Things seem to be going quite well for Joe Biden

[hobbes2702 13,509]

2 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Other than meth and hookers?

Yes other than that. What do you think board members do?

And you’re still not gonna provide us that testimony right? Just ignoring that one?

[bad_teammate 13,567]

17 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

If consistency includes things that aren’t true then sure. You have gone away from this being influence peddling because it can’t be proven. Now you’re just on nepotism, which also can’t be proven.

The conversation moved on with 5 different people barking at me.

I'm happy to continue talking about that if you want, though.

There are accusations that Joe has received monetary benefits from Hunter's dealings. I don't believe them, but when you have a failson child of nepotism paid millions by a foreign concern wanting influence it's hard to maintain an actual moral standard against that sort of thing. It's unacceptable. Even the potentiality of that is unacceptable. Our leadership and representative should be beyond reproach.

[Brisketexan 107,031]

Yes other than that. What do you think board members do?
And you’re still not gonna provide us that testimony right? Just ignoring that one?

Can I give you my testimony?

[Enchubben 5,600]

6 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

Yes other than that. What do you think board members do?

And you’re still not gonna provide us that testimony right? Just ignoring that one?

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34,108]

20 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Hunter Biden himself said he had no knowledge of Ukraine or natural gas. He also admitted he probably would not have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden.  

He was unqualified to be a board member of a foreign gas company in a country he knew nothing about. 

so, that's illegal? you have never worked a job you were not qualified for? I have. It was great. I learned new shit and new skills and it helped me forward in life. I assume you were born with all the knowledge you ever needed?

[MC Fresh Breath 4,075]

 

Quote

 

With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story

Unprecedented efforts to squelch information about a New York Post story may prove to be more dangerous corruption than whatever Hunter Biden did with a crooked Ukrainian energy company

Matt Taibbi

Oct 24

325

271

 

The incredible decision by Twitter and Facebook to block access to a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with Twitter going so far as to lock the 200 year-old newspaper out of its own account for over a week, continues to be a major underreported scandal.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Imagine the reaction if that same set of facts involved the New York Times and any of its multitudinous unverifiable “exposes” from the last half-decade: from the similarly-leaked “black ledger” story implicating Paul Manafort, to its later-debunked “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story, to its mountain of articles about the far more dubious Steele dossier. Internet platforms for years have balked at intervening at many other sensational “unverified” stories, including ones called into question in very short order:

Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait

Why Julie Swetnick's allegations spell doom for Brett Kavanaugh nymag.com/daily/intellig…

September 26th 2018

180 Retweets404 Likes

 

The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized – bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms – that it’s become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing. Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, and you’re likely to be shown a pile of “fact-checks” and explainers ahead of the raw information:

 

 

Other true information has been scrubbed or de-ranked, either by platforms or by a confederation of press outlets whose loyalty to the Democratic Party far now overshadows its obligations to inform.

Obviously, Fox is not much better, in terms of its willingness to report negative information about Trump and Republicans, but Fox doesn’t have the reach that this emerging partnership between mass media, law enforcement, and tech platforms does. That group’s reaction to the New York Post story is formalizing a decision to abandon the media’s old true/untrue standard for a different test that involves other, more politicized questions, like provenance and editorial intent.

Take the example of the taped conversations between Joe Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrei Derkach has been rolling out in press conferences for some time now.

Derkach is a highly suspicious character to say the least, a man even Rudy Giuliani assessed as having a “50/50” chance of being a Russian agent. He has for some time now been disseminating information that is clearly beneficial to Russian interests.

Nonetheless, the Biden/Poroshenko recordings he’s released appear to be real. Still, Atlantic columnist Edward-Isaac Dovere this summer bragged about how media members learned their lesson after the experience of 2016, when (real) emails from the DNC suspected of being hacked by Russians were released by Wikileaks. The correct path instead is for a priesthood of “mainstream” outlets to assess whether or not the material has enough news value to publish:

It’s hard not to feel some déjà vu here. In 2016, Russian intelligence agents hacked the emails of Democratic National Committee staffers and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and delivered them to WikiLeaks, as a way to get them into the American media. Some outlets learned a lesson from that episode, and have treated new Biden recordings out of Ukraine with care…

Most mainstream-media outlets have decided that the recordings that have emerged so far offer “little new insight into Biden’s actions in Ukraine,” as The Washington Post’s Carol Morello wrote after the recordings were first released.

