Rov_Scam
10d ago
You're allowed to have ties. You just can't be surprised when someone wants to look into them. Russia may not be our enemy, but our relationship with the Putin government circa 2016 wasn't the best.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
That's how indictments (and civil complaints) work. They list a bunch of facts and then allege that the fact pattern means that the person broke the law (or committed a civil wrong). They don't have to include every detail or spell out every implication. They aren't the last word in the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, either. All that's necessary is that they state enough facts that a jury can make a reasonable inference that the alleged acts were violated, and they've done that.
The listing of "travel benefits", "events to tickets" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd.
Lol, you're obviously younger than me. Before they cracked down on that sort of thing, event tickets was one of the biggest kickback schemes around. Why do you think corporate luxury boxes became so popular? When I was a kid if there was anything I wanted to go to there was always a chance my uncle (who was a facilities manager for a downtown skyscraper) could get them from a vendor. When I was in high school my friend's dad was in sales and he bought like a dozen tickets to every show at a local concert venue to give to customers. There were always a few shows a year no one wanted tickets to so a whole bunch of us would go. The ethics people started cracking down on that so the new thing became trips. If a vendor wanted to make sales he'd invite his customers to, say, an all-expenses paid hunting trip at a ranch in Wyoming. Ostensibly to talk business. This was soon cracked-down on and most companies started limiting their purchasing agents to gifts under $100, which has been steadily revised downward to the point where anything more than a fruit basket is prohibited. For a while, there was still and old school of purchasing agents who pretty much wouldn't do business with anyone who didn't give kickbacks, and were kind of flummoxed when the new generation of vendors didn't have anything to offer because 90% of their customer base wasn't allowed to accept anything, and the new generation of purchasing agents never knew of a world where that was even conceivable. This wasn't really that long ago (within the past 20 years), so it's understandable that stuff like this is still considered a red flag.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
All I'm asking is if you're willing to make the tradeoff yourself. Would you, personally, prefer to take the status of the woman in this arrangement? Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them? At the very least, it would eliminate the risk of any workplace fatalities, and no family court would award the woman primary custody in this situation.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
what about hilllary and the uranium one stuff or anyone that was part of the hillary campaign.
Um, the Justice Department spent 2 years investigating this. I don't remember anyone on the left saying they shouldn't; hell, even Trump seemed like he forgot about it by the time it wrapped up. Of course, no one cares about an investigation into a private citizen.
but don't worry spygate was a conspiracy according to wikipedia
Why would I care about Wikipedia's assessment of the issue?
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Do you seriously not know, or are you just looking for me to name the usual suspects so you can tell me why they were totally railroaded and did nothing wrong, or at least why they weren't Russian agents? Because that's not my argument. I'm not saying that there was any Trump–Russia connection, or that Trump himself did anything his critics accused him of, simply that the information available at the time warranted opening an investigation. If we had a tradition of strict standards regarding these kinds of things I could understand arguments to the contrary, but the Republicans had just spend 2 and a half years looking into Obama's comments after the Benghazi attack. The fact that people who seemed passionate about that at the time couldn't even adequately explain to me what the scandal even was tells you all you need to know. If anyone wants to investigate the New York State government further for possible CCP influence, I'm not going to complain.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
If you read the entire indictment, it looks like there was a sort of quid pro quo going on. Sun's husband met with Chinese government officials who facilitated his business exporting seafood from the United States to China. They earned millions of dollars from this business, which they didn't report on tax forms and laundered into the United States through purchases of real estate and luxury cars. There were also a series of lower-level gifts like covering travel to China and giving them event tickets. In return, she was basically doing the Chinese government's bidding to the extent that her position allowed. She was regularly meeting with Chinese officials and keeping them abreast of her actions.
These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings.
