dasfoo
4d ago
- The reason for the description of the payments was to conceal Cohen's crime. Trump could hardly put "Reimbursement for unlawful campaign contribution" on the checks!
Do you think Trump would intentionally commit a crime to help Cohen? If so, you hold him in higher esteem than I do.
dasfoo
4d ago
It doesn't look like everyone (or anyone, really) at Dominion is twirling their moustaches and cackling as they disenfranchise the American people. It looks like they run like a standard tech company, which is to say all over the place, constantly fighting fires and doing the needful to get their sales. I'm sure 2020 was a complete nightmare scenario for these guys, where suddenly all their customers are radically transforming their deployments and doing novel, untested, gigantic-scale absentee and mail balloting.
Since I got downvoted for this skepticism, I think this is key part of the above explainer. Yeah, it sounds like routine software company patchwork, but it's a big leap from there to actionable claims of fraud. "Stop the Steal" is as dumb a mantra as "Most Secure Election Ever." They aim to convince through emotional appeal backed only by weak insinuations. For the kind of election fraud claimed by Stop the Stealers, you do need to find a couple of moustache-twirling villains intentionally changing vote counts through illicit means, not just the implications-without-accusations listed above.
dasfoo
4d ago
National review has basically said this is BS (but Trump did himself no favor with bad legal counsel). That is what establishment republicans think.
I'm essentially a NR republican of the Jonah Goldberg Remnant variety. I am anti-Trump in that I think he is cultural poison and I will(have) never vote(d) for him. I agree completely with the NR consensus on this.
The problem with the "This will kill Trump" viewpoint is that it sees Trump in a vacuum, as a uniquely corrupt outlier. My view is that is he is the "naked" exampled of the corruption already pervasive in elite politics. Everything he does or tries to do or wants to do is completely routine and no more dirty than what the Bidens/Clintons/Pelosis have been doing for decades. And probably the Bushes, Obamas, etc.
The difference that Trump offers is that he is simultanously pettier/dumber/incompetent at everything he does AND he has none of the friendly institutional cover afforded to the elite club and their competent lawyers and knowlegable operatives. They have a system that they know how to navigate, litigate and obfuscate, and Trump doesn't know that he needs to know how to work that system to succeed.
So, when the proposition comes up: Does this change your opinion of Trump? The answer to even mainstream Republicans is, "This makes no difference, because the other guys are just as bad, and maybe worse because they're good at being that bad and getting away with it."
If Trump going down is the draino that unclogs the swamp and he takes them all down, this maybe isn't so bad. If he's the only one who makes it through the drain, this is a sort of travesty of selective justice.
dasfoo
4d ago
Hunter Biden is being prosecuted.
Only after a judge squashed the absurd plea deal that exempted him from all future prosecution.
It's a half-step removed, but isn't this guy paying Hunter Biden's back-taxes to benefit Joe Biden similar to Cohen paying Daniels to benefit Trump? Why isn't California coming down on this guy for FEC violations?
dasfoo
4d ago
The most relevant point is made in several places and deserves its own discussion:
Trump is accused of using personal money for a campaign purpose.
And without getting into the sleazy details, this is something that every sentient person assumes every candidate does to some extent, and Trump is the only one signled out for it.
Talk to any small business owner/gig worker, and the lines between personal and business spending are sort of vaguely (mis)understood and largely unobserved. You should see the uncomfortable faces when the bookkeeper in our local small business circle talks about this subject. Everyone is bad at this this. At times, it seems almost impossible to dilligently keep track of these things in accordance with the law. The general assumption is that small, non-malicious fudging of that line will be overlooked. This kind of petty gotcha on Trump on this subject is unlikely to substantively move the needle for anyone already sympathetic to him.
dasfoo
4d ago
Intent can't be proven in any of the three scenarios you put forward because buying paperclips isn't illegal, and legal impossibility is almost always a complete defense.
