Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

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Thad
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:59 am

Cohen flipping on Trump is potentially a very big deal.

Not necessarily because of anything he's actually said or done so far. If he can prove that Trump knew about the Russia meeting in advance and then lied about it, that's potentially huge -- but it's worth remembering that Cohen is not notable for his honesty or his competence, and anything he says is immediately suspect.

Right now what's more important than what he's said is that he's said it. Before, there was still a chance he would angle for a pardon. He's pretty clearly burned that bridge now. The best play he has left is to cooperate with the investigators. (It appears that he knows this, but again, it's hard to tell with that guy; it's possible that he is just very, very stupid.)

Ken White talked a bit about attorney-client privilege in the latest episode of All the President's Lawyers. He noted that the already-released recording of the conversation about buying Karen McDougal's story wasn't privileged because it's clear there were other people in the room and it wasn't a private conversation. And Mueller has already pursued documents under the crime-fraud exception; attorney-client conversations aren't privileged if the client was plotting a crime.

Oh, and they're looking into the Trump Organization's finances.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jul 30, 2018 1:17 pm

Thad wrote:it's possible that he is just very, very stupid.

He willingly spent multiple decades as the #1 fixer for Donald Trump. So there's that.
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Cait » Mon Jul 30, 2018 6:14 pm

Attaching yourself to someone who blatantly needs a lot of help and will pay to make his problems go away doesn't seem exactly STUPID as such.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby François » Mon Jul 30, 2018 6:25 pm

Plus it would have remained quietly profitable if the whole "presidency" thing hadn't happened. The guy was probably dragged out of his whatever his depth was.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:42 pm

Well, that's what I'm getting at: it takes a certain amount of stupid to assume that Trump becoming - or even running for - president would not bring a ridiculous amount of scrutiny to his business dealings.
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:52 pm

Mongrel wrote:
Thad wrote:it's possible that he is just very, very stupid.

He willingly spent multiple decades as the #1 fixer for Donald Trump. So there's that.

Note the qualifier "just".

As in, it's possible that he's *just* very, very stupid, or he may be very, very stupid *and also* some other stuff.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:11 pm

I know there's a twisted sort of justice in these people's apparent success just dragging their decades of quiet criminal activity out into the limelight to be exposed, but I don't think it was really worth sacrificing the reputation, self-esteem and safety of every single person who was born here. If this was all somebody's master plan, they can go fuck themselves.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 31, 2018 4:08 pm

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:18 pm

https://www.kqed.org/science/1928442/u- ... ds-tougher

The Trump administration says people would drive more and be exposed to increased risk if their cars get better gas mileage, an argument intended to justify freezing Obama-era toughening of fuel standards.

wat

At the same time, the draft says that people will drive less if their vehicles get fewer miles per gallon, lowering the risk of crashes.

oic

carry on then
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:28 pm

The American college campus, we are led to believe, is a dangerous place: If you say what you really think, particularly as a conservative, a mob of young social justice warriors will come for your faculty position or invitation to speak on campus. Entire books and online magazines are premised on the idea that political correctness is sweeping the American university, threatening both higher education and the broader right to free speech.

But a brand new data analysis from Georgetown University’s Free Speech Project suggests that this “crisis” is more than a little overblown. There have been relatively few incidents of speech being squelched on college campuses, and there’s in fact limited evidence that conservatives are being unfairly targeted.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... georgetown
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Friday » Fri Aug 03, 2018 11:34 pm

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Tue Aug 07, 2018 12:13 am

CNN: West Virginia is going to try mobile voting in the 2018 midterm.

West Virginians serving overseas will be the first in the country to cast federal election ballots using a smartphone app, a move designed to make voting in November's election easier for troops living abroad. But election integrity and computer security experts expressed alarm at the prospect of voting by phone, and one went so far as to call it "a horrific idea."


What could possibly go wrong?
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Thad
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:12 am

Ars has more:

Timothy B. Lee wrote:Advocates of online voting point out that people perform sensitive financial operations over the Internet all the time. But the difference is that financial networks keep records of all transactions that are available for inspection by both customers and banks. By contrast, our election system is based on the principle of the secret ballot, which rules out the kind of after-the-fact auditing that helps secure financial networks.

So how would the Voatz system prevent hacking, ensure auditability, and preserve voter privacy? The company's website is thin on technical details, and it hasn't responded to an interview request we sent earlier today. A five-page fact sheet distributed by Voatz at a conference of state election officials earlier this year claims that the company's blockchain-based voting technology "is fundamentally different than touchscreen or online voting."

Voatz claims that, by using blockchain technology, "an immutable, auditable record of every vote is automatically maintained while preserving voter anonymity." But the paper skims over how, exactly, a blockchain accomplishes this ambitious goal.


The way I see it is this: show me a system where it is (1) possible to confirm that your vote has been counted correctly, (2) impossible for anyone else to find out how you voted, and (3) impossible for a single person to vote multiple times. Show me the math. Once you've convinced me that it is even technically possible to create a verifiable, auditable online voting system that is still anonymous, then we can move on to all the other risks such a system entails (your vote being compromised through phishing, malware, etc.).

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:02 am

Anybody else been listening to All the President's Lawyers with Josh Barro and Ken White?

The latest episode has a good rundown of the beginning of the Manafort trial.

Ken notes that the defense is making the best play it has: it's attacking Rick Gates's credibility. "The prosecution's case relies on the testimony of a man who has confessed to fraud; why should you believe anything he says?"

White says that he thinks this tactic probably won't convince the jury, but you never know.

There's also an interesting sidebar about argument in the alternative (to choose a recent example: "There was no collusion, and even if there was, collusion is not a crime"). It's a sound type of legal argument but White notes that it's generally not a good idea to use it in front of a jury, because, well, when somebody says something like that it sure sounds like bullshit, doesn't it?

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Mongrel » Wed Aug 08, 2018 2:22 pm


hooooooly shit

Seriously... every time I think I should no longer be surprised by the sheer cartoonishness of Trump's villainy, he one-ups himself.
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:30 am

Judge halts mother-daughter deportation, threatens to hold Sessions in contempt

A federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration started to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

“This is pretty outrageous,” U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The woman, known in court papers as Carmen, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. It challenges a recent policy change by the Justice Department that aims to expedite the removal of asylum seekers who fail to prove their cases and excludes domestic and gang violence as justifications for granting asylum in the United States.


"Law and order" is and always has been a white supremacist dog whistle. The motherfuckers who bleat the loudest about "law and order" have no respect for either.

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby beatbandito » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:37 am

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Thad
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Thad » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:46 am

Do not get me started on the fascism at the heart of cop dramas.

(I will give The Closer props for spending its last season on an arc where the department gets sued because of all the times Brenda Lee violated suspects' civil rights.)

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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Yoji » Fri Aug 10, 2018 10:55 am

Thad wrote:"Law and order" is and always has been a white supremacist dog whistle. The motherfuckers who bleat the loudest about "law and order" have no respect for either.

Exhibit A: the pardoning of Joe Arpaio, convicted for contempt of court for disobeying orders to halt his prison fuckery.

They sure howl about law and order while grabbin' it by the pussy.
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Re: Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

Postby Grath » Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:01 am

"They should just come here legally! Hey, people are coming here legally, let's threaten to deport green card holders if they ever came near a societal safety net."

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