1. #69261
    Banned cubby's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Breccia View Post
    I mean, how can this not be worse for Trump? We've gone to "people might talk about the bad things Trump did" to "people might talk about the bad things Trump did for which they were present".
    Exactly. And those upcoming witnesses are going to be painting a picture of what illegal activities went down, using paper evidence as landmarks to the overall story. Moreover, we're talking about the actions of a corporation that Trump lead, and therefore is criminally responsible for, all actions under his rein. "I didn't know about that" won't cut it when charges are drawn up. Which is double-plus-worse, for Trump and his family of sycophantic "officers".

  2. #69262
    Quote Originally Posted by cubby View Post
    Gotta to apologize and correct a previous comment - seems this is a Special Grand Jury, and it will be doing precisely what Beanman said - solely deliberating evidence regarding Trump and his Organization and Affiliates. I mistakenly thought this was merely a Grand Jury, in which many issues are addressed (i.e. many crimes from various people).

    As an update, it seems witnesses are being asked to prepare to testify. In a Special Grand Jury (state) they cannot provide hearsay based testimony; so rather than a federal investigator providing information about what Person A said, Person A actually has to testify in person.
    It's really hilarious because everyone with a brain would have voted for a ham sandwich over Trump. And now Cyrus Vance get's to show his case, with no judge, no defense, there is a reason these things have such a high success rate. Jury doesn't have to be unanimous even, and it's easy to yes it cause they aren't saying anyone is guilty of anything. So Trump is praying to whatever thing he believes in that Cyrus Vance basically loses to a ham sandwich.

    You won't see Cohen much anywhere for a while cause he'll be testifying, same with Weisselberg's daughter in law, maybe someone from her kids school that got didn't seem to get paid through legal means, and I'm sure they have several other former employee's as well who'll be testifying that aren't as publicly high profile but were in the know IE former board members and such maybe even Weisselberg himself along with his two sons if any of them have flipped. Trump is cooked.

  3. #69263
    Quote Originally Posted by Belize View Post
    Walmart does not have the single biggest largest web-server hosting platform on the market. Thinking about tech-giants like Amazon or Google as "A storefront" or "the place to google shit" is having blinders on.

    The interconnectivity of Amazon is what the problem is. AWS feeds data to their music service, which feeds data to their streaming service, which feeds data to their storefront, ad nauseum. That's the issue.
    I think the US need to be careful about breaking up companies like Amazon and Facebook. It may lead to some unintended consequences. Such as creating a global vacuum which will allow companies like Alibaba and Tencent to take the positions formerly occupied by those companies. If we are going to end up with global corporation overlords anyway, I rather we have US companies than Chinese companies.

  4. #69264
    Quote Originally Posted by Rasulis View Post
    I think the US need to be careful about breaking up companies like Amazon and Facebook. It may lead to some unintended consequences. Such as creating a global vacuum which will allow companies like Alibaba and Tencent to take the positions formerly occupied by those companies. If we are going to end up with global corporation overlords anyway, I rather we have US companies than Chinese companies.
    That's probably a big reason why the American government doesn't care- they're American monopolies. Now, that doesn't mean global corporations like Facebook and Amazon owe allegiance to said America and have its interests at heart, obviously, but it does mean they're not Chinese, who do owe allegiance to the CCP to a far larger degree.

    Whenever the above is the right idea or not isn't my point- my point is more that I'm certain it's part of the why these companies aren't broken up, alongside the usual lobbyism money of course.
    It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia

    The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.

  5. #69265
    Void Lord Breccia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cubby View Post
    Exactly.
    Thanks for replying.

    Hey @cubby what does it mean when a grand jury is empaneled? Because I was led to believe it meant

    By empaneling the special grand jury, Vance has indicated he found significant evidence of one or more crimes by one or more people and is preparing to present evidence to secure indictments

  6. #69266
    Quote Originally Posted by alexw View Post
    Bezos would not care. So what if Trump sued after the fact? Lets say Trump won the case and got $20-50 million in compensation. That's just a drop in the bucket for Bezos. But my thinking is that Bezo will save the tapes for 2024 to see if Trump runs again. If he does they'll get "leaked" during the primaries/general to destroy his chances. That would be the ultimate revenge for Bezos.
    And if he doesn’t run, just run them anyways during them and make sure to paint every sycophant running with it and make sure they are associated with what they clung to and supported
    Since we can't call out Trolls and Bad Faith posters and the Ignore function doesn't actually ignore it. Add
    "mmo-champion.com##li.postbitignored"
    to your ublock or adblock filter to actually ignore ignored posters. Now just need a way to ignore responses to them as well.

  7. #69267
    Void Lord Breccia's Avatar
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    Joe Walsh's radio show is cancelled.

    Again.