So "intent to conceal a crime," in your opinion, only occurs when there is a real crime to be concealed? And not when someone intends to conceal a crime but that crime doesn't actually exist? So the defendant would have to be aware of the reality of the crime and that their actions are intended to conceal a real crime?
My analogy was meant to get at one aspect of this that is blurry: What crime did Trump think he was attempting to conceal via the falsifications (jury instructions: don't think about this, just assume there was a crime)? My guess is that it's a wild overestimation of Trump's knowlege of FEC law to come to the conclusion that he was being mindful of the contorted violation to which Cohen pled in his deal (which may or may not even be a real crime).
In my model of Trump, he was only ever going to do something to conceal his own culpability, and certainly not Cohen's, who he was allegedly also planning on screwing out of reimbursement. Trump had to suspect that he was guilty of something that needed concealing, which would be what? Since he was not charged with concealing a crime with which he himself was charged or convicted, or to which he had pled -- all of which would have made the prosecution's case much easier -- I'm guessing it was something that was not actually a crime but which he mistook as something that might be illegal, like the payments to Daniels. the only other alternative, is that he was attempting to conceal something embarassing but not criminal, in which case there is no felony.
dasfoo
6d ago
This is interesting, and I might be persuaded.
Scenario A:
Let's say I mistakenly think that some completely legal act is illegal, like buying paperclips. Every time I buy paperclips for my office, I intentionally misclassify these transactions as "legal services" because I don';t want the law to know that I bought paperclips.
In this scenario, I have committed a felony, because I was attempting to conceal a "crime," and therefore fool the state, regardless of the actuality of any crime being committed.
Scenario B
Let's say I think that buying paperclips is embarassing but not illegal. In this case, I would be committing only a misdemeanor by misclassifiying the purchases, as I was not trying to conceal what I thought was a "crime?"
Scenario C
I'm not sure if buying paperclips is a crime, so just to be safe, I'm never going to admit to buying paperclips on paper. I'm going to send my lawyer out to buy my paperclips for me with his own money, and since he's my lawyer, when I pay him back, I'm going to classify the expense as "legal services," because he's my lawyer. I think I have successfully avoided admitting to the actual act and insulated myself from any crime if any crime exists. What is this? I have created layers of insulation between my willful ignorance and reality. Can intent be proven here?
dasfoo
6d ago
Thanks. I'll take a look. This sounds like another one of those data dumps that tries to impress by volume but which really contains very little actionable information. But the mere presence of it with the suggestion that it's important convinces motivated bystanders who never scrutinize it themselves. You would think that if there were damning evidence inside, someone would already be highlighting it, specifically.
dasfoo
6d ago
If Trump were really sloppy as you allege, prosecutors would have been able to find more serious charges to bring against him.
Not necessarily. As we can see in this case, it can be really hard to create the semi-coherent appearance of a case out of a bunch of nonsense and make it just opaque enough to pay off. If a guy is racking up hundreds of little process violations because HDGAF about process, the trick is to turn those into a felony in one of the jurisdictions jaded enough to convict without ever questioning the premises. It's probably easier to charge and convict a smooth operator who is knowingly committing crimes because once you catch them in act with intent, you have your smoking gun. If someone is carelessly racking up violations by just not caring, it's going to be really hard to prove an intent that never existed.
dasfoo
6d ago
But that’s the entire point. You needed to do it with an intent to defraud and commit another crime. If he wasn’t thinking at all about that, then that is proof he didn’t commit the crime.
Yeah, I agree. But Trump is his own worst enemy and creates most these problems for himself. It's hard to feel sympathy for him when he is essentially dooming himself by repeating the same mistakes over and over rather than adapting -- even though I think he is being unjustly persecuted in a way that really hurts the entire country. Even if he's the least-bad part of this whole debacle, I can only shake my head in pity at mess he's put himself in.
dasfoo
6d ago
This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal?
