Hodad

A. 58% of the population doesn't believe Biden did anything illegal B. There is zero evidence that Biden did anything illegal C. There is no evidence that Joe Biden lied about being involved with Hunter's business activities. And indeed, the testimony so far is that he was not. Even when they dined together or Hunter made phone calls in the presence of business contacts, the sworn testimony is that they just made father/son small talk. There is literally email records where Hunter tells his associates that he can't influence what his father does, but whatever happens, they should pretend like the did influence it--because it's good for business. D. The $83K per month was business revenue, not a paycheck, and even if it weren't, your view of how amazing $83K per month is comically skewed. It's just not that much money. Not enough to incur risk or spawn an international conspiracy. Joe can make 10x that much with speaking and publishing. He doesn't need Hunter's relative pittance, nor would he risk that easy income for a relative pittance. E. You timeline and conspiracy theory are entirely bumfuzzled. Again, the entire western world wanted Shokin fired. We have sworn testimony that Burisma believed that Shokin was protecting them. We have people from the prosecutors record in Ukraine noting that Shokin actively sabotaged the UK case against Burisma to protect them. Literally the only person who says that Shokin wasn't crooked is Shokin--and you, apparently. F. What I think was actually going on is exactly what all the evidence shows was going on. -- Looking at evidence is how I reached the position, after all. By all appearances, Hunter derived significant business advantage from the expectation that he could influence his father. By all appearances, he didn't actually have any influence. By all appearances, Joe Biden is savvy enough to understand that his association is valuable to Hunter, and had no problem being visible (and audible) to do his son a favor--not a material favor, but the favor of visible association. That's not even unethical, let alone illegal. No harm, no foul.

Yes, especially to the bolded. We KNOW from observation, from history, from research, from experimentation that people aren't rational and therefore markets aren't rational. It's become almost religious dogma that any interference in the market is "communism" (which is absurd). There is nothing wrong with government powers being used to mitigate market excesses and maximize efficiencies. It would be silly not to. -- Nothing is perfect. Nothing is executed perfectly. But we can do a pretty good job.

The election was NOT in dispute, you kook. All the states certified. So the ONLY option--and the point of Eastman's coup memo--was that Pence (and by extension and VP) could simply pick and choose which certified votes to accept, throwing out enough states to declare Trump the winner. That was what they attempted to do--to literally throw away certified electoral votes until their guy won. The "contingent election" was plan B.

Right. -- GDP growth was fantastic. Real median household incomes did not keep pace or see much positive growth. But we DID get a lot of cheap and relatively high quality consumer goods, which people quite like. I don't think that the problem is that global markets didn't work. The problem is that we allowed, through perverse incentives, most of the economic benefit of massive productivity gains and wealth gains to accrue to top few percent. It's become common to have CEOs earning 300x what their employees make. That should be a shocking number, but we've grown accustomed to it. Like everyone else, I'm a capitalist, but it's hard to rationalize that kind of wealth gap. It feels a lot more like a problem than a positive outcome. And to make it generational cements the gap. Though there's some irony in it, even Thomas Jefferson warned against an "artificial aristocracy" blessed by birth. In other words, we should probably have a massive estate tax. Let people make as much money as they want, but limit what can be left as inheritance.

The Washington Examiner is pure tabloid garbage-- exactly the echo chamber I accused you of occupying. Of course, they didn't offer numbers. They know you guys don't need or heed them. Freebeacon is the same type of garbage, but they at least included poll numbers. And what do the numbers say? "Forty-two percent said they believed his actions were illegal." I rest my case.

No, there's not. One would have to be comically--and cosmically --stupid to think that the United States has conducted presidential elections for 250 years when really the vice president just gets to pick a winner. The party in power just gets to choose to stay in power, regardless of the votes? You think that's what the founding fathers wrote and intended? My God, that's shockingly dumb. Nobody actually thought that. Ever. It never was an actual legal theory. And Eastman admitted it. But once again, you're eager to be made a sucker and a fool by confessed crooks and liars.

You are entirely full of crap. Overfull, actually. There is not and never has been a mechanism by which the a Vice President simply chooses a winner or chooses not to count state certified votes. It's obviously immoral, but literally everyone involved knew that it was illegal as well. Including the scumbag lawyer who came up with the plan. He admitted it in writing and asked for a preemptive pardon--as if piling another abuse of power on top of a betrayal of democracy cancelled each other out. The courts did their job, despite many of them being conservatives, Republicans, and even Trump appointees, that laughed the comically unfounded cases right out of city. Never a shred of evidence. Recount after recount, audit after audit-- all conducted by Republicans and nothing untoward discovered of this allegedly massive conspiracy. You would have to be a fool to keep believing after all that, right? I mean, Sidney "Kraken" Powell literally defended herself in court by saying that no reasonable person could have possibly believed the lies she was selling! And still, you believe. It's one thing to have no brains and get suckered by people your inexplicably trust. It's another thing altogether to have no shame about it and no backbone to reserve it. Even today, after all of this, you cling to the lies that the liars admitted they were telling you. And weirder still, you're mad at the people who correctly called you out as a fool instead of the people who selfishly and cynically MADE a fool of you. It's a mystery.

