America - The Official Thread

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McLaren
Moron might think “that should fall under free speech” to use others’ music.
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It'd make an interesting bookend to YouTube's policy of "Oh, you used about three seconds of a song that may or may not be legitimately licensed by some questionable source we can't be bothered to verify? Demonetized and copyright struck."
 
EngieDiesel
It'd make an interesting bookend to YouTube's policy of "Oh, you used about three seconds of a song that may or may not be legitimately licensed by some questionable source we can't be bothered to verify? Demonetized and copyright struck."
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Demonetization is something with which I have no issue. It's private action and within the rights of service providers. Copyright protection isn't a bug bear for me either because I recognize the right to intellectual property. Adjudication of tort claims with regard to copyright violation is reasonable state action and limits to that action apply. An issue I do have is with DMCA fault abuse by bad actors, be they activists seeking takedown of content on the basis that they disapprove of it or litigation hawks seeking a quick payout absent legitimate harm.
 
TexRex
Demonetization is something with which I have no issue. It's private action and within the rights of service providers. Copyright protection isn't a bug bear for me either because I recognize the right to intellectual property. Adjudication of tort claims with regard to copyright violation is reasonable state action and limits to that action apply. An issue I do have is with DMCA fault abuse by bad actors, be they activists seeking takedown of content on the basis that they disapprove of it or litigation hawks seeking a quick payout absent legitimate harm.
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Fair points, though my gripe is that YouTube is known to immediately side with the bad actors and puts the onus on the content creators to prove innocence, and even after they go through the drawn out process of proving either fair use or a false claim, the copyright strikes usually stay on their channel's history undeservedly. There have been many cases of people being copyright struck for using their own originally created music or music that's specifically marked as DMCA free because outside companies will file automated claims on everything that YouTube's content ID system can come up with metadata on, even if they don't actually own any rights to it, since they know that YouTube will shoot first and then force the victim to be the one to ask questions later.

Granted this is nothing new, a lot of the largest content creators have been repeatedly calling them out on things like that for years and very little has changed. It's just one of those few things that always gets on my nerves because of how poorly handled it continues to be for a number of reasons.
 

I know Republicans will have a field day with this, but it should come down to whether Biden's documents threaten national security. If they did, then he should absolutely be investigated over it and if enough evidence is found, put through an impeachment hearing. Republicans should probably tread carefully though since whatever they do to Biden over this, it will set a precedent on what should be done to Trump. So if they go off the rails and try to imprison Biden or whatever, then Trump should probably share the cell with him.

I really wish we just took a timeout from everything and investigated all the politicians to see how shady they are and how many laws they've broken. I get we wouldn't have a functioning government though since probably 99% of them would be in jail.
 
Joey D

I know Republicans will have a field day with this, but it should come down to whether Biden's documents threaten national security. If they did, then he should absolutely be investigated over it and if enough evidence is found, put through an impeachment hearing. Republicans should probably tread carefully though since whatever they do to Biden over this, it will set a precedent on what should be done to Trump. So if they go off the rails and try to imprison Biden or whatever, then Trump should probably share the cell with him.

I really wish we just took a timeout from everything and investigated all the politicians to see how shady they are and how many laws they've broken. I get we wouldn't have a functioning government though since probably 99% of them would be in jail.
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Biggest difference (potentially) is that Biden's lawyers self-reported this violation. If Republicans go down hard on Biden, then they look like absolute hypocrites when they are asked why Trump "needs to get no penalties".
 
Democratic own goal. No matter the outcome, this will sustain the fascists for about 50 years.
 
Joey D

I know Republicans will have a field day with this, but it should come down to whether Biden's documents threaten national security. If they did, then he should absolutely be investigated over it and if enough evidence is found, put through an impeachment hearing. Republicans should probably tread carefully though since whatever they do to Biden over this, it will set a precedent on what should be done to Trump. So if they go off the rails and try to imprison Biden or whatever, then Trump should probably share the cell with him.

