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On October 06 2018 04:11 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2018 03:59 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 02:09 Plansix wrote:On October 06 2018 02:01 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 01:59 Plansix wrote:On October 06 2018 01:53 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 01:50 Plansix wrote:
But all the people accusing Kavanaugh came forth on their own or were discovered by reporters due to rumors around his time at Yale. The democrats have used those reports in the opposition to Kavanaugh, but they would be morons not to.
And leaks are part of the political world. You loved every single leak about the Clinton investigation, so excuse me if I don’t find your objections to the same tactics(assuming leaks happened) that compelling. Yes, leaks happen all of the time, but these leaks were particularly egregious. Again, it was the leak of uncorroborated and highly unquestionable allegations at the last minute before a vote when the information (such as it was) had been known for weeks. Eh, not much worse that letter from the FBI that said they were looking at some emails that turned out to be nothing right before a presidential election. But that wasn’t even a leak, they just ran out and told everyone about that. Or leaking information from an ongoing investigation so often that the Justice Department stopped turning over requested documents. Again, I cannot feel bad for Republicans getting a taste of their favorite tactic. It’s not the way things should be, but no one is putting their knife back on the table at this point. I said at the time that Comey had some explaining to do when he reopened the investigation. I still think that he has a lot of explaining to do about what happened, and I also think that we're going to learn more about what happened in the coming months as the investigations into the FBI/DOJ continue. And that leak didn't coming from the GOP anyway. It came from the NYPD if I recall correctly. I just looked it up. Comey’s letter to the Senate leadership was leaked almost immediately after it was received by government sources. That was either the FBI or senate staff. Or both. But the GOP was happy to pounce on it. We are far away from the days when the Gore campaign received Bush’s debate prep book and instantly turned it over to the FBI. It's not the same for multiple reasons. First, it was already public knowledge that Hillary's emails had been found on Weiner's laptop. Second, and let's get real about this, Hillary actually did something that was, in fact, wrong, and probably a crime. We know that she had emails in places where they shouldn't have been. Totally different situation from uncorroborated smears. Why Comey chose not to prosecute is under investigation as we speak. And as I have pointed out previously, we now know that one of his biggest justifications for not prosecuting -- that there was not evidence that her server was compromised by foreign states -- has been proven false. Yes, but it also does not negate all the other leaks the GOP has been thrilled to send to the press. The “leak” in the Kavanaugh hearing might be one of the more effective leaks, but those are the breaks. As Kavanaugh said “what goes around, comes around.”
Don't waste our time with pointless whataboutism that isn't even necessarily attributable to me. Either own that what the Democrats have done to Kavanaugh is wrong or don't.
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I wasn't expecting whataboutism for the Hillary emails thing, but apparently some people are still sore about that one. Smear someone with sexual allegations, but you remember that one time a leak hurt one of my gals right? With the emails?
Politics is a dirty business and the left is just bringing dumpsters full of trash to the game.
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Collins is on the floor. Sounds like she is a yes.
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On October 06 2018 04:12 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2018 04:11 Plansix wrote:On October 06 2018 03:59 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 02:09 Plansix wrote:On October 06 2018 02:01 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 01:59 Plansix wrote:On October 06 2018 01:53 xDaunt wrote:On October 06 2018 01:50 Plansix wrote:
But all the people accusing Kavanaugh came forth on their own or were discovered by reporters due to rumors around his time at Yale. The democrats have used those reports in the opposition to Kavanaugh, but they would be morons not to.
