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[Frumple]

Temporal or mortal limitations are beyond the concern of covid conspiracies, dood. Someone being dead or the timeframe not matching doesn't stop that idiocy even a little. It's like how obama used his presidential powers to fuck up the response to katrina, y'know?

[The_Explorer]

Bill gates walks into the room
Looks at elon musk
Elon musk looks at him
zuckerburg is there in a chair watching with his android style expression and occasionally smiles but smiles at the wrong time each time, in his head programming error programming error
Strange music is playing in the background, room is dimly lit, lights are glowing purple
Mosquitos fly around bill gates for some reason but doesnt notice, only focused on elon musk
elon musk keeps telling himself "X" "X" "X" three times in each secession as he stares intently at bill gates
they are on an island, all 3 of them. but there is a surprise guest also on the island.
in the window outside trump is watching with no clothes, just a cloak and hood that he uses to cover his parts, he is staring however at his own reflection not at the three people inside the room

and there is the most disturbing fanfic I came up with to mock all 4 of them lol. I did my best to uh...keep it PG13 I guess

To note: This is in no way a compliment to any of the above Or an insult to any group either btw, I just thought it was a fitting scenario. And I had to really work my brain to come up with that last line xD but it fits so well

[Starver]

I've seen the Gates reputation fluctuate, over the decades... I mean, he (claimed credit for having) got the PC revolution started, then sort of monopolised it/sort of democratised it, depending on your view (but at least it wasn't the Mac/but then it wasn't as perfected as the Mac). He gave us Internet Explorer (free, as opposed to Netscape Navigator), but then he also gave us <blink>Internet Explorer</blink>. The worst excesses of M$, since then actually happened under Balmer, et al, and the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation has done good things (and possibly some things worse than Microsoft Bob, depending upon what you think is important).

Right now, I think the what I would mostly say about Bill is that he could do far less actual philanthropic work (whether or not he could be doing more).

But I'm not sure he has significant personal finger in the pie, insofar as AI goes. The other two, maybe more, but only incidentally (they run (or 'run') platforms that might well use AI to a greater amount than whatever AI-like algorithms they currently do, so are in a position to say that they definitely will/will not surrender more human control over to some random black-box containing an esoteric self-modifying pattern-shuffling target-seeking mystery at its core), and it whiffs mostly of pre-emptively looking like they're being responsible for how the AI being developed in general (or brought into their domains once proved to work elsewhere) so that they can claim to be on the right side of history when the actual legislation finally catches up with where AI is now (by which time, AI will probably actually be unrecognisable by today's standards, leading to a kind of Zeno's Paradox of having still to catch up, or else the legislation made over-reaching as a knee-jerk against all imagined developments).


It makes good headlines, but I can't see what it will achieve, beyond PR. Hoped for good PR, no doubt. But, with potentially toxic figures "conspiring together", it could also be easily interpretted by many as the "technoilluminati" planning on how to control the world!!! It depends what your current balance of opinion is about the Triarchy/Dreikaiserbund apparently formed by association.

[Bumber]

Dumbshits actually went for it, huh. My guess? It's not even going to reach the senate. If the idiot speaker had the votes to push it through, he'd have held one on opening the inquiry itself.

You could just as well be talking about Speaker Pelosi in September 2019. Formal vote for inquiry happened over 30 days later.

... frickin' hell, I could have swore gates died like half a decade ago or something. Apparently not. I guess he's been kinda' quiet the last few years?

His divorce was finalized in 2021. Stuff about his relationship with Jeffery Epstein came out during that.

[hector13]

Dumbshits actually went for it, huh. My guess? It's not even going to reach the senate. If the idiot speaker had the votes to push it through, he'd have held one on opening the inquiry itself.

You could just as well be talking about Speaker Pelosi in September 2019. Formal vote for inquiry happened over 30 days later.

Article, quote:

"If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People's House and not through a declaration by one person," he said last month in an interview with Brietbart.

Yet, on Tuesday, McCarthy and his team are indicating a vote is not expected.

In 2019, McCarthy introduced a symbolic resolution slamming Democrats' impeachment inquiry, which was initially launched without a vote.

