@raphjd
This is a Lincoln Project scandal in the same way that Jeffrey Dahmer was a Milwaukee scandal!

As usual, @raphjd takes a "Dog Bites Man" story and turns it into a "tabloid stunner"...

It is true that the accused, John Weaver, was one of the founding eight members of The Lincoln Project, but last summer, when investigators started looking around, into what turns out to be a decades-long hidden history of John Weaver's illicit messaging of under-age boys, he took leave of the organization - in part because they offered their full assistance to law enforcement.

There is a story here: John Weaver was a Republican strategist for some of the most high-profile candidates - for President, Governors, and Senators alike! And his history of this abusive and illicit behavior goes back more than 2 decades.

For the record, The Lincoln Project put out a statement, calling John Weaver "“a predator, a liar, and an abuser” - pretty weak, right?

However, more telling in @raphjd's post are his sources! He could have quoted the NYTimes, The Washington Post, or even Fox News... but no, he snipped a AP report (quite literally grabbed off the wire from the AP - it says so at the bottom) from, what I assume is his local Fox affiliate, and Wayne Dupree, a right-wing radio personality who loves the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and appears to have a personal vendetta against Mitt Romney (see that his article on the John Weaver story is actually about how this is supposed to hurt Romney).

I especially love the characterization @raphjd & Mr Green have of former Republican Presidential nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain: as RINOs (that is "Republican In Name Only").

Someone's been drinking some Qool-Aid, and there's more lies in that stuff than sugar in Kool-Aid!

But, to the REAL crux of the story: John Weaver, a decades-long Republican strategist, and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, has been accused of a decades-long string of inappropriate messages, offers of employment, and other "enticements" with younger men... some of whom were juveniles.

As many of you know, I count myself a Conservative. I used to call myself a "staunch Republican" - and I know my party's history: not just the Party of Lincoln, but also the Party of Eugene McCarthy, as well as the Party of Nixon. My point isn't that the Republican party is BAD, no my point is that the Republican Party has had its share of bad apples in the past, and we've recovered from their terrible influences in the past... we we will get over this one as well.

Conservatism will not die at the hands of Donald Trump!

@andergarcia
Mountains - because I LIVE by a beach, so mountains are the break from the norm!

Bagels or Donuts?

@cub2263
I would avoid looking for someone else to make the decision for you whether the risk is high or low... that's something you need to decide/evaluate on your own.

Certainly, your risk is lower torrenting off of just one site, with just a private tracker.

Your risk would be even lower if you also used a VPN.

BUT, the only risk free thing to do is to pay the porn companies and artists for their content.

What level of risk is OK for you is a decision that only you should make. Be informed, but evaluate your own risk tolerance. Its really not a decision that should be left up to others.

I'm admittedly hyper-sexual.

When my ex-fiance was alive, we had sex 1-3 times a day. It was a rare day that we didn't have sex! (I'm a vers/top, but he was about 90% bottom - so I usually topped and it was a real treat when he would return the favor. That happened about twice a month.)

Now that he's gone, I still masturbate at least once, but usually twice a day.

I do not have a regular partner currently, and I seldom "hook-up" with strangers (tho I admit to falling into temptation from time to time).

COVID-19 has totally sucked the wind out of my social life... CAN'T WAIT FOR 2022!

@raphjd
The viewpoint you espouse here - that anyone who disagrees with you cannot possibly be a conservative - and constantly labeling them (us) as "*liberal", as-if it was a dirty word - is going to be the death of the Conservative movement (or, here in the US, the Republican Party).

Thank God for old style Conservatives, like US Congressman Adam Kinzinger: a smart, honorable, politician who has declined to fall for (or accept) the cult of personality or the dependence on lies and conspiracy theories that have overtaken the conservative parties of both the US and UK.

So you know: the only PAC I gave money to in the 2020 election cycle was...

(drumroll)....

The Lincoln Project... a Conservative, Republican PAC that opposed the re-election of Donald Trump. Count me a proud Conservative who is also a never-Trumper...

But don't worry: I'm not a slave to labels. I'm a registered Republican now: but, I won't stay with a political party that refuses to accept hard data, denies science, and depends on lies and conspiracy theories to convince weak minds of its rightness. And, as an American, I absolutely will not fall into a cult of personality!!!

@raphjd
I have limited my opinions of you, and what you believe to what you've posted in the forum... it's all I have to go on, and I won't extrapolate further.

I never said I was smarter than everyone else, just smarter than "the average bear" (or a 5th Grader)... that's a pretty low bar, if you ask me!

