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On February 11 2023 08:00 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 07:29 Gorsameth wrote:On February 11 2023 07:15 BlackJack wrote:On February 10 2023 23:00 JimmiC wrote:On February 10 2023 20:11 BlackJack wrote:Here are the "Findings" from the Snopes article FINDINGS
From what we can tell, the man shown in the videos may really be named Jordon/Jordan Walker. The video and website for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center also may have shown and referenced the very same person. Further, Pfizer did not answer questions or provide information about the man identified as Walker either by email or in its statement, and email inboxes appeared to be active at the company for someone with the same name.
In an effort to see what other news organizations had found about the Project Veritas story, we noticed that Newsweek had established a rating of "Unverified."
Meanwhile, Medical Marketing and Media (MM+M) reported that its team had been "unable to verify that Walker works for Pfizer — or even exists," adding that "he lacks a digital presence on every major technology platform." (The article did not appear to make mention of the claims about the video or website listing for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.)
The MM+M story continued with, "It's worth noting that Project Veritas, while claiming to conduct investigative journalism, has a lengthy history of using ethically dubious tactics and deceptively editing videos to fit a conservative narrative."
Again, we have reached out to Project Veritas to obtain access to all of the raw footage so that we can look for clarifying information, and will update this article accordingly if we receive the video files. The first paragraph is what Snopes found and the rest is a blurb about what others have reported. If you think the first paragraph is somehow "the opposite" of what I said I suggest reading it again. JimmiC was able to read all that stuff that snopes found and still insist that this so called Jordon Walker still has "0 digital presence." A deleted linkedin page, stuff about him and med school, a research paper he co-authored, a medical license verified online, etc. I'm not sure if considers this not "digital" or not a "presence" or if it's all just fake. I'm guessing he's getting the "0 digital presence" from that other outlet, MM&M, that reported that they had been "unable to verify that Walker works for Pfizer — or even exists," adding that "he lacks a digital presence on every major technology platform." Some possibilities I see here A) All the stuff snopes found is just a figment of our imagination and this so-called Jordon Walker guy doesn't actually exist B) Someone that just got doxxed and humilated may not be to keen on maintaining a "digital presence" on the major tech platforms Dude this just proves you do not read what is posted and have 0 reading comprehension. Look two posts up, I posted the entire findings and their opening statement. Od dont cherry pick like you. I said they think a jordan walker worked there. I also said No where do they give any even speculation to his title or mention that what he says is correct, which is also factual. Only one person in our discussion is bejng dishonest and its not me. Thank you for further proof that you clearly do not read the posts you respond too. I know you do not believe you are down the rabbit hole but this obession you have with hunters laptop, msm and pv says you are, that you post opinions that match tuckers right after his, says you are. That your friend told you the PV was BS and you went out to prove to them there was truth to it, couldnt find it, and that only proved to you there was, says you are. That this was covered by fox news with tucker going into detail and you say no MSM says you are (fox news is not some small outlet). Its fine that you are, but you need to come to grips with it and stop getting all offended when people who are not down the rabbit hole to not think these assumptions are facts. Also, before you post a gotcha message maybe read the whole post and try to understand it. It is embarassing for you to be mad at my post and then post the exact same thing I did and not even adress any of the claims of my post but rather make up your own for me. What few people who still believe your schitck are going to struggle to continue too if you can not get over that PV is all lies. Even the small facts they produce are produced dishonestly to sell a dishonest message. This has been true of all their stories. And will be true at the next one. If you can not understand this statement to be true than you are too far gone. Jordan walker can be a real person, he can work at Pfizer and the rest of the video can all be false. It very likely is because of their past, because of his title being a fabrication, and because they highly edited the content, including natration to make it less true, and wont release it all. No real media can accurately disprove it so they write how unlikely it is and that it is unverified. If they could 100% prove or disprove they would have said that. They assume its false, for the reasons above, but