And I disagree that it’s newsworthy, for reasons I’ve gone into before, but at this point I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on what is or isn’t newsworthy.
Taxes
Feel free to post yours. Once you do you have a moral right to demand someone else’s.
If I actually knew how to do so and was actually noteworthy, I would. Not that there’s anything of note, really.
Birther: I didn’t say reasonable. I wasn’t the one who brought it up.
I pointed out it was a dead horse, originally publicised up by Clinton, btw.
The last point is false. Hillary Clinton and her campaign had nothing to do with that. Clinton supporters brought it up, but it wasn’t publicized really until afterwards, mostly by Republicans.
As for reasonable, you mentioned that in response to someone saying it was unreasonable.
My response was twofold, a) it’s not a talking point by any mainstream person anymore, despite the above claim it was
Tell that to a sizable number of Republicans. If it’s a fringe belief and not mainstream, there wouldn’t be that many Republicans, especially after the recent mass exodus of moderate Republicans from the party.
Also, the only reason it’s not brought up now by Republicans (at least unless asked) is because Obama isn’t in office and hasn’t been for around five years, so it’s immaterial at this point. It’s not because they are conceding the point.
and b) at least it was based on an actual factual situation.
No, it was based upon a mistake and perpetuated well beyond what was even within sight of reason. But I will concede that the initial mistake was not inherently reasonable and could reasonably lead to honest confusion initially.
“Makes no sense”
Nope. None. Lol. I didn’t bring it up.
Just pointed out it had some actual basis after it was brought up.
Fine, but in the context of this discussion, the reason the birther thing was brought up was as a counter to your assertion that Hunter or Biden “admitting” to some kind of nepotism being involved would make the whole thing go away. That the birther story kept going in spite of the clear evidence that it was wrong being presented immediately suggests otherwise. Whatever factual basis it may have had immediately, we can all agree it grew far beyond reasonable, and it did so in spite of a quick, clear response based upon evidence.
I’ve already said that I’ve lived with it, and I am not convinced. Also, “it’s obvious if you have experience X” is not an argument or evidence.
Additionally, I’ve explained that the phenomena you claim is indicative of dementia were there since he was young, which effectively precludes dementia as the explanation. So, what evidence you have provided is insufficient.
“ If you mean to say that Burisma was corrupt”
I was talking about the failed bank, given I went into detail how it’s nothing more now than a commodity branding.
Again, no you did not. Maybe you did in some other conversation I was not a part of, but not here.
At any rate, that only strengthens my point: none of this suggests that he was unqualified for his position on Burisma’s board of directors.
“ and no (verified that I can find) legal practice.”
… question… did Hunter Biden practice law? What is his case history?
That was my sole point on the issue.
I don’t recall reading anything about him even taking the bar exam, so probably not. I still don’t see the relevance, though.
I was never arguing for reliance on the laptop for any reason.
I was pointing out it was just as newsworthy as the Clinton funded pile of crap.
And I was arguing that reliability is inextricably linked to newsworthiness. If the laptop is unreliable, it isn’t newsworthy. Period. Well, unless it’s funny or there’s a legal proceeding regarding it, but neither were the case for the laptop story.
I also pointed out reasons showing that the Steele Dossier wasn’t simply a “pile of crap” (which you still haven’t actually addressed) and that saying it was Clinton-funded is oversimplifying things greatly. Again, it was also funded by Republicans. This is absolutely material when it comes to determining plausibility and newsworthiness. Speaking of, aside from repeating that it was funded (in part) by Clinton’s campaign, you still haven’t explained what was actually wrong with it.
Saying the laptop story was equally newsworthy is not supported by your factual claims.
And, that it shouldn’t be tossed away without investigation just because big Biden won.
No one is saying otherwise.
I didn’t say it was true or false or that I believed it was true or false.
I never claimed otherwise.
What I’m doing is pointing out to less skilled non-techs is that the entire process was quite possible, even if still implausible.
No one argued it was impossible. The center of the discussion was plausibility. Good journalism should not cover implausible claims without good evidence, a court case, or law enforcement action or investigation. (Or if it’s funny.)
As others pointed out it’s not some random shop in some random place.
Apparently not. Why you chose not to mention this earlier rather than bringing crack into it, I have no idea.
It’s very possible, even likely, emails were saved to his drive. With or without his knowledge.
Fetch and display are still the most common aspect. I Ben not saving to disk they still wind up on the disk. If you have a big enough drive and small enough data turnover, you can have files over a decade past use.