That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
If the Trump–Russia allegations were limited to Manafort and only Manafort, then you might have an argument. But there were several more people in Trump's circle who were indicted in connection with the Mueller investigation, and several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes. There ended up not being any fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke; it's certainly unusual for so many people in a presidential campaign to have connections to a country the US isn't exactly on great terms with. Combine that with Trump making statements about Russia that weren't exactly in line with what anyone on either side of the political aisle was saying at the time, and suspicion is understandable. If there were evidence that the conduct in question went beyond Sun and deeper into the Governor's office, I would expect there to be an investigation.
otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.
I don't think Democrats have any qualms about hanging even more shit on Andrew Cuomo.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
They don't need to be spread out over the city, necessarily. The number of homeless in Allegheny County has halved in the past 15 years, but the problem is much more salient now than it was then. In 2009 there were certainly bums on the streets but most of the actual encampments were in the interstitial places that nobody sees or even thinks about. You had to go out of your way to find them, and into places that nobody had any reason to go. In the past few years they have taken up residence along our riverfront bike trails, including the GAP, which is a major attraction. People complain about being harassed and having to dodge needles and stray dogs. If the city would simply dismantle two encampments (which are tiny compared to what I read about in other cities) and keep the trails clear, the bums will eventually go back to the places that draw the least attention. The local news isn't going to do a story involving citizen complaints about a homeless encampment on an abandoned triangle of land between a rail yard and a highway embankment.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I would add that a disturbing number of the so-called "solutions" suggested in that thread involved imposing additional burdens on women that they would never tolerate themselves. These people would never tolerate a society where men were the ones required to make all the sacrifices. Suppose the tradeoff was that the woman bears all the physical risk of bearing the child, and in exchange the man gives up his career, financial independence, and political rights to become a full-time caregiver? And they should also be more willing to date low status women as well. You don't want to support five kids in the salary of an obese trailer trash hairdresser? Well, your only other option is to live with your parents and push a cash register until they're old enough that you need to stay home and change their diapers. If that were the necessary tradeoff for solving the "fertility crisis", I imagine that fertility rates would suddenly seem unimportant.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
The meal schedule would probably make things worse, though,. especially given Trump's known predilection for fast food. When your diet consists solely of restaurant meals and catered events, it generally isn't as healthy as if you were eating at home, even for wealthy people like Trump.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Traditional welfare benefits are already unavailable for people without children,nat least in the United States.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Chinese dumping of steel isn't a problem in the slightest. In 2017, the last full year before the Trump tariffs, the volume of Chinese steel importiwas so low I can't even find statistics for it; it was outside the top ten, lower than countries like Turkey and Taiwan that no one seems too concerned about. I imagine that the number is even lower now. We currently only import about a quarter of our steel the number one supplier being Canada by far, and number two being Mexico, neither of whom are subject to tariffs.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
The reason the hammer and sickle doesn't draw the same level of opprobrium as the swastika is the same reason anything associated with the Ottomans, or the Mongols,.or the Huns, or the Sudanese, or any other murderous regime doesn't either. There's a tacit understanding that this kind of behavior is historically common and continues to be common until a civilization reaches a certain level of development. Russia had always been a backwater so it was easy to dismiss Stalin as a thug, and most other Communist countries were even further behind economically, culturally, scientifically, and socially. Germany, on the other hand, was one of the most advanced countries in Europe, and had been viewed as such for a long time. The Holocaust wasn't the same kind of mass butchery that had always existed; it was a high-tech process optimized for efficiency with every detail down to the amount of gold extracted from dental fillings meticulously recorded, perpetrated by an army of bureaucrats in business suits and a leader who had been popularly elected. The idea that "progress" could lead to something like that was terrifying.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Before when go any further, what do you mean by "inability to audit"? The last I checked all but 6 states had audit provisions. If you want to make that argument, fine, but you have to apply it to all states equally, so unless you can tell me what it is in particular about Texas's audit procedures that make it better than Pennsylvania, I'll have to assume that Trump only won Texas due to fraud, no? I'd like to respond to your other points as well but I need this cleared up first.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
only the most elite cyclists ever have any business going on the highway.