And leaks are part of the political world. You loved every single leak about the Clinton investigation, so excuse me if I don’t find your objections to the same tactics(assuming leaks happened) that compelling. Yes, leaks happen all of the time, but these leaks were particularly egregious. Again, it was the leak of uncorroborated and highly unquestionable allegations at the last minute before a vote when the information (such as it was) had been known for weeks. Eh, not much worse that letter from the FBI that said they were looking at some emails that turned out to be nothing right before a presidential election. But that wasn’t even a leak, they just ran out and told everyone about that. Or leaking information from an ongoing investigation so often that the Justice Department stopped turning over requested documents. Again, I cannot feel bad for Republicans getting a taste of their favorite tactic. It’s not the way things should be, but no one is putting their knife back on the table at this point. I said at the time that Comey had some explaining to do when he reopened the investigation. I still think that he has a lot of explaining to do about what happened, and I also think that we're going to learn more about what happened in the coming months as the investigations into the FBI/DOJ continue. And that leak didn't coming from the GOP anyway. It came from the NYPD if I recall correctly. I just looked it up. Comey’s letter to the Senate leadership was leaked almost immediately after it was received by government sources. That was either the FBI or senate staff. Or both. But the GOP was happy to pounce on it. We are far away from the days when the Gore campaign received Bush’s debate prep book and instantly turned it over to the FBI. It's not the same for multiple reasons. First, it was already public knowledge that Hillary's emails had been found on Weiner's laptop. Second, and let's get real about this, Hillary actually did something that was, in fact, wrong, and probably a crime. We know that she had emails in places where they shouldn't have been. Totally different situation from uncorroborated smears. Why Comey chose not to prosecute is under investigation as we speak. And as I have pointed out previously, we now know that one of his biggest justifications for not prosecuting -- that there was not evidence that her server was compromised by foreign states -- has been proven false. Yes, but it also does not negate all the other leaks the GOP has been thrilled to send to the press. The “leak” in the Kavanaugh hearing might be one of the more effective leaks, but those are the breaks. As Kavanaugh said “what goes around, comes around.” Don't waste our time with pointless whataboutism that isn't even necessarily attributable to me. Either own that what the Democrats have done to Kavanaugh is wrong or don't.
This isn’t preschool, we don’t deal in pure right or wrong. Is it harmful and underhanded? Of course. Is it illegal? Nope. Can we trust the conservatives and senators like Grassley not leak things for political gain? Nope.
As I said, I would like to live in the world where everyone plays fair. Bit that isn’t the world we live in right now. But I’m willing to agree all leakers must go. So Feinstien and Grassley need to go. Both of them were eager to release unsubstantiated claims during this process and need to step down.
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LoL at these women shouting down Manchin. Democrats have lost their minds. Oppose Kavanaugh on his jurisprudence if you want, but opposing him on the basis of the allegation that he did something to Ford is madness -- specifically, the madness of a lynch mob.
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On October 06 2018 05:12 xDaunt wrote:
LoL at these women shouting down Manchin. Democrats have lost their minds. Oppose Kavanaugh on his jurisprudence if you want, but opposing him on the basis of the allegation that he did something to Ford is madness -- specifically, the madness of a lynch mob.
Pretty sure people are going to do both and do it for far longer than you are prepared for. He was the most unpopular nominee in history before the allegations, even more so now. His “what goes around, comes around,” comment will be around for a while.
But hey, you won. You got the conservative court you dreamed of. And now you get to see what that future looks like that conservatives have nothing to rally behind besides beating the libs.
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Russia's mostly fizzled and Kavanaugh's is about to be behind us + Show Spoiler +Bar something that makes the crazy of last two weeks look like civil discourse
Their campaign slogan is "for the people," presumably hoping Trump's GOP can be portrayed as the tool of moneyed interests, old white men, and oppressive corporations. I'm guessing stuff along the lines of saying the economy looks like it's doing great, but really women and minorities are missing out on things or disproportionately effected. They'll probably have a new Trump tweet saying something stupid about something or someone they like. The election is 32 days out and their last mistake just energized the GOP base for classic law-and-order stuff like presumption of innocence, due process, and not going all mob justice like some "shithole country" (as Trump would put it).
+ Show Spoiler [bonus] +
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On October 06 2018 00:08 Nebuchad wrote:
If Manchin ends up being the deciding vote for Kavanaugh they better never let GH back into the Mega-Thread
I was wondering what it would take for Democrats to finally turn on Manchin, problem is I don't think the party is leaving Manchin over the vote since they've been coordinating closely with him on it.
Perhaps the base will finally have to reconcile their party supporting Manchin (who basically supports Trump) and them supporting that party. Doubt it though.
Looks like some are still trying to spin this as a win for Democrats, amazing.
Van Dyke got convicted, now they just need to fire/lock-up the entire apparatus that helped cover it up for Rahm's election. Chicago PD should be disbanded until they can be replaced with people who don't help cover up crimes committed by their colleagues.
