LOL, bro, is your actual counter to this putting on the fedora and flexing the neckbeard as hard as you can?

Religion is clearly rubbish! How can you argue against that!

If you were actually an atheist of any caliber, you would be familiar with apologetics enough to not be so dismissive in an inadvertently hilarious manner.

Wonderful observation.

It’s really our duty to be familiar with both sides and be ready to debate.

Of course, exception guy will be in the thread pointing out extreme edge cases in which we all agree that there is no alternative to the accepted opinion (“R*pe is bad, mmkay?”)… But this is besides the point.

If Trump’s legal team is failing him, that’s a pity since unprecedented cases do tend to set precedents.

I haven’t followed any of this really close to comment - but yes, thanks for your input and the link.

OK so there might be an itta bitta sex tourism going on there…

idk.

There are some True Crime YouTube channels that have covered this, btw.

In this case, the prosecution argued successfully that not only was the conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 election criminal, but also that the way they handled the payments contravened NY election campaign law (for which Trump’s lawyer has already been convicted).

I also saw that there is analysis that this was a truly unprecedneted move (see this Michael Tracey tweet).

By moving money around for an NDA, he was attempting to influence the 2016 election… Hmm. I am not that sure we could argue that this was the motive, as it seems entirely likely that he would have created an NDA whether or not there was an election as he is a famous figure.

I do not know what that would mean other than making it dubious to argue that it was an attempt to "influence the electiojn…*

But something else about that: how would getting a legal NDA signed be an attempt to illegally interfere with an election, anyways?

It seems we would have to know something about the charges of NY election campaign violations to comment further - which also strikes me as a bit off, because it seems dubious that a businessman would necessarily be the one who would normally have his ass in the sling for campaign finance laws and such when it would be assumed that Trump’s staffers would be handling the way this all would play out.

What obligation does any Presidential candidate have to personally know whether or not his underlings are violating state campaign laws…? If he hired them in good faith, it would appear to be completely out of his hands.

Consider this: he may be a Russian who literally ran away from the country and is living poorly in Thailand because he did not want to serve or was so disgusted by the circumstances he is willing to start a new life there.

I actually have heard people say that there is a vibrant Russian community there…

Met some Russians myself who did that in the last 1-2 years, plus one of my Belarussian friends abandoned his country over the current war.

It’s ridiculous to paint them all with the same brush especially when there are some signs that they may actually be trying to avoid association with their regime.

Also very important: there are conflicting reports.

In one Thai news article, they say the man wanted to have sex with his wife.

A young British man was arrested this afternoon in Pattaya after a single deadly punch to a Russian man killed the victim. The suspect stated he punched the victim because the victim allegedly claimed he wanted to have sex with the British man’s wife while at a pool party.

Thailand News

Now, I am not sharing the following to try to tear down the man who threw the punch, but the man sounds like he has a bunch of issues and may be lying about something, exaggerating the circumstances, or otherwise just prone to loose cannon behavior and perhaps misinterpretation of the events or leaving out details…

A father arrested in Thailand accused of killing a Russian businessman who allegedly propositioned his underage daughter for sex only moved to the country six months ago to start a new life after being jailed for drug offences, it has been revealed.

The Welshman, 34, is accused of killing a man with a single punch for allegedly flirting with his 15-year-old daughter at a pool party in Pattaya over the weekend.

Described as a ‘Flash Harry’, the man was revealed to have only moved to the city in eastern Thailand at Christmas in hopes of a fresh start, after being jailed for possession with intent to supply cocaine in 2017 and ‘burning bridges’ with his family.

But within weeks of setting up home in the resort - known for its seedy nightlife - he contacted family in Wales begging them to send him money.

Acknowledging the arrest, one relative, who did not want to be named, said: ‘We know about it but he’s on his own - we don’t want to get involved. He’s burned all his bridges here.’

‘We are estranged from him, there’s a lot of bad history. I haven’t spoken to him for a long time and that’s the way it will stay.’