Honestly, highways are much safer for cycling than a lot of main roads. They tend to have wide shoulders and long sightlines, making it easier to stay out of traffic and maintain visibility. Main roads often have limited room on the side and blind curves that can send motorists a little over the edge; add in traffic and it can be pretty nerve wracking. Even country roads can be bad, because people fly on them without regard for other traffic, let alone bicycles.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Forester's intransigence was, in my opinion, largely an effect of his own political experience. He had been riding for 25+ years at the time the '70s bike boom started, and prior to that period there were so few cyclists on the streets that no one really gave them a second thought. He'd been doing it for so long that he was comfortable and developed his own set of best practices. When the bike boom cause the number of cyclists to swell, motorists started getting irritated, and their superior numbers led to local governments installing bike lanes and forcing cyclists to use them when available. Forester didn't view this as an accommodation but as a statement by government that he was a second-class citizen. I don't know what these '70s bike lanes were like, but I'll give Forester the benefit of the doubt here and assume there were safety problems with them that don't apply to contemporary designs. He fought back against this and got enough grassroots political power to convince local governments that vehicular cycling was better than dedicated infrastructure.
His advice is generally good for when it come to how to behave when riding on urban streets. But it really only works for the kind of person who isn't intimidated by riding on urban streets, i.e., an experienced rider who has both the equipment and fitness to maintain 20 mph and isn't intimidated by aggressive drivers. But it isn't going to convince casual riders to bike rather than drive. Luckily no one pays attention to him anymore because most cyclists weren't around for the California Bike Wars, don't know or care about the politics behind them, and instinctively feel safer when protected from traffic.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
That left, who speaks and acts with capricious concern for constitution and law, have spent most of the last decade giving every indication they would steal an election if necessary, and you are calling them a unique kind of liar.
Really? I've been among mainstream lefties my entire life and I've never once heard anyone say that elections should be stolen if necessary, whether from personal acquaintances or any mainstream media or political figures. Of course, you never claimed that they said as much, only that they gave indications that they believe it, which is whatever you subjectively interpret that to mean. Anyway the sum total of your case is as follows: 1. Leftists gave "indications" that they were willing to steal an election. 2. Democratic politicians had fraud machines in major cities 60+ years ago. 3. They couldn't overshoot their fraud or they'd get caught, 4. Big coordinated secret campaigns have happened before.
What you haven't presented is any real allegation, let alone real evidence. Give me a name or names and describe something specific that they did and how it affected the vote totals. Then provide some kind of evidence, whether documentary or testimonial. If Trump were to have won the 2020 election I'm sure I could have come up with just as many broad, vague, unprovable allegations as to why the Republicans rigged the election, were I so inclined. Give me something like "The Bubb County Judge of Elections commandeered 1500 mail-in ballots that the postal service returned to his office as undeliverable and marked them for Biden. As evidence of this we have copies of the ballots themselves, which all have signatures which an expert concludes are from the same pen, and email from the judge to his secretary telling her to hold onto any returned ballots, the testimony of the secretary stating that the judge instructed her to put the ballots into the office safe, and testimony from the assistant judge saying that he wanted to consult with the county solicitor on the matter of what to do with the ballots but the judge told him not to worry about it. This would create a strong, though not dispositive, case of fraud.
As for arguments from complexity, I wrote on this about a month ago. American history has immediate examples of conspiracies involving very large numbers of actors who never came forward.