Would that you would limit your opinions of me to what I've actually posted, and not extrapolate further... but "wishes ain't fishes"...

@erich214
Thank you for your comments.
At least so far in this forum, @raphjd appears to adhere to the "you're with me or you're against me" mentality. (I labeled this "bipolar", but he took to interpreting that solely as the mental disorder - even when I clarified it for him, so I'll try an different tack...).

Well to be clear: I am not with him, but neither am I against him.

I have said that we do need to look back, investigate, and learn what we did wrong in the early days of COVID spreading in our respective countries.

@raphjd seems to have already made up his mind based on conspiracy theories and partial (to be generous) data. I prefer to wait for some real data.

@raphjd
You assume I'm a Democrat.
You are again a finalist in the "Miss Taken" pageant! We'll try to get you another sash, but we're running low.

I'm a conservative, I'm just not a conspiracy-confused one.
I believe in science: facts don't lie, but people who interpret them often do.
I believe in Democracy (even when i lose).
I believe in the general goodness of the average person.
I believe that Joe Biden won the recent election fair and square.

I do not believe that nationalism works in anyone's best interests.
I do not believe in racism - especially as a political tool.
I do not believe in absolutes.
I do not believe in secret cabals of child molesting politicians, threatening our children - primarily because they belong to the other party.

I personally know very fine politicians of both political parties here in the US. Honorable men and women who do not agree (not with me, and certainly not with each other), and yet, remain friends.

To my misguided (sometimes mis-labeled) Conservative friends who believe whole-heartedly that Donald Trump is their savior, I say this: Repent of your sins now, before your God judges you!

I also offer this: count the letters - compromise is not a 4-letter word!

@raphjd
The term "bi-polar" is not only used in mental disorders. It refers to any instance where there is little-to-no middle ground between two opposites.

In a mental disease, it means you're UP or you're DOWN but you're nearly never in-between.... It's a terrible condition. I know people who suffer from it.

But in this case, I'm using the term to say that you don't have to look at people (or their records) as either all-good, or all-bad. Donald Trump demeaned and lessened the office of the Presidency in the US - but that doesn't mean he didn't also do good things, too! Betsy DeVos wasn't all bad - and even after doing a brief search, I have no idea what you mean by "restoring due process"...

But back to the point: If you're going to pre-judge Dr. Levine and her appointment because she's trans-gender, well, get in fuckin' line! If you think you'll be the first to make that mistake, you're the latest winner of the "Miss Taken" idiocy pageant! And you won't be the last, either! (Your sash is in the mail... the US mail, so be patient! LOL)

Your attitude amplifies the importance that her appointment has: she will suffer the "slings and arrows" of narrow-minded bigots - and I suspect begrudgingly so - so that future trans people do not.

@raphjd
Lots to unpack there: thoughts meander much?

In the early part of the pandemic, counting anyone who tested positive for the virus and subsequently died a victim of the disease was probably just a way to get around the fact that we knew SO LITTLE about it, and had little way of otherwise "filtering" results to get better data. Over time, all of that reporting will undoubtedly be revised for accuracy.

Forget the political leadership for a moment - the people who do the counting - who generate the reports - are usually career public health experts. In most cases, their only agenda is saving lives. (Fuckin weasly bastards!)

Now, what politicians do with that data is another thing... and in that, there is always politics. While I don't agree with any kind of playing with the numbers, I must say: I strongly prefer a politician fudging the numbers in an effort to save lives, over one fudging the numbers and sacrificing lives in the name of political expediency. Again: neither is good, but saving lives is still better than ignoring them.

I've already said - multiply now - that going back and re-examining our entire response - GLOBALLY - to the COVID-19 pandemic is definitely a wise thing to do... although, right now, I would personally rather that they keep focusing on getting through the pandemic... we can investigate early missteps once the threat has been reduced! Still, the only way we learn from our mistakes, is to discover them to begin with!

Finally: in the early days of COVID-19, we thought it was spread by contact - thus the suggestions you do things like wiping down your groceries before taking them into your house. Putting a sick patient you cannot help into a nursing home seemed, at the time, a humane way to let them die in peace, and in the presence of their families - while also freeing up badly needed space in the hospitals. The other patients in the nursing homes weren't exactly "visiting" the COVID-19 patients, and since there would be no cross-contact, it was thought to be a safe, humane way to treat the un-treatable.

It is important to put these things into the proper context: we had few treatments at the time that were effective once your disease got to a certain point... to put a fine point on it, yes: they were sent to the nursing homes to die!

