US & NA Politics Thread

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**Vaktathi**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Disciple of Fate wrote:
Erdogan won't be that stupid. Going after US military personnel doesn't fit into strengthening his power because it carries significant risks of an escalation. The pastor falls into the oversight category imo, not deemed important to the US at the time and an acceptable arrest risk. Raiding an allied military base to drag off US soldiers? What value does that have when the 'coup' was a gift from above for Erdogan's purges?

Whatever issues the USA and Turkey have, (and remember that allies disagree with each other all the time, that's natural) should be thrashed out by the diplomats behind the scenes.

Conducting foreign policy by twitter is no way to run a superpower.

I look forward to the death of Twitter one fine day. Nothing of value will be lost. It's a platform made for shouting at the internet, and has little capability or value beyond that.

Asherian Command wrote:

So Kobach ordered that mail votes would not count? What the feth?

Nobody should be surprised, this is a guy who bungled his signature voter fraud push in court so bad he was ordered to take remedial law courses by the judge. He's a political animal pushing an identitarian agenda to the the base and cut down voter representation for his own gain, everything else be damned. He's not even trying to be subtle or hide it.

**Adeptus Doritos**

Vaktathi wrote:
I look forward to the death of Twitter one fine day. Nothing of value will be lost. It's a platform made for shouting at the internet, and has little capability or value beyond that.

While I have no desire to debate any actual politics, I can genuinely tell you that I completely agree with this statement. Twitter itself has done nothing good for society. I suppose if you give people the means to broadcast their 'hot takes' on things for the masses, and grant them a little blue checkmark to give them some sense of status- they lose their minds.

I can say that I've seen people in major entertainment industries and working for family companies say some things on their Twitter that... well, let's just say that any of the places I've worked.... from the corporate white-collar job, to my military career, and back all the way to my basic food service and construction jobs... I would be unemployed and unemployable. But hey, it's their customers they're losing I guess.

The fact that the tweets that are getting people fired have to be blatantly racist, or come off like outright pedophilia, or be outright death threats... yeah. If we've gone that far, then maybe this whole Twitter thing has made some folks just lose their minds.

I'm not sure how any sane human being would want a Twitter.

**Kilkrazy**

People have used it for Tweeting WW1 and WW2 news daily

I used Twitter to do a minute-by-minute real-time recreation of the Battle of Jutland on the 100th anniversary.

I think these are fun and interesting use of the platform.

On the whole, though, I agree with the point that most of it is gak.

**Kanluwen**

Kilkrazy wrote:
People have used it for Tweeting WW1 and WW2 news daily

I used Twitter to do a minute-by-minute real-time recreation of the Battle of Jutland on the 100th anniversary.

I think these are fun and interesting use of the platform.

On the whole, though, I agree with the point that most of it is gak.

That was you?! I enjoyed that!

**Formosa**

Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
I look forward to the death of Twitter one fine day. Nothing of value will be lost. It's a platform made for shouting at the internet, and has little capability or value beyond that.

While I have no desire to debate any actual politics, I can genuinely tell you that I completely agree with this statement. Twitter itself has done nothing good for society. I suppose if you give people the means to broadcast their 'hot takes' on things for the masses, and grant them a little blue checkmark to give them some sense of status- they lose their minds.

I can say that I've seen people in major entertainment industries and working for family companies say some things on their Twitter that... well, let's just say that any of the places I've worked.... from the corporate white-collar job, to my military career, and back all the way to my basic food service and construction jobs... I would be unemployed and unemployable. But hey, it's their customers they're losing I guess.

The fact that the tweets that are getting people fired have to be blatantly racist, or come off like outright pedophilia, or be outright death threats... yeah. If we've gone that far, then maybe this whole Twitter thing has made some folks just lose their minds.

I'm not sure how any sane human being would want a Twitter.

I’m not so sure, I don’t use it myself as I don’t really see a need for it in My life but I do remember hearing about this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring

So it seems that it’s done some good at least for some people.

