FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6d ago
Biden only committed to picking a woman, not necessarily a Black woman. Two of the four on the shortlist were white. I know it's a punchier line to say, but it's not true.
I don't know that they committed in advance that "it must be a Black Woman" but I do know that during the Summer of George they picked a Black Woman, and that they absolutely thought about her status as a Black Woman when doing so. I don't think it makes any difference. Passing over the Black Woman who was his natural successor would have been a bad look with significant IdPol portions of the Democratic base, in a way that passing over Joe Biden wasn't.
Biden in particular had bad personal feelings about not getting Obama's full support in the primary for 2016, so it seems extra unlikely that Biden would actually backstab Kamala in the same way, even on just a purely personal level (even if he was tempted).
It wasn't really Joe's call to make, once he had dropped out. The Democratic party circa July of last year isn't beholden to him on this.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
Most of the reporting from inside the Biden-verse indicated that he only dropped out begrudgingly and with guarantees of personal protection.
The movers also aren't necessarily Joe, whose next phase of life is death, it's the hangers-on and handlers who want to secure their own legacy and job security. Blinken and co. They don't want to be thrown under the bus either.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
I have no insight to offer on your deeper problems, but in response to your core original question:
Should you be a liberal or a traditionalist?
You shouldn't seek consciously to align yourself with a whole grab-bag of beliefs. You should follow your conscience and your reason and your interests, and if that leads you to find that you align with people who use the label "tradition" or people who use the label "liberal," then that is convenient for labeling yourself to signal to others what your beliefs are, but it's not real. It's not a fact about you like your height or who your father was.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
A savvy career politician like Biden would understand that winning elections is more important than being nice to him personally.
I don't think Biden would have stomached that. Throughout the process he was not willing to be a bullet magnet.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
"With hindsight, we should have stopped the pandemic-era emergency spending as soon as everyone who wanted to be was vaccinated and pivoted to controlling inflation."
"So why didn't you do it?"
The problem is that, while the VP has no formal powers, a politician good enough to be President should be the kind of person who exerts power just by existing in the space.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
If Biden had dropped dead, sure.
That was the point of the hypothetical.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
You're correct, I had forgotten this fact.
I'm not really pulling back on the point though. Ford was appointed VP during the Watergate process, he was never really part of a functioning Nixon administration.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
No personal offense meant, but any time you start writing a fanfiction speech for a politician, just realize that one is wrong.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President."
And what's the answer to the other question: "Was Joe Biden a bad president for not listening to you on Medicare For All/Free Palestine/Abolish Prisons/Annex Cuba?"
Kamala would never survive being disloyal to Biden. She would have been electorally doomed if she was perceived as disloyal.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
The problem is, that is a double-edged sword: give the masses the chance to see President Kamala (as she takes over from Biden and finishes out his term) and maybe we all see how badly she does when given power. See Ford versus Carter for how being the VP who took over as President wasn't any advantage.
The difference with Ford is that Ford succeeded (as Speaker of the House, not VP) from a disgraced Nixon admin. Kamala, succeeding a dead Biden, would not have been concerned with those disgraces. Witness St. Charles of Kirk; we still avoid speaking ill of the dead. Still moreso a dead president, still more a dead president who was mediocre but ultimately started no wars and kept unemployment under 4.5% for effectively his entire term. She would have basked in the twin glows of succeeding a martyred president, and being the first woman in the white house.
Or maybe there is enough of a run-in to let them have an open primary and choose a different candidate.
The dems could never choose a different candidate after they picked Kamala for VP. They picked Kamala to be a BLACK WOMAN, and they couldn't be seen to skip over a BLACK WOMAN.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
First of all, 107 days is plenty of time for an election
I never blame it on the timeline. Rather the major problem is that she can't have
iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals. Compare some policy ideas from better politicians, like Build the Wall and Medicare for All. Iconic, bold, and yet emblematic of what the politician stands for. Inseparable from the personality of the originator. Give me a policy goal that fits in 3 words and you've got a shot at winning.
