Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Badger]

Well to be fair for Clinton it was merely Tuesday too.

[archer]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

But it's hard to believe Clinton was impeached for lying about one consensual extramarital affair. For Trump that's Tuesday.

 

Clinton lied under oath about his consensual extramarital affairs as he was being deposed in a non-consensual sexual harassment lawsuit which was being brought against him by another woman. Those lies by Clinton were designed to prevent the plaintiff from establishing a pattern of behavior which would have helped prove his guilt.

 

Context matters.

 

Even with the lies, Clinton ended up having to pay $850,000 to settle the sexual harassment lawsuit. And he was forced to forfeit his license to practice law in his home state.

 

If we got Trump under oath, I have no doubt that he'd lie if for no other reason than that he couldn't stop himself.

[archer]

Here's the link to the very long NYT article about Trump's income tax returns if anyone wants to read about it in detail.

 

Most NYT articles are behind a paywall for me but this one wasn't.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

[ScottishFox]

2 hours ago, archer said:

 

Clinton lied under oath about his consensual extramarital affairs as he was being deposed in a non-consensual sexual harassment lawsuit which was being brought against him by another woman. Those lies by Clinton were designed to prevent the plaintiff from establishing a pattern of behavior which would have helped prove his guilt.

 

Context matters.

 

Even with the lies, Clinton ended up having to pay $850,000 to settle the sexual harassment lawsuit. And he was forced to forfeit his license to practice law in his home state.

 

If we got Trump under oath, I have no doubt that he'd lie if for no other reason than that he couldn't stop himself.

 

If memory serves at the time Bill Clinton had the extramarital affair it was felony sexual harassment based on the law of the time and his relative position to Monica Lewinsky.

 

I feel pretty confident that Trump has had affairs as well, but not while President and with people who worked for him.

[archer]

4 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

If memory serves at the time Bill Clinton had the extramarital affair it was felony sexual harassment based on the law of the time and his relative position to Monica Lewinsky.

 

 

 

Jones v. Clinton was a civil lawsuit.

[ScottishFox]

34 minutes ago, archer said:

 

Jones v. Clinton was a civil lawsuit.

 

Not sure what that has to do with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's affair.

[Lord Liaden]

Of course what Clinton did was illegal, unethical, and stupid. It was also just a tawdry affair, not worth the time, energy, and money devoted to pursuing it. But it's simply not on the same order of magnitude as what Donald Trump has done, and so far gotten away with. Not only has the goal post been moved, the whole field has been plowed and salted.

[archer]

4 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Of course what Clinton did was illegal, unethical, and stupid. It was also just a tawdry affair, not worth the time, energy, and money devoted to pursuing it.

 

Lying to a court is not an "affair". Nor is sexual harassment an "affair".

 

At least not in the United States, your country may vary.

 

 

"But it's simply not on the same order of magnitude as what Donald Trump has done, and so far gotten away with."

 

Well, I was arguing that Trump should have been impeached from the first month of his presidency when he first started putting up his Secret Service detail in his hotel properties and charging the government for it since that was the first time I could identify that he did something which was unconstitutional and impeachable. It took the Washington Post until after Trump's impeachment to "break" that story to the public.

 

So you aren't going to get any argument from me about the fact that Trump should have been removed from office long ago.

 

I'm not really much on "orders of magnitude" when it comes to impeachment. I'm an idealist. When a president does something which is impeachable I believe it is the duty of the members of the House in both parties to impeach him and that it's the duty of members of the Senate to remove him from office.

 

I've got my own opinion about why the Democrats still haven't attempted to impeach Trump over illegally enriching himself, even though we have government documents (already in hand, no investigation needed) showing that he's guilty.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, archer said:

 

Lying to a court is not an "affair". Nor is sexual harassment an "affair".

 

At least not in the United States, your country may vary.

 

 

Not in my country, although Europeans generally found the scandal laughable. But lying to a court was the illegal part, yet it was also after the fact. Up until at least 2014, when Monica Lewinsky wrote an op-ed piece for Vanity Fair, she insisted her relationship with Bill Clinton was consensual. Four years later, in the same magazine, she had revised her view after more consideration of the power differential between the POTUS and an intern. Clinton should have thought of that himself before playing smoke the cigar. That was the unethical part. Both parts were stupid.

 

These actions had a bearing on Clinton's character and judgement, but ultimately affected only the people directly involved. Donald Trump's actions, or inactions, have involved blatant misuse of his office for personal benefit, rampant corruption, and threatening the security of his nation and the health and very lives of his citizens. The Republican Party tried to nail Clinton's hide to the wall for his transgressions, but excuse and normalize Trump's. That was why I made the comparison -- the consequences of the latter are vastly more grave, but are now being treated as excusable by a large segment of the American political class and no small part of its populace. That's a profound and frightening shift.

 

(I concede that I may see more grey than you do, or maybe I just draw my lines farther out.)

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, archer said:

 

Jones v. Clinton was a civil lawsuit.

 

3 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Not sure what that has to do with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's affair.

 

I believe archer was referring to the fact that Clinton was charged with perjury for giving misleading testimony regarding his affair with Lewinsky as part of Paula Jones' civil suit against him over sexual harassment. No legal action was ever undertaken against him in regards to the Lewinsky affair itself.

