Presidents don't spend their time debating. Verbal quickness and avoidance of gaffs are good for instilling public confidence, but what Presidents do is consider and absorb information from their aides and cabinet officers and chiefs of staff and applying deliberate judgment to come up with a sensible course of action. That they get someone's name wrong -- I'm a good bit younger than Biden and I do it myself more than I used to -- or speak slowly has little to do with how they perform their substantive jobs.
What makes you think I claimed that it was a comparison to something I wasn't talking about?
And you still haven't explained why I need to form an opinion RIGHT NOW.
Indeed I do. But you have no claim on my labor or to demand that I tell you what might, hypothetically, cause me to have an opinion I don't have, or, at present, care to develop. And you still haven't given me a reason that I should.
Some years ago, I was defending the deposition of a doctor in a case brought by a former department chair. My client had been told by, let's call him Smith, that the former chair was antisemitic, and, when asked, said so. The lawyer then asked my client (who was Jewish) whether he believed Smith. He said he registered what Smith said, but never formed an opinion on whether the former chair was antisemitic. The lawyer seemed to have trouble understanding the answer and asked a lot of questions. As he got increasingly frustrated, my client told him that he didn't reach opinions lightly and felt no obligation to form them until he had enough to go on, which he couldn't specify in advance. The lawyer seemed incapable of understanding this.
I guess there are other people in the same boat.
You still haven't given me a reason that I should do this work. But I'm cool with your constitutional inability to understand why someone wouldn't want to bother developing an opinion on Sunday when it will probably be a matter of fact, not opinion, on Wednesday.
People who think their hot take opinions are a big deal don't seem to grasp that not everyone else feels that way.
You still don't get it, do you? I could make a laundry list of the many kinds of things that would seal the deal, but why should I do that? More evidence is likely to come out, including things on my hypothetical laundry list, but I'm not trying to predict on Sunday what we will probably know by Wednesday, or soon thereafter. I have often railed against the urge to have opinions for the sake of having opinions. Maybe you can try to explain why I should go to the trouble of having an opinion on this, but I doubt it will be convincing.
You're assuming that I'm waiting for some specific evidence for the purpose of developing an opinion about bullet v. shrapnel. I feel no obligation to develop such an opinion, for reasons that I think anyone who can read, or think, can understand. I expect that, eventually, there will be solid evidence one way or the other. Then I won't have an opinion; I'll know. In the meantime, I see no value in having an opinion on something that doesn't matter to me.
Or is that concept hard for you to grasp?
1. Jaybird: I have no opinion on whether it was a bullet or shrapnel, and I don't think it matters. He was shot at, and I don't think any sane person denies that. I'm perfectly willing to wait and see whether he was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel, but it won't mean anything to me except getting the question right for the sake of getting it right.
2. InMD: As I said, the extremely on-line seem to care. I see no evidence that anyone else does.
Outside of the extremely on-line, how many people are invested in the bullet v. shrapnel dispute, such as it is? Obviously, Trump was shot at and narrowly escaped at least serious injury and probably death. I'd guess that for most people of most political persuasions the question of bullet v. shrapnel is simply a matter of getting it right, and that transparency, which has never been Trump's strong suit on health related issues (or much else), is the best way to get to the answer, whatever it is.
But rando conspiracists are more fun.
Lots of political types claim the mantle of populism. Trying to fit what any particular bunch is getting up to against a Platonic form of Populism is a fool's errand. One can look at what the current "populists" are doing and saying and matching it up with the wide variety of historical examples of what people who have claimed to be populists have done and said. Specific policies are rarely the point. Turn of the century rural populists, for example, hated tariffs because they made it harder to sell agricultural products, while urban industrial populists favored them because they thought they would help them keep their jobs. They all hated elite bankers and financiers, and though they got some of what they wanted in the way of banking reforms, the financial system remained, as it inevitably would, largely in the hands of "elites." So they still hate them. Common to all who claimed to be populists was the belief that they (ignoring their own elite backers) were The People and everyone else was an out-of-touch or even actively hostile elite and the cultural resentment that inspired. (How much of William Jennings Bryans' support came from people who gave a damn about free silver, if they thought they understood it, as opposed to people who just wanted to stick their thumbs in the eyes of well-off or cultured urbanites?) "Elite failure" is not so much wrong as it is uninformative. Everything, ultimately, is run by elites -- it can hardly be otherwise -- and resentment is not necessarily based on anything that can objectively be described as failure. Sometimes, quite the opposite.
