Ten oz

Between federal and state courts Trump has been involved in 3,500 legal cases. It makes sense he would have some basic knowledge of how to shield himself. Considering his history I am shocked that he is as amateurish as he is.

The data was collected in the 10th of this month. It is recent. The second meeting had been known of and discussed. Perhaps something will change post the meeting. It seems to me North Korea is a big win for Trump. Polling has shown that. North Korea is one of the few areas where Trump's approval is comfortably above 50%. The con appears to be working. I think another factor is that even among Republicans there is unease about Trump's competence, demeanor, and general suitability for the office. No one wants to see a new war and especially no one wants to see a war under Trump. So the bar has been sit real low. Provided Trump isn't threatening military action against North Korea twitter most people satisfied.

I have to disagree. Trump has gotten what he wants out of this. Polling shows people are less concerned about North Korea than they use to be. That is a narrative win for Trump. Perception is more important to Trump than tangible things.

Gotcha. That may very well be possible however Trump and his associates would have more insights on other possible crimes Cohen might've than others might. So to me throwing them under the bus for appearances is risky if Cohen has something more to hide. Stones connection to Assange and Bannon's involvement in the campaign shows that Trump has the needed connections to get stories out under the radar. If Cohen we're guilty if other crimes, especially ones not related to Trump, I suspect those would have already been leaked to the media by now.

What influence over his sentence do Democrats have?

Mueller has requested an interview. Trump's team has rejected it. Link I saw several arguments yesterday where people tried to imply that Cohen was lying in hopes of pleasing Democrats who might then advocate for him to get a lighter sentence. It makes no sense to me. Democrats aren't in control of that. Plus Trump is in charge of the DOJ. The possible price of retribution from Trump is theoretically greater than any potential reprieve by Democrats. Trump is a perfect example of why laws and regulations are so complicated. Many Politician's throughout my life have noted the size of various laws and instructions as an example of bloat or an overly involved govt. Cutting the proverbial redtape and simplifying things has been a common campaign promise of many. A**holes like Trump are one of the reasons everything is so onerous. Because people like him take advantage of everything. They work around the clock to exploit everything and bend ever rule to it's breaking point. As you point out Trump probably wouldn't even see anything wrong with what he's done. Following the rules in a straight forward fashion is for suckers in his mind.

I think Harris, Warren, Booker, and Sanders are the only current candidates with a shot. Everyone else is running for VP, a cabinet position, or to promote something. Trump was considered a long shot so there is an argument that long shots can win. However Trump got wall to wall press. Alone his campaign eclipse all other Republican primary contenders put together. As it currently stands no one in the Democratic field has that ability to capture headlines which diminishes the chances of a dark horse gaining steam.

I am familiar with Yang. He openly acknowledges he is running to raise awareness of key issues and doesn't expect to be the nominee.

....so no one? Sanders campaign seems to have already hit a snag. I wonder if this is just normal growing pains or a sign that Sanders will have a tougher time shoring up support this time.

@Sicarii I started a thread a year ago in speculation addressing the amount of disinformation available on the internet. From Flat Earth to political propaganda like you described the propagation of false information online seems to be a serious issue.

Who did they rush to judge? My understanding is that the guy had himself attacked. The crime is that he wasted the time of the police. No one was unjustly accused of the crime. This isn't some type of situation where people had taken his side against someone else. If someone shows up with a black eye and says they were punched in face and you feel bad for that person and offer condolences but later it turns out they lied it wouldn't look bad on you. Violence, to include murder, against members of the LGBT community are on the rise. That is a fact. I have already cited links in this thread and the dangerous climate thread. Smollett's lie doesn't change that fact. Yes they believed the victim. Who was hurt or made a victim by that? Who's good name was put through the mud as a result of them believing the victim? In the future real victims of crimes shouldn't be denied support just because Smollett's is a liar. What judgement was rushed to? I have only loosely read about this situation. So perhaps I am missing something. Other than speaking out that the going violence about members of the LGBT community is like modern day lynching (which we all agree it is) what did any of the primary candidates do? No one was be unduly accused of a crime they didn't commit. If any Democrat running in the primary were to accuse innocent persons of crimes just for political gain that would be deplorable.

