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@TheUnderdog
Left-wing politics support social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.
Right-wing politics is generally defined by support of the view that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority or tradition.
By French tradition dating from the Tennis Court oaths at the beginning of the French Revolution, LEFT is human rights before property rights, RIGHT is property rights before human rights.
If you support the proposition that "all men were created equal" then you are a left winger. If you are loyal to the principle of democracy, then you are a left-winger, by definition. If you are a faithful Christian, then you are a left-winger by definition. No people who respect themselves and their personal autonomy would ever want to be dominated by government and no practitioner of the golden rule would support domination according to social hierarchy since they themselves would not want to be dominated.
Le Pen is an economic nationalist. She's no capitalist. She believes the state should run the machines of industry and intervene in the economy at every level. Le Pen believes that banks should be prevented from investing in markets. She believes investors be should restricted to investing in France. She's against privatization of any govt service. She opposes the admission of Ukraine into NATO and calls for French friendship with Putin's dictatorship. Le Pen would ban the wearing of yarmulkes or other religious outer wear. Le Pen doesn't sound like a friend of liberty to me.
You might call it far-left from the perspective of the far-right, but there were many candidates far left of these two and other candidates far right of these two- more left than right, generally speaking although in France there's nationalist liberal-conservative parties so the spectrum is more diverse than in the US. There's no doubt the French center is far left of the American center, which is all you really saying here. LePen has moved steadily left since 2011 in effort to make herself more palatable but can you trust political changes of mind made only for political gain?
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@TheMorningsStar
That isn't happening. To jump from that to "they don't even want Republicans to debate in the primaries" is a giant leap.
Here's nine Republican frontrunners in Governor and Senate primaries, mostly in swing states, who have dropped out of primary debates in recent weeks:
- Joe Lombardo, front-running Republican for Nevada Gov.
- Jim Pillen, front-running Republican for Nebraska Gov.
- Dr Mehmet Oz, front-running Republican for Pennsylvania Senator
- Herschel Walker, front-running Republican for Georgia Senator
- Tedd Budd, front-running Republican for North Carolina Senator
- Pat McCrory, former NC Gov in 2nd place won't debate if Budd won't
- MIke DeWine, Ohio Governor
- Rep. Jim Renacci won't debate if DeWine won't
- Brad Little, Idaho Governor
As I said, stop just reading left-wing news and actually fact check things for yourself.
My facts are checked. You are the one parroting the RNC without research.
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@TheMorningsStar
The RNC has made it clear that they are open for debating still, but that the debates must be neutral and held at an appropriate time. Seriously, stop just reading left-wing news and actually fact check things for yourself.
If you had read the article, you would have learned that Republicans are refusing to debate Republicans in the primaries so your argument that these Republicans are simply holding out for neutral debates before voting starts stands as disproved. All Republicans, no early voting and yet the Trumpists are running scared from any venue where they might get asked a public policy question.
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@thett3
On a related, funny note, the web address for the commission on presidential debates is debates.org because this websites dead ancestor still owns the debate.org.
It is funny to think that our little cadre would have any influence in American politics, even if just a domain name. Seems fair, though since DDO does way more debates than they do.
Perhaps that domain name will be available soon
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WILL THERE be PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES in 2024?
Republicans cast doubt on the prospect
David Jackson
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – The Republican Party took a step closer Thursday to eliminating presidential debates in the fall of 2024, voting to stop working with the foundation that has organized such debates since 1987.
"The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates," said Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
The move underscores how former President Donald Trump reshaped and continues to reshape the GOP, with his complaints about debates in 2016 and 2020 laying the groundwork for the possible withdrawal of Republican candidates in the future.
McDaniel and other party members who voted unanimously to withdraw from cooperation with the commission said they want "freer and fairer debate platforms." But it is unclear who might organize a new set of debates and whether the Democrats and their presidential candidate would agree to a new sponsor.
The RNC is also requiring Republicans to state in writing that they will only participate in party-sanctioned debates.
The Republicans are responding in part to complaints by Trump, who protested microphone muting and other aspects of his two debates against President Joe Biden in 2020. Trump refused to participate in one scheduled debate because the commission decided to hold it virtually instead of in-person because of the COVID pandemic.
And before the series of debates in 2016, Trump said he would prefer to face Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton without moderators because they were apt to "rig" the set-up against him.
McDaniel said the party would continue to sanction debates among GOP candidates competing in party primaries. This decision applies only to general elections sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Democrats said Republicans are just looking for excuses to avoid a presidential debate.
Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that "after years of having their toxic policies exposed on the national stage, the RNC has decided they would rather hide their ideas and candidates from voters."
In recent negotiations, Republicans said they wanted the first debates of 2024 to be held before the start of early voting periods. They also sought more say-so over the appointment of debate moderators, claiming past ones have been biased against Republicans.
The commission said it was set up in 1987 "to ensure, for the benefit of the American electorate, that general election debates between or among the leading candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States are a permanent part of the electoral process."
Prior to Thursday's vote, the Republicans have sought to discourage corporate contributions to the commission.
When the Republicans threatened to withdraw from the process in February, the Commission on Presidential Debates said its "plans for 2024 will be based on fairness, neutrality and a firm commitment to help the American public learn about the candidates and the issues."
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DEBATE-DODGING TAKES off in MIDETERM CAMPAIGNS
The traditional candidate debate might be on its last legs.
The traditional candidate debate might be on its last legs.
A time-honored staple of political campaigns, the traditional candidate debate, appears to be on life support.
Republican candidates this year are increasingly ducking out of primary debates or demanding greater control over the terms than ever before, raising questions about the future of an institution that has long been a central part of American campaigns.
It isn’t just the traditional reluctance of front-runners to share a stage with their challengers that’s to blame. Instead, a confluence of factors is jeopardizing the once universally agreed notion that candidate debates are a valuable practice in elections.
The media — a traditional arbiter of many debates — is so reviled by Republican primary voters that campaigns now recognize there may be more to gain from criticizing the process than participating. There’s also been a surge in self-funding and celebrity candidates in 2022, whose inexperience at debating and fears of campaign-ending missteps may be leading them to dodge debates altogether. Then there’s the shadow of Donald Trump, whose complaints that debates are rigged is now the party line, with the Republican National Committee throwing the prospect of presidential debates in two years into question.
“The media will fight like cats and dogs, because it’s the last thing in a campaign environment they have any control over,” said Dave Carney, the Republican strategist who advises Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, whose campaign is suggesting he may not debate his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, in the fall. “But in 10 years, when debates don’t happen anymore, no one will notice, voters won’t notice or care.”
Debates, Carney said, are “crazy … It’s like having your candidates do pet tricks for the media, and I’m against them.”