they do not treat assumptions like facts the way you do so they do not declare it false. This should vreate credibility not the opposite. If you want to be mad at people for surpressing the true information your side needs, be mad at trumps inner circle for not ever producing the laptop and taking over a year to realease what you have called a nothing burger of data. They surpessed it not the legitimate news sources. The legitimate media simply asked for thr data to back the (turns out false, shocker) claims of evidemce tieing joe to corruption. You want to be mad that no one in legitimate news sources belives PV and is not covering it, be mad at PV for lying about his title, be mad at them for supressing the real video. Be mad at them for every story thay have ever released being dishonest. Legitimate news has rules about sources to keep their credibility, this is a good thing. It is a bad thing that so many people like you do not require, evidence, corroboration, trackrecord of honesty or anything to believe conspircys. It is a major massive problem because you make up such a huge percentage of the population and your low bar of evidence and high level of anger lets them point you in amy direction they want with no proof. I do not think defending PV and being mad that everyone is not taking them as a factual, honest deliverer of news is the hill you want to die on. Thanks for the essay on how Jordon Walker can be a real person that works at pfizer but the rest of the video can still be false. Unfortunately, as I have reiterated 10 times, I have never made any claims to the believability of the contents of the video. It's irrelevant to my point. My point is that there is some credibility to the claim that someone with a background in medicine/research and is employed by pfizer is on video talking about "gain-of-functiony stuff" and the majority on this forum believe that this is completely not newsworthy and should be ignored all while we yuck it up over a photo of DeSantis having a beer from a party 20 years ago that has been covered by every MSM outlet with the NYT taking the effort to track down some girls from one of the parties to get them on the record. It was a video by Project Veritas. Why should anyone give a shit about anything after they were caught for creating an entirely fake narrative with they Planned Parenthood video? They even lost a court case over it. This has been asked and answered. People should give a shit because the video has 31 million views on Twitter alone and across all platforms and mirrors, who knows. maybe double that? In fact quite a few people are in agreement with me that the reputable media should fact check such things and determine the truth as opposed to allowing people to retreat to their corners of the internet and believe what they want. Show nested quote +
And no one here is yucking it up over DeSantis, the only opinion I have seen is that it might not be entirely appropriate but is a complete nothing burger.
You seem to have made up your mind ages ago about what this conversation would be about and your entirely ignoring the reality of what is being said to play out your own fantasy of what should be said instead.
yucking it up just means joking around, which is what people were doing with the DeSantis picture as opposed to believing it was something worthwhile The people running off to shout "omg have you seen this horrible video about pfizer" are not listing to what you consider the MSM media in the first place.
Them debunking it didn't help the previous 10.000 times, what makes this different?
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On February 11 2023 08:09 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 08:00 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 07:29 Gorsameth wrote:On February 11 2023 07:15 BlackJack wrote:On February 10 2023 23:00 JimmiC wrote:On February 10 2023 20:11 BlackJack wrote:Here are the "Findings" from the Snopes article FINDINGS
From what we can tell, the man shown in the videos may really be named Jordon/Jordan Walker. The video and website for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center also may have shown and referenced the very same person. Further, Pfizer did not answer questions or provide information about the man identified as Walker either by email or in its statement, and email inboxes appeared to be active at the company for someone with the same name.
In an effort to see what other news organizations had found about the Project Veritas story, we noticed that Newsweek had established a rating of "Unverified."
Meanwhile, Medical Marketing and Media (MM+M) reported that its team had been "unable to verify that Walker works for Pfizer — or even exists," adding that "he lacks a digital presence on every major technology platform." (The article did not appear to make mention of the claims about the video or website listing for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.)
The MM+M story continued with, "It's worth noting that Project Veritas, while claiming to conduct investigative journalism, has a lengthy history of using ethically dubious tactics and deceptively editing videos to fit a conservative narrative."