In that resolution he wrote that then-Speaker Pelosi's "extraordinary decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry without any debate or vote on such a resolution by the full House undermines the voting privileges afforded to each Member and the constituents they represent," and represented an "abuse of power and brings discredit to the House of Representatives."

Sounds like a bit of a hypocrite, but then again if I was being threatened by my colleagues to replace me or make me look inept, I might do that too.

How many Republican led committees have looked into Biden’s corruption? Two, three? How many years has Hunter’s been investigated for his taxes? Four, five?

If they had evidence of his corruption, they’d have presented it already, and voted on it.

However, they decide to embellish the evidence they do have, which only shows Hunter being a greedy fuck:

Three separate memos based on bank records obtained by the committee, however, have failed to identify any specific payments made to President Biden or provided evidence that he benefited from them directly.

An analysis of the evidence published by the Washington Post in August found that only $7m went to Biden family members - mostly Hunter - while the rest went to "associates". Mr Comer and other Republican lawmakers had suggested that the entire sum of $20m went to the Biden family.

Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, has said that the elder Mr Biden was put on speaker phone with potential business associates - including foreign nationals - "maybe 20 times" over the span of 10 years.

House Republicans have said the calls contradict Joe Biden's claims that he had never discussed business deals with his son.

Mr Archer testified that the phone calls were "casual conversations" that never delved into Hunter Biden's business dealings, and "never once spoke about any business dealings"

Republicans have also focused on an unverified tip to the FBI that said Joe Biden pressured Ukraine's government to fire a top prominent prosecutor to halt an investigation into Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board. The claim first emerged in 2019, during then-President Donald Trump's first impeachment.

An FBI document detailing the claim was obtained and released by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley in July. According to the document, former Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky reportedly said that he paid $5m to both Joe and Hunter Biden.

The justice department investigated the claim for eight months during the Trump administration, but ultimately abandoned its probe due to "insufficient evidence".

Mr Zlochevsky later rebutted the claim and said that he had had no contact with Joe Biden or any of his staff members and that Mr Biden had never helped him or the company while serving as vice-president, according to a transcript of an interview released by Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin.
In his testimony, Mr Archer also said that he was unaware of any such payments.

Citing testimony from two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers, House Republicans have also suggested that the justice department intentionally interfered in a multi-year investigation into Hunter Biden's tax return…

The department has denied the claims. Other witnesses called by Republican representatives in July testified that neither President Biden nor Attorney General Merrick Garland interfered in the investigation.

So they’ve basically made shit up, forgotten/ignored what people said, taken unverified information as truth and then been told not to be so stupid, and made more shit up.

If you can read the WashPo article there and not get a paywall pop-up, it details some of the financials more than the BBC one.

In short, they got nothin’, and know it.

Edit: forgot to mention in pointing out the massive lack of evidence that McCarthy doesn’t even have the votes with his own party!

From the ABC article at the top, emphasis mine:

As of right now, House Republicans likely do not have the 218 votes needed to impeach President Biden, and some Senate Republicans are on record saying they don't think there's enough evidence to proceed.

Many Republicans have said they haven't seen enough evidence against President Biden to support impeachment and/or an impeachment inquiry.

House Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has said he doesn't believe the House has produced any evidence that Biden profited from or influenced his son's foreign business deals.

He has also cast doubt on whether the evidence even exists -- which is particularly significant since he is a senior member on the Judiciary Committee that would help oversee an official impeachment inquiry.

Senate Republicans also are not sold on the idea of a third impeachment trial in so many years.

Senators are solely focused on funding the government ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline and have largely said they haven't seen any evidence against Biden that amounts to impeachment or -- conviction in the Senate.

[Frumple]

Dumbshits actually went for it, huh. My guess? It's not even going to reach the senate. If the idiot speaker had the votes to push it through, he'd have held one on opening the inquiry itself.

You could just as well be talking about Speaker Pelosi in September 2019. Formal vote for inquiry happened over 30 days later.

Context matters; as hec notes, McTwit spent a great deal of air screeching about that, and then turned around and did it himself.

