American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 20 of 57)

Well, as someone in Texas, I can tell you that we're sorta relaxing.  You have to remember that while the state as a whole is conservative, all the cities are not.  Even after the governor declared that we're slowly opening things up, the city of Dallas (near where I live) declared that you have to wear a mask outside your home.  I don't know anyone who's protesting and haven't seen any evidence of it happening near where I live.  There were protests in Austin, but again, Austin is a very liberal city so it's doubtful that it was people in Austin.  Probably from the more-conservative rural areas.

I know people love to rag on Texas, but the state is changing and the cities more-than lean left.  It's just a very big and diverse state that has traditionally been more conservative.  I live here and my sister lives in Florida, and I can tell you that we're taking it more seriously than they are.

And from my understanding, the "opening" of the state involves allowing pickup from stores and opening parks back up.  I haven't seen anything about going back to work, and my work has told me we aren't going back for "a while"

Hey SQ21, I have been to Texas, and though you won't get me there in the summer, I enjoyed the heck out of it!  Then again, I've enjoyed most places I've been in the USA.  Believe it or not, Las Vegas remains a dump of shit IMO, with Cincinnati not far behind, ha ha ha!

ireactions, we have to tamper any sort of progressive "agenda" for the next term, even if Biden wins.  We will be picking up the pieces from this virus well into 2022. 

In terms of UK politics, PM Boris Johnson is now being slammed similar to Trump, for mismanaging the early weeks of this outbreak.  In his case, he was missing meetings to deal with his pregnant GF and irate wife, as well as dismissing warnings privately from UK health experts.  More evidence that electing a small time big mouth lacking valid executive experience has consequences.

https://www.axios.com/boris-johnson-ski … 1e7db.html

I think we have a choice between a step back to sanity or staying exactly where we are, when it comes to presidents. And I know Informant is determined to vote for another four years of Donald Trump, but with the death toll topping 30,000 from a virus that the current president called an overblown hoax, it's time to get competent people into federal leadership instead of obsequious lackeys with no qualifications in crisis management.

Which leads me to my next question, and it's a question I feel we have an obligation to ask: why is our old friend still supporting Donald Trump? Our friend wasn't that different from the people in those photos Grizzlor posted and we should contemplate how we had a Trump cultist in our midst and that even today, we -- or at least I -- continue to have a lot of appreciation and love for his writing, his TV reviews, his creative advice and his friendship.

And yes, he's left us, but he's on Twitter. He's ceased his insistence that Donald Trump's every act as president is above reproach, but he hasn't reversed those views; he just isn't professing them.

He's still encouraging people to harass Democratic governors who instituted lockdowns to save lives. He's declared that anyone who protests Trump declaring that a president has "absolute" and "total" authority to be juvenile. He calls anyone who can remember Trump's inaction in February despite warnings as early as January to be childish.

This has gone well beyond Informant having conservative views; our good, strong, brilliant, talented friend has become a cult member declaring that any criticism of his supreme leader is wrong.

The thing I find interesting about Informant is that he knows there is a realm of civil discourse and rationality and he pretends to be within it: he's not going to say he supports Nazis as that would earn complete condemnation -- so he says that it's wrong to call people Nazis. He knows he can't say that he hates women without being banned from whatever discussion forums he prizes -- so he encourages people to watch men's rights activist documentaries funded by a man who declared that women who wear low-cut clothes and go to bars deserve to be raped. He's not going to say he agrees with sexual harassment; so he says that many liberals are harassers too (true) and that women are immature and weak to be hurt by harassment (yeah, Kyle could be a jerk).

Interestingly, Informant is not insisting that Trump is handling the crisis well -- probably because saying that when the death toll is at 30,000 and rising would take him so far out of the mainstream he'd never get back. But he still can't turn his back on a cult leader who is encouraging supporters to expose themselves to lethal contagion for a campaign event.

This also isn't the first time. In 2008, Informant declared that the best person to come out of that election was Sarah Palin on the grounds that she was a well-mannered, intelligent, well-informed, thoughtful, capable politician. This is a person whose own campaign staff would reveal her to be, like Trump, ignorant, incurious, egotistical, prone to improvising falsehoods and nonsensical statements like saying Alaska's proximity to Russia made her an expert in foreign relations, saying that the Queen governed the United Kingdom and being unable to name a single book or newspaper she'd ever read.

Twice now, Informant's self-declared ideal representatives have been intellectually lazy, delusional oafs going on live television thinking random inclinations are superior to knowledge and reason and declaring that their version of reality cannot be questioned -- an attitude Informant professed as well albeit with the articulate vocabulary that came with Informant being a talented professional writer.

