Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
No bio...
User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
The "weird" attack angle works so well precisely because it is something Republicans think of as an attack but that lots of people wouldn't. Lots of leftists, democrats, and others would, as you note, be happy to describe themselves as weird. Not Republicans though. They are the party of The Adults In The Room. The party of Serious People. The Normals. If Republicans had enough self reflection to acknowledge or joke about their own weirdness the attack would lose all of its power. Same thing for the couch meme about Vance.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
Are Republicans shamelessly sexually-humiliating their opponents enough to win this election?
I assume this is supposed to say "Democrats" rather than Republicans, since the comment is about Democrats sexually humiliating Republicans?
No, it won't be enough but that's fine. It will accomplish its purpose of making Vance even less likeable and instigating Republicans into even more deranged attacks. See the Tim-Walz-horse-semen thing, or your own discussion about Kamala using some piece of White House memorabilia as a dildo. Whatever the Republican response to "Vance fucked a couch" is it will be approximately 1 million percent more deranged and offputting to the normie voter than the couch thing.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
Formally, the agreement was for a debate among all candidates who had broken 15% in certain polls in a certain time window. Maybe Trump assumed his opponent would be Biden but that was not part of the actual terms.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
I don't think this attack works. The new definition specifies that sexual orientation is an attraction to a person without regard to their sex. Age is not sex. "I'm attracted to this person because of their age" would not be a sexual attraction under this definition.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
I'm already seeing subversions like #TamponTim is going to stop the red wave.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
Then let me clarify. I do not think literally everyone who talks about fairness in sports is only using it as a stick to beat trans women. But I do think there are a lot of people out there who do see fairness in sports as a stick to beat trans women.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
How far do you take this? Would a league be justified in excluding black women, on the grounds they would be too dominant? What if Russian women were really good at some sport? Should they be excluded for being too good? I expect the rejoinder here is that black women and Russian women are women in a way trans women are not, but that is precisely the point I and others dispute!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
My point then and now is that it's not obvious how much of an advantage Khalif actually has. She was eliminated in the Olympic semi-finals in the Tokyo Olympics. She lost the welterweight IBA championship in 2022 to a cis-woman. The idea that she has the kind of advantage over other women the same way a heavyweight has an advantage over a featherweight is exactly what's in dispute. It is not something you can just assume, as your comment does.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
And she was permitted to compete in the same competition in 2022. Did she become a man between 2022 and 2023?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
That's not the question. The question is whether the advantages Khalif might have due to her biology are due to her biology being male.
Incredible that none of Khalif's family, or government, or various sporting organizations she participated in could determine this fact for the first 24 years of her life!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
I just want to know: how much of a biological advantage is too much, such that it's unfair to have people who don't have that advantage compete against people who do have it. That's the motivation for having some kind of testosterone limit for women's competitions right? That it would be unfair to have those women with less testosterone compete against those with more. I can't help but Notice this ostensibly general objection about biological fairness seems to only exist in the context of how much testosterone women's bodies produce. Is it fair for other men's swimmers to have to compete against Michael Phelps with all his biological advantages? What about Usain Bolt? Are the advantages Khalif might have due to her biology greater than the advantages others have due to their biology?
Presuming that Trump's children are also residents of Florida, choosing them would forfeit Florida's electoral college votes under the 12th amendment.
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves;
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
You may biased from previous media spectacles. Let’s consider everything with the right priors first: two professional police officers are dealing with a woman who is acting crazy. These two officers are trained professionals in recognizing when a crazy person is about to turn violent, because they deal with that every day. Their intuition for recognizing that is going to be top 0.1% in the country.
No thanks. I have no interest in uncritically believing cops know better than me, especially when I have video evidence to the contrary.
In this video, at about 10:40 we clearly see that she ducks first at the request, without the pot. She is on the ground. Gun pointed at her. Officer saying “drop the pot”.
So, the officers are screaming at her and advancing with guns drawn after she has already complied with their orders? Not beating the allegations they manufactured the situation!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
I feel like I'm losing my mind. How does anyone watch the first linked video and conclude this was a good shoot? Like, she gets up to take the boiling water off the stove. The cops seem cool with it, even commenting that they don't want a fire. She takes the water over to the sink (presumably to drain it). One of the cops backs away. She asks (in what seems to me a humorous manner) why he's backing away, he mentions getting away from the water. She makes what seems to me a joke (the "rebuke you in the name of Jesus" line, like it's holy water they are afraid of) and the cop flips the fuck out. They draw their guns, she immediately apologizes and ducks behind the counter. They approach and then the forward officer shoots her.
