so did Obama and Trump in different ways but they did alright.. Joe Biden should have it in spades but he absolutely sucks at it..TexasScientist said:Ramaswamy has a lack of understanding and the importance of the US role on the world stage.4th and Inches said:Ramaswamy 2024!TexasScientist said:whiterock said:Smarts got nothing to do with it. This is about what is real and what is not.TexasScientist said:That's why I said they're smarter about it than Hunter. A little (sarcasm) here and there is easier to escape attention and easier to try to obfuscate and confuse the issue, and speciously argue.whiterock said:A reminder to correctly fill out a check is not a cover-up. It means, "make sure to make the check her company, not her, so we won't have yahoos alleging that we are paying her for something other than the work she actually did."TexasScientist said:It's interesting that you excuse Ginni but not Hunter. My liking Justice Thomas is not at issue. I liked him as a Justice until it came out he and his wife were receiving gifts and emoluments. Why do you think the donor instructed Conway to keep it quiet? The Thomas's are just a little more sophisticated about their grift and graft than Hunter.whiterock said:It's only irrelevant because your argument needs it to be.TexasScientist said:I don't approve of Hunter either. There are some similarities. Being in that business before they were married is irrelevant. It is his relationship and hers with Harlan Crow for example. He sits on the board of a lobby group that has interests in various cases that come before the SC. The Thomas's shouldn't be accepting gifts from him, or others for that matter. Your views are no different than the corruption in places like Mexico. Influence peddling has no place in our judicial system.whiterock said:There is no relationship between Judge Thomas and his wife's business clients. She was in that business when they married and has done it continuously for decades, and you have been unable to identify any cases where her clients were a plaintiff or defendant in a case before SCOTUS.Quote:No it's about the nature of the relationship to the officeholder and the financial interest of the person paying for influence. Under your standard, Hunter's activities shouldn't be questioned or reported.Quote:The double standard is all yours = a spouse of a judge may not engage in free enterprise without posing a conflict of interest to a judge, since a judge will hear cases concerning commerce.Quote:It's always been about anything of value, to him, his wife, family, or anything that he would have had to pay for himself if he were to pursue the same, or money paid quietly to his wife's company for commercial services rendered. Federal judges and congressmen cannot accept those things (no, but their spouses can hold employment for which they can be paid). Why do you think justices should be any less accountable? (I'm not suggesting they should be.) You haven't answered that quetion, and I can only surmise you have a double standard when it comes to people you support.Quote:quit moving the goal posts and covering the field with white chalk. Your statement above in bold was about cash. When I point out such is flatly not true, then you move to the travel and then inflate the value of it by 100x. Hopping a ride on a private plane rather than commercial is....well....I've done that with friends who own planes. It's what you do when your friends are going to the same place you are.Quote:Things of value were given. Doesn't have to be cash. Why do you resist holding our public officials to a high standard? Do you prefer third world graft? Requiring ethical behavior of our public officials is what sets us apart from the likes of Mexico, Colombia, and Venezueala. Look inward to who is dense. Don't be so naive.Quote:
What I described was a private-sector business entering into a contract with another private sector business, a contract to which no federal judge was party.
Geez you are dense.
Geez you arguments are so tedious.
Thomas didn't put any money in his pocket by forcing people to buy their stuff like another sitting justice did.
Same cannot be said about Hunter, who is patently in the business of selling access to elected officials in impromptu business ventures sitting astride the lines of US foreign policy.
Ginni Thomas has along career as a political consultant. 98% of political consultants have a career path that starts out as a legislative aide, then transitioning into election consulting, which inevitable leads into lobbying or related activities because the private sector is a far larger market of customers than the election business. Further, the private sector goes to work every day, every week, every month, every year, over decades and centuries. Elections, however, happen once every 2 years for about 6 months.
So Ginni did what millions of people have done before her, at a high level. One of the better ones in the business.. She just happened to marry a judge you don't like, so you're trying to turn every paycheck she ever EARNED into some kind of influence peddling scheme.
Hunter, on the other hand, does not have that kind of resume. He's the coke-head playboy son of a corrupt politician who made it thru law school then frequency hopped around from jobs in one industry after another, ending up doing business with foreign interests with whom the US had substantial aid packages over which his father had influence if not control. Wherever Joe went, Hunter followed along in the shadows. Classic influence peddling scheme, and not a terribly tidy one at that, given the dissolution seen on the laptop photos.
And here you are covering for him.
You just can't stand the fact that a justice you don't like has a wife with a successful career of her own. That's why you conflate her lifelong success with the actual grifting of a dissolute young man whose career prospects dovetail closely with US policy initiatives overseen by his father, literally getting hired by companies interfacing with his father.
Absolutely nothing like that has ever occurred with the Thomases.
In fact, I don't think Hunter ever took a vacation with any of his clients, because, unlike Ginni Thomas, he did have a need to keep things hush-hush.
Reality is, nobody lobbies a SCOTUS judge just in case they happen to have one of the infinitessimally small number of lawsuits that rise thru the courts all the way to SCOTUS. Millions of lawsuits are filed each year. About 50k make it to federal appeals court. In a good year, 8k of those federal cases bother to make a petition to SCOTUS. Less than 1% of those petitions get heard. Those are Lotto type odds. The guy who spends money year after year to surreptitiously lobby a SCOTUS judge just in case he might get lucky enough to get his case heard by SCOTUS is by any reasonable measure the dumbest SOB on earth.
Reality is, Ginni will still have a career after Judge Thomas retires. She had a lobbying business before he became a judge, because her skills and contacts existed before he became a judge. After he retires, she will still have a lobbying business for as long as she wants one, because her skills and contacts are neither connected to nor contingent upon her husband's position, in any conceivable way.
Reality is, Hunter is not too dumb to hide his influence peddling. He just can't afford to be discreet. He's on the clock. After his dad leaves office, the gig is up. He'll have nothing to sell. So he's got to fill the bag as much as he can as fast as he can.
Reallity is, politics is full of low-lifes who feel a sense of duty to smear people they cannot defeat with ideas.That's one reason why Trump shouldn't be renominated as the R candidate.Quote:
Reallity is, politics is full of low-lifes who feel a sense of duty to smear people they cannot defeat with ideas.
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