Scrutable

monkey wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:11 pm

One thing I'm noticing today is that Trump supporters are using the incoherence of the debate to basically make up what Trump or Biden said. I've noticed it happen a bit before, but not to this extent. It'd be a scary tactic if I thought Trump was doing it on purpose.

monkey wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:11 pm

One thing I'm noticing today is that Trump supporters are using the incoherence of the debate to basically make up what Trump or Biden said. I've noticed it happen a bit before, but not to this extent. It'd be a scary tactic if I thought Trump was doing it on purpose.

Trump: ...you don’t want to say anything about law and order. And I’ll tell you what, the people of this country want and demand law and order and you’re afraid to even say it.

Biden: ...And by the way, violence in response is never appropriate, never appropriate. Peaceful protest is, violence is never appropriate.

Trump: What is peaceful protest? When they run through the middle of the town and burn down your stores and kill people all over the place-

Biden: That is not peaceful protest.

Trump: No it’s not, but you say it is.

Trump: … don’t want to talk, like you, about law and order. And you still haven’t mentioned. Are you in favor of law and order?

Biden: I’m in favor of law. You-

Trump: Are you in favor of law and order?

Biden: Law and order with justice, where people get treated fairly.

Trump: Okay.

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:06 pm

I've researched this so you don't have to.

Every year an organisation called The European Forest Institute awards a city the title "European Forest City".

It's Bonn in 2020. It was Aberdeen in 2019. Previously Oslo, St Petersburg and Vienna.

They pick a city where the university has a good forestry course. The "award" means the city gets to host the annual conference of The European Forest Institute. A bunch of people gather and talk about forests and how nice they are. Ecosystems! Climate! Animals that sh.t in the woods! They have a good time and take a group photo. This was Olso:
https://efi.int/



Somehow Trump gets to hear about European Forest Cities.

Trump thinks it means cities in forests.

He said at the debate that these city dwellers live in the forest.

Where the trees are explosive.

But in these Forest Cities they manage the forests so the cities don't burn down.

Orange Racist wrote:In Europe, they live, they’re forest cities. They call forest cities. They maintain their forest. They manage their forest. I was with the head of a major country, it’s a forest city. He said, “Sir, we have trees that are far more, they ignite much easier than California. There shouldn’t be that problem.”

bolo wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 8:23 pm

On 538's post-debate podcast, someone suggested that Trump's interruptions were a calculated strategy to exacerbate Biden's stutter. (Stutterers apparently find it harder to control when interrupted.)

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 12:57 pm

I guess for the Trump team (to the extent that they have any influence on what he does), the strategy was to find the best way to highlight Biden's perceived (and probably actual) incipient dementia. That might have been by unbalancing him with interruptions, but perhaps they could have let him say his thing for a couple of minutes and extract some WTF from it.

Whatever else the US needs to reform in the wake of all this, the age of incoming Presidents surely has to be high on the list. Really nobody over 60 should be doing that job, but an age limit of say 66 on inauguration day would be a good start. Maybe this can become a project of President Biden; after 18 months in office, if he has Congress on side, he can go on TV, say "I'm knackered", and hand over to Kamala on condition that they amend the Constitution to stop this happening again.

The sad thing is, the Democrats probably have picked the best candidate, if the aim is only to beat Trump. AIUI, Biden polls the best with otherwise-less-likely-to-turn-out minority voters in the states that the Democrats need to win.

Joe Biden is a stutterer. Like many others, he has overcome the disability by understanding it and exercising extraordinary perseverance and discipline. If you know and love a stutterer and you watched the presidential debate last night, within minutes it became obvious what was going on. Abusive tone of voice, rapid fire interruptions, zigzagging change of topic, personal insult and humiliation, and family pain are all tripwires that scramble a stutterer's ability to speak. There was nothing unplanned or spontaneous in the President's strategy. The bastards did not prep him to attack Joe. They prepped him to attack Joe's disability hoping that by triggering his stuttering they might deceive an audience unfamiliar with the disability into thinking that Joe was stupid, weak, uncertain, confused, or lost to dementia.

If you have ever gotten in the face of a bully on the playground protecting a stutterer that you love, the game being played last night was nakedly and painfully obvious. If you watched with glee while it happened, then you haven't made much progress since the playground.

However, the stutterer that I love taught me early on that he did not so much need my protection. He fought back by owning and integrating his disability into who he is. He learned how to stand his ground as master of perseverance, knowledge, and empathy. Without his example, I would not have recognized the game that was being played last night. I would not have been able to recognize the subtle but intense struggle against the disability that Joe was winning at the same time he was struggling to advance his positions on the issues in the midst of a rhetorical sh.t storm.

But, like the stutterer that I know, Joe didn't need any help on the playground. I was proud of him.

The President flushed his family fortune down a gold-plated toilet and somehow wants us to believe that he is the poor victim of mean people. Then he tries, and fails, to beat up a kid with a disability on the playground.

