Total posts: 3,014
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
There is, it is the world implied by your claim that knowingly possessing documents that weren't explicitly declassified after leaving office is willful retention and a crime.How is it that after all of these months of debating this you are still fundamentally ignorant on what the basic charges against Trump are?The charge here is not that he had them and he knew he had them.
Yes it is. Read them. Look at the law. It doesn't apply because he is authorized and the origin of authority, but that is the charged law.
It's that he had them, knew he had them, and refused to give them back when asked.
So you believe it's not "willful" until someone asks for the documents?
Having possession of something that isn't yours is not necessarily wrong, that depends on the circumstances. When it's rightful owner asks for it back and you refuse, that's theft. This is common sense.
Then they should have charged him with theft. Of course he is the rightful owner, not NARA or the FBI; so that would fail basic logic tests but at least it would match what you're saying which is better than the ignorance you repeatedly display.
Classified documents belong to the government.
...
Neither Biden nor any former office holder had ever done something [not giving every document in the house] so stupid.
"He also cited the diaries that President Reagan kept in his private home after leaving office, noting that they included classified information. Contemporaneous evidence suggests that when Mr. Biden left office in 2017, he believed he was allowed to keep the notebooks in his home. In a recorded 8 conversation with his ghostwriter in April 2017, Mr. Biden explained that, despite his staffs views to the contrary, he did not think he was required to turn in his notecards to the National Archives-where they were stored in a SCIF-and he had not wanted to do so. At trial, he would argue plausibly that he thought the same about his notebooks. If this is what Mr. Biden thought, we believe he was mistaken about what the law permits, but this view finds some support in historical practice. The clearest example is President Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 with eight years' worth of handwritten diaries, which he appears to have kept at his California home even though they contained Top Secret information. During criminal litigation involving a former Reagan administration official in 1989 and 1990, the Department of Justice stated in public court filings that the "currently classified" diaries were Mr. Reagan's "personal records." Yet we know of no steps the Department or other agencies took to investigate Mr. Reagan for mishandling classified information or to retrieve or secure his diaries. Most jurors would likely find evidence of this precedent and Mr. Biden's claimed reliance on it, which we expect would be admitted at trial, to be compelling evidence that Mr. Biden did not act willfully."
Biden seems to disagree with you Double R. He seems to think that something can be personal property and classified at the same time.
Circumstances matter.
Only if they are written in the law.
A person driving above the speed limit for the thrill of it is not the same as the person speeding to get his wife to a hospital before she bleeds out in the back seat from a pregnancy complication.
and a "vagrant nigger" isn't the same as an "upstanding white man", when you let people inject their own notions of relevance that is not "rule of law".
If emergencies are a valid exception to the speed limit that should be in the law. If the severity of the offense varies with how much one is exceeding the speed limit that should be in the law.
Once again, our disagreement is about balance. And again, I think there are two sides to this scale that have to be considered, you think there's only one.
Hardly, you're defending totally unprecedented charges against a political rival on the eve of an election because you think he's terrible based on accusations by his political opponents that they obtained (recent news) through bribery and extortion.
Then, unable to look at yourself in the mirror you went on to try and justify the relevance of your subjective feelings about the man by alluding to 'circumstance' and 'discretion'. In so doing you've only managed to come up with a single analogy which has been used unjustly as all discretion will be.
There is absolutely nothing to balance here at all. There is no merit to your position that laws should remain vague and enforcement need not be equal. CERTAINLY no merit in the goal of getting Trump over framed non-crimes.
Equal application of the law is important, but it is ultimately pointless of it is enforced without any thought, because laws exist for a reason and if those reasons are not going to guide us in our enforcement of them then what we end up with is not a system of justice.
If you can make exceptions on a case by case basis when exceptions are just and rational then there is no motivation to write the exceptions into the law and then what happens when the enforces are not just and rational?
What happens when they see someone speeding for an emergency, but they don't like that person's religion or the bumper stickers on their car? Then they get detained and someone dies and the law was not violated. What are you going to do then? Make up more law? Make up fake charges against the cop so that other cops know to fail to do their job next time?
That is not rule of law. It is insanity.
If every president until now has been getting "exceptions" due to I don't know being the elected president and origin of classification authority, and whoopsie those exceptions just dried up, how is that any different?
You will NEVER convince me or any other Trump voter that your motives are pure for not excepting Trump from your so called "law against presidents having national defense information", that's why motives and bias purity is a bad way to frame a legal system. When there is no trust the system collapses.
What I find ironic about what you're trying to argue is that your position is essentially a pro beurocrat world view, something right wingers love to decry.