[DShomshak]

17 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Did any Amurricans here pay less than $750 in tax in 2016?

Yes. I may have mentioned that I'm poor.

 

In my most "lucrative" years of freelance game writing, though, I paid more than $750 on the pittance I received from White Wolf and Hero Games. Self-employment tax is kind of a bitch.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I paid more than that in taxes in a month of work. Not that it matters though...this isn't news. The rich had always manipulated the system in order to keep their wealth. Also not news....this revelation won't do a thing to Trump's political standing in America. If anything, his base will cheer his victory over a "corrupt liberal system".

[Pattern Ghost]

11 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

I feel pretty confident that Trump has had affairs as well, but not while President and with people who worked for him.

 

True, some were independent contractors.

[Old Man]

And those are the contractors he actually paid!

[TrickstaPriest]

The stuff I find interesting out of all this has been the "hundreds of millions of debts" bit.

 

That is like, a serious problem.  So serious that it immediately invalidates you from access to TS information.  Like, for real.  Knowing people with TS access, that's like a giant red flag.

 

And everything else is the stuff I wish the impeachment had actually been about.

 

If I wanted to be generous I'd say the strategy was not to include anything they would prefer to drop to damage his election (because the impeachment was likely to never pass for political reasons).

 

But it still burns me.

[Pariah]

24 minutes ago, Old Man said:

And those are the contractors he actually paid!

 

As if there were any such. I'm more likely to believe in unicorns and viable third-party Presidential candidates first.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

I paid more than that in taxes in a month of work. Not that it matters though...this isn't news. The rich had always manipulated the system in order to keep their wealth. Also not news....this revelation won't do a thing to Trump's political standing in America. If anything, his base will cheer his victory over a "corrupt liberal system".

 

 

[Old Man]

2 minutes ago, Pariah said:

 

As if there were any such. I'm more likely to believe in unicorns and viable third-party Presidential candidates first.

 

According to Cohen, Trump viewed paying Stormy as less expensive than what it would cost to mollify Melania.

[Ternaugh]

21 minutes ago, Pariah said:

 

As if there were any such. I'm more likely to believe in unicorns and viable third-party Presidential candidates first.

 

Many years back, I worked for a software development company which sold a product to casinos for player tracking. One of our customers was his casinos in Atlantic City. My office was right next door to the COO, and one day, he stumbled in, looking like he'd just been mugged. He explained that he had called them to try to arrange the final payment, and was told that they would never sign off on the software, as they could always find something wrong. They were never going to make the last payment, we would have to service the software forever, and if we didn't like it, then we could always sue, but they then said they didn't expect us to last long enough to collect.

 

I found out later that this was SOP for how he ran all of his businesses.

[Lord Liaden]

Over the past several months I've seen quite a few YouTube testimonials from people who live in the "tri-state area" (New York/New Jersey/Connecticut) who claim Trump has been well-known there for many years as a swindler. No few of them declare that they or their relatives were scammed or cheated by his businesses.

[archer]

"I paid more in taxes than Donald Trump" stickers, buttons, and t-shirts now available.

 

https://store.joebiden.com/

[Pariah]

That's outstanding. 

[wcw43921]

The Family Whose Black Lives Matter Sign Shook Their Conservative Town

[archer]

Tweets:

 

Well, I was going to tweet about how the ballot that I just received is so poorly designed they must not want you to actually vote, but then I noticed that @BOENYC sent me someone else's ballot. What am I supposed to do now? (Actual question)

 

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My mail-in ballot also has someone else's return envelope. This is gonna be a real huge problem, huh.

 

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I received someone else's return envelope in my #AbsenteeBallot. I just got off the phone with an operator at .@BOENYC and they said this has happened to a lot of people. Double check your ballots. .@NYCMayor .@NYGovCuomo @Gothamist @nytimes @NY1 @NYDailyNews @nypost

 

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Called the BOE, they’re sending a replacement ballot, but, uh, had me in their system with the wrong birthdate. (It’s always been fine before!) I’m absolutely going to vote in person now.

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PSA: brooklyn absentee voters! I received my absentee ballot today with the wrong name/address/voter ID on the ballot envelope. brooklyn BOE says this mess up affected at least 500 voters but up to 123k. please *check your envelopes* and call your BOE if you find anything amiss!!

 

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I received someone else's return envelope in my #AbsenteeBallot. I just got off the phone with an operator at .@BOENYC and they said this has happened to a lot of people. Double check your ballots. .@NYCMayor .@NYGovCuomo @Gothamist @nytimes @NY1 @NYDailyNews @nypost

 

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Imagine my surprise, @BOENYC, to have opened my absentee ballot envelope today, only to find 1) a military ballot (does not apply to me), 2) with someone else's name and address on it. This is of grave concern.

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518682-new-yorkers-report-receiving-ballots-with-wrong-name-voter-addresses

 

Voters are required to sign their names on their ballot to return it to be counted, meaning the mislabeled return envelopes would likely be voided if mailed in because the names and signatures would not match. 

 

(Note that their state law says the mismatched ballot is supposed to be voided. The only way these ballots would be counted is if the counters didn't follow the law or if there was a post-election lawsuit which ended up making such ballots be counted, regardless of what the state law says.)

[Lord Liaden]

Ohhh... Trump is going to leap on this to discredit mail-in ballots. Thanks, BOENYC.