It's interesting to also compare Informant's uniform defense of Donald Trump with his uniform condemnation of Barack Obama. Obama made many mistakes in office: a weak stimulus plan, overuse of executive power, drone warfare without sanction or review, heavy deportation, a failure to observe the threat posed by Russia, an inability to connect with the poor and working class who brought Trump to office after him, an insistence on supporting Hillary Clinton for president (which he came to regret during her campaign which he would privately describe as "soulless") and perhaps he should have outright confronted birthers with his birth certificate rather than let that stupid conspiracy theory go on for as long as it did.

But while Informant criticizes Obama, he calls the media-shy from 2016 - 2019 Obama divisive for trying to undermine the Trump presidency while somehow excusing the most aggressively antagonistic president in history from criticism. He calls Obama arrogant for having no false modesty about his intelligence when Trump declares himself a genius and a medical doctor to no comment from Informant. He calls Obama a liar when Trump has made, as of the end of March 2020, approximately 18,000 false claims in the press or on social media.

Shouldn't Informant have being going after Trump just as hard as he did Obama? Temporal Flux called Obama a phony and said that Obama's message of "hope and change" was bunk. When Trump became the Republican nominee, Temporal Flux renounced the Republican party. Transmodiar called Obama a fake Democrat only pretending to be an agent of change and he's declared that he is voting for Andrew Yang whether Yang is running or not and he finds Joe Biden an abomination masquerading as a kindly grandfather. I can tell that Temporal Flux and Transmodiar have expectations of their leaders that Obama failed to meet.

I can also tell that if Informant evaluated Trump as he did Obama, he would find Trump just as guilty and shameful. But Informant gives Donald Trump a pass. The only reason I can see is that Trump is white and Obama is black.

...

After thinking all of this last night, I did something last night that I haven't done since I was a child. I got down on my knees and prayed and I grovelled before my creator (if he exists) and begged him to spare Informant. I prayed that Informant would, despite considering the virus an overblown hoax, not expose himself to it and die or infect his friends and family with it out of his bizarre and unfortunate decision to commit his loyalty to a cult.

**

Uh, Joe Biden, my default standard bearer (default as in being the only choice available), released a new campaign commercial that's... pretty racist. It blames the virus on "China" and "the Chinese." I would suggest that his media designers revise it to distinguish the People's Republic of China from people of Chinese ethnicity. God damn it, Grandpa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVgQ0pYGYtk

I just don't get this either.  He's a liar and an adulterer.  You can like that he fights against abortion, but I don't know how people can say that he's a godly man.  Just admit it.  He's a bad person but he "stands for" what you stand for.  Him being in power makes you feel safer or makes you richer or you like that the president looks like you and not Obama.

People are stubborn.  Believe me, I have many relatives and friends who are fiscal Republicans, and while they personally dislike Trump, they are so stupidly ingrained with hating Democrats they simply must back him.  As if Obama was somehow the destroyer of what I don't know?  They do NOT like immigrants, and Trump wins with them for sure.  They also have the usual tact that any sort of social program is bad, not because they pay taxes.  No, it's really from selfishness, that if those at the bottom are brought up, it will bring them down.  They enjoy being able to scoff at the less fortunate.

Look, we as a nation will never be able to deal with China without international buy in.  Trump's go it alone approach has been awful.  In terms of the alt-right, even the neo-Nazi's are full of crap.  They're all cry baby snowflakes.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ … 581710002/

Well Biden DID author an op ed on January 27, 2020 in the USA Today which literally said, "The possibility of a pandemic is a challenge Donald Trump is unqualified to handle as president."  He mostly blamed his poor judgment and rejection of science, before listing several approaches that worked during the Obama administration but Trump has abandoned.  Biden has repeatedly mentioned the DPA (Defense Production Act), and while Trump has claimed to have invoked it, in reality he has not.  The DPA is designed to have FEMA pay for the construction and/or usage of facilities and equipment.  FEMA then solicits private industry to run the plants, since this is their expertise, and ramp up production to war-time levels.  When the demand is gone, the industry packs up and FEMA closes or sells the plant.  You cannot expect private industry to spend $150 million on a plant that they will have no use for in 2 years time.  Only the US Government can do this, and that is why we have no tests, or PPE, and are still relying on shipments from China.  Trump is a failed businessman, and now a horribly failed government leader.

More proof Trump's policy as late as the end of the February was to hide the truth about the dangers from the outbreak.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-chi … 1587570514

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … force.html

Is this the "Good Job Browney" of this mess?  A DOG BREEDER was in charge of the taskforce initially?????