Part of the problem with this whole thing is assigning intent to a guy who seems to wing it on instinct and never really bothers to do due dilligence to make sure he's doing things the proper way -- and who hires shitty, sleazy lawyers who are also incompetent at covering the legal bases. Trump is sloppy. Contrary to the memes, he's barely playing 1-D Chess. He follows the straight line from his desires to his ego. It's entirely possible given his apparent modus operandi that no one thought to check if there were any legal issues with anything related to the FEC or any other set of regulations, and "legal services" was written on the checks because Cohen was a lawyer, making anything he does "legal services."
I don't doubt that Trump is guilty of hundreds (if not more) of compliance violations, because he generally holds all rules and official processes in contempt. Felony convictions for details he likely never bothered to consider or understand seems harsh; but it does make a good case for why political parties should screen their candidates with a more serious sense of purpose.
dasfoo
6d ago
I just did a search for "dar leaf dominion emails" and didn't find anything substantial. Care to share what you found?
dasfoo
6d ago
The parties should be better gatekeepers, but they seem to be broken now in a desparate race to the bottom.
dasfoo
6d ago
There was a Hollywood movie in the wake of the Clinton scandal, The Contender, about a woman who is chosen to replace a deceased Vice President. However, her confirmation becomes controversial when rumors of a college orgy surface. The Democrat-led argument 25 years ago was this private sexual conduct was wholly irrelevant.
Of course, the movie also pulls its punches by ultimately revealing the rumors to be baseless, drummed up by an Arlen Specter-like Senator played by Gary Oldman.
These are always arguments as kamikaze soldiers, to be used when convenient for maximum shock but with no real ideological committment to using them faithfully and responsibly.
dasfoo
6d ago
But why would SCOTUS want to "squelch" this?
Because wide latitude for states to prosecute presidential candidates is going to be extremely chaotic and destabilizing. Ideally, yes, candidates who have committed crimes should be prosecuted without favor -- but you have to acknowlege that state party operatives are going to abuse this newly validated tool in cynical and destructive ways.
EDIT: One of my most important rules-of-thumb for politics is, "Do I want a candidate/party/official I don't like or trust to have this power?" If the answer is "No," then I don't want it for my team, either.
dasfoo
6d ago
"1" seems to completely normal political campaigning. E.g., The Hillary Clinton email server thing.
Isn't this now, according to the bases on which Trump was convicted, illegal election fraud?
dasfoo
6d ago
Claiming that the false entry was in furtherance of another crime ... without actually including that crime in the indictment and without that crime ever being adjudicated in court
This is the part that bugs me the most. How can a crime be asserted as a predicate fact in court when that crime has never been charged, tried or convicted?
If the argument is that the crime exists because Michael Cohen pled to it as part of a bargain, isn't that irrelevant with regard to Trump? AIUI, one person cannot be convicted by proxy of another person's trial; Trump would be entitled to his own defense.
Further, the insinuation that it is electoral fraud for a political candidate to mislead the public opens unlimited potential for lawfare fuckery. Does this mean it's possible to charge Joe Biden with Electoral Fraud for saying that his son's laptop was fake during a Presidential Debate? Or any other outright lie or even half-truth told in the course of any campaign?
I admit, seeing most active politicians from the past few decades jailed for dishonesty might be a nice corrective, but selective prosecution is not the way to go about it. It seems like this case is going to come back at the Democrats in severely unpleasant ways.
dasfoo
15d ago
My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.
Her voice is generic.
Really? She was hired for the movie Her because of her voice. She came in to replace another actress (Samantha Morton) because her voice didn't work. SJ might not be primarily a voice actor, but her voice is distinctive enough to be considered an upgrade from Morton's voice.
dasfoo
16d ago
No the company is not “deep faking” you, you just aren’t actually unique.
I think there are too many indicators in this case pointing in the opposite direction.
