The Real timschochet

Please make a specific prediction about how he will do. Are you willing to put some money on it?

He hasn’t admitted to anything. This is a summary by a Republican hostile to Fauci. No transcript has been released. This is why Hunter Biden was reluctant to testify in private before these guys. Because they lie. Let’s see what the actual transcript says.

What are you referring to? Swift writes most of her own music. Sometimes she has collaborators but she is essentially a singer/songwriter.

If an 18 year old in high school has sex with a 17 year old in high school, should the law and morality regard that as the same crime as when a 55 year old man rapes an 8 year old? If your answer is yes then I don’t think we’re living on the same moral plane.

All forcible rape should be illegal and severely punished. I was referring to statutory rape here (consensual sex with a minor).

Again misrepresenting me. I’m willing to discuss issues like pedophilia and rape in general terms. But I won’t discuss a certain Polish director any longer; done with that.

I dunno. 15, 16. Obviously the younger you get the worse it is.

I think that Taylor Swift is a powerful woman who threatens the patriarchy.

Because I thought I did. But for the record: 1. Any kind of rape is bad and deserves prison time. How much I don’t know, depends on the rape. Forcible violent rape being the worst kind. 2. Statutory rape (consensual) with a teenager is a little different. It still should be illegal, it’s still morally wrong. But if the teenager is older it’s not AS wrong. 3. Sex with a prepubescent is no different than rape. Lock the culprit away and throw away the key. I wouldn’t be opposed to the death penalty, honestly, for this crime. As bad as it gets. 4. You suggested that I see a difference between 11 and 13. That’s absurd. But I DO see a difference between 6 and 15. But ONLY if the 15 year old is the victim of statutory rape, and not actual forcible rape. If it’s actual rape there’s not much of a moral difference at all. 5. I don’t think homosexuality plays any kind of factor in this topic whatsoever. That goes to my original complaint about this thread.

Sure you have. Were you one of them?

I will not because that’s not what the word means.

But if I take your argument to its logical conclusion it means that no taxpayer money should ever be spent on anything or it’s socialism.

You’re misapplying the term. Government endowments and funds for universities has been going on for decades, even centuries. There are both pluses and minuses to it. But it has little of anything to do with socialism. Your post, however, is representative of a problem I have with conservative rhetoric on this issue. Any expenditure by the government for anything that conservatives don’t like (for example, money to Harvard, or for undocumented immigrants, or to Planned Parenthood, etc) automatically becomes “socialism”. Socialism isn’t the spending of taxpayer money; it’s a permanent redivision of assets. That’s not what’s going on here.

You seem to be speaking from personal experience here.

Sure, and those ashes include my great-grandparents, great aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family except for him and his parents and one aunt. But we could spend thousands of hours discussing the causes of that occurrence, and of the millions that died in Communist Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. I don’t believe we have the conditions for such an occurrence here. Short of a crisis such as the aftermath of a nuclear war or terrible pandemic (think Black Death, not Covid) I don’t think we ever will. So chin up!

For the last time (and this really will be the last time- I will never again respond to this issue no matter how many times you bring it up): 1. My comments on Polanski were based on the mistaken impression that he had consensual sex with a a young girl that he thought was of age. I was unaware, or had forgotten, that he gave her Quaaludes beforehand, which made it rape. I was unaware that she was 13, I thought she was around 16. 13 is far more problematic than 16. When I became aware of my errors of fact, I changed my mind quickly. It didn't take months. 2. The misinformation that I had didn’t spring out of my addled brain; they were based on the comments by famous actors who have defended Polanski and worked with him long after he committed this crime, including Harrison Ford and Adrian Brody. They attempted to excuse his behavior. Does that make them pro-pedophile? 3. I do believe that there is a moral difference between someone who has sex with a prepubescent child and someone who has sex with a physically developed teenager. Neither act should be permissible in our society; both are wrong and should be punished. But the former is far worse; that is the argument I made at the time and even when I retracted my initial statement defending Polanski I continued to make this argument. 4. You have spent years now constantly calling me a pedophile as a result of these statements. That’s your prerogative but hopefully cooler minds will read this post and judge for themselves. As I wrote, I’m done with it; I will never respond to this again. My last word on the matter.

I did not. What I wrote about Roman Polanski’s crime was wrong, based on misinformation, and highly regrettable. But you’re mischaracterizing it deliberately. Which is something you do all the time.

Your statement is not backed up by any news source that I have read. I have seen Cassidy Hutchinson give numerous interviews in recent months. Not once did I hear her complain that her testimony was edited or that it actually exonerated Trump. If that had been the case I would think she would have said something. In any case Donald Trump is about to be tried in a court of law for his actions on January 6. A jury will listen to the facts and decide for themselves whether or not he committed wrongdoing. Personally I think they will find him guilty of a felony or two, and I offered to wager you on this point which you refused despite your assertion to the contrary. But I guess we’ll find out.

I do not.

Maybe YOU need to look deep inside as to why you are constantly labeling people “POS”, “retards”, “morons”, etc. You often do this in lieu of any kind of valid argument. I offer a lot of opinions. In this forum that is filled mostly with conservatives, most of my opinions are likely to be unpopular. So be it. Sometimes when I get emotional I write things I shouldn’t. When that happens I try to apologize. Thats because with very few exceptions I have nothing personal against anyone here. You’re working hard at being one of those exceptions.

I’m not a fake. Wrong reasons? Possibly at times. But never fake.

This is a tough situation. I support Biden’s decision. I also think that @BuckSwope offered a reasonable criticism. I also think that @Strike’s criticism that Biden should have acted earlier has possible merit as well, but I reject the his other arguments about how none of this would have happened under Trump, Biden is weak, etc. That’s a lot of malarky IMO. Hopefully we can contain this and prevent it getting worse.

In retrospect I should not have written that CDub’s choice to label these criminals as “7 gay men” was “almost as horrific” as the crime itself. That was a very poor choice of words on my part and I apologize for them. I still object to the way he phrased it, but obviously it’s nothing close to the crime itself.

Of course not. Nobody should. If we’re going to discuss current events (presumably that’s why we’re all here), then why not offer our personal views of what is right and wrong? I’ve never understood why trying to signal what should be virtuous is something worthy of criticism.

There are few folks here who are openly racist. Most aren’t. Larger and of more concern is a tendency to deny racism in our society.