I don't think you understand. You're not a US citizen, so they don't need special authority to bring in a drone strike.
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DragonWatch
Small FootPrint
Based on my experience in life, military service and observations ~ I believe we need a female black candidate as Joe’s VP. If three black women can get us to the moon, one can bring humanity to new heights. Progressive democratic candidates need to elected all the way down the ticket.
I am the scout dad sent on a backpacking trip without a jacket, and told to have fun. My parents should have named me Sue ~ that would have served as a warning to others
I am the scout dad sent on a backpacking trip without a jacket, and told to have fun. My parents should have named me Sue ~ that would have served as a warning to others
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I think we need the best person, regardless of race or sex. We obviously aren't getting that with nominee for president, probably not much hope we'll do much better with the vice.
TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Logic dictates a latina VP with no aspirations for the big chair. Firstly for demographic turnout in 2020, but also to ease the path for an AOC run in 2024 when Biden bows out due to being 10,000 years old.
A badass 50-60 year old lawyer would do just fine.
A badass 50-60 year old lawyer would do just fine.
If Elizabeth Warren was younger, I would call her a strong contender, but she's only a few years younger than Biden. If elected we would have the oldest president in history with the second oldest VP (the oldest was Alben Barkley elected in 1848), with a virus on the loose that predominantly kills older people. The chances of both of them making it to the inauguration would be lower than average.
When a presidential candidate is older, they almost always pick someone on the young side for a presidential race, and when a candidate is younger they almost always pick an old hand. Barack Obama and John Kennedy faced some resistant for being as young as they were, so they both picked running mates with long records. Trump picked someone in his 50s. Biden will almost certainly have to pick someone in their 40s or 50s.
Back in 2016 Rachel Maddow had a segment on the VP selection process. She pointed out that presidential candidates choose their running mates based on one of three criteria:
1) An August pick - someone picked to secure the nomination (hasn't happened in the TV era)
2) A November pick - someone to help them get elected. Trump did this with Pence picking someone the religious right liked.
3) Someone to help govern - This is a choice who won't help the ticket much, but will help the president run the country. Obama did this and it sounds like Biden is doing the same.
Biden has also said he's looking for someone who can take over on day 1. That would mean someone who has some experience with high office. That rules out Stacey Abrams. She's a high profile woman of color, but her resume is fairly thin compared to the others under consideration. She's never held a position higher than a state legislature seat.
Personally I do think the best person for the job should be chosen regardless of their demographics, but in the current political environment someone who is non-white and someone who is female is probably the best choice. The Democratic party has the vast majority of American minorities under its wings, plus it's becoming a party with more women than men. The bulk of American voters don't vote the issues, they vote based on who they like and that's the reality we have to live with.
I also think all sitting governors should be ruled out. The COVID-19 crisis is putting tremendous stress on every governor and its likely to get worse this summer. The governors who might be considered are either embroiled in a severe outbreak right now (such as New Mexico), or is doing everything they can to keep the outbreak in their state under control. This is a bad year for a governor to be distracted from their state. It's like Hurricane Katrina 24/7 in all 50 states.
That leaves people who are out of office or in an office where they can take time off such as a legislator. I've seen a number of different short lists, but we don't know who is actually on the list. I think the two women who would make the best VPs in terms of advisors to Biden as well as being able to step up from day 1 are Susan Rice and Kamala Harris.
Amy Klobachar has been tossed around, but she's always competing with people. I saw an interview with her which was supposed to be informal about lock down and she was going on about how competitive she is at Scrabble with the rest of her family and they never want to play with her. She thought it was a funny story, but it demonstrated to me someone who isn't really a very good team player. She's always out to win whatever the situation. That's a good thing in a courtroom, or on the Senate floor where she's trying to get her bill or her amendment through, but while running for president is a competitive sport, being president shouldn't be if you want to be effective.
Susan Rice is a career diplomat who appears to me to be pretty good at reading situations and behaving appropriately. In interviews I seen with her, she has a side to her that is blunt and to the point, but she can also turn on the diplomatic charm when necessary.
Kamala Harris is similar in that regard. Though she's not a career diplomat.
