I think this is a paranoid thought, but I think the media is screwing the pooch again because they think the election is over. They want to appear tough and fair in a future Biden administration so they're getting their hard hits in their now I see it in the harping on court packing, amplifying the NYPost Story, and the Axios piece calling Biden the luckiest, least scrutinized front runner since he's taken less questions than Trump (though the numbers are from the Trump campaign and treat questions from FoxNews as legitimate/tough questions, also Dave Weigel states that Biden has answered 10x as many questions as Hillary did in the stretch run).

It is just very infuriating. Luckily the lead is larger than 2016, voting is happening already, and even the most pessimistic and optimistic are still doing their part to elect Joe Biden.

Wolfgang622 wrote::)

thephan wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

The Savior wrote:NYPost a conduit to Russian intelligence. Literally rerunning the same strategy from 2016. This is incredible.

And Maggie Haberman on Twitter pretending it is actual news not a hack political attack.

Haberman from the Times is commenting on quality reporting from the Post? Casting it as breaking news when it sounds a lot more like a contrived story to gin up conspiracy theories? Very Qanon like being the reality they want.

The timing of the news breaking seems politically calculated, since the feds evidently had it since around April of 2019... but the story could be legit.

Of course, since the provenance of the computer has not been established, it's also entirely possible the entire thing is a hoax.

I mean it could be his computer and that guy could have sent the email but it’s pretty established at this point that Biden didn’t try to influence Ukraine to get rid of a prosecutor because he was investigating Biden’s son, right? The whole thing from what I remember was the prosecutor that got ousted was refusing to investigate corruption and it was part of a larger diplomatic plan developed by the state department and international entities that everyone was aware of.

This just seems like a new spin on old information that’s meant to embarrass Biden’s family.

The Savior wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

The Dude wrote:Would not be surprised if he never had covid

It's all a show with him. Everything is about marketing the product.

I'm starting to come around to this possibility. I figured he had it because so many others got it, but I'm skeptical he could have recovered this quickly from lung/breathing issues. They just don't heal that fast in a fat, old guy. If he did recover that fast, I demand the healthcare he's getting.

Guys, he had it. It’s madness to suggest otherwise.

Eh, I think of this more as proof positive that Trump has officially entered what our own EndlessSummer coined, and Bill Simmons stole from him and popularized - The Tyson Zone.

There is nothing you could tell me, no matter how outlandish, about Trump that I could dismiss out of hand as clearly impossible. Except maybe that he truly knows what love is.

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

Calling black people colored is not a good analogy for using sexual preference instead of sexual orientation. How many people before yesterday had any idea sexual preference was a phrase anyone objected to? I feel like I follow this stuff pretty closely, and I'd never heard of that before.

Wolfgang622 wrote:The timing of the news breaking seems politically calculated, since the feds evidently had it since around April of 2019... but the story could be legit.

Of course, since the provenance of the computer has not been established, it's also entirely possible the entire thing is a hoax.

It is so factually tenuous that all the way to Rudy being the point man on this that I would put it into the hoax until proven legitimate by a credible LE authority. I mean the story, and I mean that like fiction, is so sketchy and poorly orchestrated that it seems like the work on an aspiring 9th grader. It hardly passes a logic test. I, for one, will be surprised when it is discovered that the laptop was imaged just days before it was turned over to authorities. Ah, but the emails... Political hacks.

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

Calling black people colored is not a good analogy for using sexual preference instead of sexual orientation. How many people before yesterday had any idea sexual preference was a phrase anyone objected to? I feel like I follow this stuff pretty closely, and I'd never heard of that before.

Pretty much everyone I know have known for many years that the term “sexual preference” was objectionable. The only people I know who didn’t understand that were people who still believe homosexuality is a choice.

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

There are certainly enough legitimate gripes about Barrett's history and ideology to question the appointment. Creating a kerfuffle about the use of "sexual preference" in this context is counterproductive because it's hypocritical. They are saying that she can't use the words and phrases that Biden or Ginsberg used.