However they came to reach the public, the Biden-Poroshenko tapes are a newsworthy window into how America leverages its power to impact the lives of every single person in countries like Ukraine. One amazing exchange came on May 16, 2016, when Poroshenko pleaded with Biden to approve an aid package:

Poroshenko: I think that within the last three weeks, we demonstrate real great progress in the sphere of reforms. We voted in the parliament for 100% tariffs despite the fact that the IMF expected only 75%… We are launching reform for the prices for medicine, removing all the obstacles.

Biden: I agree.

Poroshenko was telling Joe Biden that in order to get an American aid package, he’d gone beyond even what the I.M.F. asked for and raised energy prices for ordinary Ukrainians not by 75%, but by 100%, as well as taking steps to curtail subsidized medicine prices.

This is clearly newsworthy, but the few outlets like the Washington Post that even bothered to report on these tapes only did so to convey their distaste for the source, and to relay news that the Biden camp believed it all to be “a continuation of a long-standing Russian effort to hurt the former vice president.”

Press outlets began some time ago to describe such material as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” even though items like the Derkach tapes (or the leaked calls between State Department officials Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should be Ukraine’s interim leader after the Euromaidan revolution) are neither. Both terms normally require an element of “false information.”

In one recent AP story, reporters spent more time asking Twitter and Facebook why they’d allowed material from the Derkach tapes to be spread than they did weighing the truth of the information in the tapes. Their conclusion was a warning from “disinformation fellow” Nina Jankowicz from the “non-partisan Wilson Center,” about Twitter and Facebook rules that allowed some of this information through:

That’s a loophole foreign and domestic troublemakers are inclined to continue exploiting before Election Day, Jankowicz said.

“If you get a piece of information in the hands of the right American, it can absolutely spin out of control and make the national news in a couple of days,” she said.

Connecticut Senator Senator Chris Murphy, racing past Adam Schiff in his candidacy to become this era’s more odorless and colorless version of McCarthy, went even further this week, telling CNN that Russian disinformation efforts are “more problematic” than in 2016. He said this was because “this time around, the Russians have decided to cultivate U.S. citizens as assets. They are attempting to try to spread their propaganda in the mainstream media.”

Note that unlike the Derkach tapes, where the foreign interference issue is obvious, the New York Post material hasn’t been conclusively tied to Russia (it has also been denied by the Director of National Intelligence, not that blue-state audiences care). Nonetheless, politicians and pundits alike freely make such accusations.

In an interview with Yahoo!’s “On the Move” program, anchor Adam Shapiro became one of the only members of the press — think of how shameful that is — to ask a prominent Democrat to make a statement about the veracity of the New York Post story. Shapiro asked Murphy:

Even if it’s an outright lie, or Russian… some kind of interference… We haven’t heard the Bidens say it’s absolutely not true. We haven’t heard Hunter Biden say that or the Senator say that. Do they need to say that?

To which Murphy replied, “I mean, what a victory for Russian propaganda, that we’re talking about this right now.” He went on to non-answer the question, which has essentially been declared illegitimate, by the press first of all. The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.

If the problem is “American citizens” being cultivated as “assets” trying to put “interference” in the mainstream media, the logical next step is to start asking Internet platforms to shut down accounts belonging to any American journalist with the temerity to report material leaked by foreigners (the wrong foreigners, of course – it will continue to be okay to report things like the “black ledger”). From Fox or the Daily Caller on the right, to left-leaning outlets like Consortium or the World Socialist Web Site, to writers like me even – we’re all now clearly in range of new speech restrictions, even if we stick to long-ago-established factual standards.

As has been hinted at by several prominent journalists, controversies erupted within newsrooms across New York and Washington in the last week. Editors have been telling charges that any effort to determine whether or not the Biden laptop material is true, or to ask the Biden campaign to confirm or deny the story, will either not be allowed or put through heightened fact-checking procedures.

On the other hand, if you want to assert without any evidence at all that the New York Post story is Russian interference, you can essentially go straight into print.

Many people on the liberal side of the political aisle don’t have a problem with this, focused as they are on the upcoming Trump-Biden election. But this same press corps might be weeks away from assuming responsibility for challenging a Biden administration. If they’ve already calculated once that a true story may be buried for political reasons because the other “side” is worse, they will surely make that same calculation again.

What happens a month from now when an ambitious Republican like Tom Cotton leaks a document damaging to a President-Elect Biden? Or two years from now, if in the weeks before midterm elections, we get bad economic news, or a Biden/Harris administration foreign policy initiative takes a turn for the worse? Are we sure those stories will be run?

The Republican version of Burisma story – essentially, that former General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin was Elliott Ness, and Joe Biden intervened to fire him specifically to aid his son’s company – is also not supported by evidence. What Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his cohorts have done to date is take a few unreported or under-reported facts and leap straight to a maximalist interpretation of corruption on Joe Biden’s part.