I should point out that long ago, when George Wallace and several other like-minded folks made populist noises, William Safire wrote that these people weren't "populists," but "popularists." Safire himself seemed to think that there was a thing properly called "populism" that, somehow, had something to do with the actual interests of the people the"popularists" were wooing with boob-bait, which may have been a mistake, but he wasn't wrong about the "popularists."
Unless the arrow of time reverses direction, there's no way Kazzy could have known when he posted that JB would actually answer the question, and every reason to think, off past form, that he wouldn't. Congratulations are in order for getting a straight answer for once.
Try reading better. (Yes, JB, you can cover that square.) There's a big difference between putting your life at risk by doing something that can reasonably be expected to save lives and getting yourself shot for no good purpose. The cop who didn't try some comic book superhero move that wouldn't have worked and would have likely gotten him killed did the right thing. Unless you think getting shot is, itself, a moral imperative. Do you really have trouble understanding this?
On “Joe Biden Announces that he is not Running for Re-election”
Presidents don't spend their time debating. Verbal quickness and avoidance of gaffs are good for instilling public confidence, but what Presidents do is consider and absorb information from their aides and cabinet officers and chiefs of staff and applying deliberate judgment to come up with a sensible course of action. That they get someone's name wrong -- I'm a good bit younger than Biden and I do it myself more than I used to -- or speak slowly has little to do with how they perform their substantive jobs.
"
Well, there's no video.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/15/2024”
What makes you think I claimed that it was a comparison to something I wasn't talking about?
And you still haven't explained why I need to form an opinion RIGHT NOW.
On “Joe Biden Announces that he is not Running for Re-election”
Well, that's certainly a conspiracy theory all right.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/15/2024”
Indeed I do. But you have no claim on my labor or to demand that I tell you what might, hypothetically, cause me to have an opinion I don't have, or, at present, care to develop. And you still haven't given me a reason that I should.
Some years ago, I was defending the deposition of a doctor in a case brought by a former department chair. My client had been told by, let's call him Smith, that the former chair was antisemitic, and, when asked, said so. The lawyer then asked my client (who was Jewish) whether he believed Smith. He said he registered what Smith said, but never formed an opinion on whether the former chair was antisemitic. The lawyer seemed to have trouble understanding the answer and asked a lot of questions. As he got increasingly frustrated, my client told him that he didn't reach opinions lightly and felt no obligation to form them until he had enough to go on, which he couldn't specify in advance. The lawyer seemed incapable of understanding this.
I guess there are other people in the same boat.
On “Joe Biden Announces that he is not Running for Re-election”
He's doing the job. The real, substantive job, not the showbiz.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/15/2024”
You still haven't given me a reason that I should do this work. But I'm cool with your constitutional inability to understand why someone wouldn't want to bother developing an opinion on Sunday when it will probably be a matter of fact, not opinion, on Wednesday.
People who think their hot take opinions are a big deal don't seem to grasp that not everyone else feels that way.
"
You still don't get it, do you? I could make a laundry list of the many kinds of things that would seal the deal, but why should I do that? More evidence is likely to come out, including things on my hypothetical laundry list, but I'm not trying to predict on Sunday what we will probably know by Wednesday, or soon thereafter. I have often railed against the urge to have opinions for the sake of having opinions. Maybe you can try to explain why I should go to the trouble of having an opinion on this, but I doubt it will be convincing.
"
You're assuming that I'm waiting for some specific evidence for the purpose of developing an opinion about bullet v. shrapnel. I feel no obligation to develop such an opinion, for reasons that I think anyone who can read, or think, can understand. I expect that, eventually, there will be solid evidence one way or the other. Then I won't have an opinion; I'll know. In the meantime, I see no value in having an opinion on something that doesn't matter to me.
