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I don't doubt it's the voice of Tara Reade's mother, Jeanette Altimus. I don't doubt anything Altimus says -- which isn't substantial. She says that her daughter "had problems" with then-Senator Biden and couldn't "get through with her problems" and that she chose not to "go to the press" and made that choice "out of respect for him."

Altimus doesn't say that Biden assaulted Reade although she does indicate that whatever Reade had to say about Biden would have been damaging in a court of public opinion but maintains that Reade respected Biden.

What mother defending and believing her child would describe her daughter as having "respect" for her rapist? I know a victim might claim to respect the perpetrator to normalize the relationship -- but would that be said by a mother who believes her daughter's rape accusation?

To me, Altimus sounds like she's describing one of the many accounts of Biden being overly affectionate with women -- hugs that lasted too long, smelling hair, bumping foreheads, rubbing noses -- behaviours that a pre-civil rights man might think supportive and affirming only to realize that they are intrusive and hurtful. It sounds ridiculous to say that, but any man born before 1990 (like me) has likely harassed a woman in this manner and can (like me) learn to be better and realize that respect for women is conveyed through actions of listening and meaningful support for their ambitions and voices and not through any physical contact.

Another issue that we have with Reade is that she has gone from loathing world leaders to becoming infatuated with them and then flip-flopping. She lavishly praised Biden in 2016 - 2017, retweeted numerous articles alleging ties between Trump and Putin in 2016 and how Putin effectively legalized domestic assault on women. Then in 2018, she wrote:

And in 2019:

And then there's Reade's original account of Biden's behaviour where she insists that she was not sexually assaulted.

Reade is erratic and extreme in how smitten she becomes with political figures before the pendulum swings to her loathing them.

In cases like Weinstein and his like, there is an established pattern, Multiple women have come out with stories depicting the same methods of assault: the way Weinstein lured women into hotel rooms and his requests for massages and his use of female assistants to make the encounter seem professional at the start.

In Biden's case, there is an established pattern -- and that pattern reported by multiple women is one of overly prolonged and close gestures of affection. There is no common pattern of assault across the multiple accusations; it's harassment and that's not okay, but one pattern is based in hatred and violence and one is not.

And with Tara Reade, there's an established pattern as well: she allows imaginings to overrule reality. She retweeted articles on Putin making it legal for men to beat their wives, then she started writing fevered daydreams about Putin shirtless. She was escaping an abusive, traumatic marriage when she entered Biden's employ in 1993; she is inconsistent and wildly variable.

I don't doubt that she believes what she's said when she's said it: she believed it when she called Biden a speaker of truth, when she called Putin a domestic abuser, when she called him an interfering force in the 2016 elections. She believed it when she said that Biden's behaviour towards her wasn't sexual and when she said that he sexually assaulted her and that Putin is a wifebeater and that he's admired by most women.

I don't think Reade has an agenda or is a Russian agent or is trying to support a Trump victory or is trying to win fame -- I think she isn't well.

On China: I merely mean I'd prefer that language in media differentiate Chinese government from Chinese ethnicity. I know the Biden campaign is not racist, but for Asians in America taking a lot of abuse and stigma, they view that lack of distinction as racism and that's pretty understandable. And takes one to two extra words to avoid that. "The Chinese government" as opposed to "the Chinese" or "China." Surely those extra syllables could be provided.

On Admissions: As much as I dislike neo-Nazis and white supremacists and misogynists, at least they have the courage (or depravity) to declare who and what they are -- as opposed to trying to shield their stances by calling themselves alt-right men's rights activists and then falling silent when their positions become obvious in their irrationality as they know voicing them would put them outside the realm of reasoned discussion.

And I admit all. Joe Biden is a crashingly mediocre, average person who "stands for" what I "stand for" (at least when a camera is rolling) and him being in power would make me feel safer and if the US stabilized, I would certainly become richer and I like it that a President Biden would remind me of my grandfather who was a man with attitudes from a specific era in the past who took care of me but had many shortcomings and social difficulties while still being a (generally) responsible, hardworking, generous soul.

I dunno if I'd want my grandfather to be leader of the free world, but if I had to choose between him or someone who's already allowed 40,000 Americans to die and still won't get to work on getting personal protective equipment and medical supplies to the states he took an oath to serve, I'd have to go with Grandfather and do what I could to help him not completely screw up at his job. I mean, at least Grandpop is working on getting his transition team together while having the humility to concede that the race isn't won yet and he's just prepping for if he does win it.