So far this year, in more than a half-dozen Senate, House and governor’s races across the electoral map, Republican candidates have skipped primary debates, seemingly with few repercussions.
Former football star Herschel Walker, the front-runner in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary, has refused to debate his primary opponents. So has Jim Pillen, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska, and Mike DeWine, the incumbent governor of Ohio. In North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) ducked a Senate primary debate last month. Mehmet Oz, the TV personality-turned Pennsylvania Senate candidate, says he wants to debate Anthony Fauci — who isn’t running against him — but has skipped debating the Republicans who are. And in Nevada’s race for governor, Joe Lombardo, the Clark County sheriff, was a no-show at a debate among Republicans last month.
In Pennsylvania, four GOP campaigns for governor sent a joint letter to the media recently laying out the conditions under which they would participate. One of them was a no-brainer: No one who has endorsed or donated to one of the candidates on stage can serve as a moderator.
The other criteria, however, were more constraining on the media or any other entity that sought to host a debate. There could be no questions with answers shorter than 30 seconds. Moderators must be registered Republicans who live in the state, and must not have spoken negatively about any of the candidates on stage. Nor can the moderator work “for an organization that has maligned one of the candidates.”
Republicans like Walker have suggested they will debate in their general elections, if they advance. But in a midterm year in which Republicans are favored across the electoral map, many candidates may have little imperative to agree to a debate in the fall. Already, it’s clear they no longer consider it a requirement of a campaign.
“In general, most candidates do not feel they get a fair shake from the mainstream media,” said Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. “So, I think you put yourself at risk going up … against a Democrat in debates, depending on who the moderators are going to be.”
He said, “Just from a strategic perspective, there’s not a whole lot of reason to give your opponents an opportunity to attack you or make a mistake or set yourself up on an issue that may backfire against you … Why put yourself at risk for anything?”
In Nebraska, Pillen’s campaign said the only thing he was missing by declining a primary debate was “political theater.”
In the past, debate avoidance has come at the cost of bad publicity, and some debate skippers are getting a taste of that this year. Earlier this month, Dan Moulthrop, president of the board of the Ohio Debate Commission, penned an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch blistering DeWine for his refusal to participate, under the headline, “It’s bad for democracy.”
A spokesperson for one of Walker’s opponents in Georgia, Gary Black, was quoted in the local news saying Walker “isn’t smart enough to debate anybody.” The Philadelphia Inquirer headlined its piece on a recent debate, “What we learned from a Pa. Republican Senate debate that Oz and [David] McCormick skipped,” while in Nebraska, Ryan Horn, a Republican media strategist, said Pillen was only hurting himself.
“He’s not sharing the stage with Edmund Burke. Winston Churchill’s not going to be up there,” Horn said. “We’re talking about [gubernatorial candidates] Charles Herbster and Theresa Thibodeau.”
In Minnesota, where five GOP candidates did debate, in December, Gregg Peppin, a Republican strategist in the state, said, “I would hope that we don’t get to a position where we can’t have spirited robust debates among candidates on the challenges that face our country. If we get to that point, we’ll have really lost something in our democracy.”
But even Republicans who lament the decline of debates as a tentpole of political campaigns can see the logic in some candidates passing on them — and the prospect that they will increasingly elect not to.
“If you’ve got $50 million in the pipeline to bomb your opponent back to the Stone Age, then why even put yourself out there, other than to have a very crafted message that is essentially manufactured in a PR factory,” said Carl Fogliani, a Republican strategist based in Pittsburgh, who added that voters should question the qualifications of any candidate who lacks “the courage to answer questions.”
Money and courage are only two of the factors working against debates as a lasting institution. There is also the kind of candidate that the GOP is increasingly fielding in the post-Trump era. Following the former president’s outsider example, other politically inexperienced millionaires or high-name-recognition individuals have crowded into races.
“There’s no upside to debate,” said Jason Shepherd, the chair of the Republican Party in Cobb County, Ga., “if you’re someone like Herschel Walker who is already the frontrunner … and has no experience debating.”
With the electorate as polarized as it is, the number of viewers a candidate could hope to persuade in a debate is vanishingly small. Meanwhile, for Republican base voters, skewering the media’s role in the process is a slam dunk, especially after Trump’s effective use of the media as his “fake news” foil. Today, just about 1 in 5 Republicans now say they trust the news media — a lower level of support than government, the scientific community, Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
Trump’s 2020 attacks on the Commission on Presidential Debates as a partisan outfit bent on undermining him also continue to color discussions surrounding debates. The Republican National Committee is moving forward with its threat to prohibit future presidential nominees from participating in commission-sponsored debates, pleasing Republicans who have long argued moderators are biased against them.
“Campaigns have come to the realization that no one watches debates, so the risk outweighs the reward,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country.
In the past, he said, “part of the reason you would debate is you were afraid of being shamed by the voters that public discourse, campaigning and governing requires public debate.” Now, Thomas said, “Voters are totally cool with you going on Facebook Live for 20 minutes and having a conversation with them about your policies and your agenda.”
Thomas added, “I’m just waiting for campaigns to finally come to the realization that lawn signs don’t work.”
Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
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@3RU7AL
-->@oromagiIn UNIX passwd file, I don't think that would be technically difficult but labor intensive.would it be easier to simply "not display" usernames and icons for a week ?
Probably not- that would probably a coding change rather than just line editing.
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@Barney
-->@GreyparrotWould you mind clarifying your point?
concisely: never vote Republican
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@ADreamOfLiberty
-->@oromagiYou think user data is in a unix file? What dark cave filled with thousands of flashing blinking lights have you been in?No way a site like this works without a relational DB.
A very old cave that used to be called Sun Microsystems and is now called Oracle.
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So, I'm proposing, for maybe a week, at random, all DebateArt usernames and icons be shuffled.
In UNIX passwd file, I don't think that would be technically difficult but labor intensive.
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@coal
I stopped reading when you referenced an alleged encyclopedia
That's too bad. If you had read my reply before responding you would have discovered that all of your latest points were addressed therein.
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@RationalMadman
Also very few people realise that I am the rightful mod of this website and the glorious king yet to be crowned.
It is true that RationalMadman deserves a shot at being a mod one day, although I strongly feel he would suck at that job. It is for the very reason of anticipating that regular users like RationalMadman or Wylted or Greyparrot might be a Moderator some day that I strongly oppose Mods having powers like re-writing the voting rules after the election and while voting is in progress. Supadudz has already stated publicly that he believes his opinion as moderator outweighs the opinion of the majority of regular users as expressed in MEEPs. If Supadudz can say so now what's to stop RationalMadman from saying the same when his turn comes?