**Bran Dawri**

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Bran Dawri wrote:
Mmm, Turkey has been moving away from the West for some time now, with its move away from democracy and having intentionally caused diplomatic rows with several European countries for political reasons.
I think both Erdogan and Trump are benefitting from this current dispute at home, and neither has recently given the impression of being concerned with international politics or long-term consequences. Trump can say he's standing up for US citizens being (unjustly?) persecuted abroad, and Erdogan can continue his "strong man standing up to a Western foreign bully" narrative while distracting attention from the freefall of the lira and ailing economy.

The democracy argument shouldn't be a factor in this IMO.

We all know that the USA has allied itself with some dodgy regimes in the past: Soviet Union in WW2, South Vietnam, Saudi Arabia etc etc

and that's not a pop at America because obviously my own nation allied itself with the Soviets in the war and has supported dodgy countries since then.

Sometimes you have to join a devil to defeat another devil and often you do these things for national interest.

I'm not convinced by the rational behind the Turkey sanctions. Other reasons cited include US support for the Kurds, disagreement on how to fight ISIL and some American pastor being locked up.

These are not trivial things, nations disagree with each other on a host of issues, but neither are they grounds for this kind of action by Washington.

France didn't back the USA over Iraq in 2003, but it never resulted in a huge split between Paris and Washington.

AsI've said before, US foreign policy is all over the shop.

Oh, the democracy bit wasn't an argument to defend the current row or say that we should estrange them further, it was one of the points to argue Turkey's move away from the West.

My main point was (and is) that these moves by both Trump and Erdogan aren't made with foreign policy/international diplomacy in mind, they're made for the benefit of their domestic base.

**Galas**

Formosa wrote:
Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
I look forward to the death of Twitter one fine day. Nothing of value will be lost. It's a platform made for shouting at the internet, and has little capability or value beyond that.

While I have no desire to debate any actual politics, I can genuinely tell you that I completely agree with this statement. Twitter itself has done nothing good for society. I suppose if you give people the means to broadcast their 'hot takes' on things for the masses, and grant them a little blue checkmark to give them some sense of status- they lose their minds.

I can say that I've seen people in major entertainment industries and working for family companies say some things on their Twitter that... well, let's just say that any of the places I've worked.... from the corporate white-collar job, to my military career, and back all the way to my basic food service and construction jobs... I would be unemployed and unemployable. But hey, it's their customers they're losing I guess.

The fact that the tweets that are getting people fired have to be blatantly racist, or come off like outright pedophilia, or be outright death threats... yeah. If we've gone that far, then maybe this whole Twitter thing has made some folks just lose their minds.

I'm not sure how any sane human being would want a Twitter.

I’m not so sure, I don’t use it myself as I don’t really see a need for it in My life but I do remember hearing about this

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spring

So it seems that it’s done some good at least for some people.

I wouldn't say the Arab Spring was a good thing, at least not for everybody... it ended up like Khomeini with Iran. A bunch of lawfull dictatorships were overthrown (Rightfully) with the hopes of stablishing a western democracy, but the pro-democracy groups end up being killed/destroyed by the islamist fundamentalists.

**Formosa**

I agree with you galas, it’s a very hard thing to measure, we not see the true ramifications for decades to come, while social media had its part to play it would be ignorant of me to state that it was purely down to it however.

I think we can both agree that the Arab spring has been this far a destabilising element to North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, ultimely I’m optimistic that it will work out in the long run, which may be naive, but I’m hopeful none the less.

**Asherian Command**

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/voting-hackers-defcon-failures-manufacturers-ess

Election hackers have spent years trying to bring attention to flaws in election equipment. But with the world finally watching at DEFCON, the world’s largest hacker conference, they have a new struggle: pointing out flaws without causing the public to doubt that their vote will count.

This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year’s Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.

In a room set aside for kid hackers, an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.

Before Russian hackers targeted the 2016 US election process, hacking voting equipment was a niche issue. The Voting Village has changed that. “As far as broad social impact,” said Jeff Moss, DEFCON’s founder, “it is Voting Village” that has achieved the most notoriety in the conference’s history.

But that attention has brought pushback. The day before the conference began, ES&S, one of the largest providers of election equipment in the US, sent an email to its customers assuring them that while “attendees will absolutely access some voting systems internal components ... Physical security measures make it extremely unlikely that an unauthorized person, or a person with malicious intent, could ever access a voting machine,” the company said.