It allows conservatives to make semi-legitimate points that liberals are not attacking her nomination on the merits.

Hirono hardly even raises her voice when questioning Barrett about the term, and I probably wouldn't have said 'offensive' but the distinction is pretty important for the reasons Hirono calmly lays out as far as Scalia's opinion that gay people can be discriminated against on those terms. since Barrett calls Scalia a mentor, it's pretty relevant

I'm sure anyone can dig up a bunch of bad overreactive tweets for anything but it amounts to just doing the thing Trump/Fox News/my dad does where you act outraged about something and then pretend it's the other side throwing a tantrum

JFLNYC wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

Calling black people colored is not a good analogy for using sexual preference instead of sexual orientation. How many people before yesterday had any idea sexual preference was a phrase anyone objected to? I feel like I follow this stuff pretty closely, and I'd never heard of that before.

Pretty much everyone I know have known for many years that the term “sexual preference” was objectionable. The only people I know who didn’t understand that were people who still believe homosexuality is a choice.

Serious question: If someone identifies as bisexual for a while, but then later identifies as homosexual, how do we talk about that change? I wouldn't think we'd call their earlier life as a lie, or wrong. I used to consider sexuality like a spectrum, and people could fall along that spectrum in various places. I thought that "sexual preference" captured that complexity fairly well, and respected the folks in the middle whose inclinations were more fluid. Marriage equality was about respecting that two consenting adults should be able to form a marriage union regardless of where they fall along that spectrum. Is that off-base, or outdated?

The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.

Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.

The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.

The shop owner couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother and former Delaware attorney general.

The NY Post has 5 or more stories on their site, so this is clearly click bait stuff. Just the sampling above makes everything rather suspicious. Drop off a spendy laptop with a Biden charity sticker (oh, incriminating) full of sensational images and damaging emails somewhere in NW Delaware (while Hunter Biden was living where? CA at that point or still in DC, but wanted that hometown discount), then never bother to pick it up? All that tracks with reality.

This smells even worse then a Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman production

The MacBook Pro's serial number would tell you where and when it was purchased and, if registered, by whom.

Can they publish the name of the computer repair shop, because I’d like to make sure I never go there. Why the hell are they watching all the videos and stuff on a water damaged computer? Also, why would you take a mbp to a computer repair shop when there’s an Apple store in Christiana Mall?

Well it's a fabricated story, that's why.

Well the MBP could be out of warranty and it's sometimes hard to get a Genius Bar appointment at the Apple Store, but the whole thing doesn't pass the smell test anyway. It certainly wouldn't take a bad actor much to acquire a MBP, load some incriminating stuff on it, stick a Beau Biden Foundation sticker on it and take it to a friendly computer store in Delaware and just happen to break the story 3 weeks before the election. But it's obviously a political setup even if all or parts of it are true.

If this is the best Trump supporters can do for an October surprise, it's pretty weak sauce. I'm sure we'll see at least one ore attempt because this story likely has no legs.

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

Calling black people colored is not a good analogy for using sexual preference instead of sexual orientation. How many people before yesterday had any idea sexual preference was a phrase anyone objected to? I feel like I follow this stuff pretty closely, and I'd never heard of that before.

I will say that even as someone who is not a member of the community and tends to be somewhat oblivious to trends until they are pretty main stream, ACB's use of the term did kind of leap out of me. I think this is one of those situations where it all has to do with the person using the term. I believe Joe Biden if he says he just used an older term that used to be acceptable because he's an old man and he forgot and slipped up through old habits shining through or whatever. When it comes to ACB and knowing her views and likely views on any number of social issues, including sexual orientation, I have a harder time believing it was merely a slip up; I believe it is very likely reflective of her beliefs on the subject. The Church's position, for what it's worth, as I recall, is an exercise in pure logic without context: sexual orientation may well be an immutable characteristic and the urges are perhaps natural not necessarily something that can be prayed away; however, as all sexual activity (anything involving the "spilling" of semen) outside the boundaries of sexual intercourse between a man and woman - the only version of marriage blessed by God - is barred, including masturbation, sex with a condom even between married couples, anal sex even between married couples, oral sex between married couples, etc. no homosexual act can be sanctioned. So, rather like prohibition, where it was legal to be drunk and even possess liquor, but not legal to make it or buy it (so how exactly would you get it?), so it is with homosexuality in the Catholic Church: you can be gay, so long as you never, ever, do the first thing about it. But even this is disputed; there is a notion out there that homosexual impulses are evil by their nature, and so therefore unnatural (because "evil"=unnatural in Church thought), and therefore indulgence in them is a conscious choice, and therefore a preference.

