US Politics Mega-thread - Page 644

On August 25 2018 00:42 IyMoon wrote:


As someone who also has a music degree, it didn't stop anyone I studied with in Germany where they have civil service.

On August 25 2018 03:13 Plansix wrote:

That sounds like a you problem, my reasoning is staggeringly good.

On August 25 2018 01:44 On_Slaught wrote:


These recent immunities are big news. If there was any financial wrong doing then these are the people who would know and have evidence. Looks like Mueller is going hard on the campaign finance violation angle. There may even be more financial crimes we dont know about (his charity maybe?).

Seeming more and more likely that Mueller's report will state that he believes Trump obstructed justice and violated campaign laws as well as lied to the American public (a lot probably). As for the Russia collusion part we will have to wait and see what he has.

As for how Republicans in Congress will respond to his report depends entirely on how the midterm goes, right or not.

On August 25 2018 03:18 zlefin wrote:

Or you think it's good, and it's in fact a poor reason that you've failed to substantiate; and that fails to address the counterpoints.

On August 25 2018 03:20 Plansix wrote:

Ah, we have now moved to the general understand that “a good argument” is a subjective metric, rather than this objective measurement of merit that can be demanded at will. Carry on then.

On August 25 2018 03:25 zlefin wrote:

ok, this is clearly going nowhere so I'm done with you; if anyone else wants to discuss the matter I'd be interested.

On August 25 2018 03:13 Broetchenholer wrote:
I would assume that in germany civil service was not as helpful to society, as we abolished it when we abolished the draft. Someone looked at it and said it's not worth keeping that. I personally know that now that it is gone, a lot of charity or unpaid work has been harder to do because the organisations cannot get as many social year applicants as civil year applicants before. Basically, if you are an uncommercial institution, having a pool of people that work for essentially free each year is a great boon. The medical service industry certainly cannot use civil year applicants anymore, i have no idea though how this has affected the business. For the young people themselves, there are a lot of valuable skills to be learned, but if that is enough of a reason to do it, i wouldn't want to say. I certainly grew as a person but i might have without it as well.

On August 25 2018 03:00 farvacola wrote:
The normative idea that people *should* be free to do whatever they please is obviously something far short of a maxim given the positive reality of the fact that there are a host of things forced on people because they need money to live, eat, fuck, and even die. This high fallutin take on a freedom that is necessarily circumscribed by the capitalist circumstance in which it dwells does no one but ideologues any good.

I would wager that any concept of homogeneity as applied here would need to be complicated somewhat. I think it's fair to say that the US is more homogeneous than the EU in some ways, but less in others.

On August 25 2018 02:33 Mohdoo wrote:


I think a lot of people wanted to like Clinton, but ultimately saw too much shady, elitist, establishment undertones. They definitely preferred her over Trump, but not enough to get out and vote for her. Similarly, a different group of people are lifelong conservatives and would clearly prefer to have a Jeb right now, but see Trump as the anti-Clinton. They voted for him because they felt like they had to and a lot of the legal stuff against Trump was pretty undeveloped.

There have been more than a few people on this board who are still not COMPLETELY convinced Trump and his gang did a bunch of illegal shit. Many people are unwilling to negatively judge someone for shadiness, especially when it is someone on "your own team" until an actual figure of authority declares they have done illegal stuff. When Mueller finally comes out and lays out everything illegal about Trump's dealings/campaign, it will become a lot more difficult to deny the obvious.

On August 25 2018 01:53 On_Slaught wrote:


I'm talking about the immunities of Weisselberg (Trump Org), Pecker and Howard (American Media/National Enquirer). All of those have to do with possible financial crimes.

WASHINGTON — Undeterred by his attorney general’s pledge to keep politics out of the Justice Department, President Trump again attacked Jeff Sessions on Friday, urging him to look into “corruption” on the “other side” and offering a list of highly partisan issues.

The fresh jabs launched at Mr. Sessions in early morning Twitter posts came after an evening of what appeared to be restraint. Mr. Trump wanted to rebut Mr. Sessions’s comments on Thursday on Twitter, but his advisers stopped him, according to people briefed on the matter.

“Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
....FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems - and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018

On August 25 2018 05:10 On_Slaught wrote:


I'm going back a few pages but I just realized i misinterpreted Plansix's post. You're right that Mueller appears to be shoving the campaign finance stuff off to the USAO and the recent immunities technically are for the Cohen case. Doesn't mean Trump is in any less trouble but not necessarily from Mueller.

I'm curious what his endgame is with that. Perhaps he doesn't feel it is worth taking resources away from what he considers the more important issues, at least relative to his orders, like obstruction and collusion. Or maybe it's as simple as you said: he wants to protect part of the investigation in the event Trump goes all Saturday night massacre on him.

On August 25 2018 04:06 farvacola wrote:

I'm not sure, but class/property ownership might be a good place to start. The problems with the language of difference and similarity make asserting these kinds of things really difficult aside from hand wavey stuff of the kind I've already offered

On August 25 2018 05:10 Plansix wrote:
Trump is now calling for Sessions to investigate his political opponents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/politics/jeff-sessions-donald-trump.html



In the era of Trump it seems like the new normal, but I don’t think it should be over looked. This is the most overt call by Trump for law enforcement to “investigate” his critics. It is a form of attack and an escalation of Trumps rhetoric that the investigation merely a political tool, rather than independent oversight.

On August 25 2018 05:13 Plansix wrote:

The Cohen case does not fall under the mandate of the Russia investigation, so it was referred to the office that would normally handle it. It is just a separate criminal investigation into the President’s close associates. I’m sure it will be one of many separate investigations, since Trump’s org. has never been anything but shady.

On August 25 2018 05:19 On_Slaught wrote:


But he COULD have kept them as part of his investigation since his orders explicitly permit going after crimes he finds along the way, iirc. I think you're generally right tho and he probably just sees this as the simplest path forward. Might as well focus on what he considers the big stuff.

On August 25 2018 03:49 IgnE wrote:


why arent you reading farv's posts?

On August 25 2018 03:58 Simberto wrote:


I think i might be the only person here who actually did some civil service

With regards to why we abolished it, that is quite simple. We abolished the draft, and civil service was a substitute for the draft for those people who claimed that shooting people is not something that fits their ethics. Mandatory civil service is not compatible with our constitution, which only allows forced labor under very specific conditions, one possibility compatible with those being military service. So if you wanted to have civil service for all, you would need to change the constitution. Which is not as horrifically impossible here as in the US. I think that there is currently a discussion about implementing something like a general civil service, but mostly due to the fact that not a lot of other interesting politics stuff happens during the summer.

The main selling point of general civil service is that it strengthens the bonds of the nation. It gives young people a different perspective on live and instills a sense of community through helping others, as opposed of constantly and only looking out for yourself. It might also give them a completely different outlook on what life is for less fortunate people.

That being said, the military draft and civil service in germany in its later years was very flawed. Starting from the point that it was very much not general. In fact, out of my friendship group, i was the only person who served. Everyone else found some bullshit way to get around it due to the weird drafting process. If you stated that you were going to do civil service, you were far more likely to have to actually serve than if you waited for the last possible moment to do so. Because the military didn't actually need all of those recruits, it took only 20% or so of the compatible ones. But almost everyone who stated that they would be doing civil service was actually called to do said service. And it was apparently quite easy to find some doctors who certify some bullshit so that you are not qualified for service. A friend of mine found a way to turn "my thumb hurts" into not having to serve. My brother was to thin.

That meant that the only people who actually served were those who actively wanted to, or didn't care enought to figure out a way to dodge.

Another problem were the jobs that the civil service people had to do. There were obviously large differences there, but a lot of companies simply used them as incredibly cheap labor. My job was literally just existing. There had to be two people on a car that drives sick people from hospital to hospital. But of course actually trained people are expensive, so i was one of them. I wasn't allowed to actually drive the patients, as i wasn't qualified. So i just sat there while the other guy drove them around. Apparently people complained that i was sleeping while doing that, so eventually i got send to the archive to sit around there doing nothing.

I know that for a lot of people, civil service was very formative and intersting, but to me it was just utterly pointless, and it was very obvious that the only reason i was there was because i was cheap "labor" (To be honest, i would have been more satisfied if i actually did any labor).

With regards to the musical people and the draft, i am almost certain that there would be some way to do music within the military. I know that my father got into the sports corps to play chess during his military time because he was good enough at it.