I don't make these absolutist religious arguments.
[…] your absolutist religious arguments […]
You are blinded by religion. I recognize that I'm dealing with a religious zealot.
Based on statements like these, you clearly have no idea what “religion” is.
I operate in the real world which is very grey, even on constitutional issues.
Morally? Yes. Legally…? Not so much. At least not in this area. Some parts of the law really are pretty straightforward, and this particular case isn’t in a grey area legally speaking.
Its very easy to give examples that falsify your absolutist [] arguments because your arguments have to be correct 100% of the time.
Assuming they’re absolute statements, then yes, it should be fairly easy to disprove them by simply giving counterexamples… if there are any counterexamples, that is.
Oh, but what am I saying? Surely you’re about to give us a counterexample if you’re so confident you’re right!
You make simplistic absolutist statements like 'The government cant force a private company to host speech' all I have to do is give the examples where they alredy do.
…Yes… That is indeed how you would refute an absolute statement… Now, what about those examples?
That is your problem. You are blinded by religion. I recognize that I'm dealing with a religious zealot. Not someone engaging on actual thought.
Uh, no. That’s not it at all. You can’t just say, “That’s an absolute statement, so all I need is to provide one counterexample to refute it,” then immediately conclude by saying that’s their problem and finishing off with an ad hominem. You do still need to actually provide that counterexample.
As far as the specific statement you reference, there are some exceptions regarding disclosure in commercial and legal settings, but that has nothing to do with Facebook, so while that technically means the absolute statement is wrong, the main point still stands.
The truth is an individual is allowed to use force on another when force is not being used against them or another.
Absolutely true, at least with regards to removing someone from your private property when they refuse to leave despite having no legal right to be there without your permission. But what does this have to do with Facebook?
That entire thread was bad example after bad example because fundamentally it cant be justified legally.
Wait, wha—
It doesn't matter if they are a customer, tenant, guest etc. etc. if they entered your property legally you cannot use physical force to kick them out. You can be like a bouncer at a dive bar and take the risk but that doesn't make it legal.
Whoa, slow down there! I can’t take that kind of whiplash!
Literally two sentences earlier, you said the exact opposite! Make up your mind!
…At any rate, if someone is trespassing on your private property and refuses to leave when asked, in every state, the law explicitly says that you—as the property owner—are permitted to use force to remove them if you see fit, regardless of whether they gained entry legally or illegally, as long as the amount of force is appropriate. That still means that you can drag someone who is not using force from your property, but you couldn’t beat them up unless they started fighting (assuming legal entry and that they aren’t breaking the law by stealing or vandalizing your property or something; illegal entry is a completely different story). What is considered appropriate force depends not only on the context (including whether they entered legally or illegally, how much force—if any—they use, whether they were committing any crimes (besides trespassing) while on your property, the threat you perceived that they posed, etc.) but which state you’re in, but the basics are pretty much the same in all of them.
So yes, you legally can “be like a bouncer at a dive bar” (or any other bar) and legally use physical force to kick them out, so long as you don’t go overboard. It is absolutely, 100% legal.
Voting to convict for incitement without direct incitement was a violation of her duty.
But she didn’t vote to convict Trump. She voted to impeach (i.e. indict) him. There’s a huge difference between the two. The latter has a very low burden of proof, for example. A vote to impeach doesn’t mean “he’s definitely guilty and should be punished”, but that there’s enough evidence to move to the Senate for a trial.
Also, you misunderstand the difference between impeachment—a political process—and a criminal or civil court case—which is a legal one. The former is not actually required to hold to the same standards as the latter, including regarding speech. As such, there is no need to prove direct incitement. (Also, it’s not impossible that he could be said to have directly incited the crowd, so that part of the premise is equally flawed.)
And as such she was removed.
Except she wasn’t removed soon after the impeachment. In fact, McCarthy explicitly refused to do so even when many House Republicans asked him to. Instead, they waited months later to do so. If that was the actual reason for her removal, this chain of events makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
It only makes sense if there was another reason for her removal over things between then and when she was ousted. To claim otherwise would be to ignore a ton of context.
Quoting a few R trump haters doesn’t change that.
“Trump haters”? You mean Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell? Did you actually read the article, or did you just see that it was an op-ed and dismiss it? Because no one in their right minds would call Graham or McConnell “Trump haters”.
I’m not asking about fringes in the party in general. I’m asking about comparable fringes who are in office that are treated similarly by other elected officials of the same party for each party.
I’m also not saying you’re wrong per se. Just that you failed to prove your claim.
You were provided with explicit examples. All I’m saying is that, to counter that, you need to give explicit examples at least as good as the ones presented. You’re being too vague and broad for that to be an effective counterargument.
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Someone’s laptop being abandoned half way across the country? Common enough. And for anyone in that income range,
It’s more an oh well than an oh no.
Keep in mind the vast majority of computer users think their log in password is enough to keep their data safe.
First off, it’s all the way across the country, not half.
And while you are correct about people’s lax attitudes regarding security (I know from experience; I’m actually well aware of the tech aspect and work in tech), you overestimate Hunter’s income at that time, at least compared to his expenses.
But if saved on the drive… that doesn’t require extra steps.
That’s what I mean. That is something you have to explicitly enable. If you are involved in shady practices, why would you ever do this?
“ Why did the computer repairman decide to investigate the laptop in the first place? ”
Abandoned property law.
From the up-n-up side, he could be looking for transferable software licenses.
From the not so well mannered side, maybe he’s just a voyeur. It’s legal regardless. unethical, but I’m most places legal.
