[Morgoth]

It's telling how effective the rightwings media strategy on Biden is that even a danish librarian repeats the "truth" that Biden suffers from early stage dementia.

[QuickTidal]

Morgoth, on 25 September 2020 - 09:10 AM, said:

It's telling how effective the rightwings media strategy on Biden is that even a danish librarian repeats the "truth" that Biden suffers from early stage dementia.

Indeed, especially when the proof is most recently we saw him give a speech live and he did perfectly fine. So either he memorized it (making him cognitively fine), or he did it live reading it as he went (making him cognitively fine), or he did it off the cuff (making him cognitively fine).

And of course it's more 'projecting' on the Trump Side because if anyone is suffering from dementia, it's him who has all the red flags.

[Aptorian]

I think it's telling you're so hopeful Biden can win that you're willing to ignore a year's worth of screw ups on tape where Biden forgets where he is, starts talking nonsense or has some irrational outburst towards an audience member.

So he did a live speech that did well. I can link you to some classic Ronald Regan clips where he has the audience in the palm of his hand. Does this "prove" he wasn't getting senile?

I'm not saying Biden has dementia. I'm saying he's an ancient human being. It's tiring being a presidential candidate. He's going to have good days and he's going to have bad days. Hopefully they give him lots of oats with his porridge on debate day.

[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 12:18 PM, said:

I think it's telling you're so hopeful Biden can win that you're willing to ignore a year's worth of screw ups on tape where Biden forgets where he is, starts talking nonsense or has some irrational outburst towards an audience member.

You've bought into the clips that the Right has posted online to tailor it to look like he's lost his marbles. He hasn't. I just provided proof that you can google.

My wife also works with dementia patients every day, so I know a tad more about it than the average Joe.

And hopeful that he wins? I don't live in the States. I'm an outsider like you Apt just commenting on the status of things in a dumpster fire shithole country.

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 12:18 PM, said:

So he did a live speech that did well.

If he was suffering from the level of dementia that people are talking about, he would not have been able to do that...full stop. Dementia isn't forgetting things or random word-finding difficulties (which anyone of any age can suffer from), it's forgetting WHY you're doing things you're doing, forgetting where you are...ect. These are not things Biden has done. And any clips that elude to it, are edited to look like it...same as the clips of him being "gross" with women...most of which have been proven to be reaching hard.

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 12:18 PM, said:

I'm not saying Biden has dementia. I'm saying he's an ancient human being. It's tiring being a presidential candidate. He's going to have good days and he's going to have bad days. Hopefully they give him lots of oats with his porridge on debate day.

Your first statement essentially eludes to the bullshit Right-wing taking point of "he's a dementia-riddleed old man" when there is no real proof of that other than tiny clips edited to make it look like it.

[Aptorian]

QuickTidal, on 25 September 2020 - 12:58 PM, said:

Your first statement essentially eludes to the bullshit Right-wing taking point of "he's a dementia-riddleed old man" when there is no real proof of that other than tiny clips edited to make it look like it.

You know sometimes it's okay to not just assume the worst about another person and just take their statement at face value. I've seen and heard plenty of clips of Biden being embarrassing. Not from fox news but normal third party news sources and podcasts.

[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 01:31 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 25 September 2020 - 12:58 PM, said:

Your first statement essentially eludes to the bullshit Right-wing taking point of "he's a dementia-riddleed old man" when there is no real proof of that other than tiny clips edited to make it look like it.

You know sometimes it's okay to not just assume the worst about another person and just take their statement at face value. I've seen and heard plenty of clips of Biden being embarrassing. Not from fox news but normal third party news sources and podcasts.

I'm not trying to assume the worst about you Apt. I'm trying to say that the clips you've seen (I don't care where they are seen, Fox or elsewhere you find reputable) that paint the picture of a doddering old fool Biden are done to make it look that way to serve a headline, for clickbait.

