domain:rifters.com
dasfoo
5m 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.
4bpp
このMOLOCHだ！
10m ago
It certainly seems like wokeness has traveled far enough down the barber pole that my age cohort is starting to lurch rightwards.
What does left and right even mean here, and in what way does it influence US policy towards China invading Taiwan? In Germany, the Green party is the local wing of the US progressive establishment, and they have been considered the most militaristic party (within a US-approved framework) since Afghanistan, which earned them the derogatory moniker "olive-greens" (as in the colour of camo). There is some understanding that culturally military~right, but interventionism and globalism are now more closely associated with the left.
dasfoo
11m 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.
ControlsFreak
14m ago
I haven't read that case and I don't intend to.
I don't know what to say other than to note that if one boldly declares that they intend to remain willfully ignorant of first amendment law, then most people should probably significantly discount what they have to say concerning first amendment law.
Not a reporting requirement nor a crime, because a "Blue Lives Matter" sign does not constitute "express advocacy".
Do you think that paying Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet is "express advocacy"?
RE: Federalist papers
As usual, @gattsuru has an absolute banger of a comment. I would only add that he is citing the specifics on "electioneering communications", which is much more narrow than the extremely broad sounding statutory statement we started with on "expenditures". It is fundamentally this huge gap between extremely broad sounding statutes and very narrow slivers of actual behavior that the FEC tries to enforce (due to the knowledge that going further is likely to catch the Court's ire) that is the core of the inferential distance on this issue. Most people simply don't realize that many many many things that might at first glance appear to be a violation of campaign finance laws will never be enforced, and that if it were tried, the laws would be struck down. The core of my position is that the claims against Trump are in this category. It superficially sounds plausible that the events could be captured by campaign finance law, but if you actually had to argue the case, the law, and the Constitution all the way to SCOTUS, it would not work. It is only because they specifically didn't have to actually argue the law and the Constitution on the issue of campaign finance law (especially not in an appeals court or "court of law", rather than a trial court or "court of fact") that it was able to get to this point.
JulianRota
17m ago
I'd lean against.
A serious move against Taiwan is likely to trigger a longer-term economic realignment away from Chinese manufacturing and towards all of their regional competitors. I'm doubtful that the Chinese economy is strong enough to weather such a thing. Main wildcard is to what extent Chinese leadership either doesn't believe it will happen, or doesn't care.
The PLAN and PLAAF don't have much recent experience AFAIK fighting blue-water naval battles, amphibious invasions, air battles against air forces that aren't total clusterfucks, etc. Trying for something like Indirect Control is taking a big risk that their bluff will be called. Their leadership will look pretty bad if they try it and it ends up being a flop. Even worse, a flop of the army and navy trying to assert control over Taiwan is much less likely to generate a strong Chinese domestic backlash against whoever did it, presuming they don't do something boneheaded like major attacks against mainland Chinese civilians.
If China wanted to be taken more seriously as a threat to Taiwan, I'd think they ought to get some practice in somewhere. They've been dealing with Africa for a while, why not pick whichever African country is being particularly annoying to them and go over and smash them? If they can't, or aren't willing, to pull that off, it makes it seem like they aren't really much of a threat to Taiwan.
pigeonburger
18m ago
The US Navy
More importantly, they might be building a lot of frigates and are starting to build aircraft carriers, but the PLAN has basically no institutional experience. They have negligible ASW and submarine capacity, any surprise invasion plan has to contend with an unknown: how many US SSNs and SSGNs are in or in range of the South China Sea right now?
The only way the Chinese can succeed is if there is enough political hesitation to intervene from the US.
IsItPleasing
23m ago
Bribery is not 'shady white collar activities', it's 'high crime' on par with treason. The fact that you would try to conflate the two makes your reasoning suspect at best.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
25m ago
I'm still not really getting it. I was under the impression that the Federalist papers were a series of essays published in newspapers. As far as I know, they weren't ads. Why would they be governed by the rules that apply to modern ads and not the rules that apply to modern newspaper editorials?
popocatepetl
31m ago
I think this comment should have been allowed. Almost all of the negative statements about Trump voters here are demonstrating a counterargument to @jake's claim that a Trump voter revolution is nigh. The tone is 20% more biting and recriminatory than the argument itself, but that could also be said of a lot of @FCfromSSC comments I enjoy reading.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
36m ago
It certainly seems like wokeness has traveled far enough down the barber pole that my age cohort is starting to lurch rightwards
None of this implies we can let up in our fight against it. Wokeness is like kudzu, if you leave even a single vine intact it'll come back, and faster than you think.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
37m ago
I'm always interested in learning more about the domestic politics of other countries. What are some things you think are important to understand that media outlets like the NYT don't tell people?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
42m ago
I'm not saying that res ipsa is sufficient on its own
That's literally what res ipsa loquitur means.