I am continuing to take a lot of heat among my friends and family for choosing to support Joe Biden (not that my support means much; I can't even vote in America). That I'm crazy to think a President Biden would do anything to cancel student debt, bring about Medicare for All, put corporations in their place, stop billionaires from existing, or do anything to be a good president.

I think a President Biden would be okay and I think that with a Biden presidency, the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warrens and Andrew Yangs of this world could spend less time diving for cover from whatever cruelty and savagery Trump unleashes and spend more time pursuing their progressive goals. I think an okay presidency could lead to a great one. Let's see Andrew Yang run again in 2024.

I remember sending Transmodiar the first draft of the SLIDERS REBORN outline and bemoaning how god-awful it was; all the clumsy writing, the strained logic to produce the fan service that I wanted. It was terrible. Transmodiar wrote back: "How about you take a couple days and try to get it from terrible to 'adequate'?"

If SLIDERS in Season 3 had been filled with episodes as adequate and acceptable as "Double Cross," "Dead Man Sliding," "Murder Most Foul," "Season's Greedings" and the like -- episodes that are totally okay -- it would have established a baseline to gradually ascend back to greatness. Instead, Season 3 was filled with episodes like "Electric Twister Acid Test," "The Dream Masters," "State of the ART," "Desert Storm," "The Fire Within," "Slide Like An Egyptian," "Paradise Lost," "The Last of Eden," "Slither," "The Breeder," "The Other Slide of Darkness," "Stoker," "This Slide of Paradise" and it became a quantum leap just to make it back to the heights of mediocrity. Mediocrity can be a very good starting point.

At the same time, I'm not confusing adequacy with excellence, but the presidency has been given far more power and importance than it was ever meant to have. The role was designed for the president to preside over the nation; to guide and run rather than rule or dictate.

James Carville Jr., Democratic strategist, thinks that the election is the Democrats' to lose if they're incompetent or weak -- and I'm sorry to say that Democrats often are exactly that. Nevertheless:

Yeah, I'm worried that the Conservative premier of my province, Doug Ford, is winning so much acclaim right now that he will sail into re-election and then resume his platform of austerity and political savagery. But no one should worry about that right now; the focus has to be on saving lives.

The Prime Minister of Canada is a very sweet but deeply amateur leader. He's great at gestures: after he won the office, he spent the next morning in a subway station randomly greeting commuters and thanking them, he achieved gender-parity in his cabinet, he wears STAR WARS socks, he expressed a self-confessed layman's enthusiasm for quantum computing.

He also bought an oil pipeline despite his stated intentions to reduce pollution, attempted to force a sweetheart deal for a company prosecuted for bribery and accepted a free vacation on a private island, both of which the ethics commissioner of Canada found a breach of the public trust and cost him badly. He came out of re-election with a government that had gone from a majority to a minority and significantly short on the popular vote.

Most recently, Prime Minister Trudeau had been in self-isolation after his wife tested positive for COVID-19; after she recovered and tested negative, she took the children to the family cottage outside the capital city and in a different province (think state). During Easter, Trudeau and many premiers (think governors) urged people not to go to their out-of-city cottages and secondary residences: they would put unbearable weight on those health care systems and food supplies. Police checkpoints were set up to keep residents from traveling between provinces. After that message, Trudeau crossed the Ontario provincial border into Quebec to join his wife and children at the cottage for Easter. The optics are terrible on this.

That said, the prime minister is an essential worker and permitted to cross borders; he has a private staff and physician and would not have strained Quebec's resources or food supply; he remained within the quarantine group of his wife and children and the personal staff with whom he'd lived during his wife's self-isolation. But very simply, Trudeau told people not to cross provincial lines or go to their secondary residences and promptly did both. God damn it.

This sort of thing happens. Trudeau's done some good stuff, essentially bringing about a universal basic income for the unemployed or underemployed for the duration of this emergency. It is going to cost trillions, but Trudeau effectively declared he would worry about the economy LATER; right now, he wanted everyone to have a monthly paycheque. Yes, he screwed up on the cottage front; it hardly seems to matter. I've seen the deranged village idiot running the show down south; I'd rather have the occasionally inept but fundamentally decent father figure.

In the States, the light of my life, Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, has been taking heavy fire for an updated ban on businesses selling anything other than food and medicine, barring people from buying gardening supplies and paint to try to induce them to stay indoors and apart in retail shops. It's a well-intentioned measure and my province did something similar. But they didn't ban sales of these items; they instead ordered that all non-food and medicine retailers switch to online orders and curbside pickup which is the online reason I'm online right now; my router blew and I needed a new one. Curbside pickup is how I got one.

