President Biden & The Classified Docs

Classified documents were found in the possession of President Biden; this, we all know.  However, there are a lot of narratives swirling around that, quite frankly, don't pass the sniff test.  This entry will attempt to make sense of what happened and when.

I'll start with what we do know, which is 10-15 documents (pages actually) marked classified were discovered packed in with his paperwork at his think tank, The Penn Biden Center.  This discovery was followed by another 7 or so, discovered in his garage, intermixed with other paperwork, I recall from his VP office.  This was followed by a few more that were discovered in his home, likely office.  In each case, the discoveries were immediately followed by notification to NARA and DOJ. 

The first discovery happened in early November, while sifting through the aforementioned paperwork.  The most recently found docs were the result of a thorough search specifically for any remaining classified docs. In reality, most of these are being described as single pages, not complete documents. 

That's all we actually know.  Here are things we don't know.

- Level of classification and subject matter of the material.  

- Who packed the material

- Whether Biden was aware of what was in his possession

Anyone who claims to know any of this is lying or gullible.

What makes sense to me?

In my opinion, the docs were not intentionally retained by Biden for the past several years.  They were in his possession and his staff collected and packed the paperwork, both from his think tank and his VP office.  They were likely in piles and obscured or the staff and was  not trained on classification.  That it was the staff doing the packing is an important distinction; he definitely had staff to address these things.  It was only when those boxes were gone through that it was recognized they remained in Biden's possession.  Again, in my opinion, this makes sense.

How about what doesn't make sense?  

- Biden intentionally retained the docs for the past six years, using them for some nefarious purpose.  Put yourself in Biden's place, imagining this scenario.  You would do whatever you could to hide the stolen docs, placing them where they wouldn't be discovered.  You would definitely not stick them in your garage.  Once you were done with them, you'd destroy that incriminating evidence.  For sure, you'd never advise NARA and DOJ you had it.

Every time I read this one, I scratch my head and wonder, once again, how some people can be so obtuse.  As though he had a box in his garage, labelled "Top Secrit Stay out!

- Hunter shared the material with his business partners.  If no one was aware the docs in garage were there, how could he share them?  Would he copy them and shove them back into the random places he found them?  Maybe top secrit box?  Not likely.  

If Biden didn't pack the material, which is likely, or know the docs were in his possession, also highly likely, what crime did he commit?  The only potential issues lie with him having the docs in the first place.  I can't comment on that, because it's not cut and dried and I'm not an attorney.  Perhaps that's the reason he's been quiet and the original discovery wasn't shared with the media until months after.  Make no mistake, the White House keeping a lid on this for months was an unforced error and makes things look worse than they are.

Finally, there have been many who claim that Biden's situation is as bad or worse than Trump's.  That's unmitigated horseshit.  

Trump:

• Intentionally removed at least 23 BOXES of classified material, some of which was labeled with the highest level, SCI.
• Definitely knew he had the material; some were found in the same desk drawer as his passports.  
• These were not declassified.  Regardless of what he's said on social media, Trump has not argued he declassified anything in his court filings.  
• Ignored requests from NARA to return what he had.
• Finally sent some back, along with a sworn statement there was nothing left in his possession, a lie.
• Refused to return the remainder, despite no less than three further requests from NARA, which is why a search warrant was issued.
• Not all known SCI material has been recovered.

 Check out my latest entry about how Twitter is happy to protect right wingers, but not others.

https://theinsightfulbachelor.blogspot.com/2023/01/protection-for-some-under-elmo.html

The Media - Who's Being Brainwashed

 

Aside from ad hominem attacks and accusations of pedophilia, a common theme of (non) retorts from the far right individuals I've attempted to engage with is being a slave to CNN or MSNBC.  These two news channels are seen by the far right as brainwashing their audiences and acting as fluff pieces for the left.  In order to test this, I decided to screen grab the home pages of CNN and five right wing news outlets to see how they differed.  I've broken down stories into three categories:  fact based reporting, opinion, and fluff.  

Fact based is just that, but may include quotes from the sources of said story.  An example would be CNN's top story of Russia warning the US about shipping Patriot missiles to Ukraine.  