AI expectations could play a role. China might think, "We are behind in AI meaning in a few years we won't be able to beat the US so better strike now.", or "AI is going to change everything within 10 years so why bother risking a very bad outcome.", or "He who controls the spice [chip factories in Taiwan] controls the universe"
zeke5123a
47m ago
See this is where the prosecution’s own case falls apart. There could always been a million crimes false business records could support. The prosecution was throwing out things like other business records, tax law, or FECA. And it is in theory all plausible.
But all that means is you collapsed the misdemeanor and felony since practically there is always a plausible other crime. That means in my mind you need a closer connection compared to your liquor store example.
Further, when talking about campaign finance law, it ie important to point out that it is incredible opaque. When it is far from obvious that it is a crime even if the defendant did everything exactly as the prosecution alleged, then it is very hard to infer that the defendant was worried about the law. The prosecution has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The idea here in this case that was met with respect to intent is farcical.
non_radical_centrist
49m ago
It lines up with what I've read about the Israeli far right too. MAGA supporters aren't literally like, settling parts of black communities or Mexico to create their own little villages and occassionally killing black people or Mexicans in the process. That's what the Israeli settlement movement is. Ben Gvir, one of the actual most important politicians in Israel and not just a fringe lunatic, is a settler himself. He has faced criminal charges from Israel over hate speech. He was convicted of supporting Kach, which Israel itself classifies a terrorist group. It's not just Gvir, there are other far right politicians like Smotrich too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich
Claiming that all Israelis support them, or that 50% of Israelis support them, would be wrong I think. Claiming 10% of Israelis support them, I think is accurate.
Maybe you think the Palestinians are all barbarous demons and that the Israeli far right is justified. But the descriptive parts of the NYT article would still be accurate about describing the far right's actions.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
51m ago
I am terrible at foreign policy, but I would've started by seizing ("reestablishing control over") minor RoC islands close to the mainland. They have practically zero value, so starting a major armed conflict over them would be seen as irrational, but this would establish a precedent that it's still the Chinese civil war and thus China's internal matter.
non_radical_centrist
58m ago
https://manifold.markets/news/chinataiwan
More markets where people put their (play) money where their mouth is with regards to their predictions, and I encourage everyone with strong opinions to do the same.
Personally I think the only factor that really matters is the mind of Xi Jinping. China will not invade Taiwan without his approval, and they'd likely immediately invade if he decided he did want to. Any weighing of the costs and benefits for China only matter to the extent that Xi Jinping actually cares about China instead of just his own personal benefit.
I expect Xi has many sycophants around him telling him that China is increasingly ascendant and that the US is on a downward spiral and that the Taiwanese masses actually want to be unified under a glorious greater China. That's a standard situation for a great many dictators.
On the other hand, Xi probably isn't totally isolated from reality. There are some major issues even the biggest information bubble I doubt could hide from him. He can see that the Ukraine war, while it's debatable just how well Russia is doing, definitely wasn't the 1 month stomp campaign many expected. He can see that the Chinese economy has had some major setbacks with their housing market having a crisis and Evergrande collapsing.
The benefits to invading Taiwan are basically two: To appeal to the nationalistic ego of the masses, and to inflate his own personal ego, with military conquest. My understanding is that the Chinese masses do have nationalist egos and like being the big scary country on the block, as do most masses(until they get into a brutal war for no real benefit like WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq 2, and get reminded painfully of the downsides. But I don't think they're extremely jingoistic, they're not Germans in 1938 or Americans in 2002.
As for Xi's internal psyche and how eager he personally is for war, it's very hard to know. China generally hasn't been that militant in recent years. Their last major conflict was the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, long before Xi. They're had some grandstanding around the South China Sea, and some skirmishes with India. Maybe he is more on the pacifist side and doesn't want conflict with no tangible benefit. Maybe he's just biding his time until he has the largest possible advantage over the USA to strike. Maybe he personally isn't that into war, but wouldn't back down or disavow an overeager admiral who escalates tensions during a patrol around Taiwan and that leads into war.
In conclusion, I really don't know. I just feel like focusing on what benefits China is a mistake, the focus should be on what Xi is thinking.
gattsuru
1hr ago
I'm not sure I understand the question? Why would they be impacted by campaign finance laws at all?
While FECA is best-known for its direct contribution limits on candidate-specific communications, much of the point of McCain-Feingold in 2002 was to expand the law's definition of 'electioneering communications' to cover matters that did not target or support a specific politician directly, but also matters like 'issue ads', which focused on topic areas, if usually to highlight a candidate on those matters. In addition to restrictions on when they could run them and how they could fund them, candidates running issues ads (or coordinating with those running issue ads) were required to disclose their participation, known as the "Stand By Your Ad" provision.
This was mostly used where the third-party issue ads explicitly named politicians (such as Citizens United involving a movie about Clinton's history), but the law held a candidate was clearly identified a "specific candidate" where a communication asked to call their representative, even if this resulted in many different 'specific' candidates being involved. And while the Federalist Papers genuinely were more focused on the theoretical foundations, their calls to action and some of the more subtle components would pass this requirement.