Whitmer's error may have cost her a place on Biden's VP shortlist which is a shame, but my niece grumbles that I always go for hyperactively peppy white women who get stuff done and swear like sailors and that just because I like someone personally doesn't mean they should be in the White House. She is correct.

A lot of my friends aren't too happy with me when politics come up. Most of the people I know in Real Life are women who are extremely left of center. (Did I say most? I meant all.)

They are not happy that I have spoken well of the premier of my province as he has historically been conservative and a Trump supporter and his good handling of a health crisis has won no favour with them after all of his bad and malicious budget cuts.

They are not happy with me for not believing Tara Reade's accusations towards Joe Biden. They are not happy that I think Biden might be okay as they feel he is not a revolutionary and not sufficiently progressive and they find his warm grandfather persona to be phony and fake and they are disgusted by his handsy past and believe Tara Reade's story.

They are not happy that I favour Governor Gretchen Whitmer as Biden's VP (I adore that lady, she is SUCH a go-getter) and my friends would rather see Stacy Abrams (whom I feel is an excellent human being but inexperienced), Elizabeth Warren (I'm worried she'll alienate Bernie's supporters) or Kamala Harris (whom I feel isn't progressive enough to balance Biden out).

We have a former friend who had arrogance to declare that his opinions represented all of us in consensus. I know what he would say if he and I were on the same side politically. He would say that women will always believe another woman even if what's being said contradicts history and doesn't explain past behaviour. He'd say that of course they'd favour someone with the woke label or someone of colour over someone of skill because wokeness is an act and any concern for people of colour is just pandering to specific demographics. He'd say that anyone who disagrees with me/us are just acting out their biases and trauma and insecurities whereas we, as clear, right-thinking individuals, are unencumbered by prejudice of any kind.

*shudders*

My response to my friends is: I prefer their disagreement. My opinions are MY opinions and I'd prefer it if you would get your own. No one should live in an echo chamber and no one should claim that a difference of opinion is due to one side being deceitful or mentally ill. In fact, if Slider_Quinn21 agrees with me on anything after this, I'm going to make a special effort to find something to argue over with him. :-D

Joe Biden is old. I just wrote him a letter because he was asking his supporters (even reluctant ones like myself) for advice on what principles his campaign should adhere to.

The problem with Biden, his greatest challenge, is that his successful career was the result of a gift for connecting with people in person and on the senate floor with earnest, off-the-cuff, rambling oratory that was outraged and sincere and heartfelt -- and that gift for combining righteous anger with incision and humour -- it's faded with age. Biden has lost his aptitude for the smartass, punchy quip. His days of snarking that Rudy Guliani's every sentence is "a noun, a verb and 9-11" are done. His ability to whip Paul Ryan's empty numerical nonsense back in Ryan's face -- that's gone too.

When Kamala Harris criticized him for being against bussing black school children or when an auto worker accused him of trying to take away his guns, Biden launched into an incoherent delivery of a canned response that became a lost, floundering burst of random elements of his opinion. Trump has the same problem except his answers are unveiled presentations of his cruelty, racism, egotism and disrespect that, for people like Informant, I guess, are entertaining and have won his support.

I don't think Biden was struggling or tired with Bernie, but I can see why it read that way. I think Biden was trying to be low key and gentle and respectful and not seem overly triumphant, smug or superior that Bernie was going to be working for him now. I think Biden was trying to be deferential and gracious instead of commanding. But Biden is not what he used to be and that will be okay if he focuses on his other gifts: his warmth and ability to not take attacks personally and rise above it. He embraced Kamala Harris at a fundraiser and thanked her for her criticisms. He has asked Elizabeth Warren to help him. And he gave Trump his advice on COVID-19 and, for a brief moment, brought Trump into the realm of civility.

So when Trump goes on some crazed, unhinged rant and runs rings around Biden, Biden's best bet given his current abilities, is to be centered, resolute and determined. Instead of going after Trump like he's going to put him down like a rabid dog, Biden could aim for being the disappointed dad who has come to help a wayward child. In my head, Biden, not going for unintelligible anger, tells Trump that it's okay.

The ireactions pastiche of Biden says in his folksy, kindly manner, "It's alright, sir. I understand. I know what this is about. You never wanted to be president. It was just a joke on the golf course. You didn't want to lead the free world; you wanted your name on TV, some attention, some real estate deals. But you won and now you don't know how to do your job. We're putting more on you than you can handle. Demanding something that you don't have to give. I know you feel it. That you're the wrong person in the wrong place. I know you're afraid, son. You're on your way down and you know you're falling and you're scared. I'm here to help. Let me help you find your way out."

