He’s talking about John McCain, a warmonger, not “veterans”.

Those who were there and who went on record saying none of it happened.

At least neocon Goldberg can now admit who Trump called losers: John McCain and George Bush. Goldberg is one of their cheerleaders, famous for his propaganda regarding the Iraq war.

Before they spun it in the usual way, by removing context and inserting their own. “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’”, and people still believe it. Dupes passed it around in this very thread even after it was refuted.

Disgraceful propaganda.

Thank you.

Yup. My bad.

You’re right, I’m wrong. I apologize. I will ignore the statute, its genesis, and the precedent.

Well then I apologize for believing the provision had anything to do with the statute.

Are you willing to go on record saying that this provision has nothing to do with the statute?

Well, I’m sorry for reading the title of the statute.

And what statute is that a provision of?

Now quote the statute.

You’ll quote me saying otherwise, I’m sure.

It isn’t about witnesses, victims, informants at all, but according to a provision under that statute it is now a federal crime for pulling a fire alarm in Congress, with punishment up to 20 years in prison.

18 U.S. Code § 1512 - Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

Can you tell me why he’s being charged under that statute? And why pulling a fire alarm is now a federal crime?

Exactly right. So naturally one wonders why he’s being charged under these statutes. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know.

The title of the statute, the reason the statute was brought into law, and the entire history of its use. But It wouldn’t hurt to look at the crimes themselves and come to your own conclusions.

As far as you can tell isn’t very far, I suppose.

It’s the crime in his indictment. What am I misrepresenting?

It appears to be so. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

The crime is the same and just as stupid in both cases. It’s a witness tampering crime used to prosecute political opponents who inconvenience congress because the law is stupid.

It's (D)ifferent when we do it.

That’s a good point. I mean, slavery works. Utilitarianism can justify injustice so long as the greatest number are happy.

It’s communist in name, intention, ideology, belief, and practice. It’s just that “capitalism” is largely a bugaboo. No economic system which is not capitalist has ever existed anywhere in history of states, the only difference being in who ought to manage it.

I think China has proven it does work. A couple years ago they had the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, for example. But it has also proven that communism, like all grand collectivist ideologies, is tantamount to state capitalism. So long as the republican form of government is the framework upon which they build their dreams, it will never come to anything else.

The pseudo-scientific justifications for using race have long been discredited. One does not have certain phenotypes because he belongs to some subgroup of human beings, but because his parents formed a distinctly new and unique pool of genes from which he would grow. So using the color of one’s skin or the color of someone’s eyes as a marker of something other than this is foolish.

Aside from the stupidity of using race as a taxonomy with which to order human beings into this or that category, the negative effects of racism alone should be enough to lead reasonable people to abandon it. So I find it odd and troubling that people would keep pushing to maintain it.

The appeal of race consciousness and racial identity politics to supporters of it is that they get to retain the use of race as a heuristic in their thought, and all the perversions that necessarily arise from it. An example is on display in the criticisms above, where the race of the speakers and not their arguments are all that needs be considered, even if proponents of color-blindness are of all supposed races. The racial heuristic—used as it was in the old racism as it is today, and in the exact same fashion—serves to stop and hinder thought precisely when it is needed most.

The pendulum metaphor doesn't work for me because I think it is all fruit from the same poisonous tree. The current racism is largely an extension of the old racism. The same taxonomies, the same tribalisms, the same methods—it's all there.

Activist scholarship is dog shit, in my opinion. Woke corporate racism, that Diversity, Equity, Inclusion mantra, flows straight from that rotten core. The Skokal and grievance studies affairs basically prove that they peddle in nonsense.

This is funny.

Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm on Saturday in a Capitol office building before a House vote on a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.

The alarm prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated and triggered outcry from Republicans including the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who compared the New York congressman’s actions with those of the January 6 rioters.

https:/theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/30/democrat-jamaal-bowman-fire-alarm-house

Obstructing an official proceeding is what Trump was indicted for, as were many of the J6 protesters. Since “no one is above the law”, and “people should held to account”, I guess we should expect Bowman’s indictment soon. Hilarious.

We continually have to view our own nose. This isn't because "the brain receives, organises and integrates cognitive data, along with memory and expectation, so as to generate the unified world–picture within which we situate and orient ourselves", but because the nose is too close to the eyes. It appears to us, as object, constituted by its relations.