- I propose a MEEP that states that the majority opinion of debaters on DART outweighs the opinion of the moderation team and on those rare occasions where mods must stray from the voter-approved MEEPs, the DART community is constantly consulted and negotiated with as part of any decision the moderators make to modify MEEPs. Mod rules state that MEEPs are binding and so moderators should see themselves as bound.
- I propose a MEEP to eliminate the office of DART President, since I think we've established that nobody seems to expect anything from that office and so that office proved a divisive waste of time.
- I propose a MEEP that eliminates EDUCATION as a Forum Category and makes HISTORY and CONSPIRACY THEORIES new Forum Categories and arranges Forum categories so that the most recently posted to Category is seen at the top of the Category list until a Category with a newer post pushes all the Categories down one. This way, posters are less tempted to miscategorize Topics for improved visibility.
- I propose a separate Debate Tournament page that's built to be faster and less formal-debates have no set rounds but each debater has a 10K character limit. There can be up to three debaters on either side of an issue. Debaters can argue back and forth as much as they like until they hit that 10K limit then they're done. Debates end as soon as all debaters hit their limit or 72 hrs passes. It takes 7 votes+24 hrs to end the voting phase. To earn a berth in the tournament, debaters must have voted on 3 debates. Leaderboards for tournaments refresh to 0 every hundred days.
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@TheUnderdog
My mom says it is, but she's kinda woke, so I don't trust her judgement. But family guy was able to say it and nobody cared(Chocolate people - YouTube).
Stewie's character is supposed to be a megalomaniacal sociopath so Stewie's usage is in the context of what a fictional sociopath might say. You can base your understanding of "what's offensive" on what fictional sociopaths get away with in cartoons or you can listen to your mom. Which choice seems more grounded in reality to you?
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@Intelligence_06
: a dish made typically of flattened bread dough spread with a savory mixture usually including tomatoes and cheese and often other toppings and baked— called also pizza pie
So it doesn't have to be any of these things and can still be called a pizza. It doesn't seem like there's any minimum requirements.
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I didn't know this website took official stands on things. Who's in charge of that?
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@coal
-->@oromagiINSURRECTION specifically means 'violent uprising against government'So you say. The January 6th committee would like to disagree.
- Let's recall I was correcting GP's call for INSURRECTION against the Democratic party. I argued that was the wrong verb since the Democratic Party is not a government. The correct verb would be something more like ATTACK or ASSAULT or PURGE.
- Wiktionary defines INSURRECTION as "The action of part or all of a national population violently rising up against the government or other authority; an instance of this; a revolt, an uprising; specifically, one that is at an initial stage or limited in nature. "
- The Encyclopedia Britannica specifically lists Jan 6th as an example of insurrection.
- INSURRECTION, an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects; also, any act of engaging in such a revolt. An insurrection may facilitate or bring about a revolution, which is a radical change in the form of government or political system of a state, and it may be initiated or provoked by an act of sedition, which is an incitement to revolt or rebellion.
- In the United States, insurrection against the authority of the federal government is a crime under 18 U.S. Code §2383, which provides that:
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
- Federal law also grants to the president of the United States the authority to employ the armed forces of the United States and nationalized state militias to put down an insurrection against a state government upon the request of the state’s legislature or governor (10 U.S. Code §251) and to suppress or prevent civil disturbances—“unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion[s]”—that, in the president’s judgment, have interfered or would interfere with the enforcement of federal laws in any state (§252) or have effectively deprived citizens of their rights under the U.S. Constitution (§253). These and other provisions of Chapter 13 of the U.S. Code, entitled “Insurrection,” originated in two pieces of legislation from the late 18th and early 19th centuries: an act of Congress (1795) that extended to the president Congress’s constitutional authority “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions” (Article I, §8) and the Insurrection Act (1807), which additionally authorized the president to deploy the armed forces of the United States in the same circumstances and for the same purpose. During the subsequent two centuries, the Insurrection Act was amended numerous times and invoked by presidents including Abraham Lincoln (to enable the use of federal troops to defeat the secession of Confederate states in the American Civil War), Dwight D. Eisenhower (to assist efforts to desegregate public schools in the South), and George H.W. Bush (to quell riots in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King). In 2020, in response to sometimes violent demonstrations against police brutality and anti-Black racism in several U.S. cities (see United States: The killing of George Floyd and nationwide racial injustice protests), Pres. Donald J. Trump threatened to use his authority under the Insurrection Act to unleash deadly force against lawbreaking protesters.
- Insurrections and other acts of violence against governments by their own citizens or subjects (some of which are not clearly distinguishable from revolutions, coups d’état, civil wars, or resistance to foreign rule) are commonplace in world history. Among many historically significant insurrections of the 20th and 21st centuries are the March on Rome of 1922, which brought Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party to power in Italy; the July Plot against Adolf Hitler in 1944; the briefly successful Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the student revolt in Paris in May 1968; the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico beginning in 1994; and the United States Capitol attack of January 2021.
I'll assume that the Jan 6th committee is looking at the 14th Ammendment, Section 3 which states:
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
In strictly legal terms,
Rebellion and insurrection refer specifically to acts of violence against the state or its officers. This distinguishes the crime from sedition, which is the organized incitement to rebellion or civil disorder against the authority of the state. It also separates the crime from treason, which is the violation of allegiance owed to one's country by betrayal or acting to aid the country's enemies.
Trump did demand that Insurrection charges be laid against George Floyd protesters but AG Barr pointed out that the protests were not specific to the Feds and their officers. Barr did strongly recommend sedition charges to State AG's which is consistent with the charges on Jan 6th.
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The Filthiest Joke Ever Told: Gilbert Gottfried - The Aristocrats
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@Bones
Wait so what's the definition of a women?
so far, all I've made out for sure is that it had better have tits and pussy
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Do not go gentle into that good night,....Let them go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Let's note that GP places Republicans in the metaphorical position of the death, darkness, and evil against which Thomas' poem rages.
Greyparrot is knowingly, objectively siding with surrender and death here and representing that defeatism as the Republican position in American politics. But I call this longing to surrender to domination and death incompatible with the American experience and whatever rough beast now slouches towards Mar-a-lago is neither American nor Republican in character. This is Heaven's Gate, People's Temple shit.
To quote another Thomas poem in similar contemplation:
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
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Since critical speech and Jan 6 was deemed violent, the point is valid.
No honest person would deny that Jan 6th was violent. 138 police officers reported being attacked while trying to fend of the Republicans' lynch mob. No idea what GP is referring to when he says critical speech was deemed violent.
