Harris wasn't answering questions in paragraphs. Harris was avoiding answering questions by word salad.
Team Red had fun playing quotes of the full question and full answer.
Note "avoiding answering questions" is the best spin possible.
The alternatives are she didn't know the answers; or couldn't remember what her handlers told her to say but knew her own answers would be unacceptable.
The issue isn't that you and I think she should have gone. The issue is that the people who were professionally managing her thought she wasn't up to it.
And not just, "Joe Rogan is a bad idea". It seemed to have been, "interviews are a bad idea and long serious(?) interviews are a massively bad idea". Even in a toss up election where she's losing ground.
If we assume the people professionally managing her understood their jobs and were correct, then the implication is she was that bad at interviews.
Her longest interview was one hour with Howard Stern... but at least half that was talking about her rise to glory and the other half softball questions. In practice that might have been 15 minutes. So the same as her others.
I think it's very possible her people didn't want to let her out of the bunker for three hours and do the real deal. She'd go with a platitude, he'd ask a follow up question, she'd not have an answer. Joe was viewed (correctly) as "not one of their people" so that can't work.
Three hours of word salad would have been as bad as Biden's debate.
"Abolish" is a slogan. In practice Trump will do what he did last time, i.e. tell the administrative state that for every new rule they create they have to get rid of two.
Everyone I know thinks the same way I do ergo I'm correct.
From the Leftist media I watch, the thinking seems to be there is no difference between Trump and Harris/Biden for Gaza. They don't expect Trump to be better but since Biden isn't willing to stop a "genocide" it can't get any worse.
The problem is they've redefined "genocide" to mean "brutal war". There are more births than deaths in Gaza. We've been hearing how they're days away from mass starvation for the last 9 months and we're still days away.
Biden was Jimmy Cricket. Trump thinks Israel isn't being forceful enough.
The Left has more groups and more ways for them to be at odds. For example the Jews and the Arabs are both Blue and they have opposite ideas on how to deal with the current war in Gaza.
Team Blue's job is to put together a group that is willing to vote together. Since the Arabs decided anything less than preventing Israel from defending itself was "genocide", the calculation should have been that Blue can't depend on that vote and they need to get others.
That implies doing good things for the "pocketbook" voters since that's the biggest group.
As for "nutpicking", the problem implies there should be fewer ideological purity tests and not more. This flies in the face of the "everyone who doesn't agree with me is an Evil Na.zi" thinking. IMHO Blue would benefit from being more tolerant of ideological diversity.
It is a lot easier to believe Trump can be played than it is to believe that Trump is being blackmailed.
Trump is immune to sexual blackmail because he wouldn't care and his real life has been so interesting. Finding out that he's had yet another affair with yet another East European model is already well within expectations.
Trump is also pretty much immune to money blackmail because he'd just claim that it was normal business dealings with Russia and/or loans (btw, he has taken Russian loans). It'd be easy for him to say "Fish You, sanctions say you don't get paid" so that's probably already happened.
Thankfully none of his attempts at creating hotels in Russia have been successful so his empire can't be held hostage.
Giving Russia a veto over our defense moves 20 years ago would have resulted in a real problem now. Russia feeling it has no choice but invade about 20 different countries has nothing to do with Nato (witness how they've treated their non-Nato neighbors).
Russian attacks the integrity of our institutions via these sorts of info grams. They had another where a Immigrant was bragging on how many times he'll vote.
RE: She’s also made claims she’s been assaulted by far better men (plural)
I think she's making a difference between "assaulted" and "sexually assaulted".
RE: Reade has also told people about her incident not long after.
In my experience with the mentally unstable they claim everyone not in the room as backing them up. In this case Reade told her (now dead) mother (no, you can't talk to her), and various other people who in person say she was vague and didn't give names.
What really stands out is the following: According to a summary within an Associated Press investigative piece based on interviews with over a dozen of Reade's acquaintances, Reade used "her charm and flair for drama to manipulate those supporting her until their goodwill [ran] out", and "some people who dealt with her found her duplicitous and deceitful, while others found her a heroic survivor."
Add to that her repeated lies in court on various subjects, her constantly changing story, and imho we're in "sympathy vampire" territory.
The thing about personality disorders is she will have been doing this for decades.
1) There is a long list of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
2) She is also one of 13 women who have accused Moonves.
3) Two other people have said she confided in them shortly after the incident.
4) Trump claimed they'd never met. This might put this into "famous people attract this sort of thing" except that there are photos of them together.
