Azalin
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Posts posted by Azalin
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Prayers for a full and speedy recovery.
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2 hours ago, RochesterRob said:
If you go by some of the "educational" shows there are scientists at least working on the theory and have been for years. What is going on out of the view of the general public is anybody's guess in terms of development. I am not saying with certainty that it will be introduced within the next 25-50 years. In fact I would put the probability very low but not at 0 or no chance at all. A far greater probability is propulsion at near half the speed of light within 25-50 years.
While I agree that primitive warp engines might prove feasible someday, we're so far away from developing one - let alone one that can power manned spacecraft - that I believe it will be generations, possibly many, many generations before we even begin to approach making that a reality. It's fun to imagine the possibility though.
The big wet blanket in these conversations is the incredible distance between us and even the nearest stars, and the fact that until Einstein is either proven wrong or warp technology really does become a thing, it would take a really, really long time just to get to Proxima Centauri.
Back on topic, alternative energy sources are well worth investing in and developing further, but the big hurtle is going to be coming up with an alternative way to power jet aircraft. Whoever comes up with that is going to change everything.
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7 hours ago, RochesterRob said:
We could possibly see some kind of primitive warp drive before most of us die. Time will tell.
Could you elaborate on that?
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5 hours ago, Taro T said:
To the top paragraph, if the staffers are there for a couple decades but the Congress Critter they work for can only be there for 6 years max, then they will know the lobbyists a lot better than their boss will and they will be even more involved in actually crafting the legislation their bosses sponsor and eventually vote on. If the Congress critter is daily hearing from his staff a certain message, that will resonate with many of them.
And, different circumstances but analogous to a point, look at how hard it's been for 45 to root out the Ciaramellas from the Executive branch. When Congress faces the same sort of limits on tenure that the President faces, they'll face similar issues, IMHO.
To the lower paragraph, my point must not have been clear. Wasn't saying the Reps would be working to help the Senators, was saying they'd be working to BECOME the Senators. And the best way for them to make names for themselves in the limited time they have to do so is to get the big bucks lobbyists supporting them and getting them in contact with "the right people." Which just screams out as an opportunity for corruption IMHO.
Agree to disagree, with the concession that term limits is pretty much a pipe dream anyway, considering that it would be the very people affected by the term limits that would be passing the legislation.
The fact that they don't seem to want to pass it tells me that it would be bad for them and good for us.
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1 hour ago, Deranged Rhino said:
It's Dirty Sanchez!
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2 hours ago, Bob in Mich said:
Some of this was discussed by now I guess but a few points.....
Abuse of Power is a super valid reason to impeach, as far as I know. It has been used before, if I recall. There is no requirement that says impeachment must contain a judicial law crime.
Regarding the' face the accuser' question, there are two different 'trials'. One in the senate and if impeached and removed, possibly followed by the judicial trial if criminal offense was involved. My point about possibly using the other House witnesses was that there are now a lot of accusers. Is there any requirement that the FIRST accuser be involved? I don't know. Maybe someone does.
Your point about no criminal charges being The proof of political House proceedings does not really follow. That logic seems flawed to me. There are reasons to impeach that involve behavior we can not tolerate in the President that is not strictly criminal. Say he starts downing a quart of vodka with breakfast every day and cannot be counted on to be sober or conscious, ever. IDK, just off the top of the head but that seems intolerable and non criminal.
We've probably come about as far as we can on the subject, since we both seem to be to the point where we're stating opinion more than anything else. Still, it's nice to have a cordial back & forth for a change.
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26 minutes ago, Taro T said:
And, again, adding term limits cuts down on the ability for elected officials to be corrupt in theory. We agree there. But it increases the power the career staffers end up wielding and the staffers are only beholden to their boss, not the electorate. My expectation is we'd see things get even worse in that regard.
And term limits might backfire on another front as well, they might also raise the stakes for members of the House especially in the big states as there will be an order of magnitude more of them vying to hold one of their state's 2 Senate seats as that is the next step for them and they can no longer abide their time in the House.
I guess I'm failing to understand what power a staffer, career or otherwise actually has. They can't vote on bills, they aren't lobbied, and they can easily be fired. I don't understand what kind of relationship, or bond of trust, a congressional staffer has toward the electorate at large, so maybe I'm missing something there.
My personal take on congressional reps offering campaign support to senators is simply that if that's the way their constituents want them to spend their time, then fine. Otherwise, two years ain't a whole lot of time to do the work that they were sent to Washington to do.
