It should be self-evident that the political opinions of people in other countries aren't relevant to US elections. Am I mis-reading the room on that?

You're giving the electorate way too much credit in their ability to understand specifics. Elections are mostly about 'liberals think this, conservatives think that, how do I feel about which one is in power, ergo I'll vote X'. I.e. if there's generally rhetoric around defunding or CRT or what-have-you, it makes little difference which state officials supported it or whether McAullife did or ... The candidate and what they say does matter, but not nearly as much as the broader picture. I don't think they knew or cared about the Minneapolis referendum per se, it's just an example that it is the kind of thing that is being put on the ballot in some places and being talked about ... i.e. the distinction between what liberal twitter says and what elected democrats say is not particularly significant in a practical sense.

It'd be better if that wasn't the case, but the letter by the candidates name and the very general aroma of the political environment is the dominant factor in American politics. I don't know any other way to read the data we have in modern elections.

So are you saying a little-known referendum in Minneapolis that almost no major Democrats supported was a key issue in a Virginia race? I literally cannot find a single mention of it in relation to the race in the news unless I'm missing something.

I should add that McAuliffe is on the record as saying he is not for defunding the police. He isn't even for removing qualified immunity.

Again, I'm told the moderate Democrat losing a race in a blue state is good news for moderate Democrats. Just trying to figure out why.

No. I don't think that's true.


Here's the way I see it. You're viewing it from the point of view that the candidate is really important, unless I misunderstand you. Others, and I think this is more likely but I don't have a big dog in the fight, think 'no, it wasn't really much about the candidate at all, only a small part is that and it's primarily a reflection on Biden and the national party'. If it's a referendum on Biden, the more Democrats lose by the more it's an indication of a reaction against what is happening by Democrats on a national stage and the more it strengthens moderates. Conversely, the more Democrats win by, i.e. if there was no rightward swing from the '20 results or a very small one, it would be seen as an endorsement of more progressive policies and would weaken moderates.

So, viewed that way, yes a moderate candidate can win and it can be a bad thing for moderates as a whole. As I said previously, it depends on what you think happened. Was this primarily about McAullife and Youngkin, or primarily about a larger picture?

A very favorable ruling by the Arizona Supreme court to eliminate the long accepted standard of stuffing partisan BS into budget bills, which deals a big blow to the batshit crazy wing of the GOP here.

Arizona State Supreme Court Ruling

In what is being described as a win for the legislative process, the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday (11/2) upheld a lower court ruling that found adding unrelated policy to the state budget was unconstitutional and in violation of specific provisions related to bill title and single subject rules. Otherwise known as “logrolling”, for years if not decades it has been standard practice to bunch policies together in the budget for purposes of garnering enough last minute support for passage. This political gamesmanship often results in various policies being added to a handful of “budget reconciliation” bills, which are bills originally intended to direct and inform spending. In total, reconciliation bills exist for eight specific policy areas that include health, K-12 education, higher education, criminal justice, environment, revenue, transportation and budget procedures.


This week’s state supreme court decision is centered around a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge previously siding with the Arizona School Boards Association and other education groups, ruling that specific policies included in four separate reconciliation bills are unconstitutional. The policies that were found to have violated the bill title requirement, which states that the subject of a bill “shall be expressed in the title”, were tucked into the K-12, higher education, and health bills. This included a ban on mask mandates in schools, prohibited teachers from using curriculum that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex (otherwise known as critical race theory), banned university and college mask and vaccine mandates, and banned cities or towns from adopting vaccine passports. The “budget procedures” bill was found to have violated the single subject rule, noting that it contained multiple, unrelated subjects, including permitting rules for dog racing, voter registration rules, watermarks for ballots (a popular conspiracy theory amongst the election integrity crowd), COVID mitigation limits for local governments, and placing limits on the Governor’s authority to address a public health emergency.


