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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2629 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jason Chaffetz' Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Except... he addresses several of those issues, and why he and Elijah Cummings have jointly chosen to investigate some things, not investigate others (yet), and the legal limitations of what the Joint Oversight Committee can actually do.

There were several people asking about Trump's tax returns, for example, and quoting Chaffetz before the election saying, "Everyone has to open their kimono and show everything, if they want to be President".

But the fact of the matter is, there is no legal requirement for the President to release his tax returns. And yeah, his answer becomes a mealy blowjob for Trump. But the point is that they do not have the power to compel him to do so. He laughs about it, and agrees with the crowd, but he and Cummings are powerless to do anything about it.

    He would have left with the idea that he's doing a good enough job representing his constituents that he need not fear for his life.

This right here is why I made my comment.

Yelling incoherently at someone simply makes them stop listening, and prevents any possibility of discourse.

Chaffetz goes home from that event the Winner, because he kept his cool, and the audience failed to. Period. Nothing substantive is gained.

However, imagine this: On the stage are two chairs facing each other. Chaffetz points to someone with their hand raised to ask a question. They come up on stage, sit across from him, and ask their question into the microphone. He then takes the mic and responds directly to the person. Looking them in the eye, face to face, in conversation.

It would have changed the ENTIRE dynamic of the room. Instead of "us" being on stage and everyone else in the room being "them", the dynamic would have changed. It would have been "us on stage talking" while the room became listeners to their conversation.

THIS is how you change bad policy. Not by making pithy signs and screaming incoherently as a crowd.

At least that's the position I am taking for the next 10 years.





kleinbl00  ·  2629 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Nope. Not buyin' it. You don't negotiate with liars, you don't accept the word of those that lack one. Chaffetz is motivated by fear and greed and you do not use gentle rhetoric where a cattleprod is called for.

    Chaffetz’s Twitter feed doesn’t feature any curiosity about Trump’s numerous potential conflicts of interest. But the Utah congressman has been tweeting incessantly about how he is “outraged” by “arrogant” Obama using the national monument designation powers presidents have had since 1906.

Fuck this guy. Seriously. You forget - he's not representing Berkeley. Those are red-blooded Capital R Republicans from Salt Lake City shouting him down. Same fuckers that spent $5m banning gay marriage in Cali-fucking-fornia. He doesn't go home the winner, he goes home learning that his balls-deep knob-gobbling support of Donald "I'm out" Trump is infuriating his god-hates-fags constituency.

I have no power over Jason Chaffetz other than paying whatever PAC wants to take him down in two years. Neither do you. And it warms the cockles of my heart to see a bunch of negro-hatin', whiskey-fearin', gay-bashin' Mormons tear him limb from limb and this high tea of intellectual convergence you picture?

Naaah. Watching Republicans tear Republicans limb from limb is the kind of joy I haven't experienced since John Boehner ran screaming.

goobster  ·  2628 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why is this so hard to understand? Yelling at the guy accomplishes nothing, and actually hurts your cause, because he gets to walk away the "winner", for keeping his cool in the face of what was basically a riot.

The guy completely leveled the playing field. He asked questions from random people in the crowd, not a select few plants. He gave them the opportunity to ask followup questions if they were not satisfied with his response. He showed up, in person, and answered questions live for an hour and a half. There were multiple media outlets there videoing the entire event. You couldn't have asked for a better set up to take down one of the leading moron Republicans in the party.

Any minimally-informed voter could have absolutely shredded Chaffetz on basically ANYTHING. The guy is a mental midget. All they needed to do, for example, is let the "woman in red" speak (who asked the pointed questions about Trump's tax returns), and Chaffetz would have had to defend his indefensible position. There would be video of him either incriminating himself, outright lying, or calling out Trump. On video. To be shared globally.

Instead, the crowd starts shouting again, drowning out the followup question, and his answer, so he gets off scot-free with a mealymouthed bit of wishy-washyness.

Again. Yelling at these shitwits is not the winning strategy, and will always lead to the Republicans looking composed and professional, and their detractors looking like frothing loons.

kleinbl00  ·  2628 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Why is this so hard to understand?

Because your definition of "win" is irrelevant. to whit:

    will always lead to the Republicans looking composed and professional, and their detractors looking like frothing loons.

Chaffetz has calmly and professionally investigated Clinton's email server 33 times. He has sworn to continue to do so even past inauguration. Meanwhile he's sucking the cock of a president who goes on capslock twitter rants in the middle of the night and treats federal appellate judges as if they were Rosie O'Donnell. You keep asserting that calmness and poise win debates as if it were true and you have never once offered a single reason or example as to why it would possibly be.

    He asked questions from random people in the crowd, not a select few plants. He gave them the opportunity to ask followup questions if they were not satisfied with his response. He showed up, in person, and answered questions live for an hour and a half.

Somehow you got the idea that the purpose of this meeting was to get answers from Jason Chaffetz. It wasn't. The purpose of this meeting, to those who attended it, was to express vituperative hatred and displeasure at the previous actions of Jason Chaffetz. You think the walking sphincter is going to moderate his behavior as the result of a 90 minute Q&A? 'cuz you have no reason to think that. On the other hand, attempting to moderate his behavior through convincing him he might just get run over on the way home hasn't been tried yet. Thus, a surly crew of mormons.

Nothing wrong with frothing loons... particularly when several hundred of them show up to demonstrate the likelihood of Chaffetz' re-election.

Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

-unknown