I thought it was pertinent info for those who believe one man should be another’s master. Either way, believe what you want.

Happy as a clam, friend.

You assumed, wrongly, that I was posting it for any other reason than a joke. Sorry pal. Your humor isn’t as well-rounded as you are pretending it is.

When we speak of pain and joy, are speaking of any other consciousness than human consciousness? No. Sharks have shark physiology. Insects have insect physiology. It’s an anthropomorphic mistake to assume they feel the same.

Oh dear, he’s using emojis. Is this how you get across your mockery? I usually read your words in a valley-girl voice, but this is hilarious.

Your chuckling is exactly what I wanted to see. I’ll let you know if your opinion ever means anything. For now, I’m happy you’re so risible.

You don’t like that he averted a war with Iran? That says enough for me.

No problem. I’m glad you liked it.

Trump is the only living president who isn’t a descendant of someone who enslaved Americans.

In researching the genealogies of America’s political elite, a Reuters examination found that a fifth of the nation’s congressmen, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people.

Among 536 members of the last sitting Congress, Reuters determined at least 100 descend from slaveholders. Of that group, more than a quarter of the Senate – 28 members – can trace their families to at least one slaveholder.

Those lawmakers from the 117th session of Congress are Democrats and Republicans alike. They include some of the most influential politicians in America: Republican senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and James Lankford, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.

In addition, President Joe Biden and every living former U.S. president – except Donald Trump – are direct descendants of slaveholders: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and – through his white mother’s side – Barack Obama. Trump’s ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery-lawmakers/

It’s seems a simple case of double standards. One expects better or worse of people, so he holds them to differing standards. It’s another of the myriad problems with collectivist thinking. So-and-so is from this group, or this tax-bracket, or this identity, therefor we need to judge him accordingly.

The scale of difference between an insect and a man is astronomical. Ascribing to them elements of human consciousness is patently absurd on those grounds.

It makes sense. They have a body, sense organs, digestion. But it would be silly to say that such dissimilar bodies would result in a similar consciousness.

You’re not so bad yourself. Cheers.

No offence taken. I’ve made no attempt to hide my bias, so being called a partisan is expected. But that no one else is being accused in the same way arouses enough suspicion that I doubt it is as fair and balanced a take as we’re all pretending it is. I think it is its own propaganda, used as it is to cover for the fact that we’ve been wrong about quite a few political matters, and for quite some time now.

But what do I know? My political knowledge is zero.

All that incitement and corruption we’ve listed. The treatment by the justice system, the press, the intelligence community clearly favor both exactly the same. And the scales of our judgement remain even.

I’m being genuine, though. I hope you are as well.

I said laugh all you want. Again, what corruption? I’m so inundated with Fox News that I may have missed it.

Simple definition. Still no quote. c-ya.

Yes, the quiz is silly, but so is pretending to be against corruption when the only thing you are actually against is the Bidens as evidenced by the fact that the corruption of Trump and his family has never, not once, been a point of criticism for you here. So given you are not against corruption but merely against the Bidens, why the charade? Given we know you know the correct answer to the silly quiz is D, why continue to pretend you don't know that? Do you think anyone reading this would get the answer wrong or?

What corruption?

The evidence is pretty clear that your assessment isn't considered incitement according to any law or definition. Are you able to provide a single quote of him encouraging anyone to engage in an insurrection?

If not, it appears you've been whipped into a frenzy of your own.

Feel free to shit on me all you want.

But if you want to believe a political rally is "incitement to insurrection", which is the same line repeated by the worst elements in American politics, make a case. I know it doesn't meet the standards of incitement according to first amendment jurisprudence, and I can quote the same speech proving that he incited them to do the exact opposite, so I'm once again doubtful that you're not a victim of propaganda or in the cult of the establishment.

All I know is as soon as I post something about a politician, there you and the others are, like clockwork. This has been the case my entire time here. Why is that? Because you’re fair and balanced? In Baden’s silly quiz you feign believing D and pretend to hold both to the same standards but I can go to any page on this or the other thread to see the facts of the matter.

The real problem is the preferential treatment, the justice system and intelligence community protecting one of its own. The architect of the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, the Ukraine war, a man who has consistently consolidated power in the hands of the military industrial complex while violating fundamental civil rights is suspiciously held to a different standard than anyone else.

Your laughing lets me know you have nothing else.

Well said, as usual.

There is a difference between saving some kids and believing you’re saving some kids. He either shot someone and saved the lives of children or he shot an innocent man. One is moral the other immoral. What more do we need to add to it?

But again, as far as acts go, reasoning is the least consequential. It’s not as consequential as pulling a trigger, for instance. In fact it’s so inconsequential that we could never measure it, observe it, and all we can do is sift through its chatter, most of which comes after the event in question. Should this scant activity be applied to our judgement? Law says it should be. Again, I’m not so sure.

Let me guess: corporations?

That being said I’m glad you’ve come to your senses about the Biden crime family. Now you can follow around his defenders with emoji-laden comments and say “What about Biden?” That would be fair and balanced, after all.

Can’t stop speaking about Trump, even in a Biden thread. But others are in a Trump cult.

Bring it on. What’s another frivolous investigation? Maybe they’ll hire ABC to produce it like they did with the J6 committee, or they’ll sing ballads to Robert Mueller on SNL. Besides, I’m sure you need another dose of hopium by now. Hell, maybe Trump will start a proxy war with Saudi Arabia to cover it all up, and Big Tech will censor any mention of it.

Biggest revelations from the whistleblower testimony.

