oromagi

• ah, the battle cry of every conspiracy theorist
  

• This is false.  The reason you won't find this story on CNN or NBC is because there is no truth to this statement.
  
• You cite for evidence comedian Jimmy Dore's show. 
  
• This show has rock-bottom reputation for truth telling, promoting many, many conspiracy theories such as
  
• Syria's use of chemical weapons was a false flag operation
  
• The murder of Seth Rich was a DNC conspiracy
  
• Joe Biden hosted a party in black face
  
• etc.
  
• Dore demonstrates at the beginning of the podcast that he has never heard of Eritrea, but now he's going to instruct us on Ethiopian politics.  You should have stopped listening right there.
  
• Nevertheless, Dore's show does not support your claim, which I assume you invented from whole cloth
  
• Dore cites a Devex article which is fairly good journalism from a pro-developmental aid point of view
  
• Here's that article:
  
• https://www.devex.com/news/exclusive-internal-report-shows-eu-fears-losing-africa-over-ukraine-10369
  
• Here's the opening graph Dore cites:
  
• "With Europe and Africa increasingly split over the war in Ukraine, European diplomats have argued in a confidential report for a more “transactional” approach to foreign aid that would tie funding for African countries to their willingness to work “based on common values and a joint vision.”
  
• Some EU diplomats  suggest in one behind the scenes memo that some foreign aid should be linked to common values is a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, fucking way from "humanitarian aid will now be stripped"
  
• Why made you tell this lie?
  
• YESTERDAY, the same day that Dore's show broadcast, the US gave Ethiopia $488 million in new humanitarian aid to Ethiopia.  NBC and CNN did report this story, your podcast simply ignored the most salient news on the subject and for some unknown reason, you are claiming the opposite of what's true.
  
• All of that bullshit aside, I certainly hope that when my State Department gives my taxpayer's money to foreign countries, that they tie that money to a whole fucking lot of support of American issues.  If you are pro-Democracy or pro-Capitalism,  then you want Russia's invasion of Europe to fail as quickly as possible and the dictator Putin's regime to collapse as quickly as possible.  The future good health of the US and Europe depend on Ukraine winning this war.   Countries who do not come to the aid of Europe when she is invaded have no reasonable expectation much less cause for outraged demand for free shit from Europe or the US.
  

• Epps was hardly the first.  Social media recorded more than one million posts demanding the storming of the capitol from Christmas to Jan 6, including many explicit calls for violence and specific planning for violence against Pence and Pelosi specifically and police and Congress generally.  Harvard's  Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy reports that many of the same online personalities that organized the Unite the Right rally and the Gamergate online harassment campaign were key figures in stirring the mob to violence.
  

• Here's the video:  https://youtu.be/2jbhxSht944
  
• This is  the night of Jan 5th where he says "We need to go in to the Capitol."  Even in this video we can see that Epps's message was largely de-escalating and discouraging violence.
  
• Epps is on plenty of video on Jan 6th but his rhetoric is overwhelmingly de-escalating.  At one point, he is recorded whispering in the ear of one of the most violent seditionists at the barriers but both parties have since testified that Epps was trying to calm him down.
  

• A very popular accusation throughout Jan 6th and very telling... people .who think what they're doing  is on the up and up don't usually go around accusing strangers of being cops.
  

• This is false.   Since Brandenburg v Ohio, it's not incitement unless the lawlessness is imminent. Epps' comment may seem provocative out of context but since that comment wasn't made at the Capitol and he didn't make it on Jan 6th, this comes nowhere near any kind of criminal offense.
  

• Bullshit.  Almost everybody charged broke into the US Capitol and those few who didn't  seem to consistently have police violence or weapons charges.  Epps didn't go into the Capitol, refrained from violence when almost everybody else was attacking cops, is on video multiple time trying to calm the crowd down and de-escalate violence.
  
