westslope wrote:

I have no idea what you're talking about in the third paragraph. No, the US did not kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter might have been re-elected if anything remotely like that occurred.

I never did follow the story claiming the Russians paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US soldiers. But to shrug off Trump's 30,000 lies during his presidency as "American as apple pie" is (with all due respect) utter lunacy.

I don't see how any reasonable and informed American can regard Trump's presidency as anything but a disaster. The GOP still can't come to grips with reality. It's still dancing to Trump's tune. You know you're in Bizarro World when Liz Cheney is the party's moral standard just because she doesn't think the election was rigged.

Remind us again.   How much in the way of bounties did the Russians pay Taliban fighters to kill Americans?   

Lying is apparently a bi-partisan passion.   American as Apple Pie.


Another reminder?  Did the US help kick out the Russian soldiers from Afghanistan so Osama Bin Laden could bomb New York City and then Americans could celebrate an orgy of terrorist killings?  

Did I get that right?  

 kurtster wrote:
Who here besides you cares about Hunter Biden? His business dealings and behavior were investigated and reported on before Joe officially announced that he was running for president.

Hunter is no embarrassment to me or the Democratic party. He had a rough childhood. He didn't handle it well as an adult. Apparently he's growing up.

You might as well be complaining about Roger Clinton. Hunter wasn't and isn't relevant to the Dems or the GOP.

If you want to talk about embarrassments and the GOP, let's talk about Trump and his deadly incompetence. You sure are awfully quiet about all those people who died of Covid because of Trump's lies—a number of epidemiologists have estimated it was around 400k. 

And hey, what about the insurrection that Trump whipped up at the Capitol building? Would you like to talk about that and the GOP's delusional insistence that the election was rigged?

So would somebody kindly tell us/remind us why the Russians 'invaded' the Crimea again?     What was the reason for the Russian-speaking citizens of the Ukraine to take up arms?

Was it worth the sanctions against Russia?    Billions of dollars of Exxon Mobil investment dried up.    What for?    

 haresfur wrote:
Bannon/Giuliani's fake news October surprise didn't pan out (like the last time) and now some people haz a sad. Perhaps try winning with an actual platform that has merit.

 kurtster wrote:

You are saying the problem is that a story that has been spun into a "scandal" with no basis should have been spread more widely so some people would have believed it and changed their vote. So basically, the problem is that the fake-news didn't gain enough traction? Nah, that wouldn't matter, and I see no reason why Hunter Biden's business  reflects on Joe. On the other hand we have plenty of evidence that Rudy was trying to manipulate the story and spread a false narrative to hurt Biden. Would it matter to you if this was true?

 kcar wrote:

Really ?  Not only are you dictating who can say what around here, you are also using whataboutism to justify it.

This is the Republican Party thread, right ?  HB is of interest to repubs and an embarrassment to you.

My advice to you would be to take a chill pill and stay out of this thread since it seems to bother you so much that you have to tell people what is okay to discuss in here.

 cc_rider wrote:

I wouldn't call Ivanka's those deals "charity." 

Really, it's time to STFU about Hunter Biden. Ivanka and Jared's graft and conflicts of interest make him look insignificant. 

Jared and Ivanka made up to $640 million in the White House

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to tell the exact amount as the income is sometimes reported in broad ranges and cover four months of income before Ivanka Trump officially joined her father’s administration and nearly one month before Jared Kushner joined.

Both Kushner and Trump announced they would not take a salary while working for the government in an attempt to shut down nepotism concerns. While their supporters marked this as a public sacrifice, the massive amount of money they made on the side undercuts that argument, as government salaries would have been less than 1% of their income.

The Vanity Fair article below quotes the CREW report (as shown by the boxed text):

JARED AND IVANKA MADE UP TO $640 MILLION WHILE WORKING IN WASHINGTON, OR 457,142 STIMULUS CHECKS

One major factor in their outside profits came from Ivanka Trump’s ownership stake in the Trump Hotel in D.C., just blocks from the White House and the locus of influence peddling in the Trump administration. Before business slowed down due to the pandemic, the couple paid a combined 23 visits to the hotel. All told, Ivanka made more than $13 million from the hotel since 2017.… The hotel was far from Ivanka Trump’s only controversial source of income while working in the White House. In 2018, Ivanka announced she was shutting down her namesake brand, and she later filed a disclosure with the government that “ll operations of the business ceased on July 31, 2018.” But discovered that she still made up to $1 million from it in 2019 despite the fact that she claimed it no longer existed.

In what would become the defining scandal of her time in office, in October 2018 Ivanka’s brand won 16 new trademarks from the Chinese government, including for voting machines. These approvals came about three months after Ivanka announced that her brand was shutting down, and mark the largest number of new Chinese trademarks she received in a single month during the Trump presidency. Six months after the company officially shut down, it received a new trademark to sell the Ivanka brand in Canada. In all, CREW found at least 28 foreign trademarks approved for Ivanka Trump while in the White House.

