One more post for the road. Someone stormed our capitol building, shat on someone’s desk and got pardoned. Someone got shot in the rotunda and we are going along like nothing happened. Everyone KNOWS our president raped kids and we are going to just yada yada yada past it. We are sick. We are vile. We are Americans.
Epstein client list, does it exist or not?
- Thread starter Mikie
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Speaking as someone whom your proposal would disenfranchise, I find this opinion rather disgusting.
But Biden was deemed unfit for running again as a result of his age. Trump is also showing his ability to be unfit for president as a direct result of his age.
We can literally measure the decline in cognitive abilities and stamina to their age.
And how would you be disenfranchised? Why isn’t anyone below the age of 35 disenfranchised but you are because you’re 70?
What’s the definition of “fit” when we say a person should be “fit to run for office”?
Maybe we should have a serious discussion as modern medicine keeps us alive far longer than it can improve the quality of life.
But you're not talking about barring too old people from office. You're talking about disenfrenchising people of a certain age. There is a difference. May I remind you that one reason we have that idiot in the white house is because young men are so fragile that they think someone with a different skin colour can't have more merit for a particular job than they have? Who do I prefer holding the levers of power? Nancy Pelosi or Joe Rogan? Nancy every fucking day, even though I vehemently disagree with a lot of the things she stands for because I know that she is competent and Rogan is not. Merit based selection, in other words.
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Age is a very imperfect measuring tool. Yes, overall abilities decline with age but when that is applied to any particular individual, let's just say that YMMV. Trump isn't unqualified because he's 80, he's unqualified because his mental capacity has been declining for most of his adult life. So instead of sticking up arbitrary guidelines, how about we focus on what actually makes them unqualified. Just like term limits, age limits don't get you what you think it will get you. In this case, it will just get you younger shitgibbons.
Younger shitgibbons that still have decades of life left in them as well.
I dont think their OP ever said anything about taking away the votes. It was about an upper age limit for holding office.
This is probably true. On the other hand, as I deal with aging parents who aren’t even 80, people that age should not be allowed to hold office if for no other reason than for their own good. Not even getting into our good.
I generally don't agree with fettering the rights of the electorate to choose who they want to represent them. But I would not have issues with candidates having to prove basic physical and mental health, and with a constitutional requirement for someone of failing or failed mental health or neurological capacity being removed from office automatically (by one of the other branches... if they still exist!). But frankly, the US electorate fucked about and now it's finding out. I think the better questions should be about how effective the OTHER elected people are at doing their jobs, including removing failed elected people from office when required. Both the cabinet and the senate seem to be failing, and that's probably a greater problem than changing or imposing age limits.
Yeah I had a double take when I realised this was the Epstein thread.
Kinda ironic as we’re talking about older men with money and power preying on young girls.
Back on topic: as these reports and revelations come out I feel like we’re going to shift the Overton window on ethical consequences for these powerful men. Price Andrew is effectively getting a slap on the wrist.
Trump will remain in power for another 3 years short of dying in that time.
And everyone else who participated in the whole thing - not just the big names, but the infrastructure that allowed for all this - stays in place.
How does that disenfranchise you exactly? Are you planning on running for high-office? You’d still get to vote for someone between the age limits. Were you stifled into disenfranchisement when you spent a number of years voting for Presidents who had to be at least 35 while you still under that age?
This makes no sense.
I think that's why it is so easy to careen off topic here, especially now. Many of the participants in this despicable behavior will likely never be held accountable. Not enough, anyway. Another part of our responsibility is to try to ensure these things don't happen to other children again, and make no mistake, things like the abuse of these girls happen at other levels of society that are not so visible.
The societal structures that allow all of this to happen must be dismantled. That is our collective responsibility.
Edit: grammar
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Well, some of the latest bits are more than a little disturbing:
Associated video at the link is largely just reading through the DOJ file in question.
In the meantime, Trump is madly tweeting and complaining about the Epstein files and the new one million files they’ve been sitting on (it was all turned over to them a long time ago by the Epstein estate and relevant agencies), even though his FBI director and attorney general all promised to release them and prosecute those involved.
Instead, they’re just running cover for the child traffickers. Can’t imagine why!
Associated video at the link is largely just reading through the DOJ file in question.
In the meantime, Trump is madly tweeting and complaining about the Epstein files and the new one million files they’ve been sitting on (it was all turned over to them a long time ago by the Epstein estate and relevant agencies), even though his FBI director and attorney general all promised to release them and prosecute those involved.
Instead, they’re just running cover for the child traffickers. Can’t imagine why!
I'm sure there is even worse yet to come. I've seen enough to know who these people and their enablers are. The only question is what we will do about it.
Reading all of this, I can't help but flash back to pizzagate. I mean, they elected Trump, in part, because "he was going to put all the pedophiles in jail". Unsurprisingly, Trump is one of the pedophiles and is deeply interested in protecting them, at least if they are powerful. Again, not actually surprising.
Still, the irony grates. Next thing we are going to learn that Donald Trump invented the adernacrome extraction process. As I said, the irony grates, my mind has been scraped raw.
Still, the irony grates. Next thing we are going to learn that Donald Trump invented the adernacrome extraction process. As I said, the irony grates, my mind has been scraped raw.
Well, Jeffrey Epstein said the guy doesn't have a good cell in his body. I don't need to know any more.
I mean, he’s not a noble villain. Not a Saruman, or a Magneto, or even a half-hero-half-villain like John Constantine. He’s a slithering eel. A snake. A Grima Wormtongue that floods his poison not in your ear, but on the social networks. He’s whiny, deceitful, arrogant, and stupid. He’s entitled and insufferable. To this day, I can not understand the people who looked at that squirming worm of a man and thought “All right, I’ll give him a go” instead of having an involuntary shudder of disgust.