On Fox News, the pundit Dan Bongino insisted, “Trump’s strategy tonight was executed brilliantly” and added: “Trump is an apex predator. He’s the lion king. Trump went out there tonight and did what Trump does. He’s the shark in the ocean and he acted like it. He lost no one from his base, no one.”

Little waster wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:03 pm

It is not even as if the Trump base need that much firing up, they were already recording far higher levels of enthusiasm than the Dems base even before the SCOTUS shenanigans started, so strategically it makes no sense especially given such a repulsive performance will also fire up the Dems while causing the last few remaining undecideds to break even stronger for Biden.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:18 pm

Little waster wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:03 pm

It is not even as if the Trump base need that much firing up, they were already recording far higher levels of enthusiasm than the Dems base even before the SCOTUS shenanigans started, so strategically it makes no sense especially given such a repulsive performance will also fire up the Dems while causing the last few remaining undecideds to break even stronger for Biden.

This isn't exactly true. The Dem base is reporting high enthusiasm. It's just that it's enthusiasm to vote Trump out rather than to vote for Biden, and the usual polling question is approximately "How enthusiastic are you to vote for your chosen candidate?".

Vertigowooyay wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:14 pm

I cannot stop watching this. There is a moment where you can see pure fear in Rick Santorum’s eyes as he realizes he’s gone down a conversational path that he simply can’t rescue himself from. It’s glorious. Please, I urge you to enjoy this slow motion car crash.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311 ... 36608?s=21

Vertigowooyay wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:14 pm

I cannot stop watching this. There is a moment where you can see pure fear in Rick Santorum’s eyes as he realizes he’s gone down a conversational path that he simply can’t rescue himself from. It’s glorious. Please, I urge you to enjoy this slow motion car crash.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311 ... 36608?s=21

headshot wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 8:31 pm

bolo wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 8:23 pm

On 538's post-debate podcast, someone suggested that Trump's interruptions were a calculated strategy to exacerbate Biden's stutter. (Stutterers apparently find it harder to control when interrupted.)

And it didn’t work.

A better strategy might have been to let Biden speak at length and become gaffe-prone.

EACLucifer wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:55 pm

I'm seeing quite a few people suggesting Biden should just cancel the remaining debates after that shitshow, and that seems to be a really bad idea. The debates get an audience, a lot of people who just watch a bit of the news only get soundbites from Trump, the incoherence is edited down to a few words, but if they watch the debates, they are confronted with it. Indeed, one focus group member, undecided prior to last night, described Trump as like "a crackhead". If Biden pulled out, he'd hand the Trump campaign a talking point they could exploit, but by staying in, he just has to keep his cool, he won that, according to snap polls*, and from the way they are whining about the moderator, it seems the Trump campaign think they lost.

*Leads from 7 to 32 points, though I gather the 32 may be due to demographic biases.

Vertigowooyay wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 8:48 pm

It might be more cynical than even that. I thought this was an interesting take from Facebook:

Joe Biden is a stutterer. Like many others, he has overcome the disability by understanding it and exercising extraordinary perseverance and discipline. If you know and love a stutterer and you watched the presidential debate last night, within minutes it became obvious what was going on. Abusive tone of voice, rapid fire interruptions, zigzagging change of topic, personal insult and humiliation, and family pain are all tripwires that scramble a stutterer's ability to speak. There was nothing unplanned or spontaneous in the President's strategy. The bastards did not prep him to attack Joe. They prepped him to attack Joe's disability hoping that by triggering his stuttering they might deceive an audience unfamiliar with the disability into thinking that Joe was stupid, weak, uncertain, confused, or lost to dementia.

If you have ever gotten in the face of a bully on the playground protecting a stutterer that you love, the game being played last night was nakedly and painfully obvious. If you watched with glee while it happened, then you haven't made much progress since the playground.

However, the stutterer that I love taught me early on that he did not so much need my protection. He fought back by owning and integrating his disability into who he is. He learned how to stand his ground as master of perseverance, knowledge, and empathy. Without his example, I would not have recognized the game that was being played last night. I would not have been able to recognize the subtle but intense struggle against the disability that Joe was winning at the same time he was struggling to advance his positions on the issues in the midst of a rhetorical sh.t storm.

But, like the stutterer that I know, Joe didn't need any help on the playground. I was proud of him.

The President flushed his family fortune down a gold-plated toilet and somehow wants us to believe that he is the poor victim of mean people. Then he tries, and fails, to beat up a kid with a disability on the playground.

AMS wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 30, 2020 5:03 pm

Yes but granite is notoriously flammable, especially in Aberdeen's climate.

“I don’t know who the Proud Boys are,” Trump told reporters. “I mean, you’ll have to give me a definition, because I really don’t know who they are. I can only say they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.”