ChiGoose

I don't think supporting Ukraine to this extent was the original plan. If I remember correctly, the Biden administration offered to pull Zelensky out of Kyiv and set up a government-in-exile when Ukraine inevitably fell to the Russians. Based on the poor performance of the Ukrainian military in 2014, there was little expectation that they would have much success against the much larger and better-resourced Russian military. But after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Ukraine changed it's military posture from a post-Soviet strategy to one aspiring to NATO standards. The goal was to better adhere to how Western militaries worked (valuing the lives of the soldier, delegation of control to NCO's in the field, advanced Western weaponry, etc.) instead of continuing the Russian model of meat grinders and a kleptocratic military leadership, which had clearly failed. What we didn't realize was how successful they had been. I think if we had known, we may have provided them more arms prior to the invasion. But we thought this was basically the same army that got its ass handed to it 6 years prior and had basically no chance of winning. Instead, they surprised the world and repelled the initial invasion in the north on their own, though they still struggled in the east and south. Once it became apparent that the individual Ukrainian units were far superior to their Russian counterparts, the question became: what support do they need to actually win this thing (or at the least, get back to the 2014 borders via truce)? In the end, a Ukrainian defeat of the Russian army aligns with the United States' global strategic goals and diminishes the powers of those who wish to take the global hegemony away from us and put it in the hands of the China-Russia-Iran (and maybe India?) axis. For just a fraction of our budget and none of our blood, that seems a worthy investment to me.

Not a defense of this per se, but my understanding of why it happens: We have a two-party system, which means that elections are zero-sum. You win, I lose and vice versa. As long as we have a first-past-the-post election system, it'll always be two parties, and it'll always be zero sum. Doesn't matter if we put in term limits, campaign finance reform, etc. So long as the goal of every candidate is securing a plurality of the votes against a single opponent, the other side will always be seen as the bad guy. Governance is not supposed to be zero-sum. It's supposed to be negotiation, compromise and getting less of everything you want (and a little that you don't want) in exchange for actually making a difference. In the less polarized times, there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. There were urban conservatives and rural liberals. The rise of cable news, the internet, and social media has lead to geographical and ideological sorting. This has led to an almost unprecedented level of polarization. So now zero-sum politics has infected the governance. Passing something when your team is in charge is bad for my team, even if the bill being passed is overall beneficial to my constituents. Therefore, I will vote against my constituents' interests to deny a win to the opposing team (of course, given that no bill is perfect, I will find some fig leaf of a provision, claim it is unacceptable, and blame your team for putting it in there). Regular order breaks down and whatever team is in charge just puts everything into a giant package, horse trades billions in earmarks, and rams it through at the last minute when the alternatives to not passing it are somehow worse than the bill itself. If you're Mr. Smith who went to Washington, the end result of this is that you're given the following choice: vote for this monstrosity of a bill or potentially let the American economy collapse. What's the least bad option? Can you blame even the best-intentioned member of Congress from swallowing their pride and voting for this, vowing it'll be the last time (but knowing deep down in their heart that it won't)? The only solution for this is electoral reform that returns the power to the people, not Washington, and creates incentives for cooperation, not invective polarization. But that would require those benefitting from the current system voting to replace it...

Absolutely anyone can flag Twitter accounts for violating the TOS. Twitter decides what to do with that. Doesn't matter if it's you, or me, or the FBI. The fact that you're spending your time railing against the people flagging the accounts instead of those making the decisions seems weird. Especially since Twitter rejects 60% of the items flagged. I suppose if you want to, you can just pretend that Twitter felt it had to act on the FBI flags despite the evidence showing otherwise (and the fact that, as people have pointed out, Twitter had a lot of ex-FBI people on staff so they would know that the FBI can't make them do anything about accounts). So we have a scenario where the FBI is flagging items (I'll even grant that they flagged things they shouldn't have), Twitter is deciding what to do about them and decides not to do anything about 60% of them (even at one point telling the FBI that if they really want Twitter to actually do anything, they better get a court order because Twitter doesn't have to take something flagged down if they don't want to). The only way that this is censorship is if you just make up what words mean or have no idea what censorship is. The frustrating thing to me is that there is a good debate about where to draw the line on the appropriateness of the FBI flagging accounts (not flagging them at all seems like a bad idea to me, having seen the ISIS recruitment on Twitter back on the day), but people just seem to insist on yelling about censorship in a story where all of the evidence points to there not being censorship. It's just Twitter not being good at content moderation (which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has used Twitter). Nunes is a nice strawman, but sure, I'll bite. I don't remember the specifics of the claim you're making but I'm sure you have plenty of evidence to share. PS: for someone who doesn't know anything, I nailed how weak the Sussman case was and what the probable outcome was. But I'm sure that's just all a deep state plot anyway...