The National Association of Secretaries of State, the group that brings together each state’s top election official, issued an unusually testy statement against the Voting Village. “Our main concern with the approach taken by DEFCON is that it uses a pseudo environment which in no way replicates state election systems, networks, or physical security,” it said.

“Providing conference attendees with unlimited physical access to voting machines,” NASS said, “does not replicate accurate physical and cyber protections established by state and local governments before and on Election Day.”

The conflict brings into sharp relief the contrast between how cybersecurity research is usually conducted and the stodginess of government-approved election vendors and their customers.

“I think the statement was misguided,” said Matt Blaze, a veteran election security researcher who helped organize the Voting Village. “It’s only through scrutiny that we’re going to have confidence in elections. That said, the fact that a system has vulnerabilities in it, even incredibly serious vulnerabilities, is not the same as saying any given election has been tampered with.”

“There’s an interesting paradox.” Blaze said. “We know these systems are wildly insecure, and there’s been precious little evidence of these vulnerabilities so far being exploited in real elections. I think we’ve been very lucky, and I think there’s a little bit of a ticking time bomb here.”

Since October 2016, when intelligence agencies first put forth a statement warning that Russia was attempting to interfere in the US election, the US government has walked a tightrope between warning that Russia was trying various tactics to influence the outcome and insisting that everyone’s vote was counted accurately. While a number of Russian tactics with a range of effects have been exposed — hacking and leaking Democrats’ emails, scanning state voter registration databases, and sending phishing emails to county employees — there is, as numerous agencies have repeatedly stated, no known evidence of foreign hackers ever changing a US vote tally. One of Russia’s fundamental goals with such attacks, analysts stress, is undermining Americans’ faith in democracy itself.

“You have to balance raising awareness of vulnerabilities and pushing vendors to make more secure projects, which is a lot of what DEFCON is trying to do, with the ability for vendors to react to that,” said DHS’s top cybersecurity official, Jeanette Manfra, who spoke at the conference Friday. “And we have to explain that no, these are physically secure up until Election Day, then they’re wiped. There are all these other compensating controls that are in place.”

“If you’re saying ‘even a kid can hack into this,’ you’re not getting the full story, which can have the impact of the average voter not understanding,” Manfra told BuzzFeed News.

In the most fundamental sense, security researchers work by throwing the book at a piece of software, poking and prodding for any obscure or overt flaw in a program, usually causing developers to issue regular patches as vulnerabilities are discovered. Conferences like DEFCON provide a platform for both critical research and “stunt hacking,” flashy tricks that are often simple but designed to catch the broader public’s attention.

But that process is anathema to voting equipment manufacturers for a number of reasons. Vendors have to follow some government guidelines and undergo certain audits, but they’re largely unaccountable to the public. Patching voting equipment that isn’t connected to the internet is difficult for many counties with little technical expertise, and vendors fall back on how unlikely it is that a registered poll worker or an elected official would have the time it takes to tamper with a voting machine. The vendors also point out that even if someone had the time to work a hack, the overall US election system is decentralized enough that as unlikely as hacking one machine is, a coordinated effort to hack them in bulk is even less likely.

Copyright laws have previously made it difficult for researchers to legally acquire voting equipment to test it. With an incentive to assure customers that their product isn’t dangerous, vendors have historically lied outright about vulnerabilities they deemed unlikely to cause problems in the real world.

One hacker at this year’s village, who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to tie his research to his day job as a programmer, took a Diebold TSX voting machine — versions of which are in use in at least some areas of 20 states — and turned it into a jukebox that played music from its tinny speakers and a display for an Illuminati GIF he found online.

The trick, he found, was noticing that while the machine has tamper-resistant seals that would likely alert poll workers that somebody had tried to alter a voting file, he could access the operating system itself without any apparent effect on the machine. So he replaced what that machine was running, Windows 4.1, with Linux, where he could hook up his own laptop and display whatever he wanted.

