Hi codinghorror!
– thorny locust, who had no idea what software is until long after 1970.
–> aha! seems to be working now.
Thank you, sir. The real arrow is an appreciated up grade from the dash dash “greater than”.
Did anyone catch this from Marvin’s link:
Emphasis added by me. A flypast of USAF Cessna Tweets would be oddly appropriate for Trump, given that he put so many tweets out over the last number of years. There must be a few Cessna Tweets still operational somewhere that the USAF could use.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a flyover by the Baby balloon.
A paraphrase of something I heard four years ago:
If the 2020 election was about Biden, Trump would win. If the election was about Trump, Biden would win.
Both campaigns decided that the election should be about Trump.
But it didn’t work when Hillary tried to make the 2016 election about trump. Why was that? Because back then she was hated and he was an unknown quantity as president?
Bolding added. That’s my view. Enough people really thought Trump wouldn’t be “that bad.” He’d grow more presidential or something. My personal (outdated) view, he had no principles, so he wouldn’t bother pushing for bad policy or was so inept he would fail if he tried. (not that I ever considered voting for him, but I held on to some hope that he didn’t care enough to fight for stupid shit) Hence his Presidential slogan, “Malice, tempered by incompetence.” Boy was I wrong.
A lot of people were hoping for someone to shake things up without breaking everything in the process. The depressing surprise is that Trump still got 70 million votes after clearly establishing he was worse than “that bad.” He was obnoxious personally, he was spiteful, he had bad policy, and he allowed corrupt and/or incompetent people to hold high administrative positions.
I don’t think anyone in the Trump campaign had any input into that decision. Purely an executive decision. 
There are no words for how much the right hates Hilary Clinton. A lot of it is sexism. I mean, she really is just another politician. I think she totally destroyed Trump in the debates and actually ran a more aggressive, better anti-Trump campaign than Biden. I don’t think any debate in our history will ever be more one-sided than her first one with Trump. He was insane and she showed the world what a fool he is.
Sexism and just outright hatred of “that Hilary” really ruined it.
Note: I actually think Biden will be a better president than H. Clinton, but I would have taken 8 years of Clinton over 4 years of Trump. I mean…she was good, not great. I actually admire Biden.
I don’t admire Biden, but he has grown on me a bit, and he will, I’m confident, be a far better President than the incumbent.
And yes, Hillary had to deal with a generation’s worth of bile accumulated by Republicans and right-leaning independents who just irrationally, viscerally hate hate hated her. Joe didn’t. He didn’t win just because of that, of course, but it was not a negligible factor.
A fine list! And several other good sources have also been mentioned but I would urge everyone: please do not forget about the AP News.
Many of the stories that appear on those sites first appeared on the AP; it is an incredible source of information. And it is free. That’s been my homepage for over 20 years now.
I avoid Kos and HuffPo as much as I can, and I’ve never heard of NewsNationNow. On the other hand I use a lot of British newspapers and the BBC for a broadly more objective opinion on US events.
Just quoting the previous mod note for reference.
Mea culpa…
Anyway…I’ll be interested to see what Biden does. I expect I’ll be disappointed, because I’m disappointed in every president to some degree. But a little “boring” would be nice.
He’s a good guy and I find his life story compelling. Does he say stupid stuff? Yes. Was Obama right to suggest that Biden can screw the election up? Yes.
Will he be a good president? I think most likely. People like him and I think we kind of need that right now.
I can’t imagine Biden NOT being a good president. He’s more than just likable, he deeply cares about his country and has its best interests at heart. To the extent that he may have personal limitations, he’ll surround himself with wise and knowledgeable advisors and will be willing to listen to them. I think the only way the Biden presidency may not be judged as well as it might have is if it faces extreme challenges that are almost inhumanly difficult to overcome – something that in the post-Trump era, and in the middle of a raging pandemic, is entirely possible. But I’m hopeful that with a majority in the House and Senate, at least Republican obstructionism will be largely mitigated.
Please do not snip from my post, Mahaloth, without acknowledging doing so with an ellipsis.
I am not at all sure, given Biden’s age, personality and past missteps, that he’s up to the enormous challenges before him. But I certainly hope he is, and I wish him - and this great republic which he will at last begin leading in two days’ time - only the best.
Frankly, the last four years have enormously screwed with what my conception of this would be like in regards to a President.
That’s a very interesting comment that evokes my recollection of the transition from Bush to Obama. I was delighted with Obama’s victory and watched the prelude to the inauguration with a sort of vicarious intensity. I had hated Bush, but, much as I admired Obama, I remember feeling a sort of trepidation that this awesome responsibility was being taken over by someone completely new.
Trump completely changed that whole perception of the presidency. It’s now apparent that the office can be held by any imbecile, and the system of checks and balances among the three branches of government along with the vast established civil service and military bureaucracies (or, the “Deep State”, for QAnon conspirators) will at least partially mitigate the damage of said imbecile, and provide a degree of stability even if an orange marmoset were in the Oval Office.
This does have the effect of diminishing the mystique of the US Presidency, much the way Trump has tarnished the view of the US throughout the world, tarnished the value of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the wisdom of presidential pardons, and basically turned everything he’s touched to shit.
A wee, wee bit of credit where it’s due:
Jumping back in this thread a month, I remember on the thread (and felt myself) some panic over this meeting - Barr met with Trump and McConnell in succession in a day, and for a bit I was sure that it was part of the grand coup plan (with the DOJ planning to announce more bullshit investigations or something and McConnell in the loop). Turns out bullshit was on Barr’s mind, too.