ChiGoose

There was a coordinated effort to overturn the results of the election. It was ultimately not successful in part because it was a stupid plan by stupid people and in part because key people in power acted in the name of the rule of law, even if it was against their own political interests. Just because it was incredibly unlikely to work doesn’t mean we should dismiss it. The best indicator of a successful coup is a failed previous attempt. Those involved should be punished in accordance with the law.

From the reporting I’ve seen, the report actually goes after many people who aren’t Trump. Trump is the main focus, sure, but he’s not the only one to be shown acting poorly or even criminally

Obviously there are going to be politics involved, it’s Congress. The question was whether is was purely political, which I do not believe is true. We only have reporting on Cheney keeping the focus on Trump, so I can only speculate as to why Bennie Thompson would accept her demands. Maybe it was to keep the committee working together and prevent fracturing. I dunno. I haven’t read the full report yet but I heard it doesn’t mention Ginni Thomas at all. I’d imagine that was at Cheney’s insistence as well. In the end, people will likely just believe what they want to believe anyway.

I do not believe that it was simply a political inquisition. I dislike how heavily it focused on Trump. He may have been a driver behind a lot of this but he was far from the only actor. The narrowed focus on him seems shortsighted and is rumored to be due to Cheney not wanting to go hard against other GOPers.

As one of the many Bills fans in Chicago, I was gifted four tickets to the Bears-Bills game by a family friend. The plan was for one of my sisters-in-law, a Buffalonian currently living in Los Angeles (who is a Bills fan), to join me, as well as two other Chicago in-laws (who are Bears fans). Both of the Bears fans bailed but I met up with my sister-in-law Bills fan and we stuck it out until the end. In fact, the Bills tweeted a video of the players at the end and if you squint hard enough, you can see me waving a Bills flag in the background. I like to think that the fact that the Bears fans didn’t show while the Bills fans did helped put the Bills over the top.

Twitter needs to take this down. It’s assassination coordinates and constitutes doxxing.

Currently winning the war is not the same as having won the war. Ammunition gets depleted, equipment breaks or is destroyed. The idea that we stop providing supplies once Ukraine has the momentum would only serve to prolong the war as it would stall Ukrainian advances and allow Russia to push back as UA equipment is depleted. Putin has invaded Georgia and then Ukraine twice. If he succeeds in taking over the southern border of Ukraine through Odessa, there is about a 0% chance he wouldn’t move into Transnistria as well. For a small fraction of our budget, we can destroy the Russian war machine, show Western superiority, make China think twice about Taiwan, and strengthen our alliances. Seems like a bargain.

What is the alternative to supporting Ukraine? Also, independent reporting shows Ukraine as currently winning. They have secured the north, and are continuing to make slow progress in the east and south. Leaked communications from the Russian front shows them as disheveled, unprepared, and unable to successfully push back against Ukraine. The only way to end this immediately is to give Putin what he wants. And even then, he'll just end up wanting more and we'll just end up back here again in Ukraine, or Georgia, or Moldova, or elsewhere.

Just a reminder that V-E Day was before the nukes. In any case, what's the alternative here? Just let Russia genocide an entire culture? Force Ukraine into a peace deal that gives Putin what he wants and doesn't deter him from doing this again in Ukraine or somewhere else? It's easy to throw stones, but it's much harder to come up with a viable solution to this because the guy behind it all is a murderous dictator who will attempt to take advantage of any perceived weakness.

When you have been the murderous ruler of a kleptocracy for decades, you end up surrounded by the most sycophantic people, not the brightest. Putin created an echo chamber of yes-men and is now learning the cost. Of course, it's not him out there dying in the trenches, so no reason to change course yet...

Wait, do you think the elections held in the Donbas were legitimate? Or that there weren't Russian forces driving the "revolution"? You should ask the Russians what the goal of the war is since they started it. Ukraine is the defender. They didn't ask for this. What kind of peace deal would be acceptable to Ukraine is an interesting question. Early on, maybe they would have settled for returning to Minsk agreement. But after the war crimes in Bucha and other areas, I'm not sure Ukraine would accept any Ukrainians living under Russian rule and therefore would want to go back to the original borders from 1991. In any case, a defeat of Russia in this conflict is good for the US.

You're right. What I should have said is that it's against DoJ policy to comment on ongoing investigations. Comey didn't seem to care about that, and likely handed the presidency to Trump when flouting DoJ policy. I'm not sure Garland had much of a choice but to go public about the investigation since Trump was calling for the information to be released and he was the subject of the investigation waiving privacy concerns.

The FBI has an open investigation into Hunter Biden and does not comment on ongoing investigations. That being said, we do have reporting that the FBI sent evidence it believed constituted crimes committed by Hunter to the US Attorney's office. So if that's true, it doesn't really mesh with the idea that the FBI is covering for the Biden family. I think stating that they've "locked it up and forgotten about it" is making assumptions that are not necessary supported by the facts.

If the FBI had told Twitter to spike the laptop story, it would have been the first email Taibbi released. If they did it via phone to avoid a paper trail, there would be emails between the legal department and the content moderation team discussing the phone call and what they were going to do about it. The fact that no such documents have been released makes it EXTREMELY unlikely that it's coming in the 9th+ release. It would have been in release one. Instead, what we have is the FBI telling them to look out for cyberattacks and the release of hacked materials. When the NY Post story came, the companies took their own actions, with Facebook and Twitter taking very different actions. If the FBI was censoring the laptop story: Why don't we have an email from the FBI to Twitter mentioning the laptop? Why don't we have internal emails from Twitter discussing what the FBI told them about the laptop? Why were Twitter and Facebook able to take different actions in regards to the story? Why was the NY Post allowed to keep the story up? I have a hard time understanding how someone can look at the facts and come to the conclusion that the FBI was censoring a story that was never taken down from its source, left up at basically every website that had posted it, and only taken down on one site for about a day.

Occam's Razor is anathema to this board...

There is absolutely zero evidence that the FBI talked to Twitter about the Hunter Biden laptop.

Eh, I think Very Online Brain / Brain Worms is a real thing. People who spend far too much time online get their minds warped and are unable to challenge the false reality they’ve created for themselves.

Your problem is with Twitter. The government did not violate the first amendment nor did it censor anyone.

I really hope there is someone in your life who cares for you and can help you because you are just spouting non-sequiturs that make me concerned you are in trouble

So nobody has died. It’s all fake. It doesn’t mean anything? It’s just (((Soros))) doing… something? Is that right?

Rejecting more than half of the requests is doing them a favor? Look, you can search between the lines for whatever conspiracy you want, but the bottom line here is that Twitter is bad at content moderation. If the FBI was actually censoring content, then Twitter wouldn’t be able to reject more than half their requests. And I’m not saying the FBI was right! There’s a good discussion to have about their role here. But saying this is censorship requires ignoring the facts in favor of feelings.

Are you having a stroke? Is there someone nearby who can help you? Obviously the ghost of Kyiv was fake. Does that mean there is no war?

What are you even talking about? You made a statement implying you don’t believe the war even exists, I asked about that and your respond with this non sequitor? Are you ok?

Do you think there is no war?

Actually, it’s really about a private company struggling with content moderation. The “government class” has virtually no ability to make Twitter do anything outside of a court order. But, it’s much more fun to point to a big bad “other” than to acknowledge reality.