The procedure took a few hours, he said, and it would be extremely difficult to pull off in the real world, but in theory, it could be done by someone with basic hacker skills and access to voting machines in storage.

“Obviously, it’s a long shot that people would tamper with these in a warehouse,” he said. “I chose to do this because I thought it was hilarious, but obviously there are serious implications.”

In another area of DEFCON, organizers set up a semicircle of computers preloaded with copies of secretaries of states’ websites to allow young children to try to alter the appearance of a vote result. While such an attack wouldn’t change actual votes, simply changing the appearance could cause havoc on Election Day, and reflects a tactic Russia did employ in Ukraine in 2014.

Notably, the kids were instructed to use a simple database hacking tactic called SQL injection, the same tool the US has said Russian hackers used when targeting state voter registration databases in the summer of 2016.

Within a few minutes, Audrey, 11, had figured it out, and made it appear that libertarian candidate Darrell Castle had won Florida’s presidential vote in 2016.

“Basically what you’re doing is you’re taking advantage of it being not secure,” she explained.

Once she accessed that vote database, it was quick: “It took maybe a minute or so, because I’m a fast typer,” she told BuzzFeed News. “You can [subtract] points, you can do whatever you want.”

Florida’s Secretary of State Office could not be reached for comment.

To no ones surprise o.o

interesting article.

Also trump needs to get his twitter privileges revoked : https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/trump-threatens-to-interfere-with-fbi/

Another tyraid this week. God he might be heading into a record...

**BaronIveagh**

I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

**Asherian Command**

BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

Mental illness confirmed then? Or just basic stupidty hahaha

**whembly**

BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

It's all rhetoric...

He simply has to order the FBI to do so.

**Asherian Command**

whembly wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

It's all rhetoric...

He simply has to order the FBI to do so.

He can't actually.... Not offically. Its out of his hands without having to fire people.

**Adeptus Doritos**

Formosa wrote:
I agree with you galas, it’s a very hard thing to measure, we not see the true ramifications for decades to come, while social media had its part to play it would be ignorant of me to state that it was purely down to it however.

I will say that what Social Media does a fantastic job of is exposing some peoples' attitudes to the public (namely their customers if they're representing a business) and their employer. I know that while I said that as if it were a bad thing, I believe it has its uses. Bigots and all manner of reprehensible persons seem to just... 'switch off their discretion function' when they're on Twitter. I read some of these things a while back, in relation to one of my interests- and that's what got me to thinking about a lot of things.

It baffled me that these people could say these things and just... believe that it was okay, or that it was perfectly normal to say those things about someone's race, identity, politics, etc. And we're not talking about someone who says "Neo-Nazis and Stalinists are awful", that's pretty normal and understandable. We're talking about some very, very volatile statements about people who just... voted for a different guy, or believe in a different solution to a problem we have. That's all. And that convinced me that these people aren't really concerned about the issues we have in the world, they're just angry people who need an outlet.

And it's kinda funny, it's like playing 40k. They just chose the faction that appealed to them and went into it with a WAAC attitude- it's not about their local community of games, it's not about the joy of modeling and collecting and having a fun game- it's the 'I must play hard and win and beat everyone' attitude that a lot of young, angry gamers have. That's really the best comparison I have.

That's kind what really got me looking into that sort of mindset and exploring the concept of 'bubbles' and 'echo chambers', because that's how I think people get there. They spend so much time in them that they assume that their way of thinking is the default 'correct' way, that everyone who disagrees is not only their opposition but the absolute most extreme variation of their opposition and lump them all together, dehumanizing them.

Cue theory on how lots of people claim they hate extremists, but don't ever engage and attack extremists (and believe me, they aren't hard to find)- they just find reasonable moderates and accuse them of being extremists because that's easier and puts them on the defensive so you don't have to engage the argument, yadda yadda yadda.

But hey, a lot of things it seems like we've forgotten that somehow seemed normal back when I was young and the internet was new: Don't believe everything you read on there, watch what you say on there that's tied to your real life, and be mindful of who you're speaking to and how you speak to them.

**whembly**

Asherian Command wrote:
whembly wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

It's all rhetoric...

He simply has to order the FBI to do so.

