AMA: Fuzzy Bear

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I highlighted a portion of your quote because that's the part I heatedly disagree with.

That's fair, but given the type of person he is and the stink of money laundering surrounding him, and all the information we've learned about his business, and the already shady nature of NY real estate, I think it's a reasonable bet to make. The way Trump behaves, the constant lying, the grandiose and narcicist personality that thinks he can do whatever he wants without consequence, such as scamming people with a fake university or stiffing numerous contractors, that doesn't exactly give me the portrait of a law-abiding citizen.

We don't "investigate" people because we don't like their style.  We investigate crimes and the persons that the investigation of those crimes suggest may have committed them.  The highlighted portion of your quote is the part of the opposition to Trump that I view as more dangerous than anything Trump may have said or done, because making THAT concept as our "new normal" will raise "I don't like this guy; he seems sleazy!" to the level of Probable Cause.  People are OK with this only because they've talked themselves into believing Trump to be the new Hitler.

All of that is the real danger in this.  Oppose Trump's policies.  (I oppose some of them.)  Campaign against him.  (My vote is up for grabs.)  I resist the idea of investigating persons when we have no evidence that an actual crime has occurred.

Again, I'll reiterate that this entire investigation started because of the actions of Republican members of his administration. And as for Congress, even you have to admit how much a partisan lawmaker loathes to even go near investigating a president who is in the same party. This isn't exactly a R or D thing. It's a politician thing. It's why they won't conduct even remotely the same oversight of their "guy" as they would if they were from the other party. So it really says something that we have Congressional investigations (even if stymied and corrupted by people like Nunes) and a criminal investigation by a special counsel. Trump brought all that on himself, and if there was really nothing there, this investigation would be going nowhere. But we have established Russia meddling in the election, and indictments came from that - meddling that Trump for months vehemently denied, too.

I get that Democrats obviously want this investigation (for good reason), maybe you don't agree with that, but I don't understand why you're actually holding that up as a reason for partisan support. It's not like a Democrat installed Mueller and is keeping this going. Trump surrounded himself with very shady people who did shady things, and then Trump went and did shady things that made people suspect his motives, and that led to Mueller. This is all on him.

This is what I'm confused about from your statement. Maybe I'm interpreting you wrong. I also don't understand why him being the target of what you perceive to be an unfair investigation would make you want to support him either, although I concede you could have brought that point up as just something that bugs you but isn't related to your support.


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Anywho, I don't want to suck the oxygen out of your thread bickering about this issue, but I really couldn't disagree with you more on what seems like just about everything related to it. It's pretty clear we both see him in some extraordinarily different ways. I can't wrap my head around it. So I guess we'll see when/if a final report comes out.

Could we not say the same about Barack Obama and his associations with Tony Reszko?  Or the insider crap he must have soiled his hands with while a member of the IL State Senate, a land of uncommon virtue?  Or Harry Truman, who owed his political career to Boss Pendergast of Kansas City?  Or LBJ, whose career was salvaged and made possible by a stolen Senate primary in 1948, courtesy of the most sordid power brokers in Texas (George Parr, Herman Brown)?

I see no real evidence that Trump is, somehow, more slimy than any of these folks.  If we were to open an investigation into Trump, we may or may not confirm that, but we might do the same if we looked into the Bushes or Obama, or if we had "just investigated BILL Clinton" in 1992.  That's not the way we do things in America, but that's what Trump's enemies in both parties wish to do in his case.

I fully understand why people don't like Trump, but he was elected in a series of free and fair elections, by the rules.  If you don't like the EC, that's another conversation, and I do believe it isn't good that the guy with almost 3 million fewer PV can win the Presidency, but THAT really is another conversation.  Trump was elected by the people, and the EV/PV thing is beside the point here.

I do, very much, believe that much of the "investigation" of Trump is a matter of Establishment Politicians of both parties upset because Trump's election was, very much, a Hostile Takeover of the GOP in the corporate sense.  THAT'S the real issue for many; the fact that Trump took over THEIR party.  The other is that Trump has no regard for insiders, and has freely exposed (sometimes for mere kicks) their secrets.  And he's made crude comments.  But all of those things, while often offensive, have often been RIGHT.  Even that's beside the point.  

It is not good when angered elites in Congress and other institutions can bring about an investigation about a person elected President, when there is no probable cause to show he committed a crime, and sic the investigative process on him.  Let the political process take care of Trump.  Vote him out in 2020, vote his party out in 2018, but STOP DELEGITIMIZING HIM BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE HIM.  That's my bottom line.  Deal with him like any other Republican President.  He got to where he is fair and square, and it's a dreamworld falsehood to say otherwise.  The process of investigating Trump hurts democracy more than it does Trump.