In the world of women and politics there are two sort of archetypal energies going among female politicians. There are either the "I am woman hear me roar" type. The women who see their life as a constant fight for whatever they are trying to achieve. And then there are the women who are more like one of the guys.
The first type of woman tends to turn off male voters. That drove a lot of men away from Hillary Clinton. But most of those same men would vote for Michelle Obama in a heartbeat.
I've known a lot of the latter women in my life. My sister is one and so is my mate. My sister went into petroleum Geology, which is very much the old boy's club. Back when she first started at Getty, she and the other young Geologists were sent to various training classes in Houston. On one trip the other guys in her class decided to go to one of Houston's strip clubs one evening (more upscale strip clubs in Houston than Bakersfield) and they insisted my sister go along. This was something none of them had done before and they sought her "protection" as the most sophisticated of their group. She went along and found the whole experience amusing.
My SO is the only female lawyer in her office. The guy who is the predominant lawyer there, who she trained, is an ex-hockey player and he admits some of the humor gets politically incorrect at times. But she's just seen as one of the guys. She will correct people if they go too far, but she's fine with normal "locker room talk" (not nowhere near the degree what Trump calls locker room talk).
She also does domestic violence perpetrator counseling and most of the guys are very blue collar and very coarse. She rolls with it and sometimes even jokes along with them, but she also turns their banter into teaching moments when it goes too far.
Several male friends who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary in 2016 told my SO if she ever ran for any kind of office she'd have their vote and hearty endorsement.
Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris and I think to some extent Susan Rice are like the latter type of women, while Amy Klobachar strike me as the former type. Some people are always going to tune in the demographics like gender, skin color, etc., but for those who tend to see all people on their merits first will look at an interaction between one of these latter women and a guy as just two people having an interaction. But for the former type of woman with a guy, you're constantly aware it's an interaction between a woman and a guy. It's like they wear their gender on their sleeve. Whereas the other women will identify as female if it is an issue, but they are about much more.
Some people are also very wrapped up in some other part of their identity like their profession, their ethnicity, or their orientation. I know a fair number of LBGTQ people and for some it's the topic of every conversation to a point where I want to avoid them, while others it's just a thing they are and they have a life outside of that identity. I tend to be friends with the latter while only tolerate the former. I broke some people's minds when they came across me talking Geology with one friend in full drag at an event.
Identity is an important part of who we are. For some it's all consuming, while for others their life is about more than who they are.
When a presidential candidate is older, they almost always pick someone on the young side for a presidential race, and when a candidate is younger they almost always pick an old hand. Barack Obama and John Kennedy faced some resistant for being as young as they were, so they both picked running mates with long records. Trump picked someone in his 50s. Biden will almost certainly have to pick someone in their 40s or 50s.
Back in 2016 Rachel Maddow had a segment on the VP selection process. She pointed out that presidential candidates choose their running mates based on one of three criteria:
1) An August pick - someone picked to secure the nomination (hasn't happened in the TV era)
2) A November pick - someone to help them get elected. Trump did this with Pence picking someone the religious right liked.
3) Someone to help govern - This is a choice who won't help the ticket much, but will help the president run the country. Obama did this and it sounds like Biden is doing the same.
Biden has also said he's looking for someone who can take over on day 1. That would mean someone who has some experience with high office. That rules out Stacey Abrams. She's a high profile woman of color, but her resume is fairly thin compared to the others under consideration. She's never held a position higher than a state legislature seat.
Personally I do think the best person for the job should be chosen regardless of their demographics, but in the current political environment someone who is non-white and someone who is female is probably the best choice. The Democratic party has the vast majority of American minorities under its wings, plus it's becoming a party with more women than men. The bulk of American voters don't vote the issues, they vote based on who they like and that's the reality we have to live with.
I also think all sitting governors should be ruled out. The COVID-19 crisis is putting tremendous stress on every governor and its likely to get worse this summer. The governors who might be considered are either embroiled in a severe outbreak right now (such as New Mexico), or is doing everything they can to keep the outbreak in their state under control. This is a bad year for a governor to be distracted from their state. It's like Hurricane Katrina 24/7 in all 50 states.