All told, the state supreme court’s full opinion, which is forthcoming, will have serious, long-term impacts to what was once considered the standard course of business at the Arizona legislature. Ultimately, the policies that were found unconstitutional will not take effect, and in future years there will be an infusion of transparency into the budget and policy making process. But for those of us engaged regularly at the legislature, it just means the environment will likely become more toxic and divisive when bills that have otherwise failed w

Brian yes this is what I was meaning frankly-big picture and voters looking at it as a referendum on the Democratic party and where it is going or trying to. I am actually in favor of many of the progressive agenda items and agree many other places in the world already have them. But if we are not careful in the pursuit of them we will get Trump reelected. That to me would be far worse than not getting bad family leave right now. Manchin as I had warned a year ago is a real problem too.

Must have missed some news but not sure how they can count on Manchin's vote.

Hope this happens. Biden needs a win.

Yup, lets get a win on the bipartisanship infrastructure bill. Let each bill stand (or fall) on their own merits (or lack of willingness to compromise enough).

Yet to see if the moderates or progressives win in this game of chicken but Biden is definitely losing during this prolonged face-off.

House Dems throw new curveball: Infrastructure vote, wait on party-line megabill - POLITICO

Looks like they are about to pass the Infrastructure bill and the rules for the BBB bill. Might still be a couple of progressive holdouts, but will still pass.

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If the candidate doesn't matter, then why would it matter if they are moderate or progressive? Why would anyone benefit under this weird theory?

Just seems like a lot of mental gymnastics when we can just say that the original theory that losing is a sign of doing well was dumb.

This weird theory is not mental gymnastics. The 538 blog spent quite a bit of time talking about now much the candidate vs. party identification actually matters, and they're merely among the best of a whole raft of professionals studying these issues who think it's a significant question. Methinks you're being overly dismissive.

I don't think the person matters much either. I'm responding to the person who said a loss for the moderate candidate is a win for moderate candidates.

Congrats Biden & Pelosi. More to come as more details emerge from the cigar smoke filled, backroom bartering.

But wondering about this below. Can't believe this means Manchin and Sinema have signed off on the larger bill (but maybe they have) so this means that roadblock hasn't changed. Or maybe they have agreed, assuming the CBO scoring is what they expected.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/06/polit...ill/index.html

Link of what's in the bill and how it's going to get paid. I like the Electric Vehicle Charging initiative. Hope this means a massive expansion and a boom for more electric vehicles. Also like Grid infrastructure resiliency, and Broadband affordability (but not sure what this really means).

Here's what's in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that the House is aiming to pass --- and how it's paid for - MarketWatch

I think the CBO thing is intended to be an out for one or more people. I assume they expect it won't compare well with Biden's own projections.

According to the wording of the agreement, the bill will adjust based on the CBO scoring. Of course we will see.

Will stand by that too.

Glad Infrastructure Week is finally here!

CBO estimates Infrastructure bill cost = $256B over 10 years. This seems like a reasonable investment for "hard" infrastructure stuff.

I assume the estimate for the other $1.9T (?) will be coming shortly.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/polit...ned/index.html

They could have paid for it and then some with the billionaire tax but didn't. Interesting since they were fine with a millionaire tax but billionaires donate way too much.

So just thinking out loud here for a bit. I saw a post about how people who were against a vax mandate were not necessarily anti-vax. They just didn't want someone telling them or anyone else that they must get it. Reason is individual choice is more important than collective safety. That is supposed to be the part about freedom or something like that and we should respect it.

But, I guess that means that we're alright with a certain group of people always dying from Covid every year then right? The people who want others to be able to choose whether or not to get vaccinated are banking on the fact that enough other people will get vaccinated and that will in turn, lower the overall infection rate to a point where not so many people are dying from it every day. That's ok then, that other people's choices are covering a segment of society that another group is unwilling to cover.

Second, by still allowing the virus to have hosts that it can freely and more effectively attack, it allows the virus to spread easier and really isn't ever eliminated from the population. Some people will just die every year as a result. The argument for that seems to be that people are always dying from something so why bother? That's the argument for it just being "the flu" or the government is inflating numbers artificially by counting every one who dies with covid as a covid death...thereby saying that people die all the time, and why bother checking on the whole covid thing.

if we're going to avoid mandates on this, why bother having mandates on any other vaccine? It's a legitimate question. Where and when do the rights of the individual become less important than the collective? We've gone decades to fight polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, small pox, etc.....why does the argument for avoiding the mandate for one, mean that we get to keep the mandates for the others?

