US Politics, February 2020. They want to kill your cows.

Not in reference to anything in particular (and I know before I ask that the answer is basically just 'tribalism') but how is it that there are people sufficiently credulous to believe that someone who demonstrably and pathologically lies to everyone about everything and is demonstrably and pathologically self-interested is honest with them and has their best interests at heart? Like you'd think even a dog would've figured this shit out by now.

i suspect they dont really stop to think about his individual decisions making a dif to _them_. he is just the icon for the side. creditable for all, amazingly culpable for nothing. thinks the party will ensure things stay orderly, to his interest and understanding.

I think of the georgia trumpy jackass whose wife was deported. Not until that line really really really connects to trump hisself will he change jackshit.

Manchin is a vote to convict

so is romney

so Roberts declared that Trump is not guilty on Article 1
if 48% of a jury votes guilty that's not generally a complete exoneration

seems like "not removed" would be more apt

Evidence is not the basis for the vote

I guess after Kavanaugh, the most naked demonstration that politics is exclusively about power and principle plays no part

Nihilism ftw.

I made a solemn oath before God to always defend the principle of maintaining a thin veneer of "decency"

If only the media thought this was a worthwhile narrative, as compared to "we poked the bad guy in the nose - USA! USA!".

Aimless OTM

I guess if the real issue is legitimate concern for his mental fitness, that's not conveyed very well by lulz tweets about "He direderd the December dersalt."

The point wasn't "lulz he gets words wrong bcz he's dumb," it was him experiencing two consecutive full-body spasms that interfered with his ability to form words. I know there's precedent, but it still seems non-ideal for the executive branch of the government to be extensively covering up for the sole elected element of it having a suite of medical issues that make it non-functional, if that's what's happening.

(everyone sure proved that they want to talk about actual actions taken by the US government rather than the President's neurological condition or general assholishness, by diverting to discuss the implications of CBP's exclusion from FOIA, and the eradication of archives as a basic concept, instead though. point made!)

he did manage to read out a very long, prepared speech to millions of people, live

luv u Z and there's genuinely no reason why you should remember that I've been saying the same thing itt since September 2016, but this was just hours ago tbfttm

For the third time, “body spasms” are not a symptom of dementia. Please stop with this bullshit. The guy is a narcissist asshole and clearly his mental state and diction are flaky, but he does not have dementia or any other neurological illness unless diagnosed by somebody competent. To say otherwise is denigrating to people who actually live with these diseases.

to clarify - it’s absolutely fine to hate this piece of shit, just please stop trying to medicalise or pathologise your opinion as if it’s based on something other than his shitty personal qualities

lol

ftr these aren't my socks

dementia

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone),

dementia

― But guess what? Nobody gives a toot!😂 (Karl Malone), Thursday, February 6, 2020 3:16 AM

"dementia"

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, February 6, 2020 3:36 AM (five hours ago)

For a dementia patient

― treeship., Thursday, February 6, 2020 4:08 AM (five hours ago)

experiencing two consecutive full-body spasms that interfered with his ability to form words

It's fair that "interfered" is my inference, but I'm just describing what I actually see, and saying it's concerning. I am absolutely not attempting to diagnose anyone, except in that one post upthread where I checked the specific term, and strive to be clear when I make observations about the dude's behaviour that these are observations.

I don't mean to be dismissive, Matthew, and appreciate you concern for precision. Please substitute "that coincided with a sudden inability to form words in each instance."

To explain further, I am a researcher and postgrad lecturer in dementia. Aside from the diseases themselves, the number one thing which blights the lives of people with dementia is the fear and stigma of dementia. To effectively say "I disagree with this piece of shit, and I can't fathom the mindset that would allow that kind of amoral narcissistic corruption, thus I think it's reasonable to think that he might have dementia" and go looking for "evidence", is precisely the reason why people with dementia become isolated and shunned by society. Sorry to climb on my hobby horse but this is a major fucking problem.
I also think that medicalising and pathologising an individual is to ignore the moral crisis of a political system whose highest principle is to get and maintain power, and to say and do whatever is necessary to achieve that, period. There's your pathology.