That leaves people who are out of office or in an office where they can take time off such as a legislator. I've seen a number of different short lists, but we don't know who is actually on the list. I think the two women who would make the best VPs in terms of advisors to Biden as well as being able to step up from day 1 are Susan Rice and Kamala Harris.
Amy Klobachar has been tossed around, but she's always competing with people. I saw an interview with her which was supposed to be informal about lock down and she was going on about how competitive she is at Scrabble with the rest of her family and they never want to play with her. She thought it was a funny story, but it demonstrated to me someone who isn't really a very good team player. She's always out to win whatever the situation. That's a good thing in a courtroom, or on the Senate floor where she's trying to get her bill or her amendment through, but while running for president is a competitive sport, being president shouldn't be if you want to be effective.
Susan Rice is a career diplomat who appears to me to be pretty good at reading situations and behaving appropriately. In interviews I seen with her, she has a side to her that is blunt and to the point, but she can also turn on the diplomatic charm when necessary.
Kamala Harris is similar in that regard. Though she's not a career diplomat.
In the world of women and politics there are two sort of archetypal energies going among female politicians. There are either the "I am woman hear me roar" type. The women who see their life as a constant fight for whatever they are trying to achieve. And then there are the women who are more like one of the guys.
The first type of woman tends to turn off male voters. That drove a lot of men away from Hillary Clinton. But most of those same men would vote for Michelle Obama in a heartbeat.
I've known a lot of the latter women in my life. My sister is one and so is my mate. My sister went into petroleum Geology, which is very much the old boy's club. Back when she first started at Getty, she and the other young Geologists were sent to various training classes in Houston. On one trip the other guys in her class decided to go to one of Houston's strip clubs one evening (more upscale strip clubs in Houston than Bakersfield) and they insisted my sister go along. This was something none of them had done before and they sought her "protection" as the most sophisticated of their group. She went along and found the whole experience amusing.
My SO is the only female lawyer in her office. The guy who is the predominant lawyer there, who she trained, is an ex-hockey player and he admits some of the humor gets politically incorrect at times. But she's just seen as one of the guys. She will correct people if they go too far, but she's fine with normal "locker room talk" (not nowhere near the degree what Trump calls locker room talk).
She also does domestic violence perpetrator counseling and most of the guys are very blue collar and very coarse. She rolls with it and sometimes even jokes along with them, but she also turns their banter into teaching moments when it goes too far.
Several male friends who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary in 2016 told my SO if she ever ran for any kind of office she'd have their vote and hearty endorsement.
Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris and I think to some extent Susan Rice are like the latter type of women, while Amy Klobachar strike me as the former type. Some people are always going to tune in the demographics like gender, skin color, etc., but for those who tend to see all people on their merits first will look at an interaction between one of these latter women and a guy as just two people having an interaction. But for the former type of woman with a guy, you're constantly aware it's an interaction between a woman and a guy. It's like they wear their gender on their sleeve. Whereas the other women will identify as female if it is an issue, but they are about much more.
Some people are also very wrapped up in some other part of their identity like their profession, their ethnicity, or their orientation. I know a fair number of LBGTQ people and for some it's the topic of every conversation to a point where I want to avoid them, while others it's just a thing they are and they have a life outside of that identity. I tend to be friends with the latter while only tolerate the former. I broke some people's minds when they came across me talking Geology with one friend in full drag at an event.
Identity is an important part of who we are. For some it's all consuming, while for others their life is about more than who they are.
Nice analysis but a bit more fine grained than my experience yet diplomatic. I've read analyses (sorry no citation) of women as administrators or bosses. General consensus they are much better manager's than men, probably because they have more empathy. Watching my wife in the kitchen is a blur of multitasking. Men respond well to them. Some women not so much. I don't remember why female's are more critical, and perhaps suppressed the memory as sexist. In any case generalizations about gender behavior are like nitro glycerine.
Things can be said about populations of people that can't be said about individuals. There are physical physiological differences in the way female and male brains are wired, in general. However an individual male can have female structures and an individual female can have male structures. One of the first signs of proof that homosexuality was inborn was an autopsy study done on gay men which found that many men who identified as homosexual in life had hippocampuses that were more female than male.