    Both times, it was because Walsh is a clasic Republican who dared to challenge Trump. Either he was cancelled because the station's owners just refused to have someone challenge Trump on their station, or because he lost audience because he was a conservative who challenged Trump. Honestly, doesn't matter. This is the Party of Trump now, and you suck the flaccid orange dick or you get shunned.

  8. #69268
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ry-petri-dish/

    There are about 330 million people in America. So when we talk about percentages of Americans, even a small figure — say, 1 percent — translates into a lot of people. If 1 percent of Americans were each to send me $5, I’d suddenly have $16.5 million in the bank. If you don’t believe me, let’s give this experiment a try.

    When we’re talking about 15 percent of Americans, we’re talking about nearly 50 million people, the populations of California and New Jersey combined. It’s a lot of people. And that, according to new research published by PRRI on Thursday, is the number of Americans who say they believe the most out-there components of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

    PRRI’s findings come from a survey conducted with IFYC in which they asked people specifically about components of QAnon. For example, they presented this exact statement, which is often presented as the most extreme iteration of the conspiracy theory’s belief system:

    “The government, media and financial world in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”
    And it was with that, that specific belief, that 15 percent of respondents said they agreed.

    On two other statements, similar levels of agreement emerged. When the pollsters asked if Americans agreed that “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders” — again, a theme in QAnon — 1-in-5 said they did. On a more alarming proposition, that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” the level of agreement was again 15 percent.

    This is a really surprising level of support for fundamentally baseless or anti-democratic sentiment. But, as you might expect, it’s also not evenly distributed. Republicans, for example, are more likely to agree with the statements above than are Democrats. Those who say they have the most trust in Fox News as a news source generally agree with the statements about as much as Republicans do, which makes sense given the overlap of those two groups.

    The media consumers who stand out the most, though, are those who give the most trust to far-right networks like One America News or Newsmax. Among those respondents, at least 4-in-10 agreed with the idea of a satanic cabal and nearly half believed that a storm was coming.



    Those are really staggering numbers. It’s been clear for some time that far-right media is fertile soil for conspiracy theories, given the often-loose relationship they have to objective fact. One America News in particular has been shown to be promoting false claims repeatedly. So it’s not surprising that OAN viewers appear to be more likely to believe the most ridiculous components of QAnon.

    What isn’t clear is the direction in which causality points. Is it the case that One America and Newsmax viewers are more likely to believe in QAnon because of the networks’ coverage? Or do people who are sympathetic to the QAnon conspiracy theory instead find themselves more drawn to those networks. After the 2020 presidential election, we saw some self-selection along those lines as some viewers (encouraged by Donald Trump) abandoned Fox News and its insistence on accurately reporting Trump’s loss in favor of Newsmax or OAN where the election was falsely presented as still unsettled.

    That’s a key point in all of this. One of the developments that followed the splintering of the media ecosystem with the emergence of social media is that audiences for ideas more easily formed independently of any organization. There could easily emerge a sentiment held by millions of people into which media outlets could tap, pre-formed audiences looking for someone to agree with them. This isn’t only true of false conspiracy theories, but for any institution willing to cede objectivity to advertising dollars, it proved useful. So you get entities willing to coddle false claims in an effort to gain attention.

    “At the end of the day, it’s great for news,” Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy said of Trump’s false stolen-election claims last November. “The news cycle is red-hot, and Newsmax is getting one million people per minute, according to Nielsen, tuning into Newsmax TV. I think it’s good.”

    There was a market for nonsense and Newsmax was happy to step in.

    What the PRRI survey also found, though, was QAnon believers didn’t limit their conspiracy theorizing to simply satanic cabals or political violence. They were also more likely to believe false or unfounded claims about the 2020 election and about the coronavirus pandemic.



    It’s just this muddle of false assertions swirling in a truth-indifferent universe. There are millions of people who want to believe what they want to believe and there are media outlets that cater to that, perhaps reinforcing or expanding those false belief systems. Only a small fraction of Americans say they most trust far-right networks like Newsmax and One America, according to PRRI: that block constituted 3 percent of respondents.

    Which, again, is about 10 million people.
    The Republican mind is diseased.

  9. #69269
    Banned cubby's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Breccia View Post
    Thanks for replying.

    Hey @cubby what does it mean when a grand jury is empaneled? Because I was led to believe it meant
    By empaneling the special grand jury, Vance has indicated he found significant evidence of one or more crimes by one or more people and is preparing to present evidence to secure indictments
    If I understand the Special Grand Jury statutes correctly, it means they are going to be working for a LONG time on all of Trump's actions, both personally and in regards to the Trump Organization.

    And the NYAG's office hasn't empaneled anything yet, either. I would imagine that those two offices are working together.