Shortly after this, Biden borrows Doc Brown's DeLorean and travels back to 1996 where he gets David Peckinpah into rehab and Peckinpah teams up with Torme to make a slightly more action-oriented Season 3 that appeals to both diehard fans and casual viewers alike.

I'm going to say something controversial. Temporal Flux should never have focused on SLIDERS. He should have been a journalist of the world. And also -- while I think of Transmodiar as the perfect American, I have always thought of TF as the perfect Canadian.

I personally feel that arrests for failing to socially distance are too far. Canada is not arresting people except when they tested positive for COVID-19 or returned from overseas travel but refused to self-quarantine for 14 days. Outside of those obvious health threats to all, Canada is issuing fines for people assembling in large groups. Arresting people crosses the line into actively repressing civil liberties by physical force. Canada is merely making it unaffordable to assemble for the duration of the state of emergency. The prime minister and my premier have contemplated making it arrestable -- but they ultimately decided against force in favour of strong persuasion.

Social distancing is vital right now. No one has the right to spread an incredibly communicable disease that currently has no antiviral and no vaccine. But TF is right to observe that if the pandemic becomes justification for taking the power to arrest people for assembling, that power could remain in place even after the pandemic is past. Even now, there are reports that the NYPD is using enforcement of social distancing as an excuse to accost, harass and assail low-income individuals and people of colour.

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/15/nyp … istancing/

And we've seen it presidentially as well. When Obama was in office, I personally applauded his use of executive power to provide counterterrorism, stimulus, health care and recovery to his nation when congressional gridlock would not permit him to act. But I see now that I was mistaken. Under Obama's stewardship, the executive branch of the president has gained the power to wage war without congressional approval, engage in drone attacks, assassinate globally and secretly, rewrite domestic policy at will -- and that power has remained a part of his office under Trump.

On every level, we need to consider what happens when power, even when in passable hands, could go to someone inclined to use it ineptly and foolishly if not disastrously. The opinions in this post do not represent the views of Sliders.TV, I cannot stress this enough in the name of blah blah blah it's late.

Yesterday, Trump shrieked that it was up to him to decide if state lockdown orders were lifted, not state governors. "When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total," he snapped. CNN's Kaitlan Collins replied with an astonished, "That is not true -- who TOLD you that?" Trump couldn't answer.

Noted anti-Trump commentator and renounced Republican George Conway (husband of Trump's head cheerleader Kellyanne Conway) remarked, "I'm so incredibly shocked that President Donald Trump apparently hasn’t read Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952)" and later, "Look, I'm already really really and truly sorry about having voted for Donald Trump." (That sounds like an interesting marriage.) Twitter laughed merrily at how "I don't take responsibility at all" and "the authority is total" amounted to "total authority, zero responsibility."

It's intriguing because The Atlantic had an article recently about how Joe Biden, as Transmodiar said, stands for nothing, embodies nothing and is an empty vacuum of vague centricism and triangulation. Writer Nathan Schneider said this was ideal: by design, the term "president" is distinctly toothless and empty. A president is not a ruler. A president presides over a coalition of broad interests and sets the tone for his administration and the different levels of government to pursue their goals and concerns. A president's authority is within his specific level of government.

It's easy to look back mockingly at Slider_Quinn21's assertion in 2016 that a president isn't really that powerful and that Trump couldn't do that much damage. But Slider_Quinn21 was actually correct in his assessment of the role: as designed, the president was as Slider_Quinn21 sees it. The president is supposed to be a figurehead who delegates more than dictates. The term "president" is in fact something of an insult, historically, when most world leaders were kings if not emperors.

But we've lost that. We lost it when George W. Bush acquired extensive powers to curtail civil rights under the Patriot Act. Despite my fondness for Obama, he further empowered the US Presidency and therefore eroded its appropriate role; he got past congressional gridlock through orders implemented through executive powers, powers that were then passed onto Trump. While this still doesn't amount to Trump's assertion that "the authority is total," I can see why an ignorant, uneducated fool like Trump would see it that way based on how Bush 2.0 and Obama governed.