???
The negative connotation behind that word comes from the notion of people sitting in an office making decisions based on a rule book with no regard for the real world circumstances involved in any of their decisions and therefore no regard for real world consequences of the decisions they are making.
You and I have very different ideas about what is wrong with bureaucracy.
It's that they're making stupid rules without constitutional authority; often having less oversight than legislators themselves (not being subject to elections and appropriate judicial review).
For a decade I have been constant on this point. The solution to bad rules is certainly not to break them on whim (be it personal or mob). The solution is better rules. Any other view is insanity or corruption.
The bureaucrats I have encountered have been people who delight in their discretion, who will admit that no one follows the rules and they are the ones who decide who the troublemakers are. The petty unelected tyrants make me sick, and as bad as it would be if they enforced all of the insanely oppressive rules equally at least that wouldn't last long. The blissful ignorance of people who don't cross these degenerate scum is the shield which lets them operate.
"just following the rules" + "but only for you" = lawfare = bad
The speed limit laws as they exist would not last a single legislative session if a computer enforced them and that is exactly what should happen. If I never see a video of someone saying "don't you know who I am?" it will be too soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXaTHA6wET0
They're just following the rules. And that's the world you think we should all live in, apparently.
We should live in a world where the rules are just and practical and we will never get there if people are shielded from stupid rules by the good graces of bureaucrats (if we behave like good obedient little boys and girls).
The problem is of course that you really don't, it's only because these rules are being enforced against Trump.
I am saying that he broke no rules AND that even if there was such a rule if he was the first of many examples to actually be charged it would still be lawfare.
In the second case, you just need to move the "only": because these rules are only being enforced against Trump.
Something tells me suddenly lawfare will exist when Trump is holding the gun. Suddenly every prosecutor will be corrupt. Every witness threatened. Every piece of evidence planted.He has already mused to his rally crowds that he will order the indictments of his political opponents. Not because they committed crimes, but because they're his political opponents.
Chances that you added that last part: 99.95%
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TheUnderdog
Why, would they fight back?You can't genocide half the population. There is strength in numbers.
Oh wait, that's what they have been doing since 1948; that's what the misinformed are calling occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TheUnderdog
Nobody will think every law is perfect
but if they were perfect and were perfectly enforced then no one would have a legitimate cause to make war on the government or other citizens.
like no need for massive bureaucratic waste on the military if the whole world is one nation because wars over territory wouldn't exist anymore
There is no need now, and they would still find plenty of excuses for huge bureaucratic waste that doesn't involve massive conventional warfare, just as they do right now.
Governments (in a democracy) are owned by the people. The only difference between Israel and Palestine (assuming one state solution) would be the flag; both places would be roughly half Jewish half Muslim.
Neither are perfect democracies, Israel is much more democratic, and there is nothing in the concept of democracy that prevents genocide.
Just like the Taliban are playing dress up and dotting their Ts Hamas could be all formal about it and then start rounding up all dissenters for the gas chambers.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TheUnderdog
A one world nation with one world language ends the need for war.
Only if it had perfect laws that were perfectly enforced.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
56 million died as a direct consequence of contact with europeans
That is a different claim than "killed", it is still probably false but I won't commit to debate that until you admit that "direct consequence" is not the same as "killing".
I will post this from my initial attempt to trace sources:
colonists certainly would have liked to wage such a war and did talk about giving infected blankets and such to the indigenes, and they may even have done so a few times, but by and large the legend is just that, a legend. Before the development of modern bacteriology at the end of the 1 9'h century, dis-eases did not come in ampoules, and there were no refrigerators in which to store the ampoules.... As for infected blankets, they might or might notwork. Furthermore, and most important, the intentionally transmitted dis-ease might swing back on the white population.... These people were dedicated to quarantining smallpox, not to spreading it.3
On July 22, about a month after the deceptive gift, Trent wrote in his journal: "Gray Eyes, Wingenum, Turtle's Heart and Mamaultee, came over the River told us their Chiefs were in Council, that they waited for Custalugawho they expected that Day."' This entry, which is ignored over and over again in historical accounts, shows both recipients of the soiled material alive and well-smallpox should have hit them by that time.
This illustrates the silliness of acting like a few isolated instances of biological warfare (and indeed it was in a time of war) were the downfall of millions of people.
The key information is that the time of the siege of Fort Pitt was long after contact, a century after all those people supposedly died. Natives and settlers were in near constant contact at this time. They traded constantly, they employed each other, they married each other, they traveled together, and lodged with each other.