He's all of those things, yes, and I too cannot understand those that voted for a guy that to me has no value in the best possible light, and in reality was a serious detriment to society long before he entered presidential politics. I feel casting a vote for him is less a question of politics and more a question of character.
I'm stuck thinking about the guy just like everyone else, because the Supreme Court fucked us over, among other things. But in terms of how I think about the 'Epstein Class' and whatever comes of the release, or lack thereof, of the evidence in this case, a great deal of it comes down to our law enforcement and justice system.
Assuming we get rid of the regime, the DOJ will need to be completely cleaned out of toadies, just for starters. This is only my opinion, but if we truly want accountability in this case, it must not only be our best effort to hold the known perpetrators to account. It must be a rethinking of the entire institutions of law enforcement and justice. I know that these institutions, like others, are imperfect and we try to improve them over time.
But the fact is that at the wealthy and powerful end of society, criminals (whether white collar or otherwise) skate on their crimes all too often, whether through connections or influence at the police department level, the District Attorney's office, via high-powered attorneys who have mastered the art of gaming our system, or straight-up bribery.
On the other end of society, a revolving door into and out of prison is deliberately perpetuated through a system of overly aggressive and/or corrupt policing, systemic use of informants far in excess of the situations where they are actually warranted, prosecutor's offices dependent on high conviction rates for professional advancement, and incarceration as yet another booming business backed by private equity.
I apologize if that's OT, but even in the questionable event we get our democracy back, we will not prevent a repeat of this nightmare without fixing that.
ETA: If we had an even somewhat more functional and fair system of justice, most of the people involved in this would have been convicted and locked up where they could do no harm to society. That's a goal worth pursuing, even if it seems impossible now.
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Trump’s DOJ redacted the faces of Epstein’s co-conspirators, but didn’t even do a proper job of redacting non-identifying info around some of the victims.
They’re doing a great job protecting pedophiles and sex traffickers. The rest of it? Not so much.
They’re doing a great job protecting pedophiles and sex traffickers. The rest of it? Not so much.
They're helping these guys get away with shit, just like they've been accustomed to their entire lives.
At this point, is there any doubt remaining that the Trump regime is doing everything it can to protect paedophiles?
Just waiting for the inevitable pardons he’s going to give all these people, as he’s already started shifting the narrative to the usual hoax nonsense.
That's my expectation, too. Also, the in-our-faces pardons he's been doling out to crooks of all sorts for a few bucks are just more visible examples of what I described in my comment above about the justice system. Trump himself is but one example.
As evidenced by reality, platform positions are functionally irrelevant to the electorate. Trump’s association with <gestures wildly at everything/> was a known quantity. It was a known quantity for years. Now, you literally see conservative agents making the “uhm ahktually it’s ephebophilia and it makes Trump manly” argument. Publicly.
Group identity is the only thing that matters.
Edit: this is to say nothing of the fact that Democrats are just empirically incapable of applying power against their opponents (see: Jan 6), so the idea of tribunals is simply farcical.
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I agree with you that group identity (or tribalism, or "my people", etc.) matters a great deal (maybe not 100%, but close enough). I know there are a lot of people I'll never consider my people, nor do I want to.
Is it possible that enough of us could recognize that "us" might be a sizable fraction that do not include oligarchs, old-boys-club members, the Epstein Class and the wealthy who do their damndest to ensure the rest of us can't afford health insurance?
If the answer's no, I understand. I lean that way too. But part of me believes that of course it should be possible. These people do everything they can to make sure everyone's else's lives are absolutely miserable, and for them, we're never miserable enough.
The American people by way of its electorate literally just voted for the billionaire broligarch ticket. The portion of us that realizes we're not the in-group with billionaires is simply dwarfed by the portion of us that will be a billionaire any day now.
The people that didn't vote at all (who I do not make excuses for) or who have been disenfranchised in any one of so many ways did not vote for the billionaire broligarch ticket. Those that think they'll be billionaires any day now can keep on waiting. I don't give a shit about them.
This is where I’m at. It’s a separate topic, but to tie it together a bit here, people can say pedophilia and sex trafficking, corruption, etc is bad, but they were literally given that choice in about as stark a contrast as you could make, and the majority decided that all of that is totally fine and we’d like half a decade more of it, actually.
But yeah, I’m not expecting any real consequences here. Trump will abuse the pardon power to its full effect, beyond even what he’s done now (pardoning domestic terrorists, war criminals, people that enabled and that were actual narcotraffickers, sexual and domestic abusers, and every other type of criminal you can imagine). We might get another Netflix documentary and maybe someone will yell at one of the perpetrators at a wine bar or tech conference or something.
Yup, America fundamentally does not hold its ruling class accountable, whether they are of the political or economic variety.
If Trump survives his term, I can easily imagine him dodging a shoe and taking up painting. He’ll just be another rascally and lovable fascist.
But is that a new thing? All my life, I've heard stories about it. Rotten cops protected by the system. Prosecutors who make their career about how successul they are in sending people to death row. There are films, and television franchises, based around cheating the system to gain an advantage. Dirty Harry is cheered as a hero because he does not let the law get in the way of killing people. The whole "affluenza" ruling where Ethan Couch, a rich teenager, was sentenced to 10 years probation for killing four people while drunk driving. At all levels, if you have money and lawyers, you get one sort of treatment. If you don't have money and don't have good lawyers, you get the full vindictive fury of the state.
Never heard of South Susan.....
Trump calls it Lazy Susan so the confusion is understandable.