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Elephants and Jackasses...

Discussion in 'Permanent Threads' started by Nettdata, Oct 14, 2016.

  1. Juice

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    My understanding is the root cause of that is the fracking and shale industry has more or less stabilized at this point and is no longer on the meteoric rise it was 5-10 years ago. Is that accurate?
     
  2. downndirty

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    Can you give me some context/reading here?

    Maybe I've not been paying attention, but of all and I mean ALL the white collar crime the FBI can be investigating, this is the most important? And it's in no way politically motivated?

    Because if those two things are true, I'm about to commit some outrageous crimes. And if those two things are true, then why aren't we hearing about Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and the Trump's various relatives in positions of power/compromise?


    Also, it seems there are some holes in this story:
    https://i.redd.it/gwuc1fnvx3u51.png
    • Hunter Biden, for some reason, decides to have 3 laptops repaired a thousand miles from where he lives.
    • He then doesn’t return to get the laptops.
    • The repair shop employee has a condition that doesn’t allow him to recognize people, but he decides that the laptops belong to Hunter Biden because of stickers from the Beau foundation.
    • He then proceeds to search through Hunter’s laptop and finds these incriminating e-mails
    • He then contacts the FBI, or the FBI contacts him (yes, this repairman claims both) and they issue a subpoena to get the laptop.
    • Before the laptop is taken by the FBI, this repairman makes a copy of the hard drive.
    • After months of no news from the FBI, the repairman decides to make the hard drive reach Rudy Giuliani (lol).
    • Rudy then hands over the hard drive to a Trump supporter that writes for the NYP And the “smoking gun” is published
    • The FBI has warned that Russian agents were going to release false e-mails to try and influence the election.
    • Rudy Giuliani has been confirmed by intelligence agencies to have been compromised by Russian agents.
     
  3. xrayvision

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    The overall palatability of jobs that extract resources from the earth is on the down swing. The reason they are making a big stink about last night is because Trump needs Pennsylvania to win. Jobs that deal in this industry are usually Trump’s bread and butter. Non-college white men and other blue collar types, although there is some diversity.

    At the end of the day, we still need natural gas and petroleum so the job numbers might shrink some, but the companies tend to do more reorganizing at the administrative levels. Politicians pandering to the folks who work in those industries does nothing but prevent those people from transitioning to more in-demand jobs.

    I’d keep my eyes open for lithium mining right now. With all the upcoming EV’s in the future, battery materials will be hot.
     
  4. GcDiaz

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    Lithium, isn't that what they mine in Bolivia where the Socialists just won the election resoundingly?
     
  5. xrayvision

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    Yes and it interesting because they have an interest in nationalizing their natural resources which could make it more difficult for mining companies to negotiate.

    The problem with exploiting countries like this where they don’t have a diverse economy is that they are susceptible to Venezuela-like corruption.
     
  6. Juice

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    Yeah, thats the double-edged sword for green energy. You can't have lithium without strip-mining.

    It absolutely is politically motivated, and if Biden gets elected and the GOP regains the House next time and retains the Senate, he will be impeached for it as retribution against the Democrats. However that doesn't mean its also not worthy of a legitimate investigation aside from above. That's the exact argument many people, including on this board, made about the Trump-Russia collusion story (including myself). So either we care about justice for all politicians or it's just another partisan weapon plagued with hypocrisy. Do you see what I'm saying?
     
  7. downndirty

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    Seriously, I'm trying to avoid the what-about-ism that's kind of endemic, but I don't know enough about this issue. From what I understand, Biden got his son a job? And something something email shit show? Help me out here, because I am not seeing the news on how this is a scandal (or real), so what am I missing?

    The Trump/Russia thing seems to be kind of different for a lot of reasons.
     
  8. Juice

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    Its not what-about-ism. Well not for me, anyway. And Trump-Russia is completely different. I was making a meta-comparison on how its treated versus the specific circumstances. It's taking the approach that if we are not honest in at least investigating all instances of potential corruption, regardless of an R and D next to a given name, then we will never have a political system with integrity. I have the same perspective of Biden's sketchiness that I did of Trump. Show me the proof and I'm in, otherwise I'm not buying it. But impulsively dismissing a specific circumstance altogether is also not an acceptable approach. This is does not have to be zero-sum. I'm pretty exhausted, so perhaps I'm not illustrating this as clearly as I thought I was.
     