The larger length of time between the issuance of the Federalist Papers and the local elections for the convention might have put it outside of the FECA safe harbor timeline, but I'm honestly not sure, and the Stand By Your Ad requirement probably would have applied by its strict text. (In practice, the FEC tends to avoid cases with that clear a First Amendment component, lest they get slapped by SCOTUS again.) And most FECA provisions have a 50k audience requirement and only covered audio and video, which obviously would have been hard to hit in the Founding era.
And, of course, New York law can be much more aggressive than federal law : a New York organization opposing or supporting even specific ballot issues, separate from any specific candidate, must register with the state, report to the state any donations above a certain (low) threshold, and refuse any anonymous contributions. The Federalist Papers would clearly hit that requirement by strict read of the text, though there's both official and unofficial exceptions for organizations whose free speech the ACLU cares about. I think the Federalist Papers could also hit the PAC requirements by a strict read of the text, but I'd have to look through that in more detail to say for sure.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
It's a part of it, but it's not the whole story. You need commonality of opinion/values in order to "coordinate meanness".
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
lands stolen by genociding the natives and importing slaves
It’s generally acknowledged that humans have moved past 19th century norms. We treat natives as fully human now, and most of the globe also considers Palestinians human now too. So the moral questions are significant. And in the article the oppression of Palestinians is considered both factual and significant by none other than —
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Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, once head of Israel’s Central Command
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Ami Ayalon, head of Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000
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Mark Schwartz, American three-star general, once the top military official working at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem from 2019 to 2021
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Judith Karp, then Israel’s deputy attorney general for special duties
These are not exactly renowned antisemites we are talking about. I don’t know anyone more important whose testimony should be heard short of Yahweh appearing on Mt Sinai again with a PowerPoint on his tablet.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
1hr ago
If you don't want to engage someone, then stop engaging. That means stop before you take your parting shot calling them bad faith or ignorant.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
The main reasons arguing against it are
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Risk of triggering WWIII if the Taiwan and US do not back down.
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The US Navy. It has its problems, but it's still more than a match for the People's Navy. And as far as invasion goes, has the easier task -- denying the Straits to China. A blockade would be another matter since maintaining the blockade would be the easier task, but would take a long time to have an effect. And once you've got the US's attention, the US can act, as Yamamoto found out.
SlowBoy
1hr ago
Trump has been doing business in New York for 40 years and the only crime they can charge him on is something nobody has ever been charged for before -- "falsifying records" is one thing, this is falsifying records used totally for internal purposes, as though he committed fraud upon himself (this has been discussed to death in other comments in this thread by now).
There is no one who has ever been charged with anything similar to this. You want to make it sound as though Trump is contemptuous of law because he described money paid to his lawyer as legal expenses, for arranging an NDA, which is legal, with a porn star, which is legal. If Trump was as contemptuous of law as you suggest, maybe there would be other bookkeeping crimes to charge him with that don't involve felony upcharges on underlying crimes that are not specified.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
1hr ago
Looks like a decent itinerary. Keep in mind that Dec 29-Jan 3 is around Shogatsu so a lot of stuff will be closed/limited during those days. Double check that the stuff you want to do is accessible/open.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to call up a bunch of places and see if they are going to be open. Im assuming restaurants and bars are at least open, in the worst case?
Also, don't do the Shibuya go carts, you'll just look like a tool and piss off everyone around you. If you want to do something quirky there are a million more interesting things to do even just right there in Shibuya. There are a billion cool an unique bars, live music venues, edgy boutique stores, and more. TBH you could probably just wander around Dogenzaka for an hour or two and have a great time.
Nope, go karting through the city sounds like a grand fucking idea and I will do it. We like the act of driving and want various driving-based activities.
Nevertheless, what other quirky things would you recommend? A bit more specific.
Mt Fuji is impressive and worth seeing. Good choice. Instead of driving, you might consider taking a fancy train with a beautiful view so you can chill and eat snacks and enjoy the ride. Driving in Japan is IME pretty dreary, slow, and tedious. Around Tokyo, lots of of highways routed through ugly/inconvenient areas with no view and often with large sound barriers so you can't see much. Don't know about the route to Narusawa specifically.
I plant to redo this drive: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TUgfiNg06GQ
And rent a car from here: https://fun2drive-japan.com/
Never been to Sapporo but I've heard great things about it and Hokkaido in general.
I hope so. I want to sneak in some winter activities and Sapporo should be the place to be.
Let me say this in a different way. It seems quite clear that if Trump structured the transaction differently (though with the exact same economics) even under the prosecution’s theory of campaign finance law Trump would be innocent.
It is therefore again unreasonable to allow inference here. It is just so far afield if your store example to be a different category. The nature of these laws are so different we need a more exacting search for intent.
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