Still not something I would say is advisable or something I think that a guy who I would be willing to trust not to have intentionally altered the data to suit his purposes would do. As you said, it is unethical to do so even if it is legal, so if you’re willing to do that, I have no reason to trust you on what you found.
You’d be better off wiping the hard drive.
He himself has said it may have been his. That he didn’t remember.
[Citation needed]
“ first person he chose to contact regarding this information was… Rudy Giuliani. Why not take it to the press or law enforcement first?”
He likely believed the press would bury it… or disappear it.
Given the whole mess with Clinton on the tarmac not long ago, maybe he didn’t trust federal law.
Maybe he’s a boxer and didn’t initially want to get caught up explaining. Embarrassment and all.
No idea what you mean about “the whole mess with Clinton on the tarmac not long ago” or how it would give anyone a dim view of federal law enforcement, nor what being a boxer has to do with anything, but
1) He still could have sent it to a pro-Trump outlet first, or at least sent copies of the data to the press (it’s not hard to copy the entire contents of a hard drive without messing with the data), and
2) this doesn’t make it any less suspicious. If anything, that’s actually kinda worse.
“ Without the metadata from the emails, there is no way of verifying their authenticity. And this had to have been an active step.”
Active yes. Not necessarily intentional.
Again, I missed the whole (where the were found) file aspect of the story. I do know from various conversion transfers that striping metadata isn’t hard to do. On purpose or by accident.
Hard to do? No. That said, someone who is able to open a laptop that isn’t his and that has even a modicum of security (no matter how bad it was) should know how to avoid doing so and how important it is to preserve it when presenting it as irrefutable evidence.
Additionally, you’re also missing a key point in all this: even if it is Hunter’s laptop, and that Hunter himself dropped it off, without that metadata, we have no reason to believe that the emails ever were on the actual laptop to begin with or that they weren’t altered in the process. Given that the known chain of custody is 1) a computer repairman who is well known to be a firm Trump supporter and 2) Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump who is well known to distort the truth to serve his interests, I have zero reason to believe that the emails were actually found on the laptop and said what we’re told they said.
“ Why did the two wait”
Don’t know. Maybe they thought they had a silver bullet?
That’s not a good reason. It’s a terrible reason. It shows that they weren’t actually concerned with the contents because they thought they were bad for the country but because they only cared about taking out Biden. This does not inspire confidence in people that they did not tamper with the emails to make Biden look bad.
“ Why was no one from the New York Post willing to sign their names to the article?”
Ask them? Fear of reprisals if Biden was elected? Sounds like a logical fear to me.
Not at all. The executive branch of the federal government has no power to do anything like that, so Biden would not have additional options for reprisal against the NYP if he was elected vs if he was not.
Furthermore, there is no logical reason for them to fear reprisal at all a) if they didn’t harbor serious doubts about whether the story was true b) that would be mitigated by the author not signing their name to it (the NYP as a whole would be just as culpable/vulnerable, and through subpoenas or discovery, the identity of the author could be uncovered anyways).
So no, that is not a logical fear. That may actually be the reason, but there is nothing logical about it.
“Biden released proof of the fact that the meeting described in those emails did not actually happen“
Contradicted as far as I’m aware, by Sec Src logs and travel records. But I don’t know for sure.
Au contraire, that was part of the proof that the meeting didn’t take place, not something that contradicted the offered proof. But feel free to actually provide a source that proves otherwise.
The “squad” huh? Again, what makes them comparable to the likes of MTG, who spouts conspiracy theories with no evidence and repeatedly makes antisemitic claims? Or Matt Gaetz, or Trump, etc.
I’m not saying that there aren’t “fringe freaks” on both sides, but there is a difference between the most extreme elements of each side among those that actually hold office (as opposed to people merely running for office or have not been elected or appointed to some public office), and how extremist or bigoted statements or people in office are treated by other elected officials from their respective parties.
Now, feel free to give explicit examples of fringe Democrats who hold office not being held accountable in the same vein as MTG or Gaetz or Jim Jordan, but as it is, this is a false equivalence.
H C is irrelevant (we’re talking ex-Presidents, not people related to ex-Presidents or anyone who used to be in the White House but left when next President was sworn in), and Obama didn’t comment on Trump while Trump was President until fairly late into Trump’s presidency.
But yeah, I figured that it was probably just a general musing. I was just giving my take as someone who does (on occasion) watch cable news.
If he admitted it up from, like Obama and pot, nobody would be discussing it today.
Considering the fact that a) most of the people who have been complaining about Hunter recently who were adults or teens at the time Biden was VP and Hunter was hired didn’t have anything to say about it until Trump and Rudy brought it up in an attempt to discredit Biden, and b) people did keep discussing Obama smoking pot throughout his Presidency (the frequency didn’t appear to decrease after he admitted it but rather after he left office), I have strong doubts about that, though I wish I had your optimism.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that there really isn’t anything to “admit” to.
I’m complaining that Biden refuses to admit it and move on.
Although you later say that you’re referring to Hunter getting the job because his dad is Joe Biden, this is what the person you’re responding to was referring to:
On the flip side you have the son of the then Vice President, already known for a association alone position of management, and emails if potentially dirty dealings.
Now, I don’t know what you meant by “association alone position of management”, the “emails [o]f potentially dirty dealings” is clearly referencing the laptop story, not how Hunter got his job. And that was shown to be completely false (at least insofar as it relates to Joe Biden himself).
As far as Hunter getting the job because of who his dad was at the time, that’s certainly plausible (though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is definitely the case), but that doesn’t mean Joe Biden or even Hunter Biden knew that or used Biden’s position to convince Burisma to give Hunter his position; it’s just as if not even more plausible that Burisma chose to hire Hunter of their own volition believing that it would give them an “in” with the then-VPOTUS without Hunter or Joe so much as implying anything of the sort. It’s also just as plausible that Hunter would have implied such a thing without Joe having anything to do with it.
