1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: Today at 05:51:23 AM »

Even under the scenario that Hunter Biden was collecting money under the guise of providing access to political power, but was really scamming the people paying him, how can you maintain that this shouldn't be investigated by Congress? Why are you guys crying that this should not be investigated?

Yo, this is a thread about Joe Biden. If there's evidence that Hunter Biden did something corrupt of course it should be investigated. But without evidence that Joe was involved it's just another scandal involving a President's relative and is definitely not a basis for impeachment. That whole angle is just a clown show, meant to even the playing field a bit (Look, their guy got impeached too!!) and thus far has been demonstrated to be nothing but a desperate fever dream concocted by some truly corrupt politicians.

Hunter Biden was collecting money on the suggestion of providing access to Joe Biden's political power. How is that not about Joe Biden, or warranting of an investigation?

The purpose of an investigation is to investigate things and collect evidence. Your statement of "without evidence that Joe was involved" suggests that you want Congress to investigate this and collect evidence. Oddly, you are simultaneously expressing a desire for an investigation while telling us that they should not investigate this.

2

Science & Alternative Science / Re: Do rockets push off the air?

« on: December 06, 2023, 05:59:56 PM »

They probably move though multiple mechanisms. They propel themselves through inertial mass ejection, and also push off of air when available near the exhaust port yes.

3

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 06, 2023, 05:51:05 PM »

Even under the scenario that Hunter Biden was collecting money under the guise of providing access to political power, but was really scamming the people paying him, how can you maintain that this shouldn't be investigated by Congress? Why are you guys crying that this should not be investigated?

4

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 05, 2023, 04:41:51 PM »

We appear to be at the point where you guys are claiming that multiple Biden family members were being bribed by foreign country entities to trick Joe Biden into influencing policy decisions, but Joe Biden didn't know about it.

So far, they might have Hunter Biden on selling his father's position for his own gain.  But they haven't linked anything illegal to Joe Biden.

Ok. So you admit that Hunter Biden was selling access to his father's power (through tricking his father into influencing or doing things). How can you maintain that congress doesn't need to investigate that?

5

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 04, 2023, 10:39:30 PM »

They do claim to have evidence for the Biden's pay-for-play schemes - https://oversight.house.gov/landing/biden-family-investigation/

They've had the same claim for what.... 4 years? 
Trump has claimed election fraud for 8.
And democrats claimed Trump had russian influence for 2.

None of them produced any usable evidence so you'll excuse me if I don't trust a press release.

It's not the same four year old claims. They have been posting new evidence and new claims to the link I gave all year. They most recently added something today December 4th -

https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-releases-direct-monthly-payments-to-joe-biden-from-hunter-bidens-business-entity%ef%bf%bc/

"WASHINGTON—Today, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released subpoenaed bank records revealing Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden. Hunter Biden is currently under an investigation by the Department of Justice for using the Owasco PC corporate account for tax evasion and other serious crimes.

Following subpoenas to obtain Biden family associates’ bank records, Chairman Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records. The House Oversight Committee has identified over 20 shell companies and uncovered how the Bidens and their associates raked in over $24 million dollars between 2015 and 2019 by selling Joe Biden as “the brand.” Financial records obtained show Hunter Biden’s business account, Owasco PC, received payments from Chinese-state linked companies and other foreign nationals and companies."

6

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 04, 2023, 01:52:52 AM »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67598948

Are you MAGA lot sick of all the winning yet?

Ironic comment from you since Trump is now winning the polls.

https://www.the-daily-record.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/11/19/donald-trump-leads-joe-biden-young-voters-2024-poll/71646789007/



https://www.enmnews.com/2023/11/29/tracking-polls-show-trump-at-his-all-time-high-as-a-presidential-candidate/#google_vignette



https://emersoncollegepolling.com/november-2023-national-poll-trump-maintains-lead-over-biden/



https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2023/11/26/biden-trump-2024-election-battleground-polls/71667419007/



https://www.westernjournal.com/uh-oh-nbc-news-drops-new-trump-vs-biden-poll-never-result-like/



https://themessenger.com/politics/poll-trump-continues-to-lead-biden-exclusive-2



https://electionwire.com/surprise-in-the-polls-trump-takes-the-lead/#google_vignette



https://newstarget.com/2023-12-01-joe-biden-performing-poorly-different-opinion-polls.html

7

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 03, 2023, 10:37:35 PM »

They do claim to have evidence for the Biden's pay-for-play schemes - https://oversight.house.gov/landing/biden-family-investigation/

8

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 01, 2023, 06:57:52 PM »

Well a deposition regarding potentially illegal activity should probably be done in private. If anything illegal was done then the names Hunter Biden has to mention should probably go to law enforcement or the Congressional Sergeant at Arms rather than speak the names in public and tip off a potential criminal who thought that they were safe or that they wouldn't be pointed out, and cause people to destroy records and documents in a mad panic.

