MSC

This is a Republican talking point that was debunked awhile ago. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/trump-cant-designate-antifa-or-any-movement-domestic-terrorist-organization/ Anti-fascism is a movement. It isn't a group or an organisation and that false claim was first started by Lauren Boebert. Stop lying and stop acting in bad faith with all these claims to be against Trump while spouting a bunch of falsehoods and lies that he has tried to pass off as truth. Then stop lying, stop acting in bad faith and stop sharing debunked Republican talking points or hinting at bullshit MAGA world conspiracy theories. It's actually embarrassing how transparent you are while you think you're fooling anyone.

Yeah, I can see that. Will probably be "making jokes" at rallies (remotely from a screen with a live feed to a bunker somewhere saying his bone spurs are acting up) guaging responses to phrases like "you guys wouldn't mind being home by 9pm if it meant keeping the other guys off the streets right?" Or "You'd give up your guns if I asked and you knew I was taking the radical leftists guns too right?" Or "You know what would be really cool? If I had my own cops and soldiers on the streets all the time protecting us all from Antifa and the radical leftist marxists. Would you all like that?" https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4770769-trump-biden-speak-rally-shooting/ Biden is condemning the shooting and has reached out to Trump. FBI investigating. Gunman still unidentified or identity isn't being shared yet. Trump will probably be getting a bigger security detail after this and it wouldn't surprise me if the secret service beefs up Bidens and others details too. Really wish I knew what was said between them now.

Definitely true. Martyr or surviving the attempt this was only going to end badly for the country. Trump is a master narcissist and will milk a sympathy bump for all it is worth while using this to prep people for the Big Lie 2.0 if he loses the election. The more people he can get to believe there was a vast conspiracy around this attempt, it won't be much of a stretch from there to say it was rigged. He was gonna do it anyway but now it'll have more potency. These next 6 months... and probably years are going to be really bad in terms of political unrest and violence. Anyone else feel like they are sitting on a powder keg?

How do you be a member of an ideological position that isn't a group? It's just short for anti-fascism. Allied WW2 vets were Antifa, so was Churchill and pretty much everyone living contently since the end of ww2, with the right to vote while enjoying our civil liberties and rights without fear of death, torture and imprisonment when being critical of the powers that be.

I'm curious to see if the republicans will all of a sudden be more keen on stricter gun control laws after this. Might alienate some of their base in doing so though. More likely they'll just use this as more reasons why more guns need to be out there. Assuming the assassin would have been thwarted if everyone had been carrying a gun.

Based on the video you shared; it seems like there were some issues with angle of line of sight where the witnesses could see the shooter but not the police at the edge of their security perimeter and they probably had trouble hearing what was going on over the sounds of Trump and the rally. It's definitely a security failing but it also sounds super rural so less police presence/funds for event security and I don't know what sort of budget a former presidents SS detail has at their disposal. Or maybe Trump just isn't the sort of person cops and his security won't half ass the job on. The unseen consequences of being an asshole I guess.

In this case, I dont think so just based on where Trump put his hand and where his ear was during the shot. Nape of his neck and the back of his head was in that spot moments before. I think the shot was lined up and Trump just happened to move and accuracy only tends to decrease after the first shot in such short intervals also not much is known about the gunman so we don't yet know what sort of training they've recieved. Could be ex military (my guess is this) or just a hobby gunman like a hunter. So far all I'm aware of is that the firing spot was outside of the rally or what the weather was like so couldn't even begin to describe how distance, wind and earth curvature might affect the shot. I imagine we'll find out soon enough when he posts to social media. I imagine it will be very... inciteful.

Something we can agree on. Ngl my MIL just text us the words "Trump has been shot" and my heart sank a bit when I found out they basically missed. I watched the footage, apparently it grazed his ear but he basically happened to turn his head, just as the bullet whizzed by, narrowly avoided the bullet travelling sideways through the back of his head. This is really going to get worse now, I feel in the sense that Trumps followers will feel emboldened to act more violently and the spin in Trumpworld will be this was a "deepstate" hit ordered by Biden. I also think this won't even be the only attempt on either Trump or Bidens life leading up to the election. Now there will be bullet proof glass at every campaign event. At the end when he's pumping his fist; he's either saying "I'm alright" or "fight" but I think it's the latter.

