I’m not saying Hilary Clinton is guilty of anything.

Don’t listen to Bunkey and just think about it. Do you think the American government should use the intelligence apparatus to spy on opposing political campaigns? — NOS4A2

No, but it's reasonable to conduct surveillance on suspicious individuals irrespective of whether or not they are working on a campaign. Campaigns should vet their staff, and establish rules that require disclosing all past and current contacts with foreign nationals.

It appears the Clinton campaign is guilty of the exact same thing they accused Trump of for numerous years, — NOS4A2

What are you basing that on? The only thing I'm aware of is the quote I gave from the Ratcliffe letter, and that obviously doesn't imply she did what Trump did. Seems to me you're just echoing Trump's claim that the investigation (the one he obstructed) was a witch hunt.

IMO, the worst provable thing Trump did was to encourage perjury by dangling pardons and following through on the pardon. That was criminal and prosecutable. What did Clinton do that is comparable? If you're simply going on hunches from sketchy evidence against Clinton, then we can open the floodgates on possible acts by Trump.

I don’t care how much you hate Trump, but if you want to condemn his campaign for wanting wikileaks to release emails, you should show equal concern for the propaganda efforts of the Clinton campaign, who actually did share false, Russian-sourced info in order to find political dirt on their opponent. — NOS4A2

If there were comparable evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, I would absolutely condemn her. It's pretty standard for a campaign to hire a company to do opposition research and to use that information. That company hired Steele, an experienced MI6 analyst with extensive experience with Russia. Irrespective of any other facts that have since come to light, what was know at the time doesn't sound nefarious.

Tell me: do you really think it's fine for the President to call on Barr to indict Biden based on that paragraph in Ratcliffe's letter that I quoted?

Meanwhile the Clinton campaign sourced actual disinformation from actual Russian spies — NOS4A2

Here's the quote from John Ratcliffe's letter:
In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegaton or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

So, although the IC doesn't know the accuracy of this allegation, you treat this as a confirmed fact. If there were additional evidence, I'm pretty sure the Senate Intelligence committee would have told us.

But what is the problem if it is true? It has been established (not just alleged) that the Russians actually DID hack the DNC email system, they supplied it to Wikileaks, and Roger Stone worked with Wikileaks on the strategic leaking of that information, lied about doing so (while Trump was signalling a pardon), was convicted of it, and Trump fulfilled his commitment by pardoning him. This is stronger circumstantial evidence of Trump's involvement in a crime than the paragraph in Ratcliffe's letter is about Clinton committing a crime.

I don't care how much like Trump, you should stop and think about how idiotic it is to suggest the more important story is that Clinton wanted to use some of this factual information for her political benefit. Now the Republicans are using the unsupported allegation for THEIR political benefit. Have you no shame?

*EDIT*
I just noticed that Trump has asked Barr to indict Biden for "greatest political crime in the history of our country" - referring to the allegation against Clinton, and apparently his clairvoyance about Biden's criminal involvement.

The president’s rambling and ill-tempered interview with Maria Bartiromo on Thursday saw him run through a long list of his usual grievances,

In a way, it's nice that Trump keeps the holiday spirit in his heart 365 days of the year. It's too bad the holiday in his heart is Festivus.

The Democrats have been nearly unanimous in stating that the last elections was illegitimate—something something Putin, something something Russia. They didn’t accept the last election and I doubt they will accept this one. — NOS4A2

"Something something Russia" = stealing emails from the DNC, coordinating with the Trump campaign on their release, and Trump denying that Russia did anything wrong and even joking about it with Putin. How much this (and Russian advertising and misinformation campaign) influenced the election is anyone's guess, but it's legitimate to complain about it. That doesn't imply Trump didn't win, and most Democrats accept that he won and is the legitimate president. If you have a study or poll that proves me wrong, point me at it. But don't just toss out right-wing hyperbole to counter left-wing hypberbole.

I agree there's some hyperbole among Democrats, but at least there's a factual basis to their complaints. Contrast this with Trump's hyperbole (hyperbole that goes off the charts). You may have forgotten that commission he put together to investigate 2016 election fraud because he didn't believe he lost the popular vote. Now he talks about fraud in the current election nearly every day without evidence to support it, and says he won't accept the results if he loses. Perhaps that's hyperbole, but it's pretty extreme.

I think in order for Trump to win, he cannot win by just a narrow margin, but decisively, or else they are going to contest the election, demand recounts etc. — NOS4A2

Let's see now, Trump has been crying "fraud" since 2016, calls polls "fake" if they don't show him on top, has never acknowledged an efforts by Russia to influence the election, and refuses to even say that he'll accept the results if he doesn't win. Sure....it makes perfect sense to think it is the Democrats who will cry foul.

