Dont believe your Eyes.....

[RockyRoadTravel]

13 minutes ago, unicorn said:

It's called patient confidentiality/privacy. I find it hard to believe you've never heard of this. Health care personnel can only release information with the patient's consent. Is this not general knowledge?

How can I put this?  Duh. Yes, of course.  For you and I, neither of who have chosen to be public representatives.   

However, this is a public attack on a public figure being guarded by public servants. Did you know that patient confidentiality/privacy can be waived in the public's interest?  Not that the defeated former President ever gave a shit about the public's interest (Americans are still waiting on the tax returns). 

[unicorn]

2 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

... Did you know that patient confidentiality/privacy can be waived in the public's interest?...

Only in extreme cases are medical personnel released from HIPPA/confidentiality laws. For example, if someone were to reveal to his physician that he intended to kill someone (or himself), or if there is child/spousal/elder abuse, confidentiality does go out the window. Unfortunately, outing a liar, while perhaps in the public's best interest, doesn't qualify. Trump has spouted the most awful lies about his health. Certainly, in my mind, the man's a public danger. However, if I were his physician, and I were to point out his lies, even if the lies were about things I reportedly said (but did not), I would be subject to both civil and criminal liability. At the very least, I suspect my license would be put on probation, if not suspended, and there would certainly be lots of requirements to get out of the mess, such as taking ethics courses, and so on. The exceptions are requirements to report any suspicion of child/elder/spousal abuse, and Tarasoff warning to protect those in immediate danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasoff_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California

[RockyRoadTravel]

5 hours ago, unicorn said:

Only in extreme cases are medical personnel released from HIPPA/confidentiality laws. For example, if someone were to reveal to his physician that he intended to kill someone (or himself), or if there is child/spousal/elder abuse, confidentiality does go out the window. Unfortunately, outing a liar, while perhaps in the public's best interest, doesn't qualify. Trump has spouted the most awful lies about his health. Certainly, in my mind, the man's a public danger. However, if I were his physician, and I were to point out his lies, even if the lies were about things I reportedly said (but did not), I would be subject to both civil and criminal liability. At the very least, I suspect my license would be put on probation, if not suspended, and there would certainly be lots of requirements to get out of the mess, such as taking ethics courses, and so on. The exceptions are requirements to report any suspicion of child/elder/spousal abuse, and Tarasoff warning to protect those in immediate danger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasoff_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California

I expect that the HIPPA regulations are well known by anyone who has any involvement with the medical system, they are to me. The point I was making is that Trump, the patient involved who we are talking about, could/should waive his own patient confidentiality and allow the medical personnel to speak publicly. I guess I needed to be specific about that in my previous post, sigh.  

In any case it would be good to know from the medical personnel involved what specific injury happened.  It might help tamp down the silliest of the conspiracy theories. 

[unicorn]

39 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

... The point I was making is that Trump, the patient involved who we are talking about, could/should waive his own patient confidentiality...

Trump, give up an opportunity to spout lies? You can't be serious.

 

[stevenkesslar]

7 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

However, this is a public attack on a public figure being guarded by public servants.

Exactly.   You can see JFK's head being blown off on film. And, notwithstanding HIPPA,  you can go online and also see JFK's naked body with the bullet hole in his back. I'm glad I don't have to see that in Trump's case, both for Trump's sake and mine.

Had Trump not turned his head, or had the bullet been an inch more in one direction, I think we'd all have the misfortune of seeing the gore.  

So it's interesting that these days anyone curious can do this on a computer now.  I'm guessing this amateur video is more precise than some of the work done by the Warren Commission, before we had computers.

This explains some things.  While this is just some amateur, it suggests Trump was grazed by a bullet, which then when right into that big yellow hydraulic lift.  Which caused obvious and immediate impacts - oil shooting out where the bullet pierced it.  To be blunt, thank God it was oil rather than Trump's brain gushing out.