Daily Mail

Kind of an aside… Both of them have great smiles here. They look abnormally handsome.

It almost makes me think it’s a fake? lol.

I am u nfamiliar with that film and was basically just interested in the article, and I imagined that finding the actual study not behind a paywall would have been difficult so I just threw it up and I got no answers for ya. ^^

I have a question, though…

I was under the impression that:

• Prostitution is legal in the state of Nevada when done outside of certain city limits (Las Vegas, for instance)
• NDAs can be applicable for any kind of legal activity
• The Stormy Daniels NDA is a legitimate document, and Trump had a legitimate expectation of privacy

Potentially, he inappropriately moved around funds and falsified documents when procuring the NDA, but there is basically no crime here, right?

The crime would have to be that Trump falsified business documents as they pertain to election funds, and potentially a separate crime of the illegal use of election funds for non-election purposes…

I haven’t followed the case closely, but perhaps you can enlighten me.

He will.

But I imagine it will not be resolved in time.

It also confirms what most people on the left think about Trump, and I think to some degree it appeals to a lot of moderates and even rule of law conservatives that will now feel bad about this conviction.

Exactly.

The body must do what it was designed to do.

Just amazing - the government literally going to bat for the sake of concert goers who demand hotel rooms.

Can’t imagine working through drug addiction and getting clean enough to be given a hotel room, and then eagerly trying to find some form of employment to become stable, and then your case worker is like *What do you think about spending a few days in Aberdeen…? WIth the Taylor Swift concert and all… There’s a need for this room for someone else…"

Lol what.

… Who do we think is behind the DDoS attack?

Are the Israelis up to something?

… And what impact will this have?

(All quotes from OP’s link)

Donald Trump’s digital fundraising system had a record number of supporters following the guilty verdict on Thursday afternoon, according to Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes.

For starters, it appears to be rallying his base.

I just heard from a source on the Biden campaign, who said that whether or not Donald Trump is a convicted felon, they believe the only way to beat him is at the ballot box - and they reinforce that the Biden camp has always felt they can do that.

This verdict appears to increase the Biden team’s confidence of securing a victory in November.

It definitely is a rallying point for the anti-Trumpists as well, and I can see how some amount of moderate Republicans that were tepid Trump voters will turn on him. But, then again, a lot of those people turned in 2020.

It may be the case that some perceive him as perhaps rightfully guilty, but that the charges were trumped up, and that this is an example of selective prosecution for the purpose of furthering the political goals of Democrats, resulting in even some of those who went cold on him in 2020 to interpret this differently and feel the need to go vote for Trump…

I suppose a lot of this will come down to how well it’s all spun.

“You don’t see this level of corruption in a banana republic”, she wrote, directing people to a Trump fundraiser. (MTG)

LOlL, well, yeah, you do. I’ve followed the Imran Khan thing a bit and he may have gotten it worse.

One of the other things to say about the Khan affair, though, was that this was made possible by the CIA…!

So, there’s several ways to look at it…

Do you think that a human is just a mind?

Because the answer is that a human is a full composite being…

The idea, though, of a completely disembodied human brain that is fully conscious is really terrible. But for the time being, we are dealing with something that is not quite fully a human brain.

I am not sure what that means… but yeah, there’s a horror element to this, for sure.

I think it atually is the case that the far right is pushing narratives in America effectively now, just as the far left does.

The amount of people now having serious discussions about Jewish power and even the historicity of the Holocaust is pretty unprecedented. You’d have to go back to the fifties to see anything like this, I imagine.

Currently, about 33% of cargo to and from Cambodia use Vietnamese ports for their global trade by sending them through the Mekong River, Sun Chanthol said, noting that with the expanded canal the goal is to reduce that to 10% - which would represent a 70% drop on current shipping volumes.

This is true.

The impact it has on the right is also greater since it is more of a natural conclusion for support to flounder in the Left based on the situation.

It’s truly remarkable how support is tanking among the youthful right wing.