Hodad

Point 2 here is particularly atrocious. You've made it clear that you're generally confused by charts and data, and indeed this chart has no hope of showing what you wish it showed. It's the wrong chart. BUT you don't need any skill in statistics to simply read the damn thing: "NOTE: All death rate data after 2019 are United Nations projections and therefore DO NOT include any impacts from COVID-19."

The fired guy being salty is no surprise, but people from his office confirmed that there was no investigation, Archer confirmed what the Burisma board was told (they wanted to keep Shokin). And remember, the entire Western world wanted Shokin fired because he was enabling corruption. He blocked a UK investigation of Burisma and that was the final straw. They decided enough was enough. This wasn't a Biden pet project or favor. It was the US government (Republicans included) the UK, the EU, the IMF and the Ukrainian people. That's why Joe was boasting about it. It's getting pretty kooky to reduce all of that to Joe doing a favor for Hunter. As for the money, I don't actually think Hunter got paid all that much in the grand scale of things. Certainly not enough to have others move and manipulate geopolitics at the highest levels. As Archer explained, that money didn't go right into their pockets. It went into the business and they took home a considerably smaller portion. -- it's a good salary for a company man, but it's simply not world-moving money. For a sense of scale, think of it this way: Joe made $16M+ in 2017 from books and speeches. And he can do that year after year. Nobody is impressed with Hunter's relative pittance or risking big paydays to help him earn it. What's universally agreed upon is that Hunter's market value was considerably higher because of who his father was. People will pay more if they think the relationship potentially includes that level of access and influence. It's also clear that Hunter played up that angle, riding his father's coat tails.

His positions are asinine-- just more populist idiocy. One has to be a literal crazy person to think that scientists around the world suddenly stopped competing to discover the truths of the natural universe and all just suddenly shifted to focus of perpetrating a hoax on the rest of us.

You have the facts incorrect. The prosecutor, Shokin, was NOT investigating Burisma. It was long dormant. In fact, he wasn't investigating any corruption and was widely understood to be enabling and benefiting from corruption. That's why the entire Western world and the Ukrainian people wanted him fired, and why Biden was publicly proud of executing that policy. Per the Archer testimony, Burisma's board was told that they had Shokin under control, and did not want him replaced with someone they didn't control. So no, Joe Biden acted against Burisma's interests in getting Shokin fired.

Ramaswamy is a rich kook with no political knowledge or experience. Gee, that sounds like a familiar recipe for disaster. But we don't have to worry about him. Republicans are who they are. They aren't going to nominate a brown man who won't even pretend to believe in Jesus.

That's pretty disingenuous. "Go there right now and stop the process that is underway right now or you won't have a country," is explicit in every sense of the word. He didn't tell then to attack the police or smash the doors, but for people who fell for his con, violence is a pretty reasonable response to what he positioned as an existential crisis. That's 100% why it happened. If he had given a more moderate speech there would have been no attack on the capitol.

Can I assume from this post that you acknowledge your error? That indeed, Trump did not simply get the crowd riled up and they decided on their own to go do things? That he explicitly directed them where to go, when to go, and set their objective? And that at best one might quibble about what a reasonable person would interpret as the desired level of force? A far, far cry from your description of events.

Yes, that's all true. We also saw in multiple court cases that those attacking the Capitol believed they were doing exactly what a Trump asked of them. Sure, they're kooks, but he helped make them that way and they received his not-so-subtle signals loud and clear.

1. Deficit by year 2. Data ending with FY 2022 3. Deficit dropping during the Biden admin, down dramatically from the Trump highs.

It really sounds like you haven't heard or read the speeches that were prelude to the attack on the Capitol. He explicitly told them where to go: to the Capitol. He explicitly told them when to go: right now. He explicitly told them to "stop the steal." The only point of equivocation is whether you believe, in combination with the explicit instructions and months of lies and priming, whether a reasonable person would expect that crowd to turn violent when he told them as he was wrapping up his speech, "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." I think it's hard to argue that a reasonable person wouldn't expect violence from that crowd in those circumstances given those instructions. it's really not accurate to say that he riled them up and then they just decided what to do on their own. He explicitly told them when, where, what, and why. And he AT LEAST implicitly told them how, that they needed to fight against an existential crisis in this exact moment.

No, you didn't. Full stop. You are a liar. There was no "other video" of the convenience store robbery. The surveillance footage was released, by the police, and carried on CNN, FOX and other major networks the very same day it was released - 6 days after the killing on August 15. You can't produce another video. You can't show that it was released at an earlier date, because indeed it was not. But you will cling to your phony story like as an article of faith in and will repeat it ad nauseum. Your total inability to take in and process new information when it undermines your dogma is disordered behavior. You complain that people don't want to engage with the nonsense in your Gish gallops, but why would they? Seriously, when you can't even acknowledge the basic facts of a shared reality, why would anyone debate opinion? Seek professional help.