Or is that concept hard for you to grasp?
"
Hell, why not Al Gore? He's younger than Trump or Biden and only slightly older than Clinton.
"
1. Jaybird: I have no opinion on whether it was a bullet or shrapnel, and I don't think it matters. He was shot at, and I don't think any sane person denies that. I'm perfectly willing to wait and see whether he was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel, but it won't mean anything to me except getting the question right for the sake of getting it right.
2. InMD: As I said, the extremely on-line seem to care. I see no evidence that anyone else does.
"
Outside of the extremely on-line, how many people are invested in the bullet v. shrapnel dispute, such as it is? Obviously, Trump was shot at and narrowly escaped at least serious injury and probably death. I'd guess that for most people of most political persuasions the question of bullet v. shrapnel is simply a matter of getting it right, and that transparency, which has never been Trump's strong suit on health related issues (or much else), is the best way to get to the answer, whatever it is.
But rando conspiracists are more fun.
On “From The Los Angeles Times: Schiff calls on Biden to drop out, citing ‘serious concerns’ he can’t win”
That seems to me the only reasonable alternative play was well. Anything else would be a mess.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/15/2024”
Oops:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-populism-problem#
"
Lots of political types claim the mantle of populism. Trying to fit what any particular bunch is getting up to against a Platonic form of Populism is a fool's errand. One can look at what the current "populists" are doing and saying and matching it up with the wide variety of historical examples of what people who have claimed to be populists have done and said. Specific policies are rarely the point. Turn of the century rural populists, for example, hated tariffs because they made it harder to sell agricultural products, while urban industrial populists favored them because they thought they would help them keep their jobs. They all hated elite bankers and financiers, and though they got some of what they wanted in the way of banking reforms, the financial system remained, as it inevitably would, largely in the hands of "elites." So they still hate them. Common to all who claimed to be populists was the belief that they (ignoring their own elite backers) were The People and everyone else was an out-of-touch or even actively hostile elite and the cultural resentment that inspired. (How much of William Jennings Bryans' support came from people who gave a damn about free silver, if they thought they understood it, as opposed to people who just wanted to stick their thumbs in the eyes of well-off or cultured urbanites?) "Elite failure" is not so much wrong as it is uninformative. Everything, ultimately, is run by elites -- it can hardly be otherwise -- and resentment is not necessarily based on anything that can objectively be described as failure. Sometimes, quite the opposite.
I should point out that long ago, when George Wallace and several other like-minded folks made populist noises, William Safire wrote that these people weren't "populists," but "popularists." Safire himself seemed to think that there was a thing properly called "populism" that, somehow, had something to do with the actual interests of the people the"popularists" were wooing with boob-bait, which may have been a mistake, but he wasn't wrong about the "popularists."
"
For those who'd prefer a lighter take on the subject, there is P.J. O'Rourke:
https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/6472
"
As the lawyers say, objection, non-responsive.
"
For those who are not so cocksure that they know what "populism" means, here is a thoughtful review of the subject:
https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/6472
"
Occasionally, reality asserts itself.
"
Unless the arrow of time reverses direction, there's no way Kazzy could have known when he posted that JB would actually answer the question, and every reason to think, off past form, that he wouldn't. Congratulations are in order for getting a straight answer for once.
"
Well, yes, you would say that.
"
Try reading better. (Yes, JB, you can cover that square.) There's a big difference between putting your life at risk by doing something that can reasonably be expected to save lives and getting yourself shot for no good purpose. The cop who didn't try some comic book superhero move that wouldn't have worked and would have likely gotten him killed did the right thing. Unless you think getting shot is, itself, a moral imperative. Do you really have trouble understanding this?
"
Now you're just being silly. Or proving my point. Or both.
"
They have. It has hurt them since 1964, maybe even 1948, and still they persist.
"
"I've seen it posted..."
Well, OK then.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.