I'm not the first to point out that this is a greatest-hits replay of "But Her Emails", but I have realized that my reaction to the "issue" is almost entirely my fear/anger/trauma from that episode.
I think the media is trying to put in a fix against Biden in hopes of getting a "centrist", by which they mean a Republican running as a Democrat. But I've been wrong before.
I mean, he is currently the oldest president ever. And he's older than Reagan was when we know Reagan was starting to lose it. What's weird about it is that Trump, if elected, would be the second oldest president ever (he's currently third, I think?), and he is clearly pretty well near finished losing it.
I agree with JMM that Biden needs to spend more time in front of the cameras, being normal and relatable. Trump get's a perceived-vigor boost from doing all these public events, even if what comes out of his mouth never makes any sense.
I'm not the first to point out that this is a greatest-hits replay of "But Her Emails", but I have realized that my reaction to the "issue" is almost entirely my fear/anger/trauma from that episode.
I hadn't made this connection before, but good lord, yes. I remember such sane people saying that it did show a certain carelessness. OMFG.
Speaking of which, if you want to feel the urge to jab forks into your eyes, check out this focus group with a bunch of undecided voters. It's a great reminder that looking for undecided voters means selecting for "complete political idiot".
I made it through half the link in 5 before hyperventilating and closing the tab.
Old blog friend Tim Burke has a piece on this, kinda. Not sure exactly if I agree -- and I think Bill Clinton doesn't fit the pattern at all -- but worth reading. A taste:
Young people living in the gig economy, with its ceaseless instability and commandment to self-promote, look on the stolid uncharisma of the leadership that the merit/seniority world produces with impatience and frustration. "Biden's too old" is just the particular semantic reformulation of recurrent misgivings about that uncharisma. Hillary Clinton's too distant, bureaucratic and synthetic (and yes, female); John Kerry's too programmed, cerebral, and uninspiring; Al Gore's too cold, methodical and calculating; Bill Clinton's too sleazy, patronizing and sexually predatory; Mike Dukakis is too geeky, intellectual and unfeeling. The central controlling synonyms down at the bottom of the word tree are essentially: too professional, too inauthentic, too remote. Too much like people who've climbed up the ranks with no profound sense of vision of what a society should be. Whose answer to "what politics should we have?" is "well, what politics will get me the job?"
6: I did warn you. I hope there were no forks nearby!
I think Drum pointed out the other day that there is absolutely no evidence that anybody who works with Biden or has met with him in person thinks that he's in decline, whereas basically everyone who worked with Trump discusses at length that he is deeply unfit to serve.
When Republican leaders come out of meetings with Biden, you know what they never say? That he was doddering, hazy, or confused. Because it's such complete and utter bullshit that they can't even come up with real anecdotes more substantive than "swapped two similar names", something I believe 100% of adults who've lived with more than 1 pet/child has done.
Frankly, just as we were too wimpy about standing up for HRC, we're being too wimpy in standing up against this ageist crap that refuses to distinguish between a 2% reduction in speech speed and utterly unhinged blathering.
"I'm sorry you can't distinguish between stuttering and senility" is the sort of thing we should be saying, whether to our IRL friends or people online looking for permission to sit out an election with a fascist on the ballot.
PS Reagan in 1984 performed worse on camera than Biden does now. The debate with "There he goes again" was 1 memorized zinger and 90 minutes of haziness and changing the subject.
I dunno. On the one hand, a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine met Biden and was alarmed by how old and out of it he seemed to be, and she managed to freak me out a little bit.
But on the other hand, her panic seemed less about whether he was actually fit for duty, and more about whether his appearance of unfitness might make him unelectable. Democrats tend to enjoy screwing themselves over by overthinking the electability question. We're so insecure about our unlikeability.
After Clinton got the nomination, I defended her vigorously, even though I thought she was shit candidate with a shitty enough policy profile that I had real misgivings about her serving as president. Regardless, the alternative was so much worse as to be almost unimaginable. Honestly, it remains unimaginable--I still can't believe Donald Trump served as president of the United States--so I've done the same for Biden, who's also shit candidate but whose policy profile makes him, improbably, the best president of my lifetime. That said, if Biden loses, I reserve the right to drop him in my exceptionally meaningful presidential rankings and say that he should have groomed a successor in his first term and not run again.
I generally agree with 13. I think the article linked in 7 is worth reading, and also disagree with much of what Burke implies about electability.
I saw him speak for an hour to an audience of cancer researchers in 2018. He cared about the subject, he had detailed knowledge of which funding initiatives had led to new therapies, and what looked promising contemporaneously. Cancer research is a big, confusing, contentious field, and he gave a great high-level talk full of detail. Any decline is from a really high baseline. Maybe Scorsese(81) could film the talk, he was quite good with making Fran Lebowitz talking into engaging film a few years ago.
Yes he's old, but I'm voting for him enthusiastically. Not just because Trump is a stain. He has a deep knowledge of who's capable from decades in government. His getting Israel wrong is sad, I truly wish that were different.
I agree with others that this is "but her emails" redux. That was a nonevent controversy created by Giulani goons in the NY office of the FBI leaking investigation details. This simple summary of that disaster is basically esoteric knowledge, sadl; maybe John Stewart and Taylor Swift together will save the country.
I've been rattled by my mom and her siblings (all lifelong D voters) remarking on a group chat that Biden really, really looks like their dad did as Parkinson's disease was setting in. It's a very specific, recognizable set of symptoms if you've lived for decades with someone who has it. I hope they're wrong, and they hope they're wrong. I almost never watch politicians on camera so I have no firsthand take.
I have to say, though, I can't even manage to feel stress about this election. Either there are concrete things that I can do, and I will do them, or there's nothing to do, in which case I will avoid thinking about the thousand and one varieties of bullshit that every presidential election churns up. The general "evil is winning everywhere" global vibe* right now has kept my expectations low.
* FWIW, I don't actually need to read a long list of good political, ethical, military, and other developments in the world. No statement that takes this form is actually serious, and no statement with the word "vibe" in it has any truth value. I appreciate all of you but I'm not in the mood.
12. TFA will reflect that I went to an event in, what, 2018 with Biden as the featured speaker and came away determined that he shouldn't be president. And yet here he is, doing as much good as anyone.
13. I think people are basically on drugs when they fantasize about Biden grooming a successor, or handing the nomination to some favored person at the convention. There's no obvious consensus choice, and if Biden was using energy and capital to create one, it would surely backfire, as partisans of the various people not chosen would be able to point to a zillion reasons not to support the chosen person. (My current favorite is people still mad about the Governor of California having had dinner at the French Laundry during the pandemic, when he should not have. Perfect vs. good, people.) There really is no obvious choice, and Biden doesn't have the kind of following that would let him anoint one.