• Here's a list of people charged
  
• https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-the-arrested-and-their-stories
  
• on Jan 8th, Epps discovered he was wanted by the FBI and called in to the FBI hotline
  
• Would the FBI put one of their own agents on a Wanted list?
  
• The FBI interviewed Epps soon after.
  
• The Jan 6th Committee has interview Epps twice and reported that his testimony is consistent with fact established by video and seditionists.
  
• The FBI has a lot of Epps on video in the first hour of the Capitol attack but all of it records Epps discouraging violence and lawlessness.  If Epps committed any crimes, they don't seem to appear on any of the many videos of him.
  

• "Many have alleged"  is false.  "Tucker Carlson has repeatedly alleged" is more accurate.  All the major media outlets have investigated Carlson's claim and called bullshit.  The only non-Russians still propagating this propaganda are Tucker and Trump.
  
• Let's be sure to note that FOX News lawyer have successfully argued in court  no reasonable person would believe that Tucker Carlson is making statements of fact.  Let's be sure to apply Carlson's standard as advertised.
  

• threatening to vote bomb debates as revenge for voting against him
  
• insulting me in debates he has nothing to with,
  
• threatening me with "war,"  whatever that's supposed to mean
  
• when I complain about him directing remarks at me while blocking me, he unblocks me to make replies and then blocks me to prevent response.  
  
• Childish tantrum behavior, really
  

• I'm going to assume that RationalMadman was the aggressor/provocateur in whatever nonsense he's complaining about here.
  

• Certainly, Trump brought a more corrupting influence than any prior figure in American history as the Jan 6 hearings demonstrate, the overwhelming majority of Govt is pretty much focused on doing their job and surprisingly difficult to corrupt.  
  
• "Hopelessly corrupt" is just histrionic hyperbole.
  

• Total delusion.  Government is always unpopular  in a democracy but only Trump's seditionists can be said to be opposed to the US Govt and that's 10-15% of the electorate, tops.   The majority of those seditionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan 6th now regret their opposition and claim that Trump tricked them with his Big Lie.
  

• According to what moral standard.  I can't think a objectively less moral (or Christian) standard than Evangelical/Identity American Christianity popular with the Right Wing.
  

• No wars in the ME now, so much for never-ending.
  

• Bullshit.  Trump tried to get us out of NATO, UN, WHO, capitulated in Afghanistan and Syria, knowingly invited foreign spies into the heart of US policy.  Trump promised American carnage and delivered.  Trump actively and deliberately weakened US influence in every international political sphere.
  

• You already said that the "vast majority" opposed US govt, which is way past "beginning to lose faith."
  
• Let's agree that faithless and disloyal Americans have a moral obligation to move to a country they can believe in- Russia springs to mind.

• Pay attention.  The Jan 6th hearing show without a doubt that not only was there never any evidence that the election stolen but that ALL of the President's families, friends, and advisors were telling him it was over for certain and forever with 48 hours after the election.  Only crazy outsiders like Guiliani and Mr Mypillow were claiming fraud and now we know that even Giuliani was privately advising Republicans that it was all made up "We just don't have the evidence"  That is, when Cruz and Abbott and Desantis and Tucker Carlson were telling everybody in December 2020 that there was election fraud and we have to get to the bottom of it, they already knew for a fact that there was no election fraud and they were all just pushing the lie in the hopes of overthrowing the Constitution.  "glaring stolen election" is an immoral, unpatriotic lie without any foundation in reality.
  
• There is zero possibility that Trump won the election.  He knows it for a fact and continues to lie for the benefit of low-wattage suckers, just like Augustus claimed fake offenses to justify outrageous moral violations on a massive scale.

• Because in your mind, "let's protect schoolchildren from mass slaughter" can only mean "let's take away your guns."
  

• I don't know what you base that on but let's agree that would be the nightmare scenario for all good and loyal people across the world.
  

• Contradicting your prior claims of moral leader.  It can't be both unless you bloodthirst a virtue.
  

