scoobdog

We’re really only discussing the accusations that Biden has dementia or he’s senile, neither of which is the same as him not having the mental capacity to do the job. Like you said, there isn’t any evidence he’s incapacitated, but we don’t really know whether or not an 80+-y-o can handle the rigors of the most important job in the Western Hemisphere. We know he won’t abuse the job like Trump will, and we know he won’t put incompetent people in subordinate jobs like Trump will. We can’t know how he’ll react in an emergency because we haven’t had one yet. I don’t think anyone is a fan of an octogenarian being in such an important role. Feinstein was a decade older before concerns about her capacity came out, and we likely wouldn’t be scrutinizing Biden if he was just a Senator because almost all of the issues he’s displayed are related to normal age and his stutter. Because he’s expected to have the vitality and mannerisms of a man 30 years younger, he’s going to fall short.

So, you’ll vote for Harris when she replaces Biden on the ticket, right?

Be honest... you've played quarters with Malort, haven't you?

He's been dealing with world leaders for 4 year now. If you think he isn't going to be President for 4 more years, that's fine - he is old and no one has been older in the Presidency ever. But Queen Elizabeth II kept a full schedule into her 90s, so there;s clearly a difference between being old and being infirmed. And, I have no idea what you expected him to do to Trump - maybe break out a baseball bat and start bashing his head in? Trump was lying through his teeth about everything; you don't debate a liar, you beat the shit out of him or you don't engage him at all. Frankly, I could have told you the debate was a bad idea from when it was announced. Both candidates acted like they always act. It was always going to be a fool's errand to have a debate with a known liar and person who not only shows clear signs of dementia but actually has dementia in his family (Fred died with dementia). Yet, you apparently expected Biden to do what to him?

You can't postpone an election.

It kind of is, only because it's presuming he's ill when he's not. But that isn't really the point: people aren't just saying he's old and slow as would be appropriate for his age, they're calling him senile and demented.

No, they don't. It was fine when Trump was a novelty act and a former reality show star, but now he's an empty lie machine and his antics have rubbed off on all of his surrogates, who are doing the exact same thing. At this point, the damage Trump has done to the GOP is done, making him somewhat unnecessary. That being said, if he were to come back, the likelihood he suppresses media outlets far outweighs the benefits of whatever sideshow he creates. We also have to shed this ridiculous belief that the media is enamored with Trump's dystopian display.

Also, Anthrax is absolutely adorable.... and plotting your demise for having to wear that ridiculous costume.

Damn, that's cute.

This is exactly what I was saying after a few seconds of the debate. What's troubling is that Democrats are quick to pile on which plays into a Republican narrative of low-key calling the President mentally handicapped: it's far easier to call an old man "senile" or saying he has dementia, even in the absence of actual evidence, than it is to flat out call him "retarded." But, you know a party that has a recent history of derogatory and abusive behavior is going to have members that harbor these ableist thoughts.

So.... why is he the Lorax? Does he have a scuzzy mustache like that?

For added effect, you can pretend you're waving to King Friday while you blow through a display of RC Cola.

You're not alone. Neither did Nabs.

It must be nice having a fall back excuse like "I contracted a brain disease by eating the family dog" instead of "I fried my brain in college with heroin because meth hadn't been invented yet."

I get why it might sound like blame, but that's not the intent here. There is a much larger burden on all voters because of the fact that there are enough idiots out there who vote to just to be self destructive, which is neither fair nor avoidable to those who are responsible. At the same time, progressives haven't just been outspent, they've largely been ignored because they don't have simple solutions to difficult problems. As an example, one of the biggest issues for middle and lower income Americans is wealth distribution, yet there isn't a cohesive plan to redistribute wealth from corporate investors to the middle class workers who need it to survive. It's one thing to recognize the system is stacked against you, and another to recognize why it's stacked that way which, I think, not a lot of voters are fully aware of. Again using the corporate profits example, its almost impossible to know what exactly drives that, for lack of a better word, greed - the big investors are the million / billion dollar funds that entities like your property insurance provider, your HMO, or your retirement fund uses to provide basic necessities to you. Something as simple as curtailing a CEO's multimillion dollar yearly salary has not real correlation with the push to trim corporate budgets. Knowing all that, what is the best approach for releasing that corporate wealth to the people who need it? Do you force a petroleum company to reinvest its oil wealth in clean energy technology, cutting into the all important dividends and stock value, or do you force an insurance carrier to divest in that petroleum company and, in the process, force it to cut back on coverage in areas with high fire or flood danger? There is no good answer, and its one of the reasons that progressives have been struggling to come up with a plan that voters will get behind and why moderates who are not offering any sort of solution are seen as safe votes. To put it more simply, it is unfair. We're not asking voters to just be responsible, we're asking them to come up with a solution for a system that offers no recourse. And we're asking them to come up with that solution in a time when there are people out there who not only are ignorant to the dangers of systemwide collapse but are actively blocking any attempt to fix the system so they can personally benefit. In that sense, its intentional but for the most part we're simply living with previous generations failing to address issues like the climate and wealth inequality because no one wanted to spend political capital on issues voters likely wouldn't resonate with. Progressives are being asked to do the impossible.