It's a little nuts that Donald Trump Jr. is harping on Biden's one accusation when his dad has an entire wikipedia article full of his accusations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Tr … llegations

I'm not telling anyone to vote for someone they don't feel comfortable voting for.  Joe Biden is the nominee and if you think he's a rapist, you don't have to vote for anyone.  But I just find it funny that anyone thinks that there's one voter out there that would say "I believe Tara Reade.  Joe Biden is a rapist.  I'm going to vote for Donald Trump!"

Well even with the mother's call, I'm not sure if that changes much.  Biden denies it, Reade doesn't, it's a stalemate.  Trump has 25 women accusing him of harassment.  Trump Jr., a human trash can, has said women who don't wish to be harassed ought to become kindergarten teachers, and that he's more concerned about his sons being falsely charged than his daughters being assaulted.  Lunatic. 

In other news, appears Kim Jong-Un is dead or at least a vegetable.

I cannot emphasize enough in the name of Rembrandt's AIDS ribbons, Rembrandt's throat relaxants, Rembrandt's shotguns and Rembrandt's shrine that the error is mine and mine alone as are any and all political opinions and assessments of Tara Reade.

Look, I'm just one SLIDERS fan with questionable sanity (Transmodiar has said that SLIDERS REBORN was the work of a crazy person and he helped me write it), I got the number of Ontario sick days wrong, I mistakenly thought Clinton Derricks was in "The Alternateville Horror" and I mistakenly wrote the day of the first slide as March 22, 1995 when it was actually September 27, 1994 and I forgot that Deric was an acronym for the name of the robot. I don't know everything and people who can't admit ignorance or error end up recommending Lysol injections as an antiviral.

I'm uncomfortable calling Tara Reade a liar and the Krassenstein brothers who wrote that Medium article are like the Alex Jones of the left who made money in fraudulent investment schemes. That said, I have been following their work. I put no credence in their inflammatory editorials -- but they linked to Reade's past tweets and medium posts as archived or screenshotted by others. If they told me 2 + 2 equaled four, I'd check their math -- and I have been checking their math where Reade is concerned and the Krassensteins seem to be onto something with Reade just as a broken clock is right twice a day.

I'm uncomfortable not believing a woman who says she's been assaulted, but if I'm to believe everything Tara Reade says, then I also have to believe that:

• Sexual assault was unheard of in 1993 when the Senate and Supreme Court scandals had been front page news a year previous.

• She met Joe Biden in a public, foot-traffic heavy hallway of a government building and he assaulted her in a private area of this open, pedestrian-prone space.

• Her mother would describe her daughter's rapist as someone for whom her child had "respect" and that her only option was "the press" (as opposed to the police).

• Reade fervently adored Biden (as she stated herself over social media from California) while despising him for raping her.

• Reade wasn't sexually assaulted (as she said herself in The Union) and was sexually assaulted (as she said in her podcast).

• Reade absolutely loves Russia (as she said in her self-posted Medium articles) but despises Russia for legalizing domestic abuse (as she said on Twitter) while loving Putin (as she said on Medium) and her self-posted Medium articles were taken out of context (by herself?) from a novel she was writing.

EDITED TO ADD: Reade is now saying that the posts that she wrote about loving Russia with all her heart which were taken out of context when she posted them on Medium herself were also not written by her and in fact written by hackers who stole her account information.

...

Her stories don't make any sense to me and I would be extremely cautious because believing any one thing Reade says means dismissing everything else she's ever said.

People who are as erratic as this will sometimes engage in fraud because they're flailing desperately for any markers of stability. I don't think Reade is well and as someone with his own mental illness issues, I hope that we can be kind.

I had wondered what label they would give an economic downturn following the Coronavirus shut down.  I bet this one will stick - “The Great Repression” (since we technically did it on purpose):

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-g … 2020-04-27

And now for something completely different: SUPERGIRL!

Decades ago, during Season 2 of SUPERGIRL, Dean Cain's recurring role as Kara Danvers' adoptive, missing father took prominence. Cain's Jeremiah Danvers was revealed as a rescued prisoner of Cadmus, the anti-alien terrorist group. But once welcomed back, Jeremiah broke into the DEO to steal weapons technology and was revealed to be in league with Cadmus and their plot to massacre all aliens.

Jeremiah went on the run as a fugitive with Cadmus' leader, Lillian Luthor, with Kara and Alex Danvers now forced to hunt down their father and demand answers as to his betrayal. Jeremiah's final appearance showed him conferring with Lillian Luthor who agreed that as part of their deal, Cadmus would be building... something... for Jeremiah. That was it; Jeremiah never reappeared except as a telepathic illusion. Lillian Luthor returned in the Season 2 finale and said that she had no idea where Jeremiah was and the character was never referred to again until Season 5 when it was established that Jeremiah had died off camera of a stroke while doing charity work.