The current total amount given since the start of the war is less than 6% of the annual budget. It’s not 6% every time, the number is annualized. Did you know that?

Currently winning the war does not mean they have already won the war. Ukraine is winning right now, but they cannot win it with the weapons they have on hand. The nature of war is that ammunition gets used and weapons systems break or are destroyed. Russia has more troops and (probably?) still more arms than Ukraine, but Ukraine has the quality and home turf advantages. If the supply of advanced weapons and ammo does not continue to meet their needs, Russia will be able to turn the course of the war in their favor. Spending about 6% of the defense budget and less than 1% of the overall budget to destroy the Russian war machine without risking US soldiers, support democracy, drive a wedge between China and Russia, make China think twice about invading Taiwan, and strengthen alliances seems like the deal of a century to me. If we're concerned about the cost, maybe we can cut back on some corporate welfare to defray the costs.

So you’re still living in the fantasy world where the FBI talked to Twitter about Hunter Biden, something that there is no evidence of, huh? And you still have no idea what’s actually going on, or what censorship and coercion actually are? The twitter files show that the FBI censored exactly zero things but somehow you read that as the FBI censoring things because it makes you feel good? And then you just project your ignorance to the world and make fun of people who point out the inaccuracies and leaps in poor logic based on no facts? It’s like someone made a Dunning-Krueger chat bot and unleashed it on PPP. The FBI being overzealous in flagging election misinformation is not censorship because Twitter makes the decision. Twitter screws that up a lot but if they were kowtowing to the FBI, then how come they reject 60% of the requests?

Do you think the FBI should have flagged Twitter accounts that were posting ISIS recruitment propaganda? Or would that be inappropriate?

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, this is not true. No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’ “This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them... (a)Payment.— Except as otherwise provided in subsection (c), a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information under section 2702, 2703, or 2704 of this title shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing such information. Such reimbursable costs shall include any costs due to necessary disruption of normal operations of any electronic communication service or remote computing service in which such information may be stored. But note what this is limited to. These are investigatory requests for information, or so called 2703(d) requests, which require a court order.“ Also, Twitter rejects about 60% of legal requests to take content down.

I think 95%+ of voters do not spend their days thinking or talking about politics. They don’t assume that everyone is motivated by politics and they don’t always vote straight party line. This was especially evident in last month’s midterm elections. I was listening to a podcast of a focus group a while ago and one of the participants wanted DeSantis as president and AOC as speaker of the house. I think that guy more accurately reflects the average voter than anything you see on PPP. I have no illusions that the Dems aren’t perfect. The one thing that Dems and Republicans have in common is hating the Democratic Party. I don’t think that average working Americans are yokels. I think that we could do better for them. I think that policies like nationwide / rural broadband would bring the wealth of the cities to those rural areas. I believe we should move the EPA headquarters to West Virginia to help provide jobs as the nation transitions away from coal. Many of my friends and family are those hard working middle-class / working-class people who get taken from granted. I just don’t pretend that the next time we cut taxes for the wealthy or programs to help people will be the time it finally helps them move up the ladder. What I have problems with is people who believe absolute fantasies like the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, or there is a uniparty that controls everything, or that Hillary Clinton is killing people, or that everyone everywhere acts through political motivations, or that a NYC elitist conman cares about working class Americans, or that the only reason things don’t go their way is because of some grand conspiracy. There are a lot of people with brain worms from too much time on the internet who believe utter falsehoods and no matter how many times you disprove it, they either ignore the facts or move the goal posts.