Among its powers, the House performs law enforcement functions and has powers to arrest people who defy their orders. If you are called by the House to testify in a private deposition, you should probably do what they say.

9

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: December 01, 2023, 03:22:34 AM »

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/hunter-biden-agrees-testify-house-oversight-committee-rcna126962

So "We need transparency" Republicans really really don't want Hunter Biden's testemony to be public.  Wonder why?

Any insights Tom?

If you ever watch a public congressional testimony a good percentage of the responses to the questions are "I can't mention names in public" or "I can't disclose that in this public setting" and that somehow passes for an answer.

It sounds like they want a private deposition and are also open to a public one at a future date as well.

https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1729511683301716088

10

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 27, 2023, 02:27:54 AM »

There are no numbers or percentages in that link. Do you seriously believe that a 52 year old woman who you pick to rape tomorrow in a department store dressing room will have a low likelihood of screaming to stop or screaming for help?

There may be "many" women in aggregate totality who do not scream when they are raped against their will, but this is not a denial that the great majority of women who are physically attacked and raped do scream. The article is an explanation for why some do not scream, and makes no effort to deny that most do scream.

Again, you guys are arguing for possibility instead of probability, purely as excuse making for the lack of evidence in this case. Because the arguments here are based on making excuses, it substantially weakens the case. It does not strengthen your case to argue based on a series of excuses.

11

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 27, 2023, 01:34:22 AM »

You are mainly just claiming things like it is possible that someone doesn't scream when they are raped. This possibility does nothing to erase that red flag.

Yes, it is possible that a woman does not scream in a department store when she is raped against her will. However, it is improbable. If you were to go and rape a woman in a store bathroom tomorrow against her will how likely is it that the woman will scream for help? Very likely, obviously.

The series of explanations presented are pure excuse making, which you are explicitly making to explain away and justify a lack of evidence in this case. You pretend that we should be completely on board with believing a series of improbable excuses.

12

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 21, 2023, 03:16:03 AM »

There are several elements there that do suggest an actual scheme.

1. The phrase "This has to stop", reportedly in relation to Trump

2. A suggestion to scheme

3. The suggestion to scheme is immediately followed by phrase "we must do our patriotic duty again"

Honk wants us to believe that they were not suggesting an actual scheme against an elected official and were merely making plans to hang out.

See item 3. It would be incredibly odd to tell friends that it was our "patriotic duty" to hang out. This does not make sense at all under the honk narrative.

Like I said, I'm sure that they did in fact discuss Carroll coming forward with her story with the goal of politically hurting Trump. I'm just saying that the fact that one of them used the word "scheme" does not indicate that what they were up to was in fact a criminal or fraudulent scheme.

You are supposed to be arguing why it's not a red flag, not merely how you can stretch your imagination to see if you can make it work with the rape narrative with creative interpretations.

We have two people who came up with a premeditated plan to hurt Trump politically because they didn't like his politics. The friend is also an alibi who verified that she was told about the rape at the time it happened.

Jean Carroll did not scream when it happened. She did not tell the police. She did not write about it in her ongoing diary that she was keeping. The first we hear she started speaking about it is in a book she wrote shortly after plotting with her friend on a scheme to get Trump.

A jury, too, also assessed this and rejected the claim that she was raped.

All of this exists as one red flag after another, and is counter to the idea that she was raped. In the end we are supposed to believe that in a 1996 department store a 50 year old billionaire named Donald Trump, who could and did get models much younger than himself, could not resist forcing himself upon a 52 year old liberal sex advice columnist named E. Jean Carroll. 

13

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 20, 2023, 02:51:06 PM »

There are several elements there that do suggest an actual scheme.

1. The phrase "This has to stop", reportedly in relation to Trump

2. A suggestion to scheme

3. The suggestion to scheme is immediately followed by phrase "we must do our patriotic duty again"

Honk wants us to believe that they were not suggesting an actual scheme against an elected official and were merely making plans to hang out.

See item 3. It would be incredibly odd to tell friends that it was our "patriotic duty" to hang out. This does not make sense at all under the honk narrative.

