The 2020 Presidential Election Tournament

[Peter]

Here are some contradictory statements from former Vice President Joe Biden, just weeks apart. Which statement is a lie?

From the Daily Wire: a reporter asked, “Some have speculated that you are subject to some degree of cognitive decline,” the reporter said. “I’m 65, I don’t have word recollection that I used to have, I forget my train of thought from time to time. You got 12 years on me, sir . . . . Have you been tested for some degree of cognitive decline?” the reporter asked.

“I’ve been tested and I’m constantly tested,” Biden responded. “Look, all you got to do is watch me, and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.”

From CBS News. Washington — Former Vice President Joe Biden said he has not taken a test to measure his cognitive ability, shrugging off the suggestion as President Trump and his campaign continue to question his mental fitness for office. "No, I haven't taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man," Biden told CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett in an interview airing in full on Thursday at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists. "That's like saying you, before you got in this program, you're taking a test whether you're taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?"

[Peter]

This could really harm the election.

Trump Declares Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain” The Greatest Music Video Of All Time by Ryan Leas @ryanleas | September 14, 2020 - 8:17 pm

I don’t get it.

Therapist. What don’t you get Forrest?

Well. The video starts out with that guy Axel taking drugs and drinking alcohol.

Therapist. Uh huh.

And then he gets married.

Therapist. Go on.

Then she dies.

Therapist. Oh my, Forrest.

 . . . And they bury her.

Therapist. That doesn’t sound good Forrest.

And the guitar player is in a weird, wind storm and his hair catches on fire from a cigarette.

Therapist. Is that true?

Maybe. Everybody is smoking cigarettes, which is gross and not good for you. Nobody is happy.

Therapist. Did you watch it to the end of the video?

It was hard. But I did. It was good in some places but I wouldn’t want to see it again. I hate tattoos too and everybody had tattoos and smoked cigarettes.

Therapist. Did the woman who died have a tattoo?

Maybe.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

HEAD FOR THE HILLS EVERYBODY!

IT'S COMING FOR 200 MILLION!

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Even the Amish are going for President Trump.

Horses and all...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just think.

We have well over a month of this stuff left.

And it's gonna grow more and more as the election gets near.

RSB gets it.

Michael

[merjet]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/517522-bloomberg-pays-fines-for-32000-felons-in-florida-so-they-can-vote

When I saw this early yesterday, my reaction was: Paying fines or paying bribes?  For it to not be a bribe, shouldn't the felon or ex-felon be able to choose between cash-in-hand and paying the fines?

I was glad to see the following several hours later.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/matt-gaetz-election-bribery-probe-bloomberg-florida

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is one of the most inspirational videos Scott Adams ever made.

He says about a million or so people are responsible for almost everything the press talks about, yet there are well over 300 million people in the US.

The feeling he is getting from the well over 300 million people is that they have made a decision. They decided they want America to stay America as it has been throughout the ages. They don't want a "fundamentally transformed" America as per former President Obama's old campaign term. Based on that decision, he expects them to turn out in large masses to make sure that decision stays.

That means Scott's "Slaughter Meter" just jumped to 200% chance of President Trump being reelected.

Michael

[Peter]

How would OL’s esteemed contributors arrange the election? Is this a solution? If voters are sending in a mail-in ballot, it must be received, verified, and counted, by Friday, October 30, 2020, which is just about a month away. On the following Tuesday, November 3, 2020 it will be walk in voting day. Then the previously counted and verified mail-in ballots will be added to the walk in votes. That count will be verified by each state within two weeks, which is Tuesday November 17, 2020. The vote may be contested but by December 1, 2020 the Supreme Court will give their opinion and the candidates will abide by that ruling. Peter  

Notes from The Hill. The Supreme Court decision in the historic case of George Bush versus Al Gore casts a long shadow, which is ironic given that the justices expressly tried to limit its reach to the circumstances in the 2000 election. But here we are two decades later on the cusp of an election for which the results seem contested even before votes have been cast . . . .  Following the Supreme Court decision, Gore conceded then Bush took the office without incident. Further, today we have a better understanding of the ways in which a contested election could truly lead to disorder and even chaos, like when one candidate has shown time and again that there is literally no governing norm or federal guideline he would not break if it served his own interests.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The first debate just happened.