Windows is Terrible at cleaning up
And yes, ultimately if everything is true it’s quite possible he abandoned it. Under the premise, so often thought, that an “encrypted” drive and password would make the data safe. Especially if he didn’t supply a password, but even if he did.
Being a software engineer, I can confirm several aspects of that. And, frankly, between that and the previous point, the chain of events is a lot more plausible without crack than it was with crack but without those facts. So I have to ask: Why did you bring crack into it in the first place? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t explain any of the parts that needed explanation to begin with, and it only adds additional assumptions for the story to be plausible.
If you had led with the tech stuff and that the shop was in his hometown, you would’ve had a much better argument, and you wouldn’t have needed to bring drugs into this at all. I’m honestly perplexed about your strategy here.
That is far more realistic than germaphobic trump went to Russia to have a golden orgy with hookers.
Oh, for the love of—!
Look, would you just drop that one already! I’ve already pointed out that much of the newsworthiness of that story came from its humor. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not; the fact that the allegation exists is inherently funny. If it wasn’t, it likely wouldn’t have gotten as much coverage as it did.
The fact that Trump hasn’t actually denied it (mostly just ignored it) doesn’t help. Again, while there isn’t a denial (or affirmation) that laptop was Hunter’s, the allegations implied by the story (Biden allegedly having a meeting with this one guy) have been denied and refuted.
And as for the germaphobic thing, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Trump appears to be only selectively germaphobic at best. I again point to his tendencies regarding handshakes since he became President and the hug he gave in the Access: Hollywood tape, among others. It is entirely plausible that he treated sexual contact, contact with people he wanted to impress, contact with people he thought were sufficiently important/famous, and/or contact in private differently than he did with others in a public setting, specifically with regards to handshakes. It is also plausible that he stopped being a germaphobe at some point.
Also [gross fact alert], I’ll note that some people have considered urine to be sanitary, even cleansing. This isn’t quite as absurd as it appears at first blush: stale urine can act as a cleaner or disinfectant as it forms ammonia, and there are theories that seamen would use stale urine to wash clothes and such. I express no opinion on whether or not Trump would be one of those people who hold this belief. I’m just saying it’s not entirely out of the question for a germaphobe to not have a problem with urine.
Oh, and as I recall the allegation, I don’t recall it being an orgy. I recall a prostitute. But I could be wrong.
All I said is it was newsworthy.
I never said you said anything else about the laptop story. I have pointed out why it is not. I’ve also addressed claims you made pursuant to that argument as well as regarding other things.
Now, you have gone further with the claim that Hunter was only hired by Burisma because of his dad, that he was unqualified to be on the board of directors for an energy company, and that either he or his dad should “admit” to it to “make it all go away”. You have been quite definitive on that, not just saying it was newsworthy. That was what I was addressing in this comment, not the laptop story. So really, everything after the big about Hunter practicing law wasn’t actually addressing this comment but my comments in a different discussion, if that. (Honestly, they seem more addressed for other people.)
Seriously, I don’t even get what your point is. Are you saying that supporting either side is antisemitic? Or that supporting one side is antisemitic, while supporting the other is islamophobic? Neither are accurate.
Both sides being bad doesn’t mean favoring one over the other is necessarily bigotry.
Like I said, I’m not going to argue the mail thing being stored on the laptop without Hunter’s knowledge further. If it’s often on by default, it’s entirely plausible that that was the case for Hunter even if it wasn’t the case for me. The other parts are still sufficiently implausible that I don’t consider this line of argument worth pushing.
A meeting with the head of an investigation during the investigation by a related party is definitely a rational reason for concern.
You missed why I said it wasn’t rational: by the time of these events, Trump was in office, and the DOJ was run by people appointed by Trump. The meeting you refer to may have provided a basis for a rational concern over federal law enforcement at that time, but not by 2019 when Bill Barr was in charge, at least not when providing evidence of wrongdoing by an adversary of Trump. Just because a belief may have been rational in the past doesn’t make it rational to maintain that belief in perpetuity.
Not entirely wrong, but that doesn’t make him a Trump hater, either.
Oh, and he didn’t find the claims rose to impeachable offences.
False. He explicitly said he voted against impeachment because he didn’t think that they should impeach a former President, period. He also said that the claims were impeachable offenses if brought against a sitting President. You may or may not agree with either of those claims or believe him when he says that that’s his reasoning, but that is what he said.
Sasse? Never Trump
Collins? Nt
Mit? Nt
Two more are in variable states that require more than just Republican faithful to win.
Toomey, and Cassidy.
The votes were political, not factual.