Nobody was following effective quarantine measures (kinda like covid lockdowns) and the spread of every disease was inevitable under those circumstances. If every other war somebody tried to spread a disease intentionally it may or may not succeed (in this case it apparently failed), but that's a drop in the bucket at this point in history.
The natives who lived or died because of disease would have lived or died regardless when there were so many vectors.
It's not like diseases only killed one race:
"Neither Amherstnor Bouquet actually tried germ warfare. The attempt to disseminate small-pox took place at Fort Pitt independent of both of them.Smallpox and the Indians were a dangerous and unhappy combination.In 1773 George Croghan, who handled Indian affairs at Fort Pitt, commented that "the Small pox itts very fatal to them and allways will be, Till they become Civilised, as Till then they Cant be brought to keep themselves Warm, and adopt Such meshurs as is Necessary in that Disorder." Croghan's observationis a criticism of how Indians dealt with fevers and diseases such as smallpox-hoping that a dousing with very cold water would cure them. This technique was ineffective against smallpox. For that matter, everything the British tried failed too until the development of inoculation, which involved giving a patient a weak case of smallpox so that the full power of the disease would be avoided. However, even inoculation sometimes proved fatal and it remained controversial among the colonists. A few years after the Fort Pitt episode,rioting against inoculation rocked Norfolk, Virginia; that colony soon severely limited the procedure. During the French and Indian War, smallpox attacked both the Delaware Indians and the colonists of Pennsylvania."
and there can be no doubt that many of them were killed by person to person violencesome estimates are 10 millionbut even it it was "only" 6 millionor maybe even 2 million
2 million is still a very high estimate.
it doesn't really change the equation
What equation would that be?
56 million >>> 2 million and two million people being killed in war or self-defense is not genocide
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Okay, then we won't have to worry that Trump will exercise lawfare since it does not exist.We will stop pretending Trump will do exactly the same thing, since lawfare does not exist. One less thing for us to worry about.
Something tells me suddenly lawfare will exist when Trump is holding the gun. Suddenly every prosecutor will be corrupt. Every witness threatened. Every piece of evidence planted.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually.The crime occurred in 2021. Trump wasn't POTUS.
If there was even a hint that the authorization expired every POTUS would explicitly declassify anything that they happened to have in their possession (and anything that they might want to know later) before the end of term.
They changed the rules of the game to GET TRUMP, as can be proven by Biden thinking he did nothing wrong and Clinton not even having to provide a list of documents to investigators.
Once again, Biden realized he had them, returned them immediately
This is unbelievable on the face and false based on recorded conversations with the ghostwriter.
Trump kept these documents in storage, lied to the FBI about having them, moved them from one location to another so the FBI wouldn't find them, ordered the footage destroyed
All of these probably false accusations are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a serial rapist is speeding or mother Theresa. If you charge one but not the other when they are both going above the speed limit that is unequal application of the law which is not Rule of Law.
There is no world in which these two things are remotely similar.
There is, it is the world implied by your claim that knowingly possessing documents that weren't explicitly declassified after leaving office is willful retention and a crime.
In that world, they are similar in that they both crimes of willfully retaining NDI.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.The difference between a statement being objective or subjective in many cases comes down to definitions. If two people are defining a term the exact same way, then whether the sentence formed matches reality can be determined objectively.
I won't disagree with that, provided the definition is subject to objective evaluation (logic and possibly evidence).
Laws don't work this way and they never will because the precise meaning of the pages upon pages of texts will always be subject to interpretation.
Objective definitions are subject to interpretation, but if the definitions are objective then the interpretations can differ only by human error.
Again, I am not saying the laws of the United States or any government are in whole or in any small part entirely objectively defined. I am saying that if you catch someone switching interpretations depending on the subject (or any irrelevant factors) you know they are maneuvering outside the objective meaning of the law (if any). If the law is vague what they are doing may be hard to prove from the letter of the law, but even bright clear lines mean nothing to the sufficiently brazen corrupter.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@zedvictor4
No such thing as an indigene anyway.Just previous settlers.
Logically there must have been a first, even if it was a homo cousin we wouldn't recognize anymore.
First or not, murder and theft are wrong.
I don't find claims of land belonging to gene groups to be convincing or even interesting; but lying about mass murder is a problem. Those who call squabbles over land "genocide" cheapen the word.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
Is debunked as baseless.of course it is, because you personally decided
Because CNN's assertion was not supported by their link.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
How prophetic of me. Apparently Cohen waived attorney client privilege. Did Trump ever do that for Cohen? Not that psuedojudges would care if he didn't.
Created:
-->
@Amber
He prefers "imperialist"So communist of you!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
If you want to debate something be specific about your claim.
