It’s so strange how the press covers Nikki Haley like she actually matters.
It definitely is, seeing as TikTok viewers are more likely to oppose the genocide in Gaza than any other news viewers.
If Trump is unable to be president because of Court cases that should rule that way (will they? Flip a coin…), then Haley has a pretty good chance of beating DeSantis. So yeah, she does matter.
I’d rather her over the others because she’s not so MAGA and far-right.
I’ll be voting for Biden either way.
None of those cases is going to be decided by November, or even January. He may have a ‘convicted pending appeal’ or two, but those appeals will be postponed until 2028. Hell, even if he loses, I doubt he’ll exhaust his appeals before 2030.
I’d agree with this if you were saying there’s a clear possibility of this, rather than treating it as a foregone conclusion. Because we don’t know for sure how it’s going to go at this point. But yeah, I don’t feel comfortable counting on these court cases taking Trump out of the equation at all.
She is easy on the eyes and can generally make coherent points. That makes her a very small minority within the GOP.
I’ve been waiting for this day, to throw off all my shackles and be my most petty of selves.
*ahem*
He most certainly is not.
330 million people in the US and both parties are going to run a candidate who should, by rights, be considered medically unfit for office.
I hate it here.
“The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
One of my favorite books, but depressing people were pointing shit out 50 years ago and society at large is still ignoring it today.
It’s obvious from this excerpt that Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead. Of perhaps the Royalty, who aren’t elected but hold even less power and are even more of a distraction.
The US president, by contrast, is not elected by the government and has a shit-ton of power, and increasingly so as the US congress is less and less able to govern due to Republican infighting. The US president can start and win a foreign war in less time than it takes congress to even form an opinion on the matter.
Zaphod spent two years in prison for fraud, meanwhile the US president is protected by more military firepower than literal nukes and has a chain of succession longer than most Kings because the US government literally cannot function without a President.
Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead
That’s not true though.
Do you have any proof at all that Biden is mentally unfit, or are you just repeating what TikTok says?
All I see is that he’s old, his stutter has gotten worse, and he tripped over a sandbag once.
his stutter has gotten worse,
He was a favorite in the 1988 presidential primary because he was such a a great public speaker…
He got over his stutter when he was a child, and a stutter doesn’t make someone say something completely different than what they meant to. Hell, he wasn’t even doing it while Obama’s VP, and he was in his 70s then.
Stop pretending he just has a stutter, he’s 80 years old and he gets confused sometimes. It’ll happen to all of us if we’re lucky to live that long.
That doesn’t mean he’s still fit to be presidet, and he sure as shit isn’t the best option for a Dem candidate even if he is mentally fit for office.
He was a favorite in the 1988 presidential primary because he was such a a great public speaker
Were you alive back then? As I remember it, he was a perennial also-ran because he couldn’t help but stay stupid shit now and then. It’s as if the word “Gaffe” in politics was invented to describe stupid things Joe Biden said. And saying stuff like that stopped campaigns cold back then. (remember when Howard Dean’s campaign got killed over screaming the wrong way?)
But then Trump happened, and all of a sudden saying stupid shit all the time was no longer a liability.
In 2020, his campaign had to stop scheduling evening events with Buden because he would start sundowning. He’s an 80 year old man who is clearly starting to show signs of his age.
I agree with you that he’s showing signs of his age, but isn’t it possible he simply gets tired by 8PM, and since hes the boss, he can simply say “Dont schedule me for late nights thst arent necessary”?
There’s a whole lot of daylight between that and “sundowning”.
Source?
Edit: 1 day later. There is no source. Consensus wins. They pulled it from their ass.
My favorite part about all this is both sides just kind of ignoring that their candidate can’t string together a coherent sentence, gets confused a lot, and mistakes people for others all the time as if those aren’t signs of cognitive decline.
Cheers. Thank you for doing your part to ensure this never changes.
Here’s an excerpt from the very beginning of Biden’s speech two weeks ago:
In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks: to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire that existed in the world at the time.
His mission was clear. Liberty, not conquest. Freedom, not domination. National independence, not individual glory.
America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king.
And here’s an except from Trump’s speech from his most recent rally just a few days ago:
By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley … did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security, we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.
Biden is old, just like Trump. Nobody denies that. But surely you aren’t trying to “both sides” this one by equating the two mentally or physically, right?
I don’t see anyone ignoring it. In fact, it appears to be all some folks can talk about.
Whatever, really. She’s probably 6-8 weeks from turning around and endorsing him anyway.
A mental aptitude test for all politicians is a great idea actually
This could be weaponized as a tool of discrimination to keep minority groups or the impoverished out of office by constructing purposefully confusing questions. Just like the Jim Crow Era laws requiring people pass literacy tests to vote.
I get the problem, but I don’t think it’s really applicable. Voting is a basic right of every citizen of the country. Presidency is not for everyone. You wouldn’t want a translator who doesn’t know the languages they’re supposed to translate? Why would you accept a president who is, let’s say mentally challenged?
I could understand objecting to specifics, like why should mental aptitude get tested, but I don’t understand being against the whole idea. IMO presidency is like a job and like most jobs there are specific requirements that a person needs to meet to be fit for that job. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have certain expectations of people who are running for president.
Wow. I never thought about this. I doubt there will be a time anytime soon where I’d be ok voting for a president who isn’t fluent in english. I’d almost be ok with a grammar test including diagramming sentences from the Constitution.
But since I’m a liberal I’d accept the test also being done in a relevant First Nation’s language.
Think about it this way. Many LGBTQ+ identites have been considered to make people “mentally unwell” (even to this day, the way stuff like being trans or asexual is talked about is… >.<). Or what about, say an autistic person who may do exceptionally well in one part of the test but fail some other parts (or even be unable to complete them).
This isn’t even starting on the issues of socioeconomic and cultural biases (which have been discussed elsewhere in depth).
The problem is “mental competency” is a pretty damn flexible concept and one that is frequently weaponised en-masse against various groups of people to strip away agency >.<, as it is often based on ideas which have primarily been from very specific perspectives, which can be malicious (see disenfranchisment of black people), or dehumanisation (see the fact that the Double Empathy Problem associated with autistic people was only really acknowledged in the past 10 years when they actually considered how their behaviour could appear from autistic people’s perspective, and only really because autistic autism researchers got some publishing and papers <.<), or simple incompetence, or any combination.
There’s many more examples of this, that I haven’t even started covering. The fact is that any “mental competency” requirement for a public office implies some kind of testing and barring process, which is ripe with all the flaws listed many times :p
failure means the runner up gets the position
It has to be before even filing to run for office if we bother with such a thing. I’m skeptical of the idea as a whole, but doing it after the election would cause a crisis of faith and legitimacy in the government. Not only are you depriving voters of the chance to learn the mental fortitude of candidates before they cast their vote, but you’re also invalidating their votes after the election.
This could be weaponized
COULD, not WOULD.
If you don’t make any rules that the fascists might want to abuse, you don’t make any rules.
Your slippery slope fallacy does not invalidate the need to make sure that public officials are fit to carry out their duties.
