Transparent astroturfing.

The staff is laying a foundation so that when Trump - an arrogant, oblivious nitwit with the attention span of a five-year-old - inevitably comes out of it the obvious loser - they will already have the base primed to believe that that somehow reflects poorly on… Biden.

I don’t see any possible way it couldn’t. Every official is going to expect a “gratuity” in exchange for approving a contract, and every contractor who expects to succeed is going to go into every deal with the understanding that they’re going to be expected to pay a “gratuity” after the deal is finalized.

The upshot of it all can only be wholly institutionalized pay-to-play, with only the ultimately entirely meaningless requirement that the payment has to be deferred instead of up front.

Right. Go back and reread it - that’s what I said.

I’m fully aware that the DNC is under no legal mandate to operate legitimately or honestly.

And that’s rather obviously entirely irrelevant.

In point of fact, if the legal standing of their actions is the only thing that matters, as you imply, then the entire notion that Russia willfully acted to harm them collapses. How could Russia harm them by leaking details of things that are not illegal and therefore (purportedly) entirely acceptable?

If, on the other hand, we stick with the way that things have been presented by the DNC itself - that Russia willfully acted to bring them harm - then rather obviously even they are taking the position that the legal status of their actions is irrelevant.

Go ahead and pick either one - I don’t care. Either there was nothing wrong with their actions, in which case they could not be harmed by having the details of their actions leaked, or they were harmed by the the leak of the details of their actions, in which case their actions were self-evidently judged to be wrong, and the legal standing of them is irrelevant.

Yes - it’s pretty much a given, cynically, that a corrupt court is going to rule that corruption is legal.

As I often do, I wonder if this is going to be one of the things that future historians will point to as a notable event in the days leading up to the collapse of the US.

They called it a gratuity to try to divert attention from the bludgeoningly obvious fact that it’s just a postdated bribe.

This is what this country has come to. In the face of an ever-growing failure of the government to represent the will of the people because their influence has been bought and paid for by moneyed interests, the Supreme Court is legalizing bribery.

Of course, it’s certainly not a coincidence that one of the institutions that’s been bought and paid for is the Supreme Court itself.

Literally, officially, it’s now entirely legal under federal law for officials to accept and even solicit bribes for specific services rendered, just so long as they do it after, rather than before, the service is rendered.

They aren’t even pretending to be a legitimate court of law any more - they’re just a rubber-stamping service for the oligarchy.

The Supreme Court basically just ruled that it’s perfectly acceptable for officials to accept and even ask for bribes, just so long as they wait a few weeks after the service for which the bribe is meant to pay.

Seriously. That’s exactly what this ruling in effect says - that bribes are only bribes if they’re paid before the service is rendered, and if they’re paid after, that’s perfectly fine.

And people still wonder why I’m such a cynic…

So as near as I can tell, the Supreme Court’s goal is to create some vague illusion that corruption is not to be tolerated by making it a crime if and only if people with a specific interest in a specific ruling or piece of legislation offer a substantial amount of money or something of equivalent value while clearly communicating their intent to buy the influence of an official and said official then accepts the bribe, clearly announces their intent to act according to the bribe-payer’s wishes solely because they’ve been paid to, then does so.

And in literally ALL other cases, it somehow won’t count and will be entirely legal.

Already did, though instead of the bot, I blocked the entire instance.

That’s pretty much what it seems to amount to.

All of the focus has been astroturfed onto the fact that the leaks came from Russian sources, and away from the content of the leaks. The clear (though of course unstated) implication is that the wrong isn’t the DNC’s corruption, but Russia’s self-serving exposure of that corruption.

I’ve never bought this spin.

Certainly Russia had a hand in getting the leaks to Wikileaks, and certainly because they had an obvious vested interest in the US electing Putin’s sycophant Trump.

But I’ve never seen or heard of any specific evidence that any of it was “disinformation” - just the repeated unsubstantiated claim that it was. It appears to be exactly what it looks like - a detailed record of the DNC’s overtly fraudulent maneuvering to torpedo the Sanders campaign in order to ensure the nomination of Clinton, or more precisely, to torpedo the campaign of a sincere progressive who would likely threaten the ongoing flow of big donor soft money in order to ensure the nomination of a transparently corrupt neo-lib who could be counted upon to serve establishment interests and keep the soft money flowing. And notably, early on that was how the DNC treated it themselves, even going so far as to issue a public apology to the Sanders campaign “for the inexcusable remarks made over email” that did not reflect the DNC’s “steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.”

So what it actually all boils down to was that the DNC really was acting in a manner contrary to the public good, driven by their own greed and corruption, and the fact that Russia had a hand in exposing that in order to serve their own interests doesn’t alter that fact.

No matter how one slices it, the bulk of the blame for the whole thing rests squarely on the DNC. Yes - it served Russian interests to reveal the information, but had the DNC simply been operating in a legitimate, honest and neutral way, instead of self-servingly and dishonestly, there would’ve been nothing to reveal.

Curiously enough, I didn’t delete it. I was just scanning back through my posts when I saw “deleted by creator” on one of them, and since I know I haven’t deleted anything, I came to see what that was all about.

There’s an option to undelete, so I did that, though unfortunately that means that yours is now the post without context. Sorry. 😅

I would agree that Americans need to make “informed decisions” in the upcoming election - for instance, they need to be “informed” of the fact that one of the candidates is a convicted felon.

And on another note, here’s that “politically motivated” thing again.

Just as I noted the other day, when Alito trotted it out, how is there even a notion that it matters?

Let’s just run with the assumption that the prosecution was “politically motivated.” So what? The trial worked exactly the way a trial is meant to work - the jury heard the evidence and rendered a verdict based on the evidence.

What on earth does the supposed motivation of the prosecutor have to do with anything?

I’m pretty sure that if he took his shirt off, we’d just see how much he looks like Baron Harkonnen.

Of course he wants immunity for cops - he dreams of the day when he’ll have his own murder squads and be able to simply have anyone who might dare to oppose him killed.

And so do his supporters.

And so do cops.

And just the other day, the Israelis were wringing their hands over the fact that 11 Israeli soldiers died in one day, but here they are, right back to killing Palestinian civilians at many times that rate, pretty much every single day.

It’s as if they’ve made sociopathy official policy.

Trump is owned by Russia.

It really is just that simple - Putin and his oligarch cronies have bought and paid for him.

I know you are but what am I?

Not at all.

For instance, I also don’t like petulant techbro libertarians with political views that are warped by their desperate, yearning need to try to compensate for their inferiority complexes.