11
AustereScholar 11 points ago +11 / -0

This is supposedly the content of the email he sent out: https://archive.is/TLyvi

I know you don’t want to hear this from me. And I guarantee I don’t want to say it. But we are facing an unprecedented attack on the foundations of democracy itself. If you are a US citizen, anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy.

So, you're fear-mongering over the end of democracy that you also fear-mongered over back in 2016. It was unfounded then and it's still unfounded now despite Trump having four years as President and more than enough time to overthrow democracy if he wanted to.

This is the heart of the issue. Biden believes that enabling more people to vote will help him win. Biden wins by promoting democracy; Trump wins by suppressing it. A vote for Biden is a vote for democracy.

Doesn't explain how Trump is supposedly suppressing the vote.

Also, is Biden wanting to grant citizenship to over 11 million illegals currently in your country an attack on democracy or is it just "enabling more people to vote?"

Do you want your elected official to win based on the merits of their ideas?

You don't care about merit. Your company has diversity and inclusion measures that include continuing "to increase diversity and inclusion, including but not limited to our hiring, retention, and employee care practices."

15
AustereScholar 15 points ago +15 / -0

Same. I'm an Australian and I've heard that term many times before. I think even years before Trump ran for office.

Honestly makes me wonder what these people would think about our term for illegals: boat people. I wonder if they'd also take it literally and think we're talking about human-boat hybrids.

2
AustereScholar 2 points ago +2 / -0

I'm not an American, but I do support Trump because I'd rather the US remain the kingpin of the global order instead of being supplanted by China.

I think Kristen Welker was biased toward Biden right from the get-go when she drilled down into Trump wanting specific answers, but never followed up the same way to Biden for most of his answers. That said, I think it was a better debate overall than the previous one with Chris Wallace. Welker wasn't as openly combative as Wallace was, but she was more sneaky in her framing of questions instead.

I think the two biggest things I noticed were both issues with Biden. The first was Biden trying to deny his involvement with his son's and brother's "business" dealings in Ukraine and China, trying to reverse it onto Trump. He got close to claiming that the laptop/emails were fake, but was interrupted by the moderator.

The second was Biden openly stating he wants a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants. As far as I'm aware, you already did that back in the 80s under Reagan and that was supposed to be the end of illegal immigration. Flash forward ~35 years and now it's being proposed again, this time without the additional claim that it'll be the end of illegal immigration forever.

I don't think it really moved the needle either way unfortunately, though hopefully Biden saying he wants to phase out coal and natural gas turns just enough people that some rust belt states go for Trump again, but I'd very much like to see Trump re-elected because I'd really like a pro-American/anti-Chinese leader going forward as China tries to become more dominant.

19
AustereScholar 19 points ago +19 / -0

The person who said that claims to be a corporate attorney and investment adviser who's also the Chief Deputy Whip for the Georgia House Democrats.

Someone in her replies has the best response:

Saving this exchange for the people who think that education and intelligence are the same thing.

Kek.

3
AustereScholar 3 points ago +3 / -0

It's flipped that many times from being a choice to not being a choice that I've lost count.

9
AustereScholar 9 points ago +9 / -0

Did we need more proof that white leftists and fellow whites view non-whites as the equivalent of pets and fashion accessories?

5
AustereScholar 5 points ago +5 / -0

In my probably horribly butchered pronunciation, "abagadx" sounds like "a bag o' dicks." It's perfect for lawyers.

9
AustereScholar 9 points ago +9 / -0

Yes. Not including nominations which were withdrawn, here's a list of all nominations that happened within presidential election years or after a presidential election had occurred but before the next president had taken office:

George Washington (I) nominated William Cushing for Chief Justice in 1796. The Washington-allied Senate confirmed him, but he declined to be elevated and continued as an Associate Justice.

George Washington (I) nominated Samuel Chase and Oliver Ellsworth in 1796. The Washington-allied Senate confirmed both.

John Adams (F) nominated John Jay in 1800 (after Adams had lost the 1800 election). The Federalist-controlled Senate confirmed him, but he declined to serve.

John Adams (F) nominated John Marshall in 1801 (after Adams had lost the 1800 election). The Federalist-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Thomas Jefferson (DR) nominated William Johnson in 1804. The Democratic-Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.

John Quincy Adams (NR) nominated John J. Crittenden in 1828 (after Adams had lost the 1828 election). The Democrat-controlled Senate postponed the nomination.

Andrew Jackson (D) nominated John Catron and William Smith in 1837 (after the 1837 election in which Jackson wasn't a candidate, but his Vice President Martin Van Buren had won). The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed both (but William Smith declined to serve).

Martin Van Buren (D) nominated Peter Vivian Daniel in 1841 (after Van Buren had lost the 1840 election). The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed him.

John Tyler (I) nominated Edward King and Reuben Walworth in 1844. The Whig-controlled Senate postponed taking action on King's nomination and took no action on Walworth's nomination.

John Tyler (I) nominated Samuel Nelson and John M. Read in 1845 (after the 1844 election in which Tyler wasn't a candidate). The Whig-controlled Senate confirmed him Nelson, but took no action on Read's nomination.

