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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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NY Post publishes a story claiming that the FBI in possession a bunch of evidence implicating Biden in al sorts of shady dealings and is purposely burying it in an effort to hurt Trump/help Biden win. A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation op. The official NY Post gets banned from Twitter and links to the article get scrubbed from both Twitter and Facebook. Two years after the fact even the hardcore partisans at CNN and MSNBC concede that it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine, but that doesn't matter because the original purpose of helping Biden win has been served.

it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine

You're still trying to smuggle in this claim. "email were likely genuine" and "it wasn't the Russians" are two separate claims. You've provided evidence for the first but not for the second.

AcocadoPanic's link does go as far as claiming the data appears to have really come from an actual laptop that Hunter Biden used, at which point Occam hints pretty strongly at the laptop in question really having been Hunter Biden's (as opposed to some more complicated plot where Hunter Biden's laptop was hacked by Russians, its contents copied onto a sufficiently similar laptop and that laptop laundered through the repair shop). But you didn't provide that evidence, you just claimed you did and linked to something else.

A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation

"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement

As much as I'd like to be skeptical of the IC, its hard to square these two claims.

Well, the IC made the statement with zero investigation of the underlying data. It was then used by the media and Biden campaign to say “misinformation.”

Yes the IC letter worded it carefully but they knew damn well how it would play out and they had zero reason to believe what they said.

I share most of the same skepticisms, but I disagree that they worded things carefully. The limits of their knowledge was stated clearly and prominently. Informative press would have highlighted this, but we privilege a free press over an accountable press for obvious reasons.

But there was zero reason to release anything. There was evidence they could’ve examined showing it was authentic. The only reason they made the statement was to run cover for the Biden campaign.

A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation op.

Declaring? I see a lot of hedging that it might be from the Russians, not an explicit acknowledgement that it was.

The fact that two years later, conservatives are still complaining about the censorship of the story rather than discussing the contents of the laptop to me show that the censorship was far more damaging than helpful to Biden's cause and that there really isn't that much to the underlying laptop contents.

Everybody has known that Biden was engaging in pay for play schemes since the 90s. For all his "aw shucks" good guy posturing he didn't become a billionaire in Baltimore on a public servant's salary. Accordingly Biden being corrupt is not news. The FBI working with the media to quash a story/actively intervening on behalf of the DNC for the second presidential election in a row on the other hand is a new development.

he didn't become a billionaire in Baltimore on a public servant's salary

I think you're off by a factor of ~100. Googling puts his net worth at 2.5M in 2016; 17M in 2020. Given he has made his tax returns public for decades, it seems implausible he could hide 98% of his wealth.

Yeah and it turns out that his corrupt son pays for things on his behalf per the corrupt son. Wonder if the corrupt brother also pays for things on his behalf.

You wouldn’t see those items on his tax return though that is tax fraud. Doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And before you say “you can say that about anyone” the difference is here we have the corrupt son saying he gives over a large amount of money to his father. Statement against interest.

While we don't exactly have the son saying that, I can concede that Bobilinkis testimony that Joe Biden receives 10% of the China deal is true, yet still don't see how this accounts the missing $980,000,000 you claim he's worth.

I didn’t claim he was worth a billion.

Hunter Biden in talking to Hunter’s kid told the kid that he Hunter had to give over money to Joe Biden as a matter of course.

When you looked at richest/poorest Senator lists, Biden was always at the bottom, or just above Bernie during his whole entire time there, and only became slightly more wealthy because of the usual appearance fee circuit, some book deals, and the like. Part of the reason the whole 'Biden is secretly corrupt' is failing outside the most partisan Red Tribers, when less than great views about Obama or Hillary extended past that, is that it doesn't pass the BS meter of the median voter - the median voter can buy Hillary is corrupt, Obama is conceited, and Trump is an asshole. They simply see nothing showing that Biden is making secret deals.

The argument is that if people knew the contents of the laptop and Biden ‘s pay for play, then he wouldn’t have won.

And yes, more people should be upset about it. The media has done a good job primarily making it seem like story is about Hunter or Twitter.

But something can help you then and hurt you now. I’d say Biden is probably happier to deal with the censorship story after being elected compared to having the story cost him the election.