Medication impairing his judgement? — Michael


That's certainly one explanation. It doesn't seem to be a move to boost his chances at re-election, quite the opposite. — Echarmion

His supporters will no doubt express delight that he's done this. If they're in Trump's vicinity when he farts, they rush to get close and enjoy the bouquet.

Should Trump lose, I would not be surprised if he tries do as much damage as possible in his last 2 months in office - for spite and to set things up as badly as possible for Biden. The man is scum*.

* I don't generally like name calling, but he called my niece scum a while back. She's an FBI agent.

As for his little ride and wave, I just do not possess the same anxiety towards his actions, and I actually liked what he did. The response sounds like grasping at straws to me. I could care less if they translate to votes. — NOS4A2

You're saying that the benefit (you and other committed supporters liked it) outweighs the negatives (exposure of the SS agents to the virus and the loss of votes of those who feel this cements their view regarding his poor response to Covid). That sounds narcissistic...and/or crazy because I'd think you would want him reelected.

It let’s the people know he’s ok. The man is running the country, after all, and he’s in the at-risk category. It also has the added bonus of revealing to everyone how ridiculously his opponents will twist anything he does. A wave from a car can send them into fits. Now they pretend to be worried for law enforcement after months of dismissing wholesale violence against police. It’s a thing of beauty. — NOS4A2

That sounds like an interpretation that would appeal exclusively to Trump supporters. Surely you're aware that he's perceived negatively on his COVID response (irrespective of reality - just look at the polls). This stunt doesn't seem likely to improve that perception. That was the point of my question. This doesn't seem that it can help his chances, only hurt (neutral at best).

I imagine you also believe Trump won the debate. If so, wake up to the fact that he probably gained no votes from his performance. Your positive views of the man does not translate to any more votes than the one you cast.

↪Relativist
Me strong. Me smash covid. — Benkei

I'm sure his strong supporters will cheer this, but that alone won't get him votes. Trump's #1 political weakness has been his perceived response to Covid. It seems to me the net result of this incident is to cement that negative perspective.

How can this stunt possibly be given a pro-Trump spin? — Relativist


He is waving thank you to loyal supporters. — magritte

I know that's what he did, but why should voters think this was a good thing? It's undeniable that it exposed the secret service men to some unnecessary risk. Explain the positive that offsets this negative.

The negative view is that it's another example of his poor judgment - the same poor judgment that contributed to the infection of a number of White House staff and other supporters (like Christie).

The negative spin will not turn any strong supporters against him, so the net result of the "spinning" is only relevant if it has some persuasive power to an undecided voter; ie. the positive spin needs to be more powerful than the negative for relevancy.

↪Relativist


How can this stunt possibly be given a pro-Trump spin?


As easily as you’ve given it an anti-Trump spin, except without having to use another’s opinion to form ones own. — NOS4A2

OK, give it to me. Play the role of Kayleigh Mcenany (before she tested positive) and explain what's good about Trump being driven around by a Secret Service man (risking his exposure) and waving at supporters. Also let me know if you think this positive spin will gain him votes.

So Trump puts people at risk by getting into a hermetically sealed car while being contagious. Nice. — Benkei

Physician Swipes At Trump
In theory, these SS agents should now be quarantined for 14 days, for an act whose sole purpose was to feed Trump's ego.

How can this stunt possibly be given a pro-Trump spin?

Donald Trump sentenced to death — Michael

LOL! President Biden's first order of business should be to sign an extradition treaty with Yemen.

President Trump is in the danger zone and will be for a few days, a few moons, too many hours for some, not enough for others.
Please remain humble for none of us are immune — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I'm praying for him. (factor in the fact that I'm an atheist)

My view on all this is I want Trump to survive, be defeated, and imprisoned. — Baden

:up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up: :up:

What's going to happen if Trump has a speedy recovery? Will he be contrite? Will he begin extolling the virtue of social distancing and mask wearing? Will there be another crowded public Trump rally? Will he again ridicule Biden for wearing a mask? Will he start acting like a better man in response to Biden's refraining from negative ads during his convalesence?

How will Biden act? Will he shine a spotlight on the consequences of Trump's poor judgment?

Politically, his illness (not to mention the many others who were with him that got infected) can't be helpful to Trump. The question is: how much will it hurt? Obviously, his base will remain loyal, so I think the consequences will be to solidify some of the "soft" Biden supporters, and perhaps sway a few additional. IOW, I expect polls conducted in the next couple of weeks to reflect a slight downward level of support for Trump.