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I know we have been a little distracted by the Kavanaugh mess, but this article on how China has engaged in industrial-level espionage by implanting spy chips on its domestically-manufactured electronics, including those that are exported, is a huge deal:
In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental’s national security contracts weren’t the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon’s government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA.
To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental’s security, according to one person familiar with the process. The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS to take a closer look at Elemental’s main product: the expensive servers that customers installed in their networks to handle the video compression. These servers were assembled for Elemental by Super Micro Computer Inc., a San Jose-based company (commonly known as Supermicro) that’s also one of the world’s biggest suppliers of server motherboards, the fiberglass-mounted clusters of chips and capacitors that act as the neurons of data centers large and small. In late spring of 2015, Elemental’s staff boxed up several servers and sent them to Ontario, Canada, for the third-party security company to test, the person says.
Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.
Read the rest here.
This is the kind of thing that makes it unequivocally clear that China is not a good actor on the world stage and needs to be treated as an antagonist. It also underscores the need to not over-outsource our production capacity to China. If shit ever hits the fan, we'll need secure domestic supply lines. Fortunately, Trump seems to be ahead of the curve on this with his trade war.
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but all the companies involved have categorically denied it. they wouldn't open themselves up to charges of fraudulent misrepresentation would they??
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On October 07 2018 00:59 IgnE wrote:
but all the companies involved have categorically denied it. they wouldn't open themselves up to charges of fraudulent misrepresentation would they??
I'm not sure how much they really care. Just look at how many lies Facebook told regarding what happened during the election.
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This speech by Schumer is dirty by even his standards.
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this is the end of the supreme court as we know it. it will not recover its legitimacy in our lifetime
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On October 07 2018 04:37 IgnE wrote:
this is the end of the supreme court as we know it. it will not recover its legitimacy in our lifetime
If people like the animals currently disrupting the Senate don’t get their sanity back, you may be right.
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you know, i feel like your perception is more one-sided than normal on this particular issue. there are actually a lot of deep issues underlying this drama and it doesn't seem like you care much about trying to tease out what they are
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On October 07 2018 05:06 IgnE wrote:
you know, i feel like your perception is more one-sided than normal on this particular issue. there are actually a lot of deep issues underlying this drama and it doesn't seem like you care much about trying to tease out what they are
How can I not be partisan on this one? How can any "conservative" not be? You're an attorney. Though you don't litigate, you know how to look at facts and parse allegations. The Democrats just tried to torpedo a well-qualified judge with three sets of baseless of allegations. All three allegations had internal inconsistencies. None of the three allegations had one shred of independent, corroborative evidence. In fact, all of the independent evidence contradicted each of the allegations. You know as well as I do how to weigh this evidence, and that the only proper conclusion is that it is at least more likely than not that Kavanaugh is innocent of each allegation.
Let's just stop here for a moment. How should conservatives respond? Should they abandon a very likely innocent guy to the political wolves? Should they let fundamental values of fairness and due process be eroded for the sake of the mob? Is that really what you're advocating?
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Several screaming interruptions later, the deed is done. Huzzah for an end to this disgraceful chapter in the book of baseless accusations that we've been seeing lately.
Reading CNN articles about Kavanaugh released within the past 48 hours is a hoot. I recommend it to anyone looking for some humorous hot takes.
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On October 07 2018 05:16 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2018 05:06 IgnE wrote:
you know, i feel like your perception is more one-sided than normal on this particular issue. there are actually a lot of deep issues underlying this drama and it doesn't seem like you care much about trying to tease out what they are How can I not be partisan on this one? How can any "conservative" not be? You're an attorney. Though you don't litigate, you know how to look at facts and parse allegations. The Democrats just tried to torpedo a well-qualified judge with three sets of baseless of allegations. All three allegations had internal inconsistencies. None of the three allegations had one shred of independent, corroborative evidence. In fact, all of the independent evidence contradicted each of the allegations. You know as well as I do how to weigh this evidence, and that the only proper conclusion is that it is at least more likely than not that Kavanaugh is innocent of each allegation. Let's just stop here for a moment. How should conservatives respond? Should they abandon a very likely innocent guy to the political wolves? Should they let fundamental values of fairness and due process be eroded for the sake of the mob? Is that really what you're advocating?