"Literally," anyone with the internet can see that you are lying. The summary of findings and her deposition are publicly available. Clinton wasn't charged because everyone in government was using unclassified email servers for government business. Including the Trump clan that made such a disingenuous fuss about Hillary.

Living in the alt-right echo chamber has left you tragically misinformed. I guarantee that you can't post a poll that shows 60% of people think Biden has done anything illegal to be guilty of. And your assertions that he's "toast" are just childish. If unsupported accusations were as effective on Democrats and independents as they are on Republicans, then you might be right. But thankfully the bulk of voters here are still sane and rational and would actually require some evidence. Meanwhile, you "stand by your man" after the literally tried to end American democracy. Of course, why would a Canadian Trump fanboy care a whit about American democracy and the rights of the voting public?

I don't think it's really a question anymore that democracy is breaking down. We have a majority of one party who have already dispensed with democracy--literally. They are fully on record supporting Trump's attempt to remain in power by simply pressuring Pence to unilaterally declare him the winner. Not only are they not offended to the core at this coup plot, as any decent American would be, they are trying to put him back in a position of power. I've disliked the GOP's authoritarian trend for a long time, but I NEVER thought in my lifetime I'd see an American president attempt to seize power through extralegal means. And I certainly didn't think it would happen without a stern rebuke from self-proclaimed patriots. The truth is that they are not patriots. They have neither respect nor love for the America of the founding fathers. They crave only power and dominance and will try to "win" at any cost. Who needs a democracy when you have a strongman to swoon over??

And you try very hard to remain ignorant. Like our record domestic oil output, you cover you eyes and ears while running your mouth about your feelings, entirely unconcerned that they do not align to reality in any way. It's pitiable, really, to see someone who superficially want to engage on politics but lacks the capacity. And while it's sad on an individual level, people like you create a real problem for democracy. Democracy only works when you have an informed and invested populace.

I actually think the legal implications are probably the least important aspect. I think the cultural impact would have been far greater. England was very much at the time (and in some ways is still) locked into a kind of caste or class system. There was little encouragement or opportunity for one to rise above the station of one's birth. There was something radical and inspirational about the American ideal that all people were created equal and entitled to pursue life, liberty, property and happiness. That cultural shift, rather than the legal separation, is what built America into a superpower. Wide open spaces and ample natural resources didn't hurt, but the lure of a classless society and open opportunity was the fuel of westward expansion, industrialization and innovation. Suddenly, we had a blank slate and people made the most of their opportunity to leave a mark. That change alone may have shifted the outcomes of world wars, economic and cultural hegemony, etc.

You have very little sense of perspective. Trump and his co-conspirators on Jan 6 posed a far, far greater existential threat to the republic than the 9/11 hijackers. They were one man away from creating crisis and chaos like we've never experienced--and the fallout from that vile attempt is still toxic enough to tear the country apart. There are people like you with no morals and no principles, who continue to support a man who tried to seize and retain power after an election loss. There is no greater affront to liberty and democracy. It's an unforgivable sin. Yet you people not only forgive it, you encourage it. A win at any cost--even if it destroys the very foundational concepts of the United States.

No, Trump told you it was amazingly awesome (as he does about all things Trump) and you lack the interest and ability to validate that statement. But let's be honest, you'd believe that Trump farts rainbows if Dear Leader told you that was the case. It's simply not true. Trump inherited growth trajectories in all metrics and, despite taking on massive deficits, he didn't change those trajectories. Even if you want to give him a freebie on the pandemic year (which is absurd) the numbers for the non-pandemic years of Trump look almost exactly like the numbers for the 4 years leading up to Trump. There is no jump. there is no "Trump boom." He didn't bend the curve, let alone jump start anything. And all of this despite reckless deficit spending. Again, try some facts. About the same GDP growth, despite Obama bringing deficits downs and Trump blowing them up. Similar jobs numbers. Unemployment fell faster under Obama and the trend continued, though a bit slower under Trump As anyone with eyeballs can see, Trump didn't jump start anything. He took over a growing economy based on good fundamentals and coasted along on the same track. And I'm not even going to talk about his trade war nonsense creating drag. Nor do I have to talk about the disastrous COVID mismanagement. Trump's true economic legacy is record deficits, record debt and the worst jobs performance since the great depression. Now go tell us about your feelings and fondle his balls during a ticker tape parade.

Ugh. We'd be speaking proper English!

Excellent fact-based rebuttal. This is why you need "elites." You're not funny to land a man on the moon with your feelings, or fix an economy.