Which is why they all voted to impeach Trump the first time, right?
No, wait. Mitt Romney was the only Republican Senator who voted to convict Trump in the first impeachment. The other four voted to acquit the last time, including two of the ones you called “Never Trumpers”. It’s almost like there was some other reason they voted to impeach beyond being Never Trumpers or being from variable states…
At any rate, you’re addressing the wrong point. You claimed that McConnell and Graham were Trump haters. They are not.
Furthermore, impeachment is a political process, and most of the Republican Senators who voted to acquit said they agreed with the facts underlying the claims, so the votes to acquit were just as political. I fail to see your point.
"Police have been calling out bad cops for decades. "
Until it comes to taking action, in which case bad cops are regularly prevented from being fired, or even forced to be rehired, by the organisations representing the "good" cops.
Now, that’s not fair. Sometimes they do try to take action and get fired over it.
On voting: I really wish the Dems would use their ability to negotiate rather than walk away.
They tried that. Republicans were unwilling to do so. We can argue about the Texas Dems walking away, but I was under the impression that we were being more broad than that.
I’m not fond of making it harder to GET an ID.
Quite the opposite, I want everyone to have one, for free.
But until then, Voter ID laws should not be put into effect. The Texas law in particular actually makes this harder, by the way. It’s not just Voter ID.
Keep in mind nearly all countries require id to vote.
Yes, but they also provide those IDs for free as a matter of course. We don’t. Unless and until we address that difference, what other countries do is irrelevant.
US elections are now at the point where they are so close fraud can swing an election.
Nnnnnoooooppppppeeee!
You seriously don’t understand how rare voter fraud is, do you? It’s around 0.00006% (1 in 1 2/3 million votes) nationwide.
Keep in mind that the population of the US—including nonvoters—is around 330 million. 0.00006% of that is 198. Considering that most of that population is not registered to vote, and voter turnout proportional to the number of registered voters is rather low, the actual number of fraudulent votes would be significantly lower. Let’s say the number of votes cast is 2/3 the population (which is definitely higher than the actual). This would mean 132 fraudulent votes nationwide. How many elections are decided by a margin less than or equal to that? Outside of local elections in very small towns, not many.
It’s also worth noting that swing states and the states currently pushing restrictions on voting have lower rates of fraud than the nationwide average, anyways.
So no, US elections are not so close that there is any real chance of voter fraud having any real effect on the results. Even the close elections that get a recount have a wider margin than that.
“ Have you actually read the Green New Deal?”
Considering it’s more than a ‘the’ and actual umami different ‘thes’. And my biggest problem with it is it sets goals with no backing to get there.
If you want to make radical change you need to have radical setup to do so properly.
So, you oppose setting nonbinding goals before trying to reach those goals? I fail to see the problem.
On climate: my stance for most of my voting life has been ‘show proof’.
Starting 6 years ago we are now seeing proof from Siberia and Alaska, in the form of core pulls that place carbon levels outside of natural explanation.
So yes, evidence now is in favour of man made global warming—enough so to to take it from hypothesis to full theory.
This is the point where we discuss solutions.
I’d say we had pretty good evidence earlier than that, but I would certainly agree that the evidence has been pretty clear for several years, and we should discuss solutions.
I would say that proposing goals, followed by determining how best to reach those goals, is a reasonable start. Since many people have been denouncing the goals, I don’t see any real chance of concrete steps being more successful.
Hillary’s voting record for tax plans stamped every plan that created new loopholes. Any plan that gives more outs to the top 10% hurts the bottom 50% in social funding.
You keep going between Hillary, Obama, the squad, Texas Dems, and the Democratic Party, generally talking about the individuals and then putting that belief on everyone else in the party.
Anyways, you found one Dem who created new loopholes. This says nothing about the general stance of the party.
Her support of the Ukrainian government is a rubber stamp of their slaughter of Russian ethnics in the ongoing civil war.
I know nothing about Hillary supporting Ukraine, a genocide by Ukraine, or a civil war (outside the one that only began because Russia unilaterally annexed part of Ukraine).
“ supporting the Iran Nuclear Deal is not the same as supporting Iran”
It is handing a billion dollars of US funds to a company that wants to wipe a neighbour off the map. In the most violent way possible. With no way for the US to monitor the restrictions directly.
Where do I even begin with this one?
Those weren’t US funds. They were Iranian funds that we were withholding.
We did have a way to monitor whether or not Iran was complying with restrictions. In fact, we were actually doing so. And the fact of the matter is that until, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the deal, they were in full compliance.