In either of the latter two cases, there’d still be nothing for Biden to admit to. What would he even say? “Burisma thought that by hiring my son as a director, I would treat them differently in my position as Vice President—something that could be said about many companies hiring many children of people in power”? That’s not exactly groundbreaking, nor has any other politician in history ever said such a thing. It also tells us absolutely nothing about Biden or those politicians. It tells us about the companies, but that’s about it.
Regardless, and as I alluded to before, the idea that Hunter was only (or even primarily) hired on as a director because of his father is far from a foregone conclusion. It likely played a role, perhaps even a significant one, but despite his troubled past with drug addiction, Hunter actually did have plenty of qualifications.
He has a law degree from Yale, worked at a bank holding for two years (during which he rose to executive vice president), served at the Department of Commerce under Clinton and GWB with a focus on e-commerce, was a lobbyist for quite some time, was the vice-chairman of the board of directors for Amtrak, and has also been heavily involved with investment firms and venture capitalism, even becoming an interim CEO at one point as well as serving on boards of directors on several occasions.
All of this and other details can be found on the Wikipedia page for Hunter Biden, with the claims I’m referencing being sourced among several sources, including The New Yorker, USA Today, Politico, Vox, govinfo [dot] gov, CNN, Politifact, The New York Times, AP, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC News, and Financial Times. I won’t put any links because a) it’s incredibly easy to find and b) I don’t want this to be caught in the spam filter because it contains a bunch of hyperlinks.
So, again, it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Hunter being Biden’s son was the only or even primary reason he was hired onto the board of directors for Burisma. He already had lots of experience serving on the board of directors for multiple organizations, after all. As such, and given that Biden would likely be unaware of the idea even if true, why should Biden “admit” to anything?
Nepotism of varying kinds and degrees is and has been a real problem among politicians of both parties. However, that Biden won’t “admit” that “Hunter only got the job with Burisma because of who his dad is” is not exactly surprising or aggravating, nor does it make much sense for him to do so. It likely isn’t strictly true, but even if it was, no other politician has ever done it and yet been treated like Biden has, and it’s likely that Biden would have no idea that that was the case, regardless. Plus, it says absolutely nothing about Joe Biden himself.
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“laptop they claimed they got from Hunter Biden (unclear how), ”
It was dropped off for repair, and abandoned.
By whom? Neither Rudy nor the repairman claimed it was definitely Hunter Biden, so we still don’t know how it got from Hunter to the repairman (if it actually did).
It may not be the biggest problem with the story, but the claim that Hunter went to a computer repair shop on the opposite side of the country, dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence to be repaired, left, and then never came back for it is still pretty hard to believe.
I’ve never agreed with publicising tax info. Go back to 1996 and you’ll find my bitching about it. Again in 04.
It’s just not any of our business.
It’s all fine and dandy that you’re consistent about it, but
I have no idea who you are, and this site did not exist in '96 or (AFAICT) '04, so… How am I supposed to find these old claims of yours where you complain about publicizing tax info?
It’s important to ensure that the president won’t be compromised by foreign entities or private companies to whom they personally owe a debt to. It’s also important to be able to verify that they’re telling the truth when they claim to be rich/poor and to be able to identify potential conflicts of interest.
And I’ve throughly documented where the brother thing came from.
Obama’s own agent. Prior to his political Career.
Who’s author card stated he was born in Africa.
I’ve linked to the photos of that.
Again, I have no idea how you expect me to find these old claims of yours.
But it really doesn’t matter because we already have multiple pieces of definitive proof that Obama was born in Hawaii, not Africa, so regardless of what his brother, his agent, or his “author card” (whatever that is) says, the fact is that he was born on American soil, not in Africa.
With that said, what “agent” are you talking about? Obama was a lawyer (who generally don’t have agents) before he became a politician, and I’m pretty sure that he wrote his first book after starting in politics, so before his political career, he wouldn’t have had an agent or an “author card”. I could be wrong about that, but this seems doubtful. Speaking of, what even is an “author card”, anyways? And how would it even be relevant?
a) there is no evidence that Hunter was still addicted to—let alone still using—crack in the past decade or so, let alone using enough crack to cause a blackout while still being coherent enough to take the laptop to a repair shop across the country at the time of the alleged incident;
b) nothing in the story suggests that the person delivering the laptop to the repair shop was high at the time, which should have been the case if your idea was true;
c) that still wouldn’t explain a lot of Hunter’s actions, like going to the other side of the country to get the laptop repaired, or not doing anything about the fact that a laptop that he had before the blackout and that contained incriminating evidence is no longer in his possession after said blackout, among many, many other things;
d) that wouldn’t explain any of the actions taken by the computer repairman or Rudy Giuliani, including (but not limited to):
i) the repairman—who at the time had already finished fixing the laptop but still had no idea that the laptop even could have belonged to Hunter or that the guy who dropped it off was Hunter or otherwise connected to Biden in some way—risked being brought to court or jail for unlawful access of someone’s computer by deciding to investigate the contents of this random computer belonging to some random guy just because he failed to come pick it up;
ii) the repairman first contacted Rudy Giuliani—not the press, not law enforcement, not the denizens of the internet—to reveal this damning and important information to him and to him alone;
iii) Rudy and the repairman both sat on this information for quite some time before going to the press with it (it doesn’t even appear that they had immediately contacted law enforcement), which makes absolutely no sense; and
iv) rather than showing the relevant emails in their entirety or letting anyone else have access to the original emails or to the laptop itself, the two only showed captures of the emails that lacked any of the metadata that could be used to authenticate them as having been sent to/by Hunter, and that the contents were unaltered;
e) no one at the New York Post was willing to sign their name to the article, which makes no sense if they had any faith that the story was likely to be true; and
f) even if literally everything else in the story was true, the fact is that the contents of the emails were false (whether it was Hunter, whoever brought the laptop over (who may not have been Hunter—neither Rudy nor the repairman have said that that was necessarily the case), the repairman, or Rudy Giuliani is irrelevant; it’s still false), and they were known to be demonstrably false soon after the story broke, as publicly available documents from the White House show that the meeting described in those emails did not take place, so this says absolutely nothing about Joe Biden at all.