I assumed the guy killed and the guys injured were on that far right bleacher, and they were in the line of fire that would have hit Trump had he not gone down quickly.  But, actually, they were not.  As the video explains, the second two bullets were way off, if Trump was the target.  The amateur's theory is by the time the second two bullets were fired the shooter had been hit by snipers.  We'll probably all eventually know.

There is something obviously wrong here, as is discussed briefly in this video.  It sounds like there were a few minutes between when it was clear there was a guy with a gun on a roof, and when Trump was shot.  So why wasn't the shooter taken out, or Trump removed?  People looking for a conspiracy should and are going there.  And one answer, which the amateur speculates, could be that Trump is the kind of guy who doesn't like to be told what to do.  That said, if there is a guy with a gun on a roof, and the Secret Service knows it, there is no good explanation for why they let Trump go on for two minutes until he was almost killed.

That said, from my perspective, there is also no good reason why this should not convince Congress to pass common sense gun restrictions, including an assault weapons ban, which most Americans support.  But don't hold your breath for that, either.  Sometimes even smart professionals just do dumb shit.

The idea that this was somehow an inside job to help Trump by making him look like a martyr makes no sense.  He is lucky not to be dead.  And one other Trump supporter did die.  It would make more sense to speculate that maybe the Deep State wanted Trump dead.  But that makes no sense, either.  The CIA was behind this?  Why?  How?  I suppose I could come up with a theory for why that made sense, if I had to.  But it would be really illogical and dumb.

So my takeaway is that there is some good news here.  And I'll say it this way.  Whether the target was Trump or Harris, the good news is what seems obvious is that this was just one lone nut that should have been stopped, but wasn't. Because the Secret Service and local cops were incompetent.  End of story.

That's not good.  But I can live with that better than I can live with the idea that for at least a decade or so, from 1963 to 1973, we actually did have a Deep State - the CIA, the FBI, working with the mafia - that actually did impact the course of history by taking out JFK, RFK, and MLK.  I believe that.  I believe they then used the "lone nut" theory to cover up a massive conspiracy.   I think probably a majority of Americans do.  I think the CIA got away with it in 1963, so they did it again when they saw RFK and MLK as threats.  And I say 1963 to 1973 or so because the first thing that really shut the CIA show down was the Congressional investigations, including of those assassinations, after Watergate and all the dirty tricks of the CIA started to come out.  Then there was a house cleaning.

One final point, which I will continue in a second post.  Part of the way to smell something is wrong is the stuff about the bullets.  In the case of Trump, everything we know about the bullet makes sense.  That video, albeit by an amateur, confirms the idea that one bullet grazed Trump's ear and then thankfully took out a truck, basically.  In the case of JFK and RFK, after decades of debate and investigation, we're still left with the idea that bullets are magic, and did things they could not possibly do.

I know this is about Trump, not the Kennedys.  But I spent a few hours revisiting the JFK/RFK rabbit holes, to remind myself of what I thought I knew.  And also to see if there is anything new that we did know before.  So I will put that trip down nightmare lane in a separate post.

[stevenkesslar]

So fuck both of you guys to getting into bullet rabbit holes!   You made me go down dark rabbits holes again.  😉

I think maybe five years ago I spent most of a weekend going down the JFK/RFK/MLK rabbit hole.  It was not fun.  First, it's about death and gore.  Second, where it leads is the idea that we have this right wing secret government led by the CIA and FBI and built around the special interests of oil men or other corporate interests or right wing anti-Commie zealots.

To me - and I think to a majority of Americans - these assassination theories are a little like the "Joe Biden is old" thing.  It's hard to convince people not to believe what they can see and hear.  So I think most people feel that way about the 60's assassinations.  The official theories just don't add up.  In large part because of obvious things you can see and hear yourselves.

