Why would anyone worry about Russian propaganda interfering in the US political process?
LAZombie, I have a serious question – why are you reading and repeating Russian propaganda? If the story is true, don’t you think a more reliable Western outlet would pick it up eventually? BBC News, NPR, even Fox News (not their opinion section, of course), the Wall Street Journal?
Assuming you’re really undead from LA, that makes you probably a late US citizen, right? It’s like posting something from the USSR during the Cold War – Russia is a hostile global competitor. They are currently on the other side of the Syrian civil war from us, siding with Iran. They have interfered and are currently interfering with our democratic elections. Why are you posting their propaganda, without waiting for at least the news section of Fox to check it out?
Here’s what a mainstream media source says:
Even Steve Doocy of all people was skeptical.
I will now post this in Russian so LAZombie might better understand it.
Вот что основной источник СМИ говорит:
Даже Стив Дуси из всех людей [были скептически настроены](Steve Doocy Questions Trump Spox Kayleigh McEnany on Biden -spox-kayleigh-mcenany-on-wild-biden-претензии-мы-не-знаем-это-правда/).
I know that this was intended as humor, but we really do not want posts in non-English languages. (It is even in the board rules.)
Please refrain from this sort of action in the future.
[ /Moderating ]
I’ve only briefly glanced at it, but they seem to be saying that a bunch of money was paid to Rosemont Seneca, a business that Hunter is part of.
Joe is a different human being than Hunter.
If the pair of them do business together then that is problematic. If Hunter is a slimeball who frustrates his dad, and refuses to refrain from taking advantage of his dad’s name (despite not actually being able to do anything with it), then that’s unfortunate for Joe but not really an issue that we would be concerned about.
I’ll look back through the thread since I haven’t really had a chance to participate due to personal life, but my sense is that Hunter isn’t the best person in the world. That’s not who we would be voting for, though.
I can’t wait to see what you uncover in your investigation.
I’ll offer you a head start on that investigation: that company (Rosemont) was an investment fund. They wanted to raise $1.5Bn to invest in opportunities outside China; IIRC, they only wound up with about a third of that. They did not “get paid” 1.5 billion dollars, nor even the ~$500K they raised for their investment fund.
Hope those leads help.
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- Failed corruption doesn’t mean you weren’t corrupt.
- You don’t mention Joe at any point in that.
I also omitted any mention of Xenu, Marshal Tito, or osmium. :rolleyes:
If you find any evidence of corruption, even attempted corruption, implicating either Biden, post it here. Anyone can voice baseless allegations and insinuations, and when they are repeated often enough, some people take them as “proven.” I submit that the GOP is skilled at that, and that Trump is the master.
Claims require evidence; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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The existence of a toga wearing, bearded old man who sits on a throne in an alternate dimension, ruling our universe is an extraordinary claim. Saying that a rich guy’s son is a degenerate is not so much. Saying that a father would do favors for his son that he probably should not is not an extraordinary claim, either.
Let’s also note that the discovery of truth is not always the goal.
I realise that sounds like a strange statement but consider a case where you’re thinking of giving Gerald $50,000 as an investment in a new restaurant. Right before giving him the money, you learn that he’s an ex-con who was arrested for a variety of financial crimes 10 years ago.
That criminal conviction does not mean that Gerald ever was or still is a crook. He could have been set up. He could have reformed. Maybe if you broke into his place and looked through his papers and computer and everything, you might be able to determine whether the restaurant is a real thing or just a con but that’s obviously not feasible. Determining the truth of the matter is beyond what you can do, before having to invest the $50k.
But this isn’t a case where you have to determine the truth. That’s the not the question.
The question is, are there other places in the world where you could invest $50k and not need to worry about the question? If so, then why take the risk?
I get what you’re saying, and under normal circumstances, I’d agree. But in the case we’re talking about, the evidence is tainted: your reasons for thinking Gerald might be a crook are based on the innuendo and claims of some very, very bad actors.
Refusing to fund Gerald based on those bad actors ends up empowering bad actors and incentivizing other people to make similar bad-faith claims.
Normally, don’t take such risks. But here, I think it’s crucial we give precisely zero weight to Trump’s and Giuliani’s claims in our risk assessment, because to do otherwise encourages behavior we really, really don’t want to encourage.
Then I suppose those merely ordinary claims would require merely ordinary evidence.
Whaddya got? Or, rather, what do those making the claims offer in support?
Good faith or bad faith is not relevant.
In the case of the Trump whistleblower, for example, the right is pointing out that the whistleblower worked with Joe Biden and possibly with his campaign.
Let’s assume that’s true that the whistleblower is not an unbiased reporter and has more motive than the average person to falsify a report of criminal activity.
Motive doesn’t mean “did”. The whistleblower has motive to lie but he also has motive to simply be a whistleblower and tell the truth. On average, we could probably guess that about 85% of people are honest. 15% of research studies that have a financial motive to be skewed in a particular direction are skewed, for example. The other 85%, despite having a financial motive to falsify their results, are still honest. In cases where you have no particular motive to lie - sexual assault allegations, for example - estimates are that people are lying about the accusation are more in the 2-10% range. The motive aspect may significantly increase the probability of lying, but the probability of telling the truth is still the far greater majority.
Assuming that people lie because they’re motivated to is a bad assumption, particularly if you’re talking about the news media. They could get sued down to nothing for libel, if they make stuff up. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a ton of ways to lie while telling the truth, but everything you read in any major, American news source should be factual if read in a very literal manner and if you properly separate out the parts that are statements of fact from “personal reads” and opinion.