Biden has a, shall we say, relaxed attitude to political ideology. It might be a return to appropriate presidential norms. Biden's not mere willingness but enthusiasm to work with Sanders and applaud Kamala Harris (who attacked him) and make a meaningless but cheery phone call to Trump about COVID-19 (after Trump got himself impeached trying to dig up dirt in Ukraine on him) -- it suggests that Biden isn't looking to take charge. He wants to preside. He wants to be a president in the traditional sense -- where a president empowers his Senate, Congress and state authorities to pursue what's best for the country under his guidance but not his rule.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi … ng/609769/

And I... have a lot of time for that model of leadership. The first time I was fully exposed to it was working with Transmodiar on EP.COM where each contributor had very distinct and at times mutually exclusive interests in what we wanted to do for and with SLIDERS. Annie Fish wanted, with Think of a Roulette Wheel, to explore the cultural and psychographic spectrum of media history in terms of common iconography as presented by the FOX and Sci-Fi Channel. (I think. They're smarter than I am.) Mike Truman was deeply invested in the interdimensional concept as a portal to a multitude of storytelling formats to channel into many concepts for screenplays and storytelling. And I was interested in my friendship (yes) with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo.

It was Transmodiar's website. And Transmodiar's interest was, at least from my perspective, highly anthropological and archeological as he unearthed casting sheets, unused pitches and The Box of Sci-Fi Channel press clippings that he had me scan and upload. However, Transmodiar didn't really treat EP.COM as HIS possession. He gave us all the passwords and our own user accounts. He told us he didn't feel the need for us to check in with him before posting material.

He stepped in editorially all of ONCE -- he declined to let me post a SLIDERS REBORN screenplay where Quinn meets Donald Trump. And to be blunt, Transmodiar thought SLIDERS REBORN was ridiculous. He considered it deranged fan service written by a troubled and damaged friend. He only let me do it because I was so depressed when I was first writing it; he feared I that I might kill myself without SLIDERS REBORN.

And aside from stopping me from having Quinn meet Trump, he let me do what I wanted under the EP.COM banner. Oh yes, he added jokes to all my reviews, but he was also very worried that I might protest his revisions and was relieved when I adored them and asked him to add more and more. Transmodiar did not rule EarthPrime.com. He presided over it.

Which is why, to me (and only me), Transmodiar represents America. To me, Transmodiar is everything a president should be.

That is simply my opinion and I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's sweater vests, Rembrandt's clean shaven face, Maggie's Betty Page style hair and Colin's vacant expression that the views of ireactions do not represent those of the Sliders.tv community.

Watching Biden and Sanders talk today -- this is the America that I always saw from afar but couldn't always find when looking up close and certainly not from looking at Trump. Biden conveyed great respect and warmth towards Sanders and Sanders was a little off balance at first but was smiling glowingly at the end and there was a moment when Biden told Sanders that he would need Sanders' help, not merely to campaign, but to govern, and Sanders was clearly moved.

And I'm not an idiot; of course there was a bit of rehearsal and Sanders is probably choking on his wounded ego as he struggles to put country before campaign and Biden is probably sending out goodwill without necessarily having much philosophical or ideological core aside from being nice and pleasant and not taking much of anything personally and all this sentiment has been planned and manufactured but I still like it. Together, Biden and Sanders felt like two people merging to become Professor Arturo, and not the bombastic, insecure Professor of Seasons 1 - 2 but the grandfatherly, reassuring go-getter of Season 3.

I don't think DARK PHOENIX was the worst, but it felt fractured and incomplete -- like it was Episodes 21 - 22 of a TV show where Episodes 1- 20 were somehow never filmed due to a viral outbreak that shut down filming.

I don't disagree with Transmodiar, but I don't wholly agree with him either. Let's say I'm adjacent. Biden's not great. Biden is an artifact of a previous era when politicians, to get anything done, had to work with people they disliked. Biden has worked to benefit South Africans against despotic regimes; he's not a racist, but he had to work with his share much in the same way Cleavant Derricks had to maintain a working relationship with David Peckinpah even after Peckinpah drove all his friends off the show and sexually harassed a treasured coworker.

Biden has been harrassing with women, but what we've seen captured on camera in video and still is not the behaviour of an assault perpetrator but instead a man of a previous generation whose attitude to women was to view them as objects -- treasured, valuable ones, but objects nonetheless.

Biden's accuser for rape has gone from the extreme of praising Biden on Twitter unbidden and with no relationship to normalize; she declared when Biden spoke on sexual harassment, "My old boss speaks the truth. Listen to him" and other lavish compliments -- until she developed a peculiar fixation on Vladimir Putin and wrote open love letters to him at which point she accused Biden of raping her and nonsensically claimed her besotted writings to Putin were "research." I would be extremely cautious about taking this person's word for anything given the extremity with which she's commited to completely contradictory views.