  10. #69270
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by matheney2k View Post
    Why are the right so in love with cancel culture?
    Let's be clear; nobody ever had a problem with "cancel culture". Right-wingers had a problem with rich white bigots facing consequences for being shitty human beings.


  11. #69271
    Old God AntiFascistVoter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Let's be clear; nobody ever had a problem with "cancel culture". Right-wingers had a problem with rich white bigots facing consequences for being shitty human beings.
    And by "Facing consequences" the media really means, "rolling into a paid gig at Fox/NewsmaX/OANN.

    During a town hall with CNN employees this afternoon, president Jeff Zucker addressed the network's decision to drop Rick Santorum as a paid contributor.
    "He was an important voice for the past five years," Zucker said. "But his recent comments were inappropriate and racist."



    Believing that Rick Santorum was an “important voice” would be disqualifying for a journalist in a world in which accountability is welcomed in the media

  12. #69272
    Wednesday's report:

    23,500 new cases, a little under 6k fewer than than last Wednesday.

    Top 6:

    Fuck Florida.
    Washington: 1,636 new cases; 16 deaths
    Texas: 1,569 new cases; 61 deaths
    California: 1,141 new cases; 34 deaths
    Illinois: 1,139 new cases; 28 deaths
    Michigan: 1,055 new cases; 14 deaths

    Florida retakes the top spot. Washington is also having a bit of an upswing, though their reporting system lends itself to spikes in the numbers. Washington was also one of the few states still listed as "High" risk (along with Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Rhode Island, Michigan, Maine and Florida). The rest of the country is listed as "Medium" risk, though at this rate I expect to see some entering "Low" territory within the next week or so. South Dakota's positivity is increasing; nearly 7% now.

    607 deaths is a little under a hundred fewer than last week and brings the total to 606,179. Florida again topped the list; Texas was second. The 7-day average continues to steadily decline, albeit slowly.

    Related news:

    DOJ charges 14 people in alleged Covid-related health-care fraud--Fuck anyone exploiting a fucking pandemic for their personal gain.

    The Longtime Anti-Vaxxers Caving to the COVID Jab--This is largely anecdotal, but it's nice to see at least some of them are being reached.

    Stay safe, folks.

  13. #69273
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    Hold on a sec. Sometimes things are put in weird terms. But some of these are framed wackily but refer to not so wacky results.


    “The government, media and financial world in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”


    Ok lets take out Satan-worshiping out out of the sentence.

    The government, media, and financial world - ok we know who that is. It's kind of a combination of FOX + CNN + MSNBC + the rest of the mainstream media, which pretty much panders to corporate America. And oh yeah, corporate America also pretty much owns the House and Senate and White House through their campaign contributions - just as, for example, all the ads for prescription medications is a huge steady source of income for all of our major television stations.

    are controlled by - well it's not hard to imagine a portion of corporate America controlling all of the above. Who gets the benefit from the Trump tax cuts? The Stock Market does. Who benefits mostly from Stock Market gains? Corporate America.

    pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation - Why do you think that Epstein was killed. Few believe that he really committed suicide. There have previously been stories now and again about high powered individuals engaged in sexual activity with minors, sometimes more like 13 or 14 rather than 16 or 17.

    Satan-worshipping Now lets add this phrase back in. To a lot of Christians, "Satan worshipping" means being in favor of gay marriage and legal abortions and the right to exist for atheists. So for them, this is an accurate phrase.

    Another way to put it: they are saying in their own way that power is too concentrated in the US, and that the people wielding this power are not nice people. I suspect that a lot more than 15% agree with that.

    “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders”

    I agree with half of this. I believe their WILL be a storm, and the elites in power will get swept away. I just think the leaders that emerge will be more like Danarys Targaryan from Game of Thrones Season 8 episodes 5 and 6 rather than Jon Snow. People hated the ending of Game of Thrones because it foreshadowed a HORRIBLE ending for the US - yeah we sweep away Cersei and everyone associated with her, but what we get is instead not so nice and in fact is much worse. Episode 6 tries to be kind of a compromise solution that would be a good solution, but not enough people really believed that a good person could end up as King.

    I agree with the first half of this statement. The other half I understand why people try with all their might to believe. The US is declining, and I believe that it will have a crash landing like Episode 5 of Season 8 of Game of Thrones rather than a delicately glided soft landing like Episode 6.

    “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,”

    People don't trust Politicians or the US Government or our business leaders. So I completely understand why people would support this statement.

    imho: At best, the US has a lot of turbulence ahead. These statements actually do a decent job of explaining what a lot of people think and why they think it. The problem is: well if you are in the woods, and turn around to see a pack of wolves just minutes away from attacking you and biting you to pieces, knowing that there is a lack of food for these wolves which is why they are so hungry and anxious to tear you to shreds is not really that helpful.