Because she was VP for four years and didn't try to do anything. She can't have policy goals separate from the Biden administration's policies. It just doesn't make any sense. She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?" She's on the horns of the dilemma, she can be gored by "So you were powerless to advocate for your positions for four years?" on the left and "So you're saying Joe Biden was a bad president?" I don't see how you make any bold policy proclamations as Kamala Harris circa July of last year that don't fall victim to one of those two criticisms.
She could claim none of the Biden administrations' accomplishments, such as they were. She couldn't claim to be a steady hand, who had kept the country safe and the economy humming. She also couldn't claim to be a voice for change. Where did that leave her messaging-wise? What bold policy slogan could she have used?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
In 2023 the Dallas Cowboys faced the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. It was probably the career-best year for QB Dakota Prescott, they had a strong team. Unfortunately the niners were having a better year, behind Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy's establishing campaign, and in the 4th quarter the cowgirl's season was on the brink: they were down a touchdown with just six seconds to go 76 yards. So the Cowboys draw up a hilarious trick play involving putting their running back at center and everyone else out wide, including the rest of the offensive line, and the plan appeared to be to try and lateral a series of hook-and-ladder runs up the field for the touchdown. It, of course, didn't work. Elliott got steamrolled, the pressure got to Dak and he threw it like seven yards for a short gain that accomplished nothing. They looked silly and everyone around the NFL mocked it for a while.
Now as much as I love mocking the cowgirls, realistically their win probability from that position was less than 2.5%. There was a 97% chance that the 49ers were going to win, and the play they called in that situation was unlikely to work. So I always thought mocking them in that situation was a little silly, they just didn't stand much of a chance to begin with so you gotta try something.
In the same way, mocking Kamala for her electoral results for not winning the election is kind of silly, like mocking Ezekiel Elliott and Dakota Prescott, a fun thing to do if you hate their team but ultimately not really the fault of the players on the field. She focuses on the 107 days, but the bigger problem was being tied to an unpopular incumbent president without the advantage of incumbency. If TPTB had the chutzpah to just kill Biden, Kamala would have had a chance: she would have been the first female president, she would have had the advantage of being in power. But running as an incumbent vice president of a clearly failed (because not-running) president, she had all the disadvantages of a failed admin attached to her while having none of the advantages of having concrete accomplishments to point to. She couldn't avoid blame for any of the failures of the administration eg Gaza and Inflation; she couldn't claim credit for any administration successes, eg the economy not cratering post Covid. The Democrats were doomed in 2024 when they nominated Biden and picked Kamala in 2020. Biden was always going to get old, Kamala couldn't be skipped over without pissing off too many people. The result in 2024 was pretty much set in stone, and confirmed when Trump turned left in Pennsylvania.
Pick Pete, don't pick Pete; you were losing either way. Accept what happened and move on, don't try to blame others.
Now if we want to play "How did Kamala manage to lose so badly?" then there's room to analyze performance. But losing was always her fate.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7d ago
I had this thought a couple of times, he bounces back.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
Are there any decent chinesium oura ring knockoffs out there?
I want to dabble in fitness biometric tracking, but I don't really want a smart watch, the ring seems practical but I don't want to spend that much.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
It's a sop to a subgrouping that has been co-opted by the MAGA movement.
Think of it as the RFK equivalent of the Cuba embargo: most don't care, and a subgroup cares A LOT, so you go with what the subgroup wants.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
This was my biggest culture shock moving to the city. Where I grew up the working class was mostly white, the diner waitress and the customer had about equal odds of being white or black. Moving to NYC, lower end retail has entirely black employees serving mostly white customers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
Yeah it feels like a compromise climb-down. Vaccines are cool, but it's the Tylenol.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
8d ago
Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000".
No that's pretty much craigslist here as well. Over time I've noticed some decent deals here and there, just wrong size or wrong style for me.
Though I may ultimately just keep the ones I borrowed. I'm fairly certain that the people I borrowed them from don't particularly want them back, at least not from me.
Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables.
