I think the problem is that “impeachment” really just a no-confidence vote with a really high bar, hampered by the fact that it was a prototype for no-confidence votes and thus uses words like “convict” instead of calling it, say, “dishonourable discharge”. Stop calling the Senate the “jury”, instead it’s a vote to confirm the removal from office (or once the term has ended to remove all privileges of office).
I think the whole process needs to be amended in the constitution, to make no-confidence still set as a high bar, but also to allow for both chambers to lift immunity from prosecution from federal crimes and to require a president to temporarily step aside if indicted, as the trial would distract too much from his or her duties.
At the moment, the US constitution is one of the few that does not mention political parties at all, and I think it can continue without getting parties involved.
Conceived and codified before the United States even had political parties, let alone the hyper-partisan political environment we find ourselves in today.
As you say, the Constitution does not mention political parties. I think that is both a strength and a weakness since it doesn’t account for many realities of our current system.
Political coups are like airplane landings: if you can walk away from them, they’re successful. To a greater or lesser degree, Mass-murdering Traitor Trump is now dictator for life.
There are so many names on that list. Isn’t there some kind of mnemonic I can use? Like, I don’t know…suppose there was some sort of letter in those descriptions that’s exactly the same for all of them?
If this threat was real (and I’ve not seen any reporting confirming this as of yet), I’d prefer that we not gamble with the lives of millions of people only to end up with the same trial result in the end. The verdict yesterday basically proved that the Republican Party only believes in fascism, and literally nothing would have changed the outcome. McConnell’s whole “he was totes guilty you guys but I’m acquitting anyway” speech said it all.
If Republicans were to filibuster COVID relief at this point — especially after so many have been “indignant” about having to deal with impeachment rather than COVID relief (never mind the fact that they did basically nothing here when Trump was in office other than obstruct) the fallout can be all on their shoulders.
Exactly.
If we made them actually do it, they’d threaten a lot less. Who cares if you waste a few days listening to them spout nonsense on the floor, if the end result is actually passing the laws preferred by the party a substantial majority of the country voted for?
I’m going to be Blunt, it’s going to make the Rounds that all these Morans made a really Crapo decision.
They Marshall-ed their votes and Ernst-ly Risch-ed our democracy to Fischer for the fascist voters left in Trump’s wake. There Shelby no peace for them; this will hang over their heads Tillis eternity; they won’t enter Hoeven but rather Blackburn in hell. No patriot should ever Daines to vote for any of them again.
What gets me the most is that we are a month into someone else’s term… And Motherfucker #1 is STILL in the news every fucking moment of every fucking day. This reality is shit.
fun facts. advertisers just shift their money to other programs on fox with a nod and a wink. even better though is that fox news doesn’t really rely on advertising at all - advertising is just icing on their cake.
the real money comes from cable subscriber fees - and they get that by contract for as long as they’re in people’s cable package. since they’re bundled, fox news isn’t going anywhere and they’ll keep whomever gives them the most clicks.
I just want to reiterate, Biff has not really escaped consequences, this has no effect on the various criminal investigations, where convictions can lead to real jail time.
We all knew the Republican Senate Caucus was the real ones on trial.
And now we all just saw them win the skirmish, only to have their position weakened.
Stay politically active, my friends. Vote the bastards down, even in local elections.
I’ve also heard that Tuckerfucker’s show is the #1 cable show. If that’s true, they must have no trouble attracting advertisers, even if some refuse to support that asshat.
Many of the ads on Fox News, even on the highly rated shows like Waspy Geobbels, are shit like WE BUY GOLD, survivalist buckets of dehydrated food, “collectible” coinage and My Pillow.
They don’t seem to have trouble attracting sponsors. But increasingly the quality of those advertisers are one step above phone sex and personal injury 800 numbers. It’s practically indistinguishable from the sort of ads you used to see late night on local affiliate broadcast stations.
I can’t imagine their ad rates are particularly good these days. But Fox is a cable network, the bulk of the money comes from cable subscriptions and their popularity apparently allows they to demand higher rates from carriers. When they still owned the rest of the Fox stable they used this to muscle cable carriers over their other networks. Carrier would threaten to cut FX or some other chanel if the rate didn’t go down. Fox would threaten to pull Fox News and run endless “public service announcements” about the evil corporation trying to silence conservatives by taking away Fox News. The carrier would cave.
But even that top rated status is a little deceptive because of cratering live TV viewership. The TV audience is old. Fox’s in particular, over 65 on average. CBS has managed to stay the #1 rated broadcast network in the US the same way. Catering really specifically to the over 60 audience. But if you look at raw numbers these top rated shows have a fraction of the audience of past shows. Many of them would have been in cancellation territory 25 years ago.
Except that’s the point. If they filibuster COVID relief as some sort of “revenge” for trying to hold a fair trail, it’d still all be on their shoulders! Any attempt to blame Democrats for forcing them to filibuster will be viewed as outright lunacy by anyone who isn’t completely in the Qult at this point. All democrats would have to say is “we don’t negotiate with blackmailers” and that’d be that.