Again, we have reached out to Project Veritas to obtain access to all of the raw footage so that we can look for clarifying information, and will update this article accordingly if we receive the video files. The first paragraph is what Snopes found and the rest is a blurb about what others have reported. If you think the first paragraph is somehow "the opposite" of what I said I suggest reading it again. JimmiC was able to read all that stuff that snopes found and still insist that this so called Jordon Walker still has "0 digital presence." A deleted linkedin page, stuff about him and med school, a research paper he co-authored, a medical license verified online, etc. I'm not sure if considers this not "digital" or not a "presence" or if it's all just fake. I'm guessing he's getting the "0 digital presence" from that other outlet, MM&M, that reported that they had been "unable to verify that Walker works for Pfizer — or even exists," adding that "he lacks a digital presence on every major technology platform." Some possibilities I see here A) All the stuff snopes found is just a figment of our imagination and this so-called Jordon Walker guy doesn't actually exist B) Someone that just got doxxed and humilated may not be to keen on maintaining a "digital presence" on the major tech platforms Dude this just proves you do not read what is posted and have 0 reading comprehension. Look two posts up, I posted the entire findings and their opening statement. Od dont cherry pick like you. I said they think a jordan walker worked there. I also said No where do they give any even speculation to his title or mention that what he says is correct, which is also factual. Only one person in our discussion is bejng dishonest and its not me. Thank you for further proof that you clearly do not read the posts you respond too. I know you do not believe you are down the rabbit hole but this obession you have with hunters laptop, msm and pv says you are, that you post opinions that match tuckers right after his, says you are. That your friend told you the PV was BS and you went out to prove to them there was truth to it, couldnt find it, and that only proved to you there was, says you are. That this was covered by fox news with tucker going into detail and you say no MSM says you are (fox news is not some small outlet). Its fine that you are, but you need to come to grips with it and stop getting all offended when people who are not down the rabbit hole to not think these assumptions are facts. Also, before you post a gotcha message maybe read the whole post and try to understand it. It is embarassing for you to be mad at my post and then post the exact same thing I did and not even adress any of the claims of my post but rather make up your own for me. What few people who still believe your schitck are going to struggle to continue too if you can not get over that PV is all lies. Even the small facts they produce are produced dishonestly to sell a dishonest message. This has been true of all their stories. And will be true at the next one. If you can not understand this statement to be true than you are too far gone. Jordan walker can be a real person, he can work at Pfizer and the rest of the video can all be false. It very likely is because of their past, because of his title being a fabrication, and because they highly edited the content, including natration to make it less true, and wont release it all. No real media can accurately disprove it so they write how unlikely it is and that it is unverified. If they could 100% prove or disprove they would have said that. They assume its false, for the reasons above, but they do not treat assumptions like facts the way you do so they do not declare it false. This should vreate credibility not the opposite. If you want to be mad at people for surpressing the true information your side needs, be mad at trumps inner circle for not ever producing the laptop and taking over a year to realease what you have called a nothing burger of data. They surpessed it not the legitimate news sources. The legitimate media simply asked for thr data to back the (turns out false, shocker) claims of evidemce tieing joe to corruption. You want to be mad that no one in legitimate news sources belives PV and is not covering it, be mad at PV for lying about his title, be mad at them for supressing the real video. Be mad at them for every story thay have ever released being dishonest. Legitimate news has rules about sources to keep their credibility, this is a good thing. It is a bad thing that so many people like you do not require, evidence, corroboration, trackrecord of honesty or anything to believe conspircys. It is a major massive problem because you make up such a huge percentage of the population and your low bar of evidence and high level of anger lets them point you in amy direction they want with no proof. I do not think defending PV and being mad that everyone is not taking them as a factual, honest deliverer of news is the hill you want to die on. Thanks for the essay on how Jordon Walker can be a real person that works at pfizer but the rest of the video can still be false. Unfortunately, as I have reiterated 10 times, I have never made any claims to the believability of the contents of the video. It's irrelevant to my point. My point is that there is some credibility to the claim that someone with a background in medicine/research and is employed by pfizer is on video talking about "gain-of-functiony stuff" and the majority on this forum believe that this is completely not newsworthy and should be ignored all while we yuck it up over a photo of DeSantis having a beer from a party 20 years ago that has been covered by every MSM outlet with the NYT taking the effort to track down some girls from one of the parties to get them on the record. It was a video by Project Veritas. Why should anyone give a shit about anything after they were caught for creating an entirely fake narrative with they Planned Parenthood video? They even lost a court case over it. This has been asked and answered. People should give a shit because the video has 31 million views on Twitter alone and across all platforms and mirrors, who knows. maybe double that? In fact quite a few people are in agreement with me that the reputable media should fact check such things and determine the truth as opposed to allowing people to retreat to their corners of the internet and believe what they want.
And no one here is yucking it up over DeSantis, the only opinion I have seen is that it might not be entirely appropriate but is a complete nothing burger.
You seem to have made up your mind ages ago about what this conversation would be about and your entirely ignoring the reality of what is being said to play out your own fantasy of what should be said instead.
yucking it up just means joking around, which is what people were doing with the DeSantis picture as opposed to believing it was something worthwhile The people running off to shout "omg have you seen this horrible video about pfizer" are not listing to what you consider the MSM media in the first place. Them debunking it didn't help the previous 10.000 times, what makes this different?