If Trump had faded into the woodwork -- or gone to the trashheap where he belongs -- after 2020, then Biden would have had the luxury, and probably the need, to stand down during 2023, and let a succession struggle play out. It would have sucked a lot of oxygen from the District of Columbia, but it's not as if Congress is doing very much in this session. But as it is, he looks out at the landscape and just doesn't see anyone more likely to beat Trump than he is. The stakes are too high for silly bullshit. (As they were in 2020, but it only took the voices of Black women in the South to snap everyone out of it.)
I keep telling myself that everyone is just getting this out of their system now, so that when the Trump candidacy heats up and the possibility of a Trump presidency seems more imminent, everyone can coalesce behind Biden, feeling like they fully aired their concerns. So we're in the "airing of concerns" preamble before the consolidation of support. But I still loathe it.
It's more like everybody is laying down their "told you so" markers.
This is ridiculous. Biden is old and has had a stutter literally his whole life; take that into account when thinking about any verbal gaffes. Trump is only four years younger, visibly unhealthy in ways Biden isn't, and probably literally the worst president ever. (In 2019 I would probably have given Bush the edge, due to the Iraq war, but then came covid. Not totally Trump's fault, but still mismanaged in almost every way. And Civil-War-era presidents other than Lincoln always appear high on this list, but how much of that was actually their fault?)
That's it. It's just them. Dean Phillips has zero delegates so far. I guess I can't blame him for throwing his hat in the ring just in case Biden has a stroke in the next three months, but he's not a serious candidate. Nikki Haley is the same thing on the other side, except she has a better chance of becoming the candidate, due to Trump's legal cases. RFK Jr. and whoever Putin No Labels puts forth might cause some nail-biting in swing states, but aren't going win any states, let alone the election. If Biden was going to anoint a successor, he should have done so about a year ago, so it's a good thing he's not. In 2028 when there's a Democratic primary and there's a range of candidates to consider I'd be happy to consider their age, but that's four years away and we know absolutely no one who will be running then. (Well, probably Kamala Harris.)
It's Biden vs. Trump. Biden's age is less relevant than Delaware's size. No offense, Heebie, jms, and anyone else encountering people in the wild who claim to be genuinely worried about this and aren't sure what to say to them. I'm not great at thinking on my feet in the moment in actual conversation; I'm sure I couldn't come up with this tirade if I wasn't sitting at a computer. But this really is ridiculous.
18 Well, and conservative columnists are pretty desperate to create a permission structure for voting for Trump. As I've tiresomely repeated before, in 2016, there wasn't just the emails, and the speech to Goldman Sachs, but also the certainty that Trump would pivot, the guardrails in the system (and the Republican party), and, you know, he's a business guy, so even if he has to break some eggs, he'll get deals done to bring high wage manufacturing jobs back to the Upper Midwest. All of that is gone, and Trump is determined to wraith everyone who would be doing this kind of thing by inviting Russia to attack NATO countries. So of course everyone is determined to talk about Biden's age.
tldr: you mouth to God's ears.
20 last: Jimmy Kimmel had a decent bon mot: if you think Alfred is getting too old to take care of the Batcave, that's no reason to put the Joker in charge.
22 is good, and I might steal that line. 19 is exactly right.
Also, they're the same goddamn age (three years is not a meaningful difference). One's a skinny old guy with a quiet voice, the other is a fat old guy who yells. Deciding between them on the basis of age and health, without specific information none of us has, is absurd.
Do I think Biden's too old? Sure do, and did in 2020. Has he been surprisingly good nonetheless? Sure has. Are people pushing the narrative that age and health should be important considerations for Biden voters in a way they shouldn't be for Trump voters either very dimwitted or in the tank for Trump? That's what it looks like to me.
This is a good editorial (video): https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-biden-on-his-worst-day-is-better-than-trump-on-his-best-day-204101189938
People who think age is an issue preferring Donald OatmealBrain is also like the emails coverage. As Lemieux often points out, even if you were a single issue voter on secure server practices, Trump was objectively far worse than Clinton.
I think this meme is the perfect response: https://twitter.com/DavidEDaveWall1/status/1757462873536966858
26: But Biden has a omnishambles criminal failson who has been grifting based on his father's political clout!
||
"Too much politics, and nothing for ourselves; we did not even see an elephant"|>
Working vacations are the worst. I suppose. I've never had one.
NMM to GOP control of the PA House, and of NY-03.
"Creating a permission structure to allow them to vote for Trump" is exactly right, except I'd add "or not vote". It was nice having Trump in office, if you were well-off and personally safe and on the left. It gave you a rallying cry. Everyone was suddenly on your side. If you enjoy protesting, big protests are terrific. It's like the crowd scene in Les Mis. If you like being a political blogger or journalist, it's amazing having all this Trump stuff being leaked to you. It's jus like real journalism but so much less work.
Now things are boring and nuanced again and life has lost its spark.
29: What book?
32: No, it was not nice having Trump in office. It was a Gish gallop shit show from start to finish, from lying about the size of the crowds at his inauguration to an attempted coup after he lost, and uncountable amounts of crap -- buy Greenland! divert a hurricane with nukes! or just Sharpie a map and hope!! -- in between. I grew up in Louisiana and have a bunch of family in Texas, so no, everyone was not suddenly on my side. I got to find out who would have gone Nazi if they had been there then. Granted, it was mostly who I expected but it was still rotten. I've kinda hung up my political blogger spurs, but it's not like there was a shortage of it from 2003 to 2016, and a Hillary presidency would have been a golden age for bloggability. (If there was some kind of British irony that I missed in the comment, apologies. I've been in the Land of the Literal a long time now, and I have no chill at all about Donald Trump, a wholly pwned subsidiary of V.V. Putin OAO.)
Apparently Jon Stewart made some jokes about Biden's age in his triumphant return. That guy was always so edgy. I didn't watch so maybe he also made fun of those clowns in Congress, what a bunch of clowns.
28- Next you're going to tell me there's speculation his son might have used illegal substances.
https://search.worldcat.org/title/1151508412
Ill-written, but interesting.
36, 37: Thanks! That's a good quote from Gagarin.
I find the media narrative incredibly manipulative.
But the biggest problem is that there is a problem. It doesn't matter the substance of the problem, really.
We have to pay attention to the problem, as much as one can quibble about what it is.
I strongly doubt that the media is trying to get a centrist. Biden IS a centrist. They are just doing their usual shit.
They are telling us they will sink his campaign. We have warning in advance. We HAD warning in advance. Plus, we have had other gerontocracy events (for lack of a better term) that were CATASTROPHIC in the RBG case.
It's going to be horrible when he loses and everyone says 'oh right. He WAS too old, or people thought he was. That's why.'