Opinion stories are interviews or more frequently Op Eds from supposed experts on a controversial subject.  Readers should take note of these pieces, because they're written from a single point of view and because they're someone's opinion, there's no representation of being factual.  In other words, these are the pieces that would be most likely to indoctrinate a reader to a particular viewpoint.  

Because this entry's intent is to uncover bias, I consider anything beyond this scope to be fluff.  Also, I don't give a shit whether William screamed at Harry or not, so it automatically hits the fluff category.  Because certain people won't read stories, this may not be the best representative sample of what people are consuming, but I don't watch much TV and prefer reading to watching videos; I can get through the stories much faster.  That being said, I didn't read most of the homepage articles because of time constraints.  Also, because of how each outlet's homepage is structured, spending time on actual numbers is a fool's errand.  I'm fairly certain you can identify trends without this data.

I'll start with the baseline and alleged brainwashing outlet, CNN.  Of the stories, I see a smattering of fact based and fluff, with two exceptions.  First is labelled "Opinion", with the other being "Ex-Trump White House lawyer makes prediction".  Lots of stories, but fairly straightforward, with most of the stories addressing what the average American is interested in, I guess.

Moving on to Fox News, you can understand why I'm not quantifying; the number of stories located on the homepage differs between each outlet.  The left column is nothing but opinion, with two fluffers.  The top story is fact based, but if you read the article, it's chock full of comments from the GOP deriding the bill, with one quote from a Dem.  The four in the center consist of two fact based, an opinion, and a fluff.  In summary, opinion pieces are the most common on this site.

Moving down the ladder in quality, but up it in bias, we hit Newsmax.  The main story is fact based and sourced from AP, with the Newsmax TV box populated by all opinion, save the Kirk Cameron hard right fluff piece, which is an opinion piece in disguise.  Another page even more dedicated to opinion.

Moving on to OAN, we see the top story as an opinion piece, along with the stories about Trump and Mayorkas.  The remainder could be considered as fact based, as they report what others have said and done, but when what those people have said are lies, I'd argue they don't fit in that category.  

There's no way anyone could categorize RSBN as anything but a Trump propaganda outlet.  There's nothing but Trump fluff pieces and opportunities to join in with other Trump supporters.  

Finally, I decided to include Red State, just for the hell of it.  As you can see, there's nothing there except for opinion pieces with an obvious hard right slant. 

Having gone through this exercise, I noticed a massive gap in what I was seeing; there was only one story each on Hunter Biden's laptop and the Twitter Files.  Also, no Bannon or other of the grifters.  I'd originally intended not to go down the rabbit hole to the basement of right wing media, but I wanted to see at what level the real conspiracy shit showed up. So, down the rabbit hole I went, using the sources noted by right wingers on the shooting message boards I spend time on.  

Let me tell you, there are a ton of them.  Just a cursory stroll through a few days of posts, I found links to the following:

Breitbart - This is semi mainstream, but delves into some conspiracy nonsense

Gateway Pundit - It's really hard to find the articles, but they're there and a hair below Breitbart

The Blaze - Lots of links to loons like Glenn Beck, who spew conspiracy lies

Citizen Free Press - One long page of links to other sources; some legit (MSN, ABC, AP) and others to some way out shit

The Federalist - Anti Biden, Pro Trump, light conspiracy stuff

American Wire News - More of the same

American Gulag - Fun stuff like J6 was a benign party

After identifying the ones above, I lost interest and my eyes began to glaze over.  How the hell can there be so many right wing media outlets?  Granted, they're all online only, but they do tend to run together.  What's notable is the lack of really hardcore conspiracies.  Sure, there were multiple stories about the laptop, and one about the federal government covering for Biden (but not alleging him being a criminal).  Of the eight reasons given, four were about the laptop and the rest were utter nonsense, meant to boost the total.  It should go without saying that there were a ton of non conspiracy lies, but again, nothing bonkers like I've seen on Twitter.  That begs the question of where are the right wing folks getting the information for the out there crap, like Biden being in China's pocket?  I have guesses, but I'm bored with this entry.  

Wrapping this up, it's become clear to me that the further one goes down the right wing media food chain, the further away from fact based information you become.  It's also crystal clear right wing media is far more interested in indoctrinating their users than the MSM.  In fact, some are outright propaganda.  This all leads to a question for the right, which is are liberals the ones being brainwashed?  