Biden didn't keel over.

Trump wrestled Biden to the ground several times, with Biden kicking and screaming.

Trump wrestled with the referee Chris Wallace at times, too.

This was the most professional wrestling I have ever seen in a presidential debate.

My own feeling (I admit I'm biased, but I want to give an opinion before I go around and see what others are saying) is that I liked the idea of a brawler standing up to a bald-faced liar who likes to hide behind civility. That game of lying with decorum is one of the ways Biden helped sell the USA to China.

Nobody had the balls before to tell Biden to his face, "Don't you ever use the word "smart" with me. You're not smart. You're dumb." And back it up with Biden's lies about his school records as opposed to what they really were.

We need brass balls to stop the elitist madness. Trump not only delivered on that, he drug Biden down into the pig sty and made him fight there. Biden is not too good in the pig sty. 

As a human being, I was worried a few times Biden would keel over. He would close his eyes and kind of zone out. Then when he looked up and started speaking again, his eyes would seem wobbly and he would stutter and fumble a bit before he got back in stride. I think that happened three times.

I'm glad he did not keel over. I fear something with these debates. I fear Trump will push Biden's buttons so hard, Biden will have a stroke right there on camera. I'm glad that did not happen.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

For the record, since I was so big on the Drudge online poll about who won the debates in the 2016 election, including the lead-up primaries, I just looked.

As of right now, there is no public poll on the site. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just spent some time online listening to pundits do post debate analyses. They are all over the place on who won and what happened.

My own personal favorite was looking the Fox people right as the debate ended. I watched it on Fox.

I thought I was looking at a funeral with those people.  They knew Chris Wallace pooped his undies in front of the whole world. But worse, with maybe the exception of Dana Perino, I think most of them secretly hoped Biden would have taken Trump down a peg or two. And he didn't.

Then I went around on the Interwebs. There was a lot of hedging and tut-tut-tutting and none of the fire I personally felt. (The worst was Ben Shapiro's crew.)

I began to wonder, did I see the same thing they did?

Then, in the middle of that bouncing around, I saw this:

Then I began to wonder what the hell I was watching pundits for. I need to find places where the people are speaking, not the talking heads.

I believe this Telemundo figure is echoed by the American Silent Majority, only more so in President Trump's favor.

I read something somewhere (it's true, I really did read something somewhere  ) that made sense to me. There are about one million people in America who are involved in the events and issues the news talks about. That leaves 329 million people left over. And the polling companies are a disaster at getting to them where Trump is concerned.

But there is where the Silent Majority is found.

I didn't expect to find a Latino Silent Majority on a mainstream TV channel since, from what I can tell, Telemundo leans anti-Trump in a CNN kind of way.

But here is an image from the TV show, then video. Notice that the female anchor does not seem too happy since she emphasized that this is not a scientific poll before she showed the results.

There they are in all their glory. The Latino Silent Majority.

The pundits and fake news media people can yak it up all over the place, but as far as the election is concerned, the different Silent Majorities--the different engaged Silent Majorities--are what counts.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Looks like Biden fucked up, too.

It really really really does look like he wore a wire so others could tell him what to say.

Here's a picture of it--I took a screenshot from the video:

Look at this, then watch the video. The video starts by showing a smaller length of the wire at first, then this popped out.

Not good...

Man, them Dems luvs them some cheatin'...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a personal little story. Kat is a HUGE Beatles fan.

So I came across something I thought was kinda cool for her re the debate. Sean Ono Lennon, John Lennon's son, has a Twitter account (I follow him). He put up a poll asking people who won the debate. I saw that and voted--for Trump, of course. I noticed that Trump was killing it in his poll--over two thirds pro-Trump to less than one third pro-Biden.

Only three thousand people or so had voted when I saw that and voted--which was after it had been up for 6 or 7 minutes or thereabouts. I thought I would leave the tab up and wait for more votes to come in before I showed it to Kat and posted it here in this thread.

That was about two or three hours ago. Now the tweet has been deleted and Sean is bitching about intolerance.

LOL... 

This is pure stimulus and response on a mob level and it caught Sean off guard.

Sean backed down just now, probably shocked at the intensity of hatred coming his way from the left, but I bet he doesn't stay backed down.