Women also tend to have more developed corpus callosums, which aids communication between the hemispheres of the brain. However individuals can vary. It appears my mother completely lacked one. It's a rare condition in women, but it's a birth defect that might inflict 7 in 1000 people. She had some very weird neurological quirks and what eventually got her was a collapse of her nervous system.
On the other hand, I appear to have an overdeveloped corpus callosum for a male.
With personality groupings like the Myers Briggs, there is a gender split for the decision making function Feeling/Thinking, but the preference is only 60/40 for each gender. 40% of women are Thinkers and 40% of men are Feelers. But the overall culture encourages men to be Thinkers and women to be Feelers. So a Thinking female is likely going to have more empathy and other Feeling traits than a Thinking male, and vice versa for a Feeling male. But a Thinking woman is going to appear cold and callus compared to a Feeling woman because the Feeling traits come more naturally to someone who was both born with it and had it culturally reinforced.
The MBTI has gotten a bad rep in recent years, but it's mostly because it's been badly misused by people who didn't really understand it. When applied as it was intended it's a fairly good resource for helping understand the whole that is the human psyche. But it only describes a few functions people do.
Just like someone who was born with dominance for one hand who was trained to use the other. Later in life they may prefer their trained hand over their natural one because they've been doing it so long, but they will also demonstrate more ambidexterity than someone who was always using their dominant.
So we have an interesting mix of nature and nurture in the population.
Leadership is a very interesting topic and there are different types of leadership. The talents needed to be an effective combat platoon commander are different than the talents needed to be an effective leader of a creative team. The talents needed to lead a country are different at different times. Bill Clinton probably would have been a poor president in the 1930s and 40s and Franklin Roosevelt might have been poor in the 1990s. But both were very effective in their eras.
There are trends in the population as far as gender and leadership goes. A woman with leadership talents will probably do better doing something like leading a creative team rather than something involving intense competitiveness like combat. But individuals vary. A friend's brother was in Iraq and he was serving with some of the first women to be close to combat. His unit was a support unit, but they did see some combat. He said the women in his unit were tougher than the men and better fighters, but that might also be self selection. The number of women who join the military is much smaller than the number of men and the number of women who volunteer for combat positions is even smaller. In any situation where you have people who believe they are there to prove themselves, they tend to do better than those who are just there for other reasons.
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was a unit made up of Japanese Americans in WW II. Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii lost an arm in that unit. It became the highest decorated combat unit in the US military during the war. When African Americans were put into combat positions due to manpower shortages after the Battle of the Bulge they often served with distinction.
The current generation of women combat personnel feel they have something to prove, so they tend to be better than the men.
Some women have proven to be very capable leaders through world history. QE I led Britain through a very difficult period, Angela Merkel has been a very good chancellor in Germany, and many others. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher was very effective (though her political views were controversial then and criticized now), but Teresa May was very ineffective.
In the US 45 men have held the presidency. Some have been terrific, but some have been idiots or just ineffective. Nobody is saying men are terrible at leadership because some turned out to be awful. When a group is trying to break into some new area, the pioneers are often seen as representative of the whole group whereas the accepted group are seen on their individual merits.
Jackie Robinson was seen as representative of all African Americans in baseball when he first played for the Dodgers. He was exceptional in talent and temperament for the role he played, but for every exceptional African American athlete there are quite a few who are never going to go anywhere with sporting talent, just like white kids. If someone studied the populations, there might be some minor differences between the percentage who have world class talent, but the differences are minor at best.
I probably look at gender and ethnicity different than most people. I grew up a white minority in a dominant Asian and Hispanic mixed part of Los Angeles and in my own family my mother and sister were both very "yang" and my father was passive and very "yin". My sister and I have a lot in common, but she's much more yang than I ever was. Throughout my life many of my friends have been fairly yang women with some yin men mixed in.
I look at everyone by their merit first. I think the ideal of being "color blind" or "gender blind" is not helpful. Someone who is African American is likely going to be coming in with different life experiences than someone who is white. How those experiences mixed with their inborn talents and traits is what made them who they are. Same thing with a woman. Amy Klobachar's competitiveness may be compensating for being criticized as a child for not displaying enough stereotypical female behaviors. She may be rebelling against the early messages.
