I have nothing against drug dealers, I believe drugs should all be legal. It is possible to be responsible about stuff that is addictive and it is possible to be irresponsible. Magic Mushrooms are a good example of almost all users and producers acting responsible around addiction while infinitely scrolling dopamine hacking apps are a good example of users and producers acting irresponsible around addiction. And yet the ones that are illegal are the harmless ones. So obviously legality isn't about safety or justice and any attempt to frame it as such is ignorant at best and problaby dishonest. If you find yourself thinking like that, it's time for some self-reflection.
I do have an issue with middle men sucking out value, though he took a fraction of what Amazon (for example) takes so punishing him for that but not punishing Amazon is incredibly hypocritical. Apart from the parasitism (and hypocrisy) of the taxation of transactions on his platform the one thing he did that marks him as a bad person is the attempts to hire assassins. That's enough to make him a monster. No need to bring morally ambiguous stuff into it, that's just dogpiling and guilt-by-association thinking.
Trump is a bastard and a criminal with no integrity, and his pardon of a drug dealer kingpin is another example of his pay-to-play corruption. But I actually agree that the use and possession of drugs for recreational use should be decriminalized. What a person chooses to put in their body is their choice. Offer more education and treatment with the billions you’ll save on leaving junkies alone. Stop trafficking drugs, if you can, because the black market invites murder and violence. And the drugs are increasingly stepped on and adulterated and deadly.
People are obviously disproportionately arrested and charged with possession based on race and socioeconomic factors. I’m a middle class white guy and I know a few people. I can get controlled substances for myself tomorrow if I needed to. But I already poisoned my body enough and was lucky to avoid jail or death. But criminalizing possession makes the problem so much worse, imho. But this douche was selling drugs online to huge numbers of people. His enterprise was highly dangerous and destructive.
The reason the black market invites murder and violence is because it is highly profitable. It is highly profitable because supplies are low but more importantly supplies are uncertain. Supplies are low and uncertain because production and trafficking is a high risk activity. If you legalize, manage, and slightly tax the import/export part, then the black market will become a lot less violent. Not a lot of people are willing to murder for less than they could make flipping burgers for a day.
I'm not a big fan of libertarians. They all seem to think they're better than the rest of us, holier than thou, and I'm not having any. They can all get fucked!
"Whatever happened to Trump heaving, “We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”
Pardon me, but do you sell drugs? Yes? Then would you please receive the death penalty for your actions?
That man can’t even articulate his own evil intentions.
I admit, I did not know much about this guy before reading this article. I didn’t even know he was a disgrace to my Alma mater. But now that I’ve read it, I’m 100% sure that I know more about him than Mango does.
"Donald is doing such a great job with prison reform letting out all these privileged white criminals! Why, pretty soon there'll be more than enough room to re-fill prisons (private and not private) with all the insufficiently butt licking browns, blacks, immigrants, antifa democrats and jesus freaks who won't pray to the orange felon no matter how blasphemous it is!"
I was assuming that Ulbricht still had some crypto stashed away somewhere and that he paid off Trump with crypto to buy his pardon . But maybe he didn’t have any crypto left. Nevertheless, crypto is still the thread that runs thru all of Trump’s scams and kickbacks. During Watergate, it was follow the money. Now, with Trump, it is follow the crypto. Starting with Trump’s Meme coin crypto , he now has a crypto “wallet” and crypto “coin” to sell. As he basically is selling access and favors pretty much out in the open to whoever wants to buy his influence, he has created various repositories into which deposit said bribes & kickbacks. He can ‘sell ‘ his meme coins, accept payment in crypto, accept ‘contributions’ to his inauguration fund, various PACs and The Trump Library Fund (not a joke). I read a piece where a Trump spokesperson stated they expect to get at least half a billion dollars in contributions. Not counting kickbacks. Now, Trump is ‘pausing’ distribution of foreign aid payments, exempting Israel & Egypt (who previously paid him $10 million). My guess is that he giving recipient countries time to submit their kickback plans to Trump, in order to keep receiving their foreign aid. ‘Cuz Trump don’t be givin’ out free money without his cut.
Keeping with the crypto meme, Trump’s Commerce Sec nominee, is Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a big supporter of crypto, has announced the Cantor Fitzgerald is moving their headquarters to El Salvador. The new Prez of El Salvador is a big proponent of crypto. After he took office, Trump’s 1st phone call was to
MBZ. His second phone call was to the Prez of El Salvador. Rubio’s 1st foreign trip will be to El Salvador. All of a sudden, El Salvador is getting a whole lot of attention. Combine that with Trump’s plan to create a government crypto stockpile reserve and the crypto bros push to use U.S. Treasury funds to buy crypto, the key here is crypto.
