AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
No bio...
User ID: 2498
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I've seen people say he "bladed" himself with a razor to draw real blood.
But given there's a dead man on a roof with a rifle, it's going to take some pretty determined motivated reasoning to continue to call this fake.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I'm not sure what I expected, but Chinese wasn't it.
Presumably they must have identified him by nationality or they'd just say Asian.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I'm not sure I'd call assassinations "unforeseen", the whole reason the secret service exists is because they are foreseen risks.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I continue to think Biden is more likely than not to hold on (and probably lose).
The easiest and cleanest way for democrats to remove him is for him to willingly step down. So far he has been steadfast in refusing to do so. I've heard some wishcasting that "well of course he's going to dig in his heels until the moment he doesn't" still thinking pressure on him will prevail. I don't believe it will. Politicians in general are very self centered and egotistical, and I've seen nothing to indicate Biden is an exception.
As you say, the next step in escalation is for Democrats to take him on at the convention. He's clearly thought ahead that far and is openly daring someone to try it. So far no one has thrown their hat in the ring, not even Dean Phillips. Biden is signaling that this option will be a real fight, it will be messy, and he will damage whoever comes for him as much as possible. He also starts with a big advantage given that almost all the delegates are pledged to him. The "good conscience" clause in their pledge is a loophole that could be exploited if enough people want to exploit it... but will they?
My expectation at this stage is that no one actually challenges, and Biden is coronated. Taking him on is a highly risky option - if you fail and Biden loses some people will blame you for the loss, potentially killing your future prospects. If you take him on and he wins that's even worse - now the President has a very personal grudge against you.
He's still not completely out of the woods if he gets through the convention - there's still the 25th Amendment option. But the convention is probably the biggest point of vulnerability left and if he survives that he probably survives to November.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I'm not a human so... fuck you too buddy?
Humanity is not determined by self-identification. You may not be a particularly grounded-in-reality human, but you are human nonetheless.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I don't mind biting the "sapient aliens don't matter but human embryos do" bullet. I value humanity, not intelligence. But if you care about sapience rather than humanity per se, how about the baby counts as a baby once it has a brain?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
Much the same reason that there is resistance to efforts to require anesthetic for aborted babies when the abortion is done at a late enough stage for the baby to feel pain, or resistance to efforts to make the killing of an unborn baby by e.g. a drunk driver a criminal offence. That is, defenders of abortion recognise the political danger of giving an inch.
Once you concede the baby has any rights, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify why this but not that. Once you start saying that it's right to save the life of a born child who is dying from an incomplete abortion, well, people might question whether it was right to try to kill it in the first place.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
In general, I think it's a big mistake to confuse "X" group with "X activists".
I cannot stand trans activists. But the actual trans people I know are cool. And this applies broadly. I mostly dislike unionists but actual construction workers are great.
Internalise this, and the world suddenly feels a lot more chill.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
I haven't read the judgement itself yet but my general reaction from commentary about it (including yours) is pretty similar. Barrett's position is the best one. The majority opinion goes too far specifically in disallowing official acts from being used as evidence of intent. Sotomayor's dissent is pretty good.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
That's my point. I don't dispute that Hunter wants Joe to retain power, but I don't see his personal legal issues as being a motivating factor.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
3mo ago
Tax fraud.
I don't actually think that Joe winning improves the situation for Hunter with his legal troubles though. If Joe loses he can pardon Hunter on the way out.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
The reason is that a quota to get elected is 14.3%. This is the smallest number that ensures that only 6 people can win, much like how in a single member election 50%+1 is the smallest number than ensures only one person can win.
So straight off the primaries you have 5 senators elected on full quotas. 2 Labor, 2 Liberal 1 Green. There's one seat left.
Once you take 2 quotas away from Labor and the Liberals they are left with 5.9% and 3.1% respectively. There's a bunch of small parties as well, the biggest being One Nation on 3.5%. So Payman has a clear lead here. But none of these parties are close to 14.3% so they start getting knocked out, starting with the smallest ones, and their votes get reallocated to their next preference.
If the preferences flowed strongly to the Liberals or to One Nation, they might have been able to overtake the lead that Payman had. But they didn't, and she ended up beating the One Nation candidate by 23,490 votes.
Now of course while this is the way that the senate counts votes, you can theoretically use all sorts of other methods. But just looking at the primary votes, and knowing that you have to elect 6 people, it's hard to see a combination that makes more intuitive sense. 2 ALP 2 LIB 2 GRN? 2 ALP 3 LIB 1 GRN? 2 ALP 2 LIB 1 GRN 1 ON? All alternatives are pretty hard to justify.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Well, the EU President is not elected at all, so that's kind of a bad comparison.
Size of the country doesn't have much to do with why US elections take so long. It's the system for selecting candidates. A series of 50+ state by state elections to select delegates to attend a convention to nominate a candidate is just always going to take longer than a small number of party insiders deciding internally who it's going to be.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Cross pressured voters are real. Someone out there might think "Trump's tariffs are going to be disastrous and wreck the economy, but this border situation is such a mess, we can't keep doing this." If Biden can make the border seem like not such an urgent problem, that voter then gets freed up to vote on the basis of tariffs.
Sure, I don't dispute that she should not have been pre-selected. Simply that it had anything to do with "ranked choice shenanigans".
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
It has to do with our different procedures. In Australia MPs vote by literally sitting on one side of the chamber or the other. The British Commons doesn't work like that, they're packed in like sardines. So in the UK parliament you only (literally) cross the floor if you are changing parties.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Biden is not going to hand it over to Harris after the election. He wants power, and he doesn't want to let it go now he has it.
All the talk of Biden stepping down is deluded. There's only two options on the table - election defeat or 25th amendment.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Yeah, in some ways Biden benefits from his reputation as a being a bit old and senile. People kind of shrug off some of his brazen lies as confusion or misremembering stuff. But he's a shameless liar and he has been for decades! The bloke stole Neil Kinnock's life story because it sounded better than his!
Granted, lies are very common in politics and neither Trump nor Biden is very far outside the norm in that regard. But as you say it makes it galling when he drapes himself in the mantle of honesty.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Payman is a modal muslim who managed to become as a politician due to ranked choice voting shenanigans
It had nothing to do with ranked choice voting shenanigans. Payman had a big primary vote lead in the race for the 6th seat.
The primary votes were 34.5% ALP, 31.7% LIB, 14.3% GRN, with no other group getting above 3.5%. How do you think the 6 seats should have been allocated?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
The response to a muslim terror attack, as demonstrated by the many European nations that have suffered them, is not to bomb civilians into oblivion. In fact, the preferred response is to venerate the outgroup that hurt you and seek reconciliation even harder.
I would point out that in no small part due to the European elites taking this stance, anti-muslim anti-immigration parties have grown enormously in power across Europe. Meloni is in charge in Italy, Wilders is in charge in the Netherlands, the National Rally is about to win the French election, AfD is rising in Germany, etc, etc.
J.D.Vance stocks up.
More options
Context Copy link