Biden is not a revolution. This is absolutely true, but the claim that Biden would preserve the status quo is untrue when the status quo has over 20,000 dead from a pandemic warned of in January and which the current president ignored until mid-March. This status quo has the US president seizing medical equipment from hospitals to redistribute to states with governors that have spoken well of him in the press while refusing to create any national, federally-led plan of addressing the outbreak. This president dismantled the organizations and offices designed to address a pandemic and has refused to use his office to create the supplies and equipment needed to repel it while urging that people resume rampantly spreading it in order to briefly raise his economy before another massive death toll. Trump's removal from office would change all of this immediately.

Andrew Yang was preferable. Andrew Yang is no longer running. That opportunity has passed. What is before America now is a chance to remove a dangerously incompetent man from office and replace him with an average man who will defer to medical and supply chain experts to lead efforts to treat the sick and rebuild the country. The choice is the deranged, delusional grandfather who embraces racists and quacks or the dim, Democratic-in-name-only grandfather who will accept the knowledge and experience of others. It is not a revolution. But a Biden presidency could create the ground on which Sanders, Yang and others like them could build. Another four years of Trump will see more Americans ensickened by completely preventable equipment shortages.

Supporting Biden does not refute progressivism. Supporting Biden is simply to remove Trump. One can vote for Biden and then receive the stability needed to resume advocating for Medicare For All, universal basic income, transgender rights, reproductive rights and everything else.

But regardless of our differences, I support Transmodiar voting for Yang and intending to write in Yang on his ballot and I wouldn't want anyone other than Transmodiar writing Quinn Mallory's political opinions for me.

If Trump wants to focus on Hunter Biden, he can draw more attention to his own impeachment and I think the Biden camp happily welcome it.

The accusation is that Biden withheld aid money to Ukraine unless a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son's company was fired. However, Biden was authorized to communicate that on behalf of the US Government which had observed this prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was failing to investigate financial corruption; he was delivering a message and not acting on his own behalf. Shokin had filed an investigation with Burisma Holdings on which Hunter Biden was a director, but the case had been inactive for months. If Biden hadn't called for Shokin's firing, the Obama administration would have dispatched someone else to do it.

I'd be more concerned with Biden's approach to women, his plagiarism, his lies about visiting Nelson Mandela, his weird forehead bumping-nose-rubbing thing...

Slate.com on why Biden's blandness is so appealing and why Trump running rings around Biden might just make Biden look like a good choice for the Oval Office:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … a=taps_top

This is why people like Biden. Transmodiar is right to say that Trump is very heavily armed, but Biden is fundamentally disarming.

Biden's speechwriters wrote a respectful and beautiful message from Biden to Sanders: https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/statement- … e128a935ac

As someone who ghostwrites lots of stuff for people, I know that we should all be mature adults and recognize that oratory and rhetoric is carefully crafted by a team of specialists and calculated down to the last comma, but I still really admire the artistry there and the intent even if Biden is a dim dinosaur and a Republican in a Democrat's suit.

But I suppose this is what must be done when you seek to be a majoritarian political party that has some hope of acquiring power as opposed to being an ideological cult of symbolic and empty gestures.

Personally, I am glad that the Supreme Court upheld the decision to hold an election in the midst of a pandemic and force people to vote in person if they didn't receive their mail-in ballots even if they'd already signed up for them.

It shows anti-Trump voters exactly what they need to anticipate in November and gives them months to work out how to prepare for what will not be in any way a shocking surprise. It's seeing the iceberg before your ship is even out of the dock.

Grizzlor, please stop saying democracy is dead. Democracy is in a fight. And nobody ever won a fight by giving up.

EDITED TO ADD: That's a request, not a demand.

The Wisconsin election is on, the Governor doesn't have the authority to stop it.

I'd try to look at this defeat as a teachable moment along with why it's unwise to elect an idiot to run a country out of spite.

Also, I wish Temporal Flux would go into politics. We're on opposite ends politically, but TF is a problem solver.