This claim:
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years
Is debunked as baseless.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@FLRW
Cunning native american counter-genocide I presume.Starting his reign in 1503, Pope Julius II was known for being domineering, hot-headed, and a manic at times. But by far his worst feature was his severe case of Syphilis, contracting it via prostitutes. It was documented that on Good Friday, his feet were so covered by sores that no one was able to kiss them.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
and the smallpox situation was simply "god's will"
Contagious diseases are not homicide.
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. [[LINK]]
Bullshit.
Contains no historical citations or any other scientific means to estimate the number of european on native homocides at any point over any period in any region.
Disinformation debunked. Next time do not trust propagandists.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@3RU7AL
@Best.Korea
This is false.after European invaders killed most of Native Americans.
Created:
Posted in:
A list of evidence points supporting the existence of lawfare:
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
Instead this law along with pretty much every law ever written is intentionally vague
There is a big difference between general and vague.
Vague is bad.
These are not complicated questions at all
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually. More authorized than vice POTUS.
Pretend that the level of ambiguity here is the problem.
No, I said that ambiguity is a problem when you used purported ambiguity to escape from the consequences of your chosen interpretation of the law.
Pretend that because there is some ambiguity on some level, well that's the problem and it means the government is engaging in corrupt lawfare.
All vagueness (which I take as identical to ambiguity in this context) is a vulnerability for corrupt (unequal) enforcement. That doesn't mean the government is always waging lawfare.
To know whether the a flaw in the law is being abused one must apply the "other shoe" test. Look around, do other people get these charges and these punishments for the same acts? and no, no matter how many times you try to tac on what you consider corollary bad acts they are always irrelevant to determining whether the law is being abused.
If legislatures want a 'crime' to be punished more harshly in conjunction with other things they should (and have) create laws defining accessory crimes that add additional punishments.
Joe Biden (among many others) retaining classified documents is the other shoe test, the government fails spectacularly, therefore this is lawfare.
As to whether the law is vague, when people impersonating officers of the court are insane enough even a well crafted law may be abused, they just pretend words mean different things entirely.
Your argument is essentially:P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is badP2: the charges against Trump are subjectiveC: the charges against Trump are badIt would never have assumed you would cede P2, but you said there are no objective charges which means they are all subjective; then this argument wins.The argument wins at what?
Inferring the conclusion....
So any charge using any law that wasn't written for the specific allegation becomes "bad", which means all criminal charges are bad since every charge is unique in some way.
Strawman
It's a tautology, which is to say it is a pointless meaningless statement.
You saw law is subjective, then say subjectivity must be fine or else law would be bad. I am not going to wear the straw.
Have you ever hear anyone "argue" that 2+2=4?
Yes.
Why do you think that is if this is all objective on the same level as 2+2?
I said nothing about levels.
I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.If the inference is correct they were authorized.The question clearly presumes the inference is incorrect.
Then they were not authorized.
If they were elected POTUS then action and authorization are identical.Until the person elected is no longer POTUS. At that point all the next president has to do is reclassify them in his mind and whoala, he's back in violation.
You can't classify public information and then physically attack people for talking about it, that is a violation of the 1st amendment; however that would be an example of how vagueness in laws could be used for lawfare. Let's examine if this law is dangerously vague:
What is to stop a prosecutor from claiming knowing that aircraft carriers exist is NDI?
Suppose they claim a model air craft carrier is "any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation"
This is an example of why the bill of rights is such an important feature of the design and why a more perfect constitution would have a hell of a lot more of that kind of thing. Twisting laws should have the highest possible chance of stepping on an enumerated right so that it is difficult.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok".Then it was willful.Not according to the law.
The imaginary, or should I say "subjective" law that says "it's not willful until and FBI agent asks you for everything you got"
If you believe the meaning of laws is subjective there is nothing to debate on that subjectAnd yet appeallate court challenges and SCOTUS oral arguments will continue to be had as they have been for all 200+ years of our country's history.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.
There are certainly flaws in our legal code, but what we are seeing now are not flaws acting on their own but flaws that are being exploited. Those "loopholes" you referred to are often baked in by the state to be used by the state against "troublemakers".
This is the first time they've decided to subvert a federal election with the kind of attacks they've used against "troublemakers" for a long time.
Created:
-->
@Moozer325
This thread might benefit from a reminder about the nature of causality.
Causation is when a series of events OR simultaneous states as a whole cause an event or state.
A sufficient condition will cause the event regardless of other causes. A necessary condition may be sufficient or it may be part of a set of necessary conditions that must 'work together' to produce the caused event.