And, as I've pointed out multiply already, we didn't know it was spread by aerosol. Thus, we didn't know we were exposing other nursing home patients to the disease... we thought the infection-control in the nursing homes would be adequate. (They were not)

It is also important to note that this practice wasn't wide-spread: it happened only in the hottest of the hot-spots... the biggest cities with the worst outbreaks. Hospital beds were desperately needed to treat the victims who were treatable and had some reasonable hope of survival.

It is not fair to judge their decisions or actions then based on what we know now! First, with the advanced therapeutics, immune-therapies, and other knowledge of how to treat COVID-19 (like putting patients on their stomachs!), there aren't many (any?) "un-treatable" patients any longer... while there is still a shortage of hospital beds, these patients have a decent chance to survive COVID-19 right up until the end, so there is no ethical rationale to send them elsewhere to die. Secondly, knowing now (what we didn't know then) - that COVID-19 is an aerosol disease - we would never put a dying patient anywhere that there wasn't a full quarantine in place.

While we (as a population) need to learn, and take heed, from the mistakes made in the early days of COVID-19 (and the US and UK are far from the only countries who struggled with their responses), care should be taken not to recriminate against people who were doing the best they could with little to no knowledge of what they were facing.

Simply put: we need to learn, but we do not need to blame.

@erich214
Thanks! It's nice to be appreciated.
I've always liked "debate" - I don't think I'm always right, but I actually do think I'm "smarter than the average bear" (or, for a younger audience: "smarter than a 5th grader" ) - and I usually think things through...
The point being, I love debate, but I don't always win

Not sure if its the same thing, but I'm getting 404'd when I click links... and my login has timed out

The forum login & the torrent login appear to be different. So, even if you can read/post forums, if there is a link to a torrent - and you've timed out on that part of the site, you may get 404'd.

It'd be nice if the system took you to a login page (if you were not logged in) and showed the 404 ONLY if the page really didn't exist, but I don't know how hard that would be - I'm not a web guy, just a user (and a happy one with most of the new changes to the site!)

@davis94
I personally use NordVPN. Inexpensive (if you find the deals - their full price is downright absurd)...

I like that I can choose my location... I can, for example, choose a server in Atlanta so I can watch local Atlanta shows. I can also choose a UK server and watch content that is geo-restricted to the UK.

I do have some minor issues - for example, in their zeal to protect me from ads and popups, most top-line Google search responses are blocked (you have to find the "native" result below)... and often, when I search on Google at all, I have to perform a "captcha" because they see sooo much traffic from the NordVPN sites.

Also, I have no trouble seeding torrents through my NordVPN - though the frequency of people downloading from me is far FAR less when I'm on the VPN....

@cub2263
I agree with @bc22 on this one:
Your risk depends on what you're torrenting... porn alone, solely on private trackers? Less so than downloading current, high-value content from public trackers.

So, there was a while there, a few years ago, when studios like Corbin Fisher were pretty aggressive in seeking out people illegally uploading or downloading their content. Other porn studios followed suit, but in the end it turned out to be a lose-lose proposition for them. (Kind of like how some retailers - like Walmart and Amazon - are now telling some people who want to return an item to just "keep it" vs. trying to ship it back!)

That said, the major studios in Hollywood - esp. the streaming companies like HBO Max, Netflix, and to a lesser extent, CBS - are continuing to battle the illegal sharing of their content.

So, if you're looking to download "Star Trek Voyager", you're far less likely to be "targeted" than if you're trying to get the latest "Snowpiercer".

On the other hand, if you value your privacy, a VPN can help you keep the fact that you like "spanking videos" or "tiny cocks" out of the hands of your ISP! Choosing a VPN that does NOT LOG - at all - is important though. And even then, change the VPN server you're using REGULARLY.

Just my suggestions... you're ALWAYS taking a RISK (that new video you just downloaded MIGHT be a trojan, after all!)... how much risk you're willing to assume is an extremely personal decision.

For What Its Worth: I pay for my VPN in "large chunks" (3-years at a time) using a pre-paid VISA card. Not saying they CAN'T track my ID down, only that I don't make it EASY!

@raphjd
Can we dispense with the bi-polar nature of the argument?
Can't she be both qualified AND a token appointment?

So, is it really so bad to look at a stack of 700 resumes of highly qualified people and say to yourself: "Hey, there has never, EVER, been an out trans person appointed at this level of government. She's as qualified as the others, plus she'll make history as the first trans person appointed to such a high office! BONUS!"