I don't really agree with that last part. Having a Commander in Chief being held responsible for a casualty event, even if it was based on bad intel or extenuating circumstances, is still highly problematic. For instance, conceivably an unscrupulous Republican prosecutor could prosecute Biden as an accessory if a criminal sneaks across the border and murders a citizen. Immunity has to exist in some form, regardless of the moral quagmires it might create, because the absence of it leads to the actual weaponization of the criminal system as envisioned by the same bastards who claim the system is being weaponized against Trump. Some morally repugnant rules exist because we can't always guarantee that our system of checks and balances is administered by those who are both intellectually and morally capable. That being said, @Raptorpatwarned us about this decisions a long time ago - the SCOTUS was always going to sidestep the actual question by simply saying that the President would continue to be immune from official acts while failing to actually defined what an official act is.

Scooby is my nickname, as in IRL people actually call me that.

That's a valid complaint. Most DAs in that position would oppose anything that might jeopardize a conviction for reasons that have nothing to do with actually serving justice, and that isn't something that should be ignored because of the ultimately self-serving motivation. (Thankfully, Gavin Newsome is making sure the death penalty isn't a factor, so there's that.) That being said, we're in this position because progressives haven't done nearly enough to build a vision for America's future, and by progressives I mean progressive voters. We can't spend our way of getting rid of student debt or having true universal healthcare or protecting social safety nets, but we won't survive without all three. We, the voters, need to take a more active role in deciding not just what we need as a country but how to go about achieving those needs, and we need to elect people who reflect that hard work. Like it or not, we're in a polarized country because for too long there were too many voters who were hands off on the practical administration of government and voting solely for personal needs and vague ideals. Biden buys us more time to start taking our democracy seriously, nothing more.

Let's unpack this. What do you think the founding fathers meant by creating laws and regulations (your words)? For instance, did you think that they expected the post master to come to them and determine how he was going to deliver mail? You're deliberately misrepresenting what's going on by suggesting that regulations include how government agencies do their jobs. So, it's now up to Congress to tell the DOT what speed limits they should set for Interstates. Or, now Congress alone can decide how and where the ACoE builds levy, and what the design specs for them should be. Since you conveniently forgot wha the original decision was about - Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984) was a landmark decision where the Supreme Court held that federal agencies had the authority to interpret existing law in designing their regulations. It was specifically meant to say that once Congress enacted law (the Clean Air Act) with the approval of the President of course, the agencies defined in that law were seen as having the technical knowledge to determine how the parameters set forth by the law are implemented. It says nothing about countering the established law, just interpreting the law in a way that it sees fit. If Congress does not specify how to implement the law (which it won't because that's too specific for any law), than the agency that's a part of the executive branch does not need to go back to them to craft the regulation of that law. The executive branch isn't creating law, it creating a regulation within the confines of an existing law. Except, now the Supreme Court is saying that the executive branch does not have the authority to do the job its legally given without also having being told how to do that job. I can't begin to express how asinine that is, especially from a Congress populated by whores, pedophiles, and spineless sycophants.

Well yeah, but that's not something that happens in a polarized political space. There are too many people actively voting against our collective well being, and i mean that in the sense they're voting to tear down the government rather than voting for someone that represents their values. The problem all along has been irresponsible Trump voters - as much as the complain about being disrespected, they are fundamentally anti-democratic and should be eliminated from the voting bloc in order for the democracy to survive.

That would be logically false. For the same reason that Congress would not have to defer to anyone, neither should the Executive or Judicial branchs. Checks and Balances work through amendments not through retractions - you don't take power from one branch because that branch has no more or less power than you. By forcing the DoE, DoI, or the DoA to cosign a regulation, you're giving final arbitration for mechanisms assigned to the Executive branch to Congress. Rather, it should be on Congress to address a regulation after the fact by passing a law that supersedes it. It's not on scientists to craft regulations that Congress will approve, it's on Congress to address those regulations by creating laws that make them moot.

That's what I'm thinking as well. In fact, it's more likely than not that President would have had no immunity at the time of the Constitution's writing. The federal code was far less complete than it is right now, especially as a lot of the laws covered under the state at the time have been expanded to the Fed as the government has expanded its responsibilities. Some of the crimes Trump is accused of wouldn't have existed in the 1790s, like the presidential records laws, and things like "insurrection" would have been defined differently. I doubt the founding fathers would have anticipated having a bunch of goons showing up to disrupt an otherwise ceremonial proceeding at the behest of president who clearly has no idea how the government works. Having a catch-all outlet of impeachment would have covered most, if not all, conceivable crimes by a renegade chief executive. When it comes to election interference, I think the interesting thing is that this was always supposed to be a state issue. The states were supposed to handle their own business when it came to elections - the federal government only needed to make sure that each state had equal representation (regardless of population and economic importance). No state governor or legislature would ever allow the president to come in and push the state to throw an election. Part of that was an intrinsic faith in the institutions (like the specific makeup of the senate, House of Representative caps, and the electoral college) implemented to ensure that each state had an equal measure of determination. Part of it was the fact that each state still had a fairly robust militia to enforce their guaranteed rights. All of that changed with the Secession and ensuing Civil War. Aside from the fact Constitutional Originalism is fundamentally flawed because of everything that happened after the mid 19th century, it ignores the logical fact that now system of government exists without evolution. You can't interpret what someone would have intended with a broad guarantee of rights when it's likely the issues addressed wouldn't have been conceivable.

Just wanted to point out: You're telling us that you would rather have Bobo the Clown dictate greenhouse gas emissions than someone with a ph.D who conducted thirty years of studies determining the correlation between CO2 buildup in the upper atmosphere. That's not a failure of congress, that's a failure or logic - even if congress is completely populated with the illuminati (lol) they still have to defer to the scientific underpinnings of their decisions.

It’s something I use to mow down little children and slow moving adults…. so a battle wagon.

Happy Birthday, Sieg!