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1 hour ago, Taro T said:
It would reduce the ability of ELECTED officials to enrich themselves. Unelected staffers gain even more power as it won't take long for all of them to be in Washington longer than their bosses that we send there.
Absolutely support the concept of term limits, but haven't heard a proposal yet that doesn't create more problems than it solves.
1 hour ago, Chandemonium said:The point isn’t if any of the current people in office are effective or not. The point is, if one were, would you want the ability to keep them there or be forced by the government to get rid of them? I’d rather the electorate be able to decide who stays or who goes and when. We already have the ability to limit terms for the house every two years and the senate every six, but we consistently choose not to. That shows me that to most people who claim to support term limits it either isn’t that important of an issue, or to you second point, they support them for those other guys but not when it come to their own.
reducing graft is definitely an issue I’m on board with, I just don’t think term limits would do as much to that end as most proponents of term limits do, and would be less effective than other potential reforms in lobbying and campaign finance. I’m fine with presidential term limits because as the head of the executive branch he was never intended to be a direct representative of the people and has as much power by himself as all 535 members of Congress put together, but I remain leery of congressional term limits because of the restriction it places on the people’s ability to choose their representation.I don't necessarily disagree, but speaking strictly for myself, I believe that most of our elected public servants are in it to feed their egos and to enrich themselves, to the point where many of them work hand-in-glove behind the scenes regardless of party affiliation at our expense (the swamp/uniparty/etc). Limiting the time they can serve might go a long way in aiding this administration's attempt to rid us of "the establishment" by limiting their access to power.
Even if I'm totally wrong in my presumption, how many Senators and Congressmen truly deserve to continue holding office as long as they do? Sure, limiting their terms of office will mean some good ones are forced to step down, but there are far fewer honest, effective ones in office than there are crooks, bitter partisans, and self-serving egomaniacs. I think that would be a net positive trade-off.
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1 hour ago, Koko78 said:
Well, if there are multiple doctors, it only stands to reason that there would be at least one of color.
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1 hour ago, Chandemonium said:
I agree 100%. In the context of term limits, I would posit that enacting term limits does in fact hand more power to the government, as it places a limit on the electorate’s power to choose their representation by taking away the ability to re-elect a popular, effective incumbent.
Then again, it would reduce power held by government officials who are there to enrich themselves through connections made and lobbyist dollars received. I strongly support term limits, especially for the house, and I'm glad as hell that the president only gets two terms.
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1 hour ago, Foxx said:
as an aside, to get off on a bit of a tangent... i have since come around to thinking that the entire impeachment process is not one where there are two different proceedings, one in the House and one in the Senate. i believe, again from my impressions on what constitutional scholars have said as well as what arguments were made during the trial in the Senate, that the Constitution charges the House with the fact finding and presentation of facts that are to be presented to the Senate for deliberations of said record. i don't know that the Senate was ever intended to be part of the fact finding portion.
I must not have been making myself clear, because this is more or less exactly how I believe it works.
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3 minutes ago, Foxx said:
did the House violate the Presidents constitutional rights by not affording him the opportunity to cross examine the public testimony of 13 witnesses in the Intelligence Committee hearings?
I don't believe so. I liken the House's role as being akin to that of a grand jury - hearings to determine if a trial is warranted. I'm not certain about specifics, but the actual trial occurs in the Senate. That's where the president would defend himself against specific charges.
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2 minutes ago, Foxx said:
agreed again. my reply was also my interpretation of what i believe the Constitution to say. as well as listening to what certain constitutional scholars have had to say in the preceding months. the Constitution also doesn't stipulate exactly how the House is to conduct an inquiry other than to say that it is, '...the House...' that will conduct it, not, 'the speaker'. there are hard and fast rules for criminal trials. as was stated often by the WHC during the Senate phase of the trial, the House Managers would have been thrown out, even laughed out of a criminal trial attempting some of the crap they did. all of which, again lends me to believe that there are no hard and fast rules for a political trial.
Which seems to bring us full-circle. If the charges are political and not criminal, then the impeachment is toothless, right?
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1 minute ago, Foxx said:
while i mainly agree, i don't believe that there are any 'standards' in a political trial. the guidelines are what the Senate says they are. there is no guarantee to face your accuser, though i think you would be hard pressed to get any sitting Senate to reject that notion.
i do agree that there should to be a crime as the statue reads, "briber, treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors" . "high crimes" in it's context there would seem to indicate you need an actual crime because bribery, treason and misdemeanors are all criminal offenses.