No, My Dog Doesn't Want to Play!

As one might imagine, there are a fair amount of dogs in the subdivision I live in.  In the middle of the subdivision, there's a park, which is roughly 75 meters square, and many of us use it as an area to walk our dogs.  Most of us understand the unwritten "rules of the road", when it comes to meeting other dogs, within the park, which typically involves whoever gets there first owns their track, whether that be clockwise or anticlockwise.  

We do this because some dogs don't like other dogs and direct contact could be unpleasant.  My dog doesn't like most of the dogs she sees, although there are some she mostly ignores.  But again, caution is better than a dog fight, unless your name is Maverick.  

Tonight, when we reached the park, there were two other people with their dogs.  One (Dog 1) was in the center, off lead, but well behaved.  The other (Dog 2) was on the same side as me, but headed away, so I went in the opposite direction to eliminate contact.  Much to my chagrin, this individual crossed the park and I found myself headed to a contretemps between Dog 1 and Dog 2.  It seems the well behaved off lead dog (Dog 1) wasn't perfect in the return command.  At this point, I reversed course and headed the other way, mildly annoyed at Dog 2's owner for dicking around.  

After my dog and I got around the corner of the park, I see Dog 2 and owner jogging across the park in my direction.  At that point, I passed through annoyance into pissed.  As Dog 2's owner got closer, he asked if mine wanted to play.  WTF???  My response was quite pleasant for me.  "No she doesn't want to play, which is why I kept changing direction to get away from you!"  I'll take the pat on the back for not using the words "dumb fuck".  

Bannon Behind Hunter Biden Smear Campaign

Someone sent an article to me and it's quite eye opening.  If you're at all curious where the material from Hunter's laptop you've seen came from, read on.  

Spoiler alert:  If you think Hunter Biden slept with underage women or that he and the President are being blackmailed by China, congratulations, you've been played by Steve Bannon and the Chinese. 

In my previous laptop entry, I noted how Rudy received a copy of the hard drive from the computer repair guy and how at some point after, numerous files were added to the drive.  From there, the "augmented" drive made its way to the New York Post to be used in the story everyone knows about.  The FBI and CBS News have the original version.  Some of the nude photos of Hunter wound up on Twitter.  These are the tweets highlighted in the Twitter Files that were removed at the behest of the Biden campaign.  These tweets were a violation of Twitter TOS and laws against revenge porn.  All facts, confirmed by multiple sources.  

The outstanding question that I hadn't considered was how those photos, along with similar videos made their way onto the internet.  

The article, which I've linked to, explains how Steve Bannon worked with the Chinese and developed a smear campaign against Hunter Biden, in the hopes of influencing the 2020 election.  

Article

This is all detailed in the article, but since it's a long read, I've highlighted a few key sections below.  The italicized portions are direct copy paste. 

The third tweet cited in Taibbi’s screenshot, the Internet Archive shows, came from an account that features a logo and slogan indicating the user is a member of New Federal State of China. The NFSC is an organization set up in 2020 by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese mogul, who has aggressively promoted false claims about Covid vaccines and the 2020 election. Numerous former allies, and multiple lawsuits, have accused of him of working as an agent for the Chinese government. 

This would be the same Guo whose yacht Bannon was arrested on.  Apparently Guo has a small army of followers, who support him in his "endeavors".  

In another message, referring to various Hunter videos, Guo ordered: “Post one right now, one every hour from now on…I want everyone to fully promote it.”

But they didn't just post these pictures and videos; they created false narratives to accompany them. 

 

According to multiple people involved in distributing the material, Guo ordered them to claim that the laptop material included images of Hunter Biden having sex with underage Chinese girls. There is no evidence supporting this allegation against Hunter. Guo also told subordinates to assert that the Chinese government had obtained the material and used it to blackmail both Hunter and Joe Biden.

Worth repeating is I'm not taking Hunter Biden's side.  If he broke the law, he should be punished accordingly.  However, there's no verified evidence from any reputable source of any wrongdoing, particular involving the President.  Only innuendo and hearsay, which is proof of nothing.  

In conclusion, one should always question the source and motives behind the "earthshattering" revelations you read, particularly on the internet.  

