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.

The whole “politically motivated” complaint is such a brazenly dishonest diversion that it just astonishes me that people use it, much less get away with it.

Alito told a filmmaker posing as a conservative activist that ProPublica “gets a lot of money” to dig up “any little thing they can find,” suggesting the reporting was politically motivated.

How does that even matter?

The simple fact of the matter is that, whatever their motivations might be, people either are or are not going to find evidence of corruption, and the one and only thing that determines that is whether or not such evidence exists.

Alito, were he so inclined, could’ve very easily have made it so that nobody, no matter how determined or for what reason, could’ve uncovered evidence of his corruption. All he had to do was not be corrupt.

If there was no corruption there could be no evidence of corruption, and then even the most sinister and underhanded attempt to make him look bad would fail.

On the other hand, if there is evidence there to be found, then the motivations of the people who uncover it are entirely irrelevant - the ONLY thing that matters is what they uncovered.

Seriously, how does the assertion that something like this is “politically motivated” even have the illusion of credence? How is it met with anything other than a blank look and a “So what?”

I don’t think we can say, since it’s possible (likely?) that his premises aren’t even true.

Israel has already trotted out all of the same “mistakes were made” rhetoric, and certainly if they haven’t already, they will state that they’ll try to learn from it to make changes. So there’s really no difference as far as that goes

The biggest difference I see between the incidents is only relevant to Americans - then it was our government controlling the narrative at home, and now it’s a foreign government, failing to control the narrative abroad.

I have little doubt that the narrative about Gaza that Israelis are being fed now is roughly the same as the narrative Americans were being fed about Iraq and Afghanistan, which at least leaves the possibility that the actual underlying realities were and are also roughly the same. And if so, what Kirby is actually doing is not comparing the incidents and responses in and of themselves, but essentially just playing off of the differences between the version the people at home get and the version outsiders get - depending on Americans actually believing the American rhetoric then, even as they don’t believe the Israeli rhetoric now. That’s really the only way you end up with the notion that America sincerely did regret it and admit to it and set about making changes, rather than just, as Israel is doing now (from an outside perspective) paying lip service to all of that.

So what he’s actually possibly demonstrating, certainly inadvertently, is that the US was just as full of shit then as Israel is now.

So basically the US government is a gigantic Trump - rising up in self-righteous fury at the very idea that anyone might dare to charge them for the crimes they’ve brazenly committed.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be so morally bankrupt.

Clearly, they know that what they’re doing in Gaza is evil, and they know that the only hope they have of evading the entirely justified condemnation of the rest of the world is to hide it.

History will not judge them kindly. No matter what they do, they’re not going to be able to hide the evidence of their evil forever.

No surprise there.

Israel’s actions in Gaza are morally indefensible.

So its defenders cannot, and for the most part don’t even bother to try to, sincerely engage with criticism.

Instead, they rely on diversions, misrepresentations, character assassination, censorship, intimidation, harassment and violence, simply because that’s all they have.