Look, if you believe in the whole elite uniparty thing where no matter what happens some vague “them” is controlling events or is predestined to win, then I cannot help you. I thankfully do not live in such a world. I also have questions about your understanding of what the FBI’s powers actually are or what Section 230 means in practice. But in a good faith effort to answer the thrust of your point: Let’s try to remove modern political biases from this. Let’s suppose that during the American Revolution, the very nascent American intelligence apparatus learned that the British were going to put out materials to make the King look good and the rebels look bad to the broader public. I think we might both be in agreement that it would be inappropriate for the American government to say that nobody could publish the materials saying good things about the king. But if they suspected that those news items were obtained through illicit means, would you be opposed to the American government alerting the news agencies to a potential pro-monarch news release, so long as it was solely up to the news agencies as to what to do with it? Because in current times, I honestly fail to see what crimes are being committed here. After the previous election was rife with attempts at interference of a foreign adversary, it would be irresponsible for people to not be worried it might happen again. A generic warning of such a risk is not only reasonable, but it would be negligent to omit it. In the end, Twitter is free to tell the FBI to suck a dick. And as everyone so routinely points out, Twitter hired a lot of former FBI people, so they definitely knew that the FBI had no power to make them censor anyone. Plus, the FBI, like most law enforcement agencies, is populated mainly with people who skew Right. So why would they go out of their way to harm a Republican? The idea that there is a leftist conspiracy to seed private companies with *FBI* agents would be laughable to every liberal from now back all the way to when the FBI tried to make MLK kill himself. In the case of a company like twitter, the worst part of an overly zealous FBI is that they have to pay their lawyers to come up with polite ways to say “go ***** yourselves” But to ascribe some grand leftist conspiracy based on companies in our capitalistic economy deciding how to run their own businesses is not really believable.

All these commie libs will believe anything the tv tells them. Not me! I only believe what the internet tells me! That’s why I believe that sleepy Joe Biden, who has dementia, outsmarted all of the true patriots to steal the 2020 election. If it wasn’t him, it was Kamala Harris, who I also believe to be an idiot, who orchestrated an election coup that geniuses like me were unable to prevent. If not either of them, it was probably a broad combo of (((globalists))) and deep staters lead by (((Soros))) who did it. Also, Facebook tells me that vaccines cause autism and/or kill you, and COVID is the same as the flu and also the 2022 election was somehow stolen too, despite my team taking the House and forever ending the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi. I may have forgotten to vote due to the effects of ivermectin so I might be misremembering that. Actually, any election that doesn’t go my way is stolen, because nobody that me (a guy who spends much of his time decrying the crimes of Hunter Biden and drives around on a truck with Trump 2024 stickers on it) knows has admitted that they would vote for a democrat. Therefore, democrats don’t exist and any election they win is obviously fraudulent. Who is “the big guy!? Is it Joe? Or Hunter’s penis?” Also, it is certain that a guy who was the son of a rich guy and illegally gained his father’s wealth through fraud and then somehow managed to lose all of that on casinos and also lost everything a couple times over is actually a business genius because he has a fun catchphrase on his tv show and he ***** in a gold toilet. Him being bad at business and taxes means that he’s actually good at business and taxes. This guy must certainly be someone who speaks for the working class people and if anyone challenges him it’s because this super rich buffoon (and friend of the Clintons and Jeffrey Epstein) who brags about screwing over the little guy, is actually fighting for the little guys like me. As a very smart graduate of Trump University, I was an early investor in Trump Steaks, Trump’s Castle, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Ice, Trump’s Plaza Casino, Trump Magazine, and I have multiple Trump trading card NFTs. If you criticize the current state of these industries it’s only because you’re jealous that you couldn’t bankrupt as many companies as my idol can. Next time, I’m gonna strike it rich just like I know he is because he only won’t show us his taxes because it’s totally embarrassing how rich he is. I have a very high IQ. A website I paid money to told me so.

No, whether or not to file charges is solely up to the DoJ. The reasons that congressional committees may refer individuals for prosecution would basically be to say "Hey, we think this person broke the law. You might want to look into it" at which point, the DoJ can do what it wants with that. We saw this in earlier referrals for contempt of Congress. The DoJ ended up indicting some of the referred individuals but not indicting others. In this case, the referral of Trump himself is redundant because Trump is already under investigation, but it's not clear whether or not other individuals who are to be referred are being investigated independently by the DoJ. There can also be situations in which Congress is providing additional information with the referral that might supplement an ongoing DoJ investigation.