5) On May 9, 2023, a jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. (wiki)
In a July 19, 2023, memorandum opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, demonstrated Trump "raped" Carroll in the plain sense of the word(wiki)
IMHO after we've proven something in a court of law the burden for disproving it is much higher. So muttering something about media bias, or left leaning, needs to get a lot more specific.
No I don't. My claim is that everyone who runs for office needs to expect this sort of thing. Ergo we're selecting for people who deal with it well. Almost by definition that works against very ethical people.
Trump manages this sort of thing very well because he's had so much practice. The way he's gotten so much practice is he's been an unethical scandal ridden slime for decades.
Another side effect is the electorate is conditioned to expect and ignore it. Which means the truth of the allegations matters very little, it's more about how they're handled.
RE: Monica
If memory serves, Monica was young for her age and sex obsessed. In a different context we'd call her a groupie. She was also wondering if Bill would divorce HRC and marry her which makes me wonder what he told her.
My CEO was fired over less than this. Considering Bill stepping down would have meant his (competent) VP stepping in, there is a strong argument Team Blue should have made him step down.
BTW that's a different world where it's thought that the VP is less than competent which has also happened multiple times.
RE: Franken
There was no investigation, this was a moral panic, he was never allowed to give his side of the story.
It's not clear that he did anything. As a comedian, he had a skit where he'd be a sex manic doctor. He did this act for years. None of the other females who played in it reported problems. That's not, they didn't step forward, that's they were called up and asked since it was a small enough number.
The accuser's description of the events seem to be of his skit and his character's behavior during that skit. She also is a professional publicity seeker. A handful of women reported behavior they felt was inappropriate during photo ops, but that's out of tens of thousands and it seems Al did a lot of these in character.
In the best case, Al's behavior was clean for someone who professionally does raunchy sex comedies that cross lines.
I don’t recall such allegations being made against John McCain or Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley or Mike Pence
Romney campaign tells Obama to ‘rein in his supporters’ on Na.zi comments. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/124572-romney-campaign-tells-obama-to-rein-in-his-supporters-on-nazi-comments/
Nikki Haley being compared to Eva Braun (Hit.ler's girlfriend)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/09/05/romney-ally-to-dems-stop-trivializing-nazism/
Mike Pence being compared to Hit.ler
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/whoopi-goldbery-mike-pence-nazi-lgbt-rights-row-us-vice-president-a8212516.html
John McCain being compared to Hit.ler
https://rac.org/press-room/madonnas-hitler-mccain-analogy-deplorable
4 of the 5 accusers have admitted their claims are false. The 5th (Ford) has a ton of major red flags, including the problem that she swears she can trivially back date her accusations but refused to actually do so.
they wish that people would not classify them that way.
Amusement. So when Biden was forced to pick a black female, he should have explain to Team Blue that there is no such thing? And I've noticed you call me "cis male" more than once like it means something about my opinions.
My opinions here are driven by me being an engineer. The problem we keep running into is what to do with a female penis.
More specifically, and the issue you keep ignoring, is what to do where we've segregated the genders for good reason, i.e. "sports" and "preventing sexual misconduct / rape".
Avi Silverberg claims to identify as a woman and as such she(?) should be able to enter female power lifting events. The current rules actually allow that even though he's clearly not serious.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/
If allowed to continue, everyone who sets women's power lifting records will have a penis.
If you don't have a solution for "what to do with a female penis" other than "born women should lump it", then you're inviting Conservatives to insist there is no such thing and the normal rules apply.
Big picture I'm in favor letting people control their own bodies and technologic advance was always going to allow switching genders at some point.
However maintaining that there is no difference between the genders is not dealing with reality, and asking women/children to just lump it is begging ignorant and self serving politicians to step in.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/11/2024”
Harris wasn't answering questions in paragraphs. Harris was avoiding answering questions by word salad.
Team Red had fun playing quotes of the full question and full answer.
Note "avoiding answering questions" is the best spin possible.
The alternatives are she didn't know the answers; or couldn't remember what her handlers told her to say but knew her own answers would be unacceptable.
"
I haven't seen Trump's Rogan interview but my brother said although Trump wandered around a lot he did actually answer questions.
"
Three hours of word salad wasn't going to convince anyone that she's fit to be President.
Her lack of long interviews was clearly a chosen tactic. The only way that makes sense is the more we know the less she was likely to win.
"
RE: (hard to get to TX twice in a 107 day campaign).
There is this new invention known as the telephone. Or Teams. Or other streaming meeting services.
"
The issue isn't that you and I think she should have gone. The issue is that the people who were professionally managing her thought she wasn't up to it.