In my opinion Sanders is only progressive on key economic issues. Sanders leans to the right of the rest of the Democratic Primary field on issues like Gun Control, Abortion, Trade, immigration, and foriegn conflict. Taxation and social welfare programs are the only issues where he is solidly to the left. During the midterm Sanders endorsed a pro-life candidate and argued Democrats should be more accepting of pro-life positions. When Sanders speaks on immigration and trade he uses a lot of the same America first sort of rhetoric conflating the issues with rural working class citizens losing jobs. Of course that is more a matter of technology that it is immigrantion or trade. Being for Universal Healthcare doesn't make one ultra progressive. Hillary Clinton fought for universal healthcare as first lady take it straight to the house floor before Congress. Today people seem to treat green policies as an emerging left wing issue but Hillary Clinton spent decades fighting for things like the Kyoto protocol. Yet Hillary Clinton was painted as a center right elitists who was a puppet for big banks. Sanders isn't uniquely liberal and the current progressive platform isn't new. Both notions are just narratives pushed to minimize progress policies. Universal Healthcare isn't a radical leftist idea Sanders, AOC, and whomever just invented. I am know you are aware of this. Just a conversational post. Not any sort of rebuttal.

Right, none of the Democratic candidates are running around claiming the charges against Smollett are a fake news conservative hoax and that the judge in the case can't be trusted because he's a white male Trump appointee. Warren and Booker didn't tweet their condolences to Smollett and claim the system is rigged against him. Smollett will face a judge for his actions. What should happen is happening and no one is complaining, making excuses, or otherwise defending Smollett's actions.

He was arrested and will be thoroughly investigated and stand trial. No one is objecting to his arrest. No one is defending his actions.

I don't see why it should. Such crimes do happen and have been on the rise. It is still a worth while issue to address and in Smollett's case he primarily only hurt himself.

Propaganda machines are still out in force. Democrats need to figure out a way to combat this.

While the rhetoric surrounding North Korea has changed the situation on the ground doesn't appear to have at all. Can simply pretending all is well actually manifest into things being as pretended?

Different groups of people resort to violence for different reasons. In my opinion Trump finds violence and the threat of violence are useful tool for intimidating his advisories. It don't think Trump cares about the potential long term impact of it might be. Trump might be stirring the pot currently but the pot and its contents have been here the whole time. I think the whole country is surprised by what people are getting away with. Part of the disbelief is rooted in a naive view of the law. I think many have vaguely assumed Constitutional Law were like the Laws of Physics. That they couldn't be broke or that if someone tried to break them there'd be some type of automatic consequence. That isn't how the law works though. Laws don't enforce themselves. They aren't autonomous. People must act to enforce laws. Examples of preventing elected officials from threatening private citizens or licensed broadcasters can vary. Congress could pass a law prohibiting elected officials from singling out individuals or organizations by name. Rather than trashing JP Morgan by name a politician would have to refer to Banks for example. If a federal law like that could be passed than individuals and organizations would have strong grounds to take Politicians to federal court and keep the enforcement honest. It is only a bandaid though. Savvy Politicians would find ways around it. Such a law would do nothing about the trash Alex Jones says. I don't think anything can be done about Alex Jones. He has the freedom to say what he wants.

The change required is cultural. People being able to accurately identify and reject hateful speech which encourages violence is the first step. That will need to be accomplished on an individual level. A friend of mine has epic debates with people on twitter. He followers people like Ann Coulter and Trump so not to miss any of their tweets so that he can use their words against them in his twitter arguments. I have tried to example to him that by following and sharing their tweets he is only encouraging them and help spread their propaganda. He insists that it doesn't make a difference. That he is just one person. "It is like spitting in the Ocean" he says. However I see more akin to tossing a plastic bottle in the Ocean. The accumulative effect of individual after individual doing the wrong thing has a disastrous effect. Are you spitting in the oceans? Do you help the rating,view totals, and etc of groups and personalities you are aware promote divisive rhetoric or that placate hate organizations? On the legislative side there are some obvious things which will happen in a bipartisan manner soon as Trump is gone. I think it is a slam dunk that both Democrats and Republicans with agree to legislation limiting the sort of insults and threats elected officials can make against private citizens and licensed broadcasters. I think the majority of both parties don't want to live in a future where the President threatens private citizens on twitter. Sadly Republicans won't act until the Trump era ends. Such legislation will help restore some political decorum but it's just a bandaid.

We generally agree but not specifically agree. We agree so long as the Alt Right remains faceless and we are merely discussing the specific actions of terrorist who have been caught. I suspect there would be plenty of disagree about which media and personalities are involved in encouraging the behavior. So we are only halfway to identifying the problem. There will always be bias, bigotry, and disagreement. Public debate must accommodate for that safely as it if a fact of life. The problem I am concerned with isn't that racism, sexism, or whatever exists (it always will) the problem I am concerned with is the violence and terrorism. Being a member of the KKK is not a crime. Lynching someone is a crime. Being a member of an anti fur movement isn't a crime. Tossing red pant on someone walking down the street minding there own business is a crime. Disagreement isn't the issue. As mentioned above I don't believe we do fully agree.