The whole point of the deal is to prevent them from wiping that neighbor off the map for as long as possible through peaceful means. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing at all.
Democrats have a tendency to support raising income taxes with loopholes in the plan. Democratic cities quickly raise local taxes and fees nearly every time it happens.
[citation needed]
Obama
I didn’t say “ immediately”. He had a plan (in general) to replace them.
Which was inevitable one way or another. If man-made climate change is a real thing (and you seem to agree that it is), we’re going to have to replace them eventually. We’re also going to have to replace them eventually either way simply because they are finite, nonrenewable resources. Having a general plan to gradually replace them with more eco-friendly and renewable resources shouldn’t be an issue in that case.
“ Obama increased fossil fuel regulations while in office and signed the Paris Climate Agreement.”
The former I agree with, the latter I do not.
And what’s the problem with the Paris Climate Agreement?
[AOC video]
Okay… She’s talking about refugees. And she’s also right that it’s not a crime. It’s a civil law issue, not a criminal one. And she’s talking about the family-separation issue. She’s not pushing for open borders.
During the early period she pushed that bo[]rders were xenophobic.
That is not supported by the video you presented.
She’s softened her stance since.
Okay.
And it’s nice to see the VP tell people to stop flooding over illegally.
Technically, it’s primarily about refugees, which are not illegal, but again, this doesn’t support your point that Dems support open borders. You didn’t even present evidence that shows that AOC does.
I’m not going to keep going around with you, and others, on the Dementia issue.
You keep bringing this up, and you never present evidence for this claim, so please do stop.
Reading from a script he does just fine.
Take away to script and he’s confused and lost.
He’s always been like that, at least as far as speaking goes. That’s not dementia. He’s had a speech impediment (among other things) since he was a kid. It acts up more when speaking in front of a crowd without a script. It is in no way reflective of his cognitive abilities; just his ability to speak. This is well-known, publicly-available information.
It’s also no worse than Trump was, so I fail to see your point.
I’ve spent my whole life in a family where dementia is genetic on both sides. I don’t need a degree to see it. I live with it.
Guess what: so do I. And yet what I see in Biden isn’t dementia. So, clearly, living your “whole life in a family where dementia is genetic on both sides” and “liv[ing] with it” aren’t enough to definitively determine whether or not some public person you don’t know personally actually has dementia. Maybe we should leave such determinations to people with the training and experience to make such determinations. Maybe—and I’m just spitballing here—someone with a degree in psychiatric care or something?
Biden has dementia.
No, he does not.
So who is writing the script/speeches? That’s the person behind the curtain.
So, a couple of problems with this.
First, as I’ve said, this is not a new thing for Biden. He often would write his own scripts ahead of time to stay on track. He likely still does.
Second, every President in modern history has had an official speechwriter. I believe their identities are a public record, so you could probably find out who this person is if you really wanted to. But regardless, I bring this up because you clearly don’t understand how speechwriting actually works. They don’t come up with them on their own. Generally, the President and possibly some advisors give the speechwriter a list of points to cover, they write a speech, and then there’s some back-and-forth over it before it’s actually read from in public.
Third, this only applies to speeches. As I’ve noted before, Biden has done things besides public speech. He’s also done private negotiations with people in Congress and foreign leaders and written and signed executive orders.
Fourth, everything he’s said in his speeches is perfectly consistent with things he’s said long before anyone even considered or alleged that he had dementia. No reason to suspect that they aren’t things he’d say without someone else writing his speeches.
I suppose in the land of "believe whatever the hell you want", I have had to adjust my standards for credibility of one's conviction.
Most only have a political opinion because some politician gave it to them. Said politician only has that particular opinion to cater to their party's lunatic fringe, in the pursuit of the ever so precious 51st percentile of vote. Actual knowledge, or common sense isn't even a consideration anymore, for the professional political view. They're just being a lemming.
Irrelevant. How they got that political view makes no difference when determining whether or not they are expressing a political view from a 1st Amendment standpoint or when interpreting the statute at issue here.
You're confusing the letter of the law regarding political speech, with the intent of actual political speech.
The only one confusing the two here is you. The intent of the political speech in question is irrelevant according to the law, and you’re the only one arguing about intent.
This isn't about free speech.
Yes, it is.
This is about a free audience for drivel.
No, it is not.
Audiences aren't free, or a right.
True, but that makes no difference here.
Look, the audience thing refers to public property (like a street) or property owned by someone other than the speaker. It is not relevant, from a legal perspective, when you post a sign on your own property.