I think we should try to avoid this. Or 'they' should try to, given what a disaster it will be.
I don't think a lot of options exist besides putting in someone else. Who has to be Harris. Who will also probably lose.
What a mess. Or we can just pray I guess? But this all seems nuts to me. It was signaled to us over a year ago they would do this.
I find the media narrative incredibly manipulative.
But the biggest problem is that there is a problem. It doesn't matter the substance of the problem, really.
We have to pay attention to the problem, as much as one can quibble about what it is.
I strongly doubt that the media is trying to get a centrist. Biden IS a centrist. They are just doing their usual shit.
They are telling us they will sink his campaign. We have warning in advance. We HAD warning in advance. Plus, we have had other gerontocracy events (for lack of a better term) that were CATASTROPHIC in the RBG case.
It's going to be horrible when he loses and everyone says 'oh right. He WAS too old, or people thought he was. That's why.'
I think we should try to avoid this. Or 'they' should try to, given what a disaster it will be.
I don't think a lot of options exist besides putting in someone else. Who has to be Harris. Who will also probably lose.
What a mess. Or we can just pray I guess? But this all seems nuts to me. It was signaled to us over a year ago they would do this.
I find the media narrative incredibly manipulative.
But the biggest problem is that there is a problem. It doesn't matter the substance of the problem, really.
We have to pay attention to the problem, as much as one can quibble about what it is.
I strongly doubt that the media is trying to get a centrist. Biden IS a centrist. They are just doing their usual shit.
They are telling us they will sink his campaign. We have warning in advance. We HAD warning in advance. Plus, we have had other gerontocracy events (for lack of a better term) that were CATASTROPHIC in the RBG case.
It's going to be horrible when he loses and everyone says 'oh right. He WAS too old, or people thought he was. That's why.'
I think we should try to avoid this. Or 'they' should try to, given what a disaster it will be.
I don't think a lot of options exist besides putting in someone else. Who has to be Harris. Who will also probably lose.
What a mess. Or we can just pray I guess? But this all seems nuts to me. It was signaled to us over a year ago they would do this.
39-41: Biden is the best chance for sanity and democracy, and has been since, I don't know, probably the 2022 elections, maybe earlier. If they had gone differently, Harris maybe could have taken a more role, as some VPs do. Or maybe someone I can't even think of could have stepped up. But that's not what happened, and I can't imagine it being a good strategy at this point. If Biden loses, chances are his age (and for that matter, the media talking about his age) will be less of a contribution to that than the economy and the American public's preference for fascism.
the American public's preference for fascism
This, exactly. It'd only be close enough for the few who would vote Trump (or not vote -- a more plausible goal for Putin and the plutocrats) based on Biden's age because 10s of millions of people want unapologetic Trumpism without the mitigating factors many media outlets and pundits sold in 2016.
39 RBG's successor would have been nominated by Clinton if so many people hadn't acted like they thought the power to make Supreme Court nominations was just a sideshow.
None of whom were Republicans, who were voting explicitly to have Trump fill Scalia's seat.
NY-3 and PA-140 are, while far from dispositive, not bad signs at least.
NY-3 looks like it is pushing Nate Cohn even further into the ressentiment bunker into which the other Nate has so thoroughly ensconced himself. In doing so he is molding himself as the perfect "analyst" for the hyperbolically crazed-yet-conventional discourse that the NYT politics section promulgates (more on that re: the post topic and the Hur report in subsequent comments). He is of course "right " in some ways re: the probable overreading of the NY-3 results that will show up, but 1) If NY-3 had gone the other way, his organization would have been all in and then some on the overreading, and 2) he felt the need to preemptively float the scenario where a solid D win was potentially "bad news for Biden" given that it involved the D candidate overperforming against Biden* so Biden still sucks in the minds of voters.
NY-3 was at least a reassuring data point in light of current immigration / Dems in disarray discourse if not necessarily an extremely positive one. PA-140 with its massive D overperformance was an even better result.
*And if I read his confusing multi-tweet scenario correctly he was talking about overperformance against Biden polling data from Times/Siena not the 2020 election as in fact the special election result looks like it will be very close to the 2020 Biden+8 margin.
Yeah, his long thread read like him disappearing up his own methodological ass. His whole value-add is extrapolation.
First of several comments on the age thing and the current precipitating event of the egregious Hur report. The conjunction of the two and the utterly predictable media response spurred me to begin writing in my head a guest post on the baleful legacy of 30+ years of Republican "justice and security daddies." HG's post (and my manifest sloth) will probably spare the commentariat that, or who knows maybe not because to me it is one of the signal symptoms of a discourse gone berserk.
Putting the age thing aside, the report itself looks to be mostly an overblown piece of shit that leads with wholly inappropriate conclusions based on the actual findings of the report. For some details read this from Just Security, or various postings from emptywheel, and this (somewhat better than usual for him) Glenn Kessler piece (gift link so should be readable).
Bottom line is that ""Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen." is a quite misleading synopsis of the results and certainly not the appropriate lead to the report. But of course that was the (admittedly secondary to the memory stuff) lede that almost all media went with. And I will just note that Hur's gratuitous inclusion of the memory stuff should have been in a sane world, a big clue that maybe a bit deeper analysis was warranted by the news organization before they trumpeted Hur's chosen headline. "R special prosecutor releases a tendentious and gratuitously inappropriate report against a candidate for President in an election year" was certainly one of the 2 main takeaways of the report. You will have noticed that angle was not one almost any significant media organization chose to pursue. I will not get into the details but just note that the primary "willful" came from a statement that Biden made to his ghostwriter about finding "classified documents" which in context was not easily linked to any actual classified documents (those the SC suggested where never shown to be at the house Biden was at at the time of the statement, and in fact there is a very plausible non-classified item that possibly referred to. [Oh no another Biden gaffe, wrongly using "classified".]
Here is Just Security's suggested summary from their analysis and their interpretation of Special Counsel guidelines:
"We have concluded that there is not a prosecutable case against Biden. Although there was a basis to open the investigation based on the fact that classified documents were found in Biden's homes and office space, that is insufficient to establish a crime was committed. The illegal retention or dissemination of national defense information requires that he knew of the existence of such documents and that he knew they contained national defense information. It is not a crime without those additional elements. Our investigation, after a thorough year-long review, concludes that there is an absence of such necessary proof. Indeed, we have found a number of innocent explanations as to which we found no contrary evidence to refute them and found affirmative evidence in support of them."
Even if they don't actually want Trump to win -- and I'm sure plenty of people employed by the NYT don't -- they do want to sell a bunch of newspapers and soap for the next year, so every little potential bit of drama has to be hyped and hyped again.