Right before she is shot the body cam just barely picks up Massey throwing the boiling water toward the officers, with the water landing on the ground and steaming where it landed. I want to thank Twitter user Fartblaster4000 for turning that moment into a helpful gif.
It's important this is in the form of a gif (without sound) because if you watch the version with sound you can plainly hear the gunshots before any steam is visible on the ground. Even in this gif you can see the recoil from the first shot go off before any steam is visible. How about "she dropped the pot of boiling water because the cop shot her in the head."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
I think Republicans should make this criticism central to their critique of Harris from now until the election.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Harris' biggest advantage is the online right is going to be totally unable to hide their power level, in ways that will be negatively polarizing to the median voter. This is already happening in this thread.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
I feel like the obvious explanation is that clothes (at least such obvious ones) ceased being reliable indicators of the things they would want to screen for. I know this is partly my cultural milieu (west-coast-tech-types) but I basically never see a suit in the office. Or on the street. Or almost anywhere that isn't interacting with some financial services vendor or high end retail. I wear a suit very rarely (generally when a restaurant dress code calls for it) and pull down a pretty comfortable income. Before wearing certain kinds of clothes can be used as an effective screen it has to be an effective signal and I think this is mostly not true. Largely as a result of wealthier people dressing down.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
What's Biden's survival path?
Nothing happens? Under current DNC rules Biden is the guy that 90+% of delegates are pledged to vote for and will win, absent some change in DNC rules. For Biden to not be the nominee the status quo needs to change in some way. There are 10 days left until the virtual nomination so if something is going to happen to get rid of Biden it needs to happen soon.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Now, this likely pays out upon the formal nomination at the convention, the final day of which is 45 days away, as the rules clarify that the replacement of the nominee prior to election day has no impact on resolution.
I am not sure this is correct. The DNC is looking at doing a virtual nomination of Biden by July 21st. This has been planned long before the debate performance and is due to the state of Ohio's requirement that party candidates be nominated 90 days before the election (August 7th). In the past the Ohio legislature has done special sessions to extend this date when party conventions have gone later than it but I understand why the DNC doesn't want to risk it this time. Biden doesn't have to hold on 45 days to the convention, he has to hold on about a week and a half. At which point replacing him (short of his death) will probably be a logistical impossibility (I don't know the rules in Ohio on replacing candidates on ballots). If someone's plan to replace Biden involves a fight at the Convention they will be about a month too late.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
It depends on how you construe it. If the act the President is being prosecuted for is merely an official act where the President has some joint authority with Congress then plausibly that burden could be met. But if the burden is within the core of presidential authority (giving orders to the military?) then the immunity is absolute, not a rebuttable presumption.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Nixon's actions were not really those of a candidate for office. By all accounts he did not know about and was not involved in the actual break in. Any actions he would have been charged for were squarely within the court's grant of immunity today. Most likely obstruction of justice for attempting to interfere in the DoJ's investigation of the break-in, including by firing several high level officials.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
I think my last paragraph is responsive? To be clear: I do not think Presidents having this level of immunity to criminal prosecution in office is necessary or desirable. I especially do not think it is necessary in order to have a peaceful transfer of power, given the ~200 years or so of peaceful transfers of power America has had without anything like this. I think the risk is much greater that Presidents abuse their office than that they face superfluous criminal charges.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
I am not, in principle, opposed to some level of presidential immunity but the court's decision today is insane. The President is a public servant and if they abuse their office to benefit themselves at the expense of the public, that conduct should not be immune to criminal prosecution. Instead the court today says intent is irrelevant for any official act and a whole bunch of official acts are just unreviewable as such. Some tin pot dictator drops a cool billion dollars in the President's bank account to get the US military to help him out? No bribery charges there! Maybe you get impeached but whatever, you got your billion dollars!
Given the fact of the way Presidents have historically acted and the absolute lack of criminal prosecutions until the latest one I am inclined to think the problem is that Presidents do not have enough culpability for their acts in office, not that they have too much.
I think a big part of it is provoking a Republican reaction. Since weird is such a low-valence insult, if it even is one, it's unlikely to influence people either way. I think partly it's also cathartic for a lot of Democrats who have thought Republicans are weird for a long time but have felt forced into this framing where they have to treat Republicans like they're normal.
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