Holy fish. Wagner has taken Rostov. If they fish things up there the whole Russian logistics chain into Ukraine could implode. Do we actually live in a timeline bright enough for this to fishin happen!?!?
There might, emphasis on MIGHT, be something huge happening in Russia. It's possibly this is nothing. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been full of it many many many times before but this isn't something you can posture at and walk back afterwards. If he's said the stuff he's said (and by all apparent accounts he has) the possible outcomes are he wins or he's dead.
I am struggling with this; likel; I fear to even consider giving it credence because a Russian civil conflict of significant size right in the midst of a Ukrainian offensive is just... I don't know... too good to be true? LIke do we live in a timeline where this is possible? Or is there some way this all goes to crap? I suppose is Prigozhin is too successful and somehow we end up with that nut controlling the nuclear button... or maybe a total chaotic scrum?
Even in those worst case scenarios I struggle to see how this isn't good news for Ukraine but I hope ol' Uncle Joe has all his experts working overtime this weekend.
It's in international waters so even if you try and make a regulation good luck applying it outside your borders. Of course the Americans could pull it off by saying "if you don't follow our regulations in international waters and something goes wrong we won't come rescue you" which might be sufficient to snap billionaire idiots heads around- but far from certain.
Obviously, one cannot prove a negative but if the original laptop actually contained the information the NYP alleged it did then Trumps FBI would have been howling to the skies about it. Even the data copies that Guiliani, and everyone else who felt like doing so, had meddled with only contained some very vague allusions to Biden which “coincidentally” were risqué enough for media folks to inveigle about while, simultaneously, not being concrete enough that the FBI would feel any pressure to come out and say “that stuff isn’t on the untampered laptop, it’s made up” or “That stuff is on the untampered laptop and we’re investigating it.” It’s now been four years since the laptop was found and a significant portion of one of those years took place under an administration that was desperate to find dirt on Joe Biden. That no charges, no whisper of charges, no substantiation of the allegations against Joe Biden have so far emerged suggests to me that the allegations in the New York Post again Joe Biden are falsified. If you say “Joe’s a crook” and I say “prove it” and then you go four years providing nothing you can’t say “Joe’s never been proven not to be a crook” well, you can, but everyone outside the circle of true believers will just roll their eyes at the obvious con.
The original New York Post story from October 14 2020, alleged two things; first that the laptop existed and, second, that it contained information that demonstrated that Joe Biden was corrupt. There’s this two step that constantly goes on with this laptop story wherein people keep pointing out that the first premise of the article is correct (the laptop does indeed exist) and then happily imply that means the second premise is also correct. When challenged on the second premise they just retreat back to pointing out the first premise is correct. The only reason anyone outside some tax and gun registration authorities care strongly about this laptop story, though, is the second premise which remains, utterly and completely, unproven.
As far as I know the FBI hasn’t stated anything to Hunter Biden saying “You’re in the clear.” Frankly I don’t particularly care if he is in the clear; I’m not Joe Biden; I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if that idiot Hunter got locked up, heck I’d probably be glad since he obviously has done enough idiotic and unscrupulous things to deserve being locked up over.
That's not what the original allegations in the Post's story was. I'm all for raking politicians over the coals for nepotism and the like so climbing the original story down to this level strikes me as a salutary development. I just am unwilling to ignore that a climb down has happened.
And I'm baffled by the repeated return to the well of media disinformation. The article's allegations against Joe Biden have not been substantiated. That the media didn't give legs to an unsubstantiated baseless allegation is good news, not bad news.
But this is risible- we've now examined the laptop for years and found no proof of Joe Biden doing any of the things that the new york post's article claimed he did. The original article has been falsified but the narrative is now shifted to one that, weeks before the election, the media screened out a false story and didn't give it legs? Shouldn't that be cause for celebration, not approbation?
No argument from me, the n in networking is for nepotism. It's as common in politics as it is in business and it's utterly pervasive in business. And don't get me started on non-profits.
You, yourself, have raised the Clinton's and the Clinton foundation as an equivalent case to Trumps corruption in the past Dark. I merely remember it and referred to it.
And the fact remains that Hunter is not a foreign national so what he did isn't illegal. And, more pertinently, the overarching fact is that so far no one has been able to substantiate any connection between Hunter getting these nepo gigs and his employers actually gaining any form of access or policy benefit from employing Hunter. In the absence of that connection the saga of Hunter Biden becomes backpage gossip, not a national scandal.
