Good Thread. There's a reason why after investigating Hunter Biden for 5 years over 2 administrations, that all they've been able to find are ancillary violations. It's because getting hired for being the son of a famous person, even if you are a failson, isn't a crime. https://t.co/YXyZkHLd1u
— The Biden Accomplishments Guy (on Threads) (@What46HasDone) September 13, 2023
David Simon’s idea — if it were noticed by Our Very Serious Pundits — would be greeted with an outcry second only to that which met the Reverend Swift’s:
1) Not to excuse Hunter Biden from trading on his father's name — or the Kushner couple from trading much better on Trump's, but it's about time to admit that influence peddling is not at all a crime under the U.S. code. It is legal. Congress has left it as a hole that…. https://t.co/TfO8ckcp6j
— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 13, 2023
2) …all parties involved in our governance and their friends and relations can drive a truck through. Extortion is a crime under the law. Bribery is a crime. But earning money by talking horseshit about how you know and who will listen to you is the premise of the K Street….
3) ….lobbying class. Federal prosecutors have a name for the activity that involved people talking shit and pumping up their influence for salary and consulting fees. “Rainmaking.” A player goes to the chump and says if you hire me, I can make it rain. Rain being whatever…
4) legislation, or subsidy or grant the chump wants to get from the government. If the player does anything overtly illegal to advance the chump’s agenda — a bribe, a threat, a quid pro quo — then there is the possibility of prosecution. If the player doesn’t do shit….
4) ….other then whatever a lobbyist or consultant is legally allowed to do, and the subsidy is obtained or bill gets passed, he made it rain and seems worth his pay. If it doesn’t, then the chump overpaid. But influence peddling? That’s legal. It’s built in to the process….
5) What the Republicans lack so far is a single fucking overt criminal act by Hunter Biden, never mind Biden as vice president. They’ve got the younger Biden pimping his name, as Kushner and his wife pimped theirs to greater profit. And again, this is shitty, but in not criminal.
Apologies for two 4)s in the thread. Math is what kept me out of business school, if not the federal courthouse.
I think those big Saudi checks were cashed after they departed. Call it implausible deniability, but deniability nonetheless.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 13, 2023
No. The legislative power needs to pass more restrictive laws about who can lobby or consult or otherwise engage with government at all while relations occupy high office. Or it's simple legal.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 13, 2023
Alison Rose
Same.
Baud
What’s the proposal again?
NotMax
Plucked from late in thread downstairs.
NotMax
Head/desk head/desk head/desk.
cain
@NotMax:
Lol .. so he has targeted guns, federal crimes, education and so on.
Noticed he didn’t shutter border and immigration.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Indian Damian sounds like a Sanghi. I see the same arrogance, the ability to lie with a straight face and the utter lack of scruples. He is quite popular among die-hard BJP supporters both here and in India.
*Sanghi = indoctrinated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (national volunteer corps)
** Husband kitteh’s uncle called Avivek “our boy
eeww,
craigie
@Baud: I think it’s to pass laws about what relatives of legislators are allowed to do while those relatives are in office. But yeah, kind of vague.
frosty
Math is what turned me into an engineer instead of a math major.
Steeplejack
Thread Reader link to Simon’s thread.
schrodingers_cat
@frosty: Same here. Substitute physics for engineering.
divF
@NotMax: In the tech business, the use of “bleeding edge” is a dead giveaway of an idiot who is trying to impress you.
Re: SC and frosty’s comments. For me, it is the other way around – math (via computing) was the back door that allowed me to do physics and engineering.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Hunter Biden is my hero. He, through no specific action of his own, has provided incontrovertible proof that Republicans have no intention of fighting corruption.
If they did, they would work to make sure the type of behavior Hunter Biden engaged in was made illegal. Instead they wage a political campaign to convince enough people it was.
Mai Naem mobile >
@NotMax: i would have thought Scamaswamy would have gone for shutting down the SEC to help get rid of his little problems.
Roger Moore
Look at our current Supreme Court and try to tell me with a straight face any kind of influence peddling reform has a prayer of surviving court challenges. They’ve already neutered attempts to prosecute bribery. Too many of them are up to their own ears in influence peddling for them to allow any kind of legislation like that to stand.