Nothing wrong with having people on ignore, but it takes a special kind of coward to shout about having someone on ignore, and then continue vto talk about and reply to that person. Congrats on the dubious achievement of finally being special. That was not a generic insult, BTW. I don't know ahy other poster who, regardless of debate topic, compulsively vomits forth the same litany of recycled accusations as if they are some religious mantra. It's exactly like the batshit crazy guy on the street corner preaching rehearsed and rehashed nonsense to any poor soul who happens to pass by. And yes, though CNN is not something I seek out, it's fairly decent news. I don't watch any televised news, but their online stories and excerpted broadcast segments are usually reasonable. They did not, for example, report that Michael Brown was a gentle giant. Nobody at CNN knew Michael Brown. Instead, they did what news organizations do: they interviewed friends and family and reported what the interviewees said. And guess what, when the police released the footage of the Brown robbery CNN ran it the same day, specifically citing the dueling narratives. ^^ This is not news to you. We've actually had this conversation multiple times. You falsely claimed that FOX ran the robbery video on the day Brown was killed - 6 days before police released that footage. I showed you time-stamped stories showing that both FOX and CNN ran the footage on the same day it was released (6 days after the killing) and still you couldn't manage to admit the error and absorb that fact into your perspective. Do you have a magic TV that can show you the future? No, of course not. But you're too farking crazy to adjust your facts, so you repeat the same debunked mantra ad nauseum. Seek professional help ASAP.

Oh, boy. Someone bumped the lunatic jukebox and now its stuck blaring out it's greatest top 40 fictional hits again. What a deeply defective conspiracy bot this one is.

She was fired from Biden's staff, literally, 30 years ago. Whatever she was back in 1993, she's clearly a nutball now.

You are being gross. We don't need a "liberal" version of Reason10. A man was killed, with lots of inputs leading to that outcome, but his friends and neighbors and family aren't giddy. The agents who opened fire aren't giddy. There's something wrong with you if this sad affair brings you joy.

Those things aren't exclusive. There's ample evidence of core, fundamental dishonesty. It doesn't require critical thinking to acknowledge basic facts, but he'll hold tight to lies about anything that feels convenient, from the weather to dates of publish--things which need not be argued or reasoned, but simply observed and acknowledged. My absolute favorite is denying that it rained during the Trump inauguration while reading contemporaneous reports of the rain, looking at photographic evidence of the rain, and the fact that people on stage speaking at the inauguration referred to the rain. That's not a failure of critical thinking. Trump lied about it, so his sycophants repeated the lie. -- There are many other colorful examples, but none more illustrative.

^^ You see, pathological liars often can't keep their lies straight. They just say whatever is convenient in any given moment. And in the next moment will happily say the exact opposite. See Trump.

Right. He didn't even ask Zelensky to check into or investigate something. His quid pro quo request was for the public announcement of an investigation into his campaign opponent. Pretty obvious what he wanted out of the deal: more foreign campaign favors. -- After all, it worked pretty well for him in 2016.

^^Compulsive liar at work again. The FBI didn't say anything about Hunter's laptop There were 2 acquittals in the Whitmer case and 7 GUILTY, yet he presents it was illegitimate The FBI has good cause to investigate the Trump campaign for Russian collusion -- even the goddamn Durham report acknowledged that a preliminary investigation was warranted. And indeed, they uncovered fairly damning evidence. Give it a rest already.

Indeed, Archer explained with full transparency that he partnered with Hunter Biden because the Biden brand and the hope/appearance of access would be great for business. He also said that Joe Biden never took action on their behalf and, indeed, never even talked business with them. In his testimony and his Carlson interview Archer said that whenever Joe Biden was visible/audible to Hunter's business contacts, all they talked about was small talk--weather, fishing travel etc. I actually don't think that's accidental. Hunter and Joe are not naïve. Both of them are are aware there is great value for Hunter in demonstrating that easy access to Joe. In a way, he could "help" his son without ever actually doing anything on his behalf or making any ethical compromises. Just catching up with his son for a few minutes is all it takes. Note that this actually comports with the internal conversation between Hunter and Archer: we can give the appearance of influence, but I can't actually get my data do to anything.

Ah, these mysterious charges again. What were they and when were they dropped? I'll hold my breath.

I think you're right about all of that, except I crushed to discover that it was a close contest. Nearly half of Americans will tolerate a Trump--and an alarmingly large subset don't just tolerate, but actually celebrate, a Trump. It shouldn't be a close race. We should be better than that.

Right? At what point to conscientious Republicans either take back the party or abandon it? Is there even such a point? There will always be people for whom the ends justify the means, but I have to believe that many--maybe most--of my fellow Americans are not without principle. If decent people of principle can't win a primary in the Republican party of Trump, is that really a party worth belonging to? Yet year after year we see the disqualifying, the unacceptable--the unimaginable--being rationalized, normalized and defended at the party level. A man who, among numerous disqualifying actions and crimes, literally tried to overthrow our system of government, is the overwhelming frontrunner for the Republican nomination again. Which should have any decent Republican asking what is worthwhile about being a Republican anymore? If they don't stand for moral values, and they don't stand for fiscal restraint, and they don't stand for law and order, and they don't stand for the constitution, WTF do they stand for? At this point, they just stand for Trump. And I don't know how decent people can tolerate it. I may have overestimated my countrymen.

Yep, the Republicans were on board as well--some on record. This whole thing is such a weird reconning of history, pretending as if there are no records of that time--or hoping that people will be too lazy to look for them. Everyone wanted Shokin gone except for the the corrupt interests that he was protecting. It's about as phony as it gets to pretend that this was just Biden doing something for his son.

Don't you think that with unlimited and extraordinary levels of scrutiny, and after decades of public service, if Joe Biden were actually corrupt there would be some evidence? How, after decades, is wild speculation, innuendo and creative storytelling the most his rabid opponents can dig up? Sure, he's a regular, flawed human being, but seems like you should have higher standards to label someone a criminal.