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> As a partisan Now it's my turn to be offended. I am anti-partisan. In a two-party system I'm forced to choose the lesser of two evils. I have no side, and ce

> As a partisan Now it's my turn to be offended. I am anti-partisan. In a two-party system I'm forced to choose the lesser of two evils. I have no side, and certainly no love for the DNC. I try to align with science, reason, and compassion. That is my side. I don't think that Joe Biden is corrupt in a significant degree (he's deferential to his patrons but that is assumed for virtually all players). He doesn't seem obsessed with wealth and there's no indication he's significantly cashed in beyond the genteel corruption of speaking fees. That liberal rag Forbes agrees with me: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/06/10/heres-how-much-joe-biden-is-worth/?sh=3d1442b5461b https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/06/10/heres... Hunter Biden is an adult and his father did not have direct influence over him; the investigation exonerated him of being bought. Your complaints about the Fourth Estate are selective. The DNC email dump got plenty of action. CNN gave Trump at least a billion in free advertising (e.g., cutting away from Sanders mid speech to an empty podium that was anticipating a Trump episode). And again, on evaluating news I look for minimal bias and maximum accuracy on what I know to be true. There's limited reporting on the "flaws" of Biden: gaffe-prone, the kept property of the credit card industry, inappropriate lingering touches, a shameful dismissal of Anita Hill, overly cautious. Perhaps more, but that's what comes to mind. Meanwhile there's a well-documented sordid history of his rival. In fact, I'm not aware of any admirable qualities of note. This assessment is simply from the consistency of it, not because of his political party (I would enjoy having a beer with GWB as much as I disagreed with his administration). While this has been a political themed dialog, the core question about the suppression is also simple: there exists speech that should not be tolerated (let alone promoted). Not censored, in that if you find a way to speak you are not jailed. Just not promoted, e.g., go buy your own printing press (as has historically been the case). Anti-vax propaganda and hate speech fall into this category. I've been temporarily banned by Facebook for perceived hate speech (it wasn't), so I understand how this can fucked up but thats life. Rules can be abused but it's still valuable to have them.

rendall 4y ago
>> As a partisan > I try to align with science, reason, and compassion. That is my side. Awesome. Then we are on the same side, even if we disagree on how best to get there, and on interpretation of the even the same facts. > That liberal rag Forbes agrees You should understand that Forbes runs a side-project that works like SubStack. It's hard to see, but note in the url this `/sites/michaelatindera`. Those sites get less fact-checking and oversight than normal because they are more intended as opinion pieces. This sub-site is from someone named Michaela Tindera whose beat seems to have been billionaires in government. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/ I read the article, but it was long and uninteresting, and after paragraphs of not actually saying where the money went, I skimmed it to the end. While it seems to show what you said to be true "that Joe Biden is [not] corrupt in a significant degree", I think this kind of thing is picking at lint. I suspect Joe Biden, like Clinton and unlike Trump, is well aware of the bounds of legal corruption and will always be able to say correctly that he follows the law, even though the law itself allows for legalized corruption such as earning high speaking fees as private citizens. Or high-paying sinecures for family members. As a comparison, the only reason Trump's bullying of Ukraine was illegal while Joe Biden's was legal, was not because one act was inherently ethical and the other is wrong, but because Biden has intimate awareness of these arcane protocols through long experience; Trump does not. To my mind, it doesn't matter if it's legal. If it's wrong, it's wrong, no matter which party does it. We can quibble about whether Joe Biden "meant" to help out his son, but the fact is, he did. He quashed the investigation and has a plausible, legal reason for doing so.

rendall 4y ago

>> As a partisan > I try to align with science, reason, and compassion. That is my side. Awesome. Then we are on the same side, even if we disagree on how best to get there, and on interpretation of the even the same facts. > That liberal rag Forbes agrees You should understand that Forbes runs a side-project that works like SubStack. It's hard to see, but note in the url this `/sites/michaelatindera`. Those sites get less fact-checking and oversight than normal because they are more intended as opinion pieces. This sub-site is from someone named Michaela Tindera whose beat seems to have been billionaires in government. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/ I read the article, but it was long and uninteresting, and after paragraphs of not actually saying where the money went, I skimmed it to the end. While it seems to show what you said to be true "that Joe Biden is [not] corrupt in a significant degree", I think this kind of thing is picking at lint. I suspect Joe Biden, like Clinton and unlike Trump, is well aware of the bounds of legal corruption and will always be able to say correctly that he follows the law, even though the law itself allows for legalized corruption such as earning high speaking fees as private citizens. Or high-paying sinecures for family members. As a comparison, the only reason Trump's bullying of Ukraine was illegal while Joe Biden's was legal, was not because one act was inherently ethical and the other is wrong, but because Biden has intimate awareness of these arcane protocols through long experience; Trump does not. To my mind, it doesn't matter if it's legal. If it's wrong, it's wrong, no matter which party does it. We can quibble about whether Joe Biden "meant" to help out his son, but the fact is, he did. He quashed the investigation and has a plausible, legal reason for doing so.