And not just, "Joe Rogan is a bad idea". It seemed to have been, "interviews are a bad idea and long serious(?) interviews are a massively bad idea". Even in a toss up election where she's losing ground.
If we assume the people professionally managing her understood their jobs and were correct, then the implication is she was that bad at interviews.
"
Uncommitted was thought to have 100k votes in Michigan. Trump won by 80k.
So a 50k flip would have made Michigan Blue.
"
Her longest interview was one hour with Howard Stern... but at least half that was talking about her rise to glory and the other half softball questions. In practice that might have been 15 minutes. So the same as her others.
I think it's very possible her people didn't want to let her out of the bunker for three hours and do the real deal. She'd go with a platitude, he'd ask a follow up question, she'd not have an answer. Joe was viewed (correctly) as "not one of their people" so that can't work.
Three hours of word salad would have been as bad as Biden's debate.
"
Welp, he’s getting called a Na.zi Collaborator.
Amusement. LOL.
And there you go. He's in the way of what Blue wants to do, ergo he's a Na.zi.
"
"Abolish" is a slogan. In practice Trump will do what he did last time, i.e. tell the administrative state that for every new rule they create they have to get rid of two.
"
Everyone I know thinks the same way I do ergo I'm correct.
From the Leftist media I watch, the thinking seems to be there is no difference between Trump and Harris/Biden for Gaza. They don't expect Trump to be better but since Biden isn't willing to stop a "genocide" it can't get any worse.
The problem is they've redefined "genocide" to mean "brutal war". There are more births than deaths in Gaza. We've been hearing how they're days away from mass starvation for the last 9 months and we're still days away.
Biden was Jimmy Cricket. Trump thinks Israel isn't being forceful enough.
"
Maybe. Trump is seriously erratic and loves to screw people while they're down if it's in his interest. Putin's interests aren't aligned with ours.
Having said that, Trump's leaked "peace proposal" is a disaster.
"
The Left has more groups and more ways for them to be at odds. For example the Jews and the Arabs are both Blue and they have opposite ideas on how to deal with the current war in Gaza.
Team Blue's job is to put together a group that is willing to vote together. Since the Arabs decided anything less than preventing Israel from defending itself was "genocide", the calculation should have been that Blue can't depend on that vote and they need to get others.
That implies doing good things for the "pocketbook" voters since that's the biggest group.
As for "nutpicking", the problem implies there should be fewer ideological purity tests and not more. This flies in the face of the "everyone who doesn't agree with me is an Evil Na.zi" thinking. IMHO Blue would benefit from being more tolerant of ideological diversity.
"
It is a lot easier to believe Trump can be played than it is to believe that Trump is being blackmailed.
Trump is immune to sexual blackmail because he wouldn't care and his real life has been so interesting. Finding out that he's had yet another affair with yet another East European model is already well within expectations.
Trump is also pretty much immune to money blackmail because he'd just claim that it was normal business dealings with Russia and/or loans (btw, he has taken Russian loans). It'd be easy for him to say "Fish You, sanctions say you don't get paid" so that's probably already happened.
Thankfully none of his attempts at creating hotels in Russia have been successful so his empire can't be held hostage.
"
Giving Russia a veto over our defense moves 20 years ago would have resulted in a real problem now. Russia feeling it has no choice but invade about 20 different countries has nothing to do with Nato (witness how they've treated their non-Nato neighbors).
"
Russian attacks the integrity of our institutions via these sorts of info grams. They had another where a Immigrant was bragging on how many times he'll vote.
On “He Got Away With It”
RE: She’s also made claims she’s been assaulted by far better men (plural)
I think she's making a difference between "assaulted" and "sexually assaulted".
RE: Reade has also told people about her incident not long after.
In my experience with the mentally unstable they claim everyone not in the room as backing them up. In this case Reade told her (now dead) mother (no, you can't talk to her), and various other people who in person say she was vague and didn't give names.
What really stands out is the following: According to a summary within an Associated Press investigative piece based on interviews with over a dozen of Reade's acquaintances, Reade used "her charm and flair for drama to manipulate those supporting her until their goodwill [ran] out", and "some people who dealt with her found her duplicitous and deceitful, while others found her a heroic survivor."
Add to that her repeated lies in court on various subjects, her constantly changing story, and imho we're in "sympathy vampire" territory.
The thing about personality disorders is she will have been doing this for decades.
"
RE: Carroll & Trump
1) There is a long list of women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.
2) She is also one of 13 women who have accused Moonves.
3) Two other people have said she confided in them shortly after the incident.