He can't actually.... Not offically. Its out of his hands without having to fire people.

No... he can. All of Article II power is fully vested in the POTUS.

What you're thinking is that it'd be politically untenable.... I'll grant you that.

Hence why, for all the kerfluffle, Trump could fire Sally Yates...and did so when she refused to defend the Travel Ban EO.

He can order the FBI to "save" the McCabe communications, or anyone elses in the FBI because he literally controls the executive branch. If the officials at the FBI won't do it, he can have that person fired. If the appointed positions (aka, Rosenstein/Wray) refuses to fire those folks... Trump can fire them. The political fallout would be knarly, yes, but it's inescapable that he does have the power to do so. But, he won't because for some reason he (or his political strategists) think its better to bash the FBI for political reasons... a department that he has authority over.

**Asherian Command**

whembly wrote:
Asherian Command wrote:
whembly wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

It's all rhetoric...

He simply has to order the FBI to do so.

He can't actually.... Not offically. Its out of his hands without having to fire people.

No... he can. All of Article II power is fully vested in the POTUS.

What you're thinking is that it'd be politically untenable.... I'll grant you that.

Hence why, for all the kerfluffle, Trump could fire Sally Yates...and did so when she refused to defend the Travel Ban EO.

He can order the FBI to "save" the McCabe communications, or anyone elses in the FBI because he literally controls the executive branch. If the officials at the FBI won't do it, he can have that person fired. If the appointed positions (aka, Rosenstein/Wray) refuses to fire those folks... Trump can fire them. The political fallout would be knarly, yes, but it's inescapable that he does have the power to do so. But, he won't because for some reason he (or his political strategists) think its better to bash the FBI for political reasons... a department that he has authority over.

But he can't order a court to commit to a law suit. He doesn't have that power.

So Nixon 2.0 Electric Rift part 2 Trump Edition?

**whembly**

Asherian Command wrote:
whembly wrote:
Asherian Command wrote:
whembly wrote:
BaronIveagh wrote:
I like that he's demanding the tapes be given to Right Wing think tank Judicial Watch rather than, you know, a judge.

It's all rhetoric...

He simply has to order the FBI to do so.

He can't actually.... Not offically. Its out of his hands without having to fire people.

No... he can. All of Article II power is fully vested in the POTUS.

What you're thinking is that it'd be politically untenable.... I'll grant you that.

Hence why, for all the kerfluffle, Trump could fire Sally Yates...and did so when she refused to defend the Travel Ban EO.

He can order the FBI to "save" the McCabe communications, or anyone elses in the FBI because he literally controls the executive branch. If the officials at the FBI won't do it, he can have that person fired. If the appointed positions (aka, Rosenstein/Wray) refuses to fire those folks... Trump can fire them. The political fallout would be knarly, yes, but it's inescapable that he does have the power to do so. But, he won't because for some reason he (or his political strategists) think its better to bash the FBI for political reasons... a department that he has authority over.

But he can't order a court to commit to a law suit. He doesn't have that power.

You're right. He can't force the courts.

What *I'm* saying is that he can simply order the FBI to give Judicial Watch what they're requesting. The bureaucracy would fight Trump tooth'n nails because it would set an arguably problematic precedent...

Just like there's nothing stopping him from declassifying what happens in Area51... doesn't mean it's pragmatically nor politically a good idea.

**Asherian Command**

You're right. He can't force the courts.

What *I'm* saying is that he can simply order the FBI to give Judicial Watch what they're requesting. The bureaucracy would fight Trump tooth'n nails because it would set an arguably problematic precedent...

Just like there's nothing stopping him from declassifying what happens in Area51... doesn't mean it's pragmatically nor politically a good idea.

Problem though... Judicial Watch is a private entity.... soooo that might be misconduct as it is a civilian entity and not in anyway associated with the government. (I mean he can but man, i don't think a single FBI agent would follow that order)

It might waste all of his political capitia as well. And several senators might give a crap.

**Kilkrazy**

What is Trump's political capital, though?

He's 18 months into his term, he's accomplished a number of the things he set out to do, and he's failed in a number of others.