This isn’t right, but the room to make that argument has been created by the ongoing squelching of information coming from Ukraine. The suppression story is almost certainly a bigger scandal than the Hunter Biden affair itself, but it’s all become part of the same picture.

As I learned from sources in Ukraine this week, the biggest misconception has to do with the question of whether or not investigations of Burisma were ongoing at the time of Joe Biden’s intervention in 2015.

As noted last week, the term “dormant” has been an all-but-mandatory element of Western news coverage, when describing the status of investigations into the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat during the tenure of Viktor Shokin. The slippery term “dormant” recognizes that cases existed, but suggests they weren’t really being worked on in earnest, a near-impossible thing to disprove.

After the “Euromaidan” revolution in February, 2014 deposed president Viktor Yanukovich, American officials essentially hand-picked the country’s next leader, Arseniy Yatsenuk. As then-Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said in that leaked conversation in early 2014, “We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing.” Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland put it like this, “Yats is the guy who has the economic experience.”

“Yats” did indeed have “economic experience.” A former Central Banker, he was the Western choice for an obvious reason: he planned to implement the austerity measures the West wanted all along. This earned him comparisons to Mario Monti, former Prime Minister of Italy. That former Goldman, Sachs advisor and Italian “technocrat” pushed through “pension reform,” increased taxes, and other measures designed to reassure European Central Bankers and foreign investment banks alike that Italy would control social spending. The West wanted the same neoliberal package passed in Ukraine.

This pattern of not-always-welcome American interference in Ukrainian affairs may have ended up indirectly impacting the Burisma investigations. After “Euromaidan,” American officials stressed the need to investigate and prosecute oligarchs loyal to the previous administration, with Mykola Zlochevsky and Burisma being a major example. There were real reasons to go after many of these targets, as well as other individuals (like the 17 riot police officers responsible for gunning down 100 protesters during the Maidan protests), but there was a political component to this as well: Western interests wanted to make sure powerful oligarchs with ties to Russia were not left in place to exert influence.

After the revolution, career police and anti-corruption official named Vitaly Yarema was brought in with expectations he would make sweeping arrests. He didn’t, and ended up being dismissed in February, 2015. One of the main reasons he had to step down was because of an incident in which the British Serious Fraud office asked for documents related to a case involving Zlochevsky in order to seize $23 million in funds belonging to him. The General Prosecutor’s Office stalled the case for two weeks by transferring it to the Internal Affairs Ministry — just long enough to muddy the British seizure efforts.

American press reports frequently and (at least somewhat) erroneously lay this episode at the feet of Shokin – witness New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg saying it was “Shokin’s office” that “[subverted] a British case.” The affair took actually place under Yarema’s watch, although Shokin briefly had responsibility for the case at one point.

Shokin was appointed Prosecutor General on February 10th, 2015, and got positive reviews initially. Within the first few days of his tenure, he reorganized the Prosecutor General’s office, had a well-known oligarch named Oleksandr Yeferemov arrested, and replaced the prosecutor who had failed to bring charges against police who’d shot Maidan protesters, among other things.

There was criticism during Shokin’s tenure that he was a good “company man,” who allowed politically sensitive cases to be steered to special sectors, like his Department of Particularly Important Economic Cases, perhaps at the behest of superiors like Poroshenko. In one instance, Poroshenko was accused in the summer of 2015 of using the special department to try to wrest control of the energy giant NaftoGaz from oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

If Shokin’s sloth on fighting corruption or passivity in allowing Poroshenko to use the office for political ends bothered Americans, it didn’t show right away. Exhibits in a Senate report show an email from American George Kent to fellow diplomat William Taylor in August of 2015, explaining that three-time Ukrainian Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun met with the Americans in the hope of getting his old job back — and was rebuffed.

“This spring, we had former PG Piskun trying to meet/spin us with an eye toward replacing Shokin,” Kent wrote. “Points for chutzpah if nothing else.”

 

For all the negative press about Shokin, there’s no doubt that there were multiple active cases involving Zlochevsky/Burisma during his short tenure. This was even once admitted by American reporters, before it became taboo to describe such cases untethered to words like “dormant.” Here’s how Ken Vogel at the New York Times put it in May of 2019:

When Mr. Shokin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering. Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. 

Ukrainian officials I reached this week confirmed that multiple cases were active during that time.

“There were different numbers, but from 7 to 14,” says Serhii Horbatiuk, former head of the special investigations department for the Prosecutor General’s Office, when asked how many Burisma cases there were.