In my opinion, it really doesn't. The end goal is still the same, to protect as large of a part of the population as possible from the spread and infection of an illness that has is quite communicable and deadly at the same time, given the ease of transmission. If people don't want masks, want freedom to travel the planet and get back to the way things were pre-pandemic, then they need to be able to accept the idea that means that covid spread is minimized as much as practical.

Places like airports and planes are going to be the very last places to get rid of mask mandates because they are places where people from all over the world cross paths. It makes it really easy to spread over large distances between infected people. I love how people want to look at covid through a very small lens of their own world, and simply refuse to look at it and the global impacts of local decisions. Maybe they do, but they just don't care. Which brings us back to individual choice versus collective security.

As a society, we have had no problem with the government being very very heavy handed in people's lives. We constantly support it.

But it's almost always been poorer folks and minorities.

The virus doesn't care about your bank account or your race. So the government's interventions have necessarily had to touch white people and middle-class and above incomes.

And therein lies the backlash. 250 years of "We have rights; they have responsibilities" crashing into the need for actual collective action.

It has not been pretty.

I was observing the other day to some of the guys in my church (because a bunch of the families are wanting to withdraw from public school and go the home school co-op direction -- but only partly as a response to vaccination mandates generally) that the religious objection to mandates (and increasingly, childhood vaccinations generally) is only going to fly until things like smallpox, mumps, and rubella become regular features of religious school life.

The thing about this is that I don't see this as being much of a reality anymore. It's been noted (accurately) that what we now have is a pandemic amost entirely of the unvaccinated. There are a very small amount of vaccinated getting ill and dying from it, almost all of them are unvaccinated, by choice, so it's sort of a Darwin Award type of concept. They're taking a risk, and some of them are paying for it.

There's also a level at which we accept a certain number of people dying for many reasons. We accept it with violent crime; we could implement measures akin to martial law, but we don't. We could mandate influenza vaccines and save tens of thousands of lives every year; we don't. I'm not at all comparing martial law to a vaccine mandate, but this is a line we have to walk on many issues in a modern society in terms of 'what level of intrusion is acceptable to prevent what level of deaths'.


A global solution would be required to eliminate it from the population. If we could snap our fingers tomorrow and eliminate all virus from the United States and vaccinate every person in the country, it will still return due to the prevalent global spread. This is one reason, along with the more fundamental basic equality aspect of it, that I advocate for distributing vaccines to other countries that need them before people in America get boosters. We really are all in this together from a global sense, whether we like it or not.


A very legitimate question, as you say. One aspect that is much different IMO is the limited understanding we have of long-term impacts. Another is the need for boosters, which is different from polio, smallpox, etc. which are 'one-and-done' vaccines. Most people who are opposing the mandate though aren't making that argument, they're saying 'mandates are just wrong' which runs right into the point you've made. If we had a policy of mandating COVID vaccines for schools etc. it would be a direct corollary. But polio and other vaccines aren't mandated just for most jobs as is being (with absurd delays to January now) currently implemented. So from my POV I agree with you in large part, but in others it just isn't the same.

I think individual choice requires a moral population (see: sir Edmund Burke). This used to be a conservative position. Collective security will continue to win out in the long run barring a major societal shift, but there are some measures the public isn't ready for yet. But it's definitely where we're headed. Overall the vaccine mandates have strong public support. The opposition may be loud, but they're a relatively small minority.

The problem with the Darwin concept is there actually are people with valid medical excuses to not get the vaccine. Mandates protect those people.

Meat prices going up. Not good for Biden.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/09/busin...ion/index.html

Wait....I thought capitalism was good?

pretty much my answer for any sort of supply and demand question.

Capitalism baby. Fixes all... if they raise prices and people don't buy them then they'll know that they reached the maximum price elasticity and have to adjust OR find out that they don't have a strong business model and innovate. Or.... they'll get bailed out and the GOP will take the money all the while screaming about communism!!!