Except Trump and his Federalist dirt bags know the key to a virile dictatorship is eliminating any oversight, guardrails or checks on power. Trump is firing inspectors general. He’s doxxing and threatening any federal judges with the courage to oppose him. He’s got Congress firmly in his grasp.
Even at his height of power Nixon was surrounded by establishment lawyers, judges, politicians. The deep state was deep for Nixon, and he knew resignation was his only play. Trump will steal, extort and corrupt the government to extremes Nixon never dreamed of, but few, if any, are left to stop him. The GOP wouldn’t dare oppose him even if he declared minorities no longer had civil rights. He could demand mass deportation of all non-white people and Jewish people and nobody on the right would oppose him. At most, they would say “it’s troubling,” or “he just wants to make America safe.” Maybe if he crashes the economy and unemployment climbs to 20%, enough people might revolt. Unlikely though, as they will probably blame Joe Biden.
Trump is Mob trained. During the first term, he got rid of any FBI and foreign diplomatic threats to his Russian & Ukraine extortion scheme. He&
his made men have schemed & planned to eradicate any investigative threats.
History shows us that every time Repugs lift regulations on the financial industry, their unbridled greed eventually leads to catastrophic financial damage to our economy. This time will be much worse.
Bukele is not the "new" prez of Salvador, having strong-armed his legislature into changing their constitution to give him another term (or three)... literally sending in armed troops to the legislature to ensure the votes when the right way.
With left, or at least progressive, governments now in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia Salvador -- and its "libertarian" (i.e tech-bro fascist) government is the best hope for Trump-style US policy to "keep" Central America.
I have put together my assessment from bits of info from a number of various articles, especially from the past 2 weeks. The first article mentioned the Prez of El Salvador, & referred to him as the ‘new’ Prez. Before that,
I just didn’t pay any attention to El Salvador. Now, it warrants at lot of attention. You seem to be well informed about that area, so I will defer to you on what I do not know. Hell, I have not been down to Mexico in many years. I have spent some time down there. Thanks for your input.
When contributing to the Trump Library Fund, please remember to also support the Museum of Perpetual Motion Machines, the Save the Dodo Fund and the Ivermectin Medical Institute.
Is there any way for crypto to crash and wipe out those that have it, like dump and his ilk? I mean it's not backed by anything but can it crash like the dollar will in value?
One such condition is stated in the article, the expected sale/auction of the $6.2 billion of Ulbricht’s seized bitcoins.
Another factor is that crypto seems to be created by various entities . If a creator entity does something bad, it can cause that specific crypto to lose value, all the way down to nothing. Some cryptos have been created just for fraud. A couple of people have been prosecuted.
With as big difference that it is ONLY subject to the speculative type of market conditions, there is no actual market for this stuff because it is not productive. It isn't comparable to, for example, cotton which, while also subject to speculation and all that entails, at least has a solid base of consumers who in the long run will keep buying cotton. This means that if you trade in cotton and the cotton market bottoms out you can still sell it if you have to, but just at a loss. While if bitcoin bottoms out there might actually not be any buyers. Which means at least one thing: You can't always sell bitcoin, so if you take options you might end up with a wallet full of bitcoin you can't get rid of. This means there will always be bitcoins owned by people, so any sale of bitcoin will re-enliven the market. With cotton if the market crashes and producers switch to other products, then eventually all cotton will be used up and the market for it could stay dead. By virtue of its uselessness, bitcoin is an immortal commodity. The only thing that could kill it is if enough people decided not to trade in it anymore, which is highly unlikely since even when bitcoin is valued at $0.00 anyone who has bitcoin then experiences no downside to putting it on the market for $0.01, leading to a resurgence in trading.
I am very familiar with commodity futures, especially metals futures, being in the Scrap metal biz. Crypto does have a raison d’ etre, as it is an alternative, non governmental currency, free of any transparency & traceability. It is also unstable as each “brand” is somewhat controlled and manipulated by its’ creator.
The comments to that video! What a bunch of dumbasses! Especially the ones going "Oh, he wasn't charged with planning murder for hire, so obviously he didn't do it."
Carl Force IV sounds like a bad '90s direct to video action adventure movie sequel.
"because one thing libertarians all seem to have in common is a self-righteous inability to shut up."
Of course they can't shut up. They're too busy proving to themselves that they're the smartest and coolest and most savvy guys in the world.
(The eyerolling I did while writing that was vast enough to give me a little headache.)
But HOW DARE Biden pardon his son!
I have nothing against drug dealers, I believe drugs should all be legal. It is possible to be responsible about stuff that is addictive and it is possible to be irresponsible. Magic Mushrooms are a good example of almost all users and producers acting responsible around addiction while infinitely scrolling dopamine hacking apps are a good example of users and producers acting irresponsible around addiction. And yet the ones that are illegal are the harmless ones. So obviously legality isn't about safety or justice and any attempt to frame it as such is ignorant at best and problaby dishonest. If you find yourself thinking like that, it's time for some self-reflection.