One thing all those have in common is thousands upon thousands of pages of documentary evidence. There's no way you're running a complex fraud operation across five states involving hundreds of local boards of election and doing it all with in-person meetings that wouldn't arouse anyone's suspicion. What makes you think the people counting the ballots are all ideologically motivated to the point where they'd be willing to commit felonies? Seriously, if your employer asked you to commit a felony for ideological reasons and promised that you'd totally get away with it, would you do it? I know people who actually counted ballots in Allegheny County. They're county employees who don't make a lot of money. They also hate doing it and look for any excuse to do their regular jobs on election day (one supervisor described the tedium of testing thousands of voting machines as they moved them out of storage). Even if you assume they were all paid off, that amount pales in comparison with how much money they'd make if they were able to present a credible case of electoral fraud. It wouldn't even be that hard to prove either since you'd have to hold huge training sessions with handouts and Power Point slides. I know you're going to come back at me with some supposition on how they destroyed the evidence and how every employee in Allegheny County is a Democrat and whatever but unless you can actually prove any of this, I don't want to hear it. Just show some real evidence or quit making the allegation.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
It didn't. The transatlantic accent was based on British RP, which doesn't have an aspirated "wh".
Rov_Scam
14d ago
His advantage in the 2016 debates stemmed from his approach being so unconventional that the audience found it exhilarating, and the other participants were so flummoxed by anyone not being appalled by it that they didn't know how to effectively respond. By 2020 his schtick had worn thin, and Biden knew what he was up against.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I hate to be pedantic but Bryson DeChambeau is not a PGA star. He's a former PGA Tour star, and possibly a LIV Golf star, if you're of the opinion that LIV Golf actually has stars.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Santorum's political career is an interesting case study. Everyone forgets this, but when he was in the House he represented a district that was heavily Democratic and waged his first Senate campaign as the prototypical "compassionate conservative" who would look critically at the budget but still try to accommodate social services spending. At the very least, he always shied away from the "up by your bootstraps" mentality that characterized a lot of the Reagan right in those days. As such, he was a rising young star who had bipartisan support. His first term was relatively uneventful, and he cruised to victory in a totally unmemorable campaign that was nonetheless closer than it probably should have been. He was popular enough in PA but had no national profile. He decided to rectify this during the Bush administration by going hard in the direction of the religious right. This decision absolutely boggles the mind. Maybe things looked different in 2001 or 2002, but those guys generally don't win presidential primaries, let alone general elections. He couldn't even keep his Senate seat, losing to Bob Casey, who even back then always looked like he was about to fall asleep.
As far as him being unlikable in person is concerned — I'm from the same neck of the woods as him and I never heard that. That being said, most of his interactions around here are from the '90s, when he was "your local elected official" as opposed to after 2000, when he was "national political celebrity". Part of the reason people may view him as unlikable may be that he turned into a caricature of himself at some point and couldn't turn it off. Maybe the lone attendee of his 2016 rally during the Iowa Caucuses can shed some light on this.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
One of the things I find most irritating about these "Voter integrity" narratives is that they operate on the assumption that states have crappy systems while the people making the arguments have no idea what the systems actually are. I can't speak for what Virginia's laws were like before Youngkin, but the fact that only "tens of thousands" of voter's were purged after his directive suggests that things were actually running like they were supposed to. I live in Pennsylvania, a state that's often accused of shenanigans and was in fact so accused earlier in this very thread, and they purged nearly 300,000 voters from the rolls in 2020. There was nothing unusual about this because they "purge" a similar number every year because that's how many people die or move away every year. While I wouldn't expect some rando on the internet to know that, I would expect a gubernatorial candidate to know that before he says the state of the PA voter rolls is so messed up we need to do a total purge and require everyone to re-register. OF course, it's easy to keep track of people who move out of state if you're part of a multi-state system that keeps track of these things. Youngkin, however, decided to remove Virginia from the ERIC system, following the lead of other Republican-led states who were convinced by conspiracy theories about it being some evil Democrat vote rigging scheme. How these states plan on eliminating those who move elsewhere from the voter roles is currently anyone's guess, but election deniers would prefer to ignore that.
To further prevent fraud, they will only allow paper ballots, and the machines that count the ballots will be tested and not connected to the internet.
Again, Pennsylvania was doing this before 2020. Voting machines were never connected to the internet. I'm unaware of any jurisdiction that hasn't tested voting machines before an election, at least in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
And all dropboxes will be monitored 24/7.