See I think you are fundamentally misinterpreting what the drama was even about. It was about believability regarding the kind of person Brett Kavanaugh is, and had little to nothing to do with legalistic weighing of evidence with regard to a specific and isolated charge. It had little to do with "qualifications." I don't know what happened back when Brett was in high school, but on balance I think that he was probably a hard-drinking, typically misogynistic jock and asshole. If I believe that much, regardless of whether he sexually assaulted Ford, is that enough to say that I don't think he should be the next supreme court justice? I think probably yes. As you know there are many brilliant lawyers in this country almost all of whom would drop everything at the chance to become a supreme court justice.
As for how conservatives should have responded, my understanding is that they had a list of 25ish judges that were basically all equivalent in judicial terms. Perhaps they should have quickly torpedoed any candidate themselves that met any resistance and just put up another? You think the Dems could have brought unseemly allegations against all 25? So why him? Because the democrats played politics and tried to control the release of allegations from a woman who by all accounts firmly believes she was assaulted by Brett back in high school?
Don't give me something like, "it's the principle of the thing." Sorry, but the prestige and legitimacy of the Court was and has been under fire since long before Kavanaugh. Any person worthy of being placed there would know that appearances matter. This whole drama has been a referendum on what kinds of people are allowed to be on the Supreme Court. You should read that with full understanding of the implicit tension inherent to it. What kinds of people are allowed on the Supreme Court? Who is actually nominated and confirmed? Who are these people deciding whether abortion is constitutionally protected? The whole thing has been a referendum on entitled white boys, born with a host of economic, educational, and social privileges, who acted like assholes for a significant portion of their lives and whether or not they should be the ones making decisions of such importance for so many.
I do think that there's a possible world in which Kavanaugh met this criticism and appropriately addressed it. That is not the one we are living in.
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This is more wrapped up in people’s prenudices about jocks, whites, rich people, and the negation of the individual than I first thought. I can’t answer for xDaunt on this matter. The sense of real entitlement I get the feel of is the entitlement to point towards conservatives to back down for the good of the country when a significant minority wants their standards of evidence and suitability to hold sway.
I gotta say that the ONLY path back for “appearances matter” crowd is a textualist/originalist court that doesn’t create legislation through judicial activism. No withdrawing here would even come close in healing division compared to confirmation—is it literally the less divisive of the two options (for reasons xDaunt already went over). I know some parts of the country, particularly the coasts and metros, aren’t past the “entitled white boys ... who acted like assholes” culture of prejudice and bigotry, but we can work on that as a society before letting it deprive good men the chance to serve in government and create the standards more typically associated with banana republics compared to America.
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I think it's disappointing that any of this has to even be seen as partisan in the first place. You don't have to be partisan to see that the accusations put forth are so flimsy that you have to want to believe them to be true to even consider that they might be valid - in fact you have to be quite partisan to even consider taking them seriously. The matters of due process, innocent until proven guilty, so on and so forth, went out the window entirely in this entire affair, and the word of women who had negative credibility was taken as truth out of some misguided sentiment of "believe the victim" or something of the sort.
I can certainly respect opposition to Kavanaugh on the principle of keeping the court non-partisan or at least balanced, because it is hard to deny that the Supreme Court has become far more political than anyone would like. I can even agree with that to some extent - he is a far cry from the kind of judge I would like to fill that seat in terms of what precedent the new court is likely to set. Fuck if there's anything that can be done about it, because the opposition doesn't have the votes. But if you're willing to eat up baseless accusations and make shit up about people's personal lives as a means to oppose their politics, or to try to dredge up support in the midterm elections based on the desire to capitalize on outrage, then that is absolutely despicable.
I've been around long enough to see dozens of these internet lynch mob scenarios play out. Proof doesn't matter, facts don't matter, it's just an "if you're accused then you're guilty" witch hunt that continues until enough people caught in the mob mentality realize that they've gone too far in shitting on the lives of people who "deserve it" who actually did nothing wrong in the first place. Shame on the Democrats for playing it this way, and I hope the voters in the middle can at least see this farce for what it was in the midterms. Though I agree with Democrats far more on policy than Republicans, I'm going to have to make sure not to vote for the kinds of people who think playing this game is a worthy political strategy.
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EPT