What happened? Well, during Season 2, Dean Cain supported Donald Trump's electoral campaign. SUPERGIRL cut all ties with Cain and declined to have him on set again, leaving Jeremiah's arc unfinished.

Looking at Season 2 -- it didn't register at the time, but a second look indicates that Jeremiah's intentions were somewhat present: Cadmus was keen to kill all alien immigrants. Jeremiah instead provided the blueprints and plans to build a spacefleet to send the aliens back to their homeworlds which would have spared Kara as well. The information is present, but Jeremiah never appeared onscreen to take ownership of this choice, establish his reasons and answer to Kara and Alex, so it never *felt* like his motives were explained.

And ultimately, SUPERGIRL betrayed itself and its narrative obligations. While it asserted the moral high ground by kicking Dean Cain off the set, it would a few months later revealed that it had blown up that high ground long ago when showrunner Andrew Kreisberg was revealed to be an unrepentant sexual harasser who would be fired off all his shows. Trump supporter is not always a full character description, but sexual harasser is pretty comprehensive. But regardless of Kreisberg's dismissal, Cain was no longer wanted and Season 5 now attempts to write Cain an exit story with "Alex in Wonderland" even though only his body double appears, seen from behind.

SUPERGIRL attempts to turn into the spin by having Alex withdraw into a fantasy world, revisit her final confrontation with Jeremiah (or rather, the back of his head while he's turned away from her) and it defines Jeremiah's death entirely in terms of absence. Jeremiah is away: he cannot explain himself, he cannot give Alex closure, he's never even seen as in an image, he can never justify or validate anything he did. Death isn't random like Professor Stein getting shot by an anonymous Nazi goon and end his story as a hero. Or Dr. Henry Allen being executed in a hostage situation and assuring Barry that his heroism is his identity and choice and not a front or a fake. Or like Oliver giving his life to save worlds.

Instead, Jeremiah's death is confusing, disorienting, inexplicable, unsatisfying and devoid of answers and explanations. Throughout the episode, Alex withdraws from the question by escaping into a virtual reality fantasy. And then by the end, she withdraws from the question again by conceding that she's simply never going to find answers. We're never going to know why Informant insisted on supporting Donald Trump after 25 assault allegations and over 50,000 dead. We can only speculate, theorize and contemplate our questions and know that we'll need to learn to live with them.

**

I'm kind of worried about this Tara Reade thing, guys. Reade's story seemed like something she'd thrown together recently for whatever reason, but it's starting to look like her story has been present but told only to a few in the 90s. We shouldn't blow it off just because Trump has 25 rape accusations to Biden's one.

I think it's time for Biden to answer to these allegations personally.

He needs to answer: does he remember Reade? What were the substance of their interactions? Why was she let go from his office? What harassment did he engage in towards her? He should be honest and confess if he engaged in overlong hugs / nose bumps / forehead rubs / hands on waists and shoulders. He can deny that he did anything sexual including penetrating her with his fingers. He can point out that Reade's story has him doing that in a public hallway of the building which is absurd.

He can say that he cannot comment on why Reade may have told her friends and neighbour and family of this, but that Reade was dismissed because she was erratic and prone to fabricating stories which we've seen a pattern of in her scamming a horse rescue not for profit. He can say that he urges everyone to believe women, but that believing is a starting point: believing means listening to everything they've ever said which in Reade's case includes saying that Biden was a great boss and that he could be trusted and that nothing he did towards her was sexual in addition to saying that he raped her and that he's a liar and that he's a terrible person.

He can say that he hopes Reade finds help and peace and that he didn't assault her; that he was devoted to his wife and that he would never have lingered at work because he was always racing to get the train home to his family. He can open up his personnel records and let CNN comb through them.

EDITED TO ADD: The Atlantic and others are calling on Biden to open his Senate office records -- currently housed at the University of Delaware -- and let the press review them. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi … rs/610801/

I'm going to be frank; I'm scared that I may have been supporting a rapist. I can't imagine that warm grandfather raping a woman, but I myself am a reformed harasser of women. I did not assault anyone, but I made inappropriate and intrusive physical contact and unwelcome remarks and looked too long and stood too close and followed women around campus when I was a student. I am deeply ashamed of my past and I can tell you from experience that who we see in the mirror today is rarely who we were even a mere 10 - 15 years ago.

I wasn't always a figure of platonic female friendship whose social circle is entirely women. Biden was not always his grandfather persona. Who was in he in 1993?

Interesting.