A. It's absurd that you want to give Trump a mulligan on the economic effects of mishandling the pandemic and only compare the "good years." As if bad things only happened to Trump. You wanna apply the same thinking to Obama and Biden, who inherited massive disasters from their Republican predecessors? Of course you don't. That would be honest, consistent and inconvenient. B. As I said in the initial post, the record is nothing special even BEFORE the pandemic. Certainly not special enough to justify the massive elective deficits. Again, if you actually look at the facts you can see the both the cumulative and annualized comparisons. S&P Obama vs Trump (NASDAQ and DOW quite similar) GDP Jobs created ^^ As is plain to see, Trupmp NEVER delivered the kind of performance he promise and tried to chase with elective deficit spending. Not even close. He basically coasted and continued the Obama trends without farking it up--until he did fark it up. If his performance had actually been good, you wouldn't have to dredge us silly metrics isolating minorities--as if Trump ever did anything to advance minority interests. Rather, he sowed racial dissent and division to the degree that white nationalists felt empowered, accepted and encouraged in the MAGA America. They went marching. The drove through crowds. They attacked Black churches and Asian people. He kicked off his campaign with racism, xenophobia and sexism. That's what your movement is built on, and it showed up in the data. Facts These trends continued throughout Trump’s presidency, with annual hate crimes remaining around 20% higher during his administrationviii. Other research specifically tied these increases in hate crimes to Trump himself, finding that counties that hosted a Trump rally showed hate crime rates almost double those of similar counties with no rally [1]. So let's not pretend that Trump waved a magic wand to bless Black unemployment. ? I know you're allergic to data and primary sources, but you're not going to reconnect with reality unless you stop googling for opinion pieces to reinforce your bias.

By your own telling, you operate on your feelings instead of facts, but that rather neatly illustrates the value and necessity of the "elites." Somebody has to be making informed decisions. You may feel like it was the best economy ever, but that is so wildly inaccurate as to be laughable. Trump inherited a healthy economy an unwisely tried to goose it by running massive elective deficits, but it didn't really work. Poor ROI, as it never became more than a healthy economy. Take a look at the facts instead of your feelings on this. GDP growth, unemployment, poverty rate--pick whatever you want. It's not the best economy by even a single metric, let alone overall. And as for the "properly managed border" illegal crossings went UP dramatically under Trump and deportations went down. Really, it seems like you just sort of believe whatever Trump says. He's made these claims. The trouble is that he's a compulsive liar who has always made outlandish and exaggerated claims about his results.

Nonsense. World opinion of both the US and our POTUS are manifold higher than under Trump. You may be taken in by conspiracy thinking and myopic reductionism, but don't imagine that you speak for "the rest of the world." Biden is old AF and that sucks, but there's no evidence whatsoever that he has done anything unethical, let alone illegal. If he has he should be held accountable. Trump, on the other hand, has been unquestionably caught SO many times it's become so normalized that some of you have simply given up on the idea that his lawbreaking should even be prosecuted. He's above the law for you. Untouchable. Anything goes. Thankfully that's not how America operates. The Jan. 6 coup failed and we are still a nation of laws.

Think? FFS, there are a hundred different answers, but chief among them is that Joe Biden never tried to seize power and end the Republic.

Trump does have "a type" when it comes to lawyers: incompetent lunatics.

There's broad consensus among economists that immigrants (of any status) are a net positive for the economy. You were factually incorrect about undocumented immigrants claiming food stamps or other welfare benefits that are only available to citizens or certain classes of immigrants. Perhaps you should consider that you harbor other misconceptions or misunderstandings that lead to your mind being boggled. There are other arguments to make for or against immigration. There are arguments to make about the optimal levels of immigration. There are humanitarian arguments. There are even cultural arguments. But whatever the case, they should be grounded in reality. For example, the is no serious "open border" conversation. It literally doesn't exist. But that's language we see used over and over again. Real debates and real policies aren't interesting enough?

You're very confused. Third world countries have unelected dictators who place themselves above the law. This is not "third world" behavior. This is the way things work in a nation of laws. Rich, poor, powerful or powerless, all are meant to be held to the same standard. Neither being a president nor running for the office puts one above law, but that is what you are arguing. Trump has broken many laws, betrayed his oath of office and betrayed the American people. For all of this, he's being prosecuted, not persecuted.

In your view, how many votes does one require to achieve immunity from the law? How many to get a free pass on an attempted coup?

If they have been granted asylum, they are neither undocumented nor "illegal."? And people granted asylum still aren't eligible for 5 years. Most of which must be spent working (unless they have some other means of support) and paying into the system. ETA: You're sort of selling Reagan's "welfare queen" boogeyman, which wasn't true then and isn't true now. People aren't just waltzing across the border into a life of taxpayer supported leisure. Just isn't a real concern.