4) Trump claimed they'd never met. This might put this into "famous people attract this sort of thing" except that there are photos of them together.
5) On May 9, 2023, a jury of six men and three women found Trump liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation. (wiki)
In a July 19, 2023, memorandum opinion, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the trial, demonstrated Trump "raped" Carroll in the plain sense of the word(wiki)
IMHO after we've proven something in a court of law the burden for disproving it is much higher. So muttering something about media bias, or left leaning, needs to get a lot more specific.
"
Yes. No serious negatives. No serious positives.
You can't beat something with nothing.
"
But you still need to demonstrate...
No I don't. My claim is that everyone who runs for office needs to expect this sort of thing. Ergo we're selecting for people who deal with it well. Almost by definition that works against very ethical people.
Trump manages this sort of thing very well because he's had so much practice. The way he's gotten so much practice is he's been an unethical scandal ridden slime for decades.
Another side effect is the electorate is conditioned to expect and ignore it. Which means the truth of the allegations matters very little, it's more about how they're handled.
"
RE: Monica
If memory serves, Monica was young for her age and sex obsessed. In a different context we'd call her a groupie. She was also wondering if Bill would divorce HRC and marry her which makes me wonder what he told her.
My CEO was fired over less than this. Considering Bill stepping down would have meant his (competent) VP stepping in, there is a strong argument Team Blue should have made him step down.
BTW that's a different world where it's thought that the VP is less than competent which has also happened multiple times.
RE: Franken
There was no investigation, this was a moral panic, he was never allowed to give his side of the story.
It's not clear that he did anything. As a comedian, he had a skit where he'd be a sex manic doctor. He did this act for years. None of the other females who played in it reported problems. That's not, they didn't step forward, that's they were called up and asked since it was a small enough number.
The accuser's description of the events seem to be of his skit and his character's behavior during that skit. She also is a professional publicity seeker. A handful of women reported behavior they felt was inappropriate during photo ops, but that's out of tens of thousands and it seems Al did a lot of these in character.
In the best case, Al's behavior was clean for someone who professionally does raunchy sex comedies that cross lines.
On “Trumped”
RE: "too focused on cultural issues"
Ouch. Arguably all three of those are "it's the economy". Of course that's swing voters and not the social justice warriors.
However nothing prevented Harris from Blue virtue signaling AND ALSO doing less word salad with how she'd deal with economic issues.
On “He Got Away With It”
I don’t recall such allegations being made against John McCain or Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley or Mike Pence
Romney campaign tells Obama to ‘rein in his supporters’ on Na.zi comments. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/124572-romney-campaign-tells-obama-to-rein-in-his-supporters-on-nazi-comments/
Nikki Haley being compared to Eva Braun (Hit.ler's girlfriend)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2012/09/05/romney-ally-to-dems-stop-trivializing-nazism/
Mike Pence being compared to Hit.ler
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/whoopi-goldbery-mike-pence-nazi-lgbt-rights-row-us-vice-president-a8212516.html
John McCain being compared to Hit.ler
https://rac.org/press-room/madonnas-hitler-mccain-analogy-deplorable
"
RE: Kavanagh
4 of the 5 accusers have admitted their claims are false. The 5th (Ford) has a ton of major red flags, including the problem that she swears she can trivially back date her accusations but refused to actually do so.
"
Sexual assault is a real thing and a real problem.
False accusations are also a real thing and a real problem.
Biden's accuser has a lot of red flags that we see with false claims. Carrol managed to prove hers in a court of law.
On “Trumped”
they wish that people would not classify them that way.
Amusement. So when Biden was forced to pick a black female, he should have explain to Team Blue that there is no such thing? And I've noticed you call me "cis male" more than once like it means something about my opinions.
My opinions here are driven by me being an engineer. The problem we keep running into is what to do with a female penis.
More specifically, and the issue you keep ignoring, is what to do where we've segregated the genders for good reason, i.e. "sports" and "preventing sexual misconduct / rape".
Avi Silverberg claims to identify as a woman and as such she(?) should be able to enter female power lifting events. The current rules actually allow that even though he's clearly not serious.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/
If allowed to continue, everyone who sets women's power lifting records will have a penis.
If you don't have a solution for "what to do with a female penis" other than "born women should lump it", then you're inviting Conservatives to insist there is no such thing and the normal rules apply.
Big picture I'm in favor letting people control their own bodies and technologic advance was always going to allow switching genders at some point.
However maintaining that there is no difference between the genders is not dealing with reality, and asking women/children to just lump it is begging ignorant and self serving politicians to step in.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.