This is fucking stupid and it is why so many even otherwise practicing and reasonably devout Catholics simply ignore the Church on matters of sexual morality (the so-called "cafeteria Catholics" because they pick and choose what they like and don't like), but there it is.

Anyway I am not picking up what ACB is putting down on this, even as I believe someone like Joe Biden simply misspoke. And yes I know they are both Catholic. I think one is prepared to take that faith and its demand for unexcepting obedience to papal authority and canon law without question, and the other... is not.

So when ACB

Werthless wrote:

JFLNYC wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Language evolves

The Biden quote is from May. Did it fall out of favor over the summer? Like, it's just making up shit to get angry about for no reason.

Those people were wrong to say it too. But also Biden is three decades older than Barret. It would be odd if Barrett called black people "colored" or something similar. But, as far as I am aware, there is no record of them giving five separate talks to a group that tried to make homosexuality illegal. She is also looking for a lifetime appointment! Makes you think!

Calling black people colored is not a good analogy for using sexual preference instead of sexual orientation. How many people before yesterday had any idea sexual preference was a phrase anyone objected to? I feel like I follow this stuff pretty closely, and I'd never heard of that before.

Pretty much everyone I know have known for many years that the term “sexual preference” was objectionable. The only people I know who didn’t understand that were people who still believe homosexuality is a choice.

Serious question: If someone identifies as bisexual for a while, but then later identifies as homosexual, how do we talk about that change? I wouldn't think we'd call their earlier life as a lie, or wrong. I used to consider sexuality like a spectrum, and people could fall along that spectrum in various places. I thought that "sexual preference" captured that complexity fairly well, and respected the folks in the middle whose inclinations were more fluid. Marriage equality was about respecting that two consenting adults should be able to form a marriage union regardless of where they fall along that spectrum. Is that off-base, or outdated?

I would point out that "orientation" need not be a simple question one or the other and still be an "orientation" - that is, the way one is hard-wired, not something one "chooses."

Sexuality can be both confusing and not a choice like, "I think I'll be gay today." Preference is loaded with the concept that the issue is not one of an "immutable characteristic," the standard for equal protection under the law established by the SC with respect to race.

So for example when ACB says she will not judge someone based on their "sexual preference" - when she is being interviewed to be a Supreme Court judge - I don't think that is just a relic of an "evolving language" and I think she knows exactly what she just said.

Even if it is preference and not an orientation, they should still be allowed to get married.

Bill McNeal wrote:Also, why would you take a mbp to a computer repair shop when there’s an Apple store in Christiana Mall?

Because of all the maddeningly obnoxious things Apple does, calling its IT/hardware support center in its retail outlets fucking "Genius Bars" is by far the most obnoxious one, and that is really saying something considering how all-around insufferable they are? And I say this as an owner of an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air?

Phred wrote:Even if it is preference and not an orientation, they should still be allowed to get married.

And not get fired or lose housing.

Wolfgang622 wrote: I believe Donald Trump if he says he just used an older term that used to be acceptable because he's an old man and he forgot and slipped up through old habits shining through or whatever.

This is why that argument is BS. Language X to describe Y can only be used if you believe Z, or are old. Maybe the problem isn't with the language X afterall.

It's logic like this that Trump leveraged into support in 2016. Frustration with PC culture, and inconsistency with the application of ever-shifting norms, drives people to throw up their hands and elect a troll who calls people on their shit.

BTW, no one has asked for or received an apology from Biden. Because no one really believes he did something wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... tt-hirono/