The Ohio GOP Senate primary is a cesspool. Not only do you have Mandel and Vance, but now another candidate is running ads pointing out that Mandel is Jewish. When asked about it he said that people should know he's a Jew.

Article didn't have details on what US was offering/proposing but yeah, we should definitely provide humanitarian help. We broke the proverbial china shop after a prolonged stay, and we should help pay for some of the broken china.

What's another $1B here and there in an upcoming $1.9T bill.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/11/polit...lks/index.html

Yeah, link is to nypost but source is Bloomberg. I wouldn't put it beyond Putin to take more land in Ukraine. He got away with it once already.

But honestly, this is a European thing. We should support our European allies with intelligence, logistics, supplies etc. but let them take the lead with boots on the ground, airpower etc.

Unsure if they are or not, but haven't read any articles that say our European allies are sounding the klaxons over there (may be wrong). So either they don't think its a real threat, or don't care enough, or too scared to do anything.

US reportedly warns Europe of potential Ukraine invasion by Russia

This is interesting. Too bad we've lowered legal immigration to a crawl over the past few years.

GOLDMAN: “Most of the 5.0mn persons who have exited the labor force since the start of the pandemic are over age 55 (3.4mn), largely reflecting early (1.5mn) and natural (1mn) retirements that likely won’t reverse.” pic.twitter.com/L1WaQ5wVkL

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) November 12, 2021

Gotta love the "want a job, have not searched" group. Reminds me of the Robin Harris bit about sitting home waiting for a job. Knock on the door - who is it? JOB.

So if I'm reading this right, the GOP has been bitching about people making too much money to sit home, but if you combine the "want a job, have not searched" and "don't want a job" groups (since to me, that's basically the same group), and combine age 16 through 54 (the target ages the GOP is basically blaming for sitting home), that only accounts for about 20% of the 5M. Meanwhile, older people in those categories account for about 70% of those sitting home and not trying to work. The remaining people are those who are apparently looking for work but haven't found something in the field they want, or maybe not at the income level they want, etc.

Now, I'm sure certain industries are disproportionately affected (food service, retail), but if these numbers are accurate, that sure blows a big hole in the narrative. But it also makes sense, because you can certainly see this in education and trucking. Older people are leaving those jobs rather than deal with the complications (increased risk, changes to the way the job has always been done, inconvenience of new precautions, etc.) that have come along with Covid.

The GOP line was that the $300/week or whatever it was was causing people not to work.

It turns out that it is much deeper than that. People were in shitty underpaid jobs that treated them worse than animals b/c that's just what you did. Then COVID changed things. And a decent number of people aren't going to go back to shitty underpaid jobs ever.

It was never about the extra $300. It was that they should have quit those jobs years ago, but it took COVID to make that plain.

Sure, but by age, it's not the meat of the workforce who is coming to that conclusion, it's older folks. Which makes a ton of sense because I'm been trying to wrap my head around a 30-something with a 2-kid family who can really afford to sit home and pay for everything that's needed with $300 instead of a job. That never made sense.

I wonder how often that happens--retirement by circumstance.

Both my parents has a similar sort of retirement. My mom's company used to be 5 minutes from her house. And so she'd come home at lunch to take care of her sick mother. Then the company moved across town, and it didn't make sense for her to stay working there and have to hire a home health worker, and she was too old to look for a new job, so she retired.

My dad got really sick and had to take off work. And he just never went back. (He's better now. Just didn't make sense to go back to a very physically demanding job)

They both were in a position where they could have kept working for years, but they were also old enough to "retire." And for both of them, outside forces pushed them out.

That probably happens more often than we realize. We still have this vision of the "retirement party" at age 65. But that's probably pretty rare that that actually works out for people.

And COVID just made that happen for a lot of people all at the same time for the same reason.

Totally agree. My daughter is seeing it first-hand as a soon-to-be graduating education major. They are hemorrhaging teachers and her odds of having a job starting in January are excellent because those positions are open and schools are duct-taping their way through the fall. We know of multiple teachers in our county who decided not to return this fall after the spring Distance teaching debacle and fear of it happening again, or getting Covid in the classroom.