We do, as individuals and as part of a broader collective, have a little bit of agency. We all wish we had a different candidate. We don't. Sooner rather than later it's time for us to stop talking about how much we wish there was someone else, and move over to how much we'd rather have Biden than Trump. Without the obligatory wish for someone else qualification.
The price of a large coffee in my office building's cafe has dropped by 75 cents. Somehow I think this crazy economy is gonna turn out juuuust fine. (Winks at camera)
So Hur sort of comes somewhere in the middle in the iniquity rankings of Republican Justice and Security Daddies. Certainly not as manifestly evil as Ken Starr or the utter clown John Durham. He did not refer a recommendation to prosecute to DOJ and included a section explaining how different the Biden set of facts were from the Trump Mar-a-Lago thing.
But I suspect in an attempt to stay viable in Republican politics he felt the need to balance his sound prosecutorial decision with the gratuitous memory mentions and the misleading summary. It is very similar to what I believe motivated James Comey to act soo inappropriately in July and October 2016 (although I think his was a desire to be able to work with various crazed Republicans in more ostensibly neutral roles.)
I am actually looking forward a bit to Hur testifying to Congress although it risks just providing more memory stuff for the feckless assholes in the press to chew on. Comey's subsequent testimony to Congress in July 2016 was actually far more honest and revealing than his prior scolding, but of course got almost no play in the press.
And despite the "respected prosecutor" label assigned to Hur he did have some red flags in his background. IN particular for me he was a big player in the egregious effort to can McCabe just before he got his pension. (Aided by one of the surficially milder Security and Justice Daddies--but ultimately a complete hack-- DOJ IG Michael Horowitz).
Bottom line a complete and utter fuckup by Garland to appoint Hur.
54.last a compound fuckup deriving from the original fuckup of Biden appointment of Garland in the first place in what appears like some sort of misguided consolation prize.
An d finally in my series of comments after the discussion has moved on the crazed press reaction to the memory stuff.
I kind of viewed Hunter as the "her emails" thing, but the eerie similarity of the Hur thing to Comey's BS and the absolutely over-the-top press reaction make me think memory/age is the email and Hunter is the Clinton Cash/Foundation crap (which the NYT in particular tried to make a real thing).
In this case I think the press in general and the Times in particular when even further berserk than they did with the 2016 October Surprise. By my count the day after there were 5 news/"news analysis" items prominently on the website/front page the next day and then 4 featured opinion pieces the day after that. Plus almost all their other coverage was tainted with it--things like "Trump goes to SC as Biden tries to shake off memory issue". The only initial leavening in the Times I saw was an article talking to memory experts about he complexity of sorting out slips from real issues. The WaPo was pretty bad (I think 4 initial articles) but much more leavening including a good piece from Matt Viser (a guy I generally do not like) on how the Hur/Biden interviews went according to people who were there. The thing that galls me is that almost no one in MSM seemed to do the appropriate questioning of the overall conclusions based on the gratuitous inclusion of the memory stuff. All but the true partisan hacks at least acknowledged their inclusion was gratuitous and politically-motivated; e.g WaPo Ashley Parker noted in a tweet what a gift it was to Trump--but as far as I can tell did not followup with any questions or reporting on how/why a "respected prosecutor" was giving a gift to Trump. Part of it is that I think Republican officeholder malfeasance is just completely baked into the discourse at this point.
54 last -- He had to appoint a Republican, I think. It's just too bad that Republicanism has been steeped in bad faith for a generation, so you can't hardly find a decent one anywhere.
55: And although admittedly not a position I took at the time, I think milquetoast Obama's selection of Garland was also a mistake. It is a pretty hindsight view, however, but no one was fired up to get Garland on the SC and he was easily dismissed (somewhat accurately) as just another corporatist, neo-liberal, pro-cop hack by the misogynistic fuckpigs of the Alt-left leading up to the election. Where they were completely wrong, of course, was in pretending Trump would not nominate someone much worse.
I don't think that highly of The Nation these days, but there seems to be a decent case to be made that, in addition to the bad decision of appointing Hur, Garland could have enforced a black-and-white rule against the kind of smears Hur put in his preamble under the guise of reasons for non-prosecution (Hur surely knew how the media would read them), and not doing so is a pretty big lapse.
58: Why the fuck did he? Fuck that shit so, so hard. This is precisely the thinking the imbues our current discourse with craziness. Take the heat up front for appointing a "D."
Your second sentence belies the first.
Could Murkowski have gotten through?
Yep, the idea that fairness requires you to ratfuck yourself is certainly something Garland genuinely believes and something not consonant with any principle of good government.
60 My original thought as well, but upon reflection I think he would have had to somehow have made that condition upfront. I think any editing would have certainly come out in testimony/leaks and probably looked worse while providing the same fodder now imbued with scandal.
I do think they need to release the transcripts (there may need to be some natsec redactions I presume).
Contrast the house-cleaning Tusk is creditably doing, with results like this.
Is it true that the extent of the memory issues in the report are 1) Biden wasn't sure whether he was VP in 2009 (he wasn't for the first 3 weeks!) and 2) Hur speculating that if he charged Biden the defense would be that Biden is a forgetful old man (this is the line most news reports quote even though it's complete speculation from Hur)? No witnesses actually described Biden as forgetful, it was all either Hur's inference from Biden's questioning or speculation about how it would look to a jury?
I am hoping that the feeling that Democrats need to appoint their ideological enemies to be fair dies with the gerontocracy.
I am pissed about Biden's age and that he is running for re-election. I am not sympathetic to people from other states being pissed about it because if I had to put up with being represented by Feinstein for the last few years, then everyone else can suffer the same pain.
I also really like Biden's administration and policies, so I guess I am gonna have to grudgingly accept the second term of the best president of my lifetime even though he is old.
66: The report directly made stated that Biden couldn't remember the year of his son Beau's death, which seems to have infuriated him.
68: Would love to see the actual transcript/context for that. Hur's accoiunting is not something I am going to give much credence to.
66: 2) Hur speculating that if he charged Biden the defense would be that Biden is a forgetful old man (this is the line most news reports quote even though it's complete speculation from Hur)
The (lame) defense I've heard of the media use is that Hur went on to say something like "as he did during our questioning." So iyt was not just the speculation about a potential trial but rather an "observation." But if the disingenuous fuckers want to pick that niit, I will point out that as written that would be a characterization of "how Biden presented himself" which is less of an observation of a memory issue than a minor duplicity issue. But of course the lazy media guys just went for the obvious pull quote without context.
69,last: And on the speculative trial part, I've heard legal analysts I generally respect say that such speculation is quite common in *internal* memos among prosecutors and staff when they are determining whether to charge or not. But hardly appropriate for public reports.