While the details vary from state to state (specifically regarding warnings and what is or isn’t reasonable force in certain situations), once a person, who is physically on property you—as a private citizen/resident or as a private corporation/organization—own, refuses to leave after being told to leave, they become a trespasser who no longer has any legal right to be there, and you are legally allowed to use whatever force you see fit (within reason) to physically remove that person from your property (as well as any of their possessions that are also on your property as you see fit). It doesn’t matter whether or not they ever had a legal right to be there to begin with or even if you personally invited them. While that can change what amount of force is permissible (unlawful entry, threats or violence against you or someone else, and the presence of firearms for the trespasser to use will generally allow more force—even lethal force—to be used against the trespasser), there is essentially always some amount of physical force that you can use to evict a trespasser.
That’s not to say there are no exceptions to that rule (depending on the time they were there unlawfully, for example), but the fact is that not only is it not never justified to use physical force to remove an unresisting but noncompliant person from your property, almost the exact opposite is true: usually, you can do so (at least as long as fair warning is given, though that depends on the state).
We’re just asking for an example of an elected Democrat who has been publicly black supremacist and not been denounced and/or punished immediately by other Democratic leaders. That’s what would need to happen before this is even close to a true equivalence.
But it’d actually have to go further. They’d have to be some sort of conspiracy theorist on top of that.
Why? Because MTG, Gaetz, Jordan, et al are vocally conspiracy theorists but (with just one or two exceptions), almost no Republican politicians or Republican leaders have denounced or punished them for any of the crazy thing they’ve said or done. They also hold elected positions in government.
This suggests that the R party doesn’t consider being a conspiracy theorist (or a white supremacist, or even both) to be a disqualification for being a government official within their party.
While I don’t agree with calling the R party the Q party for other reasons, you should still present evidence for your points. They’ve presented examples to support their view, so your counters should match theirs to be effective.
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Your hypothetical conveniently left out that the son was also a crackhead which makes the scenario far more believable.
Not at all. By which I mean that it doesn’t make the scenario significantly more believable.
High crackhead breaks laptop, takes laptop to computer repairman, crackhead completely forgets entire incident. Not very far fetched once you include that whole crackhead part.
So many problems.
Yes, Hunter was—at least at one point—addicted to crack cocaine. However, by all accounts, he appears to have been staying clean for quite some time. Drug addicts can overcome their addiction, and it’s been long enough since the last known instance of him having used the stuff that his past addiction is no longer all that convincing.
Even if that is plausible, that in no way explains how or why he and his laptop would end up all the way across the country from his home and workplace to where the computer repair shop is.
It also doesn’t explain how he not only did that but also got back home, all while still sufficiently high that he’d no longer remember any of it later.
Even if true, how didn’t he notice the fact that he is now missing one laptop. Even assuming—without conceding—that everything else you said about how someone high on crack would behave and would later forget what happened while high once the effects wear off, once he’s not high, I’m pretty sure that he’d notice that his laptop is gone. Even if he no longer remembered the details of how his laptop broke and so he went to drop it off at a computer repair shop across the country from his residence and then came all the way back, he’d still notice that he had a laptop before that time period and that it was no longer in his possession after that time period. He’d also probably remember that he did get high at some point before (even if it is just immediately before) this period of blackout. He would also the fact that some money went missing to cover the costs of travel to and from that area. At that point, he could reasonably track those expenses to learn about the plane ride and what the destination was, infer that the laptop went missing in that area, and either report it as missing to law enforcement or ask around at places he likely would have been at some point. He may not recall the entire incident, but he’d recall enough to infer that he lost his laptop across the country from his residence during a time period.
This in no way explains why the laptop would still have such evidence on it in the way the repairman claimed it was so that he could access it. The way the emails were allegedly stored on the laptop would have required active steps on Hunter’s part that make no sense to perform, crackhead or not, and he would have had to have done so years before the laptop ended up in that repair shop.
This is related to 4 and 5: Hunter would surely notice that a laptop that he knew contained incriminating evidence was missing and would have tried his best to find or retrieve said laptop. He would also have had means at his disposal to do a decent job of doing so.
That’s not exactly how crack works, anyways. Didn’t you ever learn about the differences between various drugs? I had to—twice—in health class.
And that is just a non-exhaustive list of the problems with that part of the story you were referring to and the parts about Hunter’s actions. There are still a number of other problems with the whole deal, none of which would be remotely helped by saying, “Hunter was on crack.” Here are just a few:
Why did the computer repairman decide to investigate the laptop in the first place? Keep in mind that—according to the story—he had no idea it was Hunter’s laptop until after he started investigating its contents beyond what was necessary to repair it, and the laptop had already been repaired by then. Additionally, doing so is unethical and potentially illegal (or unlawful), so why would he risk doing so with a random laptop some guy he didn’t recognize had dropped off just because the guy didn’t show up to pick it up?