• Defiled means desecrate or rape.  I think you want a different word there.  When it comes to divorce, Augustus was a nasty, death-dealing hypocrite.
  

• Fuck that noise. To the horror of every pious person in history, he made declared his own father a God and forced people to worship him as a Son of God.  Augustus made certain that he would be worshipped as a God after his death.  If you don't understand that Dionysianism, and Mithridatism, and Christianity and all those "Son of God" claims were a direct reaction to Augustus' assertion of divinity than you haven't studied much religion.  Hey, if some general in Rome can just declare himself God, then I guess all bets are off and we can make our own, new religions.
  
• Augustus violated the sanctity of the Temple of Vestal Virgins to investigate his political enemies
  
• He name himself High Priest of Rome in violation of Roman law that you couldn't also have political office and then effectively destroyed the priesthood's power base (and much of Roman religious tradition with it) by simply not participating in the many rituals.  Augustus didn't respect Roman religion, he declared himself and his self-interest the religion of Rome.

• porn, delayed marriages, fewer children are all objective social goods.  The world is objectively overpopulated by humans and we must actively work to decrease population.  Nobody suicided with the frequency of Romans.  Augustan Rome was totally pro-suicide.  Its true that inflation is up and we might have recession in reaction to pandemics but the US economy is still the strongest in the world and growing.  Whatever "worsening economic situation" is supposed to mean, the American economy today is still better than most other times and places in economic history.
  

• Let's keep it that way, shall we/
  

• Yes but as we here and in many other postings by you, your grasp of history and politics is way off base, total fantasy really.

• Rome wasn't really discovered by explorers.  The first Romans and Etruscans and Latins were very likely direct descendants of Stone Age peoples who'd been living there for 14,000 years.  By contrast, America was built on remains of the multiple 14,000 year old cultures that mostly died from European diseases in a few short years after contact.  Always been there vs. took over after wiping out everybody are very different origin stories.
  
• I don't know what "cultural exhaustion" is supposed to be a euphemism for but I see no evidence for such a claim in Rome or US today.
  
• Likewise, I don't see any evidence for the elite being unpopular in Rome then or in the US now.  Trump and Kim Kardashian and  Elon Musk and Johnny Depp are the elites of today and frankly I wish they were a lot less popular- I could certainly stand to hear less about those assholes.
  

• Rome conquered whole peoples and enslaved the survivors and their Gods until they were made Roman.  This is the opposite notion to inviting immigrants to live and worship side by side with different cultures in freedom as they please.
  
• In any totalitarian state, every good man is a criminal eventually.
  

• The Roman Republic admired Lucius Junius Brutus for overthrowing his tyrant uncle and founding the Republic in 509 BC.
  
• The American Colonies admired Marcus Junius Brutus for assassinating the tyrant (and his mom's boyfriend) Julius Caesar in 44 BC
  
• This Brutus committed suicide after losing one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history.  According the Suetonius, Augustus chopped off his head and let it rot in front in front of a statue of his Uncle Julius.  
  
• That is, as with Jesus, you are admiring the executioner of the man the Founding Fathers admired.
  

• Well, it lasted 500 years- the longest single stretch of continuous government and peaceful transfer of power in the history of mankind and an unprecedented continuous run of increasing prosperity, innovation, and military victories.  It was this incredibly long-lasting and powerful example that the American Founding Fathers consciously emulated.
  

• Put another way, the people of Rome weren't trying to create an independent power base, they just rejected the wisdom of allowing the ultra-wealthy to rule absolutely.
  

