IF trump is arrested AND convicted

[pchang]

Don’t know about Cruz, but pretty sure Steve Bannon is a lizard person.

[pchang]

Um, no. Hillary and Stacy conceded and accepted their defeats.

[Berzerker]

Oh... you mean misinformation like Trump won the election? He still claims he got more votes, and conservative media still pushes it.
It's all BS. But now it's the Media's fault he lost, even though the conservative media keeps telling his lies.
All media has an agenda. The days of neutral media seems to be dead, much to the shame of somebody with a journalism degree.

If Trump had correctly handled the Covid outbreak, he would be president today. Instead, he screwed it up and it cost him an election.
Even though he is a liar, a crook, pond scum and a terrible person, he still would have been elected thanks to his cult of brain dead followers if he had just done his job with Covid.

For years the Democrats have been claiming multiple elections were stolen, from Hillary to Stacy Abrams in Georgia. What could he have done about covid? Fauci is on tape saying Trump did what he told him, everybody was doing what Fauci told them, including the censors - Fauci even smeared doctors who got in the way. Millions of people voted for Trump because he wasn't a neocon bent on never ending wars, Trump ended 2 of those wars and didn't start any more. Shall we look at the records of the people who started the wars he inherited? I dont think Trump would be at the top of the list of evildoers if we asked Libyans and Syrians.

[Ming]

Oh... you mean misinformation like Trump won the election? He still claims he got more votes, and conservative media still pushes it.
It's all BS. But now it's the Media's fault he lost, even though the conservative media keeps telling his lies.
All media has an agenda. The days of neutral media seems to be dead, much to the shame of somebody with a journalism degree.

If Trump had correctly handled the Covid outbreak, he would be president today. Instead, he screwed it up and it cost him an election.
Even though he is a liar, a crook, pond scum and a terrible person, he still would have been elected thanks to his cult of brain dead followers if he had just done his job with Covid.

[Berzerker]

And the govt was/is censoring people about covid, vax injury/death victims, doctors, critics, I might not have gotten the vax if not for the constant fearmongering. That pisses me off to no end. The vax didn't mess me up that I know, but many of those job losses John T cited were from state/local lockdowns and vax mandates as people were demonized and fired for refusing the jab. Many were front line health care workers who already got covid, so they lied about natural and herd immunity. These are the people who want to protect us from mis-information.

[Berzerker]

Fauci and 50 state governors were in control of Covid policy, eg Cuomo was sending infected old timers back into nursing homes. And there's more than a million Americans dead from Covid, does Biden get the blame for the other 3/4 million?

[Berzerker]

Welcome back... The Twitter Files are conversations between the FBI and social media about censoring Americans, it has nothing to do with Trump. I see no rebuttal in your response and I had a different take on the hearings. As for my opinion of Trump, I didn't vote for him and he's disgusting on a personal level, but he was ending our wars, not starting more. In discussions about evil that matters more than my dislike of the man.

[Jon Miller]

I posted a link to the Twitter Files, you can read thru them. They're far too extensive to write out here so I'll offer a brief summation of the most obvious case. The FBI had Hunter's laptop and knew it was for real, not some effort by Putin to lie about Biden. That in itself is incriminating, it shows a pattern of trying to smear Trump as a traitor and portray Biden and the Democrats as the victims of a treasonous conspiracy. Knowing the lap story might (would) show up before the election the FBI had social media censor it. Zuckerburg admitted it on Joe Rogan and the Twitter Files show many govt agencies were involved.

How is that incriminating? And who did wrong? Who was trying to smear Trump as a traitor here? Who is trying to portray Biden and Democrats as victims of a treasonous conspiracy?

I have read over parts of the twitter files and listens to debates with the authors of the twitter files. The FBI did not have the social media censor the Hunter laptop story. There is no reasonable connection between the FBI telling various social media companies to be careful about stories (no mention of the Hunter laptop) because there could be a foreign media campaign and the Hunter laptop story (which came out many months later).

While the FBI was censoring people 50 intel experts including several former heads of the CIA quickly sent out a letter blaming the Russians and the media and Biden et al cited them to dismiss the story as a Trump/Putin lie. The FBI knew the truth and censored it. And the FBI was concocting the kidnapping plot of the Michigan guv around the same time. They targeted and entrapped a handful of lock down protesters to make a big splash in the media about those damn MAGA terrorists.

What FBI censoring? You, and the twitter files 'journalists' (and I put it in quotes because they haven't followed standard approaches to journalist integrity) haven't provided any evidence for that.

In one of the debates I saw, the journalists were maintaining that the FBI agents had quit, started work for social media companies, so that a year or two later they could squash the Hunter laptop story...

The Hunter laptop story was ridiculous. Sometimes ridiculous things are true. Even though it is true, the providence makes most of the information on it not trustworthy.

It is mostly interesting as corroborating evidence (well, we think this email is Hunter's. We find this email on the laptop, so that is collaborating evidence that it is Hunter's.).

As for Trump's appointees, he was mostly picking people endorsed by establishment Republicans. Comey was busted by the inspector general and indirectly by Mueller, Russiagate was the Clinton campaign scam to frame Trump as a traitor. Comey oversaw that until Trump fired him but Wray is establishment too, the Twitter Files show the FBI was censoring social media right under Barr's nose. And if he knew about it, shame on him too. But Trump didn't control these people, Chuck Schumer warned Trump early in 2017 if he kept pissing off the security state they'd get him and they did.

