All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[GindyPosts]

With the prosecution planning to retry the case, in the time it'll take to choose a new venue and seat another jury, Cosby will be probably be pushing 81. Who knows what sort of condition he'll be in by then. I know this will sound horrible, but I wouldn't take any bets on his living through a second trial.

They'll likely give him the Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka treatment where he is deemed "mentally incompetent" to stand trial due to poor health, and likely dies short after. In failing health, vision is often the first sense to go. I know this personally because that's exactly what happened to my late brother.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

They'll have trouble with a retrial. From what I've researched she gave several conflicting accounts including the date of the alleged incident and she spent the next year in close contact to him buying and receiving gifts and asking for favors. I could see a retrial getting denied. Even more so when you consider his age. This mistrial gave him grounds to appeal this case for years. He won't see a second of jail time.

[Tazirai]

Well Considering in the latest poll Bernie has 80% black support, soooo....

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm done defending Bernie from Establishment types. It's all good. He's not nuts or cuckoo, and caucuses with people that despise him. Maybe he should went to the GOP. Maybe he could have helped to right that ship. /smh.
I've been aware of Bernie since 1994.

[Tazirai]

Crazy trials last couple days.

Little White girl helps her boyfriend die, WHILE in another state, and not physically with him. She gets ten years.
Bill Cosby, has documented cases of years of abuse. But gets a Mistrial.
Yanez, MURDERS Philando Castile on Facebook Live, and gets Acquitted.

Something is seriously wrong with the American Legal system. Why we are not on the same page federally Is insane.

[Malvolio]

There are rumors that he's only doing it to c***block other hotels that are building there, and trying to set up an end-around so only Trump Organization hotels can side-step his mini-embargo and get a monopoly on American luxury motels on the island.

And while that is a blatant and egregious violation of the emoluments clause to line the pockets of his business (that his sons are totally running independent of him), it's something that he's stubbornly brazen enough to just do, even though there would be obvious consequences.

I used to think that Trump thought he was Michael Corleone. Now I'm thinking that he wants to be Hyman Roth.

[Gray Lensman]

Crazy trials last couple days.

Little White girl helps her boyfriend die, WHILE in another state, and not physically with him. She gets ten years.
Bill Cosby, has documented cases of years of abuse. But gets a Mistrial.
Yanez, MURDERS Philando Castile on Facebook Live, and gets Acquitted.

Something is seriously wrong with the American Legal system. Why we are not on the same page federally Is insane.

I understand the first 2 - there is a pretty good trail for the first, and while there is a lot of stuff against Cosby, the fact that so much of it is past the statute of limitations meant it couldn't be admitted into the record at trial. That made things much harder for the prosecution.

The fact that cops are almost always presumed to be in the right after killing someone is a cultural thing that needs to change before we start seeing convictions. Juries are drawn from society, and sifted through to get the most easily led on top of it.

[Kevinroc]

I understand the first 2 - there is a pretty good trail for the first, and while there is a lot of stuff against Cosby, the fact that so much of it is past the statute of limitations meant it couldn't be admitted into the record at trial. That made things much harder for the prosecution.

The fact that cops are almost always presumed to be in the right after killing someone is a cultural thing that needs to change before we start seeing convictions. Juries are drawn from society, and sifted through to get the most easily led on top of it.

Cosby is an example of powerful men not being punished by society for the horrific things they do.

[Gray Lensman]

Cosby is an example of powerful men not being punished by society for the horrific things they do.

That most likely has something to do with it as well - but by being able to prevent 47 accusations from being brought up at trial, Cosby's defense team was able to reduce his case more towards 'he said/she said' which is difficult to convict even when the person in question isn't powerful. There's a reason why some states will wave the statute of limitations if a case can be made that the initial crime wasn't reported due to a fear of reprisal (and someone with as much money and fame as Cosby has can be very effective if he wants to be petty).

I'm not saying your take is wrong, just that more is going into it than just that alone.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Cosby is an example of powerful men not being punished by society for the horrific things they do.

Cosby's more of an example of how rape crimes can be problematic. It's almost always a he said vs she said and the statute of limitations killed a lot of cases. This was the only one that could be tried and it still was so far enough away from the initial crime that it neutered and compromised the plaintiffs testimony.

[Mister Mets]

Cosby's more of an example of how rape crimes can be problematic. It's almost always a he said vs she said and the statute of limitations killed a lot of cases. This was the only one that could be tried and it still was so far enough away from the initial crime that it neutered and compromised the plaintiffs testimony.

It's a tough case for several reasons, and does reflect changing times.

Some of the victims felt pressured to keep quiet because it would have been bad for civil rights to have a high-profile black man accused of rape.

The understanding of rape has changed from "Did she say no?" to "Did she give consent?"

Information is spread more easily. Something that would have been a local news story decades ago can become a national story pretty quickly. Secrets can't be kept to the same extent.

When the ball gets rolling, women who were attacked in the past learn that they're not alone, and are more comfortable coming forward.

[TheInvisibleMan]

It's a tough case for several reasons, and does reflect changing times.

Some of the victims felt pressured to keep quiet because it would have been bad for civil rights to have a high-profile black man accused of rape.

The understanding of rape has changed from "Did she say no?" to "Did she give consent?"