I highly doubt this is the case. The most obvious concern about dropboxes is that someone could break into them and destroy the votes. This is not something I've heard the election deniers express any concern over. Instead, they express vague fears that the dropboxes will enable ballot harvesting that is somehow a vector for MASSIVE FRAUD. They might have an argument if the only place to cast these ballots were the dropboxes, but these are mail ballots. Every mailbox in the state is a potential ballot dropbox. If someone is going to ballot harvest they can just put them in a mailbox on the street, or mail them from their house for that matter. I doubt Youngkin is posting monitors at all public mailboxes, let alone monitoring households and businesses.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
One of the things I find most irritating about gish gallop election fraud claims is the way they breathlessley move between theories that assume the theft of the 2020 election was something that Democrats had been planning for months and that it was something that was done at the last minute after they realized Trump was going to win. Somehow, your post seems to capture both of these sentiments simultaneously — the PA Department of State is planning on rigging the election, but it's apparently impossible for them to do so without a couple extra days on the back end. How this is supposed to work is beyond me.
Professional football prognosticators seem to be more fickle than normal lately. The Eagles had a bad end to the season but I'm not going to throw them under the bus and say that a season and a half (plus the improved season before that) was all a lucky fluke just because of a half-dozen games. The Gnats are terrible. The Commanders get hyped every year but never seem to go anywhere. That leaves the Eagles and the Cowboys, and the Cowboys will probably choke. At the very least, they don't deserve to win anything. For some reason their fans hate Dak. Everyone keeps saying Zeke is washed, but he's still better than the guy backing him up. They have a good defense, but Micah Parsons is unhappy. I don't know what to make of this. The Eagles have as good a chance as they do.
I'm going to ping @Walterodim so I can consolidate my responses here. I have Josh Allen as my dynasty league QB so I'm totally biased, and I've always liked the Bills. I have a theory about QBs like Allen and Mahomes; when you combine guys this good with really good coaching, it doesn't matter who the receivers are. In a sense this is the ideal play because they can't just shadow your top guy all day. Tom Brady won all of his Super Bowls in such a system — everyone forgets this, but the only wideout to ever make the Pro Bowl on a Patriots Super Bowl team was Troy Brown in 2001 (and that was his only Pro Bowl). Randy Moss and Wes Welker had better careers, but neither won a Super Bowl. The Bills' defensive injuries are more of a concern but it seems like they always have a ton of defensive injuries. Speaking of the Patriots, they're in a rebuild and are expecting to be so bad that they're easing Drake Maye into the QB role even though he's obviously better than Brissett. The Dolphins are the kind of team with an "explosive" offense that wins games by hanging a ton of points on shitty teams. But they can't beat anyone good. Their defense relies on the offense keeping them off the field. As for the Jets, it's all hype. The offense assumes a 76-year-old Aaron Rogers will be back in hall-of-fame condition after being injured for a year. I predict he gets injured again and we get to see Tyrod Taylor. Their defense boils down to "we have Sauce Gardner", and they can't stop the run. Breece Hall is good, but so was Travis Henry. Bills win this division easily.
Pinging @Hoffmeister25. The only thing the Chargers have going for them is that they're clearly better than the Raiders and Broncos, so they should coast to an easy second place finish. If two things are certain it's that Jim Harbaugh will run the ball, and J.K. Dobbins will get injured, so be ready to see a lot of the Gus Bus. The Jags briefly looked like they had their act together, but that remains to be seen. The Texans should easily win this division, but their only two years removed from being the second worst team in the league, and as a Jags fan you should know what that means. Hell, as a Chargers fan you should know what early hype combined with limited success can lead to. Granted, the Texans looked more put-together last year than the Jags or the Chargers ever did, but I'm not about to crown them kings of the division, either. The Colts could also pose a problem, but I'm not a fan of overhyped QBs like Anthony Richardson and Michael Pittman, Jr. always underperforms expectations in fantasy, so I'm rooting to see Joe Fluke-O lose another wild card game. The Titans are an interesting story. They deserve to lose for tearing down a stadium that isn't that old to build a taxpayer-funded dome in a city with mild weather. They also have a history of disrespecting the Terrible Towel, and their best season in the past 20 years was with Kerry Collins at quarterback. Honestly, this division could go in any direction.