Temporal Flux once expressed some concern that Warner Bros. would cancel THE FLASH on TV in order to prop up the perpetually imploding failure of the FLASH movie, a project that is perpetually unwritten and has seen multiple directors walk away from the project. After today, I am going to hazard a guess that the project is over now that the star of this unmade film has been caught on video choking a woman and throwing her to the ground.

https://screenrant.com/ezra-miller-fan- … explained/

The truth is that voter suppression is going to be a serious problem in November and if the federal and state and municipal governments are no help, then support must come from a grass-roots, DIY level.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/82712285 … arks-anger

We're seeing some of that now in Wisconsin and it will be up to voters and campaigns and activists to work together to minimize the risk of voting. There is absolutely no way to make it completely safe, but the risk of contracting COVID-19 while voting is, by my calculations, not as hazardous as another four years where this incompetent non-leader will be in charge for the next crisis on top of COVID-19. Because there will be another crisis that needs federal leadership and we're already seeing what happens when you don't have any.

I think the Biden campaign will have to do everything to equip people to minimize the risks of voting physically. Election edition masks. Biden branded gloves. Joe's election day hand sanitizer. The Biden face shield. The Biden measuring tape that extends six feet. The Biden MP3 playlist.

Assuming defeat is an assumption too.

In seven months time, we may know far more about the virus and how to prevent its spread in the midst of others and treat it's symptoms.

In seven months, we may find that the absence of passion for Biden is balanced by a fervent determination to remove Trump from office.

In seven months, we may find that NBCUniversal has renewed SLIDERS for a sixth season.

Bringing back SLIDERS is a process, not an event, and this route was never free of challenges. It must be overcome with inventiveness, cleverness, commitment and no small degree of compromise and often accepting an approximation of the intended result.

I liked PICARD. A lot. The only issue I really had with it -- the artificial synthetic apocalyptic beast from far away who would bring doom to all organics -- I didn't feel the show set up what it was, where it came from, why it was coming, what it was doing, why it left its phone number telepathically or what that was about at all. It was simply a means to an end in terms of creating a ticking clock. Aside from that, I felt in transitioned the NEXT GENERATION universe into one more a mirror of our own reality.

I thought Data's dream sequences and his final scene at the end of PICARD was poignant and beautiful even if Brent Spiner's voice reflected all the years that the CGI was wiping out of his face and girth and hairline. I'm fascinated by the question of whether Picard is still Picard or merely an approximation, a backup copy of the actual human being. I'm intrigued by where his journey will take him next. Patrick Stewart is signed for one more season of PICARD.

I'm not as Starfleet-focused as you are, but that's a valid take, I respect it. I'm happy with PICARD being about Picard's life after he left the Navy. And I think that Bashir is a computer sales clerk in San Francisco, Worf is a bombastic combat professor whom nobody likes and La Forge is somewhere in a residential area basement working on anti-gravity but on the verge of discovering something else instead. Meanwhile, Tom Paris is likely a labrat in an interdimensional experiment after he lost the use of his legs in a car theft gone wrong.

Reade's story is proving difficult to corroborate which is why mainstream media hasn't reported on it heavily. There are many oddities even when you take into consideration that abuse victims have confused and erratic memories. Her accounts of her employment with Biden were extremely positive and flattering from 2016 - 2018 where she, on Twitter, repeatedly called him a hero against sexual assault, saying, "My old boss speaks the truth. Listen to him."

Now, sexual assault victims often maintain a relationship with their abuser in an attempt to normalize what happened, but Reade now claims she was fired after reporting Biden for raping her and hadn't worked for Biden in over 20 years; there was no relationship to normalize. She was declaring herself a fan of Biden -- and I find it difficult to reconcile her accusations with her actions. Unlike the actresses who were forced to keep dealing with Harvey Weinstein to maintain a career, Reade had been out of Washington for decades and was ardently praising and retweeting her former employer from far, far away.

And with Russia -- from 2016 - 2017, she was constantly tweeting fury at Russian interference in US elections -- until 2018 when she began writing bizarre and infatuated essays about Putin and calling Russia as a picture of a perfect society. Her fondness for Russia has continued straight into 2020 when she was criticizing John Cusack for expressing concern at Russian interference in US elections. There has been no turnaround aside from a claim that her 2018 love letter was "research."

It's difficult to find her credible on Biden or Russia. That doesn't mean her story can't possibly be true, of course, but it's difficult to believe -- at least for me. Reade seems too schizophrenic to be trustworthy and Biden seems to lack the self-control needed to cover up a predilection for rape.

An auto worker accused him of wanting to shut down the Second Amendment; Biden threatened to kick his ass. A college kid asked Biden, when his poll numbers were bottoming out, why anyone should think he could recover; Biden asked if she'd ever been to a caucus; the girl nodded uncertainly and Biden snapped at her, "You're a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!" and the student later confessed that she had never been to a caucus. Biden, for all his faults, reads people well and could see her lack of conviction and saw that she was lying and it pissed him off and he said so.