A few other sleazy items in the report:
* Hur talking about how Biden saw himself as a "figure of history" in trying to gin up motivation for his keeping classified info to use in his book. (Part of his convoluted attempt to make plausible that Biden's mention of finding the "classified documents" is referring to actual classified documents (ones never known to be at the place Biden was at at the time) rather than other (from what I have seen) much more likely scenarios.
* Hur referring to Biden's "notebooks" rather than ":diaries" (which Biden called them) avoiding the well-known Reagan diary treatment (personal not presidential records).
I haven't read the thread but man, the anti-Biden left is a major bummer. I have an old friend, smart, educated guy and very anti-Gaza-genocide, and you know, I also am against bombing the innocents! But the way he phrases his many social media posts about Gaza is "I just want to find someone I can vote for. Who else is out there?" Fuckin' A, dude, there are only two people that could be elected president and if you don't vote for Biden, you're helping elect Trump. How hard is that to understand? You can criticize what's going on in Gaza without effectively campaigning against Bidan and Trump. The only reason my head doesn't explode is because he's in Massachusetts and, you know, probably that's safely blue (though they elected a Republican senator and seem to love republican governors, go figure). So like 90% of us, his vote doesn't matter.
71 His vote doesn't matter, but his contribution to the narrative does.
I'm probably misremembering, but I recall Michael Moore having a book out in 2001, which mentioned being surprised in 2000 that Nader was campaigning in Florida. A Nader partisan, he nonetheless wasn't hoping Bush would win Florida, a definitely foreseeable consequence of Nader campaigning there. The response from the campaign was no we want votes everywhere we can get them.
The people in Florida voting for Nader understood themselves to be part of a national movement, which had a narrative about Gore's inadequacy. Your friend is a small part of a similar narrative.
71 should say "against Biden and for Trump". I don't know who Bidan is.
Where they were completely wrong, of course, was in pretending Trump would not nominate someone much worse.
No, where they were completely wrong was the belief that Trump could not be elected. I think we've all collectively forgotten quite how unthinkable that seemed. I remember that the (conservative) president at Heebie U made a joke about the lack of a Republican candidate and how non-real the election was, at the fall welcome back meeting.
I'm glad my brother asked me in October 2016 how likely Trump was to be elected, because it means I remember how correct my uttered take was. I told him I thought it was unlikely, but in the ballpark of 25%, possible enough we should work like hell to prevent it.
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I just got the Idaho Bar monthly magazine in the mail, and opened it to the disciplinary page. I don't usually read these, but somehow ended up looking. There were two items. A lawyer got disbarred for sending dick pics to clients and making suggestive and inappropriate comments. A magistrate judge got reprimanded for not changing his policy of changing clothes in his chambers without locking the door.
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Joe Biden is a very good president, and a solid candidate. Even on pure electability grounds, I have not seen a plausible case made that there is a better prospective nominee available.
Yeah, Biden's age represents a grave risk.* But Whitmer, Harris, Newsom (God help us) or whoever else you might name all represent more serious risks. None of them has been tested electorally the way Biden has been.
Biden is unpopular, but that's the time that we live in. All institutions have been degraded in the public mind -- that's how you get a guy like Trump in the first place. The cure to that is making competent, decent politicians like Biden popular again.
*Pun entirely accidental. Please ignore it.
Are you saying he should start sending dick pics.
"A magistrate judge got reprimanded for not changing his policy of changing clothes in his chambers without locking the door."
This seems a little unfair. Why are people barging into a judge's chambers without knocking first? Uncivilised lot, these Idahoans.
Depends if it was plausible deniability for indecent exposure, like certain guys do to cleaners in hotel rooms. "Oopsie, forgot to lock the door!"
"...a finding regarding Judge Peterson's judgment in failing to alter or eliminate his practice of changing clothes in his chambers without properly securing them," per the official announcement. To be walked in on in your chambers while changing once may be regarded as misfortune...
Judges don't wear anything under the robe, right?
80: cleaners knock first, though? I always did in my hotel cleaning days.
71: I think there's a misunderstanding about the anti-Biden left. The key to understanding their motivations is that, by and large, they aren't on our side. They really want outcomes that Biden won't give them, just like Republicans.
Biden is a small-d democrat, and those leftists find the idea of building majority coalitions to be repugnant.
And yeah, sure, some of those folks are very nice people. But you know, a lot of Trumpers are donating to charity, taking care of their elderly relatives and volunteering for suicide hotlines. But they still aren't on our side politically, and asking them to wise up is futile because they already know what they are doing. By asking them to see things your way, you're not asking them to get smarter -- a lot of them are very smart -- you're asking them to switch sides on fundamental issues.
75: I told him I thought it was unlikely, but in the ballpark of 25%,
Having brought up the Nates above, I find it ironic that a thing that Nate Silver got a lot of shit for was one I regard him as getting absolutely correct--his election eve numbers had Trump on the order of 30% or so chance of winning.
86: I've seen speculation that that reaction is his supervillain origin story.
86: Almost certainly that was where my number came from.
87: Yes, I almost added that as I recall he started by "defending" it on reasonable grounds like correlated polling error.* But then getting progressively more defensive**.
*Which I think was quite correct, education effects hitting the upper Midwest. It is often forgotten that nationally the polling averages were not off that much in 2016.
*Nate C. from last night "Based on a careful analysis of my replies, I can report that what remains of twitter has completely lost it lol."
84: They do, that's why it's so blatant on the part of these men. They "didn't hear".
86 is because most people literally think 30% means it'll happen two times out of a hundred.
https://x.com/jsellenberg/status/1504222073476075521
Is this a genuinely novel form of immunity from criminal law?
85: I get that some leftists want things incompatible with Biden. I hadn't viewed the personal friends who let anti-Biden stuff leak into social media as "the anti-Biden left." I guess my previous conception of the anti-Biden left was more wacko than these people, but maybe they're it, and that's what's so dismaying. Why would this bright person I know only as a precociously talented young birder be wanting the world to burn?
I accept that they want outcomes Biden won't give them (well, Gaza is the *only* issue I see them post about, so that one issue anyway) but from what I know of their values Trump would give them worse outcomes all around (I'll see your Gaza atrocities and raise you Ukrainian atrocities, and maybe Lithuania too!). It makes me sick to think of otherwise simpatico aquaintances sitting out the election or actively working to damage Biden. I can't yet accept that they're that different, still feels like they just don't understand and in the right situation I could convince them. (I may just be an idiot).
On reading 93 after posting it I'm pretty sure I'm an idiot.
74: No, where they were completely wrong was the belief that Trump could not be elected.
You are right, this is the calculation that was being made by the vast majority of folks saying Garland/HRC potential SC picks were likely to be indistinguishable from Trump's. I should have said something like "one aspect of their disingenuous fuckheadedness was their statement of that position." Similar to CC's point in 72 they were de facto part of a national movement that helped remove incentives to vote for HRC.
