US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1651

On July 10 2019 11:16 KwarK wrote:

It's not at all naive. One of the first things we learn in professional ethics is that if your boss asks you to do something unethical you say no because if you do it then it's not the boss doing something unethical, it's you. The boss probably has a boss too and his boss probably has a boss and so forth. To the people under him Acosta was the one in charge protecting Epstein. The idea that it's not his fault for protecting Epstein, he was just following orders, ignores the obvious, that he did protect Epstein. No different to how I would be committing fraud if I was asked to commit fraud and then did so.

As for what he's supposed to say, at this point a suicide note would be appropriate. Or at the very least telling us about how his family were threatened and that a mysterious government vehicle picked up his kids from daycare only to return them later with a warning for him. When you're admitting to helping free a pedophile so they can continue to rape kids explaining that you were asked very nicely to help them doesn't look better.

On July 10 2019 12:37 IgnE wrote:


look, kwark, you were the one who mocked the idea of a "deep state", despite the plausibility of the scenario. so if you think it's plausible why are you mocking the idea that somebody higher up might have actually told him not to go after Epstein? this might have happened. we don't really know, but it's at least plausible. if you wanted to liken him to a Nazi prison guard you shouldn't begin the salvo by mocking people who think the "deep state" (i.e. the group around Hitler and Himmler in your analogy) actually names some really existing group of conspirators.

secondly, your analysis raises a bunch of issues. firstly, even if he did let Epstein get off easily, it's (probably) not as if he knowingly signed up to be an accomplice to letting pedophiles go free. prosecutors are beholden to higher ups. prosecutorial discretion is not as black and white as you make it out to be. does your analysis apply here only because it's pedophilia? only because you assume there was a conspiracy to protect Epstein rather than any legitimate security interest to grant him a plea deal? or is any instance of prosecutorial leniency de facto a gross miscarriage of justice? it's also plausible that he has generally been an upstanding attorney seeking justice, that he didn't know what he was walking into when he was assigned the case, and that he basically saw no other choice when the institution which he was a part of voided his responsibility over the matter. sure, he could have turned Snowden and gone to the press or whatever, but 1) we can't expect everyone to be heroes and 2) how do you know that there weren't good, consequentialist, national security type reasons not to actually go after Epstein at that time? surely you can imagine a scenario in which letting a bad dude get off is still a global net positive — you might object that this is very unlikely, and true, it might be very unlikely, maybe Acosta knew that he was letting a pedophile off simply because the pedophile had connections to corrupt higher ups in our government, and that he could either let it go through or risk his job and status (possibly to no effect; it is possible that he simply would have been replaced and Epstein would still go free) and he chose to participate in letting Epstein go free? so what? then we are simply back to the starting premise that there was a corrupt cabal of deep staters tied to Epstein, the very premise you initially mocked.

if your point is simply that we shouldn't have anyone who "willingly" participated in such a miscarriage of justice, even if only as a pawn, as our Labor Secretary then why didn't you start there instead of this weird observation about how "convenient" it is that Acosta could say that higher ups told him to drop it?

On July 10 2019 19:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


You must not have calibrated too much if you still watch a comedian-turned-meme-who-doesn't-understand-the-burden-of-proof for your revelations about the news, especially since his assertion is a clear logical fallacy (false compromise fallacy) And, to be fair, there are plenty of news sources posted in this thread that aren't crazily biased in either direction, such as Associated Press (AP), BBC, NPR, Reuters, and CBS

On July 10 2019 19:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


When Emnjay808 wrote "from both sides", I was assuming those two sides were liberal/ Democrat vs. conservative/ Republican, not directly related to capitalism, but I could be mistaken. Sources like AP are not particularly left-wing or right-wing.

On July 10 2019 18:04 Destructicon wrote:


Sorry for not replying to this sooner, sleep and all.

From your example I'm getting that the Convention Hall at the Dulles Airport is a private space which could be used as a public forum if the owner chose to allow the government to host said forum there.

Not sure how to answer your first question but.
I believe the owners can deny access to people, so long as they aren't singling them out based on sex, ethnicity etc.

Also if the gov holds a public forum in said space they aren't allowed to exclude people from it.
But I think there is also an extension to this, if the owner chose to let the government hold a public forum, they themselves also can't deny people access to it. (correct me here if I'm wrong)

The problem I have with social media platforms, not necessarily just twitter is that, according to the court ruling from today, they act as a public forum all the time.

Social media are private platforms but by the nature of whom they host act as a public forum all the time. Hence, by that logic I don't think social media platforms should be banning people from them either.

The fact that social media platforms now can ban people from them also leads, in my opinion, to a very weird loophole where the gov conducts a public service, informing the public on important matters, but people aren't allowed to engage.

Its not so bad today where you have other forms of discourse but I think it could become a bigger problem as the world starts relying more and more on social media. In short its like the government can outsource censorship by choosing to conduct its discourse through a private platform.

On July 10 2019 21:03 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

You must be bored and so jaded to literally find a divide in everything said and put it into two boxes; capitalism or communism. You offer nothing new except to attempt, fraily, to steer the conversation to your choice of topic. No one is going to stop their current discussions and join you in your pathetic attempt to hijack said conversation because you think what you have to say is more interesting. It isn't. Either contribute to the current discussions or sit by quietly until your topic of choice presents itself.

On July 10 2019 09:42 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I've been temped. And I would say I'm not a combative person except against the forces of stupidity and blatant racism/bigotry. If anyone has examples, I'd be glad to know.