I really wish we just took a timeout from everything and investigated all the politicians to see how shady they are and how many laws they've broken. I get we wouldn't have a functioning government though since probably 99% of them would be in jail.
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If 99% of them belong in jail, we have some serious issues. I agree that all of it should be investigated. Government officials at this level deserve the highest level of scrutiny, not the lowest.
Blitz24
Biggest difference (potentially) is that Biden's lawyers self-reported this violation. If Republicans go down hard on Biden, then they look like absolute hypocrites when they are asked why Trump "needs to get no penalties".
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So far, the biggest difference is that we don't even know if this was Biden's doing, and we definitely don't know, or have any reason to suspect, that it was intentional. Those are both big.
 
Danoff
If 99% of them belong in jail, we have some serious issues. I agree that all of it should be investigated. Government officials at this level deserve the highest level of scrutiny, not the lowest.
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I do think we have some serious issues. Maybe it's not 99%, but I do think more than 50% of politicians in the federal government have broken the law to a degree where they should be incarcerated. Even just looking at the politicians we know likely committed a crime is concerning enough. Take Matt Gaetz, there's actual evidence that he solicited a minor for sex and offered her money. He has (or had maybe the kid is old enough now) custody of a Cuban boy who has zero relation to him and that's questionable. There is definitely more than one person in the House of Representatives who contributed directly to January 6th as well. Nancy Pelosi has likely made a fortune off of insider trading, something you or I would end up in prison over.

Hell, if you did an independent tax audit of every member of Congress, I'd be willing to bet you'd find more than a handful of people guilty of tax evasion and fraud, along with mishandling election funds.

This isn't even counting the under-the-table deals that likely violate laws, especially when it comes to accepting money from a foreign power. We know that the Trump campaign took money from Russia and the question should be asked is who else is on another country's payroll. I suspect if you follow the money, you find that an alarming number of politicians get influenced in the way of donations from foreign powers. While it's likely not all of them know this money is coming from a foreign power, I can't imagine all of them are ignorant of this.
 
Joey D
I do think we have some serious issues. Maybe it's not 99%, but I do think more than 50% of politicians in the federal government have broken the law to a degree where they should be incarcerated. Even just looking at the politicians we know likely committed a crime is concerning enough. Take Matt Gaetz, there's actual evidence that he solicited a minor for sex and offered her money. He has (or had maybe the kid is old enough now) custody of a Cuban boy who has zero relation to him and that's questionable. There is definitely more than one person in the House of Representatives who contributed directly to January 6th as well. Nancy Pelosi has likely made a fortune off of insider trading, something you or I would end up in prison over.

Hell, if you did an independent tax audit of every member of Congress, I'd be willing to bet you'd find more than a handful of people guilty of tax evasion and fraud, along with mishandling election funds.

This isn't even counting the under-the-table deals that likely violate laws, especially when it comes to accepting money from a foreign power. We know that the Trump campaign took money from Russia and the question should be asked is who else is on another country's payroll. I suspect if you follow the money, you find that an alarming number of politicians get influenced in the way of donations from foreign powers. While it's likely not all of them know this money is coming from a foreign power, I can't imagine all of them are ignorant of this.
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Some of that is criminal, some of it is impeachable, and some of it ought to be impeachable and isn't yet. Even for tax fraud people don't often get incarcerated - incarceration just makes it less likely the IRS will get those tax dollars.

I'll give you that Gaetz and Trump should be in prison (at least Trump should be multiple times over for criminal offenses). But I'm far from convinced that Biden should be imprisoned as a result of someone turning in classified documents from his office. Just for context, it is possible to properly secure classified documents (including top secret documents) in an office. So it's not even immediately clear to me what has happened, let alone who did it, or why or how. I'm sure Biden was not the only person that had access to his office. He was probably not even directly the person tasked with cleaning it up after his vice presidency. Certainly I wouldn't want to draw a parallel between Gaetz and Biden here, and not even between Trump's classified document scandal and this one with Biden. Trump has admitted to intentionally taking classified documents he shouldn't be in possession of, and even intentionally deceived investigation into that act, that's not equivalent, at least not so far.