I should not even mention 2016 anymore, it just leaves me fruitlessly angry and depressed.
Oh, and I forgot to mention some of the media response that most thoroughly enraged me.*
1) The juvenile hideousness of seeing the WH Press Corps at the impromptu press conference the evening of the Hur report release. Biden was pissed (which I think was good but the press found off-putting). During it he zinged asshole Peter Doocy quite adroitly, and gave cogent replies on actual topics of import like the Middle East. But of course the Sisi slip in the middle of a substantive answer was all anyone led with.
2) in the midst of the frenzy, several in the media further disgraced themselves by maintaining the media were involved in covering up the "age" issue.
See @asteadnyt: Biden's age is very clearly the most impt non-Trump issue in this elec. polling says so. Voters say so. It's just the WH/DC have had a sorta gentleman's agreement for the last year to pretend like it's not. (He's doing the Run Up podcast which has been basically a diner dive to find what the real folks think.
And the dreadful Olivia Nuzzi: It's going to be a long 9 months of watching the establishment media deny what is obviously true about President Biden's mental decline and what voters consistently say about how much it worries them. She was full of ableist BS about Fetterman as well.
*"Free Yourself of Serenity-Destroying Rage Demons via Blog Comments, A 20-year Failed Experiment" by JP Stormcrow.
Fetterman went really big on Isreal. Not many of the Squirrel Hill people in big houses liked him when I was canvassing.
I am finding him a bit disappointing, but not a thing to do with his stroke. Although refreshingly candid on some stuff as expected,, But can't get past his Israel/Palestine stuff at the moment. He is currently the target of complete fury among young politically active people I know in Pittsburgh.
And I snuck into secured apartment complexes for him.
93-94: Nah, not at all an idiot. I'm generalizing here about the anti-Biden left, and you're interacting with a specific person.
I wouldn't dream of getting into a debate with a Palestinian American with family in Gaza (or the West Bank) about whether they should vote for Joe Biden -- despite the fact that I believe they should, even on that single issue. Some people have single issues that they understandably can't compromise on.
But the anti-Biden left -- in general -- is about performative virtue, and not achieving any particular policy goal. If it isn't Palestine, it's the failure to forgive enough student debt or whatever. And the thing about that kind of virtue is that it is, fundamentally, anti-democratic -- that's why that group doesn't view Trump as a huge problem.
Freddie DeBoer offered what I consider to be the Rosetta Stone of the anti-Biden left. He wrote an
anti-AOC essay for New York Magazine that I thought was a pithy summary of all of the repugnant things I hear from those clowns. A key bit:
I don't think Ralph Nader or Jill Stein cost the Democrats presidential elections; I think Al Gore and Hillary Clinton were terrible candidates who ran incompetent campaigns. But if you do think lefties voting third party determine the outcomes of national elections, perhaps at some point you might consider actually giving those lefties something to vote for?
In another context, I guarantee you that deBoer would claim to be against climate change and the Iraq War, but with Bush vs. Gore, those are non-issues. Gore's positions provided nothing to vote for. Talking policy with these people is meaningless because they don't care about policy.
If you want to find out what motivates them, you have to look elsewhere. And the place to look (I propose) is the opposition to compromise as a matter of principle. The absolute, non-negotiable issue for such voters is absolutism. Palestine or the minimum wage or whatever -- these things aren't relevant to the conversation. What's relevant is there there is some place where the candidate falls short.
And with the deBoers of the world, that's where the difference of opinion lies. Talking about policy matters avoids the actual issue.
During it he zinged asshole Peter Doocy quite adroitly, and gave cogent replies on actual topics of import like the Middle East.
Yeah, I don't normally watch these things, but since the whole controversy is about how he presents himself, I thought I'd take a look.
The Doocy zinger was pretty sweet, but as a theater critic I thought it would have worked better if it was delivered with a smile. Instead, as you note, he was visibly pissed.
He meandered a bit in the Q&A, but this wasn't like, say, a GW Bush performance. That sonofabitch often looked senile. Biden is clearly fine.
If it isn't Palestine, it's the failure to forgive enough student debt or whatever.
You may have seen this, but one guy several months ago tweeted "I guess I have to vote for Biden now" with a screenshot of his email on being forgiven $60k in student loans, then recently tweeted, presumably about Gaza, "So we're not voting in November, right?"
103 et seq. I'm on the board of our local IAF affiliate, and a smart thing from one of our trainings was that you have to learn to distinguish between half a loaf and half a baby.
What? Babies either smell great or horrible.
So if Biden's age isn't an issue, what about the mishandling classified documents charges?
49.last to 112. Hur even highlighted that Biden was cooperative in a way that typically avoids charges for a mistake, while noting that if everything alleged in the Trump indictments is proven then it's entirely appropriate for Trump to face a significant punishment.
Hopefully I'm not just replying to a troll here.
Oh hey, now we know the position the Justice Department took when Biden's lawyers protested the language.
"The identified language is neither gratuitous nor unduly prejudicial because it is not offered to criticize or demean the President," Weinsheimer wrote to Biden's legal team. "Rather, it is offered to explain Special Counsel Hur's conclusions about the President's state of mind in possessing and retaining classified information."
Not to say the DoJ acts indistinguishably from a six-year-old child, but yes, Bradley Weinsheimer, there is a Santa Claus.
Speaking of the Justice Department and Biden, the main witness alleging corrupt Biden dealings in Ukraine has been indicted for lying about that.
7 is pretty cogent. In the end, it's plausible that for lack of a better explanation Obama was cool and by association made the Democratic party and mainstream liberalism actively cool. The enthusiasm gap between my mid-millennial peers and young voters at the same age is pretty astonishing to me.
If you want to find out what motivates them, you have to look elsewhere. And the place to look (I propose) is the opposition to compromise as a matter of principle. The absolute, non-negotiable issue for such voters is absolutism. Palestine or the minimum wage or whatever -- these things aren't relevant to the conversation. What's relevant is there there is some place where the candidate falls short.
Or, to modify this slightly: the absolute, non-negotiable issue is that you don't accidentally end up voting for the same person as your parents, or other people whom you regard as cringe, lame, or embarrassing. (This applies even though many of the people who hold this position are nearing grandparent status themselves.)
114. It's sad seeing this place fall into delusional cultdom.
Like, is the median poster here even aware that they sound like a bush supporter in 2007?
the stupid age thing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html
Ezra's piece makes me think of how Jerry Brown refused to campaign before Labor Day, saying that no one was paying attention until then anyway. If the convention were in August and did pick someone besides Biden, it would still be a three month campaign. Man, they should all be only three months.
I think he's way undervaluing the downsides of a contested succession race. That some process worked in the 19th century isn't a very strong endorsement. Those processes had a much different 50 years of antecedent that we've been having.