Well, I've re-read Tara Reade's accusation towards Biden from the transcript podcast. It sounds ludicrous to think that Biden would rape a woman in an open hallway. I've re-read all of her erotica over Vladimir Putin. It's insane and delusional. I've re-read the transcript of her mother's call to Larry King. It doesn't sound like it's reporting a rape in any way. I've re-read the story of Reade's co-worker in California saying she'd heard Reade's story in the 90s and Reade's neighbour saying the same, indicating these events weren't concocted in the last few years by a Putin fangirl and have been in Reade's mind since 1993 and that Reade is a deeply traumatized, troubled person in agony. But her story sounding unlikely to me does not mean that it's untrue.

Reade comes off as incredibly erratic, but erratic people can be rape victims. We can't dismiss her story as a recent fabrication anymore, and we should operate on the presumption that a woman who says she was raped is telling the truth until we receive information to the contrary. Which means that it is really down to Joe Biden who must unseal his personal Senatorial papers and release them to a third party and submit to an independent investigation of his life in 1993.

This Tara Reade story has not gone away and has continued to accumulate corroboration of Reade having shared her story as early as the mid-90s -- whether or not that story is true. How much will it snowball? Not sure. Biden's opponent has 25 rape accusers. Biden has one. But the longer it goes unanswered, the more it will entangle itself with Biden's campaign and our chances of ousting Donald Trump.

For the sake of his supporters from whom Biden is asking trust and funds and votes, he needs to answer the accusations and share every recollection and scrap of paper he has on Reade's 1993 employment with him.

Once, over dinner, I had to tell my niece about every woman I'd ever stalked and harassed in university. It was a difficult and shameful conversation, but she is the person I trust most. It was better to confess than to leave that part of my life blank to her. That would have allowed her or others to fill it in with the worst suppositions and imaginings and accusations. To not confess could have left her thinking that I hadn't changed or wouldn't be willing to face my misdeeds. I think a politician who wants his constituents to trust him needs to do the same if only for their emotional well-being.

A lot of people think Biden is experiencing cognitive decline. But another possibility: Biden as a child suffered from a stutter. In adolescence, Biden learned various techniques to manage, control and isolate his speech difficulties. But in controlling his stutter, he seemed to cede control in other areas.

Throughout his career, Biden has been described as a "gaffe machine" and throughout his time with Obama, Biden blabbered and babbled, often making potentially costly errors of impulsivity. He encouraged Senator Chuck Graham, a stranger to him, to stand up at a rally, only to realize upon closer view that Senator Graham was in a wheelchair. Biden apologized and asked the audience to stand for Graham, a brilliant self-correction. He also dropped F-bombs into live mics, neglected to thank the individuals he quoted in speeches (which made it plagiarism), and now it looks like in Biden's advancing years, the methods that once mastered his stutter have led to often garbled, confused statements and he's now he's trying to control it with retraint.

**

... why isn't Biden responding to the Reade allegations? The worst possibility -- and I hope it isn't the case -- is that it's true and Biden is hoping to stonewall. Or could the Biden campaign be trying to investigate Reade's ties to Russia and lying in wait to reveal something?

However, the Biden campaign has also presented talking points to Democrats for responding to questions about Reade and the talking points, while emphasizing Biden's support for women, falsely declare that the New York Times article cleared Biden. That's simply not true; it was inconclusive, yet Biden has commanded his surrogates and potential vice presidents to misrepresent the Times investigation as proving Reade's claims false. They're trying to starve the story of any further news coverage and let it die out by not feeding it any more information. Why?

Assuming innocence -- could it be that Biden doesn't remember Tara Reade? And can't offer any answers? And saying that he has no memory of her would only allow further claims to fill in the gap of information with the worst of speculations? The other possibility is that while Biden didn't rape Reade, he touched her legs, shoulder and neck, rubbed noses with her, smelled her hair and confessing to that paves the way to the public assuming he did the rest and so he's sealed that off.

This is something I've seen people do in this forum: I said that Biden had only one accusation of assault and a poster provided a lengthy list of names of other Biden accusers -- except those women were not alleging assault. Touching someone intrusively on the shoulder / arm / leg / neck / face is not the same as raping someone. Neither is acceptable, but intrusive touching can be poor social calibration, ignorance, outdated views of women -- which can be corrected with understanding and empathy. Raping someone is an act of violence and willful harm meant specifically to injure and damage.

One of my favourite TV shows, CHUCK, has lengthy comedy scenes of two Best Buy salesmen sexually harassing women and being met with slaps to the face and other well-deserved punishment. At the time, I thought it was funny and acceptable because the men always got their comeuppance. Watching it today, I am deeply disturbed that CHUCK never devotes any screentime to how the women must feel to be groped, tricked, leered at and surveilled and assumes that their putting a fist into their harasser's faces is sufficient. I've met a lot of women since I first saw CHUCK and listened.