According to the story, once the repairman found the incriminating emails, the first person he chose to contact regarding this information was… Rudy Giuliani. Why not take it to the press or law enforcement first? Ensuring that only Trump’s personal attorney—already known for being biased and untrustworthy—and himself—also a known Trump supporter—would be the first people to know about this makes no sense.
Why weren’t the emails that allegedly came from the laptop presented as they originally were? Without the metadata from the emails, there is no way of verifying their authenticity. And this had to have been an active step.
Why did the two wait to go public with the emails for so long?
Why was no one from the New York Post willing to sign their names to the article?
Even if every part of the story is true, that just means that Hunter and/or the guy he was emailing were lying. Soon after the story became publicly known, Biden released proof of the fact that the meeting described in those emails did not actually happen. And keep in mind that that was the only part of this story that could be remotely damaging to Joe Biden; everything else was about Hunter and the guy he was emailing. And this wasn’t something that was hidden or not found for some time; this would have been publicly available to anyone who submitted a request for the information to the White House (something that should have been done before the story was published), and Biden presented this evidence pretty soon after the story was made public.
What is it about that story that makes you think that it's a "gotcha" moment to mention it? I mean, the sex worker part is
You’re the one who brought it up in the first place. No one was treating it like a “gotcha” moment.
Trump supporters weren’t racist he only ones to jump on stories.
I won’t speak with regards to all Trump supporters, but many of them were, in fact, racist. A lot of them were pretty vocally so, like David Duke.
Even if true, that doesn’t really help your case… I mean, that doesn’t make Trump look any better.
The whole Russia Russia Russia folder was obviously bull.
Tell that to Robert Mueller, the people who worked with Mueller in investigating such things, various prosecutors, the judges, and all the people who were convicted of or pled guilty to charges stemming from the Mueller report and relating to “[t]he whole Russia Russia Russia folder” and similar evidence/claims.
Seriously, even if parts of the Steele Dossier were completely wrong, a lot of it has been shown to be true, and people have been imprisoned in part because of those parts that were true or at least close to true.
On the post: Axios Parrots A Lot Of Dumb, Debunked Nonsense About Net Neutrality
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No, I still trust Fox News more than I trust Trump. OAN, no, but Fox is more likely to have a stopped-clock moment than Trump.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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Based on statements like these, you clearly have no idea what “religion” is.
Morally? Yes. Legally…? Not so much. At least not in this area. Some parts of the law really are pretty straightforward, and this particular case isn’t in a grey area legally speaking.
Assuming they’re absolute statements, then yes, it should be fairly easy to disprove them by simply giving counterexamples… if there are any counterexamples, that is.
Oh, but what am I saying? Surely you’re about to give us a counterexample if you’re so confident you’re right!
…Yes… That is indeed how you would refute an absolute statement… Now, what about those examples?
Uh, no. That’s not it at all. You can’t just say, “That’s an absolute statement, so all I need is to provide one counterexample to refute it,” then immediately conclude by saying that’s their problem and finishing off with an ad hominem. You do still need to actually provide that counterexample.
As far as the specific statement you reference, there are some exceptions regarding disclosure in commercial and legal settings, but that has nothing to do with Facebook, so while that technically means the absolute statement is wrong, the main point still stands.
On the post: Judge Ignores First Amendment, Misreads Town Law, While Ordering Resident To Remove 'Fuck Biden' Signs
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To be frank, I’m honestly lost on this.
Absolutely true, at least with regards to removing someone from your private property when they refuse to leave despite having no legal right to be there without your permission. But what does this have to do with Facebook?
Wait, wha—
Whoa, slow down there! I can’t take that kind of whiplash!
Literally two sentences earlier, you said the exact opposite! Make up your mind!
…At any rate, if someone is trespassing on your private property and refuses to leave when asked, in every state, the law explicitly says that you—as the property owner—are permitted to use force to remove them if you see fit, regardless of whether they gained entry legally or illegally, as long as the amount of force is appropriate. That still means that you can drag someone who is not using force from your property, but you couldn’t beat them up unless they started fighting (assuming legal entry and that they aren’t breaking the law by stealing or vandalizing your property or something; illegal entry is a completely different story). What is considered appropriate force depends not only on the context (including whether they entered legally or illegally, how much force—if any—they use, whether they were committing any crimes (besides trespassing) while on your property, the threat you perceived that they posed, etc.) but which state you’re in, but the basics are pretty much the same in all of them.
So yes, you legally can “be like a bouncer at a dive bar” (or any other bar) and legally use physical force to kick them out, so long as you don’t go overboard. It is absolutely, 100% legal.
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Legally speaking, you’re just plain wrong.
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But she didn’t vote to convict Trump. She voted to impeach (i.e. indict) him. There’s a huge difference between the two. The latter has a very low burden of proof, for example. A vote to impeach doesn’t mean “he’s definitely guilty and should be punished”, but that there’s enough evidence to move to the Senate for a trial.
Also, you misunderstand the difference between impeachment—a political process—and a criminal or civil court case—which is a legal one. The former is not actually required to hold to the same standards as the latter, including regarding speech. As such, there is no need to prove direct incitement. (Also, it’s not impossible that he could be said to have directly incited the crowd, so that part of the premise is equally flawed.)
Except she wasn’t removed soon after the impeachment. In fact, McCarthy explicitly refused to do so even when many House Republicans asked him to. Instead, they waited months later to do so. If that was the actual reason for her removal, this chain of events makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
It only makes sense if there was another reason for her removal over things between then and when she was ousted. To claim otherwise would be to ignore a ton of context.