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“No War”
You’re standing with a “No war” sign as if indulging
the inevitable: this war can’t be stopped,
like bright arterial blood from an open wound
it flows till it kills,
it enters our cities with the armed men,
seeps into our courtyards with the reconnaissance units,
like deadly mercury beads that can’t be put back,
you can’t fix it, except to find and neutralize it,
these civilian managers, clerks, IT-guys and students,
life didn’t prepare them for street fights, but the war did,
on the frontline, in a painfully familiar landscape, in a hurry
at first they only recruit experienced combat fighters to the defense units,
after that gamers who play Dune and Fallout,
or maybe if you’ve had a short-course in Molotov cocktails from a bartender you know,
at the local club while the kids are asleep, the kids are crying, the kids are being born
into a world temporarily unfit for life
Out on the playground they’re assembling Czech hedgehogs,
and nuclear families are mixing deadly “drinks.”
whole families, finally enjoying a conversation
and a collective project—war shortens the distance
from person to person, from birth to death,
from what we never wished for—
to what it turned out we were capable of
“Mom, pick up the phone,” a woman’s been pleading for two hours in the apartment building basement,
stubborn and dense, she won’t stop believing in a miracle
but her mother is out of cell phone range, in the suburbs,
where the prefab collapsed like cheap Legos
from the massive strikes, where just yesterday broadcast towers
stopped connecting people, where the world got blown up into pre- and post-war
along the uneven fold of the “no war” sign,
which you’ll toss in the nearest trash,
on your way home from the protest, Russian poet,
war kills with the hands of the indifferent
and even the hands of idle sympathizers.
Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.
_____________________________
Halyna Kruk
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Tim Pool predicts the insurrection against Democrats and their anti-science Orwellian world is coming very soon.
INSURRECTION specifically means 'violent uprising against government' You can't have an insurrection from outside a political party, that would just be an attack. Pool/GP are specifically praying for another attempt at violent overthrow of the US government here.
We need only look to GP's sources' for their views on climate change or vaccination to determine which side is anti-science and which side listens to the consensus of scientists.
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The ultimate endgame is to create a nation of victims so that there will be nobody left to oppress Washington DC.
Get that? So it is scientists who are victimizing Trumpists by not confirming Trumpists fake news worldview. Poor Trumpists are only try to oppress America and science keeps attacking them.
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@FLRW
I'm suprised that Greyparrot hasn't stolen CoolApe's profile picture.
GP's profile used to be SS Grupenfurher Heinz Reinefarth for a while- the butcher of Warsaw, the ratfink of Nuremburg
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I don't think I buy this, generally. Any scholarship on this subject? How about some examples of female movies vs male movies?
Are these movies female or male?
Shrek
Most recent Dune
Becoming Cousteau
The French Dispatch (or any Wes Anderson movie)
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HOW did RUSSELL BRAND GO FROM STAND-UP to PEDDLING YOUTUBE CONSPIRACY THEORIES?
With a series of alarmist videos tackling issues like COVID and the Russian-Ukrainian war, the comedian has reinvented himself as a popular online current affairs guru. But while his latest venture offers a mixed bag of healthy skepticism and poorly sourced controversy-mongering, it’s worth asking what exactly he stands to gain, writes Louis Chilton
When did Russell Brand decide comedy wasn’t enough for him? For most of his time in the public eye, the Essex-born funnyman has been better known for his off-stage antics than any particulars of his comic craft. There was his short-lived marriage to Katy Perry. His bullying of Andrew Sachs over voicemail on Jonathan Ross’s radio show. His vocal objections to voting in general elections back in 2013. Well over a decade on from all that, his personal website now describes him as an award-winning comedian, actor, author, a “passionate activist for mental health and drug rehabilitation”, and, more grandiosely, a “public thought leader”. See, he can still make you laugh.
It is in this last capacity that Brand operates his self-titled YouTube channel, publishing daily videos to 5.3 million followers and counting. These videos have prompted some to accuse Brand of peddling conspiracy theories – and it’s easy to see why. Hot-button issues such as Covid vaccines and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have countless clips devoted to them. Usually they’re framed with some sort of contrarian take or calling out hypocrisy in the mainstream media. They frequently have alarmist titles, hinting at a vague, world-altering conspiracy. A few recent examples: “WW3 – So THIS Is Why They Want Russia War”; “So They DO Run The World”; “I’ve Been Warned Not To Talk About This”. They often open with Brand addressing viewers as “awakening wonders” – “awakening” being his New Age-inflected buzzword of choice.
With his beard, long hair and loose-fitting, wide-necked shirts, it’s hard to shake the sense that there’s something cultish about Brand’s whole presentation. And yet, despite all the Matrix-like “here’s the real truth”-ing, Brand’s videos are also thoroughly beholden to his puerile sense of humour, with each new revelation incongruously seasoned with a splash of his insufferable schtick.
On Monday (14 March) a clip from one of Brand’s recent Russia-themed videos went viral on Twitter. Entitled “How Did We Miss This?”, in it Brand criticises Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and “authoritarianism” in Canada surrounding vaccine mandates, which faced a series of costly and high-profile protests nicknamed the “freedom convoy”. Brand is careful to stipulate that he is not condoning Russia’s actions, but simply pointing out a perceived hypocrisy. Whatever your opinion on Canada’s Covid laws, it should be clear that one of these things has nothing to do with the other.
One of the more common reactions to the clip – and to Brand’s YouTube persona in general – has been to compare him to Joe Rogan, the controversial US podcaster whose handling of Covid-related misinformation led to much-publicized boycotts of Spotify earlier this year. Like Rogan, Brand made his name as a comedian. Like Rogan, he has given a platform to conspiracy theories on his channel, sometimes making claims based on unsubstantiated or fringe sources. But both men also offer their followers the same unusual appeal: an apparently sincere willingness to question what we are told. The popularity of Brand’s videos is a testament to just how disillusioned many people are with mainstream media, and just how eager they are for open, defiant skepticism.
Now, it’s true that the evils of western foreign policy are often omitted from mainstream news reporting, or else largely downplayed. But is this really because of some grand, orchestrated effort to keep the public ill-informed? More likely it’s just for brevity or relevancy’s sake, or for legal reasons, or due to vague and unspoken corporate pressures.
Brand is right when he suggests that the Russia-Ukraine situation is a whole lot more complex than most news sources make out. But unless you’re going to vast swathes of research on the political and social histories of the countries, you’re never going to get the full picture. Brand’s whataboutery offers no fuller picture of the complexities of the situation than any mainstream news report does – but does offer a lot more unverifiable speculation.
His sources have come under scrutiny before, with far-right journalists and unsubstantiated newsletters among the sources used as the basis for past video essays.
Last year’s “So...Trump was RIGHT About Clinton & Russia Collusion!!” featured some particularly egregious mistruths. This is one of the problems with his approach to broadcasting: some of the world’s most trusted sources are regarded with fierce cynicism, while other more spurious ones are taken blithely at face value.