Millard Fillmore (W) nominated Edward A. Bradford in 1852. The Democrat-controlled Senate took no action.

Millard Fillmore (W) nominated William C. Micou in 1853 (after the 1852 election in which Fillmore wasn't renominated by his party and which his party's candidate, Winfield Scott, lost). The Democrat-controlled Senate took no action.

James Buchanan (D) nominated Jeremiah S. Black in 1861 (after the 1860 election in which Buchanan didn't run for re-election). The Democrat-controlled Senate took no action.

Rutherford B. Hayes (R) nominated William Burnham Woods in 1880. The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Rutherford B. Hayes (R) nominated Stanley Matthews in 1881 (after the 1880 election in which Hayes didn't run for re-election). The Democrat-controlled Senate took no action. Matthews was renominated by James A. Garfield (R) and confirmed by the new Republican-controlled Senate in May 1881.

Grover Cleveland (D) nominated Melville Fuller in 1888. The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Benjamin Harrison (R) nominated George Shiras in 1892 and Howell E. Jackson in 1893 (after Harrison had lost the 1892 election). The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed both.

William Howard Taft (R) nominated Mahlon Pitney in 1912. The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Woodrow Wilson (D) nominated Louis Brandeis and John Clarke in 1916. The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed both.

Herbert Hoover (R) nominated Benjamin Cardozo in 1932. The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Franklin Roosevelt (D) nominated Frank Murphy in 1940. The Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed him.

Barack Obama (D) nominated Merrick Garland in 2016. The Republican-controlled Senate took no action.

Donald Trump (R) nominated Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to confirm her.

So, 28 (29 counting Barrett) people have been nominated (and not withdrawn) in a presidential election year or post-election year before the president leaves office.

Of those 28, 19 were confirmed (16 when the Presidency and Senate were aligned, only 3 when they were not (Fuller in 1888, Woods in 1880 and Nelson in 1845)).

Of the 9 that weren't confirmed, 8 occurred when the Presidency and the Senate were opposed. Only 1 occurred when the Presidency and the Senate were aligned (Black in 1861).

Biden's claim is just more bullshit because he doesn't want to answer questions about court packing or his potential nominees. Not only have there been 28-29 nominations in an election year, there's been nominations after an election where the nominating President lost or wasn't running and there's been at least two nominations happen while people are actively voting (John Tyler nominated two candidates on the last day of voting in 1844, but both were withdrawn two months later).

Anyone saying that Republicans shouldn't confirm Barrett now because they refused to confirm Garland back in 2016 also doesn't have history on their side. The last time an opposed Senate confirmed a nominee in an election year was in 1888 and the last time an aligned Senate rejected a nominee in an election year was 1861.

It's just politicking since none of the Democrat activists or elected members would've been hesitant to confirm Garland had they also controlled the Senate during Obama's last year in office.

10
AustereScholar 10 points ago +10 / -0

No, it's a non-answer.

We're not excusing a non-answer just because Kamala isn't white. Liana wouldn't have trotted out an excuse if Pence gave the same non-answer that Kamala did.

10
AustereScholar 10 points ago +10 / -0

Why did Kamala even show up? You could've just replaced her with clips of CNN lead stories for the last 4 years and have gotten the same arguments.

Trump said white supremacists are fine people. Trump called the military suckers. Russia put bounties on US troops. Obama and Biden were responsible for the economy and employment figures right up until the WuFlu and then it was Trump's fault. But Trump also didn't act early enough or harsh enough for the WuFlu. And so on.

Hell, clips of CNN might've even been able to answer some questions like the Biden/Harris' changing stance on fracking, their support for the Green New Deal and whether or not they'd pack the court if they had the Presidency and the Senate. Harris certainly wasn't answering any of those.

But, lol a fly landed on Pence's head. Rekt.

59
AustereScholar 59 points ago +59 / -0

Can our children understand why Rittenhouse, a teenager carrying an AR-15-style rifle, was allowed to walk away from the scene of his alleged crime, past police cars, and return to his home in Illinois, while Jacob Blake was Tasered, shot seven times in the back, left paralyzed and still, until Friday, was handcuffed to his hospital bed while fighting for his life? We do not have enough details to answer that question with certainty, indeed police have offered only some information, but we cannot turn away from our moral obligation to keep asking it.

If they haven't already been ideologically possessed and you give them all of the information, I think many of them could figure it out. It isn't hard. Rittenhouse approached police with his hands up and complied with their orders; Blake had a warrant out for his arrest for violent crimes, didn't comply with officers, actively tried to fight with officers and reached inside of his vehicle in which a knife was later found.

It's really not hard to see a huge difference between those two interactions.

3
AustereScholar 3 points ago +3 / -0

Yeah, RE5's "racism" from 2007 is probably the earliest I remember that's close enough to today's wokescolds. Before that it was mostly focused on violence and some sex, but usually with a "think of the children" angle not a broad social justice one.

Though I'm sure there were probably some feminists screeching about Tomb Raider back in the 90s, I just never saw it.

