Xhieron

Good for them. At least somebody did.

Except there’s no such thing as a hollow blue suit! Any alternative to Biden has to be a real live human being, probably with real live political aspirations of their own. That means they’re going to want to win. Anybody who stands any chance of being anywhere remotely close to competitive also stands a chance of outright winning under better circumstances in four years.

You’re asking an ambitious politician to take a real, serious risk of political suicide just to save face, and the reality is that no matter who your replacement is, polling better than Biden isn’t a win condition. Winning the election in November is the only good outcome. All other outcomes are bad not only for the nation but also personally for whoever replaces Biden.

Sure, you can run a would-never-win-or-even-run-anyway candidate, but like I said: that’s essentially conceding the election, and Biden can do that on his own.

Uh… okay, bro. You know that Donald Trump is also running in this election, right? Biden could be running single digits, and it still wouldn’t change the calculus: If a Biden alternative can’t beat Trump, they’re not going to put an albatross around the neck of their political career just to lose in November.

Newsom was on MSNBC singing Joe’s praises, just like he would have done regardless, because Newsom wants to be president, but Newsom also polls worse than Biden. That’s not hypothetical. Those polls already exist, and a drop in Biden’s numbers isn’t automatically a boost for Newsom. If Newsom thinks losing in 24 hurts his viability in 28, he wouldn’t do it. And who could blame him? It’s five months to the election.

The point is: It’s possible that all of the options are bad. Biden was in the mid-forties before the debate and the thirties after. He went from near toss-up to probably losing if the election were yesterday/today. Newsom might out-poll Biden today, but that’s not the contest.

The contest is with Trump. It’s not good enough to poll better than Biden. You have to actually carry all of Biden’s states and then some. If I’m Newsom and deciding whether to try to cobble together a five-month campaign and limp to November to save the DNC from itself and protect Amtrak Joe’s legacy when I’m starting 15 points in the hole or run my own campaign against the likes of a Haley or DeSantis also-ran once Trump is term-barred, dead, or both in four years, I’m not taking a risk at the convention unless someone makes me very, very confident that I could win.

And there’s the rub. Newsom wants to be president, and he’d love to be president in six months, but he’s not going to take over a campaign that’s already lost. If the party thinks Trump wins no matter what–not an unreasonable conclusion–why on earth would they burn their best shot of a rebound in 28?

Ratings and clicks–same thing they wanted with the debate.

This probably doesn’t work, and it’s probably not as good idea as anyone hopes (genuinely or not). It might happen anyway, but no matter what, we’re coasting toward a second Trump presidency, just like all the Russian agitprops here wanted all along.

If Biden is polling down 10 points or worse at the convention, they could drag someone else onto the stage, but my suspicion is that no one else outperforms him on short notice, even after his abysmal performance in the debate.

A few reasons:

1. Newsom probably doesn’t want it. If he calculates Trump wins either way (not unreasonable), he’s not going to want that loss on his record since he’s already gunning for 28. He would be the best chance at getting an up-and-comer who already has good name recognition and looks and sounds good.
2. Harris. If Harris wants it, she has a lot of leverage to make it hard or outright impossible for the party to push anyone else out in front of her. She’s a poor candidate for a lot of reasons, but she’s also the most attached to Biden. That’s both good and bad for her. If they want to run anyone else, they have to have her playing ball too. Ask yourself, if you were Kamala Harris, would you give up your only conceivable chance at the Oval in favor of another non-Biden candidate? Remember, in any scenario the odds are good Trump wins anyway.
3. The truth may be that the party would rather just let Trump win. That sounds unthinkable, but this isn’t a secret cabal of idealists we’re talking about: it’s a bunch of self-interested rich people who want to put themselves in power. Getting them to do anything for the public good is difficult under the best circumstances. They could easily decide–rightly–that Biden is still their best shot at beating Trump. That was the call in 2020, and it paid off. Don’t forget that many of these same names being batted around now were active in the party four years ago. Newsom loses to Trump, and he’s largely seen as the best alternative. If you’re running the party and looking at those odds, you should run Biden if you actually want the best chance at winning. You might decide it’s just a lost cause and start planning for a four year long nightmare.

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It was a disaster. Trump lied for 90 minutes straight, but he did it confidently, with a straight face, and without rambling. It was a vast improvement over his stump speeches. Biden mostly told the truth, but he meandered, stammered, got mixed up, and was obviously ill. That’s just what happened.

I’m going to vote for Biden anyway, because the old man stands for policies that actually benefit me personally (and a second Trump term is a threat to the existence of the Republic). But the debate was bad for him, possibly catastrophic. His campaign desperately needs an October surprise, and at this point it’s hard to guess what it might be.

Yeah, my bad. I forgot how cool it is to just spout whatever bullshit you want. Hurray for ignorance.

No wonder humanity is doomed.

That an opinion lacks evidence does not alleviate the requirement that its factual allegations be supported by evidence. “I don’t think the surface of the earth is curved” may be an opinion, but it’s a provably wrong assertion, and adding a disclamitory phrase to it doesn’t excuse the statement from evaluation.

Citation needed.