Ultimately, Brand would probably say that he preaches a healthy distrust of prescribed authority. “Together, we can create new narratives, new stories and new understanding,” he told followers recently. But surely this same scrutiny should apply also to himself? In a world where conspiracy lurks around every corner, where every news source has a hidden motive, it begs the question: what exactly is his?
Maybe he truly wants to awaken his followers to the world’s ugly realities. Maybe he just likes the attention. Or maybe a skeptical viewer might watch one of his videos and question why he advertises his stand-up tour just seconds into the start of each clip. Hypothetically speaking, if a comedian of waning mass-market appeal were looking to drum up ticket sales and bolster their profile, there’d be worse ways to go about it than a series of topical controversy-mongering YouTube videos. But who can tell? Either way, I’m starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist myself…
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GAP in TRUMP CALL LOGS on JAN. 6 'suspiciously tailored,' RASKIN SAYS
By Amy B Wang
The gap in phone logs in the official White House records on Jan. 6, 2021, is of “intense interest” to the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin said Sunday.
In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Raskin (D-Md.) noted that a 7½-hour gap in the phone logs for President Donald Trump’s communications that day covers the period when the Capitol assault was taking place.
Raskin said he and other Jan. 6 committee members have been able to piece together some of Trump’s activities during that time frame based on other people’s interviews and depositions, but holes remain.
“It’s a very unusual thing for us to find that suddenly everything goes dark for a seven-hour period in terms of tracking the movements and the conversations of the president,” Raskin said.
When asked if the gap could possibly be due to incompetence rather than conspiracy, Raskin said the committee was taking that into account. He added, however, that “the gaps are suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events” of Jan. 6, including when several lawmakers later said they were pleading with Trump to intervene. Raskin noted that the committee was aware that the president took part in calls during that time, “but we have no comprehensive, fine-grained portrait of what was going on during that period, and that’s obviously of intense interest to us.”
The bipartisan Jan. 6 panel is investigating the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that tried to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win. The attack led to five deaths and left some 140 members of law enforcement injured.
Trump has tried to assert executive privilege to withhold documents from the committee, which last year ordered the former president to provide records of all his actions and activities on Jan. 6. President Biden has rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.
Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the committee 11 pages of White House records from that day, including the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs.
As first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, those records did not include any documentation of calls placed to or by Trump from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.
Raskin added that the committee’s mission is to get “a complete picture” of everything that took place on Jan. 6, as well as what needs to be done “to fortify democratic institutions and processes against future insurrections and coups and attempts to destabilize and overthrow our elections.”
Raskin said he hoped the committee would be able to begin holding long-delayed public hearings in May and was looking for connections between the violent insurrection at the Capitol and what he called the “attempt at an inside coup” orchestrated by Trump against the Constitution.
“I do feel confident we’re going to be able to tell that story,” Raskin said, adding, “Obviously, we’re up against a lot of obstruction now.”
Last week, the committee voted to hold two more former Trump aides — former trade and manufacturing director Peter Navarro and former communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr. — in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas. Raskin said the House probably would vote this week on whether to refer Navarro and Scavino to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Like Trump and a raft of other former aides, Navarro and Scavino have tried to claim they are protected by executive privilege and that the subpoenas were an overreach by the committee. They are among the latest in high-profile Trump White House officials facing repercussions for refusing to comply with the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas.
Last year, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon was indicted on charges of contempt of Congress, which prompted warnings from some Republicans of “payback” that they could do the same to Democrats if they retake control of the House majority in November.
Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, also refused to cooperate with the committee, leading to the House voting to hold him in contempt of Congress as well in December.
Separately, a federal judge ruled last week that Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in attempting to stop the confirmation of Biden’s electoral college win.
Asked about the judge’s comments Sunday, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has defended Trump frequently and who voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trials, was noncommittal.
“Well, federal judges say a lot of things and we’ll see how that comes through the process,” Blunt said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “I think the Justice Department has a job to do and they should do it and people who were involved in the planning or execution of illegal activities on Jan. 6 should be prosecuted.”
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
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Yeah but this political compass site is not a work of Journalism or factual integrity. The site says that its makers are anonymous and its scoring system is secret but the NY TImes reported a couple of years ago that this site is run by a radical Zionist out of New Zealand.
I suppose Bernie suppose might look like a moderate to some loon in New Zealand just because Bernie believes in wearing pants to work but that's not really a "people say..." I mean, this guy has Hillary as more right wing than Trump or Hitler and lists Stalin as a left-wing politician. Since your source is not American and clearly knows nothing about politics, I suggest you disregard his POLTICAL COMPASS as mere ignorance and/or lunacy.
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Your premise seems quite false. Please cite three examples of real journalists calling Bernie a centrist.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I was talking about Airmax not posting for the last two months, I'm assuming you mean wylted/incel
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@FLRW
Do you think that the 17 year old girl traveling with Gaetz had a dream of liberty?
What about Nestor? I don't think we're asking enough questions about why a 12 year old boy was living with an adult three times his age without any state oversight. I had a lot of questions about his Gaetz's "black" son/poolboy/roommate even before he was under investigation for pimping kids.
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so now basic market capitalism is "woke"
I don't know what woke is supposed to mean except "leftist" but I'm increasingly certain its a good thing when I hear what Republicans call "woke"
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Imagine if the elected site president had just been banned 2 months for doxxing
At least that might explain why he hasn't posted for the last two months.
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@thett3
-->@oromagiWhat exactly is your theory? That it’s all made up?
I don't think I need an alternative conspiracy theory to debunk a proposed conspiracy theory. The truth is we generally never discover what really happened.
Still, my guess is that Biden spoke the truth to that prostitute secretly recording him in 2018 when he said:
Hunter: 'You know what I just thought of something. When I was in California [inaudible] before I met you. I was with these guys. The one guy was, not like you anyway.
'Primarily my source, ok? And I spent fu**ing crazy amounts of money. I went to Las Vegas and he said it would be one day. I made him promise me it would be one day. I hate Las Vegas.
'And so literally after 18 days going round from penthouse suite to penthouse suite [inaudible] four different hotels, and thousands of dollars. I didn't even know. He had my credit card, he said we got half off, I was like great. Then I found out it was $10,000 a night. I'm like what.
'And each night he'd be like 'there's going to be so many people here, crazy fu**ing party' and each night it's nobody.
'Hold on I'm peeing.
'And so that's when I went into the pool. Into the tub. In the hot tub, above, in Palms that hangs over the side [Inaudible] more than I usually do, way more than that [inaudible]
'And I went out to the hot tub by myself, which hangs over the edge of the fu**ing top floor, with glass, it's ridiculous.
'And so I'm sitting there and that's the last I remember. And I don't ever pass out, ever.
'I wake up and the only people that are there are Miguel, the guy frantically running round gathering things up, ok – and Miguel, and Pierce, this guy, his friend.