It's this. Most of the supply-chain stuff is just poorly run companies crying they have to pay employees more. Looking for bailouts, tax cuts, or whatever other legislation to protect them from not making record profits.

Steve Bannon indicted after refusal to comply with Jan. 6 committee subpoena

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...eb7_story.html


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They say he's going to surrender voluntarily on Monday-I'll believe it when I see it, and I hope someone is watching his movements. Wonder if this will change Mark Meadows mind to hold out

He'll definitely appear on Monday. He wants to be a public martyr for the cause.

So how long until a potential trial? What's the potential punishment?

And can Bannon be forced to talk about the Jan 6th riots before his trial? I can't imagine congress can subpoena him while he's awaiting trial for refusing to comply with a subpoena.

Susan McDougal sat in jail for 18 months during the Clinton years. I think, though I'm not sure, that if the GOP takes the House they could drop the case. Until January 2023, though, he could theoretically end up in jail.

I think I read somewhere a minimum of 30 days for each charge (2) to a max of 1 year for each but not sure how accurate that is

Article didn't say how much of the increase maybe attributed to the new drug but hard for me to believe it would be the significant contributor to the increase. But hey, I'm all for a new Alzheimers drug being covered.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/12/healt...ike/index.html

That's not going to be good Biden's approval rating.

Back when it was approved, here were stories on how much the new drug would add to Medicare Part and it was staggering. Best of all, it probably doesn't do anything, but the rules for Medicare handcuff them into accepting anything approved by the FDA.

I read the bump was in the 30-50 dollar range, depending on other factors (for some it will be zero). That doesn't sound like much, but for retired people it is huge. It is basically completely taking away the cost of living increase they were getting in Social Security. It is ridiculous the administration didn't try to find a way to prevent this. Making the most reliable voters in this country angry just isn't good policy.

If Manchin and Sinema would agree to Medicare price negotiations this wouldn't be a problem. Until then, though, the law doesn't really let Biden do anything.

Actually even the price negotiation bill wouldn't affect this, because it doesn't allow the negotiation for drugs until they are 9 years past approval. This fix just requires more money to be spent in Medicare to off-set the added expense. Or Universal Health which is the best option.

And for a seemingly useless or super-limited use drug

SI

I saw somewhere that a full year's treatment of the new Alzheimers drug costs $56k per person. And yes, there is a lot of disagreement on whether it does anything.

From CNN:

"CMS said part of the increase for 2022 was because of uncertainty over how much the agency will end up paying to treat beneficiaries to be treated with Aduhelm, an Alzheimer's drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in June over the objections of its advisers. Some experts estimate it will cost $56,000 a year. Medicare is deciding whether to pay for it now on a case-by-case basis."

And this fucking guy was National Security Adviser.

Everyone keeps pointing out all of these insane people who WERE X or Y during the first Trump administration and I'm sitting over here thinking about what they WILL BE starting in 2025.

Flynn is probably Secretary of Defense, State, or Vice President.

FWIW some stats on Alzheimer's

Long story short, not all is well between Biden & Kamala (or at least not between their staffs). Long article with fingerpointing on both sides.

Probably truth on both sides and Biden and Kamala just need to meet, come to some sort of agreement, and tell their staffs to shut up.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/polit...ent/index.html

We forget that most of the time the VP doesn't do anything. For various reasons, that hasn't been true since 2000, but prior to that this was normal. GHWB was damned near invisible as Reagan's VP and he came to the job more experienced than almost anyone. I'm sure there's something Harris could do, but Biden is the first President since GHWB that came to the job with a wealth of experience.

dola

More from the sewer that is the Ohio GOP primary. After Flynn's call for a single national religion, Mandel tweeted, We stand with General Flynn. I guess that's one way to fight a primary opponent that wants voters to know you're Jewish.

The solution to inflation?

Moar spending!

Would be a good way for a Republican nominee to do the impossible and lose Utah.

Powell is going to have to carefully craft a response to the inevitable question.

If you want to know the going rate for buying a US Senator.