14

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Free Speech Warrior Elon Musk

« on: November 20, 2023, 06:20:39 AM »

Without X Argentina's new president would probably have been heavily demoted by Twitter's previous owners and we would never have been blessed with his wonderful words of wisdom.

https://twitter.com/KingsleyCortes/status/1726384074942493035

15

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 19, 2023, 06:18:42 PM »

My own more charitable interpretation of this - although of course I can't prove it - is that Carroll may have been doubting herself or her recollection in the aftermath of what happened (as rape victims often do), but when Trump denied the entire incident, it helped push her into realizing that what Trump had done was definitely wrong and that was why he was denying everything.

Considering that the explanation you came up with here involves her not being raped, I don't see any further need to argue the point. This does cast doubt on the rape story, and exists as a red flag.

Indeed, there were many red flags in this case. Another one is the scheme email, in which prior to the rape accusation Jean Carroll's friend Carol Martin discussed stopping Trump with her in an unspecified "scheme".

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-lawyers-e-jean-carroll-174843340.html

While asking about how Carroll developed her book, which marked the first time she made that startling accusation, Trump’s lead defense attorney pointed out an exchange she had with a close friend, the fellow journalist Carol Martin.

“This has to stop,” Martin suggested in a Sept. 23, 2017 email about Trump. “As soon as we’re both well enough to scheme, we must do our patriotic duty again.”

“TOTALLY!!! I have something special for you when we meet,” Carroll responded.

Two weeks later, Carroll started a cross-country road trip to gather material for an upcoming book in 2019 about nasty men—one that ultimately included a bombshell account of Trump allegedly raping Carroll in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman.

Coincidentally Carol Martin also happened to be Jean Carroll's alibi she allegedly confided in at the time of the event, who corroborated the story in court that she was raped by Donald Trump.

Of course, in your mind these are not red flags at all, and all of this exists as one explainable coincidence after another.

16

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 18, 2023, 08:41:02 PM »

It's not a strange move. Next year is an election year. It helps them to have Trump under indictments and tied up in these cases.

No, these indictments aren't really helping Democrats politically. They're endearing Trump to his fans even more, adding fuel to his "They're out to get me" narrative, giving him a new topic to rant about at his rallies, and most importantly of all, aren't dissuading anyone from supporting him at all. You commented on this yourself a few months ago. If the goal is to hurt Trump politically, it's clearly not working, there's no indication that it's suddenly going to start working, and yet they keep pushing forward with these prosecutions anyway.

The people voting in 2024 will not be 100% composed of Trump fans.

Rape victims do not say that they will consider dropping charges if their rapist agrees that the sex was consensual. There are a series of red flags here, of which you say it was 'possible' she was still raped. The fact is that the jury rejected her claim of rape and said that she was not raped.

Where did you see that she'd consider dropping charges if Trump agreed that the sex was consensual? I'm not seeing that anywhere, and it doesn't even make sense. Her entire claim was that what happened wasn't consensual, so how from her perspective could Trump be agreeing that it was consensual? I have read that Carroll said she expected Trump to claim that what happened was consensual, and was surprised when he flatly denied the entire incident, but that's obviously not the same thing.

See the statements of this MSNBC legal analyst covering the case. Carrol said that if Trump had said the sex was consensual she would have considered not suing him.

https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1653060043133026305

As to your other points, no, those aren't red flags, they're just your arbitrary, unsupported assertions of what is or isn't normal or suspicious. Everyone responds to sexual assault differently, and there's no right or wrong way to do it. Like I said before, a determined skeptic can twist any element of a victim's story to sound suspicious. She went out with friends after the alleged rape? You'd think she'd be shaken up and in no mood for socializing, how suspicious! She didn't go out with friends after the alleged rape? Imagine a rape victim not wanting to be supported by her friends, how suspicious!

Yeah, no. Rape victims don't consider dropping charges if the rapist says that the rape was consensual.

I specifically avoided using the term "rape" so that we could avoid the tedious "ehrm actually they said it wasn't rape" nitpick, but I guess a minor detail like me not needing to be corrected isn't enough to stop you from correcting me.

The alleged victim said that she was raped. So the fact that the court said that she was not raped is not a minor detail.

They did not retire thinking that it was up to them to award Carroll money because Trump called her ugly, nor for any other broad definition of "sexual abuse" that didn't actually correspond to what allegedly happened on the day in question.

They retired thinking that it was a strange verdict because the primary claim of rape was rejected -

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65566501

Mr Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina told reporters outside the courtroom that it was "a strange verdict".

"They rejected her rape claim and she always claimed this was a rape case, so it's a little perplexing," he said.

The media, in fact, has been going on for weeks about how Cohen was supposed to be the prosecution's "star witness" -

I'll leave Cohen's star witness status to be decided by a court of law rather than the court of public opinion.