Earlier I made a point to check to see if anyone here knew why presidents and their doctors haven't ever been bound to sharing their medical information with the public. The answer is pretty simple. So presidents aren't discouraged from seeking out medical attention for either physical or mental health reasons, due to the unfair stigmatisation of those with disabilities or just weird views on who can or can't serve in the oval office based on genetic information. This is why FDR made attempts to conceal the fact that he was paralysed from the waist down. He literally didn't trust the electorate to have any faith in a man in a wheelchair. In Bidens case, the lack of transparency could very well be to hide some aspect of his health data with the public that most reasonable people wouldn't see as something that makes someone unfit for office, like a past history with depression that isn't current, however, a past history of depression is the sort of ammo any political opponent would use and some voters would believe this makes someone unfit to be president. So this is why the presidents expectation of privacy in regards to medical data is left intact. It wouldn't do for a president to be discouraged from seeking medical aid for both simple and complex issues. You really have to put yourself in the mind of different types of voters to see why this is the case. "Oh the president has boils on his rear? No person chosen by god to lead would have boils on their rear. You've lost my vote." Or "Oh I see Biden suffered from a bout of depressipn 40 years ago, what if he gets depressed again and kills himself while in office? Can't vote for him." So there are lots of reasons why a president might not disclose their medical info really. From benign to serious. Hell there is even an incentive not to give out allergy information to not give any workable info to would be presidential assassins. Fortunately, the physician to the president is required to give general health updates to the VP and the cabinet if they are at all concerned. This is why I'm of the opinion that if the democrats want to sensibly and reasonably practice caution, they should leave this in the hands of the VP and Bidens cabinet. The way I see it, if Biden wasn't fit to run, he wouldn't be fit to finish out his term either. If the unfair pressure gets too much and he decides to bow out; I think the best way to make that strategy work, would be to give Harris the reins, make it her ticket, (she is polling better now that people are more seriously considering this scenario, to their own probable detriment) and pick whomever the next best polling willing Democrat is, for VP. That to me is just a hypothetical. I still think ditching biden is shooting themselves in the foot and nobody has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden isn't fit for office because the office is still running just fine.

Oh one became numerous since you last made the claim? Again you're grasping at straws and again I've heard nothing from Bidens real Dr, his caninet or his VP. See there is this thing called confirmation bias and you have it hard right now. He's still the democratic candidate. Nobody here can change that so quit crying about it. If that changes before the election you can say I told you so. And it's still an extraordinary claim to say an 80 year old is showing early signs of Parkinson's, a disease which normally starts around 60, without giving him a medical examination. Can you diagnose cancer by looking at someone? No. You can't do it with Parkinson's either and taking a quick look at someone's behaviour on TV isn't a medical examination. You've accepted as fact that which hasn't been proven and you expect people on a science forum to not point it out? Next joke. If Biden had parkinsons then he'd be in the later stages and would have an uncontrollable tremor. It would be unmistakable. Here is the difference between me and you right now; I address everything you say, best to worst points. You can't even respond to the majority of what I said and explain to anyone here why it isn't valid. In terms of effectively convincing someone that what you say is true, you've got a long way to go. Your debate performance is worse than Bidens at this point yet nobody is claiming you have dementia are they? It's more difficult to figure out for anyone else. At least Biden has beaten Trump once already. I had this same debate in 2019 though when the polls showed Trump with a poll advantage and was accused of mental gymnastics then too. Biden still won. In fairness; you could say there were cognitively better choices in all the elections but people can unfortunately only choose from who is running.

No, the onus is and always has been on the people making the claims. Great dodge ducking my questions and points btw. I assume Vince Vaughn was your dodgeball guru. This is a science forum. So far you've suggested an 80 year old man is in the early stages of Parkinson's and I've already pointed out a good reason, based on what is known of Parkinson's disease and the average age of onset, why that probably isn't the case, making it an extraordinary claim. What do we say about extraordinary claims? They require extraordinary proof. DaT and MRI. Here is the thing; if the American public are wrong about Bidens competency, and he is fine and fit enough to serve, or at least fitter to serve than Trump (which he obviously is) then it means the public isn't very good at determining peoples levels of appropriateness and competency for the job in the first place. To me this is all the political equivalent of a groom/bride getting cold feet before the wedding. The idealist wants a better candidate than Biden, the realist knows the time for that has passed. Biden already won the primary. If the electorate had really cared about actual competency and not just how we think it should look in short bursts on live televised events, then they would have figured out a way of replacing Biden before we got this far into the process. Now I do believe there may be some weird way that someone could take over this late and beat Trump? Probably. But if there is historical precedent for it in some political campaign somewhere, it isn't in US history but you're more than welcome to go digging for it and convince me. When it comes to Bidens mental and physical condition, all we can do is speculate. No scientific basis for assuming that a man that was competent enough 4 years ago suddenly stopped being competent enough absent compelling evidence. A) behaviour and intepretting the cause of said behaviour are two different things. B) Has anyone seen Biden driving a car lately? C) I've spent the last four years of watching Biden driving a country out of a pandemic and getting a fair amount of his legislative agenda through successfully along with a massive investment into US infrastructure and running a government with far greater respect for science and expertise than TFG. I mean Biden should spend some time trying to alleviate peoples concerns but that's not his main job right now and you can only lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. How much energy should someone with so many responsibilities really commit to reaching out to may sayers sharing speculations and not facts?