**

Slate.com had an interesting perspective: that we need not support Joe Biden because we think him the living embodiment of our standards and values. Instead, it suggests that those of us with reservations about Biden view him not as our ally but as our chosen enemy -- with the perspective that someone in authority will always stand in the way of Medicare For All, repairing the damage to our planet, universal basic income -- and a presidential election is a chance to choose whether we want that person standing in the way to be a deranged lunatic or someone who can be swayed by reason and knowledge.

Can we do that? Vote Biden! He only wants to do one term anyway and it'll be easier to get Andrew Yang in 2024.

I really like and appreciate Cathy Young's writing. But at the end of the day, women suffer so much for accusing perpetrators of rape. There is no upside to doing so which makes false accusations unlikely unless the accuser is mentally ill and delusional and prone to fraud and falsehoods and unable to distinguish fantasy from reality and perpetually altering their accounts of past events or potentially hired by Russia -- all of which seems possible given Reade's online behaviour from her Putin fetish to her revisions to her accounts of Biden's behaviour to her claims that her pro-Russia screeds were taken out of context when she posted them online or written by hackers using her accounts.

But we should believe women anyway until given reason not to and it is entirely Biden's responsibility to furnish those reasons for us with his own memories and documents.

Thus far, he has not. The officially unofficial word from inside Biden's campaign: he hasn't responded to Tara Reade's accusations yet because he is unwilling to speak poorly of her. He feels that saying that she is lying would also call any woman reporting assault to be a liar. That is not something he wants to do. But he is aware that he will have to eventually respond to the accusations directly.

https://deadline.com/2020/04/joe-biden- … 202922618/

Biden will speak on Friday and respond to the accusation.

A former Detroit prosecutor wrote an op-ed saying that Reade's story has a lot of points of suspicion. In addition to all her doubtful claims (that sexual assault wasn't understood in 1993, that Biden would rape her in a public hallway), obvious mental illness (her infatuation with a brutal dictator), penchant for contradictory lies (saying her self-posted Putin essays were taken out of context from a novel she was writing and also not written by her at all), her mother describing her child's supposed rapist as a figure of "respect" for whom the only recourse was "the press," Michael J. Stern points out:

Her story has changed, saying that Biden touched her non-sexually but intrusively to saying he raped her -- and her reasoning is that reporters weren't interested in her reporting rape which seems unlikely given how every reporter wants a scoop.

Her documents are missing: despite claiming she made a formal complaint, she has no copy of it for herself -- yet she kept her employment records outside of this complaint which leaves me wondering if this complaint even exists.

Her story doesn't come with a date; she says she can't remember when it happened -- but it also means that Biden can't use his 1993 calendar to prove himself elsewhere.

Her claim for why she was fired has changed, first saying she was dismissed for refusing to serve drinks; then saying she was fired for filing a complaint. This is not a trivial discrepancy.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ … 046962001/

Michael Stern doesn't believe Reade. And I think Reade's story is suspicious and it's possible the Biden campaign wanted to let the story fade out based on how Reade's story and Reade herself are incoherent (my Putin fan fiction that I posted myself was taken out of context from a novel I was writing and also I didn't write it I was hacked). She seems like an erratic liar.

But she might also be erratic because she was sexually traumatized and it isn't Michael Stern's job to defend Joe Biden; that's Joe Biden's job.

Well, Trump is having a rare moment of strategic clarity. He has over 25 assault accusations; attacking Biden over Reade would only draw attention to his crimes. Maybe he should tell his son that. As Slider_Quinn21 notes, it's a non-starter as a point of attack for the Trump campaign because no sensible person will refuse to vote for a man with one assault accusation to favour a man with two dozen and more.

**

Biden has spoken, first on MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/ … 2865221937

And then in a statement posted on Medium: https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/statement- … 9593bd3012

I reserve the right to change my opinion on this at any time, but Biden has done most of what I've asked. He has spoken directly and denied the allegations. He has asked that the National Archives divulge any documentation relating to Tara Reade. He has refused to open his archives in the University of Delaware's basement, however, on the grounds that (a) they contain confidential secrets of state (b) do not contain personnel records and (c) a search for personnel records that aren't in there could create an expectation of publicizing private contents before the redactions for security and privacy have been made. This sounds reasonable to me, although I reserve the right to alter that view should new information come to light.

The university has further clarified that the documents are still being sorted and reviewed, so no search is even possible at this time.

Biden refused to elaborate on Reade's employment in his office and he conveyed his reasons for that as well. He is refusing to characterize Reade in any way; he has declared that he will not pursue any action against her whether legal or in the court of public opinion other than to say that he did not assault her. In doing so, Biden has ensured that nothing he says to deny the allegations can serve to harm other female accusers, something he is clearly keen to avoid.

