We can say the media is being unfair to Biden, and it probably is. But it doesn’t matter. Biden is clearly terrible at getting positive coverage - whether that’s his fault or the media’s (and I think we can all recognize it’s at least partly his fault). If the goal is to stop Trump, we need someone who can get better coverage.

Just recognize reality. Trump has spent his life in media. He’s skilled at crafting a narrative that appeals to the dumbest 51%. His wide variety of horrible characteristics works against that, but you need a candidate who can take advantage of those horrible characteristics. Rather than doing that, Biden has played into Trump’s narratives, despite tons of time to prepare. If we would let ourselves see it, we’d recognize it’s a binary choice. Go with Biden and make Trump president, or go with anyone else and stop him.

And promoting disinfo. The blue checkmarks are basically just a way to pay for prioritized disinformation-spreading.

Which is exactly why it’s really important to have an opponent to Trump who doesn’t say dumb things.

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Are we pretending impeachment does something useful again?

Finally, they fixed shoe-tying. Now all I gotta do when I wanna tie my shoes is download an app and make sure my shoes are charged.

Yeah all that X can really do now for new features is roll out things that were half-built before Elon fired everyone.

I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous if it’s once a year. If we did it every night…yeah. But people spend more money on a lot dumber stuff, like expensive purses and giant luxury trucks.

Anybody but Biden. Kamala seems to be the expected replacement, that works. If not her, pretty much anyone else. Trump is a terrible candidate. While he has experience in show business, he’s way past his prime and pretty much any person should be able to beat him in a debate at this point.

I was actually recently thinking through people I’ve known and whether they could’ve done a better job debating Trump than Biden did. Generally any adult with a functioning mind would do better. Adults I’ve known with a HS education could’ve crushed Trump in that debate. I’m actually not sure if a homeless guy I once debated on the street regarding the meaning of pi would do better or worse than Biden, he seemed to be at about Trump’s level of sanity and if Trump won this last debate, well yeah even he’d do better than Biden. I can also think of some older teenage jocks I once knew, and while they were dumb as rocks their teenager swagger would’ve been more convincing than Biden’s rambling failed attempts to remember rote speeches.

If I try to think of who is actually about at Biden’s level, I think of myself at the age of 13, when I had a presentation in front of the class on an issue and for some reason I was struck by that early teenager nervousness, and haltingly tried to give a presentation as the class tried failingly to hide their laughter at how terribly it was going. It was probably the most embarrassing day of my life. That’s Biden’s level right there, because he sounded just like me back then giving that presentation. So any person in their late teens or older with a full grasp on sanity should be a much better candidate than Biden.

Lots of people have a problem with Trump. All the more reason to want someone opposing him who can beat him.

I think what it all comes down to is most people don’t really want rational debate, and don’t participate in debates in the hope of learning or even to help others learn. Most people participate in debates to feel superior/“own” the other side. The result is debates that are typically lazy, uninformative, and downright mean.

I think all of us have a little bit of this desire for superiority in us and we need to consciously make an effort to suppress it.

I guess I’m an ingredient purist, preparation rebel. If your house is surrounded by tea plants, and the tea leaves fall in the gutter, how is that different from brewing tea the normal way?

I’m not the biggest fan of smoked herring myself, but thanks.

The problem with this argument is this very article, which is also backed up by interviews with John Kelly, Bill Barr, and others. Everyone verifies that that Trump wanted to do all the crazy stuff from prosecuting Hillary to executing former members of his administration for speaking out against him, but they’d just delay until he’d get distracted and move on to something else. Again, these are people who eagerly signed up to work for Trump, and changed their mind based on their experience with him.

This next time around though, Trump will try to hire people who are more likely to be yes-men. What happens then?

This is Snowden’s claim and it’s not implausible, but it’s also quite a coincidence that he’d end up in the top country for spying on the US it’s also possible that he wanted to be in Russia and simply made up the part about it just being a stopover. If Snowden was looking for asylum, there are several other countries that don’t extradite to the US. I can see why he’d temporarily be stuck in Russia, but after several years he couldn’t find any other way out? There was apparently a privately-funded attempt to get him to Iceland, but the last update on it was that they were in contact with a “third party representing” Snowden…and then nothing.

A third fact (in addition to Russiabot Greenwald’s involvement) that makes it questionable is that he eventually applied for Russian citizenship in 2020. One explanation is that he could do this to get a Russian passport and fly somewhere else with no US extradition treaty, but he hasn’t chosen to do so yet.

Beyond the point that others have made about Snowden not considering himself a hero, for me there’s two facts that I just can’t get past when it comes to Snowden:

1. He ended up in Russia somehow. Seems an odd place for a freedom fighter to end up going.
2. He first contacted Glenn Greenwald, who now spends his days showing up on Tucker’s show to spout straight Russian pro-war, anti-Ukraine Propaganda

One of these could be a coincidence, but I’ve not seen a lot of double coincidences in my life. It’s funny because I agree that the surveillance program got out of control and needs more transparency, and unlike Tucker and Greenwald, Snowden sounds like someone who truly believes what he says rather than a sleazy liar working for someone else. Emotionally I want to believe in Snowden, but I’m also a strong believer in probabilities and Snowden not acting at Russia’s behest and for some sort of personal reward seems hard to believe at this point.

X requires login to view tweets, and can only get away with this because they tricked users into believing they’d allow free access while they were growing as a platform. Let’s not do anything to help them.

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