  9. xrayvision

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    I think it’s important to the look at the source for the information Biden is being accused of. There were open and active investigations into Hillary for a long time. Whether or not they were all legit can be debated. But they did plenty of damage to her over the years and gave her enough baggage to hurt her through the election.

    This Burisma stuff has been the product of foreign entities and dirty players like Giuliani for a while now. They’ve been broadcasting that they will do this and no serious investigative body has done or said anything about. If it turns out I’m wrong, I’ll gladly own it. But the whole Hunter Biden thing has been a shoddily thrown together smear campaign that the only outlet to carry it was the NYPost.

    Last night the WSJ opinion column tried to run a story, but then the news desk at WSJ actually debunked its own op-ed. It didn’t even pass the Fox News smell test.

    I feel that just because something gets cooked up doesn’t make it worthy of an actual investigation because Trump people say so. They don’t have a whole lot of credibility in this dept. Everything they accuse Biden of, they have already done and way more of it.

    I know it feels like everyone thinks the media just wants Biden to win. But they made way more money on a Trump presidency than they will on a Biden one. But when the candidate is just so bad, a lot of people are tired of the bullshit, and are just generally exhausted by the day-to-day shenanigans, it’s not the media’s fault.

    At the end of the day, there are probably 250k bodies sitting at Trumps feet and all he has to say is something about H1N1. People are starved for leadership.
     
  10. downndirty

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    My question is: what's the most credible source of accusation at play here? Who or what is the driving entity saying "there's some fuckery afoot here"?

    With other investigations, there's a few organizations/actors that seem to have some credibility, impartiality and don't have an obvious incentive in play here. For me, that seems to be missing from this scandal.

    I don't think you're naive enough to think we investigate every possible instance or accusation, and there does need to be some burden of credibility on the part of the accusing party, no? So, what is that for you?

    Because I haven't seen any credible accuser here, and I am concerned I'm missing something.
     
  11. Juice

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    Well I have no idea what your bar for credibility is. But it's tough to determine credibility if an investigation is dismissed by the media before it even begins. The accusations are apparently serious enough to warrant the FBI interviewing his ex-business partner today, who appears to be Democrat and has a history of making donations to Democratic campaigns, according to himself. This person also says he has proof of the allegations. Whether or not that proof has any merit remains to be seen. My point again, is not that Biden is guilty. It's that there is nowhere near equal coverage on reporting of it whatsoever. The vast majority of it has been on a meta-narrative about the New York Post, Giuliani, etc. rather than whether or not Biden was involved in a pay-for-play situation. To their credit, the Wall Street Journal did do a story a few hours ago, however, that they could not find any initial evidence of wrongdoing based on their review of some corporate records, so I guess we have to see how it plays out.

    I have no idea what those "corporate records" are. I would imagine without a massive leak or subpoena, they are either 10K/Qs or accessible formation documents.
     
  12. Aetius

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    What do you expect the media to do? They have an accusation, being made by a known liar and partisan, and no sources that confirm the accusation. They can keep digging, which some of them probably are behind the scenes, but in terms of what to publish, all they have is "known liar is probably lying."
     
  13. Kubla Kahn

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    Certainly hasn’t stopped the media in the past. Brett Kavenaugh mass rape party allegations and the like. Dan Rather was actually run out of his job in the mid aughts for reporting unverifiable allegations on GWB military service.

    Certainly get the hesitation around Rudy but the wholesale dismissal claiming it’s all likely a Russian disinformation campaign (which itself is purely unverified assertion) is disingenuous at best.
     
  14. Nettdata

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    You spelled “tucking” wrong.
     
  15. Juice

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    Applying consistent journalistic standards would be a good start.
     
  16. Aetius

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    What has been inconsistent?
     
  17. Juice

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    There is a clear lack of consistency regarding the burden-of-proof required to run a story. As one example outside of the current election, the NYT ran a story during the McCain-Obama cycle regarding a hearsay accusation of McCain sleeping with a staffer (or something similar). They ran in on the front page with almost zero proof and received a mountain of backlash for it. This is not a single occurrence nor is it exclusive to the NYT.

    Edit: It was a lobbyist, not a staffer.
     
  18. Aetius

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    I don't see how they're comparable. The NYT and WaPo had sources on McCain's staff, FEC filings, etc.
     
  19. Zach

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  20. Kubla Kahn

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    Did I just shit myself?

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