Now, expecting basic consistency from a GOP politician, especially one as inept as the current speaker, is a fool's game far beyond the baseline state of a politician, but again. If the idiot had the votes, he'd have held one, if for no other reason than to not paint himself as a failure by his own words.

[McTraveller]

Batten down the hatches, folks: 16 hours until the UAW (effectively) shuts down the entire US auto industry.

[Frumple]

Best of luck to 'em, heh. Quick check says they're fighting for shit like just two goddamn weeks of parental leave (of which, so far, of the three companies involved only bloody ford has offered), nevermind everything else.

[Lord Shonus]

Note that the pay increase the UAW is asking for is pegged to the percentage the CEOs got last time their pay went up.

[scriver]

Are they trying to impeach Biden?

[Lord Shonus]

MTG's crew is, and Mcwhatever can't block it outright because the margins are so thin. However, because the margin is so thin, and there's little chance of any significant number of Dems going for it, the measure's probably going to die in the House. Enough of the GOP representatives are sitting unconfortably in districts where this sort of political theater is going to piss off enough people to make the difference.

[Rolan7]

Best of luck to 'em, heh. Quick check says they're fighting for shit like just two goddamn weeks of parental leave (of which, so far, of the three companies involved only bloody ford has offered), nevermind everything else.

Note that the pay increase the UAW is asking for is pegged to the percentage the CEOs got last time their pay went up.

Woo let's go!  I'm not worried.  Those CEOs get the astronomically high salaries because they provide equally valuable service to society, right?  Like helping labor get what they need.

I mean, what would a CEO be worth if they risked critical American industry for their personal interests?  We provide them with unthinkable wealth but in exchange they have no need to act selfishly.  Now let me just take a sip of my tea and check the news...

[The_Explorer]

I'm just gonna put this here because it would effect america itself

Apparently on X (twitter, still kinda best source I found to find info on certain parts of the world, even sometimes see stuff out of north korea which mostly is fake but occasionally there is something nice that leaks out of that place...either way)

China has apparently been vastly building up their mainline coastline defenses and military past couple weeks, far more than past few months/year. Also there are right now 100s of ships apparently and 100s of planes around taiwan.

I wonder if this is more sable rattling or things are about to go down. Keeping in mind, most people thought ukraine for months was a bunch of saber rattling...it was...until it wasn't. But its seemingly this might be more to it than usual with the amount of forces there are. (edit: to add, I doubt anything will happen, but I kept thinking "no way can russia be that stupid" and it actually happened with ukraine. So I imagine something will happen eventually, in this case, there is definitely a massive military buildup)

[Lord Shonus]

China's at least 10 years from having the ability to stand off a CVBG or two in the vicinity of Taiwan if it comes to that. They're still way behind in naval power (which takes a long time to build), their amphibious forces are marginal for an opposed landing, and the international response to Ukraine has been strong enough that they can't count on getting out unscathed even if they win quickly. In theory they have ASBMs and other sophisticated land-based shipkillers, but US-made anti-air has proven so effective against Russian missiles that counting on such things would be... unwise.

If the rest of the world had responded to Feburary 2022 with a tepid "stop that", China might consider an attack. As things are, they'd probably suffer colossal economic damage even if the US and allied navies stayed out of it. If direct intervention (which wouldn't be the same sort of nuclear risk as a fight with Russia, because there's no way in Hell that the US would be able to march M1 tanks through the streets of Beijing) happened, the odds are that they'd take heavy losses and might have to settle for wrecking Taiwan instead of taking it.

[Bumber]

Sounds like a bit of a hypocrite, but then again if I was being threatened by my colleagues to replace me or make me look inept, I might do that too.

Welcome to politics!

How many Republican led committees have looked into Biden’s corruption? Two, three? How many years has Hunter’s been investigated for his taxes? Four, five?

If they had evidence of his corruption, they’d have presented it already, and voted on it.

Whereas Democrats rushed into impeachment based on a single whistleblower and a transcript, making the impeachment the entire investigation.

Evidence is coming out slowly due to stonewalling. Treasury Secretary Yellen wouldn't even let Republicans look into the 150+ suspicious activity reports (SARs) from Hunter's overseas transactions until Republicans took the House this year.

