huckelberry wrote:In the past few years I have been frustrated by the sense that too much news time has been focused upon the economic consideration that speculation is much cheaper and easier to produce than facts. Sure some facts are used to start the process to keep viewer interest.
So in this whistle blower story are there any facts involved in the speculation about what the actual complaint was about. At first there was clearly speculation but that has transitioned into a specific story about Ukraine and Biden. I am unsure what the bridge from what if speculation to a specific story has been made of.
for what it's worth, Washington Post cited two confidential sources who said that the complaint was about Ukraine.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
I don't trust "confidential sources" or the Washington Post either. So, let's see what the facts are and then go from there. Congress should be able to get the information they want from Trump regarding this whistleblower. The public should know what happened too, without wild speculation from the mainstream media.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Exiled wrote:Congress should be able to get the information they want from Trump regarding this whistleblower.
Now, what’s to be done if they can’t?
Trump is going to stonewall Congress all the way through the election. I'd bet money that he won't debate the Democratic nominee, either--he'll just go around the country having more rallies and keep on ratcheting up the MAGgots. It's a new post-reality world.
huckelberry wrote:In the past few years I have been frustrated by the sense that too much news time has been focused upon the economic consideration that speculation is much cheaper and easier to produce than facts. Sure some facts are used to start the process to keep viewer interest.
So in this whistle blower story are there any facts involved in the speculation about what the actual complaint was about. At first there was clearly speculation but that has transitioned into a specific story about Ukraine and Biden. I am unsure what the bridge from what if speculation to a specific story has been made of.
for what it's worth, Washington Post cited two confidential sources who said that the complaint was about Ukraine.
Res Ipsa, thanks for the reply. Confidential sources are a bit better than rumor or pure speculation. One could wish for more complete and more reliable information.
The thought crosses my mind that if the tape of the presidents call is made public in Congressional hearing LDSfaqs will not believe a word. The troubling part of that is there a bunch in the Senate who believe every word LDSfaqs says.
It's hard to know the exact content of the whistleblower complaint right now obviously, but you don't need to rely on anonymous sources of a secret phone call to know the President attempted to extort a foreign nation to attack a political opponent with (taxpayer funded) military aid as the carrot/stick. That's already out in the open and about a million times worse than Watergate on the substance. The admin's line on that part already is, "So what if we did? Screw you."
Maybe the cloak and dagger nature of a secret recording would move the public in a way that a rambling Giuliani confession wouldn't. Maybe the content of the complaint is even worse, but we've got enough already.
Democratic leadership has calculated that it's not in their best interest to impeach because Republicans in the Senate shielding the President puts him above the law. They think an acquittal will hurt their 2020 election chances. You know what else will hurt their 2020 election chances? Trump's willingness to engage in egregiously unethical conduct to game elections. Letting Trump undermine free and fair elections seems a smidgen worse than taking an action marginally unpopular with the public, even assuming it was, on the "what will hurt the Democrats election chances?" meter.
Because because the conventional wisdom already is that it will go nowhere, media sources like CNN are already pivoting to a both sides narrative in which the focus also shifts onto what Ukraine has on Biden. It's like a worse version of 2016 happening in real time.
I've been worried about a US slide into illiberal authoritarianism ala Hungary et. al. for some time now. I don't think the likelihood that we'll go all the way down than that path has been higher than it seems today.
What’s interesting is that it has to be someone from his administration. Who else would be privy to this phone call? The call was so over-the-top the whistleblower probably went to the Intel Community. Not sure how the cat got out of the bag. This is serious enough that Congress should immediately move to impeach, though.
- Doc
Eta:
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
1. What's funny is that there is "no sin or crime" in Trump asking those with the authority to look into someone else who according to reports (not from Trump) might have some corruption, criminal etc. issues.
2. Trump as President, after all, is the "Chief Law Enforcement Officer" per the Constitution, thus this is entirely within his purvue.
3. Trump isn't the one who brought out various information that Biden's son might have some criminal problems LOL... It was LEFTISTS... in Media and Biden's presidential candidate opponents!
Now you Leftists are trying to put this on Trump. Predictable Leftist corruption and hypocrisy.
"Socialism is Rape and Capitalism is consensual sex" - Ben Shapiro
If true, Trump essentially asked a powerful foreign national and head of state to attack and undermine a political rival's family. And he did this while withholding foreign aid that was intended to counteract Russian expansion.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