Yeah, it did help. That's precisely why we know Project Veritas is not trustworthy in the first place, isn't it? They didn't get that reputation out of thin air.
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I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says.
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On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says.
Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in.
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On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in.
Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not).
Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.”
That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage.
But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable.
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On February 11 2023 09:41 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in. Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not). Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.” That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage. But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable.
I agree that Pfizer probably gave a non-answer from a PR person. That’s always the first play in the playbook for any scandal. Then typically the media stays on the story until they can’t just keep saying “no comment” without them looking ridiculous. The question here is why should the media accept that non-answer. Why are people content with their media accepting non-answers?
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Seems likely that if the guy had never worked for Pfizer, Pfizer would have said so in its statement. Pfizer would have every interest in making that clear and there is nothing preventing them from saying that. Instead their statement says, we don't do gain of function in any nefarious way, but in some circumstances we do something like that (in a biosafety level 3 lab) because it is government mandated. Basically their statement said, here's what that employee of ours was talking about. It was a pretty transparent statement actually.
Not that there is any there there in the whole PV video and the hype around it. But it does seem like they found a Pfizer employee on tinder and taped him undercover. It's just the type of thing that PV does.
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On February 11 2023 10:07 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 09:41 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in. Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not). Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.” That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage. But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable. I agree that Pfizer probably gave a non-answer from a PR person. That’s always the first play in the playbook for any scandal. Then typically the media stays on the story until they can’t just keep saying “no comment” without them looking ridiculous. The question here is why should the media accept that non-answer. Why are people content with their media accepting non-answers?
What does “stay on the story” mean here? I’ve heard in-depth journalistic investigations described in detail, and usually they *don’t* involve somehow forcing the company/government/secretive organization to actually answer the question. Generally they follow other leads. Snopes seems to have gotten pretty creative in that regard, and reached a pretty unsatisfying answer, but that’s not uncommon with narrow, specific questions. If the guy doesn’t wanna talk, and the company doesn’t wanna talk, and they haven’t talked publicly about his employment anywhere we can find, that’s a dead end, no?
And you’re still not actually giving me a consequential claim the video makes they could investigate. It seems like your motivation is less to do with the video than with media credibility in general. Or, less charitably, it kinda seems like you just wanted to do some low-effort sniping at “the media” and don’t really care about the rest. In which case, you took your shots, and they were as ill-received by the thread as you surely expected. Are we done here? Can we talk about the SOTU or that big explosion in Ohio or something?
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On February 11 2023 10:55 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 10:07 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 09:41 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in. Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not). Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.” That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage. But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable. I agree that Pfizer probably gave a non-answer from a PR person. That’s always the first play in the playbook for any scandal. Then typically the media stays on the story until they can’t just keep saying “no comment” without them looking ridiculous. The question here is why should the media accept that non-answer. Why are people content with their media accepting non-answers? What does “stay on the story” mean here? I’ve heard in-depth journalistic investigations described in detail, and usually they *don’t* involve somehow forcing the company/government/secretive organization to actually answer the question. Generally they follow other leads. Snopes seems to have gotten pretty creative in that regard, and reached a pretty unsatisfying answer, but that’s not uncommon with narrow, specific questions. If the guy doesn’t wanna talk, and the company doesn’t wanna talk, and they haven’t talked publicly about his employment anywhere we can find, that’s a dead end, no?
Just putting a spotlight on things can get you more information. More eyes on it, more people that may be willing to come forward to talk, more pressure on pfizer to stop giving non-answers, etc. If practically nobody is going to cover this and practically nobody is going to ask questions then pfizer is never going to feel compelled to give a straight answer and new leads are not going to materialize.
And you’re still not actually giving me a consequential claim the video makes they could investigate. It seems like your motivation is less to do with the video than with media credibility in general. Or, less charitably, it kinda seems like you just wanted to do some low-effort sniping at “the media” and don’t really care about the rest. In which case, you took your shots, and they were as ill-received by the thread as you surely expected. Are we done here? Can we talk about the SOTU or that big explosion in Ohio or something?
Yes, I hope I have made it clear that my commentary is on the media coverage of the PV video. I think the answers offered here for why there has been so little media coverage are not very convincing. The most popular being offered is "PV has absolutely zero credibility so why should the media cover this." Unless you have your head in the sand you should have known 10 years ago that O'Keefe has no credibility and yet the media has still been happy to cover his projects and recordings. So that seems unlikely to be the answer, doesn't it?