So today I went down the rabbit holes again to see if there is anything new.  Especially after Biden released most, but not all, of the still secret CIA documents that were actually ALL supposed to be released in 2017, by law.  (That law was passed after Stone's JFK created an uproar.  So even after waiting another few decades, the CIA is still sabotaging public disclosure.)  Trump delayed the release of many documents in 2017.   And Biden also delayed the release of over 4,000 documents, and let the CIA decide whether they will ever release them. 

So this is a bipartisan Presidential defense of the CIA.  

My view for a long time has been -duh! - the CIA of course won't release documents, because they have something to hide.  They were in on the conspiracies.  Beyond that, even if somehow all the documents were released, I think we still would not know the truth.  Because we also know for a fact that the CIA, among other agencies like the Secret Service, destroyed lots of documents from the assassinations.  We're learning again on Trump that they don't like being looked into.  

I wouldn't mind if both Trump and Biden supporters went after the Deep State and demanded they disclose all their dirty secrets of the last half century or so.

The only thing that the Trump debacle makes me think slightly differently about the CIA and Secret Service is that it seems obvious enough that they are hiding their involvement in a conspiracy, even half a century later.  But it is possible that what they are hiding is less malevolent:  that they are incompetent.  Like I said above, it seems like their failure with Trump was incompetence, not a conspiracy.

But in case anyone is interested I will sum up what I just relearned about JFK and RFK, 99 % of which I knew already.

The most unbelievable thing about the JFK assassination to me is the idea that Oswald was not an employee or an asset of the CIA.  There are way too many CIA connections with Oswald and his close friends and associates over way too long a period of years.  This interview with a JFK conspiracy expert, Jefferson Morley, is done after Biden's release of most of the remaining documents.  And he makes the point that most of what we learn from the ones Biden released is more about Oswald.  Which is not the simple "lone nut" view of Oswald put forward by the Warren Commission. 

Morley states clearly that he (like Harry Truman, LBJ, Nixon, and Jackie Kennedy) thinks the evidence we have points to a conspiracy.  And that Oswald was, as he claimed in the little time he had before he was silenced, "a patsy".  But he also adds that it is quite possible the CIA is simply trying to cover up their incompetence in letting someone they were following closely for years kill JFK.  That said, to me their is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that for years Oswald was close to all kinds of people that were CIA assets.  Including, as I posted above, oil man Col. Byrd, who just happened to own the building Oswald happened to work in for a few weeks and from which he shot JFK.

Unlike with Trump, this is where the bullet theory also just makes no sense.  When I did my deep dive years ago, I watched a number of videos that asserted that a "magic bullet" could have shot Kennedy in the back, then Connally in the back, hand, and leg.  That is basically what you have to believe to believe the "lone nut" theory that Hoover and LBJ told the Warren Commission upfront was the only conclusion that was possible to reach. 

The JFK Assassination made simple —using video evidence and doctors' testimony

The only problem with the official theory, which I don't think people believed even in 1964, is that people believe what they see themselves - just like with Biden's age.   This video is also a nice five minute summary.  Because both Connally and his wife insisted that the Allen Dulles/Warren Commission one bullet theory was wrong.  And you can see on video that Connally appears to be hit at the same time JFK was fatally wounded, when he slumped forward.  As his wife, who was sitting next to him, said, it doesn't make sense that one magic bullet sat in the air for five seconds after it hits JFK before it entered her husband's body.  There had to be another bullet, and another shooter.

There's no way to prove this now, of course.  Which I think was the point.  There is plenty of evidence from witnesses who saw the Kennedy assassinations that the CIA, as well as local Dallas (JFK) and LA (RFK) cops bullied witnesses who did not agree with the official version of events to change their stories.  I think what we have learned time and again since with the CIA is that they are perfectly wiling to lie to Congress and the public.  Knowing that if they tell the lie long enough it will be the truth.  Or at least anyone or any document that could prove them wrong will be long gone.

Thane Eugene Cesar has passed away

That thread, on a mixed martial arts forum of all places, is also an interesting treasure trove of YouTube videos and reports on the RFK assassination rabbit hole, if you want to go down it. 