PS - Others who've shared this article on Twitter are being shadow banned; it's documented.  Another example of Elmo's hypocrisy and allegiance to the far right.  

Elon Musk, Twitter, and Grooming

Elon Musk has been celebrated by the far right for probably close to a year now, participating and in some cases, propagating right wing talking points.  However, since acquiring Twitter, Elmo has risen to demigod status with the group.  The amount of fawning over him in far right circles is quite honestly astounding.  There are literally people calling him things like the most significant American ever and greatest advocate for free speech the country has ever had.  But is he the savior they think he is?  On a side note, see if you can spot the parallels between Elmo and another right wing idol. 

He tweets random, vague phrases which his followers devour as though it's wisdom from heaven.  The rest of us see them as the faux intellectual nonsense they are.  He could tweet about a dump he took and they'd consider him even more of a messiah.  Because he's one of them.  

As I've already mentioned, the first dump of the Twitter Files was a nothing burger that the right was practically orgasmic over.  If you recall, it said both presidential campaigns had access to request the removal of certain tweets and that Twitter suppressed the NYP story about Hunter Biden's laptop.  Twitter being a non-government entity, it's free to do that.  But Elmo is on the scene to make things right in the world.  

Last night saw the second dump of Twitter material and it was an even bigger non-event, at least for most users.  It essentially confirmed they moderated content, as they saw fit, per their TOS.  Again, the right wing screamed for blood, since most of the accounts suppressed were theirs.  Who knew that stochastic terrorism and disseminating false information wouldn't be well received?  On the flip side, they again hailed Elmo as the messiah that would amplify their voices, allowing them to properly propagate patently false lies to their followers.  (Did you know that many right wingers believe we have literally open borders?)

While it's obvious Elmo is courting the far right, because he's one of them, it's equally obvious to me his motivation lies beyond providing a platform for free speech for them.  First and foremost, the man is a certifiable narcissist and the adoration he receives from the right provides sustenance to his voracious ego.  You can see this in his increasing number of faux intellectual tweets.  

The second is because he sees these rabid fans as a gravy train.  Most people are aware that Twitter has lost 80% of its advertising revenue, due to concerns over Musk's right wing ilk and lack of stability.  He attempted to bring revenue in via his ill-conceived and poorly executed $8 monthly fee, that he killed after a few days, and a verified fake account drove millions of value out of medical companies' stock.   However, if he can't fund the platform with advertising, the best avenue toward profitability remains revenue from users, which is his end game with the far right.  He thinks they'll love him enough to support a massive take rate on a monthly fee.  Considering their record of giving their money to their idols, I'd say he's right.  In other words, he's a groomer.  The elephant in the room is there aren't enough right wingers to completely offset the lost ad revenue.  

Back to content moderation, which is where Elmo is essentially trolling the right wingers.  They clearly think Twitter will be a complete free for all, where they'll be the dominant voices, because Elmo loves them.  If you read the tweet below, which seems to have been conveniently passed over by his cult, you'll see that won't be the case.  Even crazy Elmo knows that if he doesn't keep the far right out of the general population, the mass exodus by the rest of society, and complete abandonment by advertisers will accelerate.  Elmo's banking on the far right not noticing they're only seeing each other and based upon their gullibility, he's probably right.  

So, if you're one of the many Elmo worshipers, be aware you're being groomed.

Of course, this is all predicated on the platform not imploding, as various staff continue to exodus.  Today saw two key members of its Trust and Safety Council resign over Elmo's policies causing a decline in safety.

It seems the far right has an affinity for wealthy, faux intelligent and self made, pied pipers who secretly despise their followers.

Drag Shows and Right Wing Hypocrisy

 One of the pillars of conservatism has always been self-reliance; work hard and you won't need handouts, you're responsible for yourself and your family.  A recent addition to "conservative values" is that a parent knows better than anyone else how to educate their children.  I have thoughts on that at the end, but for once, I won't digress.  These two themes are repeated over and over from right wing voices, so I'll consider them to be without dispute.  