- Actress known for playing voice of AI
- Actress known in part for her husky voice
- Actress approached by AI company for permission to use voice, she refuses
- AI voice sounds suspiciously similar to that of above actress
- AI company explicitly references the actress' AI role in promoting the new voice
On the other hand, if OpenAI had used a voice similar to that of John Huston, who previously had no connection with AI, and who is not a currently active celebrity profiting off of their known assets, it would seem like a fun, quirky choice. There might even be debates over whether the AI was based on Huston or Daniel Plainview, whose voice was modeled on Huston. I don't think Anjelica Huston would be suing them, unless they had asked the Huston estate and had been refused.
dasfoo
18d ago
In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end.
But what if it's self-induced suffering, gamified to achieve victory on the scale of "who suffers the most?" Is that still "The End?"
dasfoo
25d ago
Bottoms - Diverse group of lesbians and Marshawn Lynch.
LOL. Lynch is not involved in any of the movie's romantic subplots, although he references a complicated personal life offscreen. His thoughts on feminism are quite amusing. He is the highlight of a fun movie, but irrelevant to your subject of interest here.
The main romantic pairing in the movie is between a black lesbian and bi-sexual (half-?)asian girl.
dasfoo
27d ago
Openly launching multiple criminal trials against a political opponent leading up to an election is something even Putin hasn't done.
To be fair, Putin doesn't need multiple trials. Just one is enough. And sometimes a trial isn't even needed.
dasfoo
29d ago
Is it a wise choice for a woman to opt into an identity with a mandatory retirement policy that's at most decade out? What's she supposed to envision doing for the rest of the time?
A person's value can change over time from one asset to another.
I know you want to read a lot into this, but it's reall very simple, and universal for both men and women:
If you want to be valued (beyond the default "all human life has value" value, which is a wash across the board), you need to provide value.
A young man, for example, is generally valuable for his strong back and plentiful energy; an old man is generally valuable for his learned wisdom, accrued wealth and maybe even skill at the management of young men. If an old man is stupid, poor and cannot lead the young, he is shirking his own value. It doesn't matter if other people want to imbue him with value or not, he provides nothing.
Women, likewise, can be valuable for a lot of things when they're younger, and less valuable for those things later, but valuable for other properties that align with their age and experience.
I am not proscribing that women only do certain things -- certainly there is variability with every person, and I'm libertarian in terms of what part the law should play in this -- but rather suggesting that women who complain that they aren't valued are probably not providing value out of their own choice. Just like men who don't feel valued by women. This type of value is not innate but something one must identify correctly and work towards providing. Old-fashioned gender roles were better at teaching young people how they can be of value to others than today's gender roles are.
dasfoo
1mo ago
To claim that modern society has devalued motherhood and femininity, or made them low status, is completely backwards. Motherhood and femininity in general have been devalued for as long as patriarchy has existed, so pretty much the whole of human history.
I see comments like this a lot, and it goes with the general sentiment that men don't respect women and only think of them as sex objects. The truth is that men do value women greatly for certain things that are unique to their womanhood and less for other things that are not unique to women. It's contemporary women who have devalued the qualities they have which men do value.
It's the reason you occasionally get figures like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great who are praised for being essentially men in women's bodies, but you never get men praised for being essentially women in men's bodies.
I know this is controversial to say these days, but the bodies of men who act like women cannot do the things the real women can do with their bodies and, generally, women are highly valuable because of what their bodies are built to do: nurture life. If I owned a goat who just wanted sit in my chicken coop all day, he wouldn't be very valuable to me because he can't lay eggs.
I'm not saying that all people should be strictly limited to traditional gender roles -- there are outliers that just can't perform those roles. However, society is currently obsessed with making outliers the new normal, which is wreaking havoc on both the healthy operation of human interactions and the self-worth of those who have been yaslit into devaluing their natural gifts.
I trust that the State of California is doing their best to trap Morris into a plea deal wherein he admits as much! As it is, he has nearly run out of money and can't afford to buy more than 11 of Hunter's paintings. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/15/hunter-biden-legal-defense-kevin-morris-money-00158237
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