I think part of what worked for the CIA with JFK, if you want to believe in a CIA conspiracy, is that they were at least able to alter or destroy evidence that could have confirmed something other than their official explanation.  Starting with having one of the prime suspects, the CIA Director JFK fired, Allen Dulles, run the Warren Commission.  You at least can argue their magic bullet theory is the only plausible explanation, if you don't want to believe in a conspiracy/ With RFK there is what appears to be a truly unsolvable problem. The forensics doctors said the fatal bullet was fired into his head from about 1 to 3 inches away, from behind.  And Sirhan, the alleged assassin, was by the accounts of all witnesses at least a few feet away from RFK, and in front of him.  Unlike the JFK magic bullet theory, there is no reasonable explanation for how Sirhan could have shot RFK from right behind him.

A lot of the suspicious and unexplained things are the same as JFK.  The guy the post is about, Cesar, was the security guard right behind RFK.  Who, like Oswald, was working a job he had only worked at for a few weeks.  Multiple witnesses said he was standing right behind RFK, and they saw him with his gun aimed.  He told what were later determined to be multiple lies about the gun he was carrying, as is documented in that thread.  Cesar was never investigated.  The two cops who led the LAPD investigation were also connected to the CIA, and bullied multiple witnesses who did not agree with the "lone nut" theory, based on what they actually saw or heard, into going with the official version.  Also documented in that thread, if you are interested.

So over half of century later we're left with all kinds of magic bullets and loose ends.  Including things like E. Howard Hunt's supposed confession to his sons that he was in fact part of the JFK assassination conspiracy.  The MO, true or false, is always the same:  maintain plausible deniability, wear people down, and run out the clock until everyone who could dispute what actually happened dies.  And if someone comes forward (like Hunt, or Loyd Jowers, who says he was involved in a conspiracy to kill MLK) just say they must be crazy, too.

I'll end my rabbit hole diatribe repeating what I started with.   If the worst thing Americans have to deal with now is the incompetence of the CIA or Secret Service, that is almost a nice problem to have.   I'd rather have them be incompetent than be a highly competent band of assassins who kill leaders around the world, including US Presidents and Presidential candidates and movement leaders, and then spend the rest of their lives denying it.

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

This guy Mike Bell who posted the model of the assassination attempt I posted above did this update after getting more information a few days later.   There were more shots than he initially knew.

Trump really was lucky.   In JFK's case, since the alleged "lone nut" Oswald was using a rifle, there was only time to get off a few shots - if you believe the lone shooter theory.  The RFK assassination allegedly was only Sirhan, whose gun could fire eight shots.  And yet there was evidence of 13 bullets, which has never been explained.

In Trump's case, at least so far, it appears that the number of bullets shot and the trajectory all line up with a loan shooter.  The question is not how the guy managed to clip Trump's ear.  It's how did Trump manage to survive when the number of bullets fired was more than adequate to kill JFK and RFK?

[RockyRoadTravel]

9 hours ago, unicorn said:

Trump, give up an opportunity to spout lies? You can't be serious.

 

Sigh 

[Riobard]

12 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

I expect that the HIPPA regulations are well known by anyone who has any involvement with the medical system, they are to me. The point I was making is that Trump, the patient involved who we are talking about, could/should waive his own patient confidentiality and allow the medical personnel to speak publicly. I guess I needed to be specific about that in my previous post, sigh.  

In any case it would be good to know from the medical personnel involved what specific injury happened.  It might help tamp down the silliest of the conspiracy theories. 

You obviously grasp that an unsolicited lecture may pop on to the podium. By now it should be common knowledge that this prompter is what is seen whether or not entered. Bugs is, after all, the higher life form. 

[RockyRoadTravel]

10 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

So fuck both of you guys to getting into bullet rabbit holes!   You made me go down dark rabbits holes again. 😉

 

 

 

You are most welcome. We wouldn't want you to be free and clear of rabbit holes. If you start sprouting a tail, post photos. 