You missed the point... They're going to have to spend money for the appeal, before I give their argument any merit beyond post election sour grapes.
Their legal argument or their political one? The value of a political message is not measured by its merit as an argument, and that has no relevance to whether it is actually legal. As for the legal argument, that doesn’t usually change on appeal much, and more importantly, the issue here is the judge’s legal argument, which lacks merit.
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Again you are intentionally omitting information because you are fundamentally dishonest.
I’m sorry? Even if I grant that I was “intentionally omitting information” (which I wasn’t; I didn’t know that, but even if I had, I don’t think it makes a significant difference), what other instance are you implying?
This wasn't some random town across the country. Its his home town of Wilmington Delaware. He left his laptop in his hometown obviously when he was there.
That does make the distance part of the story more plausible, but that was one of many points I brought up that make the story implausible. It was also the least important of the points I made regarding plausibility.
Plus, as I said, this was not an intentional omission. I pay no real attention to people’s hometowns in general. No one else brought it up, including the guy I was addressing, and you waited a while to bring it up yourself despite the fact that both I and others made this same claim repeatedly and that you have been part of this discussion since early on, so why would you assume that this was intentional?
If it’s because of the other information about Hunter’s background I brought up, I only looked at the stuff that had to do with his employment history, which did not include his hometown. It had never occurred to me that his hometown would even be relevant since what I did find made it clear that is not where he or his family lived at that time, so I had no reason to believe that where he grew up made any difference at all.
He also knocked up a stripper in DC.
[citation needed]
Irrelevant. How would that change anything?
Again, why would I know that?
Your whole distance argument is nonsensical.
I was addressing it as presented, and I was specifically addressing the claim that solely by including the fact that he is/was a crackhead makes it plausible. Whether or not other facts exist that make the story more plausible is irrelevant to the particular argument I was making. You were the first to mention that this was his hometown, and that is not implied by or connected to the claim that he is a crackhead. As such, it doesn’t make what I said wrong or dishonest.
And, again, the distance argument was one of many arguments I made, and it was always one of the weaker ones.
“That wasn’t the case with my emails on my laptop on the Mail app.”
Granted different manufacturers use different setting for installation.
There is a switch in the PIE for changing email access.
But most, not, installs of 10 I’ve seen have it turned on.
However, even if it’s not mail still caches emails.
As I’ve said, mine doesn’t. Still, whatever. It’s not really a big deal at this point.
“Loretta Lynch wasn’t …”
Faith in the system is lacking.
That’s all the more I was implying.
Again, my point was that the loss of faith was not a rational one as you explicitly claimed.
Fucking autocorrect
Partnership ~partisan
You should really pay more attention to that. This seems to be a recurring event with you.
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And I disagree that it’s newsworthy, for reasons I’ve gone into before, but at this point I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on what is or isn’t newsworthy.
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You’re the one who said the squad made antisemitic remarks. That’s the only reason this even came up.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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If I actually knew how to do so and was actually noteworthy, I would. Not that there’s anything of note, really.
The last point is false. Hillary Clinton and her campaign had nothing to do with that. Clinton supporters brought it up, but it wasn’t publicized really until afterwards, mostly by Republicans.
As for reasonable, you mentioned that in response to someone saying it was unreasonable.
Tell that to a sizable number of Republicans. If it’s a fringe belief and not mainstream, there wouldn’t be that many Republicans, especially after the recent mass exodus of moderate Republicans from the party.
Also, the only reason it’s not brought up now by Republicans (at least unless asked) is because Obama isn’t in office and hasn’t been for around five years, so it’s immaterial at this point. It’s not because they are conceding the point.
No, it was based upon a mistake and perpetuated well beyond what was even within sight of reason. But I will concede that the initial mistake was not inherently reasonable and could reasonably lead to honest confusion initially.
Fine, but in the context of this discussion, the reason the birther thing was brought up was as a counter to your assertion that Hunter or Biden “admitting” to some kind of nepotism being involved would make the whole thing go away. That the birther story kept going in spite of the clear evidence that it was wrong being presented immediately suggests otherwise. Whatever factual basis it may have had immediately, we can all agree it grew far beyond reasonable, and it did so in spite of a quick, clear response based upon evidence.
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I’ve already said that I’ve lived with it, and I am not convinced. Also, “it’s obvious if you have experience X” is not an argument or evidence.
Additionally, I’ve explained that the phenomena you claim is indicative of dementia were there since he was young, which effectively precludes dementia as the explanation. So, what evidence you have provided is insufficient.