'So anyway, and they had kicked everybody out. And they had cleaned up the entire place, everything ok? And they were getting ready to leave, and I woke up. And there was this Russian 35-year-old, really nice, pure brunette.
'[Inaudible] I don't know how long. She refused to leave until they – she refused to leave and they wouldn't call an ambulance. And they didn't know whether I was dead or not, at first.
Hooker: ' They couldn't just come over and check [inaudible]'
Hunter: 'They checked to see if I was breathing. When I finally showed signs of breath, at first I wasn't breathing, I was in the fu**ing pool face down, they don't know how long.
'And she told me that they don't, they were like 'we thought we'd get everybody out, because you know we didn't want, if we had to call, we didn't want everybody…' And she went no. They demanded that [inaudible]
'Two months before… [inaudible]
Hooker: 'Continue with the story please.'
Hunter: 'Anyway my computer, I had taken tons of like, just left like that cam on. And he would always put in a passcode and all that, you know what I mean? It was fu**ing crazy sh*t. And somebody stole it during that period of time. He did all this kind of like pretend search and sh*t.
'The last thing he sent me was $2,000 worth of stuff in an Uber and he sent me a [inaudible] with the Uber, and I had to send the money to a cash app or something....just waiting
Hooker: '...In Las Vegas [inaudible]'
Hunter: 'I think he's the one that stole my computer. I think the three of them, the three guys that were like a little, like group. The dealer and his two guys, I took them everywhere. Fu**ing everywhere, crazy out of your mind sh*t.
'The Russian [inaudible] she'd walk out with a fu**ing bathing suit in her hand.
'They have videos of me doing this. They have videos of me doing crazy fu**ing sex fu**ing, you know.
Hooker: 'How long ago did this happen?'
Hunter: 'Summer.'
Hooker: 'So it would have been out already if they-'
Hunter: 'No no no, because my dad [inaudible] running for president. He is, he is, he is. I talk about it all the time. If they do, he also knows I make like a gazillion dollars.'
Hooker: 'They'd try to blackmail you?'
Hunter: 'Yeah in some way yeah.'
That sounds like a fairly honest story to me. Hunter got roofied by his drug dealer at the Palms and nearly drowned in the pool and woke up to a mysterious Russian woman who made some unspecified demands and disappeared with Hunter's laptop containing videos of Hunter doing "crazy fucking sex fucking" and a bunch of emails.
Six months later, TIME reports that unknown agents in Kyiv were approaching people associated with the Trump campaign, offering explicit photos and Hunter emails for $5 million dollars. The two anonymous TIME sources say that the $5 million photos were the same that Giuliani gave to the Post.
I think that's a very likely and straightforward scenario- Giuliani paid for the Biden dirt but then had to invent some plausible scenario to explain how he came into custody of that shit- that's when Giuliani's favorite superfan who ran a Mac store in Delaware came into the picture. Mac Isaac could never really keep his story straight but he closed down his whole operation and moved to Colorado and hasn't worked since, which does suggest some new source of funding.
I don't think anything on the laptop is particularly criminal (or we'd know by now) but its certainly quite corrupt and dissolute. I'm sure Trump is going to milk it as long as he can- he seems to be able to get his followers to re-engage on the subject every time a negative story appears about him.
I think the FBI knows all this but can't say anything because there is still an active investigation into Giuliani's escapades in Ukraine.
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@SkepticalOne
POST #26- complains about WHATABOUTISM
POST #33- what about Hillary?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Nobody said it was new,
News story. Not a credible news story.
but you're incredibly naive.
Sure but that doesn't get your laptop verified, does it?
Why is it that you aren't "sure you would have heard about it" if the FBI had failed to authenticate the laptop.
Because Giuliani, Bannon, and Gaetz would have leaked it.
FBI would do everything possible to help the democratic party
If you think that the FBI is not an overwhelmingly Republican institution that you don't know anything about the FBI. There are a few liberals and a few Democrats but before Trump, a substantial majority of the FBI voted Republican by all accounts.
You're lack of knowledge on epistemology is slowing you down again here.
I don't need to show anything at any pace. Your job was to prove that the laptop(s) were thrice authenticated and you have failed on all 3 counts. The FBI saying that it has no evidence of Russian disinformation gives no insight on whether the laptop was Biden's. Stay focused.
If you take as a given that there is a laptop which appears to have Hunter's stuff on it, and you can compile a finite list of plausible explanation for its existence then eliminating every possibility except one is a strong argument in favor of the one.
Well, if we are going with PLAUSIBLE explanations, then the notion that a guy who spent much of his life as the target of Republican smear campaigns would just casually drop off three laptops with any kind of personal information on them to a guy who just happens to be Giuliani's biggest fan and never even bothered to make a call back to find out what happened to all this important information is not one of those PLAUSIBLE explanations, is it?
This is of course glossing over the fact that what you're doing right now is special pleading.
I don't think you understand what special pleading means.
- You said, "Here's Biden signature on the receipt!"
- I said, "Why doesn't it match his Driver's License?"
I call that a fairly comprehensive rebuttal.
Well fine, I can't prove it's not deepfaked
Deepfaked suggests that the evidence is superficially convincing. A non-matching signature is superficially unconvincing.
What's the alternative hypothesis?
I can think of plenty but right now we're just disproving your claim. My unproved theories would only muddy.
The simplest explanation, the least "conspiratorial" is that the confirmed emails and confirmed videos came from Hunter's laptop and that his laptop was left at a Mac repair shop.
With so many prior copies made that experts can't confirm that what hard drive they originated? Why would you have 217 Gb of copies of email files on your personal laptop rather than just mails in your account? That's just maxing out your entire storage for no reason. Doesn't the fact that Biden is alleged to have accidently chosen Rudy Giuliani's biggest fan to fix his PCs rather strain credulity? Why would Hunter Biden, who lives in California, take three laptops to a mac repair shop in Delaware? Yes, his father lives there and Hunter used to live there so he might be visiting but would you travel with three laptops? And if those laptops were so important that you had to bring them with you on vacation and you did accidently get them all simultaneously water damaged on the same trip how would they then be so unimportant that your forgot to pick them up. How big do your vodka tonics have to be to get three laptops water damaged simultaneously anyway?
You have to believe a whole long line of totally crazy shit is true to buy Giuliani's.
This isn't the sole piece of evidence of the conspiracy either. Joe's statements about what he did, Biden's unusual positions, meetings, the testimony of Bobulinski and Shokin.
Even if you bought everything else, your conspiracy falls apart on motive. Trump claims that Shokin was investigating the Bidens but we now know for a fact that was never true. Trump claims that Biden was trying to stop an investigation into Burisma but everybody in Ukraine knows that's not true. There was an investigation into Burisma but Shokin was corruptly slow-walking that investigation. Firing the manifestly corrupt Shokin didn't kill the investigation, on the contrary the investigation didn't really start until Shokin was ousted.