“There may have been two to three episodes combined, and some have already been closed, so I don't know the exact amount." But, Horbatiuk insists, there were many cases, most of them technically started under Yarema, but at least active under Shokin.

The numbers quoted by Horbatiuk gibe with those offered by more recent General Prosecutor Rulsan Ryaboshapka, who last year said there were at one time or another “13 or 14” cases in existence involving Burisma or Zlochevsky.

Shokin, Horbatiuk says, was a typical Ukrainian prosecutor, who slow-walked sensitive cases unless otherwise instructed.

“In our law enforcement agencies, there’s an idea that’s driven into the heads of prosecutors and investigators: ‘If there’s no mandate from the leadership that this needs to be investigated quickly, then I don’t have to bother.’” In that capacity, he says, “we definitely struggled with the influence of Shokin.”

One of the Burisma-related cases that appears to have been active under Shokin involved Sergei Kurchenko, a Russian racketeer who was accused of seizing property by force in the disputed Donbass territories and using those assets to fund deals with Zlochevsky and Burisma. The money in the London branch of BNP-Paribas that the British Serious Fraud Office attempted to seize contained funds from Kurchenko, according to British court documents.

As I mentioned last week, this case was described by the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta last fall, after the beginning of the Trump-Zelensky phone call scandal. In the Novaya Gazeta piece, reporter Yulia Latynina printed a photograph of what appeared to be a Ukrainian official investigatory document, suggesting that funds had traveled from Kurchenko to Burisma to Hunter Biden’s company, Rosemont-Seneca:

 

 

Asked about the Novaya Gazeta story involving Kurchenko, Horbatiuk says, “Yes, I heard something like that.” He recalled the case involved “the sale of liquefied gas at low prices. This was connected with the Ministry of Ecology, where Zlochevsky was.”

Another document suggesting the presence of an open case against Burisma is a February 4, 2016 order requesting the seizure of Zlochevsky’s property. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler has already written an article attempting to explain away this document by saying it was “largely a technical reinstatement of a court order that already had been in place for at least a year.”

Kessler focused on the fact that Republican Devin Nunes claimed that Joe Biden called Poroshenko three times after the “raid” on Zlochevsky’s property. He gave the Nunes claim four of his famous Pinocchios because “there would have been no reason for Biden to raise the supposed raid of Zlochevsky’s home in his phone calls.”

The first order was technically issued before Shokin took office, and appears not to have been acted on for the better part of a year, at which point Shokin transferred the case to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), which also did nothing. NABU’s excuse, according to one Ukrainian anti-corruption official contacted this week, was that it overwhelmed with “thousands” of such anti-corruption cases tied to the previous Yanukovich regime.

“They said, we can’t handle this trash, we can’t take all these old cases,” the source said. “We want to concentrate on new material.”

While the case was being “footballed” between NABU and the Prosecutor’s office, Zlochevsky’s lawyers succeeded in going to court and getting the action lifted. Right around this same time, Joe Biden came to Kiev and made his famous demand that Shokin be fired within six hours, or else Ukraine would not receive a billion dollars in foreign aid.

In Shokin’s telling, when he heard the story of Biden’s visit, he immediately went to see Poroshenko. “The conversation was like this, ‘Well, did Biden bring kompromat on me?’

“‘Vitya, he didn't bring shit on you,’” Shokin claims Poroshenko answered. To this, Shokin asked what he would do, and Poroshenko told him, “To hell with [Biden].”

This does fit a timeline of sorts. Shokin wasn’t fired in December of 2015, even though Biden demanded it. But the writing was on the wall. There were “regular discussions and ultimatums about me,” Shokin has said.

A little over a month after Biden’s famous visit, on February 2nd, 2016, it was indeed Shokin’s office that asked to reinstate the seizure order against Zlochevsky.

Was he doing this because he actually wanted to investigate Burisma, or because he knew what was coming and wanted to piss off the Americans? (Shokin had a difficult relationship with American officials from the start, among other things because American pressure reportedly forced him to hire Georgian prosecutor Davit Sakvareledze as a deputy). Or was it for some other reason, like for instance that he was seeking a bribe or sticking it to some other official? It’s the same question that has to be asked about the tax evasion and gas license cases opened against Burisma by Shokin at the start of his tenure.

It’s not clear, but one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order that got him fired. In his telling, Poroshenko called him and told him it was over. Shokin asked “under what sauce” he’d be dismissed. “Maybe you have health problems?” a bemused Poroshenko is said to have replied.

Bullshit or not, the fact that an official accusing Americans of corruption was dismissed at the behest of American politicians is not a great look. The story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular.