Alex, you're grasping at straws now. As are NBC and so is this neurologist whom I think really is just getting himself on tv right now. It would be quite easy for even the average person to tell if a person has had Parkinson's for up to 20 years. Why 20 years? The average age of onset is 60, with smaller groups being diagnosed earlier as young as 40. So unless Biden is a statistical anomaly and is showing the early symptoms of Parkinson's, at 81, I highly doubt this is the case. While all of this pointless arguing and ethically dubious from afar diagnosing is going on, we are expected to listen to the opinions of people who aren't around Biden very often, yet his cabinet, VP and own physician, the people who are around him everyday, and with Kamala Harris having everything to gain if Biden was unfit, they are just irrelevant? But some alleged neurologist misleading the public about the onset of Parkinson's is worth our attention? Please. Give it a few days and there will be another neurologist coming out and saying honestly, they couldn't diagnose anyone without a thorough exam. Just to see if anyone else actually knows; who here can explain why the president maintains his right to medical privacy or why his physician is not constitutionally bound to share any of the presidents medical info with the public? Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to why the physician to the president is usually a military doctor? How about you @Alex_Krycek care to take a few guesses? Maybe you're smart enough to know so I don't have to hold anyone's hand. Tell you what if he does a DaT and an MRI on Biden, then makes a determination, based on history, symptoms and physical condition, then I'll listen. Assuming Biden would even share that info.

Nazis are one person down

Indeed, although something like the liars paradox fits the question somewhat, your point is that outside a thought excercise, if we made a game out of telling who is the liar in a small group of people, the expectation is that at some point the liar will reveal truthfully, they were the liar all along for the sake of the game. There is as far as we know, no being bound to lying or bound to telling the truth with 100% consistency. So I suppose my response to OP is that truth can contradict itself in a language game where the language contradicts itself. In physical reality however, no, truth cannot contradict itself.

I'm kind of with you in this one MigL and a few of your most recent comments have seemed to hit a note with me. Not everything but a lot. I also get what Charony is saying, that the accumulation of capital in order to leverage authority through corporate lobbying/Bribery is a strategy of would be authoritarians. For me it's a case of not all capitalists lean authoritarian but lot's of money in the hands of a power hungry few, in a system that is greased primarily by money, is a recipe for a slow crawl toward dictatorship with an ever weakening democracy. Our reliance on money to make the entire apparatus of government and society to work, makes us weak as a species. Now, I'm not arguing for the abolition of capitalism, far from it. It does need to stop being put on a pedestal however, when the current structure has upper management capitalising on their workers/colleagues lack of power through capital, to take a bigger and bigger slice of the pie for themselves while lobbying against raising the minimum wage, fighting against living wage policies or union busting. As to the points of yours I do agree with; populism. I also find that confusing. Especially with project 2025 out there. What about Trumps platform is popular? It really is a poorly defined word that could have a few uses depending on the context but it seems to me that it's a term that ended up getting used because Trump said he is popular and fights for the people... when in reality most people think he's horrible and only works for himself. Or is populism now something to do with saying you'll give people exactly what they are asking for (in this case Trumps base) with overly simplistic solutions that your base can understand even though the issue is far more complex than the easy fix the public thinks is possible? Like "Build a wall".

Wi ither folks coal! I love how you always clock my humour for what it is my friend. And for those that don't know, long may yer lum reek means long may your chimney smoke. It's a wish of longlife, usually said on Hogmanay our new year celebration. You can ad "wi ither folks coal" to make it even more of a well wish and that particular addage originated in my hometown of Edinburgh.

Indeed. Before their recent decision the subject of presidents assassinating each other wasn't a legal grey area. Now who can fault us for having the discussion when the highest court seems to just be totally fine with talk of presidents assassinating each other with legal loopholes? Thing is though we all know the hypocrisy of that court would come careening out if Biden is the one committing terrible acts via their enablement and not Trump.

Wait so if I want Biden to gift me a kilt all I need to do is drive on the wrong side of the road?! I'm Scottish so you're really just making it sound like I'm one quick traffic infraction away from a free kilt. Also is fast a place? I've always wanted to go to fast. I've been to two places called Belfast but never just been to fast. Should I go there too?

And it's only going to get worse, for now at least you can tell the wazzock at the other end is human. In a few years? Who knows. When writing a little, says a lot. +1 You're absolutely right of course. Holding the wealthy or the powerful accountable is very difficult and even when it's clear laws have been broken. Take discrimination laws for example; as it stands the only people in a position to sue for unjustifiable discrimination in the area of employment law surrounding hiring, are individuals who already are independently wealthy enough to take an employer to court. If you are unjustifiably discriminated against for say just working a register in a store and need to keep looking, even if you got rejected from a job because the hiring manager or boss hates your skin tone or is creepily only looking for timid female employees, there really isn't much you can do in a legal system that is hostile toward pro se advocates vs companies with lawyers on retainer just for this. Meanwhile you'd still need to look for a job to make ends meet. Not to mention the majority of resources to help individuals find legal aid, qre geared towards unfair firing practices not hiring practices. And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the many many other ways the rich and powerful avoid accountability for both illegal acts and legal but unfair acts.

