Flashback: Hunter's Laptop Russian Disinformation

[Kukulkan]

K Graham I think it's best we agree to disagree. Which is okay, agreement doesn't always have to be the end result. Glad we could hash out our ideas though.

[Res Ipsa]

I didn't drag you into anything, Kevin. You injected yourself into a discussion that was basically completed with a comment that ridiculed and disparaged Ajax. I didn't misread Ajax, and I didn't congratulate him for conceding. I thanked him for having a civil conversation with me on a political issue, which, given how far apart we are on politics, is rare these days. We've had a few of those and I hope we can have more.

You're right, I conflated your response with those of others. Apologies. But the problem with Ajax has never been one of civility. It has been his dishonesty. I mean do you really believe he doesn't know Brietbart is lying to him? We've proven it numerous times, but like a broken record, he only wants to use them to whine about how the Left is constantly lying, suppressing stories, etc.

I'm addressing your conduct right here, right now, and I really don't give a rip about the fact that you changed your mind about religion and politics in the past. If you treated your past "opponents" the way you currently treat Ajax, then the fact that you changed teams doesn't represent much of a change, in my opinion.

Well, you said you don't expect me to concede being wrong on anything we argue about (I just did above, by the way), which suggests you think I'm just as pig-headed as ajax. And it's weird you would think my "conduct" here is any different from any other thread he starts, or any different from what others have pointed out. Calling him out for being disingenuous in his use of sources, again, is hardly something new here, either from me or a half dozen other posters.

No problem on the conflation. It happens.

And you've exactly diagnosed the "problem" with Ajax. It's that you've decided that he "must" be dishonest, and so he's fair game for you to attack personally rather than addressing the issues. I mean, you took it as far as responding to his posts by repeatedly calling him "human garbage," right? Just how different is that in terms of dehumanization than Atlanticmike calling Progressives "cockroaches?"

The truth is I'm not a mind reader. There are lots of people who believe Breitbart reports the truth, and I don't think they're all dishonest liars. In my experience, people defy simplistic categorization. And, in my opinion, cramming people into boxes, slapping a label on them, and never letting them out of the box goes a long way toward explaining why our country is coming apart at the seams. I don't know what Ajax actually thinks about Breitbart or why he posts what he posts. So why should I slap a label on him for the purpose of creating an excuse to personally attack him rather than talking to him?

No, I'm not saying that you are as "pig headed" as Ajax. I'm saying I don't place much importance on whether you or anyone else "concedes" or not. I'll argue the hell out of a position, as I've done many times here, because I enjoy the process of arguing and because I learn something from the exercise. To me, the process is kind of like how a particle accelerator works: smash two arguments together as hard as you can and see what happens. Reflect on the results and try to learn from it. Whether someone else changes their thinking is beyond my control -- they get to think what they want to think. I simply don't expect concession because the argument I've been trying out may be crap.

Your conduct in this thread is different from the thread Ajax started. His thread is about a Breitbart story. Your conduct is about Ajax. And, once again, as I've so often pointed out to Atlantic Mike, you are responsible for your own conduct. Other's conduct is not a valid justification for your own. I don't care what others have done in the past: attacking Ajax as being disingenuous is attacking Ajax the person based on your own subjective conclusions about him. Demonstrating that the Breitbart article is wrong, disingenuous, or dishonest is not attacking Ajax -- it's addressing the subject of his post.

As I explained to Mark in another thread, solely through the operation of the law of unintended consequences, the rules at times here have not been applied consistently. One of those rules is the personal attack rule, so past patterns in how an individual has been treated here may not be a reliable guide in terms of how the rules will be enforced going forward.

If folks here play the ball and not the man, they probably won't notice any change. But folks accustomed to playing the man may have to adjust how they treat others on the board. And I think it makes sense to start with talking about the difference between playing the man and playing the ball when the opportunity presents itself.

[Res Ipsa]

So, you agree with Atlantic Mike that his behavior is justified by yours?

Nah, I was just being a smart ass. I just don't see a need to "justify" anything.

You playing the man instead of the ball is not a concoction of my own making. You do it all the time, but you justify it by claiming that your target "deserves it."

Well obviously I wouldn't do it unless I thought they deserved it.

I have no idea whether you are actually blind to your own conduct or whether you've just grown accustomed to rationalizing it. But go back and reread your post. You didn't "merely" point out anything. You described his conduct as "hilarious," which is ridicule.

Maybe if I just come out and say that when I feel attacked, "I GO NUCLEAR ON THEIR ASS" then maybe I could earn your respect. I mean, that worked for DocCam

And your defense? (1) someone else did it too

Someone else did what too? Go back and read what I actually said was hilarious.