In the “misinformation” tapes released by Derkach, we learned two things pertinent to this. In one exchange on February 18th, 2016, Poroshenko made sure to point out to Biden that he has done as he’s told, and fired Shokin despite an absence of evidence of corruption:

Poroshenko: Despite the fact that we don’t have any corruption charge, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong… I specially asked him to resign… Despite the fact that he has the support of parliament… One hour ago he gave me the written statement of his resignation.

Biden: Great.

Poroshenko: This is the second step of my keeping my promise.

Biden: I agree.

In another moment on March 22, 2016, Poroshenko asked Biden if he was okay with his chosen replacement for Shokin:

Poroshenko: If you think that the politically motivated figure is not very good from your point of view, I will recall this proposal. Because nobody knows that I want to nominate Lutsenko.

Biden: Alright, well, look, let me… huddle with my team, talk over what you and I just talked about. I agree with you there is a sense of urgency here.

This shows that Biden was personally asked if he wanted to veto Lutsenko. It appears he did not. It may or may not have been the Americans’ intention for it to work out this way, but the fact is, all proceedings against Burisma were closed within a year or so of those conversations.

In September, 2016, Ukrainian court officials asked the Prosecutor’s office to terminate the fugitive status of Zlochevsky. Less than a month later, Lutsenko closed a tax-evasion case involving the company, and within a year, there were no more cases left in the hopper against Burisma. “All cases against Burisma were closed,” is how Lutsenko put it.

Horbatiuk and others say that none of Yarema, Shokin, and Lutsenko showed resolve in prosecuting Burisma. One analyst went so far as to say, “I think Zlochevsky paid Yarema, then paid Shokin, then paid Lutsenko to close his case.”

However, Horbatiuk was quick to point out, this was nothing compared to the difficulties his office dealt with under Shokin’s successor, Yuri Lutsenko.

“Compared to Lutsenko,” Horbatiuk says, “Shokin was an angel.”

None of this fits what the New York Post described as “smoking gun” evidence of corruption by Joe Biden. But it does show several things that have been quietly non-reported on our side of the Atlantic.

One is that Shokin, at least early in his short tenure, opened several cases against Burisma (including a tax evasion matter), while inheriting several others. Two, even after most American newspapers were describing Burisma cases as “dormant,” there was evidence of open investigations, including one that specifically mentioned Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont-Seneca, and another involving the seizure order of February 2016 for which Shokin does appear to have responsibility.

Lastly, it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month.

This is all information that the press should want to ask more about, even before the issue of the emails in the New York Post story. They may not be world-shaking matters. But if such stories become off-limits just because they make the wrong people look bad, we do have a serious problem, no matter who wins the presidency.

 

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/with-the-hunter-biden-expose-suppression

[Sawbonz 28,245]

3 hours ago, Enchubben said:

Do either of you have google? Christ you’re like my 6 year old, get your own glass or water, you’re big enough. 

You made an assertion. Back it up. I want to see the testimony

[Enchubben 5,600]

Just now, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

so, that's illegal? you have never worked a job you were not qualified for? I have. It was great. I learned new shit and new skills and it helped me forward in life. I assume you were born with all the knowledge you ever needed?

Where did I or anyone else say him getting a position he was unqualified for was illegal? 

[Dahobbs 18,399]

4 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

I'm quite confident you're just making shit up, googled that shit, and have no idea what the words actually mean. See my post above. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

5 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

Yet you felt the need to respond with another long ass stupid post to all the rest? 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34,108]

Just now, Enchubben said:

Where did I or anyone else say him getting a position he was unqualified for was illegal? 

well, if it's not, then what is the fucking problem? why are we talking about it? 

[hobbes2702 13,509]

8 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

“Interviews with more than a dozen people, including executives and former prosecutors in Ukraine, paint a picture of a director who provided advice on legal issues, corporate finance and strategy during a five-year term on the board, which ended in April of this year.

Biden never visited Ukraine for company business during that time, according to three of the people.”
 

This is what Hunter Biden did on the board. Which of those things do you think an experienced Ivy League lawyer can’t do?

Ok so we can just assume you were lying then since you’re unable to provide evidence for your claim. This shouldn’t be that hard. The onus is not on us to prove your claim. That you’re unable to do so is no real surprise.

Edited October 25, 2020 by hobbes2702

[StassneyHorn 6,790]

Members of the Board do nothing but expense a shit ton of money galavanting around 4 locations a year to spend a shit ton of money and cheat on their spouses, while having unanimous votes on issues that could have been resolved with a phone call.

Hunter Biden has a resume more impressive than 95% of them. But he also did exactly what I typed above.