No, actually, you couldn’t.  There’s proof beyond reasonable doubt that Trump committed obstruction of justice in multiple instances and he is currently an (as of yet) un-indicted co-conspirator in a conspiracy to commit felony campaign finance violations and bank fraud.  If Trump loses re-election, he’s gonna go to jail and rightly so.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

[...]

I find the Mueller case against him rather underwhelming and unconvincing, and I see the investigation against him as folks investigating Trump, and not investigating a crime, and folks should be concerned about that concept.  America is a place where we don't investigate folks just because we're curious.

[...]

Since you mention this as a reason for your support, it's worth mentioning that Republicans aren't exactly any better on this. There is a long trail of this behavior from them. They are arguably worse. And in this situation, it's not like Democrats put Mueller into place. Keep in mind that this investigation was started by a Republican and is run by a Republican. If all of this is important to you, then I don't understand why it'd drive you to Trump/Republicans. That barely makes any sense.

In all likelihood, Trump is a criminal, whether its from Russia shenanigans or a long history of shady and illegal business dealings, particularly over the past 20 years. Just saying that, regardless of what you think of him now, there's a reasonable chance that he came into office as one of the biggest criminals of our modern presidents. I dunno about you but I wouldn't want to be associated with that, and that is putting aside everything else wrong with Trump.

I highlighted a portion of your quote because that's the part I heatedly disagree with.

It's a statement with no basis.  Trump has never been charged with a crime, has never been investigated by a grand jury, and no one has come close to anything like that in all his years in public life and business.  We don't look at folks and say, "He looks like a sleazeball; let's investigate him!", but that's exactly what you're suggesting.  Shady and illegal business dealings?  Where?  What?  Anything outside of civil lawsuits?  

We don't "investigate" people because we don't like their style.  We investigate crimes and the persons that the investigation of those crimes suggest may have committed them.  The highlighted portion of your quote is the part of the opposition to Trump that I view as more dangerous than anything Trump may have said or done, because making THAT concept as our "new normal" will raise "I don't like this guy; he seems sleazy!" to the level of Probable Cause.  People are OK with this only because they've talked themselves into believing Trump to be the new Hitler.

All of that is the real danger in this.  Oppose Trump's policies.  (I oppose some of them.)  Campaign against him.  (My vote is up for grabs.)  I resist the idea of investigating persons when we have no evidence that an actual crime has occurred.

Ken Starr says hello.

The investigations into Bill Clinton's affairs were a travesty.  Things that should not have occurred.  I did not support impeachment of Clinton, any more than I support impeachment of Trump.

Impeachment is a genie that has popped out of the bottle.  We are now far to unafraid to seriously consider it simply because we don't like a President, and where we have all sorts of wahoos on the internet from both ends of the Spectrum talking about how someone is committing "treason" because they are "violating the Constitution" (e. g. Obama's Executive Orders and the hue and cry about them).  This wasn't so before Nixon, but threatening to impeach a President does have its plusses at the ballot box for a party.

Err...Bill Clinton committed perjury and arguably obstruction of justice.  Even if Ken Starr was a partisan hack (and he most certainly is), Congress' mistake wasn't that the House initiated impeachment proceedings, it was that the Senate didn't remove him from office.  That said, comparing it to the calls for Trump's impeachment is a logical fallacy in the form of false equivalency.  The evidence against Trump is far stronger (and will almost certainly lead to multiple criminal indictments on charges such as obstruction of justice, several different types of conspiracy charges, and quite possibly witness tampering if Trump loses reelection and thus leaves office before the statute of limitations expires), Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation was by any remotely objective measure a model of professionalism and conducted with no evidence of partisan bias, etc, etc, etc.  

Trump is the poster child for situation in which impeachment is warranted and his removal from office by Congress would be more appropriate than it was under during any other Presidency in American history.  Even Nixon, despite obviously deserving to be impeached and removed from office at the time of his resignation, did not warrant impeachment to the same degree that Trump does.  With all due respect, what has happened is that folks like yourself have gotten caught up in the partisanship of the moment leaving many congressional Republicans more concerned about losing a primary by offending Trump than they are about upholding the Constitution and protecting the rule of law in America.  As long as that remains the case, there won't be a realistic chance of Trump being removed from office by Congress no matter what crimes he commits, but that's simply due to Republican partisanship and cowardice.  Nothing more and nothing less.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

[...]