Drag Shows
As it moves further toward the extreme, the right has become obsessed with drag shows, in particular ones billed as family friendly.  They're angry that these shows are tantamount to what they call grooming, convincing children who attend to become drag performers (I guess?).  First, normalizing something doesn't do that; the brain doesn't work that way.  I could write a whole post on the grooming topic, but I'm not an expert, so won't.  Back to drag shows, the right wingers claim the shows aren't suitable for children.  In all honesty, they may be right in some cases, but it doesn't matter, as you'll see.  

This sentiment (if you believe them), has caused a documented spike in harassment and violence toward the LGBTQ community.  There are social media accounts, the worst being Libs of TikTok, who publicize dates and times of these shows, for the sole purpose of stochastic terrorism.  The person who runs it says it's purely for awareness, but that claim goes well beyond disingenuous.  With the information these accounts provide, armed right wing looneys, wearing face masks, frequently show up to protest these shows.  Strike that, when you show up openly armed to the teeth, you're no longer protesting, but engaging in intimidation  But the right's activity has begun to gravitate further toward violence.  On the extreme, some shot up a substation here in North Carolina just to stop a drag show.  Forty thousand people without power; a life threatening situation for many, all because of bigotry.  On a side note, I don't think the act was organized so much as a few hillbillies being bigoted inbreds.  With their history and path toward escalation in clear view, it's a matter of time before the right wing shoots more than power stations.  

The Hypocrisy

To summarize, the hard right is trying to destroy something they don't like so that parents (for all age shows) don't have the choice of whether to take their kids, who they know what's best for.  In other words, the hard right doesn't really adhere to their own values.  When they decide they hate something, for reasons noted below, they want it destroyed, full stop.  I may not be a child development expert, but "destroy things that you don't agree with" may not be the message to send to your children.  But it isn't about protecting children, is it?

Parents and Education
As I mentioned above, one of the new cries from the hard right is they know best what education their children need.  In other words, a single mother from the Midwest, with a GED, who's never left her home state has a better understanding of learning development than a properly trained educator who's dedicated their life to it.  Nothing more to be said there, because it's ludicrous.  

This, of course, has nothing to do with proper education, so much as them not wanting their kids exposed to subjects they're intolerant of.  Anything to do with whites not being the master race or gender.  CRT is one of the buzzwords here.  Here's your parting piece of hypocrisy - these parents are angry over what right wing media tells them their kids are being taught, but never actually engage with educators to learn the true story. 

Athletes Dropping Like Flies

I wrote this during the height of the pandemic, but never felt the need to publish it.  However, Dr. Fauci's recently testifying has apparently whipped the Trumpanzees back into an anti vax frenzy, fueled by (big surprise) falsehoods in right wing media.  

 Yes, this is another 'today with the right wingers' post, but this one's a lot less controversial than most (my debunking didn't get me called a cocksucker).  Call it an observation and identification of weaponized facts that lack context.  It piqued my interest, so I did a smidge of investigation.  

One of the assertions from the hard right is that the vaccines have caused a massive spike in cardiomyopathy among the younger of those who've received the vaccine.  "Children are dying because of the shot!" , along with a picture (that I neglected to attach) of literally every person resembling an athlete who died recently they could find.  

A quick survey of a few of the names confirmed they'd all passed recently, although none of the ones I looked at had any sort of COD identified.  But for the purpose of playing along with the intent of the post to shock readers and lead lead them to a certain conclusion, I'll pretend all died of cardiac failure.  Surely, that many of them dying in the same way isn't normal.  Except when it is normal. 

One article from July of 2010 (pre-pandemic) article I found said: The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that approximately 2,000 people under the age of 25 die from sudden cardiac arrest in the U.S. each year. It is the leading cause of death in young athletes in the United States – resulting in 1 death in a high school student every 3 days, according to some experts.

Indeed, I recall hearing about students dropping dead on athletic fields from time to time.  If you want to learn more about the underlying causes, feel free to research on your own.  In any case, this is another example of why you should always be skeptical of what you read and careful about jumping to the same conclusions as the author.

TL;DR - Unfortunately, young athletes dying due to cardiac arrest is nothing new and not something suddenly caused by Covid vaccines.

Links to a few prepandemic articles, all saying the same thing:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017912/

https://cme.lww.com/files/SuddenCardiacArrestinPediatrics-1475006727808.pdf

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/129/4/e1094/32355/Pediatric-Sudden-Cardiac-Arrest?autologincheck=redirected