Any concerted video of the man for a longer period of time (his recent town hall where he took questions for an hour straight and showed no problems)...shows that he's fine and about standard for a man of his age (which yes, is older, you'll get no argument out of me on that score). The man is 77 after all, so he's going to suffer from the natural decline in his daily life as anyone would at his age. Are there instances where he's forgotten a phrase or term? Sure. I forgot the word "trunk" as in a Tree for like ten minutes this morning while helping my kid draw a tree for school. Is it probably worse in a man who is 77? Almost certainly. But a 74 year old dude and a 77 years old dude are running for president, it is what it is.

But the fact that he GOP/Trump talking point about Biden is his "mental decline" or his "dementia" without proof is galling...

EDIT: Adding in specifically that I'm sorry I worded it as I did Apt. I realize it may have felt more like an attack than I intended. Apologies for that.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 25 September 2020 - 01:57 PM

[Malankazooie]

Jan. 20, 2021, Biden will be 78. Oldest ever to be sworn in (IF he wins). And he plans to only serve one term. Has that ever been done before, because of age? So it's a thing.

A cruel joke on Trump, and it would be wonderful if they did this; both have to walk up a ramp to the debate stage.

[Aptorian]

We're good, QT, and I hope you're right. I haven't watched any full length footage of him. Maybe he's in as good a shape as he tries to project. I'm just very worried he opens himself to Trump in a moment of weakness.

[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 25 September 2020 - 02:30 PM, said:

We're good, QT, and I hope you're right. I haven't watched any full length footage of him. Maybe he's in as good a shape as he tries to project. I'm just very worried he opens himself to Trump in a moment of weakness.

Oh the debate won't be any kind of debate at all. And yeah Trump will 100% try to pounce on any instance of Biden that shows weakness.

But I don't think that will sway anyone who is on the fence this time, Trumpsters base will stay firmly entrenched, and Biden voters will stay mostly entrenched...most people would vote for a loaf of bread over Trump at this point I hope.

[amphibian]

I had hoped that a person I know who voted for Trump would "snap out of it" and vote Biden. But they're doing the "Candace Owens videos are decent" thing and my hope for them isn't looking good right now.

[Cause]

I’d be so happy if the debate started with the words

Yellow axe up square number

After the first questions ask them to repeat it.

I have been waiting for a reportert to do this to trump for ages. Could be a good test for both.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

EmperorMagus, on 24 September 2020 - 04:21 AM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 24 September 2020 - 02:40 AM, said:

'According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.

To a modern democratic sensibility, discarding the popular vote for partisan gain looks uncomfortably like a coup, whatever license may be found for it in law. Would Republicans find that position disturbing enough to resist? Would they cede the election before resorting to such a ploy? Trump's base would exact a high price for that betrayal, and by this point party officials would be invested in a narrative of fraud.

The Trump-campaign legal adviser I spoke with told me the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people's will. Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the adviser said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended.

"The state legislatures will say, 'All right, we've been given this constitutional power. We don't think the results of our own state are accurate, so here's our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,' " the adviser said. Democrats, he added, have exposed themselves to this stratagem by creating the conditions for a lengthy overtime.

"If you have this notion," the adviser said, "that ballots can come in for I don't know how many days—in some states a week, 10 days—then that onslaught of ballots just gets pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. So pick your poison. Is it worse to have electors named by legislators or to have votes received by Election Day?"

When The Atlantic asked the Trump campaign about plans to circumvent the vote and appoint loyal electors, and about other strategies discussed in the article, the deputy national press secretary did not directly address the questions. "It's outrageous that President Trump and his team are being villainized for upholding the rule of law and transparently fighting for a free and fair election," Thea McDonald said in an email. "The mainstream media are giving the Democrats a free pass for their attempts to completely uproot the system and throw our election into chaos."'

https://www.theatlan...concede/616424/

Important counter-point to the above narrative:

https://twitter.com/...851838406610945

Now expanded into an editorial in The Washington Post. Hopefully they confirmed the validity of this argument:

'The Trump campaign is already musing about finding ways for the president to steal the election. An anonymous legal adviser to Trump’s camp told the Atlantic’s Barton Gellman that Republican-controlled state legislatures are contemplating sending Trump-supporting slates of electors in for the electoral college vote count, even if Biden wins their states.