MSNBC fixated on demanding that Biden explain how he can say that women should be believed and then say that Reade is lying. Biden replied that women should be presumed to be telling the truth at the outset and then their claims must be evaluated. The fixation on rhetoric is relevant but not particularly informative when it comes to facts. Biden refused to speculate on Reade's motives or goals. However, he did state that he does not have nondisclosure agreements with anyone. This is significant as many wealthy sexual predators buy silence from their victims in this manner.

Watching Biden speak, I saw what he would not express -- anger and hurt and grief. I could see fury in his eyes that he would contain with a breath and with silence, not wanting to voice contempt or disdain that could make any female accuser think she'd be similarly silenced, instead emphasizing that Tara Reade has the right to say whatever she wants just as Joe Biden has the right to say it isn't true.

It was a very fine line of refuting the allegation while insisting that women should be heard when they make such allegations and I can see why it took so long for Biden to decide how he wanted to respond to this. There was a muted, quiet astonishment in his face in moments, a shock that someone would accuse him of attacking them physically matched with a grim awareness of what those motives could be -- attention, a smear campaign plotted by a foreign power, a mental illness that has chosen him as its target -- and then a refusal to state those suspicions as they would be (a) speculative and (b) demeaning to women with genuine allegations.

Look, I don't read people perfectly or even well; I've had to buy books on facial expressions. But I said what Biden had to do to win my trust back and he's done 3/4 of it. The 1/4 he didn't do -- a full account of his encounters with Reade -- he's given his reasons for why he won't divulge that outside of agreeing to provide whatever paperwork he has. But Biden has refused to express hostility, refused to try to silence Reade, agreed to divulge his papers relating to Reade, explained why he won't open up the Delaware-housed documents, controlled his anger and outrage -- so for now -- FOR NOW -- I believe Joe Biden and I believe in him.

And I know how very important it is to Grandpop that a Canadian who can't vote for him is on his side.

I watched Morning Mika grilling Biden as best as she could, because frankly, there's not a ton she could have asked which he didn't answer.  The University of Delaware records thing is a joke.  Do we expect a university that is currently CLOSED to send staff in just to sift through his records?  It's not a police investigation.  Ms. Reade kept employment records, according to her own statements, which most of us never would bother with.  Yet she did not keep a copy of the COMPLAINT she filed??  Give me a break.  The reason Trump didn't hit Joe on this was because Trump knows this stuff all too well, and likely doesn't believe the claim, and is not going to be dumb enough to pile on when there's a good chance he'll be made the fool.  Yes, I know, this is Trump, but he's not an idiot on these matters.  Biden's best answer was that Delaware would not have personnel records, which is true.  Any employer has to safeguard those, and turning them over to the public would be highly unethical.  As I've said, I do not expect the National Archives to find the complaint, because it didn't exist.  None of this will satisfy the rapid left though, they hate Biden seemingly more than Trump, which makes them completely illogical.

SQ21, I do not believe Reade is politically motivated at all.  She probably intends to vote for Biden anyway, ha ha.  Some people just want to be super victim.  When questioned about her changing story, Reade claims her therapist was told the full story all along, but she will not release her therapist's notes.  Yet demands Biden release everything he's got.  Lastly, she cannot remember a single vivid detail about the incident's date, time, or location.  Victims of assault will remember where it happened, she cannot, just saying it was in a hallway somewhere in the Capitol.  Obviously she'll be interviewed by Fox News on Sunday, but I cannot see how this continues to be reported on?  Either there's a smoking gun or there isn't.

Well, Biden has a reputation for being physically intrusive with people -- not just women. It's an outdated attitude and it leaves Biden open to charges of sexual harassment and the fact that it wasn't intended sexually (which Reade herself originally claimed) is meaningless if the woman on the receiving end perceives it otherwise.

**

The Washington Post expanded more on how Biden would not want his Delaware-based records opened up because they contain numerous private conversations and communications that could be easily mined for political attacks and no candidate running for office would release those.

Again, I really have a lot of admiration for Biden refusing to speak poorly of Reade in any way or speculate as to her motives (at least not in a public statement), declaring that he would not pursue any reprisal against her, and simply saying that her accusation is untrue. His self-control and awareness of all the women who aren't Reade was admirable. At least that's how it looked to me. Anyway, here's a transcript.

Tara Reade has changed her story again, claiming that the record of her sexual harassment complaint  she demanded that Biden release contains no complaint of sexual harassment. She also cancelled her Sunday interview on FOX. She did this on Friday, shortly after Biden wrote on Medium that he would ask the National Archives to release any documents pertaining to Reade and followed up with a letter asking the Secretary of Senate to do the same. https://apnews.com/aec7beb03e9e0e0e6e3c58111293e0ea

I've written before that Biden doesn't follow the pattern of silencing, distraction and intimidating that most abusers follow. There is another pattern in abusers where the perpetrator will tell the victim that if they perform a certain task, the abuse will cease; the abuser will then move the goalposts to declare that their target failed to meet the conditions to end their suffering. It is particularly common in those who engage in elder abuse with the view that the elderly with their long and faded memories can be easy targets.