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On February 11 2023 21:04 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 10:55 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 10:07 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 09:41 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in. Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not). Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.” That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage. But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable. I agree that Pfizer probably gave a non-answer from a PR person. That’s always the first play in the playbook for any scandal. Then typically the media stays on the story until they can’t just keep saying “no comment” without them looking ridiculous. The question here is why should the media accept that non-answer. Why are people content with their media accepting non-answers? What does “stay on the story” mean here? I’ve heard in-depth journalistic investigations described in detail, and usually they *don’t* involve somehow forcing the company/government/secretive organization to actually answer the question. Generally they follow other leads. Snopes seems to have gotten pretty creative in that regard, and reached a pretty unsatisfying answer, but that’s not uncommon with narrow, specific questions. If the guy doesn’t wanna talk, and the company doesn’t wanna talk, and they haven’t talked publicly about his employment anywhere we can find, that’s a dead end, no? Just putting a spotlight on things can get you more information. More eyes on it, more people that may be willing to come forward to talk, more pressure on pfizer to stop giving non-answers, etc. If practically nobody is going to cover this and practically nobody is going to ask questions then pfizer is never going to feel compelled to give a straight answer and new leads are not going to materialize. Show nested quote +And you’re still not actually giving me a consequential claim the video makes they could investigate. It seems like your motivation is less to do with the video than with media credibility in general. Or, less charitably, it kinda seems like you just wanted to do some low-effort sniping at “the media” and don’t really care about the rest. In which case, you took your shots, and they were as ill-received by the thread as you surely expected. Are we done here? Can we talk about the SOTU or that big explosion in Ohio or something? Yes, I hope I have made it clear that my commentary is on the media coverage of the PV video. I think the answers offered here for why there has been so little media coverage are not very convincing. The most popular being offered is "PV has absolutely zero credibility so why should the media cover this." Unless you have your head in the sand you should have known 10 years ago that O'Keefe has no credibility and yet the media has still been happy to cover his projects and recordings. So that seems unlikely to be the answer, doesn't it?
Just say what you think on the topic. You are vaguely alluding to it over and over. It seems to me you think Pfizer does gain of function research and they are directly or indirectly related to the cause of Covid19. That and there seems to be a big media cover up related to this. Correct?
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Speaking of the topic, can we go back to that please?
EDIT - Although I will say the Chinese weather balloon nonsense that’s still pervading the media is just as off-topic, so…I dunno’. Someone earlier mentioned the SotU?
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On February 11 2023 21:04 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 10:55 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 10:07 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 09:41 ChristianS wrote:On February 11 2023 09:11 BlackJack wrote:On February 11 2023 08:39 ChristianS wrote:
I basically said the same thing in the other thread, but I don’t get the impression there’s that many fact-checkable claims in the video to begin with? It gives a guy’s name and says he works at Pfizer, which it sounds like fact-checkers have more or less verified but as I said in the other thread, it’s not really their MO to hire an actor for that part, so I always figured he probably did actually work for Pfizer in some capacity.
After that it’s apparently a lot of hidden camera footage of the guy talking, interspersed with cutting to James O’Keefe “explaining” what was happening. That is their MO. Usually the video makes a whole host of horrible allegations, nominally supported by the evidence, but if you took the video and cut all the O’Keefe explanatory bits it wouldn’t be at all obvious they actually supported the allegations. PV claims the explanatory bits are just summarizing context that would be apparent from the unedited footage, people ask them to release the unedited footage and they refuse.
But BlackJack, can you actually give an example of a claim the video makes that *could* be proven false by a journalist investigation? Because my impression is that it’s mostly “Pfizer is doing this or that illegal and/or unethical business practice/experimentation.” Generally Pfizer will deny it. It’s understandable not to take them at their word, but who else is in a position to conclusively say “this business practice/experiment type is not happening anywhere in the company”? Pfizer is a *massive* company, and virtually everything they do will be kept confidential.