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34,108]

2 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Members of the Board do nothing but expense a shit ton of money galavanting around 4 locations a year to spend a shit ton of money and cheat on their spouses, while having unanimous votes on issues that could have been resolved with a phone call.

Hunter Biden has a resume more impressive than 95% of them. But he also did exactly what I typed above.

 

so which part should he be in jail for?

[Sawbonz 28,245]

11 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search

It’s ok. You can say it. They know

[BradInATX 9,208]

"I AM VERY CONCERNED ABOUT NEPOTISM"

- Really smart intellectually honest Trump voters

[StassneyHorn 6,790]

13 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

1st paragraph is the largest collection of business jargon and self smelling farts I have read in awhile.

3rd paragraph is laughable.

[StassneyHorn 6,790]

3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

so which part should he be in jail for?

Smoking crack, I guess? Shouldn’t be in jail

[Texas73 422]

29 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

He was unqualified to be a board member of a foreign gas company in a country he knew nothing about.

Is this worse than Trump being unqualified to be president of a country he knew nothing about?

[Texaspython 231]

B_T is maga, just in a different form. Completely idiotic, unwilling to listen, arrogant as hell, selfish as shit. 

[SizzleChest 8,314]

21 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Smoking crack, I guess? Shouldn’t be in jail

Like Scott Stapp, he's in his own prison.

[StassneyHorn 6,790]

I worked for a financial firm in Chicago where they had someone on the board who had no experience in financial services. He had a burrito chain called Burrito Beach, catered the meetings, and kept his mouth shut about the CEO having a side piece. No experience at all in that space. Everyone found out anyway about the infidelity, the CEO was ushered out of the company eventually after I left and given a seat on the board after he was cast aside. Burrito Beach guy is still there. I get emails every time some new PE firm takes a stake in the company about over buying my A share units and never respond.

Everyone wins.

Edited October 25, 2020 by StassneyHorn

[SizzleChest 8,314]

2 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

I worked for a financial firm in Chicago where they had someone on the board who had no experience in financial services. He had a burrito chain called Burrito Beach, catered the meetings, and kept his mouth shut about the CEO having a side piece. No experience at all in that space. Everyone found out anyway about the infidelity, the CEO was ushered out of the company eventually after I left and given a seat on the board after he was cast aside. Burrito Beach guy is still there. I get emails every time some new PE firm takes a stake in the company about over buying my A share units and never respond.

Everyone wins.

Sounds like this guy.

[BradInATX 9,208]

5 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

I worked for a financial firm in Chicago where they had someone on the board who had no experience in financial services. He had a burrito chain called Burrito Beach, catered the meetings, and kept his mouth shut about the CEO having a side piece. No experience at all in that space. Everyone found out anyway about the infidelity, the CEO was ushered out of the company eventually after I left and given a seat on the board after he was cast aside. Burrito Beach guy is still there. I get emails every time some new PE firm takes a stake in the company about over buying my A share units and never respond.

Everyone wins.

That's a great story.

Unqualified people get board seats all the time. The board we built at my last startup was almost purely Rolodex-based and had nothing to do with "strategy setting" or whatever Enchubben found when he googled "what does a board of directors do".

[HenryJames 67,466]

https://twitter.com/mattgertz/status/1320502326566805504?s=21

[hobbes2702 13,509]

4 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

https://twitter.com/mattgertz/status/1320502326566805504?s=21

I was told by @Enchubben that there was witness testimony and evidence though.

[JimmyJames 12,271]

2 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

I was told by @Enchubben that there was witness testimony and evidence though.

According to him you have to google it yourself though. Ima waiting for him to reveal the secret search terms though. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

53 minutes ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

The incredible decision by Twitter and Facebook to block access to a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with Twitter going so far as to lock the 200 year-old newspaper out of its own account for over a week, continues to be a major underreported scandal.

 

 

Essentially, Molloy says it better than I ever could and more succinctly. Tabloid going to tabloid, though.

 

[hobbes2702 13,509]

7 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

According to him you have to google it yourself though. Ima waiting for him to reveal the secret search terms though. 

I assume @Enchubben is gonna go back to the Q boards now and pretend this exchange never happened. 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

1 hour ago, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

At least give us the google search terms you want us to search to look up your bullshit point. You can type those out can’t you? 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20,950]

58 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

"I AM VERY CONCERNED ABOUT NEPOTISM"

- Really smart intellectually honest Trump voters

 

 

Ha ha! No fucking shit!  It is incredible to see vague Hunter Biden laptop bullshit and Joe Biden vs the incredible Trump taxpayer dollar slurping machine.