I find the Mueller case against him rather underwhelming and unconvincing, and I see the investigation against him as folks investigating Trump, and not investigating a crime, and folks should be concerned about that concept.  America is a place where we don't investigate folks just because we're curious.

[...]

Since you mention this as a reason for your support, it's worth mentioning that Republicans aren't exactly any better on this. There is a long trail of this behavior from them. They are arguably worse. And in this situation, it's not like Democrats put Mueller into place. Keep in mind that this investigation was started by a Republican and is run by a Republican. If all of this is important to you, then I don't understand why it'd drive you to Trump/Republicans. That barely makes any sense.

In all likelihood, Trump is a criminal, whether its from Russia shenanigans or a long history of shady and illegal business dealings, particularly over the past 20 years. Just saying that, regardless of what you think of him now, there's a reasonable chance that he came into office as one of the biggest criminals of our modern presidents. I dunno about you but I wouldn't want to be associated with that, and that is putting aside everything else wrong with Trump.

I highlighted a portion of your quote because that's the part I heatedly disagree with.

It's a statement with no basis.  Trump has never been charged with a crime, has never been investigated by a grand jury, and no one has come close to anything like that in all his years in public life and business.  We don't look at folks and say, "He looks like a sleazeball; let's investigate him!", but that's exactly what you're suggesting.  Shady and illegal business dealings?  Where?  What?  Anything outside of civil lawsuits?  

We don't "investigate" people because we don't like their style.  We investigate crimes and the persons that the investigation of those crimes suggest may have committed them.  The highlighted portion of your quote is the part of the opposition to Trump that I view as more dangerous than anything Trump may have said or done, because making THAT concept as our "new normal" will raise "I don't like this guy; he seems sleazy!" to the level of Probable Cause.  People are OK with this only because they've talked themselves into believing Trump to be the new Hitler.

All of that is the real danger in this.  Oppose Trump's policies.  (I oppose some of them.)  Campaign against him.  (My vote is up for grabs.)  I resist the idea of investigating persons when we have no evidence that an actual crime has occurred.

Ken Starr says hello.

The investigations into Bill Clinton's affairs were a travesty.  Things that should not have occurred.  I did not support impeachment of Clinton, any more than I support impeachment of Trump.

Impeachment is a genie that has popped out of the bottle.  We are now far to unafraid to seriously consider it simply because we don't like a President, and where we have all sorts of wahoos on the internet from both ends of the Spectrum talking about how someone is committing "treason" because they are "violating the Constitution" (e. g. Obama's Executive Orders and the hue and cry about them).  This wasn't so before Nixon, but threatening to impeach a President does have its plusses at the ballot box for a party.

Err...Bill Clinton committed perjury and arguably obstruction of justice.  Even if Ken Starr was a partisan hack (and he most certainly is), Congress' mistake wasn't that the House initiated impeachment proceedings, it was that the Senate didn't remove him from office.  That said, comparing it to the calls for Trump's impeachment is a logical fallacy in the form of false equivalency.  The evidence against Trump is far stronger (and will almost certainly lead to multiple criminal indictments on charges such as obstruction of justice, several different types of conspiracy charges, and quite possibly witness tampering if Trump loses reelection and thus leaves office before the statute of limitations expires), Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation was by any remotely objective measure a model of professionalism and conducted with no evidence of partisan bias, etc, etc, etc.  

Trump is the poster child for situation in which impeachment is warranted and his removal from office by Congress would be more appropriate than it was under during any other Presidency in American history.  Even Nixon, despite obviously deserving to be impeached and removed from office at the time of his resignation, did not warrant impeachment to the same degree that Trump does.  With all due respect, what has happened is that folks like yourself have gotten caught up in the partisanship of the moment leaving many congressional Republicans more concerned about losing a primary by offending Trump than they are about upholding the Constitution and protecting the rule of law in America.  As long as that remains the case, there won't be a realistic chance of Trump being removed from office by Congress no matter what crimes he commits, but that's simply due to Republican partisanship and cowardice.  Nothing more and nothing less.

You're consistent on your reasoning.  I believe that much of the Starr inquiry was trying to criminalize Clinton's private life and create process offenses.  I believe that much of the Mueller inquiry was trying to criminalize actions that Trump had every right to do (e. g. firing Comey), however controversial.  (I subscribe to the Alan Dershowitz viewpoint on this.