• Total bullshit  Three of the wealthiest super-billionaires coordinated to end free trade in Rome and force huge portions of the Roman economy under their monopoly (of course, many powerful men had been trying the same over the previous century, that was the game).   When Crassus died with a mouthful of molten gold, the other two went to war with each other over who got to be billionaire supreme.  That civil war went on for twenty years, pretty much every major player on every side died a horrible, violent death along with hundreds of thousands of others and Augustus, after betraying many friends and alliances,  after executing en masse most of the Roman upper class and taking all their stuff, and then wisely overpaying the most massive military ever assembled, Augustus crowned himself sole survivor and Emperor Supreme over pretty  much everyone and everything at the point of a sharp and well-bloodied spear, to the great disappointment of twenty generations of Roman ancestors.  To say that Augustus was motivated by religion or ideology is a pure lie. To pretend that Augustus didn't win by  simply being the most corrupt and morally evil player in the game is to piss in the eye of History.
  

• He had half the Senate  executed  in 43 BC and 2000 Equites (essentially, upper class landowners) and took all their land and money.   Then he did the same again 3 years later, another 300 senators and a further 5000 elites and took all of their shit too.  
  
• When DrFranklin says, "curbed the Senate," he means "executed  over 3 years 600 members of a 600 member Senate."
  

• But that's just words for suckers to believe.  Chastity and monogamy were for wives and other slaves.  Rape was perfectly legal as long as the victim was of lower social status (and once you are Emperor, everybody is of lower social status- see how that works?)
  
• Augustus divorced his first wife for politics, kicking off the Perusine War which ended with Augustus starving his ex-wife's home town to death and then burning it to the ground (After, of course, taking everything they ever owned).
  
• Augustus divorced his second wife for politics on the same day she gave birth to his only child.  In spite of Augustus' "traditional values" that only child ended up being such a famously unstoppable slut that Augustus finally (perhaps correctly) accused her of trying to kill him and put her in jail for the rest of her life.  (The story of all family values in a nutshell).
  
• Tacitus and Cassius Dio suggest that Augustus' third wife had some role in the deaths of Augustus' nephew and three of his grandsons with the intention of promoting her own son by an earlier marriage, Tiberius, to the throne.  The same two sources suggest that she may have also poisoned Augustus.  The evidence is speculative but all that speculation depends on Rome's understanding that Augustus' home life was far more Game of Thrones than Leave It to Beaver.
  

• Again, why believe Augustus' propaganda?
  
• Antony was his father's right-hand man, famously the man who gave his dad's funeral oration.  Antony and Augustus had made oaths to one another to split the Empire and rule together, Augustus in the West and Antony in the East.  Augustus claimed "foreign traitor" but had twice swore an oath that Antony could rule from Alexandria so Antony was only foreign at Augustus' explicit demand. 
  
• If having an affair with Cleopatra was in any way de-legitimizing, we should also note that Augustus' father also had an affair with the same amazing woman twenty years earlier so any legitimacy to these claims delegitimizes Augustus to the same degree.
  
• In fact, Augustus' father's affair with Cleopatra produced a son, Julius' heir and the Last Pharaoh of Egypt.  Augustus promised his little brother that he could still rule over Egypt in order to lure him to Alexandria where Augustus promptly assassinated his little brother and took all of his shit.
  
• Needless to say, Augustus also took all of the shit his father's best friend and his father's ex-girlfriend ever had.  In fact, Augustus declared the entire Nile River his personal property, all the Pyramids, the City of Alexandria- all of it was his private property by law. 
  

• Agreed.
  

• SEMANTICS is the study of the meaning of language and to the extent that the majority of debates here fail to define their terms, much argument on this site is correctly devoted to semantics.  A "semantic argument" is usually just special pleading for a non-dictionary definition of a term.  Dismissing an argument as "mere semantics" is as feckless as dismissing an argument as "mere logic."  Every good argument is built on very specific meanings of every term found in the thesis.
  
• FALLACY is fault in reason but claiming fallacy should be the beginning of any counter-argument, not an argument itself.  Since fallacious arguments can still be true, any claim of fallacy, formal or otherwise, needs to be held up against thesis and shown how that fallacy invalidates the argument.   Many claims of informal fallacy on this site are superficial to an unconvincing degree.  Any formal fallacy can be parsed.  Any informal fallacy can be shown to be ambiguous, presumptuous, irrelevant, etc.
  