Information is spread more easily. Something that would have been a local news story decades ago can become a national story pretty quickly. Secrets can't be kept to the same extent.

When the ball gets rolling, women who were attacked in the past learn that they're not alone, and are more comfortable coming forward.

on the other hand, those women see the victims that accusers get when they come forward

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It's a tough case for several reasons, and does reflect changing times.

Some of the victims felt pressured to keep quiet because it would have been bad for civil rights to have a high-profile black man accused of rape.

The understanding of rape has changed from "Did she say no?" to "Did she give consent?"

Information is spread more easily. Something that would have been a local news story decades ago can become a national story pretty quickly. Secrets can't be kept to the same extent.

When the ball gets rolling, women who were attacked in the past learn that they're not alone, and are more comfortable coming forward.

Oh definitely that's part of it. But most of these cases are two people only in a room and one person says one thing happened and the other says no that didn't happen. Juries are going to have a hard time convicting off that. You add time and most of the evidence is gone.

Then there are other factor like men being more likely to give the accused the benefit of the doubt because they place themselves in the guys shoes and have a fear of a women lying for whatever reason.

Then so much of it's about the credibility of the accuser and the accused that each side starts smearing the other.

It becomes a mess quickly.

Realistically if the statute of limitations didn't exist and all the women were able to individually have criminal charges brought against him the majority would likely go to mistrial or acquittal just based off lack of evidence and the amount of time that passed. Then maybe two or three are rock solid cases where everything is documented enough to get a conviction. And he's probably guilty if all of them, but it's hard to get beyond a reasonable doubt when it's two people in a room saying different events occurred.

That makes it rough for rape victims because it's her word against his and everyone who likes and associates with him. Then she gets stuck having to defend her reputation and having every little thing in her life litigated.

It's not surprising that it took years for this to come to light. It was even worse back then.

[Mister Mets]

Tim Farron, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats party, resigned recently because his religious beliefs were becoming too much of a distraction. Michael Brendan Dougherty of the National Review thinks this is a problem.

Tim Farron just resigned as leader of the U.K.’s Liberal Democratic party, and his statement explaining why should enter the history books: “To be a political leader — especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 — and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me,” Farron said.

And so he’s off.

The obvious rejoinder to Farron’s statement is that he had to resign because he had a disastrous electoral showing. And to a degree, that is true. The Lib Dems have seemingly lost their political base in the last two elections. David Cameron’s modernizing of the Tories took one bite out of it. And Jeremy Corbyn has done a remarkable job consolidating the anti-Tory vote under Labour. Perhaps the Lib Dem strategy of making itself the party of die-hard Remainers actually hurt it when it seemed like the rest of the political class had moved on.

But part of the disastrous campaign for the Lib Dems was the fact that its leader was constantly interrogated for his religious beliefs, beliefs that had little to do with his public leadership. Farron had a long record of supporting gay rights and access to abortion. But the media wanted to know whether he thought they were sins. Farron would get on television wanting to talk up a second referendum to be held upon the results of Brexit negotiations. His media inquisitors wanted to talk about personal morality.

Guardian columnist Rafael Behr explains that Farron’s “problem was that the culture of contemporary liberalism is avowedly secular.” That tells part of the story. The entire elite culture and much of the popular culture is secular in a quite specific way. It is not a secularism that encourages public neutrality while maintaining a generous social pluralism. It’s a secularism that demands the humiliation of religion, specifically Christianity. And in Britain it has a decidedly classist flavor, one that holds it impossible for an Evangelical like Farron — one of those people — to represent the better sort of person.

This secularism is not without its sacred ground and hierarchical order. Farron’s religious beliefs may be publicly interrogated, even if he has an immaculate history of quarantining them lest they contaminate his liberalism. Farron’s beliefs are subject to casual public ridicule. If Tim Farron wanted his religion to be unreservedly praised in the British media, we all know what he had to do: Convert to Islam and blow up a few teenage girls. 2017 is the year we learned every Farron interview inspires people to kick Christianity and every terrorist attack starts a wave of public proclamations about the beauty of true Islam.

We live in an age in which our liberal media elite and most people who call themselves Christian in social surveys treat liberalism and Christianity as strangers to themselves and each other. Farron sought relief from his public trial by recalling the proud history of his faith in the reformation of British politics. No one wanted to hear it. He called upon the decency and forbearance that are supposed to mark British society. There is none left.

Unlike Tim Farron, I think the creative tension between political liberalism and Christian orthodoxy has ceased to be creative and is now just tension. But it is hard not to respect his witness. Today is the day Tim Farron landed on a truth in his statement: “We are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.” The truth has set him free.

[GindyPosts]

Jezum...

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/06...ox-zw-orig.fox

Further proof Kellyanne Conway is an idiot. Most people, as much as they think she's nothing more than an airhead who CNN drags in for ratings porn, would not celebrate if she got shot, because her only true crime is being ignorant beyond belief.

[Gray Lensman]

Tim Farron, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats party, resigned recently because his religious beliefs were becoming too much of a distraction. Michael Brendan Dougherty of the National Review thinks this is a problem.

While the loudest evangelicals lean hard right, I know several myself (or rather, knew - since they are still back east and I no longer am) who felt that to be true Christians they had to go left. Pity that is being forgotten.