When Biden demanded Shokin's termination, he was literally representing the Free World- EU, NATO, IMF, World Bank all demanded Shokin out before Ukraine could make any claim of improving democracy and transparency. Why would you call Biden's position unusual?
The basic motive in Trump's conspiracy is the opposite of true. Any Ukrainian reporter will tell you that Shokin was incredibly corrupt and was clearly not interested in investigating Bursima.
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@ILikePie5
@Bones
->@ILikePie5If the contents are the property of an individual and have been seized by the FBI for further investigation, I don't think the public, at that point, has the right to access the information?
That's right and I don't think the Trumpists realize how this question debunks their allegation. IF Giuliani, Bannon, or Gaetz were actually in possession of a copy of Biden's hard drive because some Mac tech in Dover copied it for them, that would constitute a substantial felony that the FBI would not ignore, never mind the laptop's contents. IF they were in possession of that stolen private data while working on the Trump- that's breaking in and stealing campaign dirt from the Democrats during a Presidential Election- that is classic Watergate and the FBI would not ignore.
However, if Giuliani, Bannon, and Gaetz were not in possession of an actual copy of Biden hard drive, the FBI would not be obligated to press charges and would not be permitted to contradict those jokers' many knowingly false claims. Even brought before Congress an FBI officer would be obligated to say he does not know and cannot say (and Gaetz, of course, is well aware of those restrictions.
The FBIs actions to this point strongly suggest that the FBI doesn't believe that Giuliani, Bannon, or Gaetz are in actual possession of stolen data and so Giuliani, Bannon, and Gaetz's claims are likely bullshit.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
First Media Organization: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/
- This is not a credible news story. Bruce Golding, the reporter who wrote the story, interviewed Giuliani and Mac, etc. refused to allow his name on the byline saying that the story was insufficiently verified.
- As the Washington Examiner reported:
According to the New York Times, the story was largely written by Bruce Golding, who has worked for the New York Post since 2007. Two reporters who spoke to the New York Times said Golding was concerned about the article's credibility.
In a report that was published shortly afterward on Sunday, New York Magazine also described skepticism among New York Post staff. One reporter told the outlet, "I think it was very flimsy." Another told the outlet that the New York Post failed to meet "journalistic standards," adding that it "should not have been published."
The two New York Post staff whose names do appear in the byline are Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge. Morris, a deputy politics editor, had no previous bylines with the New York Post before the outlet published the series of Biden stories.
According to the New York Times, Fonrouge was not aware that her byline was on the story until after it was published.
The New York Post named two sources in its reporting, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. According to the New York Times, Giuliani gave the New York Post the trove of emails because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out."
- That is, Giuliani took it to the WSJ first, who said Guiliani's story was not credible, then to FOX News, who said he was not credible, and finally to the NY Post, who has not given one shit about credibility since the 1970's, and even then had to bring in two ringers to byline the story.
- One ringer wasn't notified that she wrote this story until after the Post published = crazy bullshit.
- The other was a close enough friend of Bannon to post pictures of them together on her twitter page before she suddenly became a NY Post reporter for this story where Bannon is one of two named sources. Morris failed to declare her prior friendship with Bannon and is now Bannon's employee at Breitbart.
- I note that Golding has bylined some stories since working to authenticate some emails but apparently still does not stand by Mac/Giuliani's accounts of how the laptop was discovered. If the reporter who did the reporting won't stand by the story than you may not cite that report as "confirmation."
Second Media Organization: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html - "The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."
- I don't think anybody ever doubted that at least some emails were authentic. This article says nothing about authenticating Giuliani's whacko story about how he came to be in possession of Biden's hard drive.
- The Washington Post's investigation offers greater detail than the Times:
- The Post's experts were able to authenticate 22,000 emails (about 17% of all mails on the drive).
- "The ability to verify [the drive], was undermined by the fact the hard drive had been handled over the years in a manner that damaged some key files, making them unusable for the purposes of forensic examination. As Williams noted in his technical report, “several key pieces of evidence useful in discovering tampering were not available.”
- Both researchers, who worked independently of each other, determined that the data contained on the drive was so compromised by a variety of factors that definitive conclusions about most of its contents were impossible.
- It is quite false to say that NY TImes has authenticated the laptop(s) or Giuliani's absurd story about them. It is true that some e-mails have been verified. If any of those e-mails indicated any criminal activity, I am sure we would have heard about it.
DOJ: A good summary with lots of citations, links, and screenshots (amazing concept): https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-doj-fbi-confirm-hunter-biden-laptop-is-not-part-of-russian-disinformation-campaign, Note that the next link also confirms DOJ activity via subpoena.
- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We can agree that no US intelligence agency has positively asserted that the laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign (although the fact that Giuliani was meeting with known Russian intelligence assets in Ukraine in the months before launching his October surprise is certainly suggestive). That does little to authenticate Giuliani's story.
Images of receipts in the repair shop billed to "Hunter Biden": www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-emails-documents-alleged-signature-fbi-paperwork
- Here's Biden's signiture on his driver's liscence:
- Here's FOX News' alleged signature
- I'd call that a "no match."
I don't trust snopes at all, but you might https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hunter-biden-laptop-could-be-his/, also I remember this interview. Classic non-committal language so you don't get caught in a lie but can still mitigate.
- I agree that Biden is cagey here- clearly he did lose possession of at least one laptop at one point- not surprising for a career drug addict.
- The one point that Biden clearly denies is the one detail your are trying to prove- that the Giuliani hard drive was one of three laptops dropped off by Biden. You say" it's the one that has now been triple confirmed (by two media orgs and people at the DOJ)" but that statement is entirely false. Not one source has verified the authenticity of the laptop. At least 17% of the emails appear to have genuinely come from Biden's own mail accounts but those have been copied and re-copied so many times that authentication is difficult- and the fact of many copies strongly suggest that Giuliani's hard drive is not the original.
- Your statement that Giuliani's copy of the alleged Biden laptop has been "triple confirmed" is not true.
- The GOP has pulled a bait and switch job on you, treating authentication of some emails (which was never really questioned) as if that verified the laptop's provenance, which is simply not so.
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@zedvictor4
@AceDebatesStuff
One must always be cautious these days, when attributing gender.
Nevertheless, Ace is correct. I am a man.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
-->@oromagiThe three water-damaged unclaimed laptops that a Delaware Mac repair shop (illegally) turned over to Giuliani in October 2020 who then turned these over to the FBI office in Baltimore?That one, it's the one that has now been triple confirmed (by two media orgs and people at the DOJ)
Let's get all three of those citations, please.