Government officials using encrypted communication applications to evade the rules about government records and communications? I am sure all of the "but her emails" crowd is up in arms about this.

I've seen some of it, and while I don't agree with everything they flagged, the FBI isn't known for their sense of humor, so flagging someone joking that they'd add more Dem ballots when they were counting isn't surprising. Nor is it surprising they would flag posts that state incorrect information about the election (such as the date) even if it was a joke because that's technically a violation of the law. I can't remember if it was the FBI or the Biden campaign who flagged all of Hunter's dick picks, but I'm totally fine with that. Apparently unlike a lot of people, I'm happy going the rest of my life never seeing Hunter's penis. Plus, as non-consensual sexual content, it 100% violated Twitter's TOS. What it looks like to me is that the FBI flagged anything they saw that could be potential misinformation and then Twitter investigated and made the determination of whether or not it was and if they were going to take action. I don't see the problem with that since Twitter isn't being forced to do anything with this. They can review them for the FBI as a courtesy, they can do nothing, they can do whatever. In fact, on at least one of them, Twitter had already reviewed and taken action on an account before the FBI flagged it. If there's a potential issue here, it's that the FBI's overly broad approach to "misinformation" meant that Twitter reviewed more things than the may have otherwise. As all of the liberals who have been complaining about Merrick Garland for two years know, the FBI generally does not comment on ongoing investigations. We know that there is an active criminal investigation into Hunter Biden so there was little to no chance that the FBI would publicly comment on the details of the laptop, even to correct the record. Any outlet could call the FBI's public affairs office and would be told "we do not comment on ongoing investigations." You're jumping to a lot of conclusions there, but remember that different companies took different actions in regards to the laptop story, which would not be possible if the FBI was pulling the strings. The NY Post ran the story and kept it up. Other news outlets like Fox News didn't run with it. Both Twitter and Facebook enacted their very different policies. The bottom line of what happened here is that the FBI was investigation Hunter Biden so they wouldn't comment on specifics around his case. They did give a general warning of cyberattacks and potential leaks of hacked materials but left it at that. From there, everyone was free to do whatever they wanted about any story or information that came out. I don't see how any of that is some nefarious plot unless you're making up a bunch of stuff between the lines and making assumptions that are not supported by the facts.

There is no evidence they were discussing the laptop. I also answered this earlier but you may have missed it. Good: 1. The FBI warns companies that there may be cyberattacks and/or release of hacked materials prior to the election. Fine: 2. The FBI tells companies that the laptop does belong to Hunter, some of its contents are real but not all of it has been verified Bad: 3. The FBI tells companies that they shouldn’t post anything about the laptop 4. The FBI somehow forces companies not to post anything about the laptop. All of the evidence points to scenario 1 as the one that played out. In which case, I believe the FBI acted appropriately. Scenario 4 is basically impossible and there’s no evidence that scenarios 2, 3, or 4 happened.

Then stop reading between the lines and just read the actual lines. I even answered the morality question. It would be bad for the FBI to force Twitter to censor legal content. But that never happened so why are people even talking about it?

Actually it’s because people here just pretend I believe whatever evil liberal fantasy they want me to regardless of the words I use. In this specific example, someone with a history of making ***** up claimed I believed something I have never espoused or even implied. I clarified that I did not believe that totally made up fantasy he claimed I believed in and explained what I did actually believe in regards to that particular situation. Apparently that’s not enough for people. So I guess everyone can just go ahead and believe I said whatever they want regardless of the text of the actual words I wrote.

