You’re right. I went back and checked the article I’d found and realised it was quite badly out of date. I’m glad to be wrong about this.
Biden’s old. He is however neither doddering or a fool.
The Democrats who would be qualified to run are not running. And I expect they know more both about Biden personally and about his ability to handle the political situation than those of us on this thread do.
I have been to a number of demonstrations in my life. None of them led to riots.
I don’t know what you otherwise mean by “civil unrest”. If what you mean is “people in groups publicly stating that they object to what the government is doing”, that’s the right of every American, enshrined in the Constitution.
Would you care to specify what you think those things are?
The best one I can think of is to show up and vote to prevent Trump being elected. Arguing that this isn’t necessary because things won’t be bad if he is strikes me as an extremely bad idea.
Again, best way for the American public to prevent “the worst of Trump to be realized” is to keep him the hell out of office. The method of doing that which has by far the best chance of succeeding is to vote for Biden/Harris. You don’t have to be “thrilled” about them. The job of the POTUS isn’t to thrill people.
I’ve seen absolutely nothing over the past four years to indicate that she wouldn’t be massively better than Trump. It’s a dangerous red herring to pretend that we’ve got infinite choices here.
In addition, I’d be old, unhealthy, and impoverished. I’m those things here also, of course; but here I have a home, a farm, and the cats and dog; none of which I could remotely afford to move to Israel. And I’d still have to go demonstrate, against Netanyahu.
And I still think the USA is worth staying put and, in one fashion or another, fighting for.
The other thing to watch out for is that life expectancies taken from birth are different from life expectancy for people who’ve already made it to a later age. An average taken from birth is going to be brought down by all the people who died anywhere from immediately after birth all the way through to the current age.
Plus which, even an average taken from 80 includes all the people who at 80 are alive but significantly ill; as well as the ones who, whether apparently already ill or not, are without good access to medical care.
It’s an example of on of the most common fallacies in statistics, quoting prior probabilities without taking into account what we already know. The classic example:
OJ Simpson attorney: the probability that a husband will murder his wife is only 1 in 10,000.
Relevant statistic: when we know that a wife has been murdered, given no other information the probability that the murderer was her husband is 1 in 2.
Maybe we should just focus on not fucking things up. Okay? Do you realize this? Not fucking things up is sort of a big deal. How ever many years of gridlock, I think we’re going to be okay that. Losing democracy, not okay.
There are plenty of people on the left that are just bonkers with their expectations for office holders.
About ten years ago I compiled a bunch of demographic data and compiled my own conditional probability tables, i.e. given you are X years old, what is your probability of surviving for another 1/5/10 years:
My numbers are somewhere between what @WalterBishop and @Riemann cited. Given that Joe Biden is 81 right now, I show he’s got a 56% chance of surviving to 86 (i.e. completing a second term as President), and a 47% chance of surviving to 87, i.e. his remaining life expectancy (without considering any other info) is somewhere between five and six years.
If you add in the fact that he’s got access to great health care, is not socially isolated, and seems to get at least a bit of exercise, I think he’s probably got pretty good odds of making it into his 90s. That said, he’s already moving and speaking more slowly than he did when he was campaigning in 2020; I’d rather see him in office than Trump for the next four years, but I am concerned about what kind of condition he’ll be in as he approaches the end of a second term.
Yeah, that goes without saying. But I think there are far better VP choices than Harris. I’m always very impressed whenever I see Pete Buttigieg. I’d be far happier if they swapped out Harris for him.
That’s a pretty big discrepancy. I see the thread, but what’s your cite that contradicts the SSA actuarial tables that I linked, which say the life expectancy of an American male Biden’s age is 8.2 years to age 89.4?
Eh - little moments. But unlike some I’m not claiming he’s senile (or doddering or a fool); he’s just old. And he was old when he took office, and I think overall he’s done a pretty good job.
And he’s certainly running rings around the Congressional GOP, intellectually. But then there are slugs that could do that.
Heh.
His clapback about Social Security and Medicare just about a year ago during the SOTU address was a masterpiece of thinking on his feet that I don’t think I could manage at any age.
But the mere act of swapping out VP’s at this point, barring some utterly clear and drastic reason for doing so such as Harris being so damaged by a stroke or car accident that she clearly became incapable, would weaken his chances of re-election. It would play into the (IMO inaccurate) claim that he’s weak and uncertain.
And for every person who’d prefer Buttigieg, there’s probably several who’d prefer somebody else – not all of them the same somebody else.
ETA: Hell, I want to have Shirley Chisholm running against an early 1980’s version of John McCain. You can’t always get what you want.
No, mustard-man is basically correct. The Leafs are de facto Canada’s hockey team whether other cities like it or not. Look at the preferential scheduling they get from the NHL and the CBC: historically the Leafs almost always have a Saturday night game, and it’s proudly featured on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. Any Canadian hockey fan who tunes in to the iconic Saturday-night hockey broadcast with a Caesar or a mug of cold Molson Ex expects to see the Leafs. Prospective American emigres should understand that questions about this sort of thing are part of the standard immigration interview. Also be prepared to show that you know and appreciate how to make a good Caesar.