That the laptop info reinforces the narrative that Hunter Biden, himself, is an incredible failson dealing on his old man's name and taking wealthy people for a ride while giving them bupkis in return doesn't strike me as at all revelatory. I think you’d need to hunt far, wide and deep into the internet to find anyone on the left who doesn’t view Hunter with anything except with the same contemptuous pity or contemptuous disgust they reserve for most nepo babies and failsons.
The primary narrative the right was pushing when the Hunter Biden laptop story was released immediately prior to the 2020 election was not that Hunter Biden was a failson or that he was taking wealthy people for a ride using his Dads’ name; the narrative pushed was that Joe Biden was directly, corruptly and illegally benefiting from Hunter Biden’s activity and that Hunter Biden was providing a back channel means for actors to buy access to and policy concessions from Joe Biden. When the media, viciously burned by Comey’s idiotic (and against policy) intervention in the 2016 election, refused to fall for an even more nakedly fabricated version of the same trick the rights narrative shifted to an aggrieved caterwauling about a “conspiracy” to cover up the laptop “story”.
I’m surprised that you yourself seem to be memory holing the entire Joe Biden angle and rewriting the story of Hunters laptop into a media conspiracy to protect and preserve the reputation of Hunter fishin Biden? Why on earth would the media have covered for this idiot? His being exposed for what he was would have had zero bearing on anything outside the life of one Hunter Biden. As trifling as the internet may be, there’s no way this much digital ink would have been spilled about Hunter Biden if it was simply a story about the relative of a politician trading on said politicians name fraudulently.
To expand on Jaybirds original question- itself artfully vague- the answer is:
-Was the laptop really Hunter Biden’s? Seems so.
-Did the laptop have information that hurts the reputation and possibly criminally implicated Hunter Biden as being in contravention of a number of laws? This seems to be the case.
-Did the laptop contain any information that reflected poorly on Joe Biden? Nope, no sign of anything but communications from an aggrieved and worried Father.
-Was it real? Yes. Was it a scandal? No.
The equivalence you muster on these subjects always bemuses. Trump is convicted in a court of law of running a fraudulent foundation and is legally barred from operating another. But you personally can imagine scenarios wherein the Clinton foundation, despite being regularly audited and never found to be crooked in any way, is shady so the two sides must be equivalent.
Likewise Trump and his kids nakedly grifted and operate their offices as revenue streams but you believe in public view but you can think of a round about way that Hunter, evidently operating on his own and delivering no benefit to his purported employers, would be breaking the law If he were a foreign national [narrators voice: Hunter Biden is not a foreign national] so the two sides must be equivalent.
The stuff that was on the copy that everyone and their mother fiddled with was awful and very artfully vague. Alarming enough to give the conspiracy theorists much to inveigle about but vague enough that it never drew the FBI out into affirming that it was all fabricated. The stuff that was on the original that the FBI got apparently had none of that stuff since nothing was ginned up for charges using it under Trump and his lot, despite much desperate searching.
Except no one can find any explicit examples of Hunters employers getting any bang for their buck. Heck, they so far can't find things suggesting his employers got even close to obtaining a return on the money they spent on him.
The laptop seems to have existed, yes. Outside of having some stuff specifically embarrassing to Hunter Biden on it everything else about its contents seems to be a fabrication.
It's been a while since I watched TGP but my impression was not that the Bad Place denizens caused the point system to produce the outcome so much as that they merely aggressively defended its status quos once it, of its own accord, began sending everyone to the Bad Place.
My impression was that her placement in the Medium place was not so much that she "Got close enough to doing it" so much as that freak chance caused her death to occur within a tiny window of events that caused her virtue score to briefly achieve the "lofty heights of zero" instead of a negative number. Thus necessitating the medium place.
On “Open Mic for the week of 6/19/2023”
Professor Freedman has excellent long thoughts on the matter. I agree with him that this isn't a coup- it's a mutiny.
https://samf.substack.com/p/prigozhins-mutiny?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=631422&post_id=130568843&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
"
Thanks InMD.
"
Holy fish. Wagner has taken Rostov. If they fish things up there the whole Russian logistics chain into Ukraine could implode. Do we actually live in a timeline bright enough for this to fishin happen!?!?
"
You owe me a beer. But, heck, if this turns out to be substantive we can both drink several in delight.