He still has the lowest approval rating in history, and an increasingly high approval rating among Republican voters.

This shows Trump doesn't have political capital in the usual sense. He isn't able to gain any of the middle ground of public opinion which exists in normal times. Trump simply has divided the nation into a supportive minority and a disapproving majority.

Is there anything Trump can do to gain majority approval? I doubt it.

Everyone who believed he would be a bad president has seen it come true. A lot of people who thought he might turn out OK have been disappointed.

At the same time I don't see how Trump can lose the support of his base. He apparently is doing exactly what they want him to do. Is there any indiscretion or crime he could commit that they wouldn't forgive in some way?

Example; Trump supporter's view on possible collusion with Russia (from an interview on the BBC.)

1. Thank you Russia for stopping Hillary.
2. Collusion isn't a crime.
3. Talking to people isn't collusion.

I don't think it would matter to that lady if the collusion was proved. How many other Trump supporters are like her?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kanluwen wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
People have used it for Tweeting WW1 and WW2 news daily

I used Twitter to do a minute-by-minute real-time recreation of the Battle of Jutland on the 100th anniversary.

I think these are fun and interesting use of the platform.

On the whole, though, I agree with the point that most of it is gak.

That was you?! I enjoyed that!

Yes, it was me. I automatically Tweeted the entire battle using a social media management tool to send the messages at a real time rate. I kept an archive in case I ever want to run it again.

**Elemental**

Adeptus Doritos wrote:

It baffled me that these people could say these things and just... believe that it was okay, or that it was perfectly normal to say those things about someone's race, identity, politics, etc. And we're not talking about someone who says "Neo-Nazis and Stalinists are awful", that's pretty normal and understandable. We're talking about some very, very volatile statements about people who just... voted for a different guy, or believe in a different solution to a problem we have. That's all. And that convinced me that these people aren't really concerned about the issues we have in the world, they're just angry people who need an outlet

I find that much of the public sphere makes much more sense if you assume that anger is an end, rather than a means.

**Ouze**

So some detail has come out about what Trump means by a "perjury trap", at least as defined by Giuliani: Trump is now stating he never discussed Flynn with Comey, let alone asked Comey to go easy on Flynn.

This seems pretty unlikely. I think James Comey is substantially more credible than Trump.

I think had HRC won she also should have fired him, so I'm not exactly a huge fan. I just find it hard to believe - no, impossible to believe - that he would invent a conversation that didn't happen, write it up in a memo, report it to FBI senior leadership, and do this for literally no reason at all; because at the time he was in Trump's good graces - the conversation happened on February 14th, many months before things went sour. It boggles the mind.

In typical fashion for the age in which we live, Giuliani also said that even if that conversation did happen, which it didn't, then that didn't mean he was directing him to let it go, and then at the end of the article, Giuliani denies saying the thing he said which was on video for everyone to watch.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

**whembly**

Giuliani is Trump's personal defense lawyer... it's literally his job to muddy up these waters like this.

What'd you expect him to do? Be a goody-goody boys scout?

He's a lawyer for cripes sake.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Ouze... and here's a decent breakdown as to what a "perjury trap" entails from a NeverTrumper:
Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’

tldr: Trump would be an absolute idiot to meet with Mueller. Which, of course, he's going to meet with Mueller.

**Dreadwinter**

whembly wrote:
Giuliani is Trump's personal defense lawyer... it's literally his job to muddy up these waters like this.

What'd you expect him to do? Be a goody-goody boys scout?

He's a lawyer for cripes sake.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Ouze... and here's a decent breakdown as to what a "perjury trap" entails from a NeverTrumper:
Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’

tldr: Trump would be an absolute idiot to meet with Mueller. Which, of course, he's going to meet with Mueller.

He could say "Sorry Mr. President, I am not comfortable telling such lies on national television and ruining my good name." But he didn't. Not because he is a lawyer, but because he is a man with no ethics or morals.

But yeah, he is a lawyer for cripes sake! Looooooooooooooooool

**Iron_Captain**

Dreadwinter wrote:
whembly wrote:
Giuliani is Trump's personal defense lawyer... it's literally his job to muddy up these waters like this.

What'd you expect him to do? Be a goody-goody boys scout?

He's a lawyer for cripes sake.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Ouze... and here's a decent breakdown as to what a "perjury trap" entails from a NeverTrumper:
Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’

tldr: Trump would be an absolute idiot to meet with Mueller. Which, of course, he's going to meet with Mueller.

He could say "Sorry Mr. President, I am not comfortable telling such lies on national television and ruining my good name." But he didn't. Not because he is a lawyer, but because he is a man with no ethics or morals.

But yeah, he is a lawyer for cripes sake! Looooooooooooooooool

Isn't lying and twisting the truth part of a lawyer's job? "Lawyer" doesn't exactly conjure up images of "man with ethics and morals" in my mind.

**Wolfblade**

Iron_Captain wrote:
Dreadwinter wrote:
whembly wrote:
Giuliani is Trump's personal defense lawyer... it's literally his job to muddy up these waters like this.

What'd you expect him to do? Be a goody-goody boys scout?

He's a lawyer for cripes sake.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Ouze... and here's a decent breakdown as to what a "perjury trap" entails from a NeverTrumper:
Of Course There Is Such a Thing as a ‘Perjury Trap’

tldr: Trump would be an absolute idiot to meet with Mueller. Which, of course, he's going to meet with Mueller.

He could say "Sorry Mr. President, I am not comfortable telling such lies on national television and ruining my good name." But he didn't. Not because he is a lawyer, but because he is a man with no ethics or morals.

But yeah, he is a lawyer for cripes sake! Looooooooooooooooool

Isn't lying and twisting the truth part of a lawyer's job? "Lawyer" doesn't exactly conjure up images of "man with ethics and morals" in my mind.

What do you think judges (generally) are?

**Tannhauser42**

Here's the thing about lawyers:
When they're prosecutors, we want them to be honest and ethical so innocent people don't go to jail.
When they're judges, we want them to be honest and impartial so people receive a fair trial.
When they're defense attorneys, we want them to be honest and moral so people can have a proper defense and representation.
When they're MY defense attorney, I want them to be dishonest, amoral, unethical, sleazy, and underhanded so they can get my guilty ass off the hook.

**whembly**

Tannhauser42 wrote:
Here's the thing about lawyers:
When they're prosecutors, we want them to be honest and ethical so innocent people don't go to jail.
When they're judges, we want them to be honest and impartial so people receive a fair trial.
When they're defense attorneys, we want them to be honest and moral so people can have a proper defense and representation.
When they're MY defense attorney, I want them to be dishonest, amoral, unethical, sleazy, and underhanded so they can get my guilty ass off the hook.

Tanner has it right.

**DrGiggles**

I'm kind of surprised no one is talking about the protests in Charlottesville right now.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/12/17681986/antifa-leftist-violence-clashes-protests-charlottesville-dc-unite-the-right

Kind of nuts that most of the media is glossing over the attacks on the police and some reporters.

**skyth**

Since Antifa is a movement without leaders, etc...What proof do you have that these weren't right wing extremists pretending to be Antifa to paint Antifa in a bad light?

**whembly**

DrGiggles wrote:
I'm kind of surprised no one is talking about the protests in Charlottesville right now.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/12/17681986/antifa-leftist-violence-clashes-protests-charlottesville-dc-unite-the-right

Kind of nuts that most of the media is glossing over the attacks on the police and some reporters.

Meh... par for the course by the media.

100's of media folks were trying to make this a thing...

Thousands of Antifa showing their true colors...

All over for maaaybe a couple dozens of supremacist jackwagons. EVEN with ALLLL the attention the media is giving these donkey-caves... only a smidgen shows up. At the same time, largely ignoring how violent Antifa has been.

Also... the #2 FBI counter-intelligence guy, Peter Stzrok is formally fired:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-agent-peter-strzok-fired-over-anti-trump-texts/2018/08/13/be98f84c-8e8b-11e8-b769-e3fff17f0689_story.html

This is Wray (and others) making an example out of him about sending a message to the rest of the FBI of zero tolerance about letting political biases infect investigations.