He inherited the sassiness of his parents.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jake Tapper said on CNN that a 6 year old girl tried to watch the debate and ran to her bed in tears because it was too much for her.

Seriously.

 

That didn't go over well.

The following is just one out of a bunch of 'em.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I saw something like this earlier, but there was no video for corroboration.

Go here and see the entire tweet thread (8 tweets).

There's video and closeups in much better copies than you will find going around.

Nobody knows for sure what that is.

Michael

[merjet]

I watched the debate last night. What a raucous. The local suburban paper’s headline was Wildfire in Cleveland!

In the debate President Trump said Biden called some criminal drug dealers “Superpredators.” I read somewhere that was mistaken because it was Hillary Clinton. Trump did say Biden’s treatment of black people was awful, but he could have hit Biden even harder for Biden’s role in making drug laws.

Reason Magazine’s November 2020 issue has two articles ‘The Case Against Trump’ and ‘The Case Against Biden.’ https://reason.com/magazine/

Digital subscribers can read them online. I get the print edition. The Case Against Biden has a lot about Biden and his role in legislation, especially crime legislation, and especially about drugs.

According to the article: Biden wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which prescribed new mandatory minimums and created the notorious weight-based sentencing distinction that treated crack cocaine as it were 100 times worse than cocaine powder. Two years later, Biden co-sponsored another bill for harsher minimum sentences. Because crack offenders were overwhelmingly black and powder offenders were more likely white or Hispanic, the result was much harsher penalties for black offenders. By the early 1990’s, pressure was building for reform of crack penalties. In 2002 Biden conceded: “We may not have gotten that right.” During Biden’s run for the 2020 Democratic nomination Cory Booker harshly criticized Biden’s role in making the drug laws that destroyed black communities like Booker’s.

The article says Trump did some tweets last year about Biden’s part in the bad treatment of African Americans. A Trump campaign video released in May, 2020 and a June blogpost slammed Biden as the chief architect of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs which targeted black Americans.

[turkeyfoot]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I saw something like this earlier, but there was no video for corroboration.

Go here and see the entire tweet thread (8 tweets).

There's video and closeups in much better copies than you will find going around.

Nobody knows for sure what that is.

Michael

Michael, Nothing burger. I played the debate back and observed the left hand cuff area several times. Its a watch. Not the Dick Tracy model either, I sleuth you not. I snapped the photo from a recording of the debate on Fox. I looked at several time spots near the purported 57 min mark. If the "thingy" was not attached well accounting for the disappearance in several spots how does it appear with his hand raised? Gravity or gravitas

[turkeyfoot]

Responding to the video of the "thingy" Michael posted upstream. It isn't the same as a shadow. Play the video. If you can't see the switcheroo then you're a conspiracy nut. Its there, its not there. Wheres the there/there? My photo of the scene of the "crime" shows a shadow that doesnt mysteriously appear but appears immediately as the hand moves and the shadow created by a shirt wrinkle moves with other corresponding wrinkles. The shadow starts at the collar. The said "thingy" starts somewhere down below the collar and looks like a cord. F it all. Discovered again. You guys are going to have to do better than this.

[ThatGuy]

 

[ThatGuy]

Regarding Trump's interruptions: Rude...in a normal debate context. Genius, if Biden was truly wearing a device.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

TG,

People can deny it, but that device looks plausible when compared to the videos and stills.

If anyone looks at that and says it doesn't exist, that's a blank-out.

Whether it is or not is another question. The absolute denial is what I'm talking about.

The faith.

Michael

[tmj]

"more cowbell"

I hope 'rally' Trump makes it to the next(?) debate.

I understand the take no prisoners mode when especially when double teamed and surrounded , but even detractors couldn't not enjoy rally Trump.

His judgement on picking his modes won him the presidency and saw him through a coup attempt, so it'd be hard to try and replace his judgement. But.. it seems he missed a few opportunities to score more solid hits as opposed to countering and foiling.

For example immediately after Biden made as aside into the camera about the electorate weighing in on SCOTUS nomination, he could have agreed and then asked Biden for his proposal/choice ie name a nominee(s) and whether or not changing number of justices would be on the table. Even without an answer , the non-answer would show Biden isn't/wasn't actually proffering a choice.