So, like, bike-sensei: I haven't actually changed most of those things on several bikes that haven't been ridden in years, and the tires are hit-or-miss, but with a bit of lubrication the rest seems to work ok in that I hop on and pedal it and it goes. Should I be changing out all those things as well?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
Getting back to you, found the Charlie Kirk jokes that made me guffaw, and are still dirty enough to shock my conscience after a three years of scout camp doing dead baby jokes. From who? The sick fucks at NFC East Meme War of course!
Using Kirk as essentially the new version of the gangbang meme to show a player is gonna get wrecked
Using Robinson as an edgy version of Goku to show a player is going to be accurate
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
I'm really kinda lost on what you're saying here, Rov, though I'm sure it's my ignorance of what I'm talking about. It seems to me like $200-300 is a reasonable budget for a 10-20 year old mid-range used bike around me, both from craigslist/FM and walking around the big bike flea market near me the other weekend, at which price point one can get a decent bike from a respectable brand with what I would consider a lot of different feature sets from suspensions to frame materials to gearsets to handlebars, so like yeah one ought to get picky.
I guess if I were looking for something really specific and in better shape it seems like $600-1000 gets me there, but I really don't get what I get other than "new" for more money than that. Enthusiasts try to explain it to me and I don't get it, it feels like they're telling me I have to buy a new Mercedes and a Camry just won't do.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
I assumed that the advantage of the 3x system was using a front shift to rapidly change gears, going from 3-5 to 2-5 only takes one shift where going from 1-12 to 1-7 takes five shifts. I would think the speed/reliability of the shifter would be the limiting factor here, though that might be my lack of exposure to higher end bikes.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9d ago
Wow, that is something. I have not come across it yet! Bookmarked.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11d ago
It's decently fun and comfortable for most things for me, and ugly enough to not be an attractive theft target. The lack of gears make it not that great for climbing hills/bridges, but it's okay for me on the ones near me. Also not great for carrying cargo, but I don't have much need for that now. I used to have a nice hybrid like the one I'm suggesting, which had decent saddlebags for cargo, but it got stolen a while ago.
Interesting how that is a consideration I don't really have for this purchase, but is clearly important for others. 90% of my rides start and end at my house, the rest are on trails in parks, and none of them feature public stops.
It may take some experience to understand how road bikes are really supposed to fit and work. You should be leaning forward enough to put significant weight on your hands. The drop bars provide several places to put your hands to help with this strain. Between putting significant force on the pedals most of the time and keeping some weight on your hands, there shouldn't be that much weight on the seat most of the time, so it's not meant to be that comfortable for just tooling around.
I've been embarrassed by this already. I actually really like how the road bike rides when I get it under way, but getting it under way ends up being significantly harder or more clumsy than the more upright bikes.
The only thing that makes me consider pushing a bigger budget, like $500 rather than $200, that some of the newer bikes I see around are 1x10 or 1x12 gear systems. The 3x8 systems you see on most used bikes seem to add a lot of complexity for very little benefit (to me). Older bikes too, but nothing that's both working and cheap. One of those weird manufacturing moment-in-time things where for a while 24 speeds was really difficult to do from a manufacturing perspective and became the standard of excellence, and now you're starting to see less of it for the same reason: everyone can do it, so let's see what the best thing to do is.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11d ago
Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.
Yeah, what's annoying to me as an outsider is that I thought "Shimano" was a brand name like an Edelbrock engine, only to realize they make EVERYTHING, so they're not really any indicator of quality.
So there's a heckler's veto on good police procedure?
My philosophical problem with ICE agents masking, dressing plainly, and not providing identification is that I'm watching these videos of raids at stoplights and I'm thinking to myself: How do I go about making the decision to shoot or not to shoot a group of masked men attacking my car at a stoplight? Because the whole visual reads to me carjacking/kidnapping/robbery, and I'd be reaching for a weapon, and I'd feel that the entire history of American self-defense jurisprudence backs me up on this one.
Now am I vanishingly unlikely to be the target of an ICE raid? Sure. But procedurally the existence of a situation where the authorities are trying to arrest me, and the situation is such that I would be legally justified in shooting them, is anathema to law and order, even if the combination of events is rare.
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