I do have an issue with middle men sucking out value, though he took a fraction of what Amazon (for example) takes so punishing him for that but not punishing Amazon is incredibly hypocritical. Apart from the parasitism (and hypocrisy) of the taxation of transactions on his platform the one thing he did that marks him as a bad person is the attempts to hire assassins. That's enough to make him a monster. No need to bring morally ambiguous stuff into it, that's just dogpiling and guilt-by-association thinking.
Ta, Marcie. WTAF, FFS!!!
Yes, I want drugs legal. All of them.
We make it entirely too easy for stupid people to survive and reproduce, and look where it’s gotten us.
There is no justice... yet.
Drug dealing might be the best thing he did. He was also an arms dealer and facilitated murder for hire, one was even his own.
Trump is a bastard and a criminal with no integrity, and his pardon of a drug dealer kingpin is another example of his pay-to-play corruption. But I actually agree that the use and possession of drugs for recreational use should be decriminalized. What a person chooses to put in their body is their choice. Offer more education and treatment with the billions you’ll save on leaving junkies alone. Stop trafficking drugs, if you can, because the black market invites murder and violence. And the drugs are increasingly stepped on and adulterated and deadly.
People are obviously disproportionately arrested and charged with possession based on race and socioeconomic factors. I’m a middle class white guy and I know a few people. I can get controlled substances for myself tomorrow if I needed to. But I already poisoned my body enough and was lucky to avoid jail or death. But criminalizing possession makes the problem so much worse, imho. But this douche was selling drugs online to huge numbers of people. His enterprise was highly dangerous and destructive.
The reason the black market invites murder and violence is because it is highly profitable. It is highly profitable because supplies are low but more importantly supplies are uncertain. Supplies are low and uncertain because production and trafficking is a high risk activity. If you legalize, manage, and slightly tax the import/export part, then the black market will become a lot less violent. Not a lot of people are willing to murder for less than they could make flipping burgers for a day.
I'm not a big fan of libertarians. They all seem to think they're better than the rest of us, holier than thou, and I'm not having any. They can all get fucked!
Well, no one can accuse Trump of whiplash, his constant change of opinion keeps him limber!
"Whatever happened to Trump heaving, “We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”
Pardon me, but do you sell drugs? Yes? Then would you please receive the death penalty for your actions?
That man can’t even articulate his own evil intentions.
The tendency to translate what he says to what he probably means is strong but we should resist it. Let him stumble without us catching him.
I admit, I did not know much about this guy before reading this article. I didn’t even know he was a disgrace to my Alma mater. But now that I’ve read it, I’m 100% sure that I know more about him than Mango does.
Thanks, Marcie.
"Donald is doing such a great job with prison reform letting out all these privileged white criminals! Why, pretty soon there'll be more than enough room to re-fill prisons (private and not private) with all the insufficiently butt licking browns, blacks, immigrants, antifa democrats and jesus freaks who won't pray to the orange felon no matter how blasphemous it is!"
squid pro bro
I was assuming that Ulbricht still had some crypto stashed away somewhere and that he paid off Trump with crypto to buy his pardon . But maybe he didn’t have any crypto left. Nevertheless, crypto is still the thread that runs thru all of Trump’s scams and kickbacks. During Watergate, it was follow the money. Now, with Trump, it is follow the crypto. Starting with Trump’s Meme coin crypto , he now has a crypto “wallet” and crypto “coin” to sell. As he basically is selling access and favors pretty much out in the open to whoever wants to buy his influence, he has created various repositories into which deposit said bribes & kickbacks. He can ‘sell ‘ his meme coins, accept payment in crypto, accept ‘contributions’ to his inauguration fund, various PACs and The Trump Library Fund (not a joke). I read a piece where a Trump spokesperson stated they expect to get at least half a billion dollars in contributions. Not counting kickbacks. Now, Trump is ‘pausing’ distribution of foreign aid payments, exempting Israel & Egypt (who previously paid him $10 million). My guess is that he giving recipient countries time to submit their kickback plans to Trump, in order to keep receiving their foreign aid. ‘Cuz Trump don’t be givin’ out free money without his cut.
Keeping with the crypto meme, Trump’s Commerce Sec nominee, is Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a big supporter of crypto, has announced the Cantor Fitzgerald is moving their headquarters to El Salvador. The new Prez of El Salvador is a big proponent of crypto. After he took office, Trump’s 1st phone call was to
MBZ. His second phone call was to the Prez of El Salvador. Rubio’s 1st foreign trip will be to El Salvador. All of a sudden, El Salvador is getting a whole lot of attention. Combine that with Trump’s plan to create a government crypto stockpile reserve and the crypto bros push to use U.S. Treasury funds to buy crypto, the key here is crypto.