In language multiple events or states are often bundled into one concept. When you bundle all necessary conditions into one concept, it becomes a sufficient condition and can be said to be the cause.
This may seem obvious, but people confuse themselves and others with this stuff all the time. Especially when they apply a "but for" thought experiment.
"but for" means "if this condition wasn't true, the event would not have happened, therefore it is the cause". This is not always true, and unfortunately it gets complicated when you start to include implicit agendas and intelligence.
For example rain falls on a rock. "but for the condensation, the rock would not be wet, therefore the condensation caused the wetness"
Yet if it weren't for gravity, the water would not have fallen. The "but for" test applies equally to gravity as it does to condensation. They are both necessary conditions.
It is therefore customary, without further context, to consider the least constant or last added (final) condition to be the cause. There is gravity whether there is condensation or not. Therefore it is not typically identified as "the cause".
In the "but for" test, slavery passes as a necessary condition of the civil war. If there was no conflict over slavery it would not have happened; at least the civil war that might have happened otherwise would have been so unrelated as to say it was something else entirely. There are those who would deny this, but it's a losing argument.
Does that mean it was "the most necessary" of the necessary conditions? Was it the final necessary condition?
Created:
Posted in:
Double R has the right attitude to be these types of cops:
"From my point of view the speed limit is the lower limit!" (Anakin voice)
"Then you are lost" (Obiwan voice)
Just like Trump, get them coming or get them going.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
The main reason why they CANNOT charge Trump with a campaign finance violation is because he would then be able to easily win that part of the case (due to lack of evidence), and then there would be no hush money trial....
I think they tried to pressure it at the federal level but it didn't work out, probably because some people involved were being pushed to the point of whistle blowing.
They might also have been worried that a federal charge would end up in the supreme court *easier*
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
If I were to teach a class on how to debate, and someone asked me "how do you know you've won (and are no longer hearing anything relevant)", my answer:When they start to talk about subjectivity.Also context magic.
Both excuses to avoid giving actual reasons.
The entire case revolves around the possibility that Trump used campaign funds because....well it makes sense....kinda....sorta....let's just talk about it.
Well he didn't, but as Vivek pointed out; if he had they would have called that a fraudulent use of campaign funds and attacked him on that. Basically if your name is DJT you aren't allowed to spend money and run for office at the same time.
Now the court has to convince a jury that a felonious man who repeatedly slandered Trump can be believed that an expenditure that was never reported as a campaign expense was actually a campaign expense....according to one man alone... and because that man cares about justice, not revenge.
When there are this many layers of utter failure and absurdity it's easy to become focused on the innermost layer, but after a decade of debating I have found that can be very dangerous.
Emphasis should be kept on the most fundamental error and when mentioning others being sure to point out they are less fundamental.
So yes, Cohen is one of the weakest witnesses (by objective indicators) in the history of common law. Bringing in an convicted & confessed perjurer embittered ex-wife who owes money as a character witnesses would have a similar weight.
Cohen's claims are far from the real issue. The real issue is that Trump had every right to solicit and pay for a NDA (regardless of whether he did). The real issue is that "legal expenses" is not false. There is no underlying crime, there is no accessory crime.
When I say there is no underlying crime I mean they have not proven the act and there is no law that says it is criminal.
The most outrageous is the fact that they are attempting to charge an accessory crime without the so called underlying crime even being charged. Previously in this thread Double R used obtaining a car as an example of an accessory crime when it is used as a get away car.
They are charging Donald Trump with being an accessory to a bank robbery for buying a car when there is no conviction of robbing the bank. In other words, he just bought a car.
In other words Donald Trump is facing jail time because they claim he did something perfectly legal in the service of something else that is perfectly legal via a proxy and they can't even prove that he actually ordered the perfectly legal things because his proxy is so untrustworthy.
It is reminiscent of the monty python sketch where "robbers" plot to acquire jewelry by paying for it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
So you brought subjectivity into the debate
That is incorrect.
Your argument is essentially:P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is badP2: the charges against Trump are subjectiveC: the charges against Trump are bad
It would never have assumed you would cede P2, but you said there are no objective charges which means they are all subjective; then this argument wins.
P1 is also more general, in the realm of rationality the subjective is indistinguishable from the unreal.
This is why I have to talk about subjectivity and the absurdity of an argument that relies on premises that can be used against literally any charge that has ever been brought against anyone, ever.
It is an absurd conclusion, but the error is in the premise that whether an act is criminal is subjective, which is your assertion; not mine.
Then go start your own country
See if you can hold on to this one with all these lies. I don't think it's going well.