“Trump haters”? You mean Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell? Did you actually read the article, or did you just see that it was an op-ed and dismiss it? Because no one in their right minds would call Graham or McConnell “Trump haters”.
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I’m not asking about fringes in the party in general. I’m asking about comparable fringes who are in office that are treated similarly by other elected officials of the same party for each party.
I’m also not saying you’re wrong per se. Just that you failed to prove your claim.
You were provided with explicit examples. All I’m saying is that, to counter that, you need to give explicit examples at least as good as the ones presented. You’re being too vague and broad for that to be an effective counterargument.
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First off, it’s all the way across the country, not half.
And while you are correct about people’s lax attitudes regarding security (I know from experience; I’m actually well aware of the tech aspect and work in tech), you overestimate Hunter’s income at that time, at least compared to his expenses.
That’s what I mean. That is something you have to explicitly enable. If you are involved in shady practices, why would you ever do this?
Still not something I would say is advisable or something I think that a guy who I would be willing to trust not to have intentionally altered the data to suit his purposes would do. As you said, it is unethical to do so even if it is legal, so if you’re willing to do that, I have no reason to trust you on what you found.
You’d be better off wiping the hard drive.
[Citation needed]
No idea what you mean about “the whole mess with Clinton on the tarmac not long ago” or how it would give anyone a dim view of federal law enforcement, nor what being a boxer has to do with anything, but
1) He still could have sent it to a pro-Trump outlet first, or at least sent copies of the data to the press (it’s not hard to copy the entire contents of a hard drive without messing with the data), and
2) this doesn’t make it any less suspicious. If anything, that’s actually kinda worse.
Hard to do? No. That said, someone who is able to open a laptop that isn’t his and that has even a modicum of security (no matter how bad it was) should know how to avoid doing so and how important it is to preserve it when presenting it as irrefutable evidence.
Additionally, you’re also missing a key point in all this: even if it is Hunter’s laptop, and that Hunter himself dropped it off, without that metadata, we have no reason to believe that the emails ever were on the actual laptop to begin with or that they weren’t altered in the process. Given that the known chain of custody is 1) a computer repairman who is well known to be a firm Trump supporter and 2) Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Trump who is well known to distort the truth to serve his interests, I have zero reason to believe that the emails were actually found on the laptop and said what we’re told they said.
That’s not a good reason. It’s a terrible reason. It shows that they weren’t actually concerned with the contents because they thought they were bad for the country but because they only cared about taking out Biden. This does not inspire confidence in people that they did not tamper with the emails to make Biden look bad.
Not at all. The executive branch of the federal government has no power to do anything like that, so Biden would not have additional options for reprisal against the NYP if he was elected vs if he was not.
Furthermore, there is no logical reason for them to fear reprisal at all a) if they didn’t harbor serious doubts about whether the story was true b) that would be mitigated by the author not signing their name to it (the NYP as a whole would be just as culpable/vulnerable, and through subpoenas or discovery, the identity of the author could be uncovered anyways).
So no, that is not a logical fear. That may actually be the reason, but there is nothing logical about it.
Au contraire, that was part of the proof that the meeting didn’t take place, not something that contradicted the offered proof. But feel free to actually provide a source that proves otherwise.
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The “squad” huh? Again, what makes them comparable to the likes of MTG, who spouts conspiracy theories with no evidence and repeatedly makes antisemitic claims? Or Matt Gaetz, or Trump, etc.
I’m not saying that there aren’t “fringe freaks” on both sides, but there is a difference between the most extreme elements of each side among those that actually hold office (as opposed to people merely running for office or have not been elected or appointed to some public office), and how extremist or bigoted statements or people in office are treated by other elected officials from their respective parties.
Now, feel free to give explicit examples of fringe Democrats who hold office not being held accountable in the same vein as MTG or Gaetz or Jim Jordan, but as it is, this is a false equivalence.
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H C is irrelevant (we’re talking ex-Presidents, not people related to ex-Presidents or anyone who used to be in the White House but left when next President was sworn in), and Obama didn’t comment on Trump while Trump was President until fairly late into Trump’s presidency.
But yeah, I figured that it was probably just a general musing. I was just giving my take as someone who does (on occasion) watch cable news.
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Considering the fact that a) most of the people who have been complaining about Hunter recently who were adults or teens at the time Biden was VP and Hunter was hired didn’t have anything to say about it until Trump and Rudy brought it up in an attempt to discredit Biden, and b) people did keep discussing Obama smoking pot throughout his Presidency (the frequency didn’t appear to decrease after he admitted it but rather after he left office), I have strong doubts about that, though I wish I had your optimism.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that there really isn’t anything to “admit” to.
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Although you later say that you’re referring to Hunter getting the job because his dad is Joe Biden, this is what the person you’re responding to was referring to:
Now, I don’t know what you meant by “association alone position of management”, the “emails [o]f potentially dirty dealings” is clearly referencing the laptop story, not how Hunter got his job. And that was shown to be completely false (at least insofar as it relates to Joe Biden himself).
As far as Hunter getting the job because of who his dad was at the time, that’s certainly plausible (though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is definitely the case), but that doesn’t mean Joe Biden or even Hunter Biden knew that or used Biden’s position to convince Burisma to give Hunter his position; it’s just as if not even more plausible that Burisma chose to hire Hunter of their own volition believing that it would give them an “in” with the then-VPOTUS without Hunter or Joe so much as implying anything of the sort. It’s also just as plausible that Hunter would have implied such a thing without Joe having anything to do with it.