It would be interesting to see if any of our attorney-posters could elaborate. I read the 6th amendment and several references before posting, and not one made a differentiation for trials in the senate.
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7 hours ago, Bob in Mich said:
I am not sure about your claim about the charges from the House being criminal charges. If convicted in the Senate, there is no criminal offense. He would just be removed for bribery for instance and then could be charged for the crime after out of office. Unsure of Senate rules, so I can't say if that 'face accuser' is a Senate trial rule.
At this point in time, couldn't others actually accuse Trump at a Senate or criminal trial, if that was an actual requirement? I don't recall who would be the best, but wouldn't some of the House taped testimony accusing Trump of the scheme and of the obstruction of the document release (obstruction of congress) suffice?
In your example you used bribery to make your point, which is fine - I get what you're saying. However, bribery is a crime. If Trump is actually charged with anything criminal, then not only is impeachment just, but his rights as an American citizen would afford him all the same rights that anyone else would have, one of which is his 6th amendment right to directly confront his accuser. The whistle-blower would be compelled to appear at the trial.
Whether being tried in the senate or in criminal court, all American citizens are entitled to their constitutional rights, be they president, regular schmoe, and everything in between.
The fact that there have been no criminal charges against Trump is proof that the impeachment vote in the House was 100% purely political. I'd wager that many, if not most right-leaning posters here will admit that the Clinton impeachment was BS ( in that it began with Whitewater and went on and on until they finally caught him lying to a grand jury under oath in a sexual harassment case ), but at least with Clinton they actually had him dead to rights on a legitimate criminal charge. Not so with Trump.
I believe one mistake that's being made is the assumption on the part of anti-Trumpers that opposition to this impeachment is due to a cult-like devotion to this president. Speaking for myself ( and likely more than a few others ), my opposition to impeachment is like Harry Reid did when he did away with the filibuster, House democrats have lowered the bar for impeachment and have set a precedent for weaponizing the entire process.
Who wins in a situation like that?
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1 hour ago, ALF said:
That's all well and good, but in order to impeach and remove a president, they must have been found guilty of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. By definition, those are criminal charges, which means that the accused is still protected by the 6th amendment, which guarantees in all criminal cases that the accused has the right to face their accuser in court. How do you square anonymity for the whistle-blower under those circumstances?
It seems to me that the only way they can keep the whistle-blower's identity secret is if Trump committed no crime.
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38 minutes ago, OldTimeAFLGuy said:
...shame on you....Tibs and Busey feel left out................
They don't need any attention from me. They get plenty of that from you guys.
I was just having a little fun at Bob's expense.
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2 minutes ago, OldTimeAFLGuy said:
find me TWO better sore losers....
Al Gore and Bob in Michigan?
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2 hours ago, keepthefaith said:
That's harsh cuz Hillary's charisma is that of a house fly.
I believe I once compared her charisma to that of wet celery, and was subsequently chastised for insulting celery.
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All the corruption of Hillary with less than half the charisma - a guaranteed front-runner in 2024.
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1 hour ago, Joe in Winslow said:
Romney's always been a quisling.
Totally without any kind of backbone. Just look at his time in Mass.
The last time I had any real respect for Romney was during that first debate against Obama. After that, he just sort of fizzled out. Once it looked like Trump was going to win the nomination, Romney went full McCain against Trump, proving to me that he was just another uniparty douche. As far as I'm concerned, Romney can go ***** himself.
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3 minutes ago, Tiberius said:
Suddenly he is now Hillary with a mustache! lol
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1 minute ago, Margarita said:
me thinks you protest too much not a single peep regarding any other point of my OP but one word in regards to his followers triggered you....interesting
I'm more interested in getting to the bottom of your prejudice. You paint with a very broad brush and attempt to justify it by calling it opinion.
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1 minute ago, Margarita said:
I find it necessary to call them cultish because my opinion is his supporters wouldn't acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part even if proven beyond any doubt it existed there would be some sort of rationalization why which in my mind is irrational Yes.
Have you actually discussed this with any Trump supporters to the point where your opinion deems it necessary to label them cultists? It seems to me that your use of the word "rationalization" describes your thought process perfectly.
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Rush Limbaugh reveals diagnosis of advanced lung cancer
in Politics, Polls, and Pundits
Posted
Very well said.