On the other hand similar behaviors from Kamala Harris may have been treated differently, and/or she reacted differently to the criticisms.
Human psychology is a complex labyrinth of nature combined with nurture. No two people are the same.
I'm glad you didn't begin with this. You clever fellow, if you started with this I might have missed the erudite, yet readable tour de force leading to it. I've concluded I can't play in your sand box, er, sand boxes. All I can do is like Trump throw something out that looks challenging that I cannot comprehend like
Opinion | Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media
Please decipher for me.
Edit: After palm slap, it's the conversation, like this, dummy. It is a form of simulation. We live in a podcast.
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Joe Rogan is following in the footsteps of Art Bell, or more accurately one of the weekend hosts of Coast to Coast AM for a while Ian Punnett
Ian Punnett - Wikipedia
Art Bell got famous for exploring conspiracies and paranormal subjects, but his show started out with a broader spectrum doing long form interviews that could last 3 hours. Ian Punnett became one of the fill in and weekend hosts and he continued to explore a broad range of subjects. Punnett had to give up broadcasting because he developed severe tinnitus.
The podcast is replacing talk radio as the primary form of listening to ideas. It's also become a more democratized world with a broader spectrum of ideas available. Talk radio became the realm of conservatives because a handful of conservatives were inside the loop when Reagan's FTC chief did away with the Fairness Doctrine and they locked in conservative messaging as the primary outlet for talk radio. The left tried to get some liberal talk radio going, but they were always underfunded and were frozen out of many smaller markers where conservative media companies had bought up all the stations before they got there.
Now with podcasting we have a wide range of politics, ideas, learning, etc. available anytime and a lot of people are tuning in. I noted the article said that Joe Rogan's audience is heavily male, and I saw somewhere else that a survey of podcast listeners found Joe Rogan's audience was 71% male and averaged 24 years of age.
He has a big audience, but it's also a narrow demographic. He is the same sort of dominance Fox has, he draws in a large percentage of one demographic which makes him tops in a highly balkanized media space. But he is talking to a demographic that other media isn't reaching very well.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Data Point: Historically accurate model by Oxford Economics, (16 out of last 18 elections), predicts massive loss by Trump. Before covid crisis the model was predicting a win for Trump.
I read about this the other day. Historically economics have been a major factor in presidential re-election. A fairly large chunk of American voters are very economically driven in a normal year. If the economy is good, the president must be doing something right, if it's bad it's his fault.
The era of Trump is a different animal. There still are some economics only voters, but the percentage is far smaller than usual. Among Trump's favorability, the ~40-45% he's had for most of his presidency, about half are strong approve and half are somewhat approve. I think some of the somewhat approve have been economic voters who liked the economy but not much else with him and some of the somewhat approve are Republicans who don't really like him, but fall in line behind the leader no matter who.
Trump has had the largest percentage of strong disapproval of any president over the long haul. It's been consistently around 50% or more.
Even if the economy had stayed strong I think the Oxford Economics model would have broken down. But now that the economy has gone south, that's driving the economic voters away from him. His horrible mismanagement of the pandemic is causing him to lose seniors. He could start losing other traditional Republican voters if the pandemic gets as bad as I think it's going to be in red states.
I think a big scandal is coming about how some states are cooking the books to make the pandemic look better than it is in those states. Some red states have crazy low death rates from COVID-19 despite their hospitals being at max capacity in some parts of those states. There are investigative reporters digging into this right now.
I did find the Oxford Economics analysis interesting.
This is only one poll and could be inaccurate, but if it is accurate, Trump is in deep trouble.
https://www.utpoliticaltrends.com/s/UPTP-May-2020-Topline-FPR-0526.pdf
It's down near the end, but in the 2020 presidential contest in Utah its Trump 44%, Biden 41%, with 8% Other. That would make Utah a battleground state.
https://www.utpoliticaltrends.com/s/UPTP-May-2020-Topline-FPR-0526.pdf
It's down near the end, but in the 2020 presidential contest in Utah its Trump 44%, Biden 41%, with 8% Other. That would make Utah a battleground state.