If Elon had come in, replaced the content moderation policy and/or staff with something more akin to what Twitter’s conservative critics wanted, that would have been fine and likely wouldn’t have resulted in a ton of actual blowback. Instead, he came in like a bull in a china shop, making decisions on a whim with little thought to downstream implications and likely exposing himself to hundreds of millions of dollars in legal liabilities (on top of the $1 billion per year debt service cost his overpriced purchase requires). For a business that relies almost entirely on ad revenue, his chaotic and fickle actions fostered an environment hostile to advertisers who quickly began suspending their ad buys. He changed his mind on a content moderation committee before it could even get off the ground and decided to make moderation policies on a whim. Even reportedly applying them retroactively to posts that were not in violation of the rules at the time they were posted. At some points, he left moderation decisions to unscientific twitter polls, which is crazy considering how much he complains about the bots on Twitter. Because he slashed the legal department and moderation team, the new policies appear to be written by amateurs with little consideration to vagueness or how they will be interpreted. And even then, he declares the new rules mean something they don’t actually say, leading to more confusion about what the actual policy is. It’s a maddeningly dumb way to run a business. Which is reflected in how his mismanagement of Twitter is currently contributing to the destruction of the value of Tesla. ”But it’s a private company, he can do what he wants” is a pointless retort. Of course it’s a private business and he can do what he wants. But we’re still free to point out how bad those decisions are for the company. All of this could have been avoided with a thoughtful approach to the challenges Twitter was facing, including the moderation policy. And despite the obviousness of it all, people just reflexively defend whatever decision he makes because they were so mad at the old regime and they prefer “owning the libs” to basically anything else.

A lot of Dems were pissed at him giving MBS immunity. As I stated, it’s in accordance with precedent and the law but I would have made an exception for MBS and not done it. I don’t expect to agree with everything the president I voted for does because I’m not in a personality cult. Twitter’s moderation policy had problems before Musk but at least Twitter had a policy. Musk decides by fiat and applies new rules retroactively. And all the people who were originally cheering because he was going to do free speech suddenly forgot all of that and now fall in line with whatever decision he makes because it upsets people they don’t like, regardless of how stupid the decision is.

Nice deflection. The State Department felt that precedent required it. Which is true but I would say there is a case for breaking with precedent when the person is made head of state almost certainly solely to be granted immunity to avoid being prosecuted. Twitter moderation wasn’t good before Musk. And now it’s worse. Pretending that Musk buying twitter and then seemingly making decisions by throwing darts at a board isn’t newsworthy is just sad.

Well, obviously. Doesn’t mean we can’t point out that the rules are basically just Calvinball at this point.

Twitter is now Free Speech* *Free Speech does not include certain types of publicly available information, anything criticizing the Chief Twit, or any companies owned or operated by the Chief Twit; nor promotion of any competitors to companies owned and operated by the Chief Twit; or acknowledgment of the existence of said competitors or companies; or platforms that may be deemed to be competitors or future potential competitors. Content that is not considered free speech and may constitute a bannable offense may change at any moment at the whim of the Chief Twit and/or Royal House of Saud and apply retroactively to content that was not a violation when originally posted. Anyone found criticizing or even questioning the Free Speech policy should be told that the Chief Twit can do whatever they want and nobody has a right to criticize him for it and anyone doing so is a big whiny baby. Free speech void were prohibited. No purchase necessary. If your free speech lasts longer than four hours, please consult your local journalist.

I’m not saying that. We don’t know what the FBI knows about it. There is an ongoing investigation into Hunter so we shouldn’t expect them to say anything about it. In fact, we have zero evidence that the FBI said the laptop might be misinformation and good evidence that it didn’t.

50 former intelligence officials wrote a note stating that the Hunter story had all the marks of a disinformation op. Because given what was known at the time, it did. Completely unrelated to that, the FBI warned that there might be a release of hacked materials to influence the election because it had happened before. The media was free to take any action they wanted in regard to any of this. Nobody forced them to do anything. The most likely and simplest explanation is pretty banal and yet we still have people here with Very Online Brain who will just believe anything from anyone if it makes the media, the Dems, or any other perceived enemies look bad. The net-net of all of this is that the laptop story got far more coverage because of all of this than it would have otherwise.

I’m saying that there isn’t evidence that the FBI told social media companies not to post about the laptop or specifically talked about Hunter. There is in fact evidence to the contrary. In addition to that, while some of the laptop files have been verified, others haven’t. Doesn’t mean they are not real but does mean we cannot definitely say they are at this time. In looking at the appropriateness of the FBI’s actions, here’s how I would evaluate different scenarios what they potentially did: Good: 1. Warn companies of potential cybersecurity and/or hacked materials during the election Fine: 2. Tell companies about the laptop but state that they cannot verify all of its contents Bad: 3. Tell companies not to allow anything about the laptop 4. Force companies to not allow anything about the laptop All of the evidence points to scenario one as the most likely. Scenario four is literally impossible. People here seem to think it’s 3 or 4 without evidence to support it.