Obama LITERALLY gave them a handbook and a response team to use for pandemic response, having correctly identified it as a big threat. Trump promptly threw it away and disbanded the response team. 

 

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2,651]

Once trump is out of office, I have no issue investigation Biden for corruption.   I’m not blinded to the party, unlike those on the right. 
 

fuck all corrupt politicians.

 

hell, I’m on the record as saying we need to do a full background investigation on anyone running for president or senator.   We should also randomly select 20 or so people running for the house each election. 
 

results made open to the public. 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Xian

[Chooky 13,341]

2 hours ago, Enchubben said:

Hunter Biden himself said he had no knowledge of Ukraine or natural gas. He also admitted he probably would not have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden.  

He was unqualified to be a board member of a foreign gas company in a country he knew nothing about. 

Of course he wouldn't have been on that board without his name.  Look, I despise what aboutism, but there's a good reason the entire U.S. Senate isn't ready to scorch the earth about another senator's undeserved and highly lucrative position to each other's slobbish family members.  If you get elected to the Senate your nephew will get his financial knob polished if you're seen being nice to him just once in public.  It's shitty.  Always has been.

And whether you think he deserved it or not, a Georgetown undergrad and Yale law degree holds water.  None of us want to know what kind of privileges are being showered upon some of these slapdick morons who just happen to be the grown up cum of some successful politician.  

[Hank Kingsley 21,812]

7 hours ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Just stop. They will rationalize their hypocrisy and lack of integrity till the ends of days. 

Every accusation is a confession. 

 

[Enchubben 5,600]

1 hour ago, JimmyJames said:

According to him you have to google it yourself though. Ima waiting for him to reveal the secret search terms though. 

Oh now I think maybe I get it. You are taking issue with the word testimony I guess. Take your victory lap then. You’ve won the internet.  What I meant, and assumed an adult reading that would understand, was witness statement, which you can find in the secret search engine by searching tony bobulinski statement. 

 

[Biff Tannen 46,203]

Damn. @Dahobbs doing fucking WORK today. 

[TexEx15 17,959]

2 hours ago, Enchubben said:

Hunter Biden himself said he had no knowledge of Ukraine or natural gas. He also admitted he probably would not have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden.  

He was unqualified to be a board member of a foreign gas company in a country he knew nothing about. 

And trump was unqualified to be POTUS yet here we are.  

[bad_teammate 13,567]

What did they think the Tony Bobulinski thing was going to turn into? I never understood.

He says, "Oh totally Joe was getting money... I don't have any details or pictures or anything specific... but... totally!"

That's it?

[Bookman 4,769]

So is there any actual evidence of Joe Biden doing anything illegal or unethical? Or is this just more yammering?

[ndawg 1,242]

Just now, Enchubben said:

Depends on the organization. My experience with board members here in the US with for-profits is in so many words, to represent shareholders through electing executive leadership team, setting overall strategy and voting on various aspects of the business that come before it. 

That role changes depending on size and maturity of the organization and probably some other factors. Admittedly I am not a board member, but that’s been pretty consistent among the ones I have met.

Nothing in my experience would tell me the board members I have met, would feel prepared in taking a position like Hunters with the background he had.

And I don’t feel the need to respond to the same lazy question from people who refuse to do a basic internet search. 

You've never seen a company bring on a big name to their board that isn't expected to do anything beyond bestow the company with prestige and legitimacy by association? Really? You've never seen that?

[JimmyJames 12,271]

1 hour ago, Enchubben said:

Oh now I think maybe I get it. You are taking issue with the word testimony I guess. Take your victory lap then. You’ve won the internet.  What I meant, and assumed an adult reading that would understand, was witness statement, which you can find in the secret search engine by searching tony bobulinski statement. 

 

See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?

[BrazilHorn 6,857]

3 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

Board members wouldn't need to know anything about either of those things. He joined the board, ostensibly, to help provide guidance on proper corporate governance. As a Yale trained lawyer, that was right up his alley. 

Let me give you some examples from other major corporations:

ExxonMobil Board of Directors:

No oil and gas experience. 

No oil and gas experience.

No oil and gas experience. 

No oil and gas experience.

Shell Oil board of directors:

No oil and gas experience.

No oil and gas experience. 

No oil and gas experience.

It turns out, the primary qualification for being a board member is having done so before and being able to provide some unique perspective that is valuable to the board, or, you know, being an investor in the company. A well-trained and experienced American lawyer, venture capitalist, and businessman, who also has previous experience serving on the board of directors and board chairman of the World Food Program USA, is exactly the sort of person who is qualified to be a board member. 