If the House wishes to impeach and the Senate wishes to convict, let it happen.  I am convinced that both matters were tempests in teapots, nowhere near as serious as anything that happened under Nixon (who was a lunatic who hit the sauce hard later in his Presidency) and his crew.  Nowhere near.  I don't agree with your conclusions, but I do agree that you're consistent in your reasoning.  That's a refreshing quality on Atlas, and a rather rare one.  I would agree that there was as much cause to remove Bill Clinton from office as there is to remove Trump, one way or the other.

The issue wasn't that Trump fired Comey, as you say he has every right to do so, the issue is that he did with the intent of obstructing [if not killing] a federal criminal investigation which is not something the President is allowed to do.  This is why I would like to hear who in the justice department made the specific decision not to subpoena Trump and what that person's reasoning was for doing so.  Was it Mueller?  Rosenstein?  Whitaker?  Barr?  Someone else?  This is one of many important unanswered questions.  It's possible and appears to be the case that the evidence was so strong that an interview with Trump wasn't necessary to secure an indictment and conviction once Trump left office, but it's still odd.  In other words, it's not the act alone, but the act taken together with the underlying corrupt intent which made Comey's firing obstruction of justice. 

However, I do have to ask in light of the quoted post, let's assume for the sake of discussion that Trump committed obstruction of justice while in office.  Is that something which you feel would warrant impeachment and if not, what mechanism would you suggest using to make sure that the President was not above the law with respect to this felony given that it is DOJ policy not to indict a sitting President regardless of the evidence or circumstances. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

[...]

I find the Mueller case against him rather underwhelming and unconvincing, and I see the investigation against him as folks investigating Trump, and not investigating a crime, and folks should be concerned about that concept.  America is a place where we don't investigate folks just because we're curious.

[...]

Since you mention this as a reason for your support, it's worth mentioning that Republicans aren't exactly any better on this. There is a long trail of this behavior from them. They are arguably worse. And in this situation, it's not like Democrats put Mueller into place. Keep in mind that this investigation was started by a Republican and is run by a Republican. If all of this is important to you, then I don't understand why it'd drive you to Trump/Republicans. That barely makes any sense.

In all likelihood, Trump is a criminal, whether its from Russia shenanigans or a long history of shady and illegal business dealings, particularly over the past 20 years. Just saying that, regardless of what you think of him now, there's a reasonable chance that he came into office as one of the biggest criminals of our modern presidents. I dunno about you but I wouldn't want to be associated with that, and that is putting aside everything else wrong with Trump.

I highlighted a portion of your quote because that's the part I heatedly disagree with.

It's a statement with no basis.  Trump has never been charged with a crime, has never been investigated by a grand jury, and no one has come close to anything like that in all his years in public life and business.  We don't look at folks and say, "He looks like a sleazeball; let's investigate him!", but that's exactly what you're suggesting.  Shady and illegal business dealings?  Where?  What?  Anything outside of civil lawsuits?  

We don't "investigate" people because we don't like their style.  We investigate crimes and the persons that the investigation of those crimes suggest may have committed them.  The highlighted portion of your quote is the part of the opposition to Trump that I view as more dangerous than anything Trump may have said or done, because making THAT concept as our "new normal" will raise "I don't like this guy; he seems sleazy!" to the level of Probable Cause.  People are OK with this only because they've talked themselves into believing Trump to be the new Hitler.

All of that is the real danger in this.  Oppose Trump's policies.  (I oppose some of them.)  Campaign against him.  (My vote is up for grabs.)  I resist the idea of investigating persons when we have no evidence that an actual crime has occurred.

Ken Starr says hello.

The investigations into Bill Clinton's affairs were a travesty.  Things that should not have occurred.  I did not support impeachment of Clinton, any more than I support impeachment of Trump.

Impeachment is a genie that has popped out of the bottle.  We are now far to unafraid to seriously consider it simply because we don't like a President, and where we have all sorts of wahoos on the internet from both ends of the Spectrum talking about how someone is committing "treason" because they are "violating the Constitution" (e. g. Obama's Executive Orders and the hue and cry about them).  This wasn't so before Nixon, but threatening to impeach a President does have its plusses at the ballot box for a party.

Err...Bill Clinton committed perjury and arguably obstruction of justice.  Even if Ken Starr was a partisan hack (and he most certainly is), Congress' mistake wasn't that the House initiated impeachment proceedings, it was that the Senate didn't remove him from office.  That said, comparing it to the calls for Trump's impeachment is a logical fallacy in the form of false equivalency.  The evidence against Trump is far stronger (and will almost certainly lead to multiple criminal indictments on charges such as obstruction of justice, several different types of conspiracy charges, and quite possibly witness tampering if Trump loses reelection and thus leaves office before the statute of limitations expires), Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation was by any remotely objective measure a model of professionalism and conducted with no evidence of partisan bias, etc, etc, etc.  

