dogcows

They screen for guns, knives, explosives, and other dangerous items. Not sure why they would screen for drugs, since weed or coke aren’t a threat to the president. Their job is to keep the president alive, not nail somebody for sneaking in drugs.

You are the board’s expert on stupidity, so you might be right.

Butter emails! If you are interested in the actual differences between the two situations, you could check out the link below. https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbis-trump-investigation-hillary-clinton-email-probe-heres/story?id=89069046 Keep in mind, that article was written before the public release of video of Trump’s valet hiding boxes of classified stuff, and audio recordings of Trump showing off classified docs to impress people.

You don’t appear to understand the law at all. Try reading it sometime. Look for words such as intent, willful, and obstruction. These concepts are critical to the law. Otherwise, accidentally dropping something out a window that killed a person would be the exact same crime as intentionally gunning somebody down.

If right-wingers believe anything Gal Luft says, they’re gullible idiots. Not that it matters, since he seems smart enough to avoid extradition indefinitely. And he’s apparently got lots of friends in China and Iran to help him. How patriotic are right-wingers if they rally behind a crooked foreign agent who sold arms for China and oil for Iran? You are definitely convinced that the Biden are bad, and clearly no evidence is necessary for you to make ridiculous assumptions about them. Finally, it’s just plain laughable whenever anybody yaps about the FBI or DOJ being politically compromised. Perhaps you should watch this video (the bottom one with Ted Lieu, I can’t seem to split them) in which that idea is burned to the ground. If the DOJ was so political, why did Trump staffers convict criminals linked to Trump?

I know a lot of folks here thought the sentencing for many Jan 6 criminals was too severe. The thing is, most of the sentences were well below official guidelines. There seemed to be a definite pattern of judges harshly chastising the insurrectionists, but lightly sentencing them. It turns out the DOJ agrees with me on this one. They are appealing the soft sentences for some of these traitors to America. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/justice-department/SFXP37OKCZ5KABLXRNETTBFWGM/

As you point out in your first paragraph: They figured out pretty quickly that Luft was lying. So... why would they investigate Hunter based on the word of a known liar? And there was a definite desire to “get” Hunter in the Trump administration. Remember the “perfect phone call” by any chance? So if there was any “there” there, they certainly would have done something in 2019. I know that many right-wingers are just SURE that, despite Hunter being addicted to drugs at the time, he was somehow a mastermind international criminal. And although Joe Biden is supposedly senile, he’s simultaneously a genius mob boss that keeps any possible proof of his crime family’s malfeasance secret from the world. But to put it all in context, the reason we’re talking about Luft at all is because he was supposedly a credible witness against Hunter Biden. Not only is he not credible, but it seems very unlikely he will go anywhere with a U.S extradition treaty. So there’s a near-zero chance he will testify. So, yet another rock-solid witness from the GOP committee that is neither rock-solid, nor able to serve as witness.

Top lawyers who argued cases before the Supreme Court were exposed for making payments to Justice Thomas’s aide. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/12/clarence-thomas-aide-venmo-payments-lawyers-supreme-court

For both Thomas and Alito, they ruled on cases involving their sugar daddies.

Interesting - yet another PAC apparently; just started 2 weeks ago? Lots of PACs are loosely affiliated with certain candidates, so maybe connections to some candidate will come to light. As for DeSantis and anti-gay anti-Trump attack ads, the one he linked from his “war room” account was hilariously bad. It has been taken down. But he has definitely attacked Trump for not being anti-gay enough. https://news.yahoo.com/desantis-just-proved-may-worse-034635375.html

Luft was indicted in Nov 2022, months before he started the “I’m being oppressed because I’m a whistleblower” campaign. He’s an agent of the CCP, a collaborator with Iran, and Comer has been working with him to target a sitting president. So now Comer is part of a Chinese plot. Question is: did Comer know he was being used by a Chinese agent? If so, he should lose his committee seat immediately. If not, then he’s a gullible idiot.

Also: At his age, as fat as he is, any delay adds to the risk that he kicks the bucket before they can hold a trial.

I found some more information about this guy. DOJ recently unsealed his indictment. He was indicted in November 2022, BEFORE the GOP started publicly talking about him as a whistleblower. And part of the indictment was for lying during the 2019 Brussels meeting he talks about. So there goes the idea that he was persecuted for being a whistleblower, unless the DOJ has a Time Machine. It also blasts the idea that he told the truth during the 2019 Brussels meeting. Lots of stuff in there, but if you go to the bottom of the document, item 84 talks about him lying at the 2019 Brussels meeting. https://www.justice.gov/media/1304836/dl?inline

I think the commercial real estate crash is a concern. Remote work is here to stay; lots of workers like it and it saves companies a lot of money. We still have more need for housing than we have supply of housing though. So perhaps developers can repurpose some of their office space into residential use.