Other major sources of income for the couple came from Kushner’s real estate holdings, which got a nice boost through a tax break the first daughter reportedly personally pushed for:

worked on the Trump administration’s implementation of the Opportunity Zones program in 2018, apparently violating conflict of interest law in the process. At the same time that Ivanka was working on Opportunity Zones, Jared owned a significant financial stake in a company called Cadre which offers investment vehicles under the Opportunity Zones program. When Trump and Kushner entered the administration, Kushner’s stake in Cadre was valued between $5 million and $25 million. The value would rise to $25 million to $50 million. Kushner originally failed to disclose his ownership in Cadre. Despite the fact that the top White House ethics official determined at one point that it was “reasonably necessary” for him to divest from Cadre in order to do his job at the White House, he never did.

 kurtster wrote:
Ah, Media Research Center again, this time claiming 4.6% rather than 17%.

Did you read the article? It claimed that 36% of Biden voters were unaware of the story. That means 64% were aware of it, pretty good penetration for a story being kept under wraps.

If it were true no, it wouldn't bother me. Mainstream gutter politics as usual. Incumbent parties and their media allies failing to get their oppo out does not cause me to lose sleep.

You know what does? Biden continuing Trump's China antagonism and trade policy. I can't see a nickel's worth of difference between the two.

And yes, as others here have pointed out: if you're so upset about Hunter getting a position at Burisma, where is your outrage over there deals Ivanka and Jared scored for themselves?

 kurtster wrote:

What scandal? What hiding?

Hunter Biden got paid to be on the board of Burisma Holdings. He was hardly the first relation of a prominent politician to get a cushy job without any real qualifications.

The mainstream press investigated this. IIRC the FBI and other govt agencies investigated this. There was no scandal to uncover. We've been over and over this.

As for voters not being aware of Hunter Biden... Where the f$#k were they? Trump couldn't stop talking about Hunter and Joe and Ukraine and China. Giuliani babbled about big revelations coming. Hunter's laptop was supposed to blow things open.

As for the poll you point to I'm deeply skeptical of its credibility. I can't imagine a significant number of Biden voters can even remember Hunter at this point.

Trump lost because he botched the handling of Covid and contributed to the deaths of 400,000 more Americans than should have died with more competent government response. Hunter Biden had nothing to do with it.

 kurtster wrote:

I won't vote for his re-election .... once you show me the evidence.


BTW - the optics are bad....but he didn't do anything the Trump kids weren't out doing with the Chinese patents and overseas money.    One difference, Hunter never got paid from the campaign funds raised.

 Lazy8 wrote:

I saw the 8% number quite a few times, but that was a while ago.  I went with the lowest number that I had seen / heard.

Here try this one ...

Media's hiding of Hunter Biden scandal robbed Trump of clear win: Poll

Would it matter to you if this was true ? 

 kurtster wrote:
That 8% number seems oddly specific...and unlikely. So I went googling for it. Didn't find it, but I found various mouth-foaming sources claiming other fanciful figures.  One in 6 (17%) (Media Research Center, a right-wing think tank), 10% (Donald F#cking Trump, pulled out of whatever orifice he gets stats from) but no one claiming your particular random number.

So which orifice did this come from? Just curious, it's not going to make me...do anything in particular.

While you're doing your (ahem) research maybe look this up: how many Trump voters would have changed their votes after the Jan. 6th riots?

 kurtster wrote:
kurtster, do you not have any interest in American politics evolving beyond tabloid-style gutter, sensationalist politics?  Why do you treat your fellow Americans like they are so naive, so shallow, so gullible, so stupid? 

The Democrats also pounded mercilessly on an unsavoury connection between President Trump and Russia.  The Democrats made up all kinds of nonsense.  You and your fellow Trump supporters opened these floodgates of political mendacity.  Actually you did not open the floodgates, you simply took them to new heights.

The racist baiting of the Chinese by Trump was totally over the top.   And it was effective, even self-styled North American progressives believed the lies about Chinese industrial policy.

The Muslim ban?   Remember the American Sikhs who were murdered because they looked like Semitic rag heads?  That is on you and your Trump movement kurtster.

I know it is hard.  You and other Americans have been socialized into glorifying ethnic cleansing terrorism from a very early age.  The USA would not exist today without ethnic cleansing terrorism.   That explains in part your broad multi-partisan blank-cheque support for the thuggish anti-Semitic Israeli nation building project. 

As killing grandchildren and grandparents and stealing resources at the point of a gun (or aerial bombing) is bound to be controversial for society that PRETENDS to follow Judeo-Christian ethics and morals, is it a surprise that everybody gravitates to political mendacity with heavy doses of historical revisionism and narratives that deliberately talk around the issues?  

 Lazy8 wrote:

yes.  Already have I thought.  Is what it is.

So while there are simple numbers above that we agree on ... try this

Regarding the election as I mentioned earlier, based on polling 8% of Biden voters would have changed their votes had they known about the Hunter Biden story before the election.  The story as we know was censored into oblivion by the media powers that be, to prevent the information being seen as much as possible in order to manipulate the vote.

Now is 8% of 82 million enough to swing the election the other way ?  How about as little as 5% ?

 kurtster wrote:

Agreed.  Treating politics as a sporting like winner takes all game is a really bad idea.

 kurtster wrote:
For the record: 82 million > 75 million, right?

Does this mean you're acknowledging that Trump lost by 7 million votes?