Please try to understand that the judge already determined that there was enough evidence to find Trump guilty of fraud even before Cohen took the stand.

That's... not how court cases work. Judges don't judge defendants before the case is over.

If he did make such comments, it will only be used as fodder for an appeal. The judge in that case has already been slapped by an appeals court regarding his actions in this case: New York appeals court judge lifts gag order in Trump civil fraud case

17

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 15, 2023, 04:32:58 AM »

Why distance yourself from Cohen's testimony?

He's apparently the best you have in that case. If over the past weeks we had been discussing Cohen's upcoming testimony honk would have doubled and trippled and quadrupled down in his assertions that the prosecution wouldn't bring someone to the stand unless it was devastating for Trump.

The media, in fact, has been going on for weeks about how Cohen was supposed to be the prosecution's "star witness" -

https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fixer-now-star-witness-michael-cohen-face/story?id=104221023



https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-trial-net-worth-new-york-067501b1d742d4dccba2521ac3262fdb



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/nyregion/trump-michael-cohen-lawsuit-dropped.html



https://fortune.com/2023/10/18/trump-returns-new-york-civil-fraud-trial-star-witness-michael-cohen/



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-fraud-lawsuit_n_652e5469e4b0da897ab53696

18

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 15, 2023, 01:33:11 AM »

There isn't any reason to believe that they have substantial evidence against Trump. This is like the boy who cried wolf story. Trump was supposed to be in jail because there was all of this evidence that he was a russian spy years ago. It turned out that the evidence was pretty shoddy and politically motivated. Since then every other week it has been some other claim and some other alleged crime, which always comes with the coincidental far-left DA or far-left figure pushing for it, with recurring predictions from the left that a mountain of evidence has been collected against Trump and he is for sure going to jail this time.

How many times has Trump been indited?  Are you forgetting that he has already been found guilty of fraud in a civil trial?  The judge even said that there was enough evidence to fill the courtroom.

Engoron rejected the motion absolutely, contradicting the Trump team’s claim that Cohen was the key witness. “There’s enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom,” he remarked.

Perhaps you have a different definition of evidence than the court system.

Engoron is one of the leftist loonies, and the case will go nowhere and any result will survive no appeal. Look at the full paragraph of what you quoted for a demonstration of the type of evidence you are talking about:

Later, Trump turned on the histrionics again, storming out of the courtroom after the judge refused to dismiss the case based on seemingly inconsistent testimony by Cohen over whether his former boss asked him to inflate financial statements. “I’m leaving,” Trump exclaimed and headed out the large doors of the courtroom. Engoron rejected the motion absolutely, contradicting the Trump team’s claim that Cohen was the key witness. “There’s enough evidence in this case to fill this courtroom,” he remarked. (As CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Lauren del Valle noted in a dispatch from the courtroom, Cohen later clarified that Trump didn’t ask him directly but he implied it by speaking like a “mob boss.”)

Essentially "Trump didn't ask anyone to inflate financial statements directly, but he implied it by speaking like a mob boss!"

Do you sincerely and honestly believe that this type of evidence is going to go anywhere?

I can only roll my eyes when you guys continually fall for this media hype. 

19

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 14, 2023, 05:28:04 PM »

There isn't any reason to believe that they have substantial evidence against Trump. This is like the boy who cried wolf story. Trump was supposed to be in jail because there was all of this evidence that he was a russian spy years ago. It turned out that the evidence was pretty shoddy and politically motivated. Since then every other week it has been some other claim and some other alleged crime, which always comes with the coincidental far-left DA or far-left figure pushing for it, with recurring predictions from the left that a mountain of evidence has been collected against Trump and he is for sure going to jail this time.

Either Trump is one of the most prolific criminals ever and always evades justice for his many crimes, or this is an ongoing witch hunt with no real substance.

Spoiler: No one has flipped on Trump. No one will say anything directly accusatory or anything wildly surprising against Trump.

20

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 13, 2023, 01:43:10 PM »

As it is, she has only agreed to testify truthfully. Everything else is conjecture.

Tom, you keep focusing on the "what" of the deal (the truthful testimony).  Aren't you the least bit interested in the "why" of the deal?  As in, if she agreed that there was enough evidence to convict her for the original charges, then why would the prosecutors give here such a sweetheart deal instead of going to trial and conviction?

BTW, a plea deal still counts as a conviction.

There are plenty of alternative theories to the one you propose - https://technofog.substack.com/p/prediction-sidney-powell-wont-be

You are trying to tell us what other people are thinking, who you do not know.