Otherwise this is essentially like if I made a bunch of unsupported allegations to the effect of “BlackJack owns a dungeon under a false name somewhere in the Asian continent where they torture babies.” It’s not true (I assume), but what’s a fact-checker supposed to do with that? How can you prove a negative like that? All they could say is “These allegations are completely unsupported and do not come from a reputable source,” which is basically what every article about the PV video says. Sure, the example of the most obvious thing that can be proven or disproven is who the guy is and what he does. You can't simultaneously believe that it's probable this guy works for Pfizer but also difficult to verify what he does at Pfizer. If he works at pfizer then pfizer should know exactly who he is and what he does. Obviously pfizer would rather not answer that question and so far the media has been happy to not even ask it. Most of the "fact checking" on this has been "We googled the guy's name and didn't find anything so we consider this unverified." Snopes is the only one that I saw that said they specifically asked pfizer who the guy was and whether he works for them. I bet the media could get an answer from pfizer of who the guy is and what he does there if they put a slight bit of effort in. Can’t say this for certain, obviously, but it’s extremely likely that journalists called Pfizer, asked if the guy works for them, and got some kind of non-answer. Pretty standard PR strategy to say “We’re not answering individual questions at this time, but please refer to the press release we put out.” Possibly combined with something like “we’re not at liberty to discuss HR particulars of any specific employee.” Frustrating, but well within Pfizer’s rights and probably the best strategy if they just want this to go away (which they would want, of course, whether they were doing anything shady or not). Sounds like Snopes took some extraordinary measures like searching Wayback Machine LinkedIn for him, testing out if an email to first.last@pfizer.com (or w/e their convention is) gets bounced back or not, etc. and didn’t get anything conclusive. Then after they published someone wrote in with evidence of a LinkedIn profile suggesting he had some job title like “Director of D&D, something something strategy something something mRNA.” That’s a weird job title, though not totally implausible. It’s also weird a guy like that would have so little online footprint, though not totally implausible. You can also say anything you want on a LinkedIn page, so it’s not exactly conclusive. It’s valuable to look into this, if only because it would be good to know if PV has escalated to fully fabricating the hidden camera footage. But I was already assuming the guy exists, and that he works for Pfizer. Dim as my opinion of PV is, I was already prepared to tentatively take their word for that. So… do you have any other claims that are fact-checkable from the video? Because right now it sounds like the most likely explanation is that various outlets did exactly the investigation you think they should have, and they just didn’t find anything publishable. I agree that Pfizer probably gave a non-answer from a PR person. That’s always the first play in the playbook for any scandal. Then typically the media stays on the story until they can’t just keep saying “no comment” without them looking ridiculous. The question here is why should the media accept that non-answer. Why are people content with their media accepting non-answers? What does “stay on the story” mean here? I’ve heard in-depth journalistic investigations described in detail, and usually they *don’t* involve somehow forcing the company/government/secretive organization to actually answer the question. Generally they follow other leads. Snopes seems to have gotten pretty creative in that regard, and reached a pretty unsatisfying answer, but that’s not uncommon with narrow, specific questions. If the guy doesn’t wanna talk, and the company doesn’t wanna talk, and they haven’t talked publicly about his employment anywhere we can find, that’s a dead end, no? Just putting a spotlight on things can get you more information. More eyes on it, more people that may be willing to come forward to talk, more pressure on pfizer to stop giving non-answers, etc. If practically nobody is going to cover this and practically nobody is going to ask questions then pfizer is never going to feel compelled to give a straight answer and new leads are not going to materialize. Show nested quote +And you’re still not actually giving me a consequential claim the video makes they could investigate. It seems like your motivation is less to do with the video than with media credibility in general. Or, less charitably, it kinda seems like you just wanted to do some low-effort sniping at “the media” and don’t really care about the rest. In which case, you took your shots, and they were as ill-received by the thread as you surely expected. Are we done here? Can we talk about the SOTU or that big explosion in Ohio or something? Yes, I hope I have made it clear that my commentary is on the media coverage of the PV video. I think the answers offered here for why there has been so little media coverage are not very convincing. The most popular being offered is "PV has absolutely zero credibility so why should the media cover this." Unless you have your head in the sand you should have known 10 years ago that O'Keefe has no credibility and yet the media has still been happy to cover his projects and recordings. So that seems unlikely to be the answer, doesn't it?
But frankly, while it’s clear you want to talk about the media coverage, it doesn’t seem like you actually have a nuanced criticism. Aside from some vague bromides like “stay on the story,” “shine a spotlight on things,” or “keep asking questions until you get some answers,” you don’t actually have an idea of what such an investigation should look like. From my limited understanding of journalistic investigations, this has every indication of a story in which most questions are unanswerable, and even the basic ones you might be able to answer (e.g. does Pfizer employ a man by this name) seem to have come to dead ends without conclusive answers. If you want to say all the top experts of another profession are doing their job wrong, you really oughta come better armed than this.
