I sincerely think it’s broadly accurate - that, for the Republicans and especially for Trump, (most) every accusation is a confession.

There’s a simple psychological element to it, most often illustrated by moralists who rail against perversion of one form or another, only to be revealed to be perverts.

There’s another aspect to it though, and I think this is more often the case with Trump specifically - it’s a way to proactively undermine someone else’s accusation against you. If you can get your accusation out there first, then they end up sounding sort of like a child saying, “I know you are but what am I?”

If we’re going to go all conspiratorial, here’s my theory:

Both campaigns are dealing with old men with diminished faculties.

There’s some drug cocktail(s) that both campaigns have been using to pep the doddering old farts up for public appearances.

If you’ll remember, very shortly before the debate, the accusation that “Biden’s on drugs” made the rounds, and Trump made some noises about demanding a drug test.

For some reason - possibly fear, possibly determination in the face of a challenge, possibly a subtle communication that the Trump campaign had some hard evidence they would, if pushed, release publicly - that led to the Biden team withholding his customary drug cocktail.

Trump, meanwhile, was dosed to the eyeballs.

And that was the contrast we saw - Trump was on drugs, while Biden, for whatever reason, for that night alone, was not.

Remember - for the Republicans broadly and especially for Trump, every accusation is a confession.

Right. Go back and reread it - that’s what I said.

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.

Already did, though instead of the bot, I blocked the entire instance.

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?

No - it’s actually not like that at all.

Google didn’t pay that money just to bypass the formalities along the way to paying a fixed fine - they paid it in order to head off the possibility that they were going to face a jury trial instead of a bench trial, since juries are far more likely to vote in favor of much bigger fines than judges are.

Mm… no. It’s really not.

The specific point of all of this was that Google wanted to avoid a jury trial, and the specific reason that they wanted to avoid a jury trial is because a jury trial is much more likely to end up with a much bigger judgment against them. A judge in a bench trial will follow established precedent to arrive at a reasonable penalty, while a jury can and often will essentially arbitrarily decide that they should be fined eleventy bajillion dollars for being assholes.

So their goal with this payment was pretty much exactly the same as the goal of the motorist who slips a traffic cop a bribe to get out of a ticket - to entice someone with immediate cash in order to avoid potentially having to pay much more somewhere down the line.

So basically the corporate equivalent of slipping a traffic cop a $100, then him conveniently deciding that you’re free to go.

Best of luck to them.

It’s true in essentially all industries, but it’s especially obvious in rideshare that there’s a layer of parasites who get paid far too much money for nothing beyond the fact that they won the fight for the position of “parasite who gets paid far too much money for doing nothing.”

Anything that might even just decrease the number of overpaid parasites would be a benefit not just to the concerned industry, but to society as a whole.