It’s true that the Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup in 57 years and have spent many of those years sucking like a Shop-Vac, but we Canadians are a forgiving lot.
When he won in 2016, I had a good cry. Then I tried to get dual citizenship with Italy, but by then they had changed the rules – it used to be if you had a parent born in Italy you were good, but no longer. Then I got busy demonstrating and volunteering for progressive candidates. I also became an election judge because I wanted to do what I can to assure the integrity of the election process.
But that was 8 years ago. I’m 8 years older (70 now) and 8 years more tired. I’ll continue to be an election judge, but I likely won’t demonstrate as much (although I might meet thorny_locust at the front if I can figure out how to push my walker through the crowds). I probably won’t volunteer as much.
I’l hunker down and enjoy time with family and friends. And remind myself that Trump winning doesn’t really matter – climate change is going to do us all in anyway.
Faster and more thoroughly if Trump wins.
It’s not only the USA at stake here.
Thank you for your work on the elections. That’s important.
After reading and collecting responses in this thread I thought I’d throw down a response and some retorts of my own.
Because, for better or worse, the POTUS puts some key people and policies and initiatives in place that have extremely wide-ranging effects.
For instance,
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Eisenhower decided it was a bad idea to have certain industries clustered together in the Atomic Age, so he encouraged them to spread out. But, knowing that they still needed to share products and have meetings, he suggested an interstate highway system that would be overseen by the federal government (because it crossed state lines). That, in turn, boosted automobile technologies and related industries – diners, fast food restaurants, fuel supply chains, insurance companies, safety research. It also had some negative byproducts – oil dependency, smog, human-induced planet-wide heat-retention and the commensurate weather-related extreme situations… I think (but don’t quote me here) Ike also encouraged close ties between universities and military research, particularly in technology engineering.
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More recently, it was Clinton who signed (though perhaps he didn’t introduce or write it) the policy ceasing the restriction of computer networks to university/government/military institutions (ARPAnet, et cetera). And if you’re reading this, you’re quite likely viewing The Straight Dope owned by Chicago Sun Times hosted on their own computer servers and disseminated to the public via a few dozen commercial Internet backbones to various local commercial Internet Service Providers. And you’re doing so while using hardware and software that improved only because The Internet ‘went commercial’ in 1995.
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Clinton also signed off on ceasing the subtle regulation of reserving high-level GPS accuracy for the military. Thirty years later, you cannot buy a cell-phone or tablet computer that doesn’t have ‘location sensing’ technology built in. A lot of that is cell-tower triangulation, but hikers, bikers, drivers, and (both ocean and air) pilots can easily purchase (for around a hundred bucks) all kinds of satellite-triangulating GPS units that are smaller than a dinner plate.
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For a more recent and direct instance, Trump was the one who nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, in turn, has been the key vote in ripping Roe v Wade to shreds and demolishing several human safeguards in regard to firearms and the Second Ammendment of the US Constitution.
THIS is what I’ve been saying for over forty years. Trump is a symptom, a symbolic incarnation of the real problem. There is 0% coincidence that neo-facism was making headlines during their idol’s administrations. Sure, it was brewing from well before his governorship in California, but they felt they had tacit permission to run wild when The Gipper got coronated.
And what Trump wants is the ability to say “See, Daddy! I’m successful now!”
I believe it was called Guantanimo Bay…
…and I STILL wonder if that was intentional or not. Every republican administration has seemed (to me) to be a sleight of hand trick, with minor scandals dangled before the news outlets right around the time they were trying to distract the public from their latest crime or doing something the public would likely find even more outrageous. I’m pretty sure that’s my own confirmation bias at work.
A former coworker did that a while ago. It’s a humorous tale in and of itself, but I’ll stay on topic: While preparing to retire to Spain, she discovered the USA taxes ex-pats for their income at the same rate they paid when they were citizens. So, in order to ‘get away with it’ (in her words) she and her husband left California and moved to Texas. California taxed them as state emmigrants the first year, I don’t know what happened in their second year, and after living in Texas for two years, they were considered Texas residents and did not pay income tax. Then they moved to Spain. They settled into a nice quiet town with lots of American ex-pats where everything was quiet and peaceful. Then there were those bombings…
At first glance, this seems like a lot of bluster that borders on our rules against talking about harming particular people or groups.
But, as a general plan, I gotta say I’m right there with you.
And the irony here is that the Right Wing will quickly cater to the Second Ammendment screamers and practically shepherd people in droves to the gun stores and ranges – it’s good for sales and that means dividends and stock values go up. And when they’re handing out assault rifles and CCW permits by the car load# I figure I might as well join the crowd and get one for myself. It will be oddly reminiscent of when the NRA was telling the Feds in the 1950’s “No, no. Those black people have as much right to own guns as anyone else – and clearly just as much need.”
Yeah, I think this is really where I stand. I grew up in the USA feeling people around me saw me as other (not white, not oppressed minority, just Asian) but I still feel this is my country and worth trying to improve. I certainly don’t think US citizens are particularly blessed or exceptional and I’d never suggest “America: Love it or Leave It” but I’m also not going to think of abandoning ship because things are not the way I would prefer them to be. If anything, I’ll get more involved and try to make the world around me a little better.