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So a bit of background: one of the bigger black marks against the Biden administration in my book was more or less forcing the railway workers union to accept the deal with their bosses instead of striking last year. The workers had some eminently reasonable demands (e.g. “nonzero sick days!”) but the government was worried a rail worker strike would fuck supply chains even more than they already have been, and raise prices of basic goods at a time when inflation was already blowing up (right before an important midterm election!) so the government basically said “nope, we decided you’re taking the deal. Oh look, there’s an agreement in place, striking would be illegal!” Questionably legal, and especially disappointing considering the administration has otherwise been pretty pro-union, but I guess when it affects reelection chances they’re prepared to do some backstabbing.
This has taken on renewed relevance after a train derailment carrying a massive amount of toxic chemicals caused a massive explosion in the Ohio town of East Palestine recently (yes, that’s actually the town’s name). I haven’t seen a clear breakdown of what the chemicals on board were, but the most commonly cited one is an absolutely enormous amount of vinyl chloride (I also saw phosgene referenced). Authorities evacuated the surrounding area indefinitely, and apparently executed a “controlled release” of toxic fumes by burning a lot of the vinyl chloride before it could explode all at once. It’s not yet clear how much damage this has done (is still doing?) to the surrounding area and population; I’ve seen claims on Twitter of mass death of nearby wildlife and livestock, despite authorities saying it’s safe, but I haven’t verified any of that.
The union angle isn’t being discussed much, but safety reforms to prevent derailments like this were among the union’s demands last year. I haven’t seen any precise breakdowns of what caused the derailment and whether any of the union’s desired reforms would have prevented it, but if so it puts at least some blame on the administration.
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On February 11 2023 23:21 Ryzel wrote:
Speaking of the topic, can we go back to that please?
EDIT - Although I will say the Chinese weather balloon nonsense that’s still pervading the media is just as off-topic, so…I dunno’. Someone earlier mentioned the SotU?
Yeah, I did, but then people decided to take BlackJack's bait about PV. Here it is again:
Did anyone catch Biden's state of the union address? I missed it, but I wanted to know if he said anything particularly interesting or if there was any drama surrounding it (besides the typical list of presidential promises / "let's do better together" and the typical response of skepticism). What'd you think of his address?
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On February 11 2023 23:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 23:21 Ryzel wrote:
Speaking of the topic, can we go back to that please?
EDIT - Although I will say the Chinese weather balloon nonsense that’s still pervading the media is just as off-topic, so…I dunno’. Someone earlier mentioned the SotU? Yeah, I did, but then people decided to take BlackJack's bait about PV. Here it is again: Did anyone catch Biden's state of the union address? I missed it, but I wanted to know if he said anything particularly interesting or if there was any drama surrounding it (besides the typical list of presidential promises / "let's do better together" and the typical response of skepticism). What'd you think of his address?
Yes, at least 3 things of interest that you can see for yourself if you take the time to watch even highlights of the address in between telling everyone you haven't watched it.
First, the president berated the opposition for wanting to get rid of medicare and social security, which was met in parliamentary style with enormous boos and calls of "Liar" which seemed to unsettle the octogenarian.
Second, on a related note, the president, when announcing a proposed law to cap insulin at $35 nationwide, seemed to take credit for the previous administration's executive orders which did just that for medicare patients specifically, saying "We capped..."
Third, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, in a rare moment of class towards African Americans, brought as guest to the SOTU address someone who had been destroyed by the criminal justice system by having been wrongfully convicted for a murder he didn't commit. However, a few days later it's been revealed that the senator was hospitalized and may unfortunately never be able to recover from the stroke he suffered last year.
Fourth, the Speaker of the House didn't rip up a paper copy of the president's remarks in front of the cameras like an infant.
Fifth, the commander in chief had another speaking gaffe when he tried to pronounce "prescription drugs," reassuring Republicans that even in his most peak and juiced up speech condition, he doesn't seem on course to be runnable in 2024.
Sixth, the first lady shared a direct kiss with the second gentleman.
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Okay, can we get comments on the State of the Union that aren't snide and belligerent towards basically everyone? Baby steps, I guess.
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Second, on a related note, the president, when announcing a proposed law to cap insulin at $35 nationwide, seemed to take credit for the previous administration's executive orders which did just that for medicare patients specifically, saying "We capped..."