Either put up or shut up.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Again, no you did not. Maybe you did in some other conversation I was not a part of, but not here.
At any rate, that only strengthens my point: none of this suggests that he was unqualified for his position on Burisma’s board of directors.
I don’t recall reading anything about him even taking the bar exam, so probably not. I still don’t see the relevance, though.
And I was arguing that reliability is inextricably linked to newsworthiness. If the laptop is unreliable, it isn’t newsworthy. Period. Well, unless it’s funny or there’s a legal proceeding regarding it, but neither were the case for the laptop story.
I also pointed out reasons showing that the Steele Dossier wasn’t simply a “pile of crap” (which you still haven’t actually addressed) and that saying it was Clinton-funded is oversimplifying things greatly. Again, it was also funded by Republicans. This is absolutely material when it comes to determining plausibility and newsworthiness. Speaking of, aside from repeating that it was funded (in part) by Clinton’s campaign, you still haven’t explained what was actually wrong with it.
Saying the laptop story was equally newsworthy is not supported by your factual claims.
No one is saying otherwise.
I never claimed otherwise.
No one argued it was impossible. The center of the discussion was plausibility. Good journalism should not cover implausible claims without good evidence, a court case, or law enforcement action or investigation. (Or if it’s funny.)
Apparently not. Why you chose not to mention this earlier rather than bringing crack into it, I have no idea.
Being a software engineer, I can confirm several aspects of that. And, frankly, between that and the previous point, the chain of events is a lot more plausible without crack than it was with crack but without those facts. So I have to ask: Why did you bring crack into it in the first place? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t explain any of the parts that needed explanation to begin with, and it only adds additional assumptions for the story to be plausible.
If you had led with the tech stuff and that the shop was in his hometown, you would’ve had a much better argument, and you wouldn’t have needed to bring drugs into this at all. I’m honestly perplexed about your strategy here.
Oh, for the love of—!
Look, would you just drop that one already! I’ve already pointed out that much of the newsworthiness of that story came from its humor. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not; the fact that the allegation exists is inherently funny. If it wasn’t, it likely wouldn’t have gotten as much coverage as it did.
The fact that Trump hasn’t actually denied it (mostly just ignored it) doesn’t help. Again, while there isn’t a denial (or affirmation) that laptop was Hunter’s, the allegations implied by the story (Biden allegedly having a meeting with this one guy) have been denied and refuted.
And as for the germaphobic thing, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Trump appears to be only selectively germaphobic at best. I again point to his tendencies regarding handshakes since he became President and the hug he gave in the Access: Hollywood tape, among others. It is entirely plausible that he treated sexual contact, contact with people he wanted to impress, contact with people he thought were sufficiently important/famous, and/or contact in private differently than he did with others in a public setting, specifically with regards to handshakes. It is also plausible that he stopped being a germaphobe at some point.
Also [gross fact alert], I’ll note that some people have considered urine to be sanitary, even cleansing. This isn’t quite as absurd as it appears at first blush: stale urine can act as a cleaner or disinfectant as it forms ammonia, and there are theories that seamen would use stale urine to wash clothes and such. I express no opinion on whether or not Trump would be one of those people who hold this belief. I’m just saying it’s not entirely out of the question for a germaphobe to not have a problem with urine.
Oh, and as I recall the allegation, I don’t recall it being an orgy. I recall a prostitute. But I could be wrong.
I never said you said anything else about the laptop story. I have pointed out why it is not. I’ve also addressed claims you made pursuant to that argument as well as regarding other things.
Now, you have gone further with the claim that Hunter was only hired by Burisma because of his dad, that he was unqualified to be on the board of directors for an energy company, and that either he or his dad should “admit” to it to “make it all go away”. You have been quite definitive on that, not just saying it was newsworthy. That was what I was addressing in this comment, not the laptop story. So really, everything after the big about Hunter practicing law wasn’t actually addressing this comment but my comments in a different discussion, if that. (Honestly, they seem more addressed for other people.)
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Seriously, I don’t even get what your point is. Are you saying that supporting either side is antisemitic? Or that supporting one side is antisemitic, while supporting the other is islamophobic? Neither are accurate.