[stevenkesslar]

42 minutes ago, Riobard said:

You obviously grasp that an unsolicited lecture may pop on to the podium.

Well, lectures aside, I'll focus the Trump attempted assassination on one question:  what would a conspiracy theory that makes any sense whatsoever even sound like in this case?

Here's a nice summary written a few days afterward of the main conspiracy theories that were floating around.   They boiled down to two options:  left wing extreme, or right wing extreme.

Left wing extreme requires believing that Trump would almost have himself killed, and kill and injure several of his most loyal supporters, because it was a publicity stunt.  That's pretty far out there.  I'm guessing nobody cares much about Trump's ear because they are just happy he survived. It makes no sense he would order his own fake assassination.  And we all just want to move on and hope this never happens again.

Right wing extreme makes more sense, in that you can at least plausibly argue Joe Biden and some anti-MAGA or anti-Trump left wing Deep State wanted to take their opposition out.   So now, what?  Instead of Texas oil men and anti-Commies taking out JFK, we have AOC and Bernie and the socialist Deep State taking out Trump?  I suppose I could see how some of the most extremely fringe Proud Boys might actually believe that.  But it is absurd.

One thing that is kind of interesting about this, in a darkly conspiratorial way, is back in early 2021 there actually were some articles that pointed out, maybe correctly, that the kind of people who work in the Secret Service, law and order types, are naturally MAGA types.  So they tend to like Trump.  And the idea was that Biden maybe should watch his back, because he may be surrounded by Secret Service who really would rather see Trump be President.  

Joe Biden to have new Secret Service team amid concern about Trump loyalty

There were actually articles written about that at the time, as you can see.  Note that article was written about a week before January 6, 2021.  Which only heightened concern about the willingness of some people to engage in political violence to get their way.

Just reading articles like that was disturbing.  I did spend hours yesterday reviewing videos about the JFK and RFK assassinations.  It is just really icky to think about the possibility of some vast conspiracy where my own government is taking out our own leaders - whether that leader is a Republican or a Democrat.  I hope the outcome of this is we all can all decide that is not what anyone wants.  And that, is this case, that is not what actually happened.

I know how I feel personally. Everything around that period just a few weeks ago was DEPRESSING.  Trump playing martyr at his own convention.  Biden looking old and losing.  Oh, and now we are back to assassinations. 

So it could not be more different today.  To quote Tim Walz, THANK YOU for bringing the joy back.  It's actually good news that right now both Republicans and Democrats feel highly motivated to vote for leaders they like.  That's the America I want to live in.

[Riobard]

51 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

You are most welcome. We wouldn't want you to be free and clear of rabbit holes. If you start sprouting a tail, post photos. 

May this be any more precise catastrophic scene representation that occurs regarding His Wormwort. Watership Down! Watership Down!

[stevenkesslar]

36 minutes ago, Riobard said:

May this be any more precise catastrophic scene representation that occurs regarding His Wormwort. Watership Down! Watership Down!

Well, not that I ever make it about me.   😲   But, if we are making it about me, I like Bugs Bunny better.

But if we are gong to rabbits, I have to add this:

It is one of my favorite organizing principles.  Alinsky said a similar thing in a different way, "The action is in the reaction."  Sometimes the best thing to do is to let people do the thing you know is actually going to help you, but they are too slow-witted to figure out. 

Trump is a master at being just such a dumb ass.  As poor frustrated Republican Alex Castellanos keeps saying, Trump is the only Republican POTUS candidate who can lose in a race against himself.  And now, here we go again.

And there is a pretty good example mostly related to Trump's attempted assassination.   I am actually curious why, right now, his disapproval rating (51.6 %, compared to 48.5 % for Harris) is lower than it has ever been.   As long as over half of America does not disapprove of Harris, but does disapprove of Trump, that is good math for Democrats.

I am assuming some of the reason Trump is less disliked than pretty much ever is the attempted assassination.   Maybe it did give him this almost magical aura of dominance or invincibility.  Or maybe it just humanized him to people who don't like him.  