Asking the same question again doesn't help me understand it. I said there aren't equivalents. If you feel that isn't accurate feel free to explain why it isn't accurate. Asking me to describe individuals who doesn't exist (fortunately) seems like an empty exercise. It isn't symmetrically distributed. The Domestic Terrorism is predominately coming from the Right. Whether or not one believes media as a whole leans one way or another does change that or justify it. On the right it seems obvious to me enough isn't being done to reject the ideology related to the hatred and violence. Compare the worst violent acts from or motivated by the left you can think of over the last decade to those perpetrated by right wing extremists? Compare What happened and what the worst case scenarios may have been had their plans been fully executed. The two are not equivalent. Right wing extremists have murder black church goers, murdered people at Planned Parenthood , murdered Synagogue goers, plotted to blow up Muslim communities, sent bombs in the mail to former Presidents, and etc. People have died and the scale of some of the foiled attacks are horrific. The mentioned domestic terrorism acts have all accorded since 2015 and just the well known ones which quickly come to mind. It seems to a a handful of areas for sure. However that isn't really the concern to me. People have media choice. If NBC is too left leaning for someone they can watch NRA TV instead. People are free to be bias. They are not free to be violent and that is the problem. Domestic Terrorism is on the rise.

I don't understand your question. I don't think think most would. Rather it has progressed slowly enough overtime to just have become part of the standard political landscape. It is easier to just loosely assume there is left wing media and right wing media and it is all the same. The first step to resolving a problem or issue is to identify it. Avoiding identification till such time a perfect solution exists only allows problems to progress. From pizzagate where Edgar Welch open fired on a Washington DC restaurant where he believed Hillary Clinton was running human trafficking to Sandy Hooker Truthers who harass parents who tragically lost their children the right dabbles far too hard in conspiracy and lies. This isn't FoxNews vs CNN. It goes far beyond that. The right has a whole network of pundits who speak to their own fiefdoms. Even if one believes network media (NBC, ABC, CBS) leans left it isn't comparable. Network TV doesn't promote conspiracy. It can't. Networks can get sued, advertisers can protest, they'd be fined by the FCC, they could lose their broadcaster license, and etc. Stephen Colbert can't go around claiming in all seriousness that Mitch McConnell is running a human trafficking operation out of a restaurant. More than just conspiracy right wing media promotes a sense disenfranchisement. Despite all the choice one has in media today 3 quarters of Republicans feel the media doesn't understand people like them. A message they are plainly being fed by right wing media who promote the idea of bias left leaning media and fake news, Link.

In my opinion one of the big problems is that a lot of hate speech and fringe propaganda isn't accurately identified. Take a well known right wing pundit like Rush Limbaugh. Throughout his career he has repeated made racially explicit remarks and dabbled in conspiracies like accusing Hillary Clinton of murder. I don't think Rush Limbaugh should be silenced. I don't think his free speech should be taken away. Rather I just feel many well intentioned people are enabling hate mongers who promote divisive and dangerous ideology by normalizing them as standard political yin yang. You mention both sides but there isn't a Rush Limbaugh equivalent on the left. There isn't an Alex Jones on the left. There isn't a Steve Bannon equivalent on the left. There aren't hate groups with the size and organization as the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and other White Nationalist groups on the left. Acknowledging that the scale and infrastructure of divisive media is different on the Right than the left doesn't require censoring free speech.

As previously mentioned I suspect the speculation that Mueller was finished was just Barr's opening move to place pressure on Mueller. Barr can't fire Mueller outright or stop the investigation less he wants to spend the next several years embroiled in obstruction of justice charges. Signalling to the press that things are wrapping up was a good opening play. It gets people moving towards the exists and creates an sense that things are taking too long and/or that Mueller is dragging his feet.

While Trump himself is an individual his office and support network is made up by many. You say Conservative leaning media definitely shouldn't change their tone yet they are the ones championing Trump whom you admit is behaving immorally. If Trump is morally responsible than so are the ones who advocate for him. Trump regularly live tweets his favorite News shows, quotes his favorite pundits, calls in to shows, and has even brought news personalities out on stage with him. Trump brought conservative media mogul Steve Bannon into the White House with him as an adviser. Media mogul Roger Alles helped Trump manage his campaign. Trump and the right wing media have a more significant relationship than have any Presidents in the past had with media. It think you are making distinctions between Trump and others which don't actually exist in practicality. Below is a real opinion piece from 2015 posted by Foxnews "bravely" (sarcasm) challenging readers to wonder if the Unabomber had been right. It is an example of the sort on irresponsible behavior in media which has been fueling White Supremacist and anti govt anarchists for years. *I cited the Unabomber piece because it predates Trump while still being recent. Also because I assume it is something we can all agree is irresponsible. It is not an attempt to go tit for tat naming extremists from throughout history. I cited to highlight the the sort of stuff being posted by mainstream conservative media even before Trump came along and not to just randomly dredge up extremists.