Speaking of which, VW, could a decent argument be made that if the South hadn't overreacted to Lincoln's election, and instead of seceding had relied on the Supreme Court to protect slavery, that Lincoln's team or rivals cabinet would have ended up a chaotic disaster, ending the Republican Party as a governing force?
123 -- That was a pretty different time, media-wise.
It's true that swing voters in swing states aren't paying attention until November, but the Right Wing machine will be working to define dem aspirants from the moment they raise their hands.
"I think he's way undervaluing the downsides of a contested succession race."
Ya think??? I also dig the very special argument that Biden must go because he's unpopular, but the even more unpopular Harris would be great, because she's actually secretly super delightful. You just have to get to know her a bit!
124.2: maybe? But I don't think so. First, the South had been overreacting to EVERYTHING for decades by that point, so it's hard to imagine a measured response to Lincoln's election. And second, Lincoln proved himself more than willing to ignore the Supreme Court when it issued rulings he found particularly odious. Would that have been true outside of wartime? I don't know, but I suspect it would have been if the alternative would have meant allowing slavery to expand into the West. And if slavery hadn't been allowed to expand into the West, for whatever reason, the South would have provoked war one way or another.
126 Yeah that's the problem with the succession race. None of the potential candidates are actually very popular -- let's define that as favorable exceeds unfavorable + don't know -- right now. It may be true -- hell, it's certainly true that a full court marketing campaign could convert a lot of the don't knows into favorables. It's also certainly true that the other full court marketing press is going to convert a lot of the don't knows into unfavorables. With some assist from the 'well, actuallys' on our side of the fence.
Who are the people in the smoke-filled room supposed to impose? How many of the don't knows move immediately to unfavorable based simply on this imposition? Say what you will about Trump, his selection three times now isn't manufactured by some elite, but is a genuine result of his popularity among voters. Tens of millions of people want him, despite everything that's been said and done.
128: I think Ezra VASTLY underestimates the complexity and fragility of the Democratic coalition (and, by extension, of intersectional politics more broadly).
Guess 114.last was the correct impression.
If the U.S. president was elected by a popular majority vote, would anyone believe Trump could win? Has he ever been over 50% in approval rating? He's obviously never won the popular vote.
it would still be a three month campaign. Man, they should all be only three months
While I'm imagining the US having other systems of elections, I'm jealous of the parliamentary systems where the time from "calling for an election" to "having the election" is shorter than the typical gap between a primary and a general election in the US.
I've never agreed with anything more than I agree with 131.2, though I might have put a full stop after "parliamentary systems."
131 last -- I hear you, but, as you know, those campaigns are waged based on a whole bunch of things that may not have been as closely followed by as many people, but nonetheless have taken place. Party people jostling for position over years, carving out internal and public profiles -- the whole thing is happening, and you can (and if you lived in a parliamentary system, you would) follow along as closely as you want.
You have the option in our system to live like a swing voter in a swing state: regard everything as noise, and only start paying attention do you own research on Hallowe'en before election day.
133 I've never really dug into why the authors of the Constitution didn't go parliamentary. It must have been to protect slavery -- this is always the first (but not only) answer to everything -- but the exact mechanism isn't something I know.
By 'do you own research' I mean Feel the Vibes.
a) They were dumbasses who kinda sucked at political theory.
b) They didn't want to do anything that seemed too European.
c) They were protecting slavery, yes.
Israeli politics has soured me on parliamentary systems. Maybe a lottery? That way at least there's a chance for someone good.
OT: On a campus tour. When am I supposed to ask how antisemitic the students are?
Someone on this tour has left Evangelical literature in the rest room, so maybe I need to ask what kinds of antisemitism do the kids have.
See if there is a website xhatesjews.com where x equals the name or common nickname of the university.
Where does your mom live, peep? (You absolutely don't have to answer this. I've just been thinking about her lately. My family has been so overwhelmed by grief lately that some of them are considering leaving.)
(Ugh. I didn't mean to suggest in any way that my family's grief is comparable to that of Palestinians living in Gaza. In fact, my family's grief owes lately to the actions of their government.)
(And this, girls and boys, is why mentioning I/P on social media is bad. Don't be like von wafer, boys and girls!)
I always assumed the constitution predated parliamentary systems. Whoops.
I think I just held contradictions without questioning them. Now that I'm googling, I kinda see that I knew there were old parliaments. I just didn't realize they were parliaments qua parliaments.
Also I'm a dingbat! no shame in my game.
You're a lot better at math than 99.99% of the people on the planet. And your house levitates. In short: seems like you're doing okay.
Would you check my answer on that 99.99%, please? I'm bad at math.
150: it's the apartment she was raised in. She remembers going to the bomb shelter when the Italians bombed Tel Aviv during WW2.
I don't know how damaging that bombing was, but if I recall correctly, the Italians didn't have a reputation for aiming well.
150: I hope she's doing okay. (I remember going to bomb shelters in Haifa and on the kibbutzim where my family lived during the Yom Kippur war.)
152: I guess you're right about the Italians' bad aim. They were supposed to be bombing the port, but instead they just killed about 140 civilians.
153: Thanks! I guess considering that she's approaching her 92nd birthday and she's terribly depressed about the state of her country, she's doing pretty well.
154, 155: it seems guessing is all that peep can do.
If she had to flee to Ohio, she could check out Grandpa's Cheesebarn. Nobody would let me stop the car, so I'm very curious.
157: We stop there often, it's more charming than the cheese castle in Wisconsin.
I've not been to Wisconsin since the 80s.
I'm jealous of the parliamentary systems where the time from "calling for an election" to "having the election" is shorter than the typical gap between a primary and a general election in the US.
I mean, there is presumably no reason why the US timeline couldn't be shortened considerably. The gap between "being elected" and "taking office" is fixed but you could have a single nationwide primary in September, pick a candidate, and have a six-week campaign. When candidates were actually picked at conventions in August, the campaign would have been about two months, which is not too bad.
The 2016 campaign never really stopped.
161 Congress could shorten the gap, say by setting election day on December 10 or so, I think. The mechanics of getting a nationwide primary are a little more complicated. Obviously, the parties could try to impose it, but as we see, the state legislators have their own ideas about how elections should work, and don't mind messing with the parties. If we completely federalized federal elections, we'd need a constitutional amendment (I think) and definitely a whole new bureaucracy.
148/149: aw, thanks. The levitating house has one weird trick to keep it up, though.
145 & thereabouts: The share of the population that voted to elect the King of Poland was larger than the share of population that voted to elect the British parliament.
The share of the British electorate did not surpass Poland's until the Great Reform of 1832, by which time Poland had demonstrated the folly of electing a Russia-backed candidate as sovereign.
although, to be fair, they didn't all have a veto.