And I thought a better response to Wallace's question on Critical Race Theory would have been to bluntly state CRT is itself inherently a racist ideology. Couching any discussion of it in terms of 'sensitivity' training or anti-jingoistic only helps to conceal the "theory"'s anti-intellectual and racist foundations.

I did love , however, how hard he went at Biden with calling out his need for the hard left's support coupled to the idea that he would throw them under the bus.

Any iota , and a small iota at that, of respect for Wallace's professionalism was ripped to gd shreds. He calls out the 'fine people hoax'?! And then ignores Biden's "debunked" and 'discredited" rejoinders, wtf

 

[Peter]

Biden kept looking straight into the camera and every time he did, he was reciting a prepared speech. When he used his hands for emphasis, he was reciting. He started looking straight at Chris Wallace and recited after someone told him to stop looking straight into the camera and look at Chris. I assumed someone in the audience cued him with “a sound” but it looks like he was wearing a wire too.  

[turkeyfoot]

Does anyone have a home recording? Not an internet creation? Therein lies the lie-internet fluffery. Its not as if Im denying he has assistance. Its the proffered video and photo are rigged. And I showed the un-rigged and explained how it differed. See for yourself. Signed, Ripley.

Thery're both doddering septuagenarians.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 hours ago, merjet said:

In the debate President Trump said Biden called some criminal drug dealers “Superpredators.” I read somewhere that was mistaken because it was Hillary Clinton.

Merlin,

I, too, remember HC using the term superpredator and not Biden. So I went looking and I saw a trap Biden avoided, although I think some people in the middle will look this up and it will be ugly.

First, here is Biden in 1993 selling the infamous crime bill in the Senate when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is total cringe in the context of modern views. It's bad. Biden doesn't use the term "superpredator," but, referring to black inner city males, he talks about "predators on our streets" who are "beyond the pale" (how's that last one for a racist dogwhistle the Dems always harp on? After all, pale and white...).

In other words, conceptually, everything a superpredator means in this context was in what Biden said. And the cheap emotional appeal to keep them monsters away from his mother...  

This clip has been discussed and presented widely recently (see here and here for a couple of good examples among many).

 

Next, the source of public use of the term "superpredator" to refer to inner city black males, I believe, comes from Hillary Clinton in 1996 within the context of discussing the same law, after it had become law.

 

Later, President Trump associated Clinton's term to Biden's participation in the crime bill. This Politico article of 2019 does a pretty good job of giving the details (my bold in the quote).

Trump slams Biden for role in 1994 crime bill
 

Quote

“Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you,” Trump tweeted. “I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, and helped fix the bad 1994 Bill!

“Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing,” Trump wrote in a second tweet. “That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!”

Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, played a central role in getting the 1994 bill passed. It has loomed over his presidential bid, with critics saying the bill generated mass incarceration that disproportionately affected minorities.

Biden has defended the bill and his role in passing it and has denied that it resulted in mass incarceration. Former President Bill Clinton apologized in 2015 for signing the bill into law, saying he “made the problem worse."

Biden has already been criticized by other 2020 presidential contenders from his own party for his support of the bill, including Sen. Kamala Harris and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who called Biden's work on the bill "a huge mistake" on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

 

And the trap? Here's what I see. President Trump hammered the term "superpredator" in Biden's face so hard, it was like he was goading Biden to say he never used the term. Had Biden done that, the public spotlight would have shifted to what Biden actually said and that would have been really ugly for Biden.

Trump doesn't mind the gotcha so long as he gets people to look in the right direction and at the right thing. This is a rhetorical or persuasion technique he uses often. It drives the left nuts and is one of the things they constantly refer to when they call him a liar.

In other words, Trump  uses a word in a manner that makes them want to correct him, but in doing so, he gets to audience to look closely at the referents of the word.

(The first time I noticed this technique was when he wanted the public to look at Megyn Kelly's bias in the very first primary debate and made that comment about blood coming out of her wherever.  ) 

Now here's some gravy for President Trump. Since Biden did not deny using the term "superpredator" for black inner city males other than shaking his head or something when accused of it several times to his face, the public now thinks that's the term he actually did use.

 

Michael