Both sides being bad doesn’t mean favoring one over the other is necessarily bigotry.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Like I said, I’m not going to argue the mail thing being stored on the laptop without Hunter’s knowledge further. If it’s often on by default, it’s entirely plausible that that was the case for Hunter even if it wasn’t the case for me. The other parts are still sufficiently implausible that I don’t consider this line of argument worth pushing.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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You missed why I said it wasn’t rational: by the time of these events, Trump was in office, and the DOJ was run by people appointed by Trump. The meeting you refer to may have provided a basis for a rational concern over federal law enforcement at that time, but not by 2019 when Bill Barr was in charge, at least not when providing evidence of wrongdoing by an adversary of Trump. Just because a belief may have been rational in the past doesn’t make it rational to maintain that belief in perpetuity.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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No, he was pretty specific about where the blame lied.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Not entirely wrong, but that doesn’t make him a Trump hater, either.
False. He explicitly said he voted against impeachment because he didn’t think that they should impeach a former President, period. He also said that the claims were impeachable offenses if brought against a sitting President. You may or may not agree with either of those claims or believe him when he says that that’s his reasoning, but that is what he said.
Which is why they all voted to impeach Trump the first time, right?
No, wait. Mitt Romney was the only Republican Senator who voted to convict Trump in the first impeachment. The other four voted to acquit the last time, including two of the ones you called “Never Trumpers”. It’s almost like there was some other reason they voted to impeach beyond being Never Trumpers or being from variable states…
At any rate, you’re addressing the wrong point. You claimed that McConnell and Graham were Trump haters. They are not.
Furthermore, impeachment is a political process, and most of the Republican Senators who voted to acquit said they agreed with the facts underlying the claims, so the votes to acquit were just as political. I fail to see your point.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Now, that’s not fair. Sometimes they do try to take action and get fired over it.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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They tried that. Republicans were unwilling to do so. We can argue about the Texas Dems walking away, but I was under the impression that we were being more broad than that.
But until then, Voter ID laws should not be put into effect. The Texas law in particular actually makes this harder, by the way. It’s not just Voter ID.
Yes, but they also provide those IDs for free as a matter of course. We don’t. Unless and until we address that difference, what other countries do is irrelevant.
Nnnnnoooooppppppeeee!
You seriously don’t understand how rare voter fraud is, do you? It’s around 0.00006% (1 in 1 2/3 million votes) nationwide.
Keep in mind that the population of the US—including nonvoters—is around 330 million. 0.00006% of that is 198. Considering that most of that population is not registered to vote, and voter turnout proportional to the number of registered voters is rather low, the actual number of fraudulent votes would be significantly lower. Let’s say the number of votes cast is 2/3 the population (which is definitely higher than the actual). This would mean 132 fraudulent votes nationwide. How many elections are decided by a margin less than or equal to that? Outside of local elections in very small towns, not many.
It’s also worth noting that swing states and the states currently pushing restrictions on voting have lower rates of fraud than the nationwide average, anyways.
So no, US elections are not so close that there is any real chance of voter fraud having any real effect on the results. Even the close elections that get a recount have a wider margin than that.
So, you oppose setting nonbinding goals before trying to reach those goals? I fail to see the problem.
I’d say we had pretty good evidence earlier than that, but I would certainly agree that the evidence has been pretty clear for several years, and we should discuss solutions.
I would say that proposing goals, followed by determining how best to reach those goals, is a reasonable start. Since many people have been denouncing the goals, I don’t see any real chance of concrete steps being more successful.
You keep going between Hillary, Obama, the squad, Texas Dems, and the Democratic Party, generally talking about the individuals and then putting that belief on everyone else in the party.
Anyways, you found one Dem who created new loopholes. This says nothing about the general stance of the party.
I know nothing about Hillary supporting Ukraine, a genocide by Ukraine, or a civil war (outside the one that only began because Russia unilaterally annexed part of Ukraine).
Where do I even begin with this one?
Those weren’t US funds. They were Iranian funds that we were withholding.
We did have a way to monitor whether or not Iran was complying with restrictions. In fact, we were actually doing so. And the fact of the matter is that until, Trump unilaterally pulled out of the deal, they were in full compliance.
The whole point of the deal is to prevent them from wiping that neighbor off the map for as long as possible through peaceful means. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing at all.
[citation needed]
Which was inevitable one way or another. If man-made climate change is a real thing (and you seem to agree that it is), we’re going to have to replace them eventually. We’re also going to have to replace them eventually either way simply because they are finite, nonrenewable resources. Having a general plan to gradually replace them with more eco-friendly and renewable resources shouldn’t be an issue in that case.
And what’s the problem with the Paris Climate Agreement?
Okay… She’s talking about refugees. And she’s also right that it’s not a crime. It’s a civil law issue, not a criminal one. And she’s talking about the family-separation issue. She’s not pushing for open borders.