And besides financial risk, it’s simply hard to make a lie that stands much scrutiny. Your average liar will still mostly tell the truth, if they’re any good at it, simply because it’s safer and easier.
And all of that is irrelevant if the information proves true. The whistleblower, the guy who told us about Gerald, whatever it may be, if we’ve double-checked a reliable source and the information was true, then the information was true. That information, at least, we can trust even if there are still parts of the story that we can’t or haven’t yet verified.
But so far, in the case of the Biden’s, we don’t need anyone to lie to find Joe Biden innocent. Proving that Hunter Biden is the largest sleazeball in history is irrelevant to any vote on Joe Biden - unless we want to critique his parenting ability.
In the case of Donald Trump, for example, it’s clear that his family and associates are all crooked. We can take back from that, that Donald is probably crooked. It’s statically unlikely that you’re going to have done business with 12+ people who have gone to jail for financial crimes through simple random chance. It is fair to judge Donald by the people that he hangs out with and by the actions of his children. His children and he are in close business together.
If Hunter Biden is the only bad egg in Joe’s orbit and Joe is mostly disapproving of the things he has done, then that’s not really any evidence against Joe.
We can look at things superficially and say “corrupt family member means corruption!” but that’s not really rational. If you look in the world, I’m sure that you’ll find families with police and crooks coming out of the same parents, or switching from generation A to generation B.
The superficial view is what is called spin. People might not lie very much, but they do spin like all get out.
There is a substantive difference between Trump appointing a man convicted of bribing an elected official into the RNC finance committee and Joe Biden having a son who doesn’t give a crap about dad’s job and national security if it’s going to keep him away from cheap and easy money. One of them is an actual thing that the person being discussed did. The other is a risk, but probably not a huge concern minus any evidence that Joe is strongly affected by his son’s desires. So far as I am aware, at last glance, he fired a prosecutor who wasn’t investigating Hunter’s company, in preference for someone who would be more likely to do so. Whatever theoretical concern there might be that Joe is his son’s patsy seems to have been disproved.
Now this isn’t to say that if Hunter got himself into some major trouble, somewhere abroad - arrested for financial crimes, for example - that I would expect Joe to recuse himself and let that play out without his involvement even if it meant that Hunter served hard time in China.
But, I don’t know that I’d expect any of the candidates with children to behave completely rational in that situation either.
Separating out spin and superficial comparisons is important. Narrowing in on what’s actually a fact, what that really means from a reasonable standpoint, etc. is important.
If you can find trustworthy sources, obviously that is wonderful and all, but ultimately you need the ability to read something and think about what you have read, separate out the fact-checkable statements, and ignore everything else regardless of whether that’s a source you believe in or not. All the source of the information means is how much fact-checking you actually do.
If something is true, though, than it’s true. It doesn’t matter where it came from.
But being true, that doesn’t mean that is relevant to anything at all in the world. Don’t get lost in spin. Just because someone says that “This is proof that Joe Biden is dirty” doesn’t mean that it is. Did the money actually go to Joe Biden? Is Joe Biden happy about that money transfer? Is Joe Biden likely to do anything positive towards the source of that money, because if the transfer? If not then it’s all irrelevant, whether the existence of the payment is true or not.
Any evidence in all those words?
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Of course it is.
Ima stop you right there: they’re making that claim based on virtually no evidence. That’s not “pointing out.”
Let’s assume nothing of the sort.
Your post is really long, and the first three paragraphs are all objectionable. I’m going to apply the correct principle here: when the first three paragraphs are this bad, I’m not going to throw good time after bad. Just as I feel comfortable assuming that it’s a waste of time to pursue further Republican claims about Hunter Biden, I feel comfortable assuming I won’t get much from the rest of this post.
That’s how it works. A politician doesn’t bring their A game, they don’t get my time.
There are lots of places, I’m sure. But high risk investments usually promise a non-zero chance of high reward.
Investment in formerly communist countries had the potential to be very rewarding. Many legitimate western investment firms were attracted by companies that carried a very low price tag, often a fraction of the value of their physical assets.
Some of these investors got badly burned, usually by underestimating the depth of the corruption in these countries. Some of them lost everything, some of them were actually placed in physical danger.
And some of them played these complicated hand of cards just right and made money for their investors.
Players in this game included not just small risk taking investment companies but large conglomerates like Exxon-Mobil.
It is worth noting that many of these investments were in the Russian/Ukraine energy sector. The USA, for a time, encouraged the nurturing of these companies as a route to lessen US dependence on Middle East oil.
The above is probably oversimplified. This is a subject I’ve been interested in for a long time, well before Trump oozed down the escalator at Trump Tower. And I get frustrated when people assume that Hunter Bide was doing something different than the things that dozens, if not hundreds, of other American investors were doing. Yes, investment in the international energy sector is a dangerous and often unsavory game but it is a game played by lots of people and encouraged by US policy.
Then take it as a hypothetical since the point was raised not to raise the subject but to serve as a hypothetical.
What is the objection?
It wasn’t that sort of post.
I was explaining why the Rosemont allegation isn’t very meaningful.
He got hit with a bit of a double-whammy today. First off, he’s apparently fathered a child out of wedlock (It was, to his credit, after his first divorce and before his second marriage, but apparently at a time he was in a relationship with his brother’s widow, so maybe we take that point off the board)
Secondly, and probably most relevant to this thread subject, was this press release published by Interfax-Ukraine:
I’ll have to review. There was this story, though: