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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.

Who's the big guy? Can you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it's Biden, and not some other person Hunter meant? Hunter is about as credible as a fox in a henhouse with the feathers sticking to his mouth claiming that he's a vegetarian.

Any halfway decent lawyer should be able to throw enough doubt on that statement.

This is silly. If you think this, you would never convict on basically anything. Hypothetical:

John is married to Jill. Joe pork's Jill in John's bed. John sees this. John writes reddit post about how he saw this porking. He then berates Jill repeatedly causing her to make several reddit posts about the issue, as well as to call friends about it.

2 Days later John reports a boating accident where all his guns were lost.

10 Days later Joe is dead, gunshot to the head.

Various guns are found on the bottom of the lake. One matches the ballistics of the murder of Joe.

Fingerprints of John are found in Joe's death room, but, he's been there before. Joe met Jill because Joe and John were friendly (pre-adultery).

So, in most jurisdictions, John is dead to rights here. And his case is less compelling than the case against Joe (Biden). You just don't like to admit what is actually happening. Circumstantial evidence convicts thousands of people a day. Particularly on the portion of the charge that everyone tries to claim is not "proven" in this case: Motive. Motive is almost always entirely circumstantial evidence. Do people honestly think lots of murderers have direct evidence of "malice aforethought"? Hell no. Even the dumbest murder defendants rarely say, "I killed that man because I hated him and had for a long time" to the police.

One matches the ballistics of the murder of Joe.

Ballistics matching is pseudoscientific nonsense.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-field-of-firearms-forensics-is-flawed/%3famp=true

Ok. There is one gun. It matches John's serial # and has the same bullets as were used to kill Joe. In fact, the magazine is missing the exact number of shots that were taken at the scene. And this particular bullet company stamps batches, and its the same batch as those that killed Joe.

He's still guilty. He probably is without the gun for most juries.

According to the guidelines, sufficient agreement is the condition in which the comparison “exceeds the best agreement demonstrated between tool marks known to have been produced by different tools and is consistent with the agreement demonstrated by tool marks known to have been produced by the same tool.”

Fucking what?! We've been putting people in jail based on this shit?

PS if you want to link the article without Google's amp nonsense, click the share icon at the very top of the page on the right (you might have to scroll down a bit to get it to drop down, but it's designed to be at the top of the page no matter where you are in the article.)

I'm aware, I was just in a rush combined from "Someone's being wrong on the internet" and "there's 10 patients I need to see after I leave the shitter" haha. Amp is cancer.

Lol I figured you would know, but I was compelled to respond by the slight chance you didn't and my loathing of amp.

Burn pattern and bite mark analysis are similarly bullshit. Ditto psychological profiling, but no points for that one. Given the pattern, it's likely that other aspects of forensic science are bunk as well.

Wow, here's my daily redpill. You're saying all those cop shows don't accurately predict the process of law enforcement? :'(

From what I gathered from this article, they didn't show ballistic matching was "nonsense", only that it doesn't have the rigor expected of the scientific method.

They provide an example of forensics not classifying "inconclusive" reports as errors. However, I agree with the forensics here. If you look at ballistic data and say "I can't tell for sure Joe was shot from this gun", that's not an error, that's working exactly as intended.

Justice isn't an exact science, in general.

Theres corroborating testimony grom one of his business partners, plus other statements by Hunter from the laptop complaining that Joe took half of what other family members made, including Hunter.

Additionally, we know from Hunter's Chateau Marmont prostitute binge that he and Joe shared a joint bank account - Hunter overpaid the prostitute and then started getting frantic calls from the Secret Service about why VPOTUS's bank accounts were transferring tens of thousands of dollars to shady escort services.

Further, we also know that Joe didn't disclose $5.2 million in income that cant be explained by known income sources (salaries, etc.).

Its all very suggestive.

All the pieces fit. You just don’t have the final cornerstone that connects it beyond any doubt.

Edit: there’s actually testimony from multiple business parties.

If all the pieces fit, it is because it is very easy to fit anything into the glaringly big voids this jigsaw leaves us. 'It totally could be Joe, see, see!' isn't enough in court and it shouldn't be enough for much else, either.

With due respect, I think there is a lot more specific evidence here compared to “it totally could be Joe.”

We have three persons saying the big guy is Biden. No one has even proffered a suggestion it was someone else.

I don’t know why the standard here is “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Until there is other evidence, it has been satisfied to the reasonable doubt standard.

When it comes to impeachment, there's no defined standard of evidence anyways. "Preponderance of the evidence" is as valid a standard as "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Indeed. My preferred standard is "smells kinda fishy". We passed that point a long time ago.