I figured this would become part of this thread when I saw a headline in Google News today.
I find it ironic that the Right Wing is bringing up this kind of thing when their model-of-perfect-leadership is known to have had alzheimers while in office – and they still seem to consider Ronald Reagan a demigod.
I’ll play both sides, here. I don’t recall hearing a lot about Biden when Obama was POTUS, or about Clinton’s VP. In contrast, I did hear stuff about Pence being more dangerous than Trump, particularly where freedom of religion is concerned, and I do remember that the PITA we call the Political Correctness fad/trend/contagion started as a Republican reaction in response to Dan Quayle opening his mouth at public events, then later became a practice that Republicans blame us progressives for. Prior to that, there was some questions on whether former CIA-chief Bush-the-elder or Nancy Reagan was the real force in charge of the White House. But maybe that’s all just my own confirmation bias. Nevertheless, I’ve tended to think the best activity for a VP is to stay informed on all of the issues the POTUS has to deal with but otherwise stay relatively invsisible unless there’s a need to step up and fill an unfortunate vacancy (at which point the VP will be fully-informed and won’t have to miss a step). So I haven’t seen or heard much about Harris other than jabs from the far right, and I figure that’s a good thing. On the other hand, I do worry about the mindset of a former prison warden as POTUS. I imagine decisions would be made from a very harshly punitive perspective (what the Chinese called the Legalist tradition – cut off the hands of thieves and behead those who walk through the gate reserved for the Emperor, that kind of thing.) But perhaps that authoritarian approach might appeal to the far right…
–G!
#“Well, officer, I was walking by and they were handing both of these out at the Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot so I – no, Ma’am, I’m really NOT that happy to see you, that’s just the forward grip…”
Cthulu for President!
[Why vote for the lesser evil?]
I think maybe you’re attributing a bit much to Clinton and not enough to other factors. It’s not like all the technology was sitting out there in a non-commercial format- the WWW/HTML was literally invented in 1991, the web browser in 1993, and the W3C in 1994. Prior to then, there wasn’t anything to commercialize.
I remember; I was a computer science undergrad from 1991-1996; we were all about this nerdy shit back then, and it wasn’t until our junior year that any of this stuff even crossed our radar, and that’s being fairly wound into academic computing at the time.
The subsequent explosion of the web wasn’t really due to anything Clinton did, although you can say that he certainly didn’t get in the way, which was plenty commendable.
What he did do was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which paved the way for ISPs and the internet to not be regulated like a public utility. That meant that it was far more open for growth than it would have been had regulators and the government thought of it as if it was the phone system, a water system or a gas provider. And even that’s got its potential downsides- regulation as a utility would have guaranteed more access to everyone, for example.
He also turned around and signed a censorship bill that was highly controversial, so it’s not like this was all well planned out.
Again, Clinton did allow for the decoding of the higher precision signals (i.e. turned off “selective availability”) during his tenure, but I’m not sure that was quite the genesis of the present-day utility of GPS. They were already in use by then- they still got you within 6-12 meters ,as opposed to military grade 3-5 meter accuracy. Which is still an astounding thing, if you’ve ever had to actually navigate map and compass style. And with differential GPS (using some other signal in conjunction for greater accuracy) they could already get extremely precise readings for surveying, etc…
Even at that, we didn’t really see cheap GPS in things until smartphones came around. GPS units were still several hundred bucks years after Clinton shut off selective availability, and were standalone devices meant for navigation. It wasn’t until after 2008 when things like TomTom and Garmin became relatively obsolete and GPS became widely available to the masses, all because of the smartphone.
I think you’re perhaps overestimating a President’s ability to influence events like this- it’s basically throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, with an eye toward throwing what you hope will stick, as much as it’s careful consideration, deliberation, and implementation of thoughtful policies and standards for the ages.
the two bolded phrases contradict each other.
Be aware that any American who moves overseas must still pay income tax and fill out a much-longer-than-usual set of tax forms, including the usual 1040 form. Your friends in Spain may have avoided state income tax, but not federal.
[note: yes, I know that writing about taxes is a bit of a hijack , but several posts in this thread have mentioned moving overseas, so I’m just adding a bit of relevant info. If you want to flee when Trump wins, it will cost money.]
I’ve been pondering this and I realize that I have a ton of devices hooked up to my wifi.
Laptop, iPhone, iPad, GE range, LG TV, Nest thermostat, Nest smoke detector, Ring doorbell camera, Brother printer, five Sonos speakers and a subwoofer and later today a garage door opener. It’s funny how these things creep up on you. The blackout curtain on my bedroom window came with a remote but it also has wifi capability (somfy tahoma, normally used for lighting systems) but I didn’t set up the unit that would plug into my router. Other than the range, these things have improved my life from a little to quite a lot and I’m keeping them.
Dude! You live in Colorado! I’m pretty sure you’ve already been marked for retribution.
Obviously this was posted to the wrong thread.
That’s true. What’s first to go? All federal funds?
Thing is, there are plenty of MAGA’s here, but I’m sure Trump would have no problem throwing them under the bus.