Say you had a body, and a nervous system, at your disposal. would it be possible to create and program a machine that could provide all the necessary pressures vibrations signals lights to that body, to simulate a reality indistinguishable from true reality? — jasonbateman

It seems possible, in principle. It could be achieved by artificially stimulating the specialized portions of the brain that interpret sensory input (i.e. visual cortex, auditory cortex, etc). The simulation needn't be as fine-grained as reality (e.g. simulation at the level of atoms), it just needs to simulate at the granularity of perceptions.

I don't want anyone to suffer or die.

Minimizing that is why I want Trump and those like him out of office.

If Trump getting sick gets him out of office, that's great. Otherwise, it's pointless suffering for no good. — Pfhorrest

Trump is the guy whose example and vocal support encouraged people to not wear masks, and ridiculed others (e.g. Biden) for wearing one.

Perhaps Trump's suffering will get more of his supporters to take COVID precautions seriously. That would be a greater good. Of course, it's possible Trump will have a very mild case and start encouraging mask use, but I'm skeptical. There's a good chance his bravado will increase.

Pretty incredible. Only the military officers have systematically masks while I count about three people wearing masks. And lots of hugs and handshakes. — ssu

I hate to wish pain or death on anyone, but the Trump supporters may actually learn to take Covid seriously if a bunch of infections arise from this event.

The debate was supposed to be conducted based on agreed-upon rules. Trump blatantly violated and disregarded these rules, and Biden barely did anything about it. — darthbarracuda

Biden did the right thing. Had he acted as badly as Trump, he'd have shared equal blame and shame. The net result is that Trump's performance was the only thing memorable about the night, and it is not a positive memory. Trump gained no votes, and Biden didn't lose any.

He’ll get more done in quarantine than Biden has done in 47 years — NOS4A2

Right- if watching FOX during every waking moment can be considered "getting things done".

Crossfire Hurricane was set up to investigate whether individuals associated with President Trump's campaign was coordinating with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The problem is that they investigated the wrong campaign — NOS4A2

Wikileaks published information provided by Russians. Roger Stone coordinated with Wikileaks and lied to investigators. That's pretty strong reason to investigate.

The problem is that they investigated the wrong campaign. — NOS4A2

What evidence is there of coordination between the Clinton campaign and the Russians?

I fear that the whole “it’s dangerous to vote in person” idea is a form of voter suppression, and it’s good to see someone unswayed by it. — NOS4A2

Has anyone actually pushed it being too dangerous to vote in person? I haven't seen any. If it's there, it's been drowned out by the bogus claims about fraud.

That said, the Axios article was useful. We shouldn't just enable people to mail in ballots, we need to also be sure they are filled out correctly.

It doesn’t settle it because “the IC does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.”
We don't even know the SOURCE of the allegation. It would not be surprising if the ultimate source is Russia.
— NOS4A2

But given that the Steele dossier was largely sourced from suspected Russian spies, and payed for by the Clinton campaign, it appears that any “Russian collusion” to dig up dirt on an opponent was a Democrat affair.

What's the problem? It's common practice to dig up dirt on political opponents and to utilize whatever dirt is available (consider Trump's use of Wikileaks, not to mention Stone's coordination with Assange). It WOULD be a problem if the formal Russian investigation by the FBI and Mueller were a product of a political witch-hunt, but the IG has already assessed that and indicated it was not.

Suppose the only thing Clinton ever received was Steele's work, and decided to use this against Trump. That would be about as bad as Trump using the low quality information Guiliani obtained from Ukraine. So if you're going to cry foul in the hypothetical against Clinton, you should cry foul in the actual against Trump.

But you have yet to get the memo. Only about one-hundredth of 1 percent of in-person votes are rejected, whereas rejection rates of 1 percent are common with mail-in votes. If your ballot is rejected your vote doesn’t count.

And rejected ballots are on the rise. There go all your votes to the trash bin. Brilliant. — NOS4A2

Rejected ballots do not necessarily get trashed:
The vast majority of these ballots were rejected because voters made a mistake or failed to fill out the witness information, according to state records. A rejected ballot does not necessarily mean the voter is denied his or her vote: North Carolina allows for a process called “vote curing,” where voters are notified that there’s a mistake and given a chance to fix their ballot. But that’s not an option in every state. And even that isn’t foolproof. In Nevada’s statewide primary in June, for example, 12,366 ballots had a missing or mismatched signature, but even after voters were notified to fix it, only 45 percent were successfully cured.

This was from this fivethirtyeight article, which the Axios article linked to.

This highlights the need to educate people on how to correctly fill out their ballot, if they choose to go this route. In the future, we should push for "vote-curing" in all states.

Personally, I'm voting in person on election day to ensure my vote is tabulated on that day.

Biden's performance wasn't memorable, but Trump's was. What a prick!