• Hunter linked daddy to Chinese deal in threat to business partner.
• Joe Biden showed up at business meetings with Hunter and his Chinese partners, clearly the doting father.
• The FBI authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop almost a year before we knew it existed and found no evidence of misinformation.
• Hunter deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes.
• The investigation into Hunter Biden had started due to a foreign porn website back in the 2018, and of course all of this was hidden from the public.
• Prosecutors wanted to charge Hunter with felonies, but all he got was misdemeanors.
• Biden’s Department of Justice worked to block the investigation.
• Agents wanted to search Biden family homes but were told the optics would be too bad.
• IRS wanted search warrant for Hunter’s storage locker but a Biden-appointed prosecutor tipped off his lawyers.

Federal crimes reduced to misdemeanors. DOJ and FBI obstructing Justice. Threatening oligarchs to pay up or else daddy will get them. Crack, prostitutes, leaving a gun by a school.

But Trump held a rally!!

The desire to be good isn't good enough, in my opinion. We can desire to be good until the cows come home, but until it motivates other actions and behaviors, those which can affect anyone else but oneself, a species of desire is all it will remain.

For my own part I'm opposed to utilitarian morality, that one's abilities, and the consequences or effectiveness of her actions can make her behavior moral. Moral logic and quests for the common good can lead one to do immoral things. As intimated I believe morality reveals itself in the act alone, whether it is impelled by thought or instinct or self-concern.

Note the difference between the dutifully quoted propaganda and the actual quote of the whistleblower testimony.

NYT:

Mr. Shapley, in fact, also told Congress that his investigation had uncovered some evidence that some of the claims of the elder Mr. Biden’s involvement were mere “wishful thinking.”

He told of an interview conducted with Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker, who told investigators that it was “projection” that former Vice President Biden would get involved in their business ventures.

“I certainly never was thinking at any time the V.P. was a part of anything we were doing,” Mr. Walker said, according to Mr. Shapley.

Actual testimony:

Walker answered: "I think that maybe James was wishful thinking or maybe he was just projecting that, you know, if this was a good relationship and this was something that was going to happen, the VP was never going to run, just protecting that, you know, maybe at some point he would be a piece of it, but he was more just, you know -- it looks terrible, but it's not. I certainly never was thinking at any time the VP was a part of anything we were doing."

https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Whistleblower-1-Transcript_Redacted.pdf

Mens rea. The so-called intention can lead to a harsher punishment. You’re right. I guess I’m trying to find out why, ethically speaking, this needs to be the case.

The content your ellipses leave out.

The WhatsApp message was among a batch of documents released by the Ways and Means Committee along with the transcripts of interviews with Mr. Shapley and a second I.R.S. investigator whose name was redacted.

The two investigators, one of whom described himself as a Democrat, told Congress of a lengthy period of strife between them and others involved in the investigation. They said a particular prosecutor at the Justice Department blocked some of their efforts and communicated too much information to Hunter Biden’s legal team.

Mr. Shapley suggested that I.R.S. investigators believed there were grounds to charge Mr. Biden with more serious crimes than he ultimately agreed to plead guilty to as part of his deal with the Justice Department. Mr. Shapley told the committee that he was “alleging, with evidence, that D.O.J. provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation.”

Not a good look.

“Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight,” Mr. Biden wrote, referring to other participants in the proposed deal. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

Taken at face value, the message would undercut President Biden’s longstanding claims that he had nothing to do with his son’s international business deals.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-joe-business-deal.html

Hunter Biden got a nice little slap on the wrist for tax fraud and gun crimes, and if other allegations are true, the justice department was running defense for him even while daddy was out of office. It must be nice to be above the law.

If you want to find the “process of thought” watch a person think. Human thought, like believing and reasoning, is an action performed by persons, and not by any other collection of things and processes. If you want to see a cartwheel or a backflip you do the same thing: watch a person perform these actions.

If thoughts are not persons thinking, beliefs are not persons believing, and reasons not persons reasoning, then they are nothing but words without a referent. There is no other way around it.

One wonders how different the issue would be if the pictograms on bathroom doors were penises and vaginas.

Schiff promised them evidence of Russian collusion and when he didn’t deliver they didn’t care. He deceived congress, the public, and the world and it is quickly forgotten. They followed the Big Lie™ all the way to the end.

The fallacy of division reminds us that that which true for a whole needn’t be true of its parts. So a vast combination of non-intentional and non-purposeful processes could form an intentional and purposeful being.

Reasoning, forming beliefs, making logical inferences, seeking to arrive at a true understanding—these are the activities of a human being.

Human beings are physical and chock-full of neurochemicals and synapses. Human beings are often described as intentional and purposeful. They are rational.

Since human beings are physical, and their actions are often intentional and purposeful and rational, beliefs are inferred by both physical and rational causes.

So beliefs can still be fully explained in terms of physical causes, and naturalism remains true.

That’s what I’m struggling with. My conscience won’t let me abandon the truth of the matter, nor will it let me abandon compassion and manners. I believe abandoning one or the other is fracturing the issue and leading to the division, on what in my mind should be a matter of health.

It seems to me that if it is a matter of health we should be focusing on the dysmorphia, the question of why one cannot identify with his own body, those strong desires and incongruities which directly causes most of the suffering. That in my mind is the humane approach, while it is not clear that satisfying these desires is, especially when we risk violating the rights of the other sex.

However, in a more generalised sense, I do think a blanket denial of trans womanhood that simply designates trans women as men who "like to wear dresses " or change their bodies to look like women is transphobic, though not necessarily ill-intentioned (this seems to be @NOS4A2's stance).

Why is it transphobic?