"
https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-in-crisis-as-wagner-chief-prigozhin-declares-war-on-russian-military-leadership/
There might, emphasis on MIGHT, be something huge happening in Russia. It's possibly this is nothing. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been full of it many many many times before but this isn't something you can posture at and walk back afterwards. If he's said the stuff he's said (and by all apparent accounts he has) the possible outcomes are he wins or he's dead.
I am struggling with this; likel; I fear to even consider giving it credence because a Russian civil conflict of significant size right in the midst of a Ukrainian offensive is just... I don't know... too good to be true? LIke do we live in a timeline where this is possible? Or is there some way this all goes to crap? I suppose is Prigozhin is too successful and somehow we end up with that nut controlling the nuclear button... or maybe a total chaotic scrum?
Even in those worst case scenarios I struggle to see how this isn't good news for Ukraine but I hope ol' Uncle Joe has all his experts working overtime this weekend.
"
From stomping extra hard on capitalism no less.
"
Oh, well they'll get bupkiss then since they'll be in line with all the other creditors for a soon to be hollowed out shell of a company.
I read somewhere one of the lost rich folks families sais "Spare no expense, we'll pay for it all!" And had hope for a moment.
"
That sounds cynically plausible to me. I still hope they bill'm tho.
"
It's in international waters so even if you try and make a regulation good luck applying it outside your borders. Of course the Americans could pull it off by saying "if you don't follow our regulations in international waters and something goes wrong we won't come rescue you" which might be sufficient to snap billionaire idiots heads around- but far from certain.
"
Ironically, that is pretty good news.
"
Paging professor Darwin.
On “Hunter Biden Takes Plea Deal On Tax, Gun Charges”
Agreed.
"
Obviously, one cannot prove a negative but if the original laptop actually contained the information the NYP alleged it did then Trumps FBI would have been howling to the skies about it. Even the data copies that Guiliani, and everyone else who felt like doing so, had meddled with only contained some very vague allusions to Biden which “coincidentally” were risqué enough for media folks to inveigle about while, simultaneously, not being concrete enough that the FBI would feel any pressure to come out and say “that stuff isn’t on the untampered laptop, it’s made up” or “That stuff is on the untampered laptop and we’re investigating it.” It’s now been four years since the laptop was found and a significant portion of one of those years took place under an administration that was desperate to find dirt on Joe Biden. That no charges, no whisper of charges, no substantiation of the allegations against Joe Biden have so far emerged suggests to me that the allegations in the New York Post again Joe Biden are falsified. If you say “Joe’s a crook” and I say “prove it” and then you go four years providing nothing you can’t say “Joe’s never been proven not to be a crook” well, you can, but everyone outside the circle of true believers will just roll their eyes at the obvious con.
The original New York Post story from October 14 2020, alleged two things; first that the laptop existed and, second, that it contained information that demonstrated that Joe Biden was corrupt. There’s this two step that constantly goes on with this laptop story wherein people keep pointing out that the first premise of the article is correct (the laptop does indeed exist) and then happily imply that means the second premise is also correct. When challenged on the second premise they just retreat back to pointing out the first premise is correct. The only reason anyone outside some tax and gun registration authorities care strongly about this laptop story, though, is the second premise which remains, utterly and completely, unproven.
As far as I know the FBI hasn’t stated anything to Hunter Biden saying “You’re in the clear.” Frankly I don’t particularly care if he is in the clear; I’m not Joe Biden; I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if that idiot Hunter got locked up, heck I’d probably be glad since he obviously has done enough idiotic and unscrupulous things to deserve being locked up over.
"
That's not what the original allegations in the Post's story was. I'm all for raking politicians over the coals for nepotism and the like so climbing the original story down to this level strikes me as a salutary development. I just am unwilling to ignore that a climb down has happened.
And I'm baffled by the repeated return to the well of media disinformation. The article's allegations against Joe Biden have not been substantiated. That the media didn't give legs to an unsubstantiated baseless allegation is good news, not bad news.
"
But this is risible- we've now examined the laptop for years and found no proof of Joe Biden doing any of the things that the new york post's article claimed he did. The original article has been falsified but the narrative is now shifted to one that, weeks before the election, the media screened out a false story and didn't give it legs? Shouldn't that be cause for celebration, not approbation?
"
No argument from me, the n in networking is for nepotism. It's as common in politics as it is in business and it's utterly pervasive in business. And don't get me started on non-profits.