I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.
If the inference is correct they were authorized. If they were elected POTUS then action and authorization are identical.
Every former president and their staffs are not in jail because none of them repeatedly lied to the FBI telling them they didn't have the documents the government was asking to give back, none of them started moving their troves of government documents from location to location to evade detection, and none of them attempted to destroy the evidence of their crimes afterwards.
How many of them thought about climbing mount Everest? That's just as relevant to the determination of criminal retention.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok".
Then it was willful.
A law being "clearly defined" (a completely subjective determination) is not a requirement for enforcing that law
Definitely going into the quote list.
If you believe the meaning of laws is subjective there is nothing to debate on that subject and I will remind you every-time that you claim a law was violated that you should limit your public assertions to the objectively verifiable.
As to the opening assertions of this thread, I say I am presidentially immune from prosecution; your subjective opinion on the matter doesn't beat my subjective opinion.
End of thread, thank you all for playing, isn't subjectivism interesting?
Created:
-->
@Best.Korea
So yeah, my way is obviously better.
So you took #2 as a writing prompt.
Created:
-->
@Best.Korea
Maximum discretion for the military junta, Double R should like that plan.A better way is to abolish police and law
Created:
-->
@FLRW
At least cops don't shoot white people when they go to their door.
I'd prove you wrong if you would let yourself care, but you won't.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
the very idea that applying thought towards enforcement of the law is itself the problem."thought", that is a strawman. The thinking that is appropriate is thinking about what the law says and whether the acts are objectively part of the category.That's exactly my point, in many if not most cases there is no such thing as an objective determination that any given act matches to what the law describes.
If I were to teach a class on how to debate, and someone asked me "how do you know you've won (and are no longer hearing anything relevant)", my answer:
When they start to talk about subjectivity.
Subjectivism is the adult version of a toddler saying answering "why" with "because".
the reason laws exist is to remove discretion from government to minimize tyranny and abuse.Remove descretion *as much as reasonably possible*. Because again, removing it entirely is not humanly possible.I shouldn't have to argue this because it's plainly obvious
You were saying discretion was good (because it lets me get Trump hint hint) a few posts ago.
so you try to make this a purely legal argument (despite having no qualifications)
When laws can't be understood by an average citizen you're not living in a free country. I declare any law that requires college to be understood to be unconstitutionally vague, obtuse, or esoteric. Now the funniest thing you could respond with is "Did you get a degree in constitutional law? Then you can't make such a declaration!"
Anything can be abused, the possibility of abuse doesn't in an of itself doesn't justify it's removal
That's what I say about certain unpopular sexual practices. The difference here is that there is no justified use case for discretion. Even "leniency" can be used for oppression since the net result is that they make the maximum penalties ridiculously oppressive with the knowledge that they'll only smash the people that really annoy them, or as the case may be challenge government corruption.
No one would agree to a month in jail for speeding if everyone who sped spent a month in jail. The man who spends a month in jail "for" speeding (while telling a cop he's an asshole) is not experiencing "justice".
The remedy is to ensure checks against abuse
The remedy is equal application, clear definition, and fixed ethical framework (like from a bill of rights).
Please explain something then... If a president declassifies something in his mind, how does the rest of the government know to treat the information as such?
Depends on the context.
If he starts reading off classified materials on public television, then the rest of the executive branch can infer from context that the entire population of the world has not just become authorized recipients of state secrets, nor should they conclude that the entire population of the world are now in violation of some obscure and poorly (overly broad and vague) law about keeping government secrets.
Rather they should infer that the information is no longer classified.
By the same token, if it is illegal for former presidents (or former vice presidents) to possess classified material one nanosecond after leaving office, then they should infer that anything POTUS moved or ordered to be moved to personal property is no longer classified. They should further infer that anything POTUS allowed his underlings to take personal possession of and did not order them to return before leaving office is also declassified.
Alternatively they could infer that authorization to possess classified materials survives the end of office and that is non-revocable for former presidents since if it was revocable they would simply declassify everything they wanted to keep before the end of the term.
Now this is something you may not have encountered in your preferred sources of commentary. It's often described as "common sense" or "an interpretation that doesn't imply absurdities".
It answers questions like "Why isn't every former president and all their staff in jail" and many other questions under that umbrella, such as "why would Joe Biden think having a bunch of classified stuff in a box in his garage is fine?"
The question is; how to we handle charges of crimes that are not clearly defined?
I have an idea: don't pretend charges exist when there is no law being violated and don't pretend a law is being violated when you just fucking admitted no crime was clearly defined.