And now for my Steelers. Over the offseason, they took the bold step of replacing the frustration of a mediocre quarterback with the frustration of two mediocre quarterbacks. As they can't help but repeat in every broadcast, Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season. Every year some edgy sportswriter picks them to go 5–12 or some bullshit without realizing that that isn't possible. No matter how dire things seem, if there's one thing the Steelers are capable of it's battling back from a terrible season to have a chance to make the playoffs with a Steelers win AND a Jaguars loss, AND a Chargers loss, AND a Browns–Bengals tie, only for every leg of this impossible parlay to happen except the part where the Steelers beat the 2–14 Texans. Or, alternatively, they make the playoffs but are so outclassed they lose 45–15. After experiencing two Super Bowl wins I have resigned myself to this fate. But the sportswriters are still idiots; this team is better in every dimension than they were last year, but they're predicted to do worse. Some of this has to do with the brutal schedule, but they have one of the best defenses in the league and everyone forgets that last year they were 7–4 after Thanksgiving despite not scoring any points and would have easily cruised into the playoffs if it weren't for three fabulous weeks of Mitch Trubisky. The idea that Russell Wilson and Justin Fields can be written off entirely after a combined three minutes of preseason play is absurd. Seriously, there's absolutely no correlation between the preseason and regular season so commentators just need to stop acting like there is.
The division is interesting. The Ravens are clearly the best team, but the Steelers should have no problem beating them twice so long as Lamar stays healthy. I used to like Joe Burrow but I lost all respect for him when he showed up to the Super Bowl in that horrible suit (and had to wear it to the press conference since he forgot to bring anything else). Supposedly he's oblivious to fashion so he lets Ja'Marr Chase pick his clothes for him. Most people know that there are certain clothes that white guys can't pull off. Unfortunately, "most people" does not include stylish black guys, who tend to uncritically assume that their approach works for everybody. When Ryan Fitzpatrick showed up at a press conference wearing DeSean Jackson's clothes everybody in the press laughed because they knew it was obviously a joke. No one laughs about Burrow's sartorial choices because they know he's oblivious and it would just hurt his feelings. Anyway, they have a questionable running game and their defense might be worse than the Chargers. These are the kinds of teams the Steelers beat easily since they can't stay competitive unless they score 500 points. The Browns are always the Browns. I'll admit that they have a good defense. But DeSean Watson is terrible enough that they signed ALL the quarterbacks. Nick Chubb won't be his old self coming off of injury and will be worse than Jerome Ford was in his last game before Chubb came back, but not so much worse that they can make Ford the starter. These defensive battles are tossups so the Steelers should split this with them. You can throw darts at a board for the rest of the games because some bullshit always happens.
Prediction: They enter divisional play in last place with a 3–6 record against a shit schedule and everyone starts talking about how the schedule is so tough (all divisional plus Eagles and Chiefs) that there's no way they can possibly come back and Tomlin needs to go, etc. This whole affair involves repeated benchings of both Wilson and Fields and at least one disastrous Kyle Allen start. And then they sign Ryan Tannehill because he knows the "Arthur Smith offense" and they win 7 of their last 8 thorough some combination of the following: Injuries to opposing QBs who aren't Lamar Jackson, fluke plays, missed field goals, questionable penalties, TJ Watt fumble recoveries for TD, Minkah pick-6s, the Eagles starting Kenny Pickett, and at least one Calvin Austin jet sweep. They will then lose to the Browns in the first round of the playoffs in a game so badly played it's nearly unwatchable.
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