Your point about Doc Cam is important, because it conflates respect for a person, with respect for behavior, with respect for someone else's right to make choices I disagree with.

I have zero respect for Doc's "GO NUCLEAR ON THEIR ASS" behavior. I think it's another example of using someone's else's behavior as an excuse for his own bad behavior. And, when I'm a moderator, I will enforce the rules whether or not Doc thinks he is justified in his treatment of someone else. And when I'm not a moderator, I respect the fact that he is responsible for his behavioral choices and I am not. And all of that is a different question from my respect for Doc Cam as a human being.

And none of this conversation has anything to do with my respect for Kevin Graham the human being. It has to do with behavior and the rules that place limits on how we treat each other here. And the hope of having some discussions in the black that will avoid having to do stuff in the red.

[ajax18]

Schweizer: Joe and Hunter Biden ‘Had Intermingled Finances’

Monday, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, said that Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed that he and his father, President Joe Biden, “had intermingled finances” while the elder Biden was Vice President of the United States.

Schweizer told Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.” that President Biden could be embroiled in the investigation into his son’s tax affairs by federal prosecutors in Delaware.

“If you look at the Hunter Biden laptop, there’s a couple of things that stand out,” Schweizer outlined. “Number one, that Hunter Biden is paying some of his father’s monthly bills while he’s Vice President of the United States. That’s explicitly laid out in the emails. And number two, that Hunter Biden was paying for things like renovation on his father’s home in Delaware while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States. Add to the fact that Hunter Biden is complaining to family members about how he’s having to give half his income to pop, which would be his father.”

He continued, “It’s very clear that the president and his son, Hunter Biden, had intermingled finances. Their money was flowing between the two, and I think what the Biden family has to be very worried about with this grand jury looking into the tax evasion charges for Hunter Biden is there could very well be something that embroils the president himself because nobody was paying taxes on the money that Hunter Biden is using to pay for his father’s bills.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022 ... -finances/

Would you agree that Joe and Hunter Biden mingled their finances? would you say Biden was telling the truth when he said he didn't know anything about Hunter Biden's finances or what he made working for Burisma?

It's also interesting that Bill Barr despite his differences with Donald Trump still believes that Joe Biden lied during the debate about the laptop. I wonder if he's heard your interpretation of what the Russian plant was that made the story actual Russian disinformation?

[honorentheos]

Hi ajax,

When you read an article like this that tells you what the emails say but don't provide the emails, do you inherently think that's problematic journalism?

[Res Ipsa]

Schweizer: Joe and Hunter Biden ‘Had Intermingled Finances’

Monday, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, said that Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed that he and his father, President Joe Biden, “had intermingled finances” while the elder Biden was Vice President of the United States.

Schweizer told Newsmax TV’s “Spicer & Co.” that President Biden could be embroiled in the investigation into his son’s tax affairs by federal prosecutors in Delaware.

“If you look at the Hunter Biden laptop, there’s a couple of things that stand out,” Schweizer outlined. “Number one, that Hunter Biden is paying some of his father’s monthly bills while he’s Vice President of the United States. That’s explicitly laid out in the emails. And number two, that Hunter Biden was paying for things like renovation on his father’s home in Delaware while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States. Add to the fact that Hunter Biden is complaining to family members about how he’s having to give half his income to pop, which would be his father.”

He continued, “It’s very clear that the president and his son, Hunter Biden, had intermingled finances. Their money was flowing between the two, and I think what the Biden family has to be very worried about with this grand jury looking into the tax evasion charges for Hunter Biden is there could very well be something that embroils the president himself because nobody was paying taxes on the money that Hunter Biden is using to pay for his father’s bills.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022 ... -finances/

Would you agree that Joe and Hunter Biden mingled their finances? would you say Biden was telling the truth when he said he didn't know anything about Hunter Biden's finances or what he made working for Burisma?

It's also interesting that Bill Barr despite his differences with Donald Trump still believes that Joe Biden lied during the debate about the laptop. I wonder if he's heard your interpretation of what the Russian plant was that made the story actual Russian disinformation?

Not enough information to answer your first two questions. First, you have to define "intermingled" and then have to figure out whether what was done was improper, regardless of the label you give it. Finally, since the real question is about Joe Biden, you have to determine whether anything that Joe Biden did was improper.

The biggest flaw in what Schweitzer is saying is the notion is that, if Hunter Biden wasn't paying the taxes he owed, that means that Joe Biden was corrupt or broke the law. For example, one of my sons lives with me right now. We both have jobs and maintain separate bank accounts. We do have an agreement about how to divide expenses regardless of who incurs them, so money is transferred back and forth between our accounts to implement that arrangement.