Alison Rose
@NotMax: I refuse to believe this. For one thing, who randomly decided to take vitamins while out on a walk? And like…she was holding the Airpod in her hand, and then what…poured the vitamins into the same hand and didn’t see the thing already in her palm? And couldn’t tell the difference in her mouth between a pill and a plastic earbud with a prong sticking off it?
Also, this from a previous case of this supposedly happening: “She was surprised to learn it still worked when she tried to record a voice note, and it captured the sound of her stomach.” Bull fucking shit. You have acids in your damn stomach. Airpods are water resistant, but not waterproof, and they are definitely not stomach-acid-proof.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Mai Naem mobile >: That would be tipping his hand. Campaigning on getting rid of the SEC is a bad look. You run on closing five agencies, close six. No big deal. Not gonna happen anyway.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Wish one, just one interviewer would respond when Ramaswamy blathers on when downplaying climate change about “more Americans died from natural disasters a century ago than do today” (which he repeats with regularity) with “There was no radar, no satellites and barely rudimentary, far from widespread forms of any real time mass communication to provide tracking and advance notice a century ago.”
catclub
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: The NRC? What does he have against them?
Geminid
@frosty: I saw a good mathematician meme yesterday. It showed two columns of 3 images. On the left, a woman is trying to help a man who is laying on the ground in pain. On the right is a man in a coat and tie with a briefcase.
Woman: “Is there a doctor here?”
Man: “I’m a doctor.”
Woman: “He’s having a heart attack!”
Man: “I’m a Doctor of Mathematics.”
Woman: “He’s going to die!”
Man: “Can you prove that?”
Whomever
@NotMax: That is a truly weird list. For example why the NRC? It would be terrible politics. His opponents will instantly jump on “He wants to cause Chernobyl on you” and the first nuclear “incident” (which occur all the time but are usually something minor like the wrong button pressed) would be held up as proof…
bbleh
[WB cartoon squirming] Argh, orgh, urk, oh, mah, jeez, gurk …
Hunter Biden dodged or missed some taxes and then PAID THEM OFF. And he had a technical gun violation that probably would lock up half the Confederacy. There is no evidence of ANY other crime, and there is no evidence of ANY INVOLVEMENT BY JOE BIDEN OR ANYONE IN HIS ADMINISTRATION.
Meanwhile, Jared and Ivanka were PAID FEDERAL EMPLOYEES OF THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE during which time Jared’s family business somehow received a TWO BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT from Persian Gulf regimes to which he was delegated AS AN AGENT OF THE US GOVERNMENT.
Ok, sorry, just got a little overexcited there.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@catclub: SEC. I was mostly there to agree with Mai naem mobile but I’ve heard accusations about him making money investing in drugs that had failed at trial, bringing in other investors, then cashing out before they fail again and the price drops.
I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t know if it’s illegal, though it would damn sure be unethical if true.
Point is, to my only peripherally informed mind, sounds like under purview of the SEC if indeed it were a crime.
So ends the lengthy explanation of my riffing.
bbleh
@Geminid: proof occurs in mathematics because it is invented. Proof does not occur in the natural sciences; only disproof.
/ pedantry
NotMax
@bbleh
Ah, but on paper they received no pay. Which in and of itself, for the positions to which they were appointed, is a violation of federal regulations. (Did a comment here about the whys and wherefores of this years ago which I’ve not the time to look up right now.)
Ivanka’s “official” job designation among the White House roster of employees, BTW, was First Daughter and advisor to the President.
bbleh
@NotMax: complainant stipulates that the word “paid” should be stricken and replaced with “authorized.”
Mai Naem mobile >
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: you’re assuming MAGats know the difference between the financial SEC and the athletic SEC.
NotMax
@bbleh
Judges will also accept “empowered.”
;)
Salty Sam .
I mean no disrespect, but why the fuck are we expending ANY energy talking about this douchebag?
Suzanne
@NotMax:
We also have a goddamn building code. It saves a lot of lives.
Sure Lurkalot
@NotMax:
about “more Americans died from natural disasters a century ago than do today”
Yes, brainstem, it’s called progress when people survive things that killed others long ago. Unfortunately, progress met its match and lost to stupidity in our most recent pandemic and as for war…sigh…progress often means more efficient killing machines.