Follow the crypto.
Except Trump and his Federalist dirt bags know the key to a virile dictatorship is eliminating any oversight, guardrails or checks on power. Trump is firing inspectors general. He’s doxxing and threatening any federal judges with the courage to oppose him. He’s got Congress firmly in his grasp.
Even at his height of power Nixon was surrounded by establishment lawyers, judges, politicians. The deep state was deep for Nixon, and he knew resignation was his only play. Trump will steal, extort and corrupt the government to extremes Nixon never dreamed of, but few, if any, are left to stop him. The GOP wouldn’t dare oppose him even if he declared minorities no longer had civil rights. He could demand mass deportation of all non-white people and Jewish people and nobody on the right would oppose him. At most, they would say “it’s troubling,” or “he just wants to make America safe.” Maybe if he crashes the economy and unemployment climbs to 20%, enough people might revolt. Unlikely though, as they will probably blame Joe Biden.
Trump is Mob trained. During the first term, he got rid of any FBI and foreign diplomatic threats to his Russian & Ukraine extortion scheme. He&
his made men have schemed & planned to eradicate any investigative threats.
History shows us that every time Repugs lift regulations on the financial industry, their unbridled greed eventually leads to catastrophic financial damage to our economy. This time will be much worse.
They know Dems will bail them out again.
Bukele is not the "new" prez of Salvador, having strong-armed his legislature into changing their constitution to give him another term (or three)... literally sending in armed troops to the legislature to ensure the votes when the right way.
With left, or at least progressive, governments now in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia Salvador -- and its "libertarian" (i.e tech-bro fascist) government is the best hope for Trump-style US policy to "keep" Central America.
I have put together my assessment from bits of info from a number of various articles, especially from the past 2 weeks. The first article mentioned the Prez of El Salvador, & referred to him as the ‘new’ Prez. Before that,
I just didn’t pay any attention to El Salvador. Now, it warrants at lot of attention. You seem to be well informed about that area, so I will defer to you on what I do not know. Hell, I have not been down to Mexico in many years. I have spent some time down there. Thanks for your input.
When contributing to the Trump Library Fund, please remember to also support the Museum of Perpetual Motion Machines, the Save the Dodo Fund and the Ivermectin Medical Institute.
You left out The Sacred Circle of the Hula Hoop.
I just prepared my money order.
Is there any way for crypto to crash and wipe out those that have it, like dump and his ilk? I mean it's not backed by anything but can it crash like the dollar will in value?
It is like any commodity
It is subject to ‘market conditions’
One such condition is stated in the article, the expected sale/auction of the $6.2 billion of Ulbricht’s seized bitcoins.
Another factor is that crypto seems to be created by various entities . If a creator entity does something bad, it can cause that specific crypto to lose value, all the way down to nothing. Some cryptos have been created just for fraud. A couple of people have been prosecuted.
With as big difference that it is ONLY subject to the speculative type of market conditions, there is no actual market for this stuff because it is not productive. It isn't comparable to, for example, cotton which, while also subject to speculation and all that entails, at least has a solid base of consumers who in the long run will keep buying cotton. This means that if you trade in cotton and the cotton market bottoms out you can still sell it if you have to, but just at a loss. While if bitcoin bottoms out there might actually not be any buyers. Which means at least one thing: You can't always sell bitcoin, so if you take options you might end up with a wallet full of bitcoin you can't get rid of. This means there will always be bitcoins owned by people, so any sale of bitcoin will re-enliven the market. With cotton if the market crashes and producers switch to other products, then eventually all cotton will be used up and the market for it could stay dead. By virtue of its uselessness, bitcoin is an immortal commodity. The only thing that could kill it is if enough people decided not to trade in it anymore, which is highly unlikely since even when bitcoin is valued at $0.00 anyone who has bitcoin then experiences no downside to putting it on the market for $0.01, leading to a resurgence in trading.
I am very familiar with commodity futures, especially metals futures, being in the Scrap metal biz. Crypto does have a raison d’ etre, as it is an alternative, non governmental currency, free of any transparency & traceability. It is also unstable as each “brand” is somewhat controlled and manipulated by its’ creator.
But yes, I understand your explanation.
Thanks, I hold out no hope for any prosecution of any of the fanta fascist's bitcoin bullshit but I do appreciate you making it clearer for me.
The comments to that video! What a bunch of dumbasses! Especially the ones going "Oh, he wasn't charged with planning murder for hire, so obviously he didn't do it."
Carl Force IV sounds like a bad '90s direct to video action adventure movie sequel.