Reade was the one who insisted on repeating her demand that Biden release documents that would validate the part of her story where she reported his harassment. Now that Biden has consented to release any such records, she's changing her story to say that those documents wouldn't support her story after all.

Then what was she hoping to accomplish in demanding these documents? Aside notoriety, attention and abusing her former employer?

Reade later claimed on Twitter that the Associated Press story is false, but when asked to elaborate -- was she misquoted? Were her quotes falsified? She didn't reply.

David Axelrod, Obama's former campaign manager, reported that he was part of reviewing Biden's history and documents when Obama was considering Biden for VP. Axelrod says there was no record of any complaint from Tara Reade and that in vetting VP candidates, complaints of this nature would have been located and flagged for follow-up interviews with anyone involved. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/opinions … =hvper.com

It is a terrible thing to say that a woman should not be believed when she says that she has been assaulted. It is horrific for female victims to see fellow survivors be disbelieved. But Reade is behaving like an abuser: moving the goalposts of her demands, using the supposed vagaries of an old man's memory to attack him where he seems defenceless -- and now that Biden has proven able to defend himself with gentleness and affirmation and accountability, Reade is abruptly reversing and retreating.

Let's not forget that there's a chance that Reade has been coached or led to believe (in some way) that something happened.  It would explain why her story has changed.  It's certainly possible.

https://www.spring.org.uk/2008/02/impla … n-mall.php

I am growing more concerned about the direction we are taking in response to this virus.

https://dot.la/coronavirus-usc-app-2645887533.html

This is a shade, a beginning, of the social credit scoring system used in China.  The China system builds an aggregate score based on everything - financial history, employment history, social media history, medical history, etc. For instance, if your body mass index is too high (you’re overweight), then you aren’t allowed to ride the subway so that you’re forced to walk more. You may even be restricted on where you can eat or what you can buy all under the thought of “this is what’s best for you.”  The problem is, who is deciding what’s best for *you*?  You should decide that - the decision should not be made for you by taking your choices away.

We’ve been inching towards this for years in the US (such as Mayor Bloomberg banning Big Gulps for our “own good”), but this virus may push it over the edge.

Temporal Flux is right to be cautious. But I wonder how feasible a China style social credit system is for America, a country that can't even implement social distancing.

Also -- did the Trump administration accomplish something recently?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/0 … hip-236313

I pray that they have for my American brothers and sisters.

You know, the Donald Trump of the north, Doug Ford, has been far from perfect. But the public can see that he is fighting for their safety, for their resources, for their well-being. He failed to raise testing rates as quickly as possible, he has had disastrous results with long term care homes -- but everyone can see that he is putting in the hours, taking all the complaints, bearing all the blame. Everyone knows that none of his failures resulted from a lack of effort. Trying counts.

Well, I wonder if Trump is actually trying to appeal to his base here.  Even though Trump himself has been emphatic about this virus, a good deal of his base still thinks that the virus is a hoax.  Or just like the flu (again, Trump has repeatedly said it isn't).

So I wonder if Trump has to downplay his response to it so that he doesn't lose the people who think it's a hoax?  As I've said before, Trump can't lose a single 2016 vote if he has any chance of winning.  He has to try to figure out a way to save the economy (his only accomplishment) while also doing something to fight the virus while also not doing too much to fight the virus. 

I think it's why Trump doesn't wear a mask.  It's also certainly narcissism, but Pence doesn't have that level of narcissism and didn't wear a mask.  I'm guessing he did it to appeal to the people who think it's no big deal.

But I realize that he gets tested all the time and would have great doctors to watch over him...but he could get it if he isn't taking the right precautions.  Boris Johnson is significantly younger and appears healthier (I've seen pictures of him on a bike and on a jog and that's more than I can say about Trump) and he ended up in the ICU.  He's in several of the high-risk categories (heart disease, age, potentially pre-diabetic). 

I'm not saying.  I'm just saying.

The past week is something I hoped to never see in my lifetime.  It's not even something that a show like Sliders took risks with early on.  This is complete madness.  People of all races protesting, others looting, and the rest vandalizing.  To see street fighting between protestors and cops, protestors and loser (mainly white) kids, white kids and cops, just stunning.  Then to have it capped off tonight with the President ordering a tear gassing and rubber bullet shootup of a peaceful protest so he can take a photo op with a book he's never read in front of a Church.