"
You, yourself, have raised the Clinton's and the Clinton foundation as an equivalent case to Trumps corruption in the past Dark. I merely remember it and referred to it.
And the fact remains that Hunter is not a foreign national so what he did isn't illegal. And, more pertinently, the overarching fact is that so far no one has been able to substantiate any connection between Hunter getting these nepo gigs and his employers actually gaining any form of access or policy benefit from employing Hunter. In the absence of that connection the saga of Hunter Biden becomes backpage gossip, not a national scandal.
"
As they should be, but by all indications there's no sign of any scandal implicating the administration or Joe Biden himself.
"
That the laptop info reinforces the narrative that Hunter Biden, himself, is an incredible failson dealing on his old man's name and taking wealthy people for a ride while giving them bupkis in return doesn't strike me as at all revelatory. I think you’d need to hunt far, wide and deep into the internet to find anyone on the left who doesn’t view Hunter with anything except with the same contemptuous pity or contemptuous disgust they reserve for most nepo babies and failsons.
The primary narrative the right was pushing when the Hunter Biden laptop story was released immediately prior to the 2020 election was not that Hunter Biden was a failson or that he was taking wealthy people for a ride using his Dads’ name; the narrative pushed was that Joe Biden was directly, corruptly and illegally benefiting from Hunter Biden’s activity and that Hunter Biden was providing a back channel means for actors to buy access to and policy concessions from Joe Biden. When the media, viciously burned by Comey’s idiotic (and against policy) intervention in the 2016 election, refused to fall for an even more nakedly fabricated version of the same trick the rights narrative shifted to an aggrieved caterwauling about a “conspiracy” to cover up the laptop “story”.
I’m surprised that you yourself seem to be memory holing the entire Joe Biden angle and rewriting the story of Hunters laptop into a media conspiracy to protect and preserve the reputation of Hunter fishin Biden? Why on earth would the media have covered for this idiot? His being exposed for what he was would have had zero bearing on anything outside the life of one Hunter Biden. As trifling as the internet may be, there’s no way this much digital ink would have been spilled about Hunter Biden if it was simply a story about the relative of a politician trading on said politicians name fraudulently.
To expand on Jaybirds original question- itself artfully vague- the answer is:
-Was the laptop really Hunter Biden’s? Seems so.
-Did the laptop have information that hurts the reputation and possibly criminally implicated Hunter Biden as being in contravention of a number of laws? This seems to be the case.
-Did the laptop contain any information that reflected poorly on Joe Biden? Nope, no sign of anything but communications from an aggrieved and worried Father.
-Was it real? Yes. Was it a scandal? No.
"
The equivalence you muster on these subjects always bemuses. Trump is convicted in a court of law of running a fraudulent foundation and is legally barred from operating another. But you personally can imagine scenarios wherein the Clinton foundation, despite being regularly audited and never found to be crooked in any way, is shady so the two sides must be equivalent.
Likewise Trump and his kids nakedly grifted and operate their offices as revenue streams but you believe in public view but you can think of a round about way that Hunter, evidently operating on his own and delivering no benefit to his purported employers, would be breaking the law If he were a foreign national [narrators voice: Hunter Biden is not a foreign national] so the two sides must be equivalent.
"
The stuff that was on the copy that everyone and their mother fiddled with was awful and very artfully vague. Alarming enough to give the conspiracy theorists much to inveigle about but vague enough that it never drew the FBI out into affirming that it was all fabricated. The stuff that was on the original that the FBI got apparently had none of that stuff since nothing was ginned up for charges using it under Trump and his lot, despite much desperate searching.
"
Except no one can find any explicit examples of Hunters employers getting any bang for their buck. Heck, they so far can't find things suggesting his employers got even close to obtaining a return on the money they spent on him.
"
The laptop seems to have existed, yes. Outside of having some stuff specifically embarrassing to Hunter Biden on it everything else about its contents seems to be a fabrication.
On “The Good Place, Ethics 101, and Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers”
It's been a while since I watched TGP but my impression was not that the Bad Place denizens caused the point system to produce the outcome so much as that they merely aggressively defended its status quos once it, of its own accord, began sending everyone to the Bad Place.
"
My impression was that her placement in the Medium place was not so much that she "Got close enough to doing it" so much as that freak chance caused her death to occur within a tiny window of events that caused her virtue score to briefly achieve the "lofty heights of zero" instead of a negative number. Thus necessitating the medium place.