Trump is the poster child for situation in which impeachment is warranted and his removal from office by Congress would be more appropriate than it was under during any other Presidency in American history.  Even Nixon, despite obviously deserving to be impeached and removed from office at the time of his resignation, did not warrant impeachment to the same degree that Trump does.  With all due respect, what has happened is that folks like yourself have gotten caught up in the partisanship of the moment leaving many congressional Republicans more concerned about losing a primary by offending Trump than they are about upholding the Constitution and protecting the rule of law in America.  As long as that remains the case, there won't be a realistic chance of Trump being removed from office by Congress no matter what crimes he commits, but that's simply due to Republican partisanship and cowardice.  Nothing more and nothing less.

You're consistent on your reasoning.  I believe that much of the Starr inquiry was trying to criminalize Clinton's private life and create process offenses.  I believe that much of the Mueller inquiry was trying to criminalize actions that Trump had every right to do (e. g. firing Comey), however controversial.  (I subscribe to the Alan Dershowitz viewpoint on this.)

If the House wishes to impeach and the Senate wishes to convict, let it happen.  I am convinced that both matters were tempests in teapots, nowhere near as serious as anything that happened under Nixon (who was a lunatic who hit the sauce hard later in his Presidency) and his crew.  Nowhere near.  I don't agree with your conclusions, but I do agree that you're consistent in your reasoning.  That's a refreshing quality on Atlas, and a rather rare one.  I would agree that there was as much cause to remove Bill Clinton from office as there is to remove Trump, one way or the other.

The issue wasn't that Trump fired Comey, as you say he has every right to do so, the issue is that he did with the intent of obstructing [if not killing] a federal criminal investigation which is not something the President is allowed to do.  This is why I would like to hear who in the justice department made the specific decision not to subpoena Trump and what that person's reasoning was for doing so.  Was it Mueller?  Rosenstein?  Whitaker?  Barr?  Someone else?  This is one of many important unanswered questions.  It's possible and appears to be the case that the evidence was so strong that an interview with Trump wasn't necessary to secure an indictment and conviction once Trump left office, but it's still odd.  In other words, it's not the act alone, but the act taken together with the underlying corrupt intent which made Comey's firing obstruction of justice. 

However, I do have to ask in light of the quoted post, let's assume for the sake of discussion that Trump committed obstruction of justice while in office.  Is that something which you feel would warrant impeachment and if not, what mechanism would you suggest using to make sure that the President was not above the law with respect to this felony given that it is DOJ policy not to indict a sitting President regardless of the evidence or circumstances. 

To give a quick answer:  If Mueller had chosen to name Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in a crime, that would be sufficient grounds for impeachment.  Mueller could clearly have done so, but he did not. 

If he thought that there was evidence out there that would rise to the level of Probably Cause that Trump obstructed justice, then Mueller should not have concluded his investigation.  He was not under pressure to finish, and there was plenty of folks who would have run interference for him if the investigation needed to continue..  But Mueller didn't continue the investigation.  He wrapped it up, and he did so with the presumption that the investigation was finished. 

Anyway, that's my standard.  A completed investigation and no finding of being an Unindicted Co-Conspirator to Obstruction of Justice.

Well...that would've required a conspiracy to obstruct justice, so if Trump was the only person involved in a particular scheme to obstruct justice, then Mueller would've been unable to name him as an unindicted co-conspirator, at least that's my understanding.  A conspiracy requires that there be at least two participants which there probably weren't with a number of these things (such as Comey's firing).

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Which Democrat for president would you be most likely to support?

I cannot imagine myself voting for Warren, Harris, or Castro under any circumstances.  I do not think Pete Buttigieg has experience at a high enough level (although I view him more positively than a slew of the folks running).  The only candidate who went from "Never!" to "Slim chance" is Cory Booker, whom I think more of now than when the process started.
 against the whole impeachment process, which I consider to have no legitimacy whatsoever.

Didn't stop you from supporting the moron last time, who had far less experience.

Trump's experience in business, at a high level, and at an international level, is far, far more experience than Buttigieg has.

Trump’s only business “experience” is blowing through his inheritance, bankrupting his own business ventures through sheer incompetence, and committing tax evasion, various kinds of fraud, and money laundering.