Kayla Rudbek
The good news here is that I have a job offer! Making more money than the last one (although less leave time and I need to ask the recruiter about whether sick leave comes out of the PTO or not).
NotMax
@Salty Sam .
Because he’s sucking up oxygen in the political arena and not highlighting his inherent douchebaggery is a worse option.
No need to dwell on him but no reason to completely ignore him (at this point in time) either.
patrick II
Maybe I read too many liberal blogs, but as I have read that Jared Kushner gave the names of Saudis, which he gained from his classified status (opposed by the CIA), of Saudis opposed to the ascendance of Mohammed bin Salmen to MBS himself which caused loss of life for some, prison sentences or, for family members only, being locked up incommunicado in a fancy hotel while he took control of the Saudi government.
His payoff was Saudi pressure on Qatar to loan Kushner the money for a bad loan on his 666 building while Kushner was still in “office” and another 2.3 billion from the Saudis after left.
That is not to mention steering masks and medicine to Republican businesses during the early days of the pandemic, the most famous example of which was the interception of masks bought by NYC and meant for NYC hospitals at a NYC pier by Federal agents and rerouted to Kushner favorites.
Those incidents have never been investigated and perhaps I spend too much time at liberal blogs, but if even a little is true, I would say there was criminal activity involved.
patrick II
So, I just got around to watching my recording of 60 minutes tonight and their story on Ukraine and if the estimates of casualties is even close to correct — 200,000 for Ukraine and over 300,000 for Russia, those government officials who accused Ukraine of being casualty shy a couple of weeks ago should get different jobs. Maybe for Russian cable news.
Suzanne
@Kayla Rudbek: WOOOOOOOT!!!
Salty Sam .
Point taken. Life in our media environment. But Jesus-effing-Christ it gets tiresome dealing with shit-heels like this.
Counterpoint: by December ‘24, this guy, and all his “proposals” will be spending time in the Bobby Jindal Suite at the Loser’s Hotel and Resort. Ignoring him now will not change that outcome.
Mousebumples
@Kayla Rudbek: Congratulations! 🎉
SiubhanDuinne
@Kayla Rudbek:
Congratulations!
Geminid
@Salty Sam .: Ramaswami is effectively a Trump ally in these primaries, in that he helps split the non-Trump vote while not attacking Trump. He’ll most likely be a Trump surrogate in the general election campaign, with an outside shot at a cabinet position.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
You can bet Ramaswamy does. Besides, I’m beginning to believe wanton corruption is a positive among a significant portion of the Republican primary electorate.
Jeffro
@Salty Sam .: same
agorabum
Hunter Biden will take any mother f’ers money if he just giving it away
Ohio Mom
@Kayla Rudbek: Congrats!
Mike in NC
Somebody needs to tell non-white Republicans they have no chance in hell of getting elected president.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@agorabum: It’s the American way. God bless the USA.
sab
@Kayla Rudbek: Yay!
wjca
@Suzanne:
But a building code is an unacceptable interference by government, right…?
wjca
What do you want to bet his ask is a seat on the SEC?
RaflW
@divF: Viveck’s bleeding edge lawyers seem about as edgy and ethical as Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Alina Habba or John Eastman.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
LOL! Better chance of him having a nightmare of drowning in a vat of putrefied horse anuses.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
You’re supposed to shove a lit lightbulb up your ass to cure COVID, not introduce sound into the body.
Salty Sam .
Yes, I understand that. And I truly appreciate your deep knowledge of electoral politics.
I, on the other hand, occupy a place midway between “normies” and people like you who are much deeper in the weeds, and Rama-whatever just makes me tired. I look forward to not hearing about his stupid ideas anymore.
But (and I’m not being snarky here) if you can enlighten me as to why I should pay any more attention to this fraud, please do so.
Danielx
@agorabum:
Well, yes. So would about 90% of people I can think of off the top of my head.
Danielx
@Salty Sam .:
Know your enemies. Know what they say – if someone tells you who they are, believe them, as the saying goes. Granted I didn’t pay much attention to TFG at this point before the 2016 election. But I already knew what he was like, there were already decades of evidence that he was a doucherocket of the first degree.