For the third time, “body spasms” are not a symptom of dementia. Please stop with this bullshit

(also, as I noted the first time that you called me out for somebody who wasn't me saying this, and I googled it out of curiosity, the Mayo Clinic disagrees. I just tried again on DDG, and they're the first result there, too. if there's another thread worth talking about this on, or you want to ILXmail me, I'm honestly interested in hearing about your experience or knowledge or w/e, even if it's just to shout at me.)

xpost!

I appreciate that, and I can assure you that posts I've made in the last five months about things that he has physically done on television in that time are separate to having thought this guy was a loathsome prick, with one of the most repugnant worldviews possible, since I first encountered him in an American comic strip as a child in 1986, and read about the real person in order to try and get the jokes.

After our president's rapid rush to Walter Reed for a fairly recent and wholly unscheduled "routine physical", it does seem within reason to think he may have somewhat serious health problems that are being concealed from the public, but poring over 30 second snippets of video carefully selected by people who are selling a particular kind of characterization of what these purport to show seems like an unreliable method of informing oneself about the presence of, or nature of, his possible maladies.

xp "spasm" in the Mayo Clinic advice refers to sustained tension that prevents movement, a spasm is in clinical terms. You're referring to a rapid jerking motion which is called a clonic jerk. I mentioned this earlier too.

"spasm is in clinical"

easier to look for that moment on Rupar's feed after seeing it in ten minutes of the speech you catch on TV, and link that here, than to tell the thread to travel back in time and have their housemate happen to leave the TV on when they go out, then to all come home themselves at the same time and not switch over to music before taking off their coats and shoes and putting their bags away and turning the stove on and starting a pot boiling, imo

clonic jerk

thanks - apologies for missing it before.

matthewk respect, seriously.

still, trump is to most who’ve seen prior footage, fucked up vs his condition 10 years ago +. Whatever you know it not to be, that’s great to share. avoiding incorrect application of diagnostic terms is nice. I believe that yes, his biggest problem remains he’s an evil-ass jerk.

And still in this case, and in this specific case only, just as in Bush v Gore— so. What. It merits correction and little more imo.

(I did help walk an old guy thru 5 years of diagnosed alzheimers until his death1.5 yrs ago. he was in declining stages prior to diagnosis. he never ever had what you helpfully label clonic jerks. Most normals correctly guessed his diagnosis around his 2 year mark post diagnosis. So. What. Way way before he was in hospice, the opinions of others mattered to him not at all, and it did not affect his treatment. And he was not in any office).

For the record, lest it seem like I think sic is a bad person or anything like it, my only issue is with people saying "hey this guy is a total fuck who acts in ways which make no sense to me, hmmm that means it could be dementia". Even if you think there is something medically wrong with him, being an asshole, or stupid, or throwing tantrums or even spewing a bunch of rhetoric which makes no sense when parsed but which is really just cant to fire up his support base, is not part of an overall picture suggesting dementia. People's behaviour changes when they have dementia, for sure, but there are many many reasons for people to rant and rave which are not dementia. Trump's stupidity and inappropriate behaviours are very easily explained by his well established narcissism, lack of knowledge, profound apathy toward others' needs, egocentrism, lifetime of privilege and a complete lack of consequences for asshole behaviour. His occasional physical twitches and speech stumbles are likewise most easily explained by fatigue, stress, and god knows what stimulants he uses to reach his exalted plane of self belief. I'm in my forties and I have glitched out in the middle of sentences when I am tired and stressed and lecturing to large groups of people - and I'm not doing rails of Adderall.
tl;dr sic is generally a stand-up guy and I am trying to draw a huge, clear line between dementia and the behaviour of an amoral sociopath

also Hunt3r the stigma of dementia has a massive effect on the carers and families of people who have dementia - their friends shy away and they end up walking a very hard road without much support. That's why I get fired up about it. I'll stop preaching now.

yeah i hear you man. there are prejudices re actual illness that are so harmful to the treatment, therapy, patient communities that one feels moral AND professional obligations to denounce or clarify.

on a much less substantive basis, me flipping out every time anyone calls the Ukraine call report a “transcript.” til i die. 🙄

these things actually matter

imo not always, such as a political discussion in which the nature of the affliction—whatever its cause—is a disqualification from office, and which disqualification, regardless the cause, necessitates immediate removal from office. it’s a clear and present danger.

ha i either sound like butti whom i dislike or a narc which, lol.