28
AustereScholar 28 points ago +28 / -0

Frits Bernard

Edward Brongersma

Judith Butler

Jacques Derrida

Harry Hay

Guy Hocquenghem

Alfred Kinsey

John Money

David L. Riegel

Gayle Rubin

David Thorstad

All leftist philosophers, politicians, academics, doctors, authors, "gender/queer theorists" and/or activists who were either explicitly pro-pedophilia, tried to make a distinction between "affectional pedophilia" and "sadistic pedophilia" (essentially arguing that non-violent pedophilia is acceptable because the children consented and were focused on love not sex), or at the very least refused to distance themselves from pedophile activists.

23
AustereScholar 23 points ago +23 / -0

Shh...

Anyway, here's another one I don't recall TentElephant posting:

While today the very possibility of consent before puberty is polemic – often raising emotional responses and leaving intellectuals in a defensive position, in 1977–1978 Foucault, Hocquenghem and Danet admitted openly and with naturalness the idea of a non-abusive pedophilia. The 1977 petition refers to all ages below the age of consent in France (fifteen), including the ages before puberty.

Both Foucault and Hocquenghem agreed that consent is a contractual notion. "This notion of consent is a trap, in any case. What is sure is that the legal form of an intersexual consent is nonsense. No one signs a contract before making love", said Hocquenghem.

"When we say that children are 'consenting' in these cases, all we intend to say is this: in any case, there was no violence, or organized manipulation in order to wrench out of them affective or erotic relations", he completed.

  • Guy Hocquenghem, Sexual Morality and the Law (radio)
29
AustereScholar 29 points ago +29 / -0

"Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boylovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation."

  • Gayle Rubin, Thinking Sex

"It is not necessary to figure parent-child incest as a unilateral impingement on the child by the parent, since whatever impingement takes place will also be registered within the sphere of fantasy. In fact, to understand the violation that incest can be and also to distinguish between those occasions of incest that are violation and those that are not ­it is unnecessary to figure the body of the child exclusively as a surface imposed upon from the outside... The reification of the child’s body as passive surface would thus constitute, at a theoretical level, a further deprivation of the child: the deprivation of psychic life."

  • Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

"But, after all, listening to a child, hearing him speak, hearing him explain what his relations actually were with someone, adult or not, provided one listens with enough sympathy, must allow one to establish more or less what degree of violence if any was used or what degree of consent was given. And to assume that a child is incapable of explaining what happened and was incapable of giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, quite unacceptable."

  • Michel Foucault, The Danger of Child Sexuality
8
AustereScholar 8 points ago +8 / -0

This explains a lot, especially the ones who failed incredibly basic pattern recognition and couldn't repeat a short sentence verbatim immediately after hearing it.

2
AustereScholar 2 points ago +2 / -0

We need to wait at least a year or more to see what its legs are like (presuming we even get numbers).

Take the first one on PS3 for an example. It sold 1.3 million worldwide in its first week, hit 3.4 million after three weeks and then 7 million after 14 months. Its PS4 port did 1 million in its first month and combined with the PS3 version is now at more than 20 million (though a good chunk of those would've been bundled sales since it was bundled with both PS3 and PS4 consoles in various regions (both officially by Sony and unofficially by retailers)).

So far we know TLOU2 sold 4 million in its first three days, and it's sold enough in dollar sales by mid-August to be the third highest-selling PS4 release in the US (not too surprising since it's a major IP and hasn't been heavily bundled like Uncharted 4 was), but we haven't gotten concrete sales figures since.

Like others here, I don't think it'll be a financial failure, but I think it'll do damage to both future entries and future Naughty Dog games in general.

7
AustereScholar 7 points ago +7 / -0

Interesting that the only time the media and Democratic establishment blew him was when he bombed Syria. Everything else, including pardoning a figure they'd usually celebrate, is just met with "orange man bad."

7
AustereScholar 7 points ago +7 / -0

Nikki Haley (former Governor of South Carolina and former UN Ambassador in Trump's administration) is the one that gets the most attention. She's not the worst, but there's better male candidates imo.

I don't think there's really any other female Republican viable for 2024 right now. There's some that could probably rise to being viable to at least run by then like Senators Joni Ernst, Martha McSally and Kelly Loeffler, Representative Elise Stefanik and Governor Kristi Noem, but I don't know.

6
AustereScholar 6 points ago +6 / -0

Why did we need to wait until mid-August to learn this when Biden/Harris was basically the favorite pairing of the media and establishment since before the race even started?

3
AustereScholar 3 points ago +3 / -0

I'm terrified of Patrick Klepek. Will he remove himself from public life to prevent me from ever having to stumble upon him so that I can finally feel safe and included?

6
AustereScholar 6 points ago +6 / -0

When this first happened there was a slightly longer tape than what most media outlets were showing that showed some footage of Floyd struggling against the officers trying to get him into the car.

That alone to me suggested that he was resisting. And now seeing the full footage where the officers try to reason with him and get him to comply for 10 minutes is vindicating. As I've maintained from day one, had he just complied and got in the car, he'd likely still be alive (on his way to prison again, but alive).

I hope more people watch this and realise they've been hoodwinked (again), but I'm too cynical to believe that'll be the case.

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