The “average American” has a job. Our purchasing power has gone down, but if inflation continues to trend like it is now, wage growth could simply plateau where it is and we’d still come out ahead within a year or two. If the fed gets too aggressive with rates and increases unemployment, then you’ve got a lot of “average Americans” who will not have jobs. It’s better for the economy for people to have jobs but slightly less purchasing power than it is to have higher unemployment. I expect you are right that they will probably toss another rate hike or two at the economy in the next year. Hopefully they don’t need to cause massive unemployment to get this inflation down to their target range again. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m feeling pretty hopeful.

He’s accused of 8 counts, which can be broken down to 3 basic things he allegedly did: 1. Working to install a CCP operative in the Trump administration (Individual 1 in the indictment). 2. Brokering arms deals between China and Libya, UAE, Qatar, and Kenya. 3. Brokering oil deals between Iran and other countries, to avoid US sanctions on Iran. He skipped bail after being arrested. So even if you think he’s innocent of all the charges... he’s guilty of skipping bail and is officially a fugitive. My guess is he will never again enter a country with an extradition treaty with the US. Since he’s best buds with China and Iran, he can hang out with them.

Core inflation is ONE indicator the fed uses. Pick whatever specific slice of data you want for an exact number, but no matter which one you pick, inflation peaked and is dropping, while wage growth is steadily rising. Here’s an indicator the fed uses that shows the downward trend of inflation too. https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/mct#--:mct-inflation:trend-inflation Interest rates have been hiked, inflation is coming down, but jobs are still being created. It’s pretty good news that inflation came down without unemployment going up. Is that sustainable? I don’t know. But I do think a portion of the inflation was due to COVID relief funds and the supply chain problems that have been mostly resolved now. It’s good to see the fed raising rates, but cautiously. Also, it’s about time we got the interest rates above 1%. Over a decade of near-zero interest rates wasn’t really good for the long-term health of the economy, and left no breathing room for the Fed if things got bad. Plus, you can now get almost 5% on a savings account. It’s been decades since you could get a decent return on one.

Another day, another claim of the IRS “whistleblower” gets discredited. https://www.aol.com/news/hunter-biden-prosecutor-disputes-gop-201844270.html This Shapley guy is the GOP’s star witness? LOL

I was addressing the larger issue in which BlueSuedeHorseshoes thinks “cancel culture” might suddenly flip against most doctors in America. We have medical consensus on most things, so I don’t see his suggestion as being anywhere near close to reality. As for gender care, it’s a newer field, but large medical associations have already listed guidelines. Now, I’m a bit unclear what organizations you think are too political to be trusted. The large associations such as ACOG (for ob-gyns) serve multiple purposes. They are political in the sense that they lobby for the profession, protecting doctors, etc. But they also often publish and/or sponsor medical journals, and post clinical guides on their websites. If you’re looking for research, it’s not all done by a central organization, but at many different universities, as you’re no doubt aware. So these associations, along with medical journals and reference guides, often serve as a clearing house. Probably the most trusted medical reference I’m aware of is the Merck Manual. Most doctors have physical copies, but it’s 2023 so it’s on the web too. Here’s what it says on the topic: https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/psychiatric-disorders/gender-incongruence-and-gender-dysphoria/gender-incongruence-and-gender-dysphoria Here’s what a medical association, ACOG has to say about it: https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2021/03/health-care-for-transgender-and-gender-diverse-individuals#

Really? Does that mean Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are going to jail? 🥳

So you think medical consensus is some kind of cancel culture BS? Uh, no. They want to help patients, and rely on well-established, peer-reviewed science to do so. Lunatic contrarians who harp on some fringe medical theory for 40 years are the ones you should be worried about. Do you think that this handful of crazy quacks is going to suddenly take over the medical profession, switch us back to leeches and voodoo, and CANCEL all the real doctors? Sure, sounds plausible.

We need to find out who was supposed to get a 10% cut of a business deal that never ended up happening? Why?

They are allies in the fight against discrimination… even though one group is about sexual preference and one is about gender identity. They’ve both generally been discriminated against by society, and work together to help each other out.

Why do so many people gravitate to the tiny number of crazy doctors who say the opposite of the overwhelming majority of the medical community? They did it during COVID, they are doing it again with gender-affirming medicine. I guess it’s a part of human nature? Snake oil salesmen and quacks have been with us for centuries. I just wonder how we can explain it.

If asking social media companies to take down content is coercive, then what do you call this? If their actions WERE illegal, they could just prosecute. Instead, they threaten the CEO indicating that the actions MIGHT be illegal, so he better stop. Wow, a direct threat intended to take away the company’s 1st amendment rights. You don’t even need to come up with a Doughty-esque cockamamie legal theory to know this is wrong.