So the Brer Rabbit principle here is "Please.  Don't let Donald Trump go out there and play martyr.  Don't let him go out there and talk for an hour - or over an hour and a half at the RNC - about how he came to save us.  And of course we just recognize that intuitively.  And we want to hear him tell us how his opponents are the most awful people ever, especially dumb women like Hillary and Kamala, and he came to save us from them."  

He had about 20 good minutes in his acceptance speech.  And the rest of it proved that all this stuff about the new and improved and unifying Donald Trump who was changed by an assassin's bullet is just total bullshit.  So, please, don't send Donald Trump out to press conferences at Mar A Lago or debates with Harris and let him tell us how he is an almost assassinated martyr that came to save us!  That would be the worst thing ever!

If he does what I think he will do and his disapproval ratings go back up to 53 or 54 or 55 % or so, who could have guessed?

 

[Riobard]

Sympathy is awarded as punitive damages, but predictable incoherence can infect the magnitude of allocation of it in unpredictable ways. The most potent reference points as anchoring effect for sympathy in this case are USA assassination history along with the blessing of survival that would impel humility for most, and a present worse off contextual comparator, namely the tragic death of an innocent rally attendee, the chap that got in the way of a bullet meant for bottled blonde.

The latter is quickly forgotten. A savvy person could have subsequently started presentations with a sobering moment of silence, anchoring the prospect of toned down rhetoric, and an average person would not seem disingenuous doing so.  Paradoxically, would distract from the mere ear scratch while upgrading existential damages evocative of relatable identification sympatico, underscoring the debt everybody pays.

Just a few seconds at every mic. A ploy squandered. Too late now. Sure, some of us would rush to the vomitorium (popular misconception I know) but that’s beside the point.

[stevenkesslar]

42 minutes ago, Riobard said:

the chap that got in the way of a bullet meant for bottled blonde.

If it were me, there is something that sounds truly horrific about, "Took A Bullet For The Bottled Blonde."  If we're being blunt, who would want that on their gravestone?

I think what they did at the RNC was appropriate, and tasteful. Credit it to Susie Wiley and Chris (uncharacteristically) LaCivilaOne for once.  No cruelty.  No lies.   Just humility and honor.  Didn't last long.

Another thought on sober subjects comes to mind.  I think Walz gets traction by saying Donald Trump is weird, because he does not really laugh.  Another thought.  When does he cry? 

Whether it was politically effective or not, one moment that humanized Obama was when he was crying over the dead really young kids at the school shooting.  To belabor the point, you could compare it in a negative way to Obama saying Trayvon could have been his son.  The latter was awkward, because it made it about Obama and race.   The former was just a genuine moving moment of the most powerful man in the world having to hold back tears because he could not stop young kids from being brutally and horribly killed at school.

Hopefully none of that applies to the next three months.  I want joy, joy, joy.  And lots of it.  Either the Harris or Walz version are fine with me.  Maybe they will even make Joe look young and happy again, as opposed to old and confused and a bit tragic.

[Riobard]

I hope that Walz doesn’t explicitly refer to the laugh part. It’s also exaggeration. Trump’s niece has attempted to explain it as idiosyncratic but related to family dynamics.

Don’t go there, Tim. Bad, very bad. Settle down. You’ve made your point.

Family dynamics and intergenerational expressivity style are just that; hands off. It risks isomorphic bullying and opens up retaliatory criticism of normative vulnerabities. Let Mary’s and Gwen’s spilled beans lie, m’kay?

[stevenkesslar]

And to continue the theme of death, in a different but hopeful direction.