One of the main advantages of this strategy is that you don't violate the 5th and 14th amendments of the US constitution and thereby exclude yourself from the privileges of the social contract (also known as being a domestic enemy).
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
I found the ideal visual aid to go with post #62
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
America has done just fine with an unelected unfireable all-powerful oligarchy for decades. (allegedly)
Yep, I especially love how we don't export anything but weapons and threats. What a business model. I hate it when my appliances and tools were made in America, clearly the Chinese are just intrinsically better at engineering because we know it's totally impossible that our industry was sabotaged by a giant parasitic crime organization claiming it's for our own good.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@FLRW
Trump said he will cut SS and Medicare so he can have another tax cut.
Threatening us with prosperity, the bastard!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bronskibeat
sabotaging an emergent fascist state is for some reason a "christian and conservative" policy?
It's liberal policy, and what you posted seem like half measures to restore the federation envisioned at the constitutional convention.
Under this constitution, and with the insignificant and unreliable self-correction mechanism we currently have, there should be almost not federal laws and they should only be tried by juries drawn randomly from the entire population.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
To the Jim Crow southern sheriff being black was enough proof of being a troublemaker. That was the context they needed to pull over a black guy. People who believe in the fallacy you just expressed tie themselves in endless loops "oh discretion is good, but not for the wrong reasons..." bla bla blaSo basically; people have used descretion to effectively outlaw being black therefore descretion itself is bad.
For example.
In general, the reason laws exist is to remove discretion from government to minimize tyranny and abuse. Laws are pointless (or worse) to the degree they allow discretion.
Using it to persecute blacks is one of an infinite number of ways it can be abused, but they are all described by the same category "unequal application of the laws". Furthermore if you familiarize yourself with the debates behind the 14th amendment you'll learn that "equal protection" does not mean "don't write laws that only effect some 'types' of people", it instead means "discretion to enforce laws is unlawful".
In other words, when the KKK hangs black people from a tree, it is a violation of the constitution to decline to enforce murder statutes.
This true meaning has been obscured and hidden by many courts since while the amendment has been twisted and mutilated to mean absurd things such as "if you have a team, it can't be gender segregated"
We have been reaping the bitter fruits of this corruption and this lawfare against a presidential candidate is the culmination of the fallacy; perhaps the final dose of poison.
Why is this so corrosive? When laws are not enforced equally, then those whom are more protected from the implication of the laws than others have no motivation to avoid or repeal unjust laws. It is the opposite of the rule of law, "discretion" is arbitrary power disguised in the skin of law.
We live now in a time where theory is accompanied by daily experiment. https://justthenews.com/government/local/ny-state-senator-calls-bill-he-voted-unconstitutional-after-hes-hit-rape-lawsuit
After voting for it, a senator says that a law is unconstitutional when it was used against him.
1.) That is how you know it was a bill of attainder
2.) This is what equal application would prevent
the very idea that applying thought towards enforcement of the law is itself the problem.
"thought", that is a strawman. The thinking that is appropriate is thinking about what the law says and whether the acts are objectively part of the category. Your burning hatred of orangeman is not "thought" no matter how much you masquerade it as something rational.
You deny that hatred like cops deny racism, there is no solution to that problem.
You can't prove the cops are racist, but you can keep them from abusing people via equal protection.
You mean like noting that all classification authority flows from POTUS and if he isn't authorized then no one is?Are you seriously about to go down the whole "Trump can declassify documents with his mind" path?
I'm all the way down that path and always have been. If your claim is that classified documents can't be in the possession of ex-presidents then by the very act of taking them home a president declassifies them in the same way that he declassifies information by making a million copies and handing them out at a public rally (which he should have done). Even further any law that tried to keep secrets from the president would be unconstitutional.
It's as deeply lawful as anything in this country can get. You may as well be accusing his right hand from stealing from the left.
Created:
-->
@FLRW
IRWA's?Oh sorry, I know Trump voters are functionally illiterate.
"adjacent character swap, can be caused by 10 ms difference in key strike, therefore functionally illiterate"
*jeopardy music*
What the definition of grasping at straws?
You are correct!
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IlDiavolo
Yep, you can find it by substr ( 0, 2)
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IlDiavolo
No, it's inappropriate to be proud or ashamed of that which you have not chosen or done.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@FLRW
What kind of people would post vile sadistic things about public figures?
Oh yea, they're on this site.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Yes. What I was pointing out is that there are 'rules' to predict who has to sign what.
NDAs and waivers can be contracts between two parties as well as a one sided contingent promise.
You can (and many people have) signed NDAs where the non-disclosure is contingent on the other party paying or doing something else and they insist on the other party signing because they don't want them to be able to back out.