That isn’t as easy as it might sound. While the Constitution gives states the authority to allocate their electoral votes as they wish, every state has laws giving that power to the voters. For that matter, each state has laws for how their elections will be monitored and certified, and how the electoral votes will be cast. The legislature cannot suddenly reallocate that power without amending their laws. If they want to amend the laws, they have to follow their states’ procedures — which includes the possibility that governors could veto such legislation, which would certainly happen in a state such as Pennsylvania, which has a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor. Republicans there don’t have enough statehouse votes to override a veto. Similar problems would arise in other states.'

https://www.washingt...uL2HRnk5yARgpYs

Though if the Supreme Court had five Bill Barrs on it (and the military---I'd suppose it's a good thing I can't think of a (present-day, US) military general who would support a Trump coup (... unless they're hiding it?...))....

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Trump Plans to Nominate Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court, Reports Say

[...] Barrett, 48, has served just under three years as a judge[...] She is the mother of seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti.'

https://www.thedaily...t-seat?ref=home

It turns out that the ultra-reactionary sect she belongs to may not have been the specific inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale:

'Until recently, female advisers in People of Praise were called "handmaidens," a title they retired after Atwood's novel was popularized by a Hulu television series.

[...] But Atwood appeared to definitively put the controversy to rest in an interview published Wednesday. Speaking to fellow author Kate Schatz as part of a program with The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, Atwood denied that the People of Praise inspired her book.

"It wasn't them. It was a different one but the same idea," she said.

When Politico published its own deep-dive into Barrett's religious background on Thursday, however, Atwood seemingly backtracked, saying she was not sure if People of Praise had inspired her work, and saying she could not say anything definitive without consulting her records — which are currently locked away in a University of Toronto archive that is closed because of the pandemic. "Unless I can go back into the clippings file, I hesitate to say anything specific," Atwood told Politico in a statement.'

https://www.national...handmaids-tale/

'People of Praise is a South Bend, Ind.–based [Mayor Pete, where art thou?] charismatic community that attracts members from a number of Christian churches, though the vast majority of its members are Catholic. [...] Charismatic communities emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit in the daily lives of believers. Some of their practices appear to have more in common with Pentecostal communities than with traditional Catholicism, such as speaking in tongues, healing services and prophecy.

[...] a 1986 interview of Ms. Atwood that appeared in The New York Times Book Review.

"There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids," Ms. Atwood said in the interview, without naming the group. "They don't go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book—sit down and shut up."

[...] the purpose of the group is to incorporate faith into every aspect of life. "We believe that there's nothing outside the Christian life," he said. "So everything we do, we want to do for Christ and our neighbor."

[...] former members of People of Praise accused the organization of operating with a "Jamestown mentality and dominance" and said it was guilty of brainwashing'

https://www.americam...arismatic-trump

OTOH:

'Will Democrats Fail the Amy Coney Barrett Test?

[...] The incident [Newsweek article identifying People of Praise as the inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale; they issued a correction the next day] fed into the "fake news" narrative and the suspicion that liberals disdain Christians—by being news that was fake and by betraying an obvious animus toward Christians.

[...] During the confirmation hearings for that appointment, Dianne Feinstein informed Barrett that "the dogma lives loudly within you," which was a personal best for the senator because in just six words she managed to insult Barrett's faith and accuse her of a thought crime.

[...] a scholarly essay that Barrett co-authored in 1998 titled "Catholic Judges in Capital Cases." The authors write that "litigants and the general public are entitled to impartial justice, which may be something a judge who is heedful of ecclesiastical pronouncements cannot dispense." The authors discuss "the moral impossibility of enforcing capital punishment" and suggest that Catholic judges may need to recuse themselves from the sentencing phase of such cases. The essay does not discuss what Catholic judges should do in cases that conflict with other things forbidden by the Church—such as abortion, which is all but certain to face another Supreme Court challenge within the next decade. If Barrett is nominated, this essay will prompt intense questioning; at her previous confirmation hearing, she backed away from the suggestion of recusal. But the essay speaks loudly about her own belief that a particular faith—her own faith—could preclude a judge's ability to accept the law.

[...] These are questions that could be asked in a thorough and respectful manner. Given the national mood, I doubt that will happen. [...] Democratic senators [...] will reify certain conservative assumptions about the left such that once again, Donald Trump may claim both the low road and the upper hand.'

https://www.theatlan...andmaid/616494/

But the rest of the Newsweek article holds up:

'women are expected to be "absolutely obedient" to their husbands and the men in the group. According to Theill, those who aren't are "shamed, shunned, humiliated."

Members of the People of Praise are also assigned advisers of the same sex, called a "head" for men and a "handmaid" for women—until the latter phrase apparently became too charged following the release of Hulu's television adaption of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.

[...] For a married women, her husband is her "head"—he makes the decisions for the family and serves as her moral compass. "Total discipline is imposed upon those who submit themselves to their head," said Theill, "and this includes submission of your will, your desire, your actions."

[...] "the submission to your husband bit is not negotiable or figurative."

[...] Members of People of Praise also make a lifelong vow of loyalty in a ceremony, which Theill and Kaiser both described as akin to a marriage contract.

[...] The "subordinate role of women to men is a fundamental cultural premise" for the group

[...] In Not Reliable Guides, Reimers described how a married woman in the People of Praise is "expected always to reflect the fact that she is under her husband's authority."

"This goes beyond an acknowledgment that the husband is 'head of the home' or head of the family; he is, in fact, her personal pastoral head. Whatever she does requires at least his tacit approval"'

https://www.newsweek...-praise-1534033

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 25 September 2020 - 10:14 PM

[Malankazooie]

This shattered me.

[Cause]

Malankazooie, on 25 September 2020 - 10:36 PM, said:

This shattered me.

Why? I think it’s wierd

[Malankazooie]

Trump has chosen Amy Coney Barrett for his SCOTUS nominee. I don't know much about her except what has been in the news recently. She's a full on devout Catholic I believe.

The confirmation hearings should be interesting.

[Lady Bliss]

Malankazooie, on 26 September 2020 - 01:44 AM, said:

Trump has chosen Amy Coney Barrett for his SCOTUS nominee. I don't know much about her except what has been in the news recently. She's a full on devout Catholic I believe.

The confirmation hearings should be interesting.

Yes, and she supposedly does not separate her religious beliefs from her job as a judge, which I believe is fundamentally wrong. I have no problem with other people’s religious beliefs, but I do have a problem with them trying to force me to comply with them. It is completely hypocritical considering that these same people take offense with the beliefs of people living in Muslim countries.

[Slow Ben]

Even leaving out all the religious stuff. She’s so comically unqualified to hold that seat.

[QuickTidal]

She’s fucking The Handmaids Tale come to life...she’s a disastrous choice. A religious fundamentalist gone insane.

She literally thinks that the man in a marriage should make all the decisions without argument.

She’s fucking cancerous.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 September 2020 - 04:02 PM

[Tsundoku]

QuickTidal, on 26 September 2020 - 04:01 PM, said:

She’s fucking The Handmaids Tale come to life...she’s a disastrous choice. A religious fundamentalist gone insane.

She literally thinks that the man in a marriage should make all the decisions without argument.

She’s fucking cancerous.

In that case ... why is she in a job where she gets to make very important decisions? If the man in the marriage makes the decisions because (religion), then surely the logic follows that it's the same in the rest of society?

Dun dun dunnnnnnnn ...

Or am I being silly by using logical extension, especially when it comes to the USA and religion?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 27 September 2020 - 01:30 AM