  14. #69274
    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    Zucker isn’t a journalist though. He is a moron if he thinks Santorum added anything of value though.
    The ability to say they're neutral because they're not just a bunch of journalists, they've got some racist conservatives on their payroll too.

  15. #69275
    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    I guess? There are a lot of better options out there though. Santorum is truly bottom tier.
    Sure, but he's a national name and that's all that matters. This is the media equivalent of stacking your board with a bunch of big names. They don't actually necessarily bring anything to the company or add much/anything of value, they're just a nameplate to try to add legitimacy.

    Appearances are pretty much all that matter.

  16. #69276
    Quote Originally Posted by Milchshake View Post
    And by "Facing consequences" the media really means, "rolling into a paid gig at Fox/NewsmaX/OANN.

    During a town hall with CNN employees this afternoon, president Jeff Zucker addressed the network's decision to drop Rick Santorum as a paid contributor.
    "He was an important voice for the past five years," Zucker said. "But his recent comments were inappropriate and racist."



    Believing that Rick Santorum was an “important voice” would be disqualifying for a journalist in a world in which accountability is welcomed in the media
    CNN(tv cnn) is more opinion than journalism though not to the extreme as like FOX with is just entirely opinion almost all of which are just lies and bullshit, but well, I think this article explains pretty well the problem with CNN and their Trumper problem...

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...d-trump-490813

  17. #69277
    Quote Originally Posted by Jastall View Post
    That's probably a big reason why the American government doesn't care- they're American monopolies. Now, that doesn't mean global corporations like Facebook and Amazon owe allegiance to said America and have its interests at heart, obviously, but it does mean they're not Chinese, who do owe allegiance to the CCP to a far larger degree.

    Whenever the above is the right idea or not isn't my point- my point is more that I'm certain it's part of the why these companies aren't broken up, alongside the usual lobbyism money of course.
    That and the fact that 5 stocks (Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google & Facebook) account for 40% of the cumulative holding of the US retirement systems (individual, state, county, city, unions, etc.) With good reason. All five companies have shown that they are recession proof. Microsoft and Apple have weathered at least 5 recessions and kept on growing. In in 2020 all five companies had record breaking profit. The wrong move could send the US retirement systems into a tailspin.

    Last edited by Rasulis; 2021-05-27 at 09:59 PM.

  18. #69278
    Void Lord Breccia's Avatar
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    The NYTimes reports--

    "Paywall,"

    Don't care. Trump started an investigation into whether Ukraine attacked the election.

    "Wait, Trump did that?"

    Technically. Remember when Trump was specifically and directly warned that Giuliani was being used to push misinformation? (Oh, and OAN as well, see also @Edge- 's post about the AZ recount) These same people began an investigation themselves. Trump was in charge, so, yeah, he started it.

    This is, of course, separate from the investigation into Giuilani being an undisclosed Ukrainian agent. I suppose it's possible the two will Venn Diagram into each other, but they're separate investigations. We know Giuliani traveled to Ukraine, we know he met with a bunch of pro-Putin pro-Trump people, we know he came back with a bunch of unproven stories. The investigation the NYTimes mentions appears to be that Giuliani, and others, were intentionally used to "launder" falsehoods into America. Yes, a foreign influence into US elections is illegal. A foreign agent specifically telling an American to spread misinformation in America would count.

  19. #69279
    Old God PhaelixWW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Breccia View Post
    We know Giuliani traveled to Ukraine, we know he met with a bunch of pro-Putin pro-Trump people, we know he came back with a bunch of unproven stories. The investigation the NYTimes mentions appears to be that Giuliani, and others, were intentionally used to "launder" falsehoods into America. Yes, a foreign influence into US elections is illegal. A foreign agent specifically telling an American to spread misinformation in America would count.
    Hey, Breccia...

    Do you remember back when Giuliani was lauded as "America's Mayor" and was Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2001?

    How do New Yorkers feel about him now?

    Also, how do you feel about leading questions?
    R.I.P. Democracy


    "The difference between stupidity
    and genius is that genius has its limits."

    --Alexandre Dumas-fils

  20. #69280
    Void Lord Breccia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhaelixWW View Post
    Also, how do you feel about leading questions?
    Heh. I'm in Stefanik's district, and even they don't talk about Giuliani. He's polling about 32 percent, which again, is lower than Trump.

    The real swing for Giuliani was, of course, losing NYC. NYC never liked Trump, they tolerated him at his best. Giuliani rode the fame of being the 9/11 responding mayor and turned that name into Crazy Old Fuck. Don't live in NYC so I can't be sure, but I'd be willing to bet a lot of 30+ NYCers are shaking their heads saying "Man, he used to be a great guy, what happened?"

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