Bearing in mind I'm not an attorney nor have I credentials in what political scientists call public law, but I have taught the US Constitution four times a year for over thirty years. Three of the students later became superior court judges in California. We shall see tomorrow what the Prez wants to do in more detail to curb his coverage by social media.
President Donald Trump to issue social media executive order after Twitter fact checks his tweets
By a government restriction of criticism his action would constitute a violation of the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from enacting such an act and by judicial interpretation to the rest of government. In addition many (most?) state constitutions have such measures to protect speech from government meddling. It is clear that there is no absolute guarantee of free speech as we have laws against libel, slander, and defamation, and one of speech content: It is against the law to speak about "offing the president" as David Hilliard did at a rally years ago which triggered, so to speak, the law.
There is a great deal of confusion by our citizens unwashed by knowledge of the Constitution, including the President, as we see daily. The amendment applies to government behavior, not private behavior. Thus it is not to be used to guarantee private citizens or public citizens an audience. Our princely dunce at the top, in addition, wants to regulate who in the audience should not be there, in this case the owners of twitter et allii. I know there will be quibbles in the law about publishers, etc., but really this is government first principles thinking. Basic, if you are concerned about justice, which is hard to define in particulars, but in general is to be applied to all.
You see how clever the man is on this day of mourning as we pass the official death toll due to the virus of at least 100,000 souls. Though a non-believer, let me speculate about the conversation Donald Trump might have with St. Peter on arrival at the proverbial pearlies, "Let me in. As I've said many times when asked, 'I do not assume personal responsibility.'" "Who does?...the Devil you say?" "Where have I heard that one?" /s
President Donald Trump to issue social media executive order after Twitter fact checks his tweets
By a government restriction of criticism his action would constitute a violation of the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from enacting such an act and by judicial interpretation to the rest of government. In addition many (most?) state constitutions have such measures to protect speech from government meddling. It is clear that there is no absolute guarantee of free speech as we have laws against libel, slander, and defamation, and one of speech content: It is against the law to speak about "offing the president" as David Hilliard did at a rally years ago which triggered, so to speak, the law.
There is a great deal of confusion by our citizens unwashed by knowledge of the Constitution, including the President, as we see daily. The amendment applies to government behavior, not private behavior. Thus it is not to be used to guarantee private citizens or public citizens an audience. Our princely dunce at the top, in addition, wants to regulate who in the audience should not be there, in this case the owners of twitter et allii. I know there will be quibbles in the law about publishers, etc., but really this is government first principles thinking. Basic, if you are concerned about justice, which is hard to define in particulars, but in general is to be applied to all.
You see how clever the man is on this day of mourning as we pass the official death toll due to the virus of at least 100,000 souls. Though a non-believer, let me speculate about the conversation Donald Trump might have with St. Peter on arrival at the proverbial pearlies, "Let me in. As I've said many times when asked, 'I do not assume personal responsibility.'" "Who does?...the Devil you say?" "Where have I heard that one?" /s
My SO has been reading the draft of the order for the last half hour. It will be shot down in court so fast the ink won't be dry on his signature before it's declared invalid. But thankfully the courts are holding the line on the rule of law. This executive order is that of a stone cold dictator. If it had the tiniest chance of standing in court it would mark the end of the US Constitution and rule of law in the United States.
The fact that any president of the US could create an executive order like that is bone chilling in the extreme. That's Nazi Germany type ****. Really.
The executive order basically declares that the 4th Amendment is gone and the 1st Amendment only applies to him and nobody else. And nobody can challenge anything in court. It's crazy town, but scary that not only is 45 thinking of these things, but there are no cooler minds left keeping him from trying to do this.
As for the afterlife, we don't know for sure what happens, but if there is any kind of accountability, there are some people who probably have a rather difficult life review.
A day later, my analysis repeated by a credible legal team. I added, you have no right to an audience.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/28/trump-is-doubly-wrong-about-twitter/
Further, there is elaboration Trump's legal maneuver won't work on section 230, probably what Dolson's SO found.
What the world has going for it, and us—Trump is so stupid.
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