That is not supported by the video you presented.
Okay.
Technically, it’s primarily about refugees, which are not illegal, but again, this doesn’t support your point that Dems support open borders. You didn’t even present evidence that shows that AOC does.
You keep bringing this up, and you never present evidence for this claim, so please do stop.
He’s always been like that, at least as far as speaking goes. That’s not dementia. He’s had a speech impediment (among other things) since he was a kid. It acts up more when speaking in front of a crowd without a script. It is in no way reflective of his cognitive abilities; just his ability to speak. This is well-known, publicly-available information.
It’s also no worse than Trump was, so I fail to see your point.
Guess what: so do I. And yet what I see in Biden isn’t dementia. So, clearly, living your “whole life in a family where dementia is genetic on both sides” and “liv[ing] with it” aren’t enough to definitively determine whether or not some public person you don’t know personally actually has dementia. Maybe we should leave such determinations to people with the training and experience to make such determinations. Maybe—and I’m just spitballing here—someone with a degree in psychiatric care or something?
No, he does not.
So, a couple of problems with this.
First, as I’ve said, this is not a new thing for Biden. He often would write his own scripts ahead of time to stay on track. He likely still does.
Second, every President in modern history has had an official speechwriter. I believe their identities are a public record, so you could probably find out who this person is if you really wanted to. But regardless, I bring this up because you clearly don’t understand how speechwriting actually works. They don’t come up with them on their own. Generally, the President and possibly some advisors give the speechwriter a list of points to cover, they write a speech, and then there’s some back-and-forth over it before it’s actually read from in public.
Third, this only applies to speeches. As I’ve noted before, Biden has done things besides public speech. He’s also done private negotiations with people in Congress and foreign leaders and written and signed executive orders.
Fourth, everything he’s said in his speeches is perfectly consistent with things he’s said long before anyone even considered or alleged that he had dementia. No reason to suspect that they aren’t things he’d say without someone else writing his speeches.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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And this is relevant here and now because…?
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Uhhhh, you know that only proves the point that it is legal, right?
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Irrelevant. How they got that political view makes no difference when determining whether or not they are expressing a political view from a 1st Amendment standpoint or when interpreting the statute at issue here.
The only one confusing the two here is you. The intent of the political speech in question is irrelevant according to the law, and you’re the only one arguing about intent.
Yes, it is.
No, it is not.
True, but that makes no difference here.
Look, the audience thing refers to public property (like a street) or property owned by someone other than the speaker. It is not relevant, from a legal perspective, when you post a sign on your own property.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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The Supreme Court doesn’t recognize such a distinction regarding free-speech analysis.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Their legal argument or their political one? The value of a political message is not measured by its merit as an argument, and that has no relevance to whether it is actually legal. As for the legal argument, that doesn’t usually change on appeal much, and more importantly, the issue here is the judge’s legal argument, which lacks merit.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Actually, even if there is no fire, it would still be protected.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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I’m sorry? Even if I grant that I was “intentionally omitting information” (which I wasn’t; I didn’t know that, but even if I had, I don’t think it makes a significant difference), what other instance are you implying?
That does make the distance part of the story more plausible, but that was one of many points I brought up that make the story implausible. It was also the least important of the points I made regarding plausibility.
Plus, as I said, this was not an intentional omission. I pay no real attention to people’s hometowns in general. No one else brought it up, including the guy I was addressing, and you waited a while to bring it up yourself despite the fact that both I and others made this same claim repeatedly and that you have been part of this discussion since early on, so why would you assume that this was intentional?
If it’s because of the other information about Hunter’s background I brought up, I only looked at the stuff that had to do with his employment history, which did not include his hometown. It had never occurred to me that his hometown would even be relevant since what I did find made it clear that is not where he or his family lived at that time, so I had no reason to believe that where he grew up made any difference at all.
[citation needed]
Irrelevant. How would that change anything?
I was addressing it as presented, and I was specifically addressing the claim that solely by including the fact that he is/was a crackhead makes it plausible. Whether or not other facts exist that make the story more plausible is irrelevant to the particular argument I was making. You were the first to mention that this was his hometown, and that is not implied by or connected to the claim that he is a crackhead. As such, it doesn’t make what I said wrong or dishonest.
And, again, the distance argument was one of many arguments I made, and it was always one of the weaker ones.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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As I’ve said, mine doesn’t. Still, whatever. It’s not really a big deal at this point.
Again, my point was that the loss of faith was not a rational one as you explicitly claimed.
You should really pay more attention to that. This seems to be a recurring event with you.
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