No, sorry. I try to be deferential when talking about this stuff, but this is pretty cut and dry, and I’m afraid you’re just wrong here. This is Greek–not theology. πίστις is the word we’re talking about. It shares the common root with πείθω–“to persuade” (i.e., that evidence is compelling or trustworthy). πίστις is the same word you would use in describing the veracity of a tribunal’s judgment (for example, “I have πίστις that the jurors in NY got the verdict right/wrong”). The Greeks used the word to personify honesty, trust, and persuasiveness prior to the existence of Christianity (although someone who knows Attic or is better versed in Greek mythology feel free to correct me). The word is inherently tied up with persuasion, confidence, and trust since long before the New Testament. The original audience of the New Testament would have understood the meaning of the word without depending on any prior relation to religion.

Is trust always a better translation? Of course not–and that’s why, you’ll notice, I didn’t say that (and if it were, one would hope that many of the very well educated translators of Bibles would have used it). But I think you can agree that the concept is also difficult for English to handle (since trust in a person, trust in a deity, and trust in a statement are similar but not quite the same thing, and the same goes for belief in a proposition, belief in a person, and belief in an ideal or value, to say nothing of analogous concepts like loyalty and integrity).

The point is that πίστις–faith–absolutely does not mean belief without evidence, and Christianity since its inception has never taught that. English also doesn’t use the word “faith” to imply the absence of evidence, and we don’t need to appeal to another language to understand that. It’s why the phrase “blind faith” exists (and the phrase is generally pejorative in religious circles as well as secular ones).

Now, if you think the evidence that convinces Christians to conclude that Jesus’ followers saw Him after His death is inadequate, that’s perfectly valid and a reasonable criticism of Christianity–and if you want to talk about that, that would be apologetics.

In any event, if you’re going to call something bullshit, you better have a lot of faith in the conclusion you’re drawing. ;)

The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn’t translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn’t an analogy to a child being gullible. It’s an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.

Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn’t about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a First Century Jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Not to shit on my own profession (about this–there are plenty of other reasons for that), but lawyer education is nowhere near doctor education.

To paraphrase one of my professors, “Ever wonder why in the legal profession you can get a terminal degree after only three years without having to write a dissertation?” [Answer: It’s because lawyers control their own profession, along with the government that controls how professions are regulated.]

On the OP, I don’t think police should be required to pass the bar exam. The reason is that the bar exam, and by extension law school, covers much more material than police should ever realistically need to know, even being generous. Cops don’t need to know which agents owe their principals fiduciary duties, for example. They don’t need to be able to articulate contract remedies or determine when a party might have a prevailing argument against personal jurisdiction.

They should, however, have to pass a version of the UBE that covers criminal law and procedure in their jurisdiction, and they should have continuing education requirements. [And in many if not most or all US jurisdictions, they already do. --they do in mine, at least.] More importantly, they need to carry a bond.

In order for any of this to matter, however, first a court has to hold that the police owe a duty not only to the public at large but also directly to those in immediate need. In the US, the state of the law with respect to police and other state actors vis-a-vis victims of the torts and crimes of others is reprehensible. Take a look at Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005), DeShaney v. Winnebago County, 489 U.S. 189 (1989) (“Poor Joshua!”), and Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d. 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1981). And if you like podcasts, Radiolab has covered this.

In short, the police need to be bound by a legal duty to rescue, and members of the public need a private right of action against agencies (police and others, including agencies like DCS) to whom private remedies have been surrendered when those agencies fail to perform their duties as required. It would require an upending of the American “system” in favor of something closer to civil law jurisprudence (e.g., the European continent). And it’s desperately needed and long overdue.

As a young teenager: Do not start working until you have to. Once you start, you’ll never stop.

Thank you for this. That was a fantastic survey of some non-materialistic perspectives on consciousness. I have no idea what future research might reveal, but it’s refreshing to see that there are people who are both very interested in the questions and also committed to the scientific method.

We have not created the heavens and the earth and everything in between except for a purpose. And the Hour is certain to come, so forgive graciously.

15:85 Quran

I’m incredibly fascinated by the ghost comparison. Is the probability that ghosts are a real physical phenomenon higher or lower than the probability that aliens exist or have visited us? That’s an extremely interesting question, and I’m sure someone could do a statistical meta-analysis comparing the incidence of, say, UFO sightings with the incidence of paranormal experiences (if such an analysis doesn’t already exist). Both questions seem like the things that should be generally empirically falsifiable (and indeed, specific instances certainly are), but humanity’s curiosity about both has proven remarkably durable despite centuries of curiosity and myriad efforts to settle (negatively) both questions once and for all.

Oh shit, you’re right. Russia doesn’t want that, so I guess we should just let them have what they want.

What are you on about? This is a war in which Russia, unprovoked, invaded its neighbor to grab land, bodies, ports, and food. Russia is going to share multiple borders with NATO when this is over; the question is just whether the border is the Ukrainian border or the Polish border. If either of those scenarios results in World War 3, odds are pretty good both of them do. There’s simply no universe in which NATO allows Russia to take over all of Eastern Europe (again). Even if the fascists take the US in November, Europe will pour everything it has into stopping Putin’s advance.

Sure, Ukraine probably “loses” in the end, in one way or another. By many measures they’ve already lost. But it’s not a binary proposition. The point of propping up Ukraine at this stage is as much about forcing Russia to spend its fighting ability on Ukraine now, instead of in WW3. This desire is part of the reason that capitulating, conceding some land, and letting Russia regroup for a decade before doing a better job next time is only palatable with Ukraine in NATO. The threat of a world war is the only thing that would stop Russia from repeating this bullshit every ten to twenty years for another five generations.