Surprisingly, I think Saiselgy's take on the question is way more realistic than Ezra Klein's (though he puts more emphasis on the left-right political positioning than I would, I think his conclusions are generally correct): https://www.slowboring.com/p/21-thoughts-on-the-biden-age-question
168: My useless two cents after regrettably reading it.
It is certainly mire realistic than Klein's fantasy.
But as I read I found my loathing for MY, myself, and my country ramping up. [Note to self: Get "Don't read MY" tattooed on the inside of my wrist.]
Unfair to the sometimes sensible lad, but this piece (the right-left stuff in particular) just plunged me into ruminations on how the current political discourse generally preclude clear thinking on anything.
In conclusion Joe Manchin for President.
Friends don't let friends read MY
I just got an email from my crochety centrist uncle freaking out about Joe Biden being too old. Nice work with that, Ezra.
I still can't remember if I like Evan Williams or Ezra Brooks. If Teo stops by and remembers, I'll put it on a post it.
OT: Did anyone else notice that there is a Swastika, New York.
175: I had not despite having driven with a few miles of it.
There is also a slightly more substantial town of Swastika in Ontario. And it yields this interesting story of an infamous Hitler fangirl conceived there: "To catch the Fuhrer's eye, Unity Mitford had noted her fateful conception in a Canadian town called Swastika."
Her sister Diana, another fascist, married Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. Jessica Mitford, meanwhile, became an active Communist.
Passive communists are the worst.
Ah, the Mitford sisters. Definitely worth a Wikipedia perusal.
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Pathfinder, in other words, could be funded as an engineering demonstration as long as it went to Mars, but NASA could not get a much smaller amount of money to do engineering development here on Earth. This was, Squyres wrote back to NASA, "a strange and unfortunate state of affairs."|>
74: Right. Many people here. Megan, for one, thought it was impossible that the country would vote for Trump, so it was great. Halford correctly identified the problem with him being the nominee at all. Not knocking Megan. I remember it, because she apologized so profusely afterwards.
On the age thing, I'm slightly annoyed to be part of an overlooked generation. I worry that our next president is going to be 40.
I always said that I would never vote for Biden in a primary because of the bankruptcy bill in the early 2000s, and I didn't. I'm undecided about my upcoming ballot. There doesn't seem to be anything contested, so I could see myself forgetting to vote- just because electi9n day isn't being covered.. I thought that there was a budget tax override, but I think that has to be on a different day. There's a list of candidates for Democratic Town Committee, and Incan vote for a maximum of 35. I think there are only 30 people on the ballot.
181 There was no chance that Trump would win California, although it was certain that millions of people there would vote for him. There was no chance that Clinton would win Montana, although hundreds of thousands of people would vote for her. And so it is in 2024: Biden is not going to win Texas, or Montana, or more than two dozen other states. It's never about what the country will or won't do, but about a low-engagement low-information slug of voters in a few states. Confident predictions of what those people are going to do are basically hopium (I was going to say garbage, but that's a little hyperbolic.) All we can do in try to mitigate the permission structures coming from right, center, and left, and encourage bluish stay-at-homers to come out again.
Are low engagement voters as likely to be engaged by Trump today as they were 4 years ago, when he was president? I have a hard time seeing that.
Megan, for one, thought it was impossible that the country would vote for Trump
It was the electoral college, not the country, that voted for Trump.
We should have come up with some sort of scheme to have a fake slate of electors that would not vote for Trump. Do you think we could get the VP in 2016 to not certify the election?
One bright side of the last eight years is that I can go back to saying "That's mighty white of you" without worrying someone will take it as a complement.
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They decided to avoid sinusoidal ripples with apparent slopes of 15° or more.|>
A reasonable compromise between the constraints of conservative Islam and the traditions of belly dancing.
186: it's pretty wild that people are seriously saying things like "Biden is only doing well with likely voters" as if that was some kind of catch. You want to do well with people who actually vote!
"We're....going to mobilize the nonvoters! That's what we're going to do, mobilize the nonvoters" is something you hear from a *lot* of losing campaigns, and if the Rs really are in a place where they're relying on hoping nonvoters turn out, that's nothing but good.
The 2016 campaign never really stopped.
I remember a Doonesbury strip complaining about Jimmy Carter continuing to campaign once in office.
He didn't keep campaigning after the 1980 election is one of the differences there.
This reminds me that just down the street from me there's a house with Trump flags and signs still flying. The house next door is for sale and I'm wondering if that cuts the value. There's a lot of things in that yard and none of them are in very good repair. They have an American flag flying in ways that make me hurt to look at. You aren't supposed to display one that is clearly threadbare and you aren't supposed to leave it out in bad weather or overnight without a light*.
* There is a 'light' but only bright enough that you can see that there's a light, not bright enough to illuminate anything.
180: I took a class with Squyres in undergrad. He was a good teacher. He used to start the classes by showing us brand-new pictures of Mars downloaded from the rover that morning.
Thank you. I'm going to have to start paying college tuition soon and Jameson might be too expensive.
Plus I may have to find money to people in Ohio.
IMHMTHB but I used to bike from time to time past a house on 105th Ave - almost the deepest of Deep East Oakland - with a Trump 2024 flag flying. Also per Google Street View, no flags were evident before early 2022, when three flagpoles were erected, each with two flags, the American flag on the top, the bottom ones being from left to right, POW/MIA; TRUMP 2024: TAKE AMERICA BACK; and Thin Red+Blue Line Flag.
It's not on Street View, but I'm pretty sure when I biked in late 2023 the Trump flag was gone and a Thin Line flag remained. But I'll be biking again when the time changes.
check out Grandpa's Cheesebarn
Because it's west of Wooster, we never even knew about this until recently. Might not make it during our next visit, but it's on the list.
more charming than the cheese castle in Wisconsin.
That we've been to. It was pretty charming, so now my hopes are up.
There must be more than one because I did not go west of Wooster.
I'm slightly annoyed to be part of an overlooked generation.
I was a bit surprised to discover that we almost certainly won't be. Every Dem governor anyone has even talked about running in '28 is a solid Gen Xer, from Pritzker through Whitmer & Shapiro to Moore.
What's actually wild is that there's a very good chance that we neve have a President born between 1947 and 1960, an absolutely vast cohort. I was going to try to make an argument that the 3 1946-born Presidents somehow weren't true Boomers, but all 3 were born 9+ months after VJ Day. But still.
Shisler's Cheese House is just off of Route 30. We stopped there after our first visit. It's cute, with a decent deli counter and lots of chocolates/candies.
AB's father will be here at the end of Iris' spring break, so we're all going to drive there and spend the night so they can see the campus. We'll be doing the tourist stops along the way, including maybe Lehman's, which is some sort of huge general store thing.