However, with something like non disclosure it's always possible to "fail to deliver the goods", all you have to do is start talking; so there is less need for the party desiring silence to agree.
If you imagine it like ordering a custom vehicle, you might have to sign a contract (two parties) because if you take the car before you pay they need to be able to sue you; and if you pay but they don't give you the car you might have to sue them.
Contrast that with buying a continuous service, like internet, you don't need to sign (although sometimes there are things to sign for different reasons) because they don't need to be able to sue you. If you don't live up to the agreement they just cut you off. All they're doing is promising a service for money. You can't sue them if you don't give them the money.
In this case though Stormy doesn't need to be able to sue Cohen (or purportedly Trump) if she doesn't get the money. She can just start talking. It's asymmetric in that only Cohen (or purportedly Trump) need to have the option to sue.
Maybe Stormy really wants that money and thinks they won't pay, then she wants a promise they will pay so she wants a signature, but that's a judgement call on her part.
In any case she took the money then talked, and according to Trump defamed, so she can be sued and ought to win by all precedent.
Created:
Posted in:
Well if there is a contract specifying a payment you need two party signature to create an obligation. Cohen could have signed, but if the NDA could just make silence contingent on payment which is enough security for many without a signature.
Like "I promise to mow your lawn if you pay me $5", that doesn't need a signature from the home owner. No $5 = no mowing.
Whether Cohen or Stormy were following best practices is besides the point.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TheUnderdog
Do you have a video of this body builder refusing to sit next to someone on a plane (demanding that the other person move) and then answering the question "is there going to be a problem" with "yes"?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Most of those episodes make more sense than ebuc. They simply overlook simple explanations for incredible ones, ignore the lack of independent evidence, ignore any contradictions, then ignore the context of the fermi paradox.
but at least you knew what they were asserting...
ebuc uses words and phrases that do not work together to convey an assertion. It's made me think he's a bot more than once.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TheUnderdog
Some of those people are braindead, and incredibly not the one whose brain was eaten by a worm.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Oh for sure, and not just for the TDS. This one has general DS. He might be able to make money as a replacement for Michio Kaku or Neil De Grass Tyson though. They need to keep increasing the incomprehensible pseudoscience to keep people interested in those 'documentaries'.
"Sir is there going to be a problem"
"Not if you intersect the null void dark entropy with the bisected hypercone"
Created:
Posted in:
Pseudonym... like robinware456? Wait wrong guy.
Created:
Posted in:
As an addendum to the "democrats denying election results for 12 minutes" here is Nancy doubling down.
BTW I am not endorsing pony tail guy's statement. We should only accept real election as elections. That means elections where russians are part of the downpour of misinformation but where every ballot is from one eligible citizen and that eligible citizen only cast one ballot are still elections. "Elections" where that cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt are not elections.
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
Yea, it's a big plus for him. It should be a constitutional amendment at this point that the national currency should be a fixed growth algorithm blockchain.
PS being pro opensource blockchain is like a platinum ID card which says "I am not deepstate"
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
Net equation ['You' = population abstracted as one person]:
Government steals your stuff and you have to work for them to get some (but not all) of it back
You have less stuff because you've been stolen from and you spend less time producing stuff because part of your time is spent wasting the stuff they stole from you (through government employment/contracts).
Step 2 (or step 7 in your list):
Blame poverty, reduction in standards of living, and all other deprivations on the free market and suggest you should increase government spending to solve the problem.
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
Yep I saw it. Gave me flashbacks to macroeconomics where it was painfully easy to stump the professor. I stopped doing that out of pity (and to save my grades).
To be fair, it is hard to keep track of bullshit which doesn't actually make sense. Normally though they're smart enough to hire conmen for the job.
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
It's hard to say who they sneer at more, blacks or rural people.
It's surreal how colleges can fill their heads with minutia of specific fields without imparting an ounce of wisdom or an integrated worldview.
Also you should have known that IWRA who's pay doubled through covid (thus defeating inflation), who owns 20 houses, who has all the degrees, and who pays for misinformation would scoff at the New York Post which instead of being hidden behind a paywall has been repeatedly hidden by dogmatic censors of the deep state only to be proven to be entirely correct later on.
Personally I think the number of times your newspaper has been censored and then quietly uncensored is one of the better proxies for actual news. Very little is as important as what they don't want you to see.
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
Also see crime bills where either they get punished too hard or not enough based on the color of skin. So much for "rule of law"
Well apparently that is fine. It's called "discretion".
That's what I'm told anyway.
Created: