The Real timschochet

The rules have been released: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/15/politics/trump-biden-cnn-debate-rules 90 minutes with 2 commercial breaks. Neither guy is allowed to consult anyone during the breaks. No audience. No sound on mics when the other guy is talking. So there will be no interrupting allowed. This seems as fair as it can be. Right now there are a ton of accusations about old age and mental disfunction: both men have been accused of not being mentally with it, etc. This debate should give us the answers to those accusations once and for all.

Neither statement is correct. Neither statement represents the pro-diversity position. You and other conservatives have created a caricature of what you think liberals are and you prefer that to the truth.

This should be the sentiment of anyone with common sense.

It means, in the warped mind of @HellToupee, that my sympathy towards the plight of most undocumented immigrants is the equivalent of being for rape and murder. Because in his bigoted and perverse point of view all of those who are undocumented are rapists and murderers. It’s a hateful rhetoric shared by millions of people in the age of Trump. It makes me really sad.

Both Trump and Biden are pretty lousy at public speaking IMO. Trump is better than Biden, especially when speaking off the cuff, but that’s a measure of degrees. Neither man comes close to the skills of a Reagan or Obama. But that leads to the question: why should public speaking skills be important to the Presidency? Abraham Lincoln stuttered like Biden does. Harry Truman meandered like Trump does. It’s a really sad thing that we’ve allowed these non-important factors to have such significance.

I enjoy @Engorgeous George He’s witty and I really like his song lyric references. Ironically, though he and I have pretty obvious differences politically, we have very similar musical tastes. But George is simply wrong on most political opinions that he has offered here. And he also suffers from a tendency that I see all too often among conservatives these days: rather than simply offer an opinion and/or rebuttal to liberal arguments, he attempts to offer motivation for those arguments which is usually way off the mark. Go ahead and tell me why you think I’m wrong but don’t try to tell me what I’m secretly thinking.

And this statement is the exact opposite of the truth. It’s far easier to answer questions in front of a crowd. You can shout, interrupt, refuse to answer, give canned one liners- in other words be a clown which is just about the only skill Trump has. Answering serious questions from informed journalists, without the ability to interrupt and play to the crowd, that’s far more difficult. This raises the bar, significantly so.

It’s not a significant departure. The most famous, most important televised Presidential debate in our history (Nixon vs Kennedy) was held exactly this way. It’s the live audience that is the departure. It’s the interrupting and screaming that is the departure.

And this is what I’m talking about. Only a moron like you would consider this sort of stunt important in terms of choosing a President. This isn’t a game.

First off I strongly disagree with the statement “Biden gets lost more often than not.” But deciding a President shouldn’t be about who gets rattled when somebody is screaming at him anyhow. In any event, Biden doesn’t get rattled easily. He won the first debate in 2020 by telling Trump to shut up. But that shouldn’t be a way to win a debate either. If this favors Biden it’s only because Trump isn’t a serious person. He’s a clown, incompetent and totally unsuitable to be POTUS. I suspect that deep down you guys know this and that’s why you think this setting is going to be “unfair”.

We’re deciding the President of the United States. This ain’t American Idol. If by “sterile” you mean it should be serious then that’s a good thing. Trump tries to turn all politics into a clown show. Hopefully he will be exposed and defeated in this setting.

Appreciate the title change. Nice to know that I have made such an impression on your warped brain that I am now officially a verb.

You may be confusing me with some other people. I have very little interest in firearms issues. And I actually oppose most firearms legislation. I don’t think it helps, and a lot of it interferes with the freedom of lawful gun owners who should be allowed to do what they want. Im not too big on gun control in most situations. And I’m also just not that interested. If I was I would try to educate myself more because I believe in your general premise. But in this instance I completely differ with you. Sotomayor is not legislating and she’s not acting from emotion. Neither am I. Her position, and mine, is very well reasoned. Simply put we’re both operating on the premise of if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck it’s a duck. You don’t agree with our reasoning and you agree with Thomas’ tortured attempt to differentiate between bump stocks and automated weapons. I think YOU are the one relying on emotion here- and Clarence Thomas. Conservatives are extremely selective when it comes to originalist thinking.

That’s awesome.

This is an old argument by pro-NRA types and it’s pretty tiresome. Simply put I don’t need to know how to make a hydrogen bomb or what its components are to know that I don’t want bad guys to have one. In your words, bump stocks allow one to spray bullets faster. George wrote that it’s functionally no different from having a machine gun. What else do I need to know? The answer is nothing. When Trump’s people banned bump stocks they were not rewriting law; Thomas and those who agree with him are simply wrong about this. Sotomayor’s dissent was correct.

Turns out I won’t be on a plane, I got my date wrong. I fly out the night before. But assuming I can even get a live broadcast it would air at 3 am for me, so I won’t be watching (unless of course I’m suffering from jet lag. I suppose that’s possible.)

It’s interesting that everything a reasonable person would describe as fair is described by Trump fans as Biden “having his own way.” That should tell you something.

It won’t be done. Not with the 60 vote filibuster. And I still disagree with you. But that disagreement appears to be rooted in a more fundamental disagreement about the Supreme Court. I am not what conservatives would call an “originalist”.

Thanks for the correction in terms of 1986 vs 100 years ago. However I say the rest of my argument still holds true.

The thread is filled with the usual slurs and jokes towards trans people, denial of bigotry against them, false charges of pedophilia, and denunciations of San Francisco and other “liberal” cities. Almost none of it has to do with the issue at hand. So let’s get back to that issue: transgender people, especially teenagers, are made to feel unwelcome in many parts of this country. They are beaten up, abused, told they are mentally ill, told they are perverts, laughed at, spat upon, made outcasts (sometimes from their own family) etc. This is no different from how homosexuals who dared to openly reveal themselves were treated 50 years ago. At that time San Francisco was one of the few places in the entire country where it was generally safe to be openly gay. That didn’t come overnight. Brave leaders like Harvey Milk had to struggle against the authorities, particularly the San Francisco police force, to bring that about. But eventually he succeeded and San Francisco became a haven for gays. Now they have chosen to extend that haven to trans people. And over again I say good for them. It shouldn’t be necessary, but that’s where we are.

Thanks for the responses to my questions. I appreciate and respect the arguments, particularly that of @Engorgeous George. But I’m still not sure I agree. Even George admits in his post “functionally as far as bullets discharged there is not much difference.” It seems to me that this is the point. It is illegal for me to possess a tactical nuclear weapon. But suppose I designed a weapon that could do the exact same amount of damage except that it wasn’t nuclear. Would the authorities be unable to seize this new weapon from me because Congress hasn’t yet passed a law making it illegal? obviously that would be ridiculous. Congress made owning machine guns illegal about 100 years ago because of their function, which they deemed a threat to public safety. . So if you have another gun or addition to a gun which produces the same function (in this case a continual spray of bullets) then I don’t think you need a new law to determine that should be illegal as well. So I guess I’m with the dissents on this one.

How much faster? Is there really any reasonable difference?

Can you explain the difference? Because I can’t see it. I don’t pretend to be a gun expert but it sure seems like the same thing.

I thought owning machine guns was illegal. Aren’t bump stocks basically allowing folks to own machine guns? Whats the difference?

This won’t mean anything to them. They WANT to believe that Biden is senile- it makes their willingness to vote for Trump slightly more palatable to themselves.