I cannot understand why Biden is debating — tim wood

Debates are typically good for the underdog, and bad or neutral for the guy on top. Biden's on top, so he could possibly lose votes. On the other hand, he might have lost more votes if he ducked the debates.

What I hope Biden does is to behave like an adult. The contrast will be stark, and the stylistic difference may sway a few undecided voters.

Would anyone care to make any predictions about what we might see in tonight's debate? I predict that fact-checkers will be working overtime tomorrow.

exactly - it senses the presence of something and reacts appropriately. How do you sense without consciousness? — Pop

Chemical stimuli.

This is true but they all started with a simple consciousness, which evolved.Or are you saying consciousness is something that just pops into existence? — Pop

Consciousness is a vague term, aside from the fact that it reflects an aspect of human existence. It surely didn't "pop" into existence. Brains process input from sensory organs and through the nervous system, much of it autonomically. Consider a human body in a persistent vegitative state ("brain-dead") - incapable of consciousness. At least some autonomic brain function continues - and this function entails integrating input from the nervous system and reacting to it. Similarly, consciousness entails the integration of input - input from senses (e.g. the visual cortext processing visual input; auditory complex processing auditory input), plus memories - and integrating these. The brains of all complex animals engage in this integrative function. I think it's a stretch to call it "consciousness" at every step of the way - but at any rate, you'd need define exactly what you mean my the term - specify specific functionality.

This seems like a strange thing to say when it was an 11th month long republican senate blockade which stopped Obama from getting Merrick appointed to the Supreme court. On the grounds that 11 months was too close to an election and that the people's vote needs to factor into the senates choice for the supreme court. That's 11 months that is too close. Obviously within 2 months is a completely different scenario (sarcasm very much intended on that last one) — MSC

I'm as pissed off as you are that McConnell spouted that lie in 2016. In fact, the proximity of the election had absolutely nothing to do with the unwillingness to consider the nomination; it was purely and simply an exercise of the power held by the majority party in the Senate. Similarly, the Senate has the power today to rush through a nomination. Elections matter. Even without the SCOTUS vacancy, there's been a huge influx of conservative judges to federal courts. I hope that unhappy Bernie supporters understand this - because we don't need 4 more years of loading the federal courts with conservative federal judges.

The pendulum will continue to swing as it always does. If Roe is overturned that will energize the left like nothing we've seen in years and unheard of amounts of money will pore like a torrential rain in to the bank accounts of Pro-Choice activists. The media will be clogged with stories of the bad things that can happen when safe abortion is not readily available. Roe caused the pendulum to swing to the right, overturning Roe will cause the pendulum to swing to the left. Back and forth the pendulum will swing for the rest of our lives. — Hippyhead

I agree this is the likely outcome. It's unfortunate the left didn't anticipate this in 2016. My view at the time was that SCOTUS appointments were the biggest issue. It was for evangelicals- it is what got the idiot elected.

There doesn’t have to be a law specifically saying that fetuses are persons if the court just interprets existing laws with an assumption that they are, which thus creates common law saying that they are. — Pfhorrest

Good point - this could happen, but I think it's a worst case scenario. Do you think this likely?

I'm going to bed so I have more to say on this, but it's possible that a new right wing court will attempt to apply personhood on fetuses which would affect the ability of blue states to perform abortions — Maw

Interesting idea, but I'm skeptical they can do that. "Conservative" jurisprudence is not the same thing as conservative politics; it entails narrower interpretation of the Constitution. The constitution doesn't define a human life, and a strict constructionist wouldn't read this into it. However, they wouldn't stand in the way of a state legislature defining life - or the US Congress.

I skimmed a bit of it, and my superficial reaction is that I don't buy such claims as, "Consciousness can be described as a process of self organisation " and "Consciousness and life arose together, as without consciousness there can be no life."

I see no reason to believe such claims. Life is about survival. Survival entails appropriate reaction to the environment. At the most primitive level, it is stimulus-response. An amoeba reacts to primitive aspects of the environment: it senses the presence of nourishment and consumes it. This reflects biochemical reaction, not consciousness. More complex life-forms have more sophisticated sensory apparatus that enable more effective interaction with the environments. IMO, consciousness reflects a complex process for more optimal mediation between stimulus and response.

If I'm not mistaken, every published SCOTUS decision cites Marbury v Madison as precedent for their decision - it's their bedrock. I wonder how strict originalists (like Clarence Thomas, who disdains stare decisis) justify upholding it.

He's blaming Democratic mayors and governors.

He said that if we exclude the deaths that occurred early on in blue states such as New York and New Jersey, then the U.S.A. death rate doesn't look so bad anymore compared with other countries. — Pierre-Normand

A high death rate in blue states is win-win for Trump: fewer Democratic voters and he can blame Democrats.