US Politics: Chaos Made to Border

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Special airport security escort for political VIPs moving forward in Congress

Ted 'Crybaby' Cruz's, stop being mean to me in airports when I'm trying to run and hide amendment.   

Ya all know the drill!

"Brave Senator Cruz ran away,
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Senator Cruz turned about
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Senator Cruz!"

  

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Sounds like someone thinks Prigozhin had a pretty sweet set up and wants to do similar but thinks he's smart enough to avoid how that ended.

On the charging of parents for stuff their kids do - that's only justifiable imo when the parent is an accessory to the crime. Providing a murder weapon after being aware of the issues seems sufficient to be that, but not for any of the other scenarios discussed. And that really should be the framing - the conviction is as an accessory not as a parent.

Don't most countries already have laws and [badly underfunded] agencies for dealing with delinquent parents who are not necessarily guilty of committing a crime? Here it's called removal orders (or something like that) where kids get taken into state care, because as bad as state care can be it's better for the child's welfare than staying with their parent(s).

I'm not sure if skipping school alone has ever risen to the degree of seriousness that it has lead to a removal order, but the fact is, there are legal parental standards and obligations that if not met can mean parents lose the ability to [keep] screw[ing] up their kids. We can discuss where the line should be for placing a removal order, but people should not pretend for the purposes of pontificating about bad parents being allowed to get away with stuff that there is no legal accountability or that legal accountabilities are not enforced. 

Also, apparently live on air Hannity shows and celebrates a New York vigilante group assaulting a man, allegedly because he shoplifted and is an illegal immigrant when it turns out the man is a US citizen /or legal resident and there has been no police confirmation of shoplifting. Let's hope there is some criminal justice applied to the appropriate people here.

Edited February 9 by The Anti-Targ

[Stark Revenge]

The DOJ came out with a pretty damning report on Biden today. Not that they indicted him ironically over mishandling classified documents, but because they basically came out and all but accused him of being senile, which may be even worse. 

Biden then gave a press conference tonight to defend his mental acuity. Whichever staffer okayed that should be in hot water, but it did anything but reassure people that Biden is mentally fit for the job.

We're facing an election between a Crackhead President and a Stoner President - slight edge to Candidate Crackhead at this point. We're so doomed.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Sir, you have gone too far! And it's Chris Tucker. Not all black people look the same! Chris Rock makes terrible movies with Adam Sandler. 

If we can nail Jackie Chan for sharing the name Chan with his son for his son's misdeeds, then we can nail black comedians named Chris for their first names.

[The Anti-Targ]

Speaking of Tuckers, any hot takes on Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin? I've no way or intention of watching it, but interested in the thoughts of those who have devoted their time to it so others don't have to.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Speaking of Tuckers, any hot takes on Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin? I've no way or intention of watching it, but interested in the thoughts of those who have devoted their time to it so others don't have to.

Who is interviewing the Russian dictator?

[Tywin et al.]

37 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

If we can nail Jackie Chan for sharing the name Chan with his son for his son's misdeeds, then we can nail black comedians named Chris for their first names.

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Altho, with the nothing is getting done by congress state of things in the US, we can now didicate the final pages of this thread talking about the (lack of) merits of various Jackie Chan movies. Afterall, we managed to spend a day discussing musical merits of Taylor Swift. So why not.

Prolonged intro for me just to express my disdain for an older Jackie Chan movie (without any comedians named Chris). City Hunter. His adaptation of that manga series was just awful. Would've been perfectly fine as another Police Story movie, but for Ryo Saeba movie that was godawful.

[karaddin]

Just watched Biden's press conference and yeah. The difference between how he handled the first 2/3 compared with the last bit talking about Israel/Gaza suggests pretty strongly (imo of course) that he's ok but not great when prepared, but he clearly hadn't prepared for that latter topic and it was not good.

The most concerning thing from a "fit to be President" perspective is that if he's having to pause and verbally say "how can I say this without revealing sensitive information" then he probably can't be trusted to sit down with a belligerent foreign leader (eg Putin) without a serious risk of giving away important things.

Also just on how he moves walking away and back to the podium - 4 years ago he was a healthy but old man, but now he's elderly. This isn't relevant on its own, just an observation of the passage of time catching up with us all.

[The Anti-Targ]

Healthy people naturally age at different rates. Biden is going to be 82 this year. My father-in-law is 87, when he was 82/83 he was mentally and physically sharp enough to be "fit to be President" and if someone who didn't know him had to guess his age they could have guessed anything between 70 and 80. At 87 he is definitely no longer physically the same as he was 4/5 years go, but he's hasn't deteriorated as much mentally (though definitely slowing down in that department) and if he was seeing his final year out as President he'd probably manage. But he hasn't had to cope with the stresses of being President for the last 3 years, and that's going to take a toll on anyone, if they are taking the job seriously. Another friend who is Biden's age is also mentally and physically sharp.