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@ebuc
Wa'snt he one of the henchman for Trumpet in Ukraine, and wasnt he pardoned by Trumpet for crimes in USA.
Manafort brought US style campaigning to Ukraine, always working for the pro-Russian/oligarch candidates. He spent his time with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs and began to live like them, spend like them and eventually borrow massive amounts of money from them. When Manafort asked the oligarchs "will this make me whole?" he meant "will working for Trump get my debt forgiven?" The first thing Manafort did when he came on as campaign manager was to drop GOP support for Ukraine from the Republican platform.
In a shift, Republican platform doesn’t call for arming Ukraine against Russia, spurring outrage
BY TRACY WILKINSON
BY TRACY WILKINSON
JULY 21, 2016 3:35 PM PT
Reporting from Washington — For decades, Republican doctrine has viewed Russia as a power to mistrust. But in Donald Trump’s GOP, Moscow’s sins seem to matter less.
The platform written at the GOP convention in Cleveland this week eliminated references to arming Ukraine in its fight with Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Many in the party’s foreign policy establishment are outraged.
They note that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had worked as a consultant for the now-ousted pro-Russian government in Ukraine.
Trump’s investments in hotels, golf courses and other business interests overseas already have raised concerns of potential conflicts of interest with U.S. policy if he is elected.
Originally, the GOP platform was to call for providing Ukraine with weapons in addition to the substantial non-lethal aid the U.S. already provides, according to congressional reports.
After Trump surrogates reportedly intervened, the final passage supports “providing appropriate assistance” to Ukraine, but doesn’t mention providing arms to the government in Kiev.
Charlie Black, a longtime Republican strategist, said the change was “most unusual.”
“Virtually every Republican in Congress voted to provide defensive arms to Ukraine and they still support it,” said Black, now chairman of Prime Policy Group, a government relations firm. “This puts the platform on the side of the Obama administration and its weak response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
Although Obama’s advisors have debated whether to provide weapons to help Kiev battle the Russian-backed forces, the president has declined to do so.
The war has largely stalemated over the past year. Moreover, Ukraine is not a member of NATO and the U.S. has no treaty obligations to help defend it.
White House aides fear that sending U.S. arms into the war would further inflame tensions with Moscow.
That may be Trump’s worry as well.
He has lavished praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen as an autocratic bully in much of the world, and welcomed Putin’s quasi-endorsement of his candidacy. Trump apparently admires Putin’s strongman image and willingness to crush opponents, dissidents and critical journalists.
Manafort also had a direct interest in Ukraine.
As a crisis public relations manager, Manafort had clients that included the Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, who was driven from power in 2014 amid corruption scandals and violent demonstrations. He fled to Russia.
Manafort worked on Yanukovich’s election campaign in 2009. Yanukovich’s opponent, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, had hired Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist from Iowa.
Link says the Yanukovich campaign was virulently anti-West, anti-NATO and pro-Russia.
“What I kept thinking about was how Manafort and his team were supposed to be the Reagan guys, Reagan who stood up to the Soviet Union,” Link said in a telephone interview. “And now here they were working for Putin’s candidate for Ukraine.”
Manafort was asked about the GOP platform language on Ukraine during a news conference in Cleveland, but he deflected the question, saying only that the worlds needs a “strong U.S. presence.”
As with Ukraine, Trump’s foreign policy positions are more isolationist that Republicans traditionally embrace.
He doubled-down on that approach Wednesday when he told the New York Times he would not necessarily defend fellow NATO members in the Baltic region if they are threatened Russia.
Trump also said he would not call on authoritarian leaders, like the president of Turkey, to respect the rule of law and human rights as they crack down on opponents.
Those represent sharp departures from U.S. policy and recent GOP positions and sparked immediate concerns that Trump would abandon treaty commitments to allies.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is not attending the convention in his home state, was among the Republicans who slammed Trump’s comments.
“We think NATO doesn’t matter? Are we kidding?” Kasich said to the International Republican Institute. He vowed to support arming Ukraine “as long as I’m breathing” and said changing the platform was “a terrible mistake.”
Paul Saunders, executive director of the Washington-based Center for the National Interest, said a wing of the GOP has always sought to avoid international conflicts absent a direct U.S. interest.
He noted that Reagan and President Nixon, two Republicans who were toughest on Moscow during the Cold War, ultimately negotiated with the Soviet Union.
But Trump’s proposals suggested a clear break to their strategy.
“This is certainly a very significant change,” Saunders said, “and clearly reflects a very different approach to foreign policy.”
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@zedvictor4
-->@oromagiOK.I'll take your word for it, though that makes somewhat less sense.
I was looking at someone's stats on leaderboard and noticed you were at 2999 likes so I rounded you up in likes.
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@zedvictor4
Boom. Three thousandth like for you.
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Be advised this is a Bangladeshi company collecting this data to sell.
What is a %racist even supposed to mean?
I don't really believe that Athias is 18% more racist than chud or even that you can be 18% more racist than somebody else in some quantifiable way.
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What's the situation with the Hunter Biden's Laptop?
Which?
- The laptop hard drive seized by the FBI in 2019?
- The laptop hard drive that Russian agents in Ukraine were trying to sell for $5 million in 2019?
- The laptop Steve Bannon claimed to have in his (illegal) possession in the summer of 2020?
- The three water-damaged unclaimed laptops that a Delaware Mac repair shop (illegally) turned over to Giuliani in October 2020 who then turned these over to the FBI office in Baltimore?
- The laptop hard drive Matt Gaetz now claims to be in (illegal) possession of?
How many laptops is Hunter supposed to have? Why does he keep posting the same compromising shirtless selfies of himself doing drugs on all these laptops? Why are we supposed to care?
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Cruz has said that when he was a child, his mother told him that she would have to make an affirmative act to claim Canadian citizenship for him, so his family assumed that he did not hold Canadian citizenship. In August 2013, after the Dallas Morning News pointed out that he had dual Canadian-American citizenship, he applied to formally renounce his Canadian citizenship and ceased being a citizen of Canada on May 14, 2014.
Several lawsuits and ballot challenges asserting that Cruz is ineligible to become U.S. president have been filed. No lawsuit or challenge has been successful, and in February 2016, the Illinois Board of Elections ruled in Cruz's favor, stating, "The candidate is a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Canada to his mother who was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth."
So, if Ted Cruz is a US citizen then Barrack Obama is definitely a US citizen since unlike Cruz, Obama was born in US with US Birth certificate
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obv traps are obv traps- stepping away is always the correct move.
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When forecasting the future, "things will continue as they have done, with some variation, and in spite of recent surprising shifts" is a pretty good approach no matter what the subject.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Here oromagi says something sensible but in another thread he's denying the space program (and obvious BoP).
I am the North Star of common sense. I don't think I've ever denied the space program.
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