While Biden has not treated women with respect for their personal space, his behaviour conveys a (foolish and outdated) sense of benevolent ownership over women -- seeing them as objects to be held and protected -- as opposed to a contemptuous, abusive disdain. If he had such hatred for women in him, I don't believe he could hide it.

But I've been wrong before. I didn't think Bryan Singer was a rapist, after all.

Despite all my many, many, many, many, many issues with Biden -- I cannot imagine that sweet old man slamming a woman into a wall, fingering her by force, then telling her, "You're nothing to me." Biden is a man of absolutely no self-control whatsoever, getting into moronic arguments with auto workers and college students -- but the impulses he can't control are impulses to call people out for buying into conspiracy theories or for lying to his face or to hug people when they describe the loss of a family member or to whisper support to a woman who bruised herself badly on some ice or to describe his grief over his wife and daughter dying in a car crash and his son dying of brain cancer and nearly spitting out his phone number on national TV for grieving families to call him.

If Biden were a rapist, I don't believe he could hide it because he's incapable of any real subterfuge -- or that's a part of his act, but if Biden were pretending, wouldn't his act have less rambling, less random bursts of incoherent thought, less outbursts of frustration, less everything?

• Lucy Flores: Put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head.

• Amy Lappos: Rubbed noses with her.

• D.J Hill: Put his hand on her shoulder and then slid it down her back.

• Caitlyn Caruso: Put his hand on her thigh and hugged her too long.

• Ally Coll: Squeezed her shoulders and held her too long.

• Sofie Karasek: Took her hand and pressed his forehead against hers.

• Vail Kohnert-Yount: Put his hand on the back of her head and pressed their foreheads together and called her a pretty girl.

• Tara Reade: Says Biden raped her.

One through seven are not good -- but they aren't accusing Biden of rape and they reflect his upbringing from a past generation with views of women that are outdated and should never have been tolerated even when they weren't outdated. I wouldn't call him a perpetrator of assault based on one to seven -- certainly a harasser, possibly an unwitting one.

Reading ARCHIE comics is a very interesting exploration of SLIDERS-esque storytelling. ARCHIE comics have an interesting approach to continuity: there isn't any. There's a core title, ARCHIE (started in 2015 with Mark Waid writing it), featuring young adult high school dramedy with Archie being a clumsy, well-intentioned kid with a peculiar best friend in Jughead and Betty being a tomboy mechanic with an eccentric friendship with the regal and elite Veronica.

Then there's the JUGHEAD title written by Chip Zdarsky in which Jughead finds himself on a date with Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, a storyline that isn't reflected in the core ARCHIE title. When Sabrina appears in the ARCHIE title, it doesn't acknowledge her JUGHEAD plotline at all and she meets the ARCHIE cast for the first time again and is dating Archie. There's a SABRINA THE TEENAGED WITCH title in which Sabrina is in her own town, irreconcilable with ARCHIE.

Then there's the ancillary titles. BETTY AND VERONICA: VIXENS has the two girls starting a biker gang. It has a completely different version of the Betty and Veronica friendship in the main title. There's JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER in which Jughead is revealed to be part of a lineage of werewolves, hence his voracious hunger for hamburgers. It kills off a large number of the cast, it reveals Betty to be the latest in a family line of werewolf hunters; this isn't reflected in any other title. There's VAMPIRONICA, in which Veronica is transformed into a vampire and then she later travels to a parallel universe where she meets the werewolf Jughead from JUGHEAD: THE HUNGER.

There's ARCHIE VS. PREDATOR where all but two cast members are murdered by the Predator; this appears to be a series finale to the 'classic' ARCHIE comics as the surviving Betty and Veronica refer to various events in the original comics and travel into the parallel universe of the 2015 reboot.

The horror line also has CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA and AFTERLIFE WITH ARCHIE, two very dark versions of the characters which haven't been appearing regularly in comic stores as the writer has been working on RIVERDALE. Interestingly, there's a series, JUGHEAD: TIME POLICE where 2015 reboot Jughead discovers that the classic version of Jughead has become evil and been gathering Jugheads from parallel universes.

One of these Jugheads is the RIVERDALE incarnation who wears a Serpents leather jacket and delivers an overwrought monologue describing the war of Jugheads only to be interrupted when he's knocked unconscious.

What's interesting is that despite the light and dark and sci-fi variations on these titles, Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica remain the same characters, simply in different situations and with different choices before them even if those choices involve summer jobs in one universe or time and space in another.