Listening to Moscow Mitch's voice is somehow even worse than to Trump's

even the stables will be Romanesque when New Caligula gets a horse

The New York Times reports:

Should every new government building in the nation’s capital be created in the same style as the White House? A draft of an executive order called “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” would establish a classical style, inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, as the default for federal buildings in Washington and many throughout the country, discouraging modern design.

The order, spearheaded by the National Civic Art Society, a nonprofit group that believes contemporary architecture has “created a built environment that is degraded and dehumanizing,” would rewrite the current rules that govern the design of office buildings, headquarters, and courthouses, or any federal building project contracted through the General Services Administration that costs over $50 million.

oh nice, trump has really good taste in design, very hopeful for what he picks out

contemporary architecture has “created a built environment that is degraded and dehumanizing,”

'degenerate' was right there

we should take some of these brutalist buildings and make them 10,000% tacky

one word: mosaics

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

Bitecofer’s theory, when you boil it down, is that modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place. To her critics, she’s an extreme apostle of the old saw that “turnout explains everything,” taking a long victory lap after getting lucky one time. She sees things slightly differently: That the last few elections show that American politics really has changed, and other experts have been slow to process what it means.

The classic view is that the pool of American voters is basically fixed: About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of “swing voters” who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side.

Bitecofer has a nickname for this view. She calls it, with disdain, the “Chuck Todd theory of American politics”: “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment.”

this article is relevant to the architecture talk

https://www.thedailybeast.com/second-trump-ghostwriter-says-he-was-lousy-at-business-bored-and-obsessed-with-carpet-swatches

Charles Leerhsen, ghostwriter of Surviving at the Top, has written an account for Yahoo News about the time he spent observing Trump for the book. He paints a picture of a lazy, ill-tempered man who was out of his depth when it came to business. In fact, his main contribution to his businesses seemed to be choosing carpets.

Leerhsen wrote that Trump was neither terrified about the scale of his losses nor, as the president claimed Wednesday, carrying out a Machiavellian plan to make sure he didn’t have to pay income tax. He was just bored.

“Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day—which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches,” said the ghostwriter. “Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his ‘French military helicopter’ to Atlantic City—where he looked at more fabric swatches.”

According to Leerhsen, Trump's obsession with carpets and curtains appeared to stem from his lack of understanding of much more important business decisions. The writer recounted one decision Trump reportedly made that exposed his complete lack of ability as a businessman.

Re: Bitcofer. She could be right as rain, but her model would need to predict more than one or two elections for me to read that article and not hear strong echoes of "He predicted the 2008 crash in 2006, now hear where he thinks the DOW is going in 2021!" clickbait.

inclined to agree re: the breathless hype, but I think her underlying logic is very solid. swing voters are a myth.

Hmm, I'm undecided as to the wisdom of her claims, perhaps I will await a strong breeze to blow me in one of two directions.

heh

i do think there are sincere swing voters. they're all complete morons obviously. i guess the question is/are 1) are there enough for them to be worth worrying about 2) are there more of them and are they more easily activated than non-voters. land of contrasts stuff i know.

i don't care about the predicitive accuracy of her particular model, but the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kFUNJ2TA9II/maxresdefault.jpg

oh yeah that asshole

Andy Reid crossed with Mr Rogers crossed with Joe the Plumber

the basic thesis seems clear and plausible.

To the extent she is right about turnout being the be-all and end-all, it's not like either party thinks that GOTV isn't a critical part of winning elections already. I guess they could channel more resources from running ads into organizing GOTV, but part of GOTV is giving voters the idea that they need to vote and why. iow motivation matters and campaigns build that motivation over time. So, exactly how to turn her basic thesis into a more practical strategy is not entirely clear to me.

fair. i guess if it's correct it helps you figure out which voters *not* to chase.

i assume low info voters, ideologues or not, boil down to tribal prejudice stacked to terrible, misapplied risk mgmt heuristics.

Since this does not add anything i am not writing a book.

imho chasing racist suburban wine moms who think trump is tacky or never trump conservatives who write opinions for nyt & wapo seems like a bad idea but i'm not a data guy