It was also bizarre for him to brag about it right after explaining that insulin costs no more than $13 and its inventor/discoverer explicitly didn't want it commercialized. Even more so when you consider the $35 cap is just the copay. Drug manufacturers actually charge several times that.
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On February 12 2023 00:34 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 23:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 11 2023 23:21 Ryzel wrote:
Speaking of the topic, can we go back to that please?
EDIT - Although I will say the Chinese weather balloon nonsense that’s still pervading the media is just as off-topic, so…I dunno’. Someone earlier mentioned the SotU? Yeah, I did, but then people decided to take BlackJack's bait about PV. Here it is again: Did anyone catch Biden's state of the union address? I missed it, but I wanted to know if he said anything particularly interesting or if there was any drama surrounding it (besides the typical list of presidential promises / "let's do better together" and the typical response of skepticism). What'd you think of his address? Yes, at least 3 things of interest that you can see for yourself if you take the time to watch even highlights of the address in between telling everyone you haven't watched it. First, the president berated the opposition for wanting to get rid of medicare and social security, which was met in parliamentary style with enormous boos and calls of "Liar" which seemed to unsettle the octogenarian. Second, on a related note, the president, when announcing a proposed law to cap insulin at $35 nationwide, seemed to take credit for the previous administration's executive orders which did just that for medicare patients specifically, saying "We capped..." Third, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, in a rare moment of class towards African Americans, brought as guest to the SOTU address someone who had been destroyed by the criminal justice system by having been wrongfully convicted for a murder he didn't commit. However, a few days later it's been revealed that the senator was hospitalized and may unfortunately never be able to recover from the stroke he suffered last year. Fourth, the Speaker of the House didn't rip up a paper copy of the president's remarks in front of the cameras like an infant. Fifth, the commander in chief had another speaking gaffe when he tried to pronounce "prescription drugs," reassuring Republicans that even in his most peak and juiced up speech condition, he doesn't seem on course to be runnable in 2024. Sixth, the first lady shared a direct kiss with the second gentleman.
Am i the only one finding hilarious the cognitive dissonance between the first and the fourth point ?
Obviously it's not surprising coming from the people who blame biden for destroying the balloon too late and the new one too early.
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On February 12 2023 00:34 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2023 23:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On February 11 2023 23:21 Ryzel wrote:
Speaking of the topic, can we go back to that please?
EDIT - Although I will say the Chinese weather balloon nonsense that’s still pervading the media is just as off-topic, so…I dunno’. Someone earlier mentioned the SotU? Yeah, I did, but then people decided to take BlackJack's bait about PV. Here it is again: Did anyone catch Biden's state of the union address? I missed it, but I wanted to know if he said anything particularly interesting or if there was any drama surrounding it (besides the typical list of presidential promises / "let's do better together" and the typical response of skepticism). What'd you think of his address? Yes, at least 3 things of interest that you can see for yourself if you take the time to watch even highlights of the address in between telling everyone you haven't watched it. First, the president berated the opposition for wanting to get rid of medicare and social security, which was met in parliamentary style with enormous boos and calls of "Liar" which seemed to unsettle the octogenarian. Second, on a related note, the president, when announcing a proposed law to cap insulin at $35 nationwide, seemed to take credit for the previous administration's executive orders which did just that for medicare patients specifically, saying "We capped..." Third, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, in a rare moment of class towards African Americans, brought as guest to the SOTU address someone who had been destroyed by the criminal justice system by having been wrongfully convicted for a murder he didn't commit. However, a few days later it's been revealed that the senator was hospitalized and may unfortunately never be able to recover from the stroke he suffered last year. Fourth, the Speaker of the House didn't rip up a paper copy of the president's remarks in front of the cameras like an infant. Fifth, the commander in chief had another speaking gaffe when he tried to pronounce "prescription drugs," reassuring Republicans that even in his most peak and juiced up speech condition, he doesn't seem on course to be runnable in 2024. Sixth, the first lady shared a direct kiss with the second gentleman.
Despite your consistent rudeness towards me, I really do appreciate you taking the time to write out those highlights/lowlights (however biased their descriptions may be). Thank you 
Out of curiosity, did Biden say anything that you'd consider to be neutral or even decent/positive? And if not, what would have been an example of something he could have said, that you would have perceived as agreeable and fair?
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EPT