“The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,
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It's not clear from this alone that the files were improperly stored. I'm guessing they were at the time they were found, because it sounds like people without the necessary security credentials were able to access them (I'm not entirely sure of this either), but I haven't seen anything definitively stating that the documents were improperly secured. So far, the problem is that all of Biden's documents were supposed to be sent to the national archives when he left office, and a handful of them were not returned until now.
 
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Danoff
I'll give you that Gaetz and Trump should be in prison (at least Trump should be multiple times over for criminal offenses). But I'm far from convinced that Biden should be imprisoned as a result of someone turning in classified documents from his office. Just for context, it is possible to properly secure classified documents (including top secret documents) in an office. So it's not even immediately clear to me what has happened, let alone who did it, or why or how. I'm sure Biden was not the only person that had access to his office. He was probably not even directly the person tasked with cleaning it up after his vice presidency. Certainly I wouldn't want to draw a parallel between Gaetz and Biden here, and not even between Trump's classified document scandal and this one with Biden. Trump has admitted to intentionally taking classified documents he shouldn't be in possession of, and even intentionally deceived investigation into that act, that's not equivalent, at least not so far.
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And I don't think Biden should be imprisoned either, at least not on the current information. But I do think it warrants an investigation to get answers to all the questions and figure out if there was any potential that a security leak could've happened. Based on what we know right now, I agree Trump's classified document situation is definitely worse. But I'd like to see a similar amount of attention be done here in terms of investigating and getting to the bottom of what's going on.

My main point is that when something like this happens, a politician should be put through the wringer in terms of being investigated and if evidence is found, then appropriate action should be taken. However, appropriate action doesn't, which is what happened with Gaetz, or it's simply just ignored, like Pelosi's alleged insider trading. It's more of I'm tired of politicians seemingly being "above the law." If anything, politicians should be held to higher standards, but that's not typically the case it seems.
 
Joey D
And I don't think Biden should be imprisoned either, at least not on the current information. But I do think it warrants an investigation to get answers to all the questions and figure out if there was any potential that a security leak could've happened. Based on what we know right now, I agree Trump's classified document situation is definitely worse. But I'd like to see a similar amount of attention be done here in terms of investigating and getting to the bottom of what's going on.

My main point is that when something like this happens, a politician should be put through the wringer in terms of being investigated and if evidence is found, then appropriate action should be taken. However, appropriate action doesn't, which is what happened with Gaetz, or it's simply just ignored, like Pelosi's alleged insider trading. It's more of I'm tired of politicians seemingly being "above the law." If anything, politicians should be held to higher standards, but that's not typically the case it seems.
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Agreed. The nature of the way they were turned in suggests that some investigation into how they were stored is in order, and how they were forgotten about when it came time to return documents. My guess, and this is pure speculation, is that they were improperly stored, and also improperly tracked. I'm not sure the vice president is in charge of proper document storage or tracking, so I still hazard a guess that this responsibility falls on someone else to orchestrate.

You have to guess that the president and vice president are presented with a steady stream of classified documents and information all day every day by aides and officials.
 
Moron... sorry, more on Magic The Gathering.

Apparently she's pissed about the compromises her party forced on Kevin McCarthy, because it turns out that allowing just one member of the house to initiate a recall vote for the speaker means that the Democrats can do it.

Viewer advisory: video includes MTG speaking



(although she wasn't one of the holdouts)
 
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I think we are about to see a new standard set in house of representatives for aimless, grandstanding incompetency...which is probably what the Democratic party factoring in by not giving a helping hand to McCarthy. The majority will be bogged down in their own intraparty fighting, procedural shenanigans, attention seeking, and overplayed investigations. Biden can then do what he does best...lay low, chart an unfussy/undramatic moderate left course, and let the GOP make themselves look really really dumb. Having Gaetz, MTG, and LB be the face and the future of the GOP (they are) must keep Mitch McConnel up at night.
 