Still, even though it is a constant presence in our perspective, we barely notice our noses and rarely talk about them, especially when describing to others what we see. Van Gogh’s nose never shows up in his Café de nuit, for example. Why? Far from generating a unified world-picture, the mind tends to ignore the reality. Perspective is inextricably bound to the body, an object, constituted not only by its relations, but by its being, something any account of mind is forever lacking.

I don’t doubt that. But it’s difficult to be xenophobic towards members of groups that do not exist, like a race, rather than towards groups that do exist, like people who are not a member of your community.

How so?

I think you’re right. But the question for me is: upon what grounds should I stand? Making sense of “what is there” seems to me paramount, and not entirely fruitless.

A congresswoman’s job isn’t to govern, I’m afraid. Her job is to legislate, to oversee the executive branch, and to fund the federal government (or not). It looks to me like they are doing their jobs.

The witness Jonathan Turley laid out his claims as to why the impeachment inquiry was justified here:

The record currently contains witness and written evidence that the President (1) has lied about key facts in these foreign dealings, (2) was the focus of a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme, and (3) may have benefitted from this corruption through millions of dollars sent to his family as well as more direct possible benefits. The President may be able to disprove or rebut these points, but they raise legitimate concerns over his role based on the accounts of key figures in the matter. Consider just ten of the disclosures from the prior investigation:

• Hunter Biden and his associates were running a classic influence peddling operation using Joe Biden as what Devon Archer called “the Brand.”[1] While this was described as an “illusion of access,” millions were generated for the Bidens from some of the most corrupt figures in the world, including associates who were later accused of or convicted of public corruption.[2]
  
• Some of the Biden clients pushed for changes impacting United States foreign policy and relations, including help in dealing with Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigating corruption.[3]
  
• President Biden has made false claims about his knowledge of these dealings repeatedly in the past, including insisting that he had no knowledge of Hunter’s foreign dealings which Archer has declared “patently false.”[4] The Washington Post and other media outlets have also declared the President’s insistence that his family did not take money from China as false.[5]
  
• The President had been aware for years that Hunter Biden and his uncle James were accused of influence peddling, including an audiotape of the President acknowledging a New York Times investigation as a threat to Hunter.[6]
  
• President Biden was repeatedly called into meetings with these foreign clients and was put on speakerphone.[7] He also met these clients and foreign figures at dinners and meetings.[8]
  
• Emails and other communications show Hunter repeatedly invoking his father to secure payments from foreign sources and, in one such message, he threatens a Chinese figure that his father is sitting next to him to coerce a large transfer of money.[9]
  
• A trusted FBI source recounted a direct claim of a corrupt Ukrainian businessman that he paid a “bribe” to Joe Biden through intermediaries.[10]
  
• Hunter Biden reportedly claimed that he had to give half of his earnings to his father[11] and other emails state that intermingled accounts were used to pay bills for both men, including a possible credit account that Hunter used to allegedly pay prostitutes.[12]
  
• At least two transfers of funds to Hunter Biden in 2019 from a Chinese source listed the President’s home in Delaware where Hunter sometimes lived and conducted business.[13]
  
• Some of the deals negotiated by Hunter involved potential benefits for his father, including office space in Washington.[14] At least nine Biden family members reportedly received money from these foreign transfers, including grandchildren.[15] For Hunter Biden, this included not just significant money transfers but gifts like an expensive diamond and a luxury car.[16]

These are only some of the serious corruption allegations facing the President, but each could raise impeachable conduct if a nexus is established to the President.



https://jonathanturley.org/2023/09/30/ten-reasons-why-the-biden-impeachment-inquiry-is-justified/

It’s odd if you had missed this because it has been public record for quite some time, but then again it’s not odd because none of it is what you want to hear.

I do. But I think racism is an aberration of thought and belief rather than a feature of some particular system.

I think you’re right insofar as metaphysics is an exercise in imagination and intuition. But I also think metaphysical inquiry can help other forms of inquiry by eliminating the inpossible from our questioning, serving to constrain the scope of empirical studies to a reasonable domain of inquiry, and tempering the mind for such a task.

It has also been used as catch-all phrase for woke racism, which may or may not have anything to do with CRT proper. The worst thing the opposition can do is to seek its silence. The surest way to lead pliant minds to wonder if there is something important in CRT would be for governments to ban it. It’s enough to just point at the racism, which can be opposed from any angle.

You assume on the basis of race and descent, like every racist in the history of mankind. If you hadn't made assumptions on the basis of race and descent, asked instead of assumed, you wouldn't be capable of making sweeping race-based claims without evidence. Good riddance.