President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

The visual of DJTJ and Charlie Kirk touring Greenland yesterday pissed me off in such a visceral way that I will go back to ignoring the news until 2028.

 

Shock!

Donald Trump’s team was fed questions prior to Fox News town hall in 2024: book

 

what a terrific opportunity

 

There was widespread screeching and gnashing of teeth when Hillary Clinton was tipped off that a debate being held in Flint, Mich. in 2016 might contain questions on water quality.

 

This was a very interesting article about how - since the 1970s - we've been on a march to become anti-social people. Yeah, iPhones sped it up. But TV kicked it off. The author made a point about how a lack of communal in-person events and social gatherings causes political views to go unmoderated and prevents both sides from understanding the other. It's part of the reason why MAGA can't believe Trump lost five years ago and why Democrats were shocked he beat Harris last year. It's a pretty bleak future he paints - people living alone, ordering takeout and staring at their screens for the majority of their free time.

The Anti-Social Century

 

I assure you it is impossible for me to forget this. He could urinate on the flag at his inaugural and two-thirds of my state will start posting TikToks of them doing the same.

I also get the concept of a collective “we” and have posted things in the same vein. At the same time, no I personally do not have a share in this evil. I refuse to take on the guilt and angst the fascists gleefully dodge in every aspect of life.

I cast the one vote per election they give me and I try to have calm conversations when the opening arises with people I think might be persuadable. I’d have done just as well to empty the Gulf of Jingosim with a teaspoon.

The best line I’ve heard was half a lifetime ago when a rookie financial advisor was seeking assistance from a seasoned pro on how to talk his client out of a reckless investment the guy was determined to make.

“Well, it’s hard to make a stupid person smart.”

Indeed it is. I resigned from that mission Nov. 5.

 

Again, every allegation is an admission.

 

This is interesting/strange/depressing ...

As our homes have become less social, residential architecture has become more anti-social. Clifton Harness is a co-founder of TestFit, a firm that makes software to design layouts for new housing developments. He told me that the cardinal rule of contemporary apartment design is that every room is built to accommodate maximal screen time. “In design meetings with developers and architects, you have to assure everybody that there will be space for a wall-mounted flatscreen television in every room,” he said. “It used to be ‘Let’s make sure our rooms have great light.’ But now, when the question is ‘How do we give the most comfort to the most people?,’ the answer is to feed their screen addiction.” Bobby Fijan, a real-estate developer, said last year that “for the most part, apartments are built for Netflix and chill.” From studying floor plans, he noticed that bedrooms, walk-in closets, and other private spaces are growing. “I think we’re building for aloneness,” Fijan told me.

 

Great line that I will start borrowing from its originator.

UNC, I know it doesn’t matter whether they hide him — the true believers will believe. I’m also not as naive as Gee to suggest that people will use their brains and change their minds on this guy. If anything, the supporters’ views harden over time. Changing their minds would be an admission of weakness, and admitting weakness is not what an alpha male does.

 

Ban the phones in schools. Ban. Them. Like, they don't even in come in the schools for kids. Then, ditch all the worthless Chromebooks Google basically hands to sch0ols to track kids' web browsing habits and go back to doing homework the way anyone would have in the 1980s or 1990s.

School boards won't do it. State legislatures won't do it. They're afraid to do much of anything, really, but especially that.

 

Counterpoint: Being proficient using a computer is a more important skill today than it was in the 1980s.

I would like our new hires be able to use Power Point and Excel, rather than writing in cursive.