@raphjd
I think you're missing my point....

There are always going to be errors in the accounting of who actually died from COVID-19, and who didn't.

FOR EXAMPLE:
So a guy who is in stage-4 renal failure - has 3-months to live and is awaiting a kidney transplant... and he gets COVID-19 and dies in... 3-months! Did the COVID-19 kill him? Or was it the lack of a kidney for transplant?

.... and what if he was HIV+ (not on meds), had type-1 diabetes, and was a heavy smoker too?

The truth is, there is SELDOM a SINGLE cause of death in real hospitals - real life just isn't that fragile.

With regard to COVID, though - it has been a moving target from the beginning! We learn more and more every day, and hindsight is 20/20... so while we know now that the decision to place COVID patients in nursing homes to die had TRAGIC, even horrific, consequences... but they didn't know that then.

That DOESN'T MEAN it shouldn't be investigated - improving our knowledge of how we got here isn't a bad thing.

But complaining that the weatherman got the wind speed wrong in the middle of a hurricane is kind-of pointless. What was important (at the time) was that there was a storm in the first place!
Learning the ACTUAL statistics will be important in the aftermath, but it is of no real value to blame the weatherman for getting the specifics wrong while in the middle of the storm (unless, the TRUTH WAS that there was no storm at all to begin with)... but I'm hoping that's not your claim: that COVID isn't "real"...

@raphjd
So, you're saying that, if you happened to be insanely rich, you'd fly coach ... you AND your family... in the middle of a pandemic. If that's your claim, then I say: Prince Harry shows intelligence in his decision making in the real world that you fail to do in your imaginary one.

I'm sorry, the hypocrite is the Governor (I think it was a Governor) who told everyone to stay at home for the holidays, then flew off to his family's holiday gathering.

FWIW: If I recall rightly, it was a DEMOCRATIC Governor... he should have resigned. That was just a TOTAL abuse of power.

The AIDS activist marching for laws requiring safer sex practices whose Grindr profile says "bareback only" is hypocritical.

The minister preaching about the sins of homosexuality - while he's secretly flowing the alter-boys after church - is hypocritical.

The guy from the porn site requesting that people not upload videos from his site, while having a history of downloading multiple GB of porn videos himself (presumably from OTHER producers, naturally) - is hypocritical.

Rich people have the right to spend their money. That's not being hypocritical. Prince Harry didn't tell others not to travel, and he doesn't have the power to make rules against it.

Perfectly legitimate to complain that he's flying around with his family on the British tax-payers's dime... except that he isn't! He's given up the Royal allowance! He's just a rich snob! No power, no rules to set. Just a rich bloke that TONS of people care about because of the rest of his family (including his wife).

-- EDIT--
For those who don't want to follow the Twitter link: it's a posting about Prince Harry flying his family on a private plane and saying he did so to protect his family.

@raphjd
Wait a minute... you're complaining about an UNDER-count in NY because the nursing homes didn't report the hospital's cases as their own....

Then you claim there was a massive OVER-count?

I guess you CAN have your cake and eat it too! At least you can!

@raphjd
I'm not claiming Betsy DeVos was devoid of good decisions, only that the DIRECTION she gave the Education Department did little-to-nothing to promote actual education - and actually DEVALUED public education.

Mind you, I am aware that was her goal as the appointee of Mr. Trump! But my point remains: political appointees don't have to be experts in the fields they are asked to lead! They are appointed to provide direction and leadership to echo the desires and wishes of the President and his Administration.

My point about DeVos was not just that I didn't agree with her positions (I didn't - though I admit to not knowing about the specifics to which you refer), but rather that by being so controversial in her position, she drew added (unwanted) criticism and bad attention to her Department.

Regardless of your political views (even if you agreed with her - and the Administration's - positions), she herself was a disaster for the Department of Education.

@fun17
Sharia law does not require evidence, at least not as we know it in the US.

"Revenge" accusations are not uncommon - all it takes is to get a few citizens "in good standing" to attest that someone has broken the code, and they will be punished - severely.

There is nothing in place to stop a "band of queers" - gay men and women who have not yet been "outed" - from making accusations against the leaders of these vigilante groups - and not only shaming them (by making accusations), but also stripping them of their "power" by marking them as accused.

My point is not that this should be done! No, rather to point out that this kind of "law enforcement" is RIFE with abuse and false accusations. It fell to the wayside CENTURIES ago, not because people stopped believing in their religion, or became less pious - but because this "system" is deeply flawed, unjust, and totally unreliable as a way to enforce the law.