NEW: Kyrsten Sinema raked in nearly $180,000 from a curious special interest last quarter—crypto. The industry was lobbying her to change tax language in an infrastructure bill amendment she'd co-sponsored. And guess what? She changed her mind. Here's a mini report, with receipts

— Roger Sollenberger found true love, suckers (@SollenbergerRC) November 15, 2021

Can't invest money in the country when things are good because the stock market is doing great and profit must reign.

Can't invest money in the country when things are bad because debt spending is very bad.

Can't invest money in the country at all, because it doesn't make any monies!!

Can't invest money period, because the right people are getting the right payoff.

Not sure if anyone saw this particular article in the Post today.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world.../2021/11/12/94

If there's any doubt as to the power of conspiracy theories, false news, the control of education this should be a first hand reminder of the possibilities of things in the US.

Here's the post I shared on my FB page today.

What happens when kids grow up only having been told revisionist history (you know, things on the level of stolen elections, conspiracy theories and that 9/11 was either an inside job or was a false flag)?

Lots of parallels here. There is a whole lot of takeaway and the importance of getting the facts right. You can look at this nearly 20 year look back and see the effects this sort of thing can have, and how effective it is. It's critical that the standards we hold up are solid or else, we're going to have a world of uneducated fighters living in the US, who only want to use their guns and fight the people they have been told to hate.

I guess the Republican Party of Wyoming has no issue 'cancelling' Cheney as they vote to no longer recognize her as a Republican.

In fairness to Shakir, Bush flat out called it a modern-day crusade. The pretext was 9/11, but it clearly moved into a war against Islam at some point.

And while the rest of the stuff is bonkers, the US has had a foreign policy that lies so incessantly that it is hard to imagine why any foreigner would believe a word coming out of it. If you want people to trust you, you have to become a trustworthy source.

A tennis player speaking out against rape against a top official, and then "detained" is infuriating.

If this isn't resolved soon, the West should publicly explore not participating in the Winter Olympics.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/tenni...hnk/index.html

CBO analysis supposedly this Fri and possible vote next week. My guess is CBO results will put up some roadblocks which will need to be resolved, so vote in Dec.

It's been relatively quiet on MSM on BBB bill. No idea what that means but get ready for a flood of pundits, analysis etc. after Fri. Looking forward to it and understanding the $.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/polit...lay/index.html

I think the goal by a lot of Dems was have the CBO crush any momentum the bill may have had. They gutted all the revenue options because it would make billionaires pay taxes, so I don't think it will score well.

Well we should just ignore the score anyways, according to Larry Summers

Larry Summers: IRS proposal will generate more revenue than CBO estimate | TheHill

Since when did the CBO matter anymore? Once the trump tax overhaul happened and the CBO was like, it'll be a trillion dollar a year shortage, and their response was "so, it'll be great anyway," should it really matter anymore?

The rule is that if the bill helps incredibly wealthy people, the CBO does not matter. If it helps everyone else, it matters a lot.

Also defense budget doesn't count either for reasons.

The rule is if you have more than 50 Senators who don’t care about the CBO then it doesn’t matter, if you don’t it does.

CBO is in, the final bill is heading to the floor of the House soon.

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Larry Summers was actually spot on the CBO considering their score didn't account for increased IRS enforcement.

Guess I was wrong. House vote tonight apparently.

Give me some more of that Spice. I'm prescient.

A diplomatic boycott is entirely useless, but I guess we can all pretend it's meaningful. The athletes will still attend and the media will still cover the games.

This is infuriating. But our gymnastics program was a legalized pedophile ring for decades and we routinely lock up or threaten whistleblowers. We aren't exactly coming from the high ground on this one.

Article summarizing the in-and-out of the bill and how it'll be paid for. Other than for Obamacare subsidies (and wish it lowered Medicare eligibility), I'm not particularly impacted but I'm not the target market which is okay. I can see this helping a lot of other people.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/polit...ner/index.html

I do like this but assume it'll be renewed in 2025 as it'll be ingrained into voter's expectations by then.


This I really support. Like the summer and unsure if it includes dinner/late afternoon meal, but I'm all for that also.