We just recently got confirmation about Biden having contact with Hunter's foreign business clients via dinners and speaker phone. (Biden flat out denied in the 2019 debates that he knew anything about Hunter's business or even that Hunter worked for Burisma. We already had photos of Joe golfing with Devon Archer by that point.) Even if Joe was truly just talking about the weather, his presence sends the message to Hunter's clients that Joe is in the loop and negotiations are backed with the power of the VP.

It appears that Hunter flew with Biden on Air Force Two to at least 15 countries, much more than originally suspected. (Hunter made attempts to hide from cameras upon arrival by deplaning from a different exit, and went off to do his own business instead of attending public events with his father. Headlines of your VP father being in the country at the same time you're there certainly adds some weight to negotiations.)

FOIA request reveals that the U.S. State Department (including Secretary of State John Kerry) were satisfied with Ukraine's progress on anti-corruption, and didn't even consider firing the prosecutor until VP Biden started pushing for it.

We just* learned that VP Biden used several pseudonyms in e-mails. Hunter was CC'd in an e-mail to "Robert L. Peters" (a.k.a. "Pedo Peter"?) from one of Biden's aides. Republicans are currently attempting to get NARA to give access to 5,400+ records involving Biden's pseudonyms as VP.
*The New York Post actually reported the existence of Biden's pseudonyms back in July 2021, but I guess the GOP missed it or was stonewalled by NARA.

However, they decide to embellish the evidence they do have, which only shows Hunter being a greedy fuck:

Three separate memos based on bank records obtained by the committee, however, have failed to identify any specific payments made to President Biden or provided evidence that he benefited from them directly.

You don't need a direct payment to constitute a bribe:

(2) being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:
(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act;
(B) being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person;

(Emphasis mine.) If Joe agreed to do anything in return for Hunter getting paid, that's still accepting a bribe.

But that doesn't even matter because:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9757117/Hunter-Biden-complained-half-salary-went-paying-Joes-bills.html

From: Eric Schwerin ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Subject: JRB Bills
Date: June 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM
To: Hunter Biden hbiden@rosemontseneca.com

FYI, there are a few outstanding bills that need to be paid and I am not sure which ones are a priority and which should get paid out of "my" account and which should be put on hold or paid out of the "Wilmington Trust Social Security Check Account".

[...]

(Transcribed by me.) Who's "JRB" in the subject line? 🤔

From: Eric Schwerin ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Subject: JRB Bills
Date: June 8, 2010 at 4:48 PM
To: Hunter Biden hbiden@rosemontseneca.com

Mike Christopher is hassling me so I am paying a couple of the smaller things since I haven't heard from your Dad. Know he's busy - so it's OK. But if you think he has a free moment or two to review the email I sent you let me know.

[...]

(Transcribed by me.) Oh, JRB is Hunter's dad, and Hunter's business partner wants JRB to read the e-mail about paying JRB's bills through one of their accounts! 💡

From: Eric Schwerin ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Subject: JRB Future Memo
Date: July 6, 2010 at 5:55 PM
To: Hunter Biden hbiden@rosemontseneca.com

Mike has a pretty good draft of this done. Does it make sense to see if your Dad has some time in the next couple of weeks while you are in DC to talk about it? Your Dad just called me (about his mortgage) and mentioned he'd be out a lot soon and not really back until Labor Day so it dawned on me it might be a good time (also he could use some positive news about his future earnings potential!).

Eric D. Schwerin
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

Sent from my iPhone

(Transcribed by me.) Hunter's dad's "future earnings potential"? Eric just out and said it: Joe was being paid through Hunter's business dealings!

Let's finish with some texts from Hunter:

My dad has been using most lines on this account which I've through the gracious offerings of Eric have paid for past 11 years

(Transcribed by me.) Corroboration by Hunter that Joe was using a Wells Fargo credit line funded by Hunter's pal Eric Schwerin.

[...] But don't worry unlike Pop I won't make you give me half your salary.

(Transcribed by me.) "Half" could be an exaggeration, but it's clear Joe expects the money, and the money being paid is ultimately earned through Hunter's business dealings. Who's the real greedy fuck?