This is just conspiracy talk. You could use it to argue that Cruz is a lizard person.

JM

[Berzerker]

I dont know about stolen votes, no significant fraud has been found. But I cant ignore evidence the security state censored people and spied on their political opponents based on lies designed to smear people as traitors. What especially bothers me is I was fooled, I thought Trump was a traitor. They had me convinced, but I was a loyal follower of MSNBC until real journalists tore down Russiagate.

[Jon Miller]

I have looked over the Twitter files and have watched multiple YouTube debates about them.

JM

[Berzerker]

Can you write out what you think Twitter and the Security State (overseen by Trump appointees) did that?

JM

I posted a link to the Twitter Files, you can read thru them. They're far too extensive to write out here so I'll offer a brief summation of the most obvious case. The FBI had Hunter's laptop and knew it was for real, not some effort by Putin to lie about Biden. That in itself is incriminating, it shows a pattern of trying to smear Trump as a traitor and portray Biden and the Democrats as the victims of a treasonous conspiracy. Knowing the lap story might (would) show up before the election the FBI had social media censor it. Zuckerburg admitted it on Joe Rogan and the Twitter Files show many govt agencies were involved.

While the FBI was censoring people 50 intel experts including several former heads of the CIA quickly sent out a letter blaming the Russians and the media and Biden et al cited them to dismiss the story as a Trump/Putin lie. The FBI knew the truth and censored it. And the FBI was concocting the kidnapping plot of the Michigan guv around the same time. They targeted and entrapped a handful of lock down protesters to make a big splash in the media about those damn MAGA terrorists.

As for Trump's appointees, he was mostly picking people endorsed by establishment Republicans. Comey was busted by the inspector general and indirectly by Mueller, Russiagate was the Clinton campaign scam to frame Trump as a traitor. Comey oversaw that until Trump fired him but Wray is establishment too, the Twitter Files show the FBI was censoring social media right under Barr's nose. And if he knew about it, shame on him too. But Trump didn't control these people, Chuck Schumer warned Trump early in 2017 if he kept pissing off the security state they'd get him and they did.

[Berzerker]

I dont need Taibbi for anything, the Twitter Files speak for themselves - wouldn't matter who published them. And ofc there is a correlation between what doesn't get traction and what the media ignores. How did Twitter get Trump elected?

[JohnT]

Have no idea about what the rules are for going off-topic here, but as a general rule, the good franchises are not being sold to middle-class, middle-aged career-changers : McDonald's, KFC, etc, all require serious money and are not really interested in selling 1 unit to 1 person who then has to work there.

I have a podcast series where I talk about the worst mainstream franchises ("The Franchise Skeptics Podcast"). To me, the two worst franchises are:

Mathnasium: Pure ****, the numbers don't work on this at all. The median franchise earns $235,000/year in gross revenues, with the franchisor taking at least $40k off the top. And you left a $60k/year+pension+benefits teaching position for this ****?

Snap-On Tools: Spending $450,000 to buy a tool sales job where you get only two hundred companies to sell to (you can't prospect!), one which requires you to sign no fewer than 7 credit agreements, one where you are the one floating the debt to your own customers (not Snap-On - you) is about as moronic as voting for Trump. And selling such a franchise is as immoral as voting for Trump. (Trying to keep this on-topic, team!)

The median SOT franchise earns $700k on $450k COGS (tools), leaving you with $250k to fund your credit arrangements, pay for gas and repairs on your vehicle, as well as (1) pay your salary and (b) pay you a rate of return commiserate with your $450k 'investment'.

Subway sucks. Stanley Steemer is a scam where you lose 21-24% of your gross revenues off the top. You can find my podcast series on our YouTube channel - here is the one where I tear Puroclean a new assh0le:

https://youtu.be/RgH-O4k3Pew

Anyway, Trump got indicted on my birthday, so I am obviously in favor with the Lord.

[Dinner]

Yo, pchang, things are going well! What have I been up to? ****, a novel's worth... I think the last time I was here was 2018 and I was still married then.

Got divorced Christmas Eve 2019, my daughter (Sophia) graduated from HS in June of 2020 and immediately adulted herself: moved to NYC, found a job paying $55k/year, lived in NYC for two years to become a resident of the state, and now goes to school there with zero student debt and a world of opportunity before her. I run a business where I advise people on franchise buying (really, most of them are scams), am deeply in love with a woman who was born in the USSR (and she, me), and I take on stupid-and-immoral-as-**** (are there any other kind?) MAGAT's with ease and aplomb.

You?

Which franchises are at the top of your list and why? What separates a scam from a good deal?

[JohnT]

Thanks -Jrabbit! I fell asleep one Sunday afternoon and instead of the half-hour nap I promised myself, woke up 10 hours later with the clock nearing midnight. Decided to smoke some weed and started typing - hence, the Book of COVID.

And as for the SDMB thread, yeah: When people tell you who they are, one should truly listen. The Defendant told us in 2016 that he wouldn't accept losing, he spent 2019 and 2020 trying to game the upcoming election, it was one of the easiest predictions one could have made, to be honest.