Perhaps an appropriate thread to remind everyone about the lack of action regarding the Virginia lieutenant governor.

You guys literally couldn't tell the difference between Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Emma Goldman.

David, we should. Although what he is being accused of doesn't appear to be nearly as serious as what Epstein is being accused of. I'm not trying to marginalize what the Lt.Gov allegedly did. It's just a more serious crime, in my view, when it involves children, like in the Epstein case.

But don't you think that the apparent lack of outrage by the left in the Fairfax affair has possibly something to do with the left being fed up with the rights constant lack of outrage when conservative politicians behave this way?

It's beyond bizarre that anyone would think Epstein is part of the liberal/left team because he donated money to the Clintons. Jesus, Trump probably donated money to the Clintons. And the part of the "left" that thinks of Bill Clinton as a hero is not present here.

I supported Hillary Clinton. What choice did I have,
But in retrospect, I think she would have been almost as bad as Trump.
I almost regret it, supporting her. These are the sad choices we were faced with in 2016.

Is it bizarre to think he is part of team right?

He took his own polygraph test which found him innocent of all charges, and for the first incident his lawyer states the third guy in the room monitoring the session (maybe he was an early devotee of the Billy Graham rule?) can confirm it was consensual. In light of these facts, what can you do?

Probably. I think it's rational to assume that he's on team spread-the-money-around-and-protect-all-the-bases.

he maybe WAS those things. now he's a dottering senile old fool who doesn't understand the basic tenants of criminal law. or he is going on tv and saying things he doesnt actually believe for some particular reason...

I don't have any idea if he has any party allegiance. His general way of life is very non-egalitarian. He's famous for having an island full of sex slaves to service billionaires and powerful people. That's generally right-wing in the original sense of the meaning of left-right. But that doesn't mean he doesn't cater to people with a lot of power in the Democratic party.

Literal slavery is generally something the left is against, let's not even get into his sexual politics.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but even 86 posts is bridging on tl;dr for my time and attention span... but I listened to a podcast where they interviewed the writer of the Miami Herald expose writer. One of the things that the original article details is aprtly Epstein is somehow wrapped into ~16 year old girls from Eastern Europe who were employed at Mara Lago as masseuses. The girls were encouraged to give 'sexually charged' massages. Pizzagate anyone.

I hogged enough space in this thread already and exhausted just about all halfway intelligent things I have to say.
My parting words are, it doesn't matter to me what political affiliation Epstein is.
This shouldn't be made into a political issue.
It's a criminal(society) issue.
Crime has no party affiliation.

Okay, here's my view. Epstein seems like an evil man who committed horrible crimes, but the stakes here are objectively low and your strong reaction to Epstein has more to do with the salacious details of the crimes and the celebrity of the people associated with Epstein than the importance of his crimes. Horrible crimes are committed every day in the US that you and nearly everyone else completely ignore.

Since this is a Politics Forum, it is neither surprising nor inappropriate that people would be more interested in discussing politically motivated violence than Epstein (at least until a politico is implicated). That being said, the Andy Ngo story is also not a very important one on its own, mostly significant as part of different ideological narratives.

Well, I would argue the stakes are very high not because of Epstein per se, but because of the complicity of the system in facilitating his transgressions. I think a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle would prefer to sweep this under the rug and continue on, but I dont think that is going to happen and the fallout from this could really shake up our society.

Also, I would rate my reaction as pretty temperate, maybe too temperate given the moral transgressions involved, not just of Epstein but all the power players that facilitated him.

Meh, George W. Bush created a fake war that led to the deaths of over 5000 US soldiers and maybe 400,000 Iraqis, yet still has a massive approval rating among Republicans. Or at least he did until Trump came along and pretended he was against Iraq from the beginning and they all jumped on that bandwagon.

Regardless, comparing anything Clinton may or may not have done to the verified idiocy of Bush is patently absurd.

Surprised that Acosta didnt play out longer. He was offered up quickly. This whole thing is weird as has been noted.
Why was Acosta hired in the first place when the Trump team both knew this issue could sink him and then put up basically little to no resistance to him leaving. I won't buy Incompetence as an answer like I'm sure many will.
My theory is that the Epstein thing will end up going places and that Acosta can be seen as giving the Trump admin some plausible deniability when/if it does--but we'll have to see if that happens or not.

acosta was hired bc these never are held accountable for anything. why would they think it would happen here?

According to the reporting by Vicky Ward, Acosta was asked during his vetting process about Epstein so the Trump team knew it was an issue and they would have known SDNY was bringing new charges. I'm not saying "accountability" should have been the concern but rather that they knew this would be an issue and then dropped Acosta really fast when it came up.

Guess you never heard of Osama Bin Laden, or that HillBilly supported the "war"

There's no evidence of this. Nor would it be expected*. Its extremely unlikely and unusual for a local federal prosecutor to clear with any WhiteHouse prosecutions.

I think its fairly obvious that Trump has no issue speaking his mind on his subordinates. If Trump didn't like Acosta, he'd clearly have said so. Consider how publicly angry Trump was with Sessions.

*Unless Epstein really was an intelligence asset, which has been reported.

Such partisan gymnastics. First part of the sentence = Yeah, the war was justified (even though Bin Laden had nothing to do with Iraq). Second part = the war was wrong, blame HillBilly!

AFAIK, neither Bush have been accused of rape, or of participating in sex trafficking and having sex with underage girls.

Bill Clinton has, and Hillary Clinton has constantly attacked his accusers.

I've heard of both, but I'm not sure why you feel the need to bring up OBL when the Iraq 'war' was supposed to be about WMD's, not Al Qaeda.

Nor do I get the relevance of you pointing out that when Bush lied to you he also lied to the Senate.

And further, I don't really get why you think the fact that any of what you posted makes the Iraq war 'okay'. Care to elaborate?

GWB may have been less scandalous than BC and more ethical in his personal life, but he was a much much much much worse POTUS and did incredible harm to this country and the world.