I agree the Hunter Biden deal is BS and frankly nepotism is rampant everywhere, but you really cannot compare his experiences with these folks. He had nowhere near the chops of these people when he was awarded his position.

[Dahobbs 18,399]

1 minute ago, BrazilHorn said:

I agree the Hunter Biden deal is BS and frankly nepotism is rampant everywhere, but you really cannot compare his experiences with these folks. He had nowhere near the chops of these people when he was awarded his position.

Well, yes, I would expect Shell Oil and ExxonMobil to have board members with more experience. After all, those are huge international energy companies with yearly revenues hundreds of billions of dollars. Burisma, near as I can tell, had at most a few hundred million in yearly revenues, so 1/1000th the size. The point of course is that their experience has nothing to do with oil and gas. I'm also not sure you're really giving an honest look at Hunter Biden's resume. It ain't nothing and would be pretty attractive for companies that size. 

[BrazilHorn 6,857]

6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Well, yes, I would expect Shell Oil and ExxonMobil to have board members with more experience. After all, those are huge international energy companies with yearly revenues hundreds of billions of dollars. Burisma, near as I can tell, had at most a few hundred million in yearly revenues, so 1/1000th the size. The point of course is that their experience has nothing to do with oil and gas. I'm also not sure you're really giving an honest look at Hunter Biden's resume. It ain't nothing and would be pretty attractive for companies that size. 

I agree and it's funny I was going to say it could be comparable for a mid size company to look at him for a board spot. I will say if his last name wasn't Biden it wouldn't have been a remote possibility. I voted for his dad and to me this is nothing but standard "day to day" nepotism. You see this everywhere and in lots of industries. IDMAS.

Unless someone can show categorically that Big Biden was on the take somehow this is a total non-issue and just part of life.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

You've never seen a company bring on a big name to their board that isn't expected to do anything beyond bestow the company with prestige and legitimacy by association? Really? You've never seen that?

See Theranos.

George Schultz
Henry Kissinger
James Mattis

Those old farts don’t know shit about shit when it comes to medicine nor tech.

They were on that board to bring big time prestige names and - and don’t let me shock you - government and military access.

Pull the list of board members from every Fortune 500 company or the latest big thing from Silicon Valley and it will be lousy with Hunter Bidens.

[hobbes2702 13,509]

1 hour ago, Enchubben said:

Oh now I think maybe I get it. You are taking issue with the word testimony I guess. Take your victory lap then. You’ve won the internet.  What I meant, and assumed an adult reading that would understand, was witness statement, which you can find in the secret search engine by searching tony bobulinski statement. 

 

Ohhhh, so you’re a liar. Shocking.

[Brisketexan 107,031]

I agree and it's funny I was going to say it could be comparable for a mid size company to look at him for a board spot. I will say if his last name wasn't Biden it wouldn't have been a remote possibility. I voted for his dad and to me this is nothing but standard "day to day" nepotism. You see this everywhere and in lots of industries. IDMAS.
Unless someone can show categorically that Big Biden was on the take somehow this is a total non-issue and just part of life.

Good summary....and that’s pretty much my entire takeaway from the entire Hunter Biden saga that team Trump is so desperately trying to make happen.

Hunter, a dude with addiction issues and likely an unsavory sexual history, traded on the family name for cash...so, garden-variety unsavory stuff in the world of the well-connected. Nothing remotely firm or reliable showing that Joe was on the take with respect to any of it.

I mean, if we want to rant about how the well-connected get a shitload of unearned advantages from the family name, sure, ok, let’s have that conversation. But understand that folks who have sold their souls to support a man who, as president, has made his completely unqualified children and son in law senior US officials, need to sit the fuck down and SHUT. THE FUCK. UP. You don’t get to participate in that conversation. You spent four years destroying that privilege. So fuck right off.

[Sawbonz 28,245]

1 hour ago, Enchubben said:

Oh now I think maybe I get it. You are taking issue with the word testimony I guess. Take your victory lap then. You’ve won the internet.  What I meant, and assumed an adult reading that would understand, was witness statement, which you can find in the secret search engine by searching tony bobulinski statement. 

 

Words matter.  The word that would have aptly described the situation is not testimony but rather allegation. Uncorroborated or unsubstantiated would be appropriate modifiers. Unfounded and spurious would also likely apply; we will soon find out I’m sure. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34,108]

1 hour ago, Bookman said:

So is there any actual evidence of Joe Biden doing anything illegal or unethical? Or is this just more yammering?

Lol, nope. 

[MC Fresh Breath 4,075]

Nm