The calls for Santos to resign are growing, but the GOP will do nothing about it since they need their slim majority in the House.
 
It's just a shruggable loss anyway. Value in stocks that he was unlikely to do with anyway. Certainly not in the short term. There's plenty of scope for Tesla stock to go back up once the current downturn passes. I bet he didn't even bat an eyelid.
 
TheCracker
It's just a shruggable loss anyway. Value in stocks that he was unlikely to do with anyway. Certainly not in the short term. There's plenty of scope for Tesla stock to go back up once the current downturn passes. I bet he didn't even bat an eyelid.
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I bet he did. And Tesla is arguably in a much worse position to rise today than it was a few years ago. A few years ago Tesla had beaten the world to high performance electric vehicles, and effectively had the future of cars fairly well cornered. Today they have much more competition, and the competition is growing fast. Tesla's next party trick is self-driving, and so far that's not really grabbing great headlines in a positive way. Meanwhile their CEO has gone off the rails. Does Tesla oust him? He represents a lot of the reason people assume the brand is innovative. But he's also single-handedly ostracizing a loyal customer base.

Elon is not going to be hurting for money, but he's not exactly poised to reach new heights.
 
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TheCracker
I bet he didn't even bat an eyelid.
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Danoff
I bet he did.
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There's no way this bitch didn't.

Screenshot-20230112-081042-Samsung-Internet.jpg
 
As much as i dislike him, i don't see him as someone who is going to be hurt emotionally by the news that his on-paper worth has taken a nose dive. Not in way someone like Trump would be bothered. Trump's self-worth is based on his perceived wealth and status as a great business mind. I feel Musk wants to be perceived as some sort of 21st century philanthropist, 'selflessly' guiding humankind into a brighter future. His wealth isn't as important to him as his image as a great innovator.

If i was a Tesla stock holder i'd be concerned that there doesn't appear to be in the pipeline any replacement to the current line-up of cars. The Model 3 will be six years old this summer and the Model S will be 11. They're starting to look dated now no matter what tweaks they use to refresh them. But they're still ahead, as far as i'm aware, with their real-world mileage range which is, i would imagine, still the number one feature potential electric car owners see as the most important factor when looking to buy. This should be enough for them to weather any worldwide economic downturn and still be there or thereabouts at the top of the tree.

He does really need to step back from the Twitter helm ASAP if he doesn't want his brands to be tarnished any further then they have been since he took over.
 
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newrepublic.com

Kevin McCarthy on George Santos: Well, Is There a Charge Against Him?

New York Representative George Santos does, in fact, have a charge against him. He’s also under three other criminal investigations.
newrepublic.com newrepublic.com

So the standard for the republicans for taking some sort of action against a house member is that they must literally be a criminal. That's what "Well, Is There a Charge Against Him?" means - because as McCarthy goes on to say people in the US are innocent until proven guilty. So the standard for serving as a United States Congressional Representative in the GOP is literally are you a criminal. And even then, maybe it's ok.

At what point do we have standards for our representatives that go beyond the point where you need to be actually removed from society?
 
Except there is a charge against him in Brazil for check fraud and failure to appear in court.

But ya, nothing is going to be done because why would it? The most honest thing Trump ever said was something like he could kill someone in Time Square and nothing would happen.
 
Danoff
At what point do we have standards for our representatives that go beyond the point where you need to be actually removed from society?
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They'll stick by their useful idiots long after they've become poisonous, probably up to the point they actually become incarcerated and can no longer function as political tools. They've invested too much just to cut them loose at the first whiff (or 28th whiff) of trouble.
 
TheCracker
They'll stick by their useful idiots long after they've become poisonous, probably up to the point they actually become incarcerated and can no longer function as political tools. They've invested too much just to cut them loose at the first whiff (or 28th whiff) of trouble.
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See Cawthorn. This is accurate.
 

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