Eddie Glaude Jr., who likes to take these deep dives that may or may not mean anything, said something interesting on Morning Joe this week.  I could not find the recent clip.  But this clip from years ago sets up what he said this week:

 

So what he said this week is the opposite part:  sad then, joy now.  Dark then, light now.  Night then, morning now.  He was commenting on how the joy that seems to be manifesting itself at these Harris rallies is more than just partisans feeling happy that Kamala may win.  He put it in the context of all the death, all the loss, all the grief, and the bile, all the division.  And so now you have all these people who want a reason to feel better, to laugh, to feel joy.

Not being a MAGA or Trump guy, I could see how Trump surviving a bullet could produce a similar feeling at the RNC.  At the very least, it is survival.  You could push that into a form of manifest destiny.  God's will.  The specific image, of some older White man ripping off his t-shirt off like some buff young Gay guy in a porn movie, wasn't really my cup of tea.  (The porn movie is, I mean.  Just not Hulk Hogan).

Back to my brand of joy.  Eddie Glaude was certainly describing how he feels:  joyous.  Listening to him, I felt that helps me to understand why I like watching these rallies.  Do other people actually feel that way?  Is this going to somehow be subtext in this election?  It's happened before.  Reagan and "Morning In America" come to mind.  Or you could just say that was Michael Deaver's slick bullshit, and the 1984 election was really about the economy improving, stupid.

Warnock did this in Georgia.  I thought this "Morning" ad was very effective.  (It's the first of two pieces in that video below.)  Being a Rev, he of all people should know.  I think it helped him relate, and win. Even though it says nothing about his politics.  People talked about how he ran on joy.  And he kept winning.

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

46 minutes ago, Riobard said:

I hope that Walz doesn’t explicitly refer to the laugh part. It’s also exaggeration. Trump’s niece has attempted to explain it as idiosyncratic but related to family dynamics.

Don’t go there, Tim. Bad, very bad. Settle down. You’ve made your point.

Family dynamics and intergenerational expressivity style are just that; hands off. It risks isomorphic bullying and opens up retaliatory criticism of normative vulnerabities. Let Mary’s and Gwen’s spilled beans lie, m’kay?

Good point.   Context is everything.

Two short clips.  The first is the one minute clip where he talks about Trump laughing.  The second is kind of a "Tim's greatest hits on weirdness" montage I found when I was looking for the first.

One thing is for sure.   To oversimplify, it is the first time ever someone was chosen to be Veep because they called someone powerful weird.  😲

I wanted to remind myself what it sounded like that I liked.  In context, what works for me is he is calling Trump a bully, who laughs at people.  And we should not give him that power. I think that works.  Another thing that works tangents your point:  far from judging what families do, Republicans who want to be in my closet should mind their own damn business.

This could all be taken too far.  "Weird" has pretty much run its course.  But Trump trying to copycat similar words shows that it worked.  The other thing that Walz has to be careful about, which I think he has been, is he is not talking about weird voters.  He is talking about Trump, and Vance, and weird leaders.  "Weird" is not the new "deplorables".

[Suckrates]

IMO, this "JOY" thing can have a very short shelf life if its OVERplayed.   People are reacting to it now, because its something fresh and new,  but it can get tired real fast if political issues get lost in the "Joy".... She's joyful, he's joyful, we're all joyful,  but lets have some balance here folks.   This election isnt, cant be, and shouldnt be just about JOY...

Sorry @stevenkesslar, I know you are overdosing on Joy,  but just dial it down a tad....  Remember we were all Joyful with Hillary....Look how that turned out.   

[Riobard]

Oh OK, good, he didn’t double down on happiness expressivity quirks. He thinks fast on his feet.

[Riobard]

Oh just let Earth receive her Queen already.

[stevenkesslar]

21 minutes ago, Suckrates said:

Sorry @stevenkesslar, I know you are overdosing on Joy,  but just dial it down a tad....  Remember we were all Joyful with Hillary....Look how that turned out.   

Honestly, that's the thing.   Who actually felt Hillary's campaign was joyful?  I didn't. 