What am I trying to say here? I guess it's that 82 isn't objectively too old to be President even for another 4 years, for someone who is healthy and mentally sharp at 82. But Biden might be on a patch to mentally deterioration to the extent that he shouldn't be president for the next 4 years. I don;t think that should necessarily convince people not to vote for him, but definitely have a think about who's going to be his VP next term, because they might be POTUS before 2028. I don't know what the talk is but I am assuming Harris will be Biden's VP pick. But if there are people in the inner circle who think a significant enough percentage of people believe that for the Democratic ticket they're voting for 2 Presidents at the same time but they don't like the idea of President Harris the Democratic political strategists should have a think about that.

[mormont]

It’s a very sad fact that Bill Clinton, first elected President in 1992, is younger than either main party candidate in 2024.

[BigFatCoward]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

What am I trying to say here? I guess it's that 82 isn't objectively too old to be President even for another 4 years,  about that.

I've got to massively disagree. Being mentally sharp for 82 isn't being mentally sharp for president, it's not like they are running a bowling club, it's the most important job in the world. 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, karaddin said:

The most concerning thing from a "fit to be President" perspective is that if he's having to pause and verbally say "how can I say this without revealing sensitive information" then he probably can't be trusted to sit down with a belligerent foreign leader (eg Putin) without a serious risk of giving away important things.

?!?

How so. He was clearly aware there's stuff he couldn't say. Thus he told reporters that he was gonna choose his words very carefully and answered more cautiously, while respecting the publics need for information. I would find it more concerning if he started babbling without spending a thought on what he could and couldn't say.

Dealing with a foreign leader and doing a press conference are two different situations. Foreign leader he could more brashly say: No, we are not talking about this.  Doing that in Press conference would probably not the best response.

[Tywin et al.]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

It’s a very sad fact that Bill Clinton, first elected President in 1992, is younger than either main party candidate in 2024.

He wasn't fit to be elected in the 90's. I'm still proud that I've had three chances to have my picture taken with him and turned them all down. Fuck him. 

[Ran]

Clinton's in the upper half of presidents, IMO, and in the estimates of most presidential historians. #14 according to the latest survey, seems pretty fair.

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Clinton's in the upper half of presidents, IMO, and in the estimates of most presidential historians. #14 according to the latest survey, seems pretty fair.

That's like saying "my kid is always in the top half of his class" when your kid goes to The School of Mostly Irredeemably Shitty People

 

Eta: https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Here he is at #19, just a few spots ahead of Andrew Jackson.

Edited February 9 by Larry of the Lawn

[mormont]

Evaluating Bill C as a person is different from evaluating him as a President, of course. 

[BigFatCoward]

He's a clear number 2 in my lifetime. 

[Ran]

12 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

That's like saying "my kid is always in the top half of his class" when your kid goes to The School of Mostly Irredeemably Shitty People

 

Eta: https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Here he is at #19, just a few spots ahead of Andrew Jackson.

Sienna has him at 14.

Do we really think most of the presidents were shitty people? Weird thought.

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

How so. He was clearly aware there's stuff he couldn't say. Thus he told reporters that he was gonna choose his words very carefully and answered more cautiously, while respecting the publics need for information. I would find it more concerning if he started babbling without spending a thought on what he could and couldn't say

Yes obviously it could have been worse, but when you're thoughts get bottlenecked like that it's easier for someone who is good at their job to throw you off your game and get things out of you that they wouldn't have if you were thinking clearly.

I'm 40 and I couldn't handle a room full of reporters yelling questions at me even as well as he did today, and I do mean cognitively - I've got sensory processing issues and that would functionally make my brain blue screen. It's not an indictment of him as a person, but it's quite literally one of the hardest and most stressful jobs in the world* and we're moving back towards a more overtly hostile geopolitical landscape. There's no one in reserve if the president fucks up because he gets a bit confused and tells a hostile leader something they really shouldn't know.

*If one cares about doing a good job, and I do not have the slightest doubt that he does. It's one of many major differences to Trump and also the reason age is a problem for him and not Trump - neither Trump nor his voter base (that matter) care if he can do a good job by any criteria we use, he just needs to be an asshole to the wrong people and plenty of people with full blown dementia can manage that much.

Obviously my reservations about Biden are not a suggestion I'd consider voting for Trump, I wouldn't even consider not voting if I were American. They just make me worry the American voter base won't come to the same decision as me, and that he'll make more mistakes in a second term. I wish the Dems had a more clear succession plan, there really hasn't been anyone with a rising profile over the last 4 years and there needs to be.