jakee

Telephones, the internet and the mail.

Again, the people they polled were not in Syracuse. Modern society has given us ways of communicating with people who live a long way away. You are currently using one of them.

Regional? Why? The sentence you quoted does not mean the people who were polled are at or near Syracuse.

The best I can decipher the twisted logic of this - Trump thinks it's ok to eliminate the freedom of the press and the free speech rights of all social media users because he thinks his right to free speech has been stifled... because Twitter put a question mark next to one of his posts. Some people have mentioned they thought Hillary treated voters with contempt - so what the hell can you call this?

Sure, but that only has a bearing on whether the actions in question are matter of national interest, not about whether they are suspicious or untrustworthy. Absoutely right. I'm sure he'll co-operate with that just like every other candidate (except his opponent) has in recent times. But so far there are no indications (unlike his opponent) that he's had any remotely shady or unscrupulous financial dealings or misused his office for personal profit in any way. Ok cool, no worries. Well, I know plenty of people who did get well paying private gigs using their military skills and I'm sure you do to. Are they all suspicious because of it?

Ok sure. But if there's no real disagreement then there's no reason (at least related to this) for you to mistrust Biden or think he's done anything wrong, right? A final thought on that - if I've understood some of your other posts properly you spent a bunch of time in the US military with your salary paid by the taxpayer, then after that took your government funded skills and experience and got some very well paid contracts in either the private security or defence consulting worlds, is that close? If that's the case (and I'll be very clear in stating that I don't think there is anything at all wrong with that) what is the fundamental difference between doing that and doing what Biden has?

You certainly do, but it's not because you went to Vietnam. By anyone else's reckoning you're not much of a patriot. You simply don't understand the true values of your nation.

Why? He worked for the country for 40 years without prospering in any form beyond taking his salary. Then, after leaving leaving office he made money because he had marketable experience. Why do you think that's a bad thing? And again, in the upcoming election you do have a choice between one candidate who has spent his life in the political establishment and one candidate who has not. If you genuinely make your choice in that election based on who is more honest and trustworthy then you will vote for the establishment candidate without a moment's hesitation. (BTW, who do you think the last US president was who hasn't made millions of dollars in book deals? Pretty sure it was Gerald Ford, and even Nixon before him got rich through that route. Why wouldn't you? Why shouldn't you?)

I can so easily defend Biden because your accusations are so obviously unfounded. Again, that's cause and effect. Why? Sure, and that should be what he does. OTOH it's also what Hillary did. To be honest I don't think it matters too much. I'll stick my neck out and say the thing that will beat Trump is the last 4 years of Trump. Biden just has to not implode.

But why? Trump wasn't. He made crazy blanket statements about himself left right and centre. He opened himself up to attacks from every direction. Even the laziest of fact checkers could rip his every speech to shreds. But it didn't matter. He didn't win by becoming more humble, he won by becoming even more brazen.

Why are you doubling down on unfounded accusations instead of being interested in the truth? Don't be silly. No-one is screaming about big business execs who are worth $18M. That's chump change in the world of golden parachutes and failure bonuses as you damn well know. Even now Biden is far closer in wealth to a beggar on the street than to the businessmen being complained about. Come on man, let's have this conversation in reality and not fantasy, yeah? And he did it all after leaving office. He did not feed at the public trough. He did not get rich on the public gravy train. After spending a life in high level politics and 8 years in the heart of the Executive branch people wanted to hear what he had to say and he was paid accordingly. Does the bit you have in brackets make any sense to you? He probably wouldn't get speaking engagements if he hadn't been VP - there'd be no reason for people to be interested in what he had to say. But so what? He was, and so they are. That's not a sweetheart deal, it's cause and effect. Like, would people buy Ranulph Fiennes' autobiographies if he wasn't a famous and accomplished explorer? No, but so what? He is and they do. I find it mind boggling that in one post you both whine about people you think complain about success, and seemingly make the claim that politicians shouldn't be allowed to be successful at anything, even after they've left office. It's absurd. That is a complete non-sequitur. Even if you were right about anything else to do with Biden I have no idea why you are presenting this statement as if it is remotely connected. And again I point out that there is a (former) political outsider in the White House right now and he gives every appearance of caring less about the public good than anyone before him.

Then what does it matter what he said? Might as well follow the Trump MO, continuously make false, absurdly overblown self-aggrandising statements and whenever challenged just double down.

I do believe I just pointed out that this what is happening now. The current president is not a career politician and has the worst honesty rating you'll find in any functioning democracy. You think about it. According to available information Biden's wealth has all been gained via book deals, speaking fees and teaching positions since being VP. The near 40 years of being on the 'public gravy train' before that and he was not a millionaire. Middle class Joe really was middle class Joe for the entirety of his political career in office. To characterise him as having enriched himself by slopping at the public trough is so untrue as to be practically slander. Perhaps you could show that you are not as out of touch as you believe all career politicians to be and reconsider your accusations?

It's lazy to characterise this kind of thing as a 'career politician' symptom, as if the fix is to go to people outside the system. Trump is not a career politician, yet rarely a day of his presidency goes by that he doesn't spout multiple whoppers of this magnitude or greater.

Back to proving he's not just habitually abusing the office but he's a plain old arsehole on a personal level too. After his mad tweets about Lori Klausutis her widower wrote to Twitter asking them to delete the messages, saying Trump's conspiracy theories, bile and misinformation had perverted the memory of his dead wife for political gain. When asked about the letter Trump didnt apologise, retract, delete the tweets, or even spend a moment thinking about the pain he was pointlessly causing to the friends and family of a woman who never lifted a finger against him - he just doubled down with lie on top of lie saying that he'd read the widower's letter and was sure he wanted to get to the bottom of the very suspicious situation. Narcissistic, sociopathic fucking wanker who has no concept of the boundaries between fiction and reality.

I love how he's not even trying to mime getting a hand to the bowl, but to get his head there instead. Like, his actual objective was to bury his face in chips. Yep, def a good analogy for Trump!

I know you know this, but it's worth mentioning that while some people may not do any of the first, we all do the second to some extent. It's human nature. Even people who are strictly rational in most areas can fall down the rabbit hole in others if they're not careful.

For your logic to work you would have to believe motor cars have only just now taken over from horses. Do you?

It's only one brain scan, actually, just with two different colourings added and captions falsely claiming that it's scans of two different people. But so what? The entire video is so obviously fake that there's no need to break down every single falsehood or mistake in it - you'd end up with a post that takes all day to read. Now the real question - if you knew the whole thing was fake, why did you claim it was evidence of people joining up the dots?

Um, yeah? I mean, you'll find more people who believe the earth is flat or that all the churches in Edinburgh are mosques than think John Wick contains real fighting.

The most glaring discrepancy is that it is fiction presented as reality. But go on, what do you think the most glaring discrepancy is?

The troling bit is when you keep switching between stating what's happening now and predicting what's possible in the future depending on what lets you claim victory in that particular post, no matter which one you were talking about in the post before. That's not an honest debate, it's not even a real conversation. It's trolling.

Yeah, I mean I get that he's unquestioning enough to swallow the terrible dialogue and junk science. But when the headline says "Bill Gates briefs..." and the video contains a guy who is so obviously not Bill Gates then surely even Ron can muster up enough self awareness to realise his chain is being yanked.

Are you really that gullible? Leaving aside that you'd have to be both blind and deaf to believe for a moment that the person on stage is Bill Gates, that is not a Pentagon briefing. That is not real science. It's a promo scene for a low budget movie from a decade ago. Seriously man, grow up.

The two are not mutually exclusive.