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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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https://apple.news/APEuOPHP2TWqeUTR_h8QypA

So the Republican speaker of the house has decided to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s business dealings with hunter. I have serious doubts that this will go very far as democrats still control the senate. This looks like an attempt to stir up the base for re-election season.

I personally see this as a big distraction as we have a lot of very serious problems that need to be addressed. BRICs, Taiwan, Ukraine, inflation, and

This is just grandstanding via toxoplasma. "The Dems impeached Trump so we've got to impeach Biden!" In the conversations I've had with people on this site who think there's a huge scandal here, I've never heard of any solid evidence about direct bribery other than the wishy-washy "money for the big guy" statement. On the point of "meetings for money", nothing Hunter did was worse than what Kushner flagrantly did during Trump's admin, and nobody even really questioned that. House Repubs haven't been able to get any better evidence after months of searching. There's basically 0 chance that they can convince 18 dem Senators to flip.

money for the big guy" statement

How is that wishy washy? You have to contort yourself into a pretzel to come to any other conclusion.

How is that wishy washy? You have to contort yourself into a pretzel to come to any other conclusion.

It is wishy washy because Hunter Biden is a liar, and it was a statement he made at a time when he was motivated to lie - the foreign crooks he was dealing with wanted to bribe Joe (although paying Hunter for access would be 2nd best), and would be much more willing to pay off Hunter if they thought the money was reaching Joe.

The "10% for the big guy e-mail" is one crook sending a note to another saying he was going to put aside some money for the big guy, but no money was actually put aside for Joe Biden except, possibly, in Hunter's head (unless there is non-public information about a segregated account, but if the Republicans had that I suspect they would have leaked it by now).

The fundamental problem with making "Joe Biden personally was on the take via Hunter" stick based on a jigsaw of weak evidence is that normally a lifestyle that exceeds known clean income is a key piece of the jigsaw, and Joe's lifestyle between VP and President was entirely consistent with what he has always claimed to be in his financial disclosures, i.e. an old guy with a net worth in the low double figure millions.

It is wishy washy because Hunter Biden is a liar, and it was a statement he made at a time when he was motivated to lie - the foreign crooks he was dealing with wanted to bribe Joe (although paying Hunter for access would be 2nd best), and would be much more willing to pay off Hunter if they thought the money was reaching Joe.

This. Hunter is perfectly capable of thinking it'd be a great idea to squeeze more money out of the guys bribing him by saying "yeah but I need some vigorish for the big guy (wink wink nod nod)" and bumping up the take that way.

How bout when he emailed his daughter saying “at least I don’t make you give 50% of your money to me like pop does?”

How bout the fact that everyone in the Biden family was getting paid (why was Hunter so generous and wasn’t everyone else a bit suspicious “hmm why am I getting all of this money for nothing”)

How bout when he emailed his daughter saying “at least I don’t make you give 50% of your money to me like pop does?

If I were Hunter's parents, I'd be taking 100% of his money because the guy is a spendthrift wastrel who thinks it's a brilliant idea to post dick pics and photos of himself taking drugs and fucking hookers online.

That line could be lies, or it could be true, but if it's true there's no reason to think the money is a bribe/passing on baksheesh, rather than the family trying to ensure Hunter doesn't spend every last dollar and there's something in reserve to pay bills for him.

That line could be lies

the family trying to ensure Hunter doesn't spend every last dollar and there's something in reserve to pay bills for him.

Either of these could be correct ... so why are we having to guess here? The latter in particular sounded like a cool theory when I first heard it from an apologist, but the more time elapses the more suspicious it gets not to hear any clarification from the Bidens themselves. If the apologia are false, they still reduce public suspicion so there's an obvious reason to neither confirm (and risk getting caught in a lie) or deny (and risk the follow up question of "what was Hunter talking about then?") anything. But if an innocent theory is true, why not just confirm it by this point? Wouldn't either of these theories be an even more impressive exoneration if its source was "claimed as a fact by the Bidens" rather than "suggested as a hypothesis by some guys on the internet"?

Also Biden has already been caught in numerous lies on this topic. It is weird to me that so many people are trying to come up with innocent explanations that aren’t pretty complex to be true.

Also, these explanations always seem to work for some but not all of the evidence. The only explanation that fits all the know issues is the simplest — corruption.

  1. What leverage do they have over him to make him fork over 50% of his income? He isn’t 18. He doesn’t seem to like the situation. They have no control unless the reason he gets the money is because of them.

  2. It also doesn’t explain why all of the other Biden’s were benefiting from Hunter’s largesse.

  1. Simple, Hunter is selling what Joe produces. It's a partnership. Why would Joe continue to risk his political career making these moves for Hunter if Hunter didn't pay him his share of the proceeds?

  2. This seems like a pretty tight knit family. It's completely plausible that Joe directed Hunter to include Jim and others.

Joe is clearly in charge here. At any point he could have informed Hunter's business partners that 0 favors or consideration would be given to anyone giving Hunter money and Hunter would have stopped receiving money. I'm positive that Joe made a decision to maintain at least ambiguity so the money keeps flowing even if Joe isn't getting any personally.

On 1) failsons who get bailed out as often as hunter does have good reason to go along with parental requests of the sort.

How is his dad bailing him out? Be specific.

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