I like the tax credits (e.g. solar rooftops or buy electric vehicles) but unsure if the Civilian Climate Corps is really needed. But it creates jobs so I lean towards good.


I'll believe it when I see it but per the article, prob not this round but another separate bill.


I like the Medicare drug negotiation but seems really limited. Would it really make a dent? Good first step I guess.


In addition to Immigration reform, below 2 are out. I guess the college debt forgiveness didn't make it either and planned for a future proposal?

They did include hearing coverage for Medicare, though. That is massive.

So Biden will be unconscious today as he undergoes a colonoscopy.

Does this make Harris officially the first female president?

I will get to tell my kids "I remember well the Kamala Harris presidency."
Will she get a library?

Clean bill of physical health.

It won't happen but interesting to know if there are cognitive tests given and the results. Create a baseline in first year of office, then compare it to years 2-4 (or something like that).

I can see this being a national security issue so even if done, the detailed results will never be released for scrutiny.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/polit...xam/index.html

Those are very normal findings for someone of his age. I have arthritis throughout my joints, back and neck and at 58 still workout twice a day, weights and cardio 5 times a week. Doing so actually mitigates the severity of how it affects me, but by 78 I will look rickety as hell moving around.

And pretty sure a cognitive test is in there, since Trump bragged about his.

Once, again, a reminder of just how different this Presidency is from the last one. I'm 99.9% certain, we will not be see Biden on TV this week, bragging he got right a test about "man", "woman", "camera", "toilet", "moron" and that we'll spend the next week with half the country questioning how fit for office a moron is that would go on TV and say that and the other half saying "SEE? HE'S PERFECTLY SANE"

SI

Apparently not. That'll get 'em talking.

Joe Biden, Unlike Trump, Didn't Take Cognitive Test in Annual Exam, Sanjay Gupta Says

That is bad optics to say the least.

But I do have to ask to get a baseline:

How often to presidents get a cognitive test and is there a test to see if you should get the test?

No one knew about cognitive tests and Presidents until the previous moron bragged about his to get attention and/or bury some other shady crap his administration was doing

SI

Which they gave you him because I believe he had a minor stroke at one point that they covered up.

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Do we even know if Trump had a cognitive test? Wasn't his doctor some crank who is now fully enveloped in right wing politics calling for an end to democracy?

All we have to go on is a pathological liar and his fascist doctor.

Then the stable genius talked about how difficult the test was.

I feel obligated to post this again because I'm a Futurama fan

Absolutely. Psaki better be prepared to answer that inevitable question.

Conspiracist in me can easily believe Biden was given one and had questionable/concerning results. But if so, Biden surely would have had enough muscle to change the results anyway.

So my guess is Biden didn't think it was necessary. However, the Trumpsters will play with this and Biden will eventually get one done to silence them if/when he is running in 2024.

Decision on Fed chair by Thanksgiving supposedly.

I think I lean towards Powell just not to upset the apple cart and have predictability. He did well in 2020 and so far in 2021. I think he failed in predicting inflation being transitory, it's looking like it'll be with us for a while. But the markets are humming, the economy is recovering etc.

Do you honestly think if he did get one, said he did, and passed with flying colors it would make an ounce of difference with the Trumpsters? They would just claim it was rigged or he is flat out lying.

No, not the Trumpsters. But it would make the independent minded feel a little better.

The rumor all over twitter is Biden's people are getting people ready for the fact he is run going to run again in 2024. *sigh*

If there is no-little cognitive decline and the economy is humming, I'm all for it. Biden has successfully negotiated (and compromised) on 2 significant bills with internal warfare. This is what I had hoped for when I voted for him. But fair chance that 2022 elections is going to be a disaster for the Dems so it does also depend on how well he navigates through that.

TBH Kamala hasn't shown me much so I would take Biden over her right now.

I am not at all crazy about a president well into his 80's. I also don't think Kamala is the answer either. I am still hoping for a true leader to come out of the Democratic pack. I just don't know if it will ever happen.

What about Gavin Newsome? I know another white guy, who I am sure doesn’t meet Rainmaker’s progressive purity test but who else is there?