At worst, there were these bad moments where Blacks were saying they'll vote against her because she called them "superpredators", which became a meme.  That's not really her fault, in my view.  "Deplorables" was her fault, in my view.  For that matter, Bernie's campaigns were not particularly joyful, in either 2016 or 2020.   Bernie was like a sourpuss holding America to account.  To me it was a sort of moral reckoning.  Which arguably is why he could only take it so far.

Hillary might have done better if she sold joy.  I think it's a consensus that her "Bad Orange Man" ads from Fall 2016 just did not work.  They were based on the assumption that people would vote against Trump because he's sexist or mean or even grabs women by the pussies.  I did vote for her in the 2016 primary, even though my heart was with Bernie.  And I certainly voted for her in the general.  But I will call my vote for her dutiful.  Definitely not joyful.

Walz answered your question in the last part of that second video I posted above.  To quote him, "I think what's happened is the spell [of Trump's] been broken.   And now we need to step into it with some positive ideas."  Damn right!  I think the DNC has to be a convention about ideas about the future.   Joy is not enough.

Speaking of Hillary:

 

I don't know why she didn't run more ads like that in 2016.   I mean, "access to new markets" will only get you so far, I guess.  But that's got a positive vibe.

At the end of the day, I am a Lichtmanite. And he predicted Hillary would lose in 2016, through no fault of her own. And Biden would have lost in 2016, too.  It was a thumbs down on Obama, Term Three, basically.  Not a vote for Trump.  He's almost certainly about to predict Harris will win, because people will basically vote for more of the same.  Even though it feels new and fun.

But at the very least, assuming Lichtman is right, why not give people a reason to feel joy about it?  And why not run on some positive and unifying ideas so you can try to have a mandate?  That's what I want.  I think Walz has proven he is a master at that.

[stevenkesslar]

6 minutes ago, Riobard said:

Oh just let Earth receive her Queen already.

And speaking of Hillary, that's so 2016!

[Riobard]

17 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

And speaking of Hillary, that's so 2016!

Might have flown better without the foetal X-ray. 

[Suckrates]

19 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

Honestly, that's the thing.   Who actually felt Hillary's campaign was joyful?  I didn't. 

At worst, there were these bad moments where Blacks were saying they'll vote against her because she called them "superpredators", which became a meme.  That's not really her fault, in my view.  "Deplorables" was her fault, in my view.  For that matter, Bernie's campaigns were not particularly joyful, in either 2016 or 2020.   Bernie was like a sourpuss holding America to account.  To me it was a sort of moral reckoning.  Which arguably is why he could only take it so far.

Hillary might have done better if she sold joy.  I think it's a consensus that her "Bad Orange Man" ads from Fall 2016 just did not work.  They were based on the assumption that people would vote against Trump because he's sexist or mean or even grabs women by the pussies.  I did vote for her in the 2016 primary, even though my heart was with Bernie.  And I certainly voted for her in the general.  But I will call my vote for her dutiful.  Definitely not joyful.

Walz answered your question in the last part of that second video I posted above.  To quote him, "I think what's happened is the spell [of Trump's] been broken.   And now we need to step into it with some positive ideas."  Damn right!  I think the DNC has to be a convention about ideas about the future.   Joy is not enough.

Speaking of Hillary:

 

I don't know why she didn't run more ads like that in 2016.   I mean, "access to new markets" will only get you so far, I guess.  But that's got a positive vibe.

At the end of the day, I am a Lichtmanite. And he predicted Hillary would lose in 2016, through no fault of her own. And Biden would have lost in 2016, too.  It was a thumbs down on Obama, Term Three, basically.  Not a vote for Trump.  He's almost certainly about to predict Harris will win, because people will basically vote for more of the same.  Even though it feels new and fun.

But at the very least, assuming Lichtman is right, why not give people a reason to feel joy about it?  And why not run on some positive and unifying ideas so you can try to have a mandate?  That's what I want.  I think Walz has proven he is a master at that.

 

Hillary was selling "first female President of the USA".....  She thought THAT would take her over the finish line.   Americans chose a racist autocrat...