I don't actually know what he makes. I don't know what he does with the money he earns, other than when he reimburses me for an expense I've incurred that we've agreed he should bear.

Have my son and I "mingled" our finances? That's certainly not how the term "mingled" is commonly used. Under that definition, I've "mingled" my finances with my bank because money flows back and forth between me and my bank all the time.

The term "mingled" generally implies that money has been thrown into a common pot, especially if there aren't records sufficient to trace who put money in and who took money out. For example, I live in a community property state. I'm married for the second time. When I married my current wife, I had some financial savings. Legally, those were my separate property when I married here. I could spend that money on all kinds of things, including paying bills incurred by the marital community. But those savings would remain community property regardless of what I chose to use them for. However, if, after I was married, I started depositing my paycheck (community property) into the account with my pre-marriage savings (separate property), the funds would be "co-mingled" and would all become community property. We say they are "mingled" because all of the dollars in the account are the same, and so there is no way to tell whether each dollar came from my paycheck or my per-marriage savings.

So, the fact that father and son transferred money back and forth would not indicate a "mingling" of their finance. We'd have to know more about whatever financial arrangement they had at any given time.

Going back to me and my son, if he fails to pay his taxes, that has no fallout for me even though we transfer money back and forth between our accounts all the time. It would be different if I had conspired with him to help him avoid paying taxes for my own financial benefit. Or even knowingly aided and abetted his lawbreaking. But Switzer isn't even close to that.

If the investigation into Hunter's taxes reveals lawbreaking by Joe Biden, I expect the appropriate legal action to be taken, just as with any other citizen. But Schweizer is far from an unbiased source: he's got a pretty clear track record as an author. And he certainly knows he doesn't have enough information to put whichever e-mails he's talking about into any kind of meaningful context.

As to Bill Barr, I don't consider him an authoritative or even reliable source on this issue. That he has differences with Trump doesn't add to his credibility with me in any way. I can read the words. So can you. Can you show me where Biden said "Russian Plant?" If Barr made a comment saying that he thinks Biden lied because Biden said the laptop was a "Russian plant" during the debate, then Barr is putting words in Joe Biden's mouth that he didn't say. I can read what Trump accused Biden of in the debate and I can read Biden's response to that accusation. Even if Joe Biden had said that laptop was a Russian "plant" in the debate, what's the evidence that he would have been actually lying as opposed to jumping to a wrong conclusion?

I'm still left with the conclusion that this whole "Biden lied about the laptop" thing is a nothingburger issue created to distract from the fact that the entire effort to smear Joe Biden with the laptop was a complete failure and from the fact that those pushing these smears were helping Putin against Ukraine.

[canpakes]

From a link in the article:

Trump's "own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy, Rudy Giuliani, he's being used as a Russian pawn, he's being fed information that is Russian, that is not true," Biden said.

I don’t see that Barr’s statement can be judged as correct based on Biden’s statement above. Giuliani may indeed have been fed information by the Russians that isn’t true. The odds favor that as much or better than any claim that can be made about the Bidens.

In any event, if you trust the system to render a verdict as correctly as you perceived that they did regarding Trump and Russiagate, then you’ve probably got a bit of a wait, still.

[ajax18]

Hi ajax,

When you read an article like this that tells you what the emails say but don't provide the emails, do you inherently think that's problematic journalism?

That's a good point. I had heard vague things about what the emails said but yeah I can't find where the emails are published. But it's harder to research as a conservative. Google along with most search engines are controlled by left leaning companies.

[Res Ipsa]

Hi ajax,

When you read an article like this that tells you what the emails say but don't provide the emails, do you inherently think that's problematic journalism?

That's a good point. I had heard vague things about what the emails said but yeah I can't find where the emails are published. But it's harder to research as a conservative. Google along with most search engines are controlled by left leaning companies.

Ajax, your inability to find the text of those e-mails has nothing to do with Google. A number of conservatives have copies of the hard drive but, for some reason, release only the e-mails they want you to see. Most of the time, they just tell you what is in them rather than showing them. You should ask yourself why those conservatives, like Giulianni and the NY Post, are only selectively releasing the e-mails.

[honorentheos]

Hi ajax,

When you read an article like this that tells you what the emails say but don't provide the emails, do you inherently think that's problematic journalism?

That's a good point. I had heard vague things about what the emails said but yeah I can't find where the emails are published. But it's harder to research as a conservative. Google along with most search engines are controlled by left leaning companies.

The person speaking claims to have access to them, speaking directly to their content. And he is being interviewed by a friendly news outlet. So why wouldn't he/Breitbart share the emails?