"There is no such thing as an “impartial” commission when people like Adam Schiff get to be on it."

• The major premise is yours not mine.  The minor premise is well-documented fact so the conclusion derived from your premise is inescapable.
  
• "A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is "a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one."
  
• I am not refuting your argument. In fact, I totally disagree with your premise, I am simply pointing out the logical conclusion of your own premise.  That's not a straw man,  it is not even an argument.  It's just pointing out how you tie yourself up in knots of self-contradiction trying to defend treason.
  

Filibustering doesn’t exist in the House of Representatives..

• "In the aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack, the proposal to form a bicameral commission failed due to a filibuster from Republicans in the Senate. In late May, when it had become apparent that the filibuster would not be overcome, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that she would appoint a select committee to investigate the events as a fallback option."
  

There is no such thing as an “impartial” commission when people like Adam Schiff get to be on it.

• You concede that the Benghazi Committee was not impartial.
  

Pelosi offered to negotiate appointment power in exchange for bipartisan support for a Select Committee but McCarthy, fearing Trump's wrath, stupidly refused. 

“The Speaker shall appoint all se- lect, joint, and conference committees ordered by the House. At any  time after an original appointment, the Speaker may remove Members, Dele- gates, or the Resident Commissioner from, or appoint additional Members, Delegates, or the Resident Commis- sioner to, a select or conference com- mittee.”

• So now you've contradicted yourself regarding McCarthy's "right to appoint"  You now agree that McCarthy had no rights Pelosi was bound to respect in terms of appointment to the Jan 6 committee and that Pelosi had every right to exclude targets of the investigation from the investigation itself .  Pelosi negotiated her picks in exchange for participation in the Benghazi show trials.  We agree that McCarthy held exclusive appointment power then as Pelosi holds exclusive appointment power now- which destroys any of those claims of official illegitimacy Tucker told you to believe.
  

It is not illegal to search legal arguments.

Was it illegal for the State of Texas to file a lawsuit to the Supreme Court regarding the election? I don’t think so.

• Super illegal.  Texas has no right to challenge other State's sovereign right to determine election results.  The Supreme Court ruled in two sentences that Paxton's claims were not "judicially cognizable" which is SCOTUS for "bullshit."  Paxton and every single Republican who signed on understood that the lawsuit was unconstitutional before it was written.  No State has ever tried to claim an interest in another State's election results before because such a claim  is clearly forbidden in the Constitution.
  
• We now know for certain that Giuliani and Powell were secretly advising Republicans of the truth, that no evidence of any kind supported Trump's claim of fraud on a scale sufficient to overturn the election, even as they appeared nightly on FOX News and convinced the dull-witted to believe their big lie.  Abbott and Paxton KNEW the TRUTH of the election results from Trump's own lawyers and NEVERTHELESS filed a a Supreme Court Petition inviting the Trump friendly court to overthrow American Democracy with insanely bullshit arguments such as
  
• "The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m. on November 4, 2020, is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000. For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004). See Decl. of Charles J. Cicchetti, Ph.D. (“Cicchetti Decl.”) at ¶¶ 14-21, 30-31. See App. 4a-7a, 9a. 11. The same less than one in a quadrillion statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin— independently exists when Mr. Biden’s performance in each of those Defendant States is compared to former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 general election and President Trump’s performance in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Again, the statistical improbability of Mr. Biden winning the popular vote in these four States collectively is 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0005. Id. 10-13, 17-21, 30-31"
  
• Paxton knew for a fact how the American people voted and deliberately promoted conspiracy theories that he knew were fake to give cover to his fellow conspirators looking for to usurp power.
  
• Not just illegal, I can't think of a more patently fraudulent claim ever brought before the Supreme Court with a straight face.