In either of the latter two cases, there’d still be nothing for Biden to admit to. What would he even say? “Burisma thought that by hiring my son as a director, I would treat them differently in my position as Vice President—something that could be said about many companies hiring many children of people in power”? That’s not exactly groundbreaking, nor has any other politician in history ever said such a thing. It also tells us absolutely nothing about Biden or those politicians. It tells us about the companies, but that’s about it.
Regardless, and as I alluded to before, the idea that Hunter was only (or even primarily) hired on as a director because of his father is far from a foregone conclusion. It likely played a role, perhaps even a significant one, but despite his troubled past with drug addiction, Hunter actually did have plenty of qualifications.
He has a law degree from Yale, worked at a bank holding for two years (during which he rose to executive vice president), served at the Department of Commerce under Clinton and GWB with a focus on e-commerce, was a lobbyist for quite some time, was the vice-chairman of the board of directors for Amtrak, and has also been heavily involved with investment firms and venture capitalism, even becoming an interim CEO at one point as well as serving on boards of directors on several occasions.
All of this and other details can be found on the Wikipedia page for Hunter Biden, with the claims I’m referencing being sourced among several sources, including The New Yorker, USA Today, Politico, Vox, govinfo [dot] gov, CNN, Politifact, The New York Times, AP, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC News, and Financial Times. I won’t put any links because a) it’s incredibly easy to find and b) I don’t want this to be caught in the spam filter because it contains a bunch of hyperlinks.
So, again, it’s far from a foregone conclusion that Hunter being Biden’s son was the only or even primary reason he was hired onto the board of directors for Burisma. He already had lots of experience serving on the board of directors for multiple organizations, after all. As such, and given that Biden would likely be unaware of the idea even if true, why should Biden “admit” to anything?
Nepotism of varying kinds and degrees is and has been a real problem among politicians of both parties. However, that Biden won’t “admit” that “Hunter only got the job with Burisma because of who his dad is” is not exactly surprising or aggravating, nor does it make much sense for him to do so. It likely isn’t strictly true, but even if it was, no other politician has ever done it and yet been treated like Biden has, and it’s likely that Biden would have no idea that that was the case, regardless. Plus, it says absolutely nothing about Joe Biden himself.
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By whom? Neither Rudy nor the repairman claimed it was definitely Hunter Biden, so we still don’t know how it got from Hunter to the repairman (if it actually did).
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It may not be the biggest problem with the story, but the claim that Hunter went to a computer repair shop on the opposite side of the country, dropped off a laptop full of incriminating evidence to be repaired, left, and then never came back for it is still pretty hard to believe.
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It’s all fine and dandy that you’re consistent about it, but
I have no idea who you are, and this site did not exist in '96 or (AFAICT) '04, so… How am I supposed to find these old claims of yours where you complain about publicizing tax info?
Again, I have no idea how you expect me to find these old claims of yours.
But it really doesn’t matter because we already have multiple pieces of definitive proof that Obama was born in Hawaii, not Africa, so regardless of what his brother, his agent, or his “author card” (whatever that is) says, the fact is that he was born on American soil, not in Africa.
With that said, what “agent” are you talking about? Obama was a lawyer (who generally don’t have agents) before he became a politician, and I’m pretty sure that he wrote his first book after starting in politics, so before his political career, he wouldn’t have had an agent or an “author card”. I could be wrong about that, but this seems doubtful. Speaking of, what even is an “author card”, anyways? And how would it even be relevant?
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You keep failing to understand that
a) there is no evidence that Hunter was still addicted to—let alone still using—crack in the past decade or so, let alone using enough crack to cause a blackout while still being coherent enough to take the laptop to a repair shop across the country at the time of the alleged incident;
b) nothing in the story suggests that the person delivering the laptop to the repair shop was high at the time, which should have been the case if your idea was true;
c) that still wouldn’t explain a lot of Hunter’s actions, like going to the other side of the country to get the laptop repaired, or not doing anything about the fact that a laptop that he had before the blackout and that contained incriminating evidence is no longer in his possession after said blackout, among many, many other things;
d) that wouldn’t explain any of the actions taken by the computer repairman or Rudy Giuliani, including (but not limited to):
i) the repairman—who at the time had already finished fixing the laptop but still had no idea that the laptop even could have belonged to Hunter or that the guy who dropped it off was Hunter or otherwise connected to Biden in some way—risked being brought to court or jail for unlawful access of someone’s computer by deciding to investigate the contents of this random computer belonging to some random guy just because he failed to come pick it up;
ii) the repairman first contacted Rudy Giuliani—not the press, not law enforcement, not the denizens of the internet—to reveal this damning and important information to him and to him alone;
iii) Rudy and the repairman both sat on this information for quite some time before going to the press with it (it doesn’t even appear that they had immediately contacted law enforcement), which makes absolutely no sense; and
iv) rather than showing the relevant emails in their entirety or letting anyone else have access to the original emails or to the laptop itself, the two only showed captures of the emails that lacked any of the metadata that could be used to authenticate them as having been sent to/by Hunter, and that the contents were unaltered;
e) no one at the New York Post was willing to sign their name to the article, which makes no sense if they had any faith that the story was likely to be true; and
f) even if literally everything else in the story was true, the fact is that the contents of the emails were false (whether it was Hunter, whoever brought the laptop over (who may not have been Hunter—neither Rudy nor the repairman have said that that was necessarily the case), the repairman, or Rudy Giuliani is irrelevant; it’s still false), and they were known to be demonstrably false soon after the story broke, as publicly available documents from the White House show that the meeting described in those emails did not take place, so this says absolutely nothing about Joe Biden at all.
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Nope! That’s just flat-out wrong.