Not so with this guy, although I dislike him more with every word he utters – I just want to know more. Though as someone already pointed out, it’s an exercise in futility. A person of color has about as much chance of being the Republican candidate as the average golden retriever. Less probably, goldens are easy to get along with and this guy is a poisonous little fuck.
Salty Sam .
@Danielx: Agree with the “know your enemies“ thing. At this point, if they have (R) next to their name, that’s all I need to know. And Trump was a suis generis case of that; an (R) with an entire DSM worth of personality disorders included.
THIS is what I’d like to know why I should care about Ramaswarmy- he will drop out of sight as soon as the election is over. I’m betting that Biden wins- big (I hope). If Trump wins in ‘24, Ramalama is the least of our problems.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I agree. Intuition aside, we’re just about at the time to work hard to make it so.
ETA: I had a VA seat I was eyeing, based on something I heard this week. Gotta do some final research.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I heard the version
“I’m a Doctor of Philosophy!”
“He’s going to die!”
“We’re all going to die.”
frosty
@divF: OK, computer science is good, but if you weren’t doing proofs you weren’t doing math. If you were using numbers instead of Greek letters you weren’t doing math. I hit the wall at Real Analysis.
ETA: Middle of junior year:
Advisor: Why are you majoring in Math?
Me: It’s the only one of the four majors at this school I can do.
Advisor: Maybe you should reconsider.
Me:
frosty
@Kayla Rudbek:
Congratulations! I found out to my chagrin that when I moved from a County job to a consulting firm that PTO is a combination of vacation and sick. There is no sick leave. I went from 5 weeks vacay and 2 weeks sick to 4 weeks combined. Sucks, I hope your experience is different.
divF
(probably a dead thread, but …)
@frosty: All of my degrees are from the Math department at Berkeley, and I have been doing mathematics for my entire career. For me, computers are a means to an end, to get you from the insights provided by the math to impact on physics / engineering. You prove theorems to inform the design of a computational representation. Computer science comes in later, to tell you how to design the software.
This is a tradition going back to von Neumann, one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century. Also Turing, Lax, Godunov, … who viewed the boundaries between mathematics / computer science / physics as artificial, or at the very least porous.
wjca
@divF:
I can see how math informs physics, engineering, etc. I’m not familiar with influence flowing the other direction.
divF
@wjca: The other direction is usually more subtle. Typically, the answer to a specific physical question suggests a much more general mathematical theory (or theories). The modern theory of geometrical optics (the relationship between wave theory and and ray theory of light) was worked out for a the specific case of physical optics (Maxwell’s equations) in the 1930s. In the 1950s, Lax recognized that there was a more general theory that applies to propagation of singularities for a large class of first-order hyperbolic systems. In the 1960s-1970s, this theory led to a new set of mathematical theories for understanding some aspects of the mathematical structure of manifolds and nonlinear PDEs.
Lax has always been quite open about the inspiration provided by the original physics theory. More generally, he has been a great proponent of mathematics emerging from trying to solve specific problems in science and technology (“mathematics is not brought by the stork”).
wjca
@divF:
Thank you. It’s always enlightening to see things from the other side.
Manyakitty
@Kayla Rudbek: fantastic! PTO is generally negotiable. Congratulations!
Geminid
@Salty Sam .: Ramaswamy is not actually worth much attention at all. His constituency is fairly insignificant except maybe among a part of the tech-bro donor class.
But like I told another person yesterday, I am a curious person. One of my interests is Republican party politics, which is an area many here find too disgusting to study. I’m also interested in Democratic party politics, but those seem fairly healthy right now and lack the pathologies so striking among the Republicans.
But my knowledge of politics isn’t really very deep, just relatively broad. I’m more like a vacuum cleaner than a drilling rig.
I think of someone like Rachel Bitecofer- a political scientist-turned campaign professional- as having deep knowledge of politics, but even she has plenty more to learn.
patrick II
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
You are right about that. Laws unjustly hold libertarians down and must be broken to assert their creds.
Chris T.
@divF:
And yet, the pure-math-theory folks desperately wish it were! “Dammit, someone found a practical use for my abstruse theoretical work!”
😀