Indeed businesses aren't all run homogenously. The reason I mentioned referendums having the potential to be used more in business settings is ease of use of technological aides for votes due to drastically smaller voter pools of employees. Also; representative democracy applied in a business setting would endanger the companies operation if it becomes a popularity contest instead of merit based promotions. I suppose my pitch here for an alternative model isn't a desire for total mimicry of the political machines of representative democracy, more like a mixing of different ideas so that the top down corporate power structure is diluted into something that works better for all employees. I mean not every policy but some. For example policies that can have a direct impact on how customers interact with and treat employees in customer facing roles. One of my first jobs was customer service for a energy provider in the UK and I left that job because the company had refund policies which made it harder to make people whole when our system genuinely and verifiably overcharged them and if it ever got dealt with as a complaint, it was above my head even though I could see for myself we had made a mistake with meter readings. It's the sort of authority structure that is responsible for making the Chinese military an indecisive and corrupt mess, of nobody wanting to make decisions until time is wasted for a request to be allowed to act, be granted through a lengthy travel up the chain of command, even though you already have an idea of how to respond.

I challenge you to explain why without making me want to question it more!

I think the question in the title is great for a discussion but not in the way OP thinks. There is not so much a hidden lean toward authoritarianism in the world but it's external to politics. Ask yourself this; why is it in governance and politics we lean towards democracy and public co-ownership of the community, but in employment most of us work for businesses with top down power structures where the majority of employees have little to no say how the businesses is run despite having a vested financial security interest in seeing the business run well. I acknowledge the small existence of co-ops and public businesses yet I've not heard of much in the way of corporate referendums and democratic ship steering of business practices and policy. I also acknowledge it's not the same as governance but I still find it interesting to wonder how a business might be run more democratically from policy setting to pay structure. I'm not talking full on communism but I feel that companies that have a more team orientated egalitarian approach to profit sharing tend to have the most loyal employees and the most respected bosses. In the end, management is a job like every other job and like every other job in a business is essential so avoid anything even remotely resembling a pyramid as much as possible. Else from a certain perspective it just looks like management takes a cut of every individual under thems profit. If egalitarian pay was based on company success as opposed to determined by vocation, in conjunction with affordable non debt invoking education, you'd only see people being paid the same within the same company and employees would have much more reason to work together than play office politics to climb up ladders to chase money whether they are management suitable or not.

You've misinterpreted a bit. That Poll shows thats Biden is lower in unfavourability and higher in favorability than Trump. iNow earlier was still of the opinion it's too late in the game and at some point in all the replies it seems to have gotten a bit lost on who stands where, but as far as I'm aware he agrees with you MigL, as do I. He's just more patient with others who think Biden should be replaced than I am. Solid bar is favourability, dotted bar is unfavourability. Red is Trump, blue is Biden. Trumps dotted bar is highest because a larger majority doesn't like him. Bidens solid bar is higher than trumps because less people dislike him. Both are disliked more than 50% but Biden has more people who like him than those who like Trump. Like and dislike may not reflect voting habits though as some people can have a dislike for people they politically align with. So while some may still dislike both they will still vote for one. On voting day polls don't matter, just who is on the ballet when it's time to make the mark.

Just needs to read the news. It's just a general people are saying it and he has access to view people saying it, online or elsewhere. I couldn't say either way when it comes to his inner circle and party leadership. He isn't Trump though, I doubt he has built a culture around himself of nobody saying anything he doesn't want to hear, like Donald Trump. I don't agree with it and think the discussion is ridiculous to have at this time and I'd rather leave determinations to medical professionals or the VPs 25th ammendment powers. Maybe if he wasn't going against Trump and the threat to democracy wasn't so great I'd entertain the idea of replacement but all roads in this case are filled with risk as is the nature of dealing with people like Trump. Exactly! Biden is still more than capable of beating Trump and did it despite the same worries and concerns then as OP is discussing now. This isn't new for Biden. He won before despite these same criticisms being used last time.

I mean I've overheard a few older folks now all saying something along the lines of "If he wins a second term, I'm old as shit, would probably die before a trial or just not be in prison very long.... might have to take one for the team." So honestly if he keeps escaping legal consequences there may be a line of the old and terminally ill ready to step in and take care of the problem for us... hey, some of y'all are also old... It's just a suggestion, I know nothing. Anyone want to be a successful Von Stauffenberg?