While the details vary from state to state (specifically regarding warnings and what is or isn’t reasonable force in certain situations), once a person, who is physically on property you—as a private citizen/resident or as a private corporation/organization—own, refuses to leave after being told to leave, they become a trespasser who no longer has any legal right to be there, and you are legally allowed to use whatever force you see fit (within reason) to physically remove that person from your property (as well as any of their possessions that are also on your property as you see fit). It doesn’t matter whether or not they ever had a legal right to be there to begin with or even if you personally invited them. While that can change what amount of force is permissible (unlawful entry, threats or violence against you or someone else, and the presence of firearms for the trespasser to use will generally allow more force—even lethal force—to be used against the trespasser), there is essentially always some amount of physical force that you can use to evict a trespasser.
That’s not to say there are no exceptions to that rule (depending on the time they were there unlawfully, for example), but the fact is that not only is it not never justified to use physical force to remove an unresisting but noncompliant person from your property, almost the exact opposite is true: usually, you can do so (at least as long as fair warning is given, though that depends on the state).
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We’re just asking for an example of an elected Democrat who has been publicly black supremacist and not been denounced and/or punished immediately by other Democratic leaders. That’s what would need to happen before this is even close to a true equivalence.
But it’d actually have to go further. They’d have to be some sort of conspiracy theorist on top of that.
Why? Because MTG, Gaetz, Jordan, et al are vocally conspiracy theorists but (with just one or two exceptions), almost no Republican politicians or Republican leaders have denounced or punished them for any of the crazy thing they’ve said or done. They also hold elected positions in government.
This suggests that the R party doesn’t consider being a conspiracy theorist (or a white supremacist, or even both) to be a disqualification for being a government official within their party.
While I don’t agree with calling the R party the Q party for other reasons, you should still present evidence for your points. They’ve presented examples to support their view, so your counters should match theirs to be effective.
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Not at all. By which I mean that it doesn’t make the scenario significantly more believable.
So many problems.
Yes, Hunter was—at least at one point—addicted to crack cocaine. However, by all accounts, he appears to have been staying clean for quite some time. Drug addicts can overcome their addiction, and it’s been long enough since the last known instance of him having used the stuff that his past addiction is no longer all that convincing.
Even if that is plausible, that in no way explains how or why he and his laptop would end up all the way across the country from his home and workplace to where the computer repair shop is.
It also doesn’t explain how he not only did that but also got back home, all while still sufficiently high that he’d no longer remember any of it later.
Even if true, how didn’t he notice the fact that he is now missing one laptop. Even assuming—without conceding—that everything else you said about how someone high on crack would behave and would later forget what happened while high once the effects wear off, once he’s not high, I’m pretty sure that he’d notice that his laptop is gone. Even if he no longer remembered the details of how his laptop broke and so he went to drop it off at a computer repair shop across the country from his residence and then came all the way back, he’d still notice that he had a laptop before that time period and that it was no longer in his possession after that time period. He’d also probably remember that he did get high at some point before (even if it is just immediately before) this period of blackout. He would also the fact that some money went missing to cover the costs of travel to and from that area. At that point, he could reasonably track those expenses to learn about the plane ride and what the destination was, infer that the laptop went missing in that area, and either report it as missing to law enforcement or ask around at places he likely would have been at some point. He may not recall the entire incident, but he’d recall enough to infer that he lost his laptop across the country from his residence during a time period.
This in no way explains why the laptop would still have such evidence on it in the way the repairman claimed it was so that he could access it. The way the emails were allegedly stored on the laptop would have required active steps on Hunter’s part that make no sense to perform, crackhead or not, and he would have had to have done so years before the laptop ended up in that repair shop.
This is related to 4 and 5: Hunter would surely notice that a laptop that he knew contained incriminating evidence was missing and would have tried his best to find or retrieve said laptop. He would also have had means at his disposal to do a decent job of doing so.
And that is just a non-exhaustive list of the problems with that part of the story you were referring to and the parts about Hunter’s actions. There are still a number of other problems with the whole deal, none of which would be remotely helped by saying, “Hunter was on crack.” Here are just a few:
Why did the computer repairman decide to investigate the laptop in the first place? Keep in mind that—according to the story—he had no idea it was Hunter’s laptop until after he started investigating its contents beyond what was necessary to repair it, and the laptop had already been repaired by then. Additionally, doing so is unethical and potentially illegal (or unlawful), so why would he risk doing so with a random laptop some guy he didn’t recognize had dropped off just because the guy didn’t show up to pick it up?
According to the story, once the repairman found the incriminating emails, the first person he chose to contact regarding this information was… Rudy Giuliani. Why not take it to the press or law enforcement first? Ensuring that only Trump’s personal attorney—already known for being biased and untrustworthy—and himself—also a known Trump supporter—would be the first people to know about this makes no sense.
Why weren’t the emails that allegedly came from the laptop presented as they originally were? Without the metadata from the emails, there is no way of verifying their authenticity. And this had to have been an active step.
Why did the two wait to go public with the emails for so long?
Why was no one from the New York Post willing to sign their names to the article?
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You’re the one who brought it up in the first place. No one was treating it like a “gotcha” moment.
I won’t speak with regards to all Trump supporters, but many of them were, in fact, racist. A lot of them were pretty vocally so, like David Duke.
Tell that to Robert Mueller, the people who worked with Mueller in investigating such things, various prosecutors, the judges, and all the people who were convicted of or pled guilty to charges stemming from the Mueller report and relating to “[t]he whole Russia Russia Russia folder” and similar evidence/claims.
Seriously, even if parts of the Steele Dossier were completely wrong, a lot of it has been shown to be true, and people have been imprisoned in part because of those parts that were true or at least close to true.
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