Joe Biden 2024 thread - Dark Brandon Where Art Thou?

[jimmyjazz 45953]

2 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

First, I am unaware of any really improper redactions.  A few were "un-redacted" after litigation.  And I think Mueller's team mostly was responsible for the redactions, along with interested parties.

What Barr did was very deliberate, not negligent, and probably improper as an advocate of Trump, rather than the nation as a whole.

The critical question becomes, should Garland have betrayed his ideals in order to be a partisan hack like Barr? 

Biden specifically appointed him to bring regularity and normalcy to the office.  Recognizing what's at stake, I think not, but I abhor that kind of politics anyway.

Holy shit, man.  It's no wonder people think your perspective is "if a lawyer did it, it was fine".

That report was not fine, and Garland could have had Hur clean it up.  Full stop.  There was no need to eliminate or even minimize any findings.  All that needed to be done was to strike the clearly political red meat that was designed by Hur to do exactly what it did.

For fuck's sake, grow a soul.  You know right from wrong yet you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to prove otherwise.

[TwiceHorn 31471]

42 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Holy shit, man.  It's no wonder people think your perspective is "if a lawyer did it, it was fine".

That report was not fine, and Garland could have had Hur clean it up.  Full stop.  There was no need to eliminate or even minimize any findings.  All that needed to be done was to strike the clearly political red meat that was designed by Hur to do exactly what it did.

For fuck's sake, grow a soul.  You know right from wrong yet you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to prove otherwise.

Garland asked him to do it, it's reproduced above.

The idea of a Special Counsel is that they're independent of the Attorney General and the administration.  Garland probably could have ordered him to do it, but that's not his inclination and undermines or completely destroys the independence of the Special Counsel.

And then he would have had to deal with the fallout of being political and supporting his boss, and violating the spirit if not the letter of the Special Counsel rules.  Again, not his inclination.  He appointed the sonofabitch, so he has to deal with what the sonofabitch did.  Even Barr didn't order Mueller to change his report.

Thumb on the scale like Barr?  Thumb off the scale?  The latter is, independent of circumstances, clearly the proper path.

Edited February 12 by TwiceHorn

[Anastasis 23469]

Rare neg. But well earned. 

[jimmyjazz 45953]

11 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Rare neg. But well earned. 

LOL.  Neg away.

31 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Garland asked him to do it, it's reproduced above.

Garland asked Hur to judge Biden's memory miscues differently than he did other witnesses?  Really?

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13585]

56 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

The idea of a Special Counsel is that they're independent of the Attorney General and the administration.  Garland probably could have ordered him to do it

You're describing Calvinball. 

[Fastbreak 3985]

I just wish Dems didn't attack their candidate.  He's not broken.  Everything is working and people in place to run things are competent.  We can do this all day long.  The idea that Trump even comes up with his own attacks is hilarious.  He still doesn't know how government operates, and when he does talk on his own, it's painfully obvious. I'm not a betting man, but I'd wager with near certainty he doesn't know what NATO stands for.  

Naggers Are Taking Ours

[TwiceHorn 31471]

55 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

LOL.  Neg away.

Garland asked Hur to judge Biden's memory miscues differently than he did other witnesses?  Really?

Don't be obtuse.

Garland asked him to amend the report, pointing out the inconsistency in treatment.  He didn't order him to do so. 

[TwiceHorn 31471]

59 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

You're describing Calvinball. 

Garland understands the purpose of a Special Counsel, even if the current rules don't completely enable independence.  The idea is that the AG doesn't tell an SC what to do, whether there's any real independence or not.  He's not going to tell Hur what to do.

Even Barr didn't try to tell Mueller what to do with his report.

At some point, maybe every point, the Attorney General of the United States should not succumb to political expediency, despite what his predecessors and opponents have done, and despite what his partisan supporters would have him do.

Most importantly, ordering Hur to change the report prior to its release would have been discovered and publicized and would have been a bigger shitstorm than this is already.

Edited February 12 by TwiceHorn

[jimmyjazz 45953]

3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Don't be obtuse.

Garland asked him to amend the report, pointing out the inconsistency in treatment.  He didn't order him to do so. 

That is on Garland.  I don't see how you fail to recognize this.  Just treat all witnesses equally and don't release a report that doesn't do so.  Jesus Christ.  Obtuse much?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

[TwiceHorn 31471]

6 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

That is on Garland.  I don't see how you fail to recognize this.  Just treat all witnesses equally and don't release a report that doesn't do so.  Jesus Christ.  Obtuse much?

It was Garland's choice, maybe, but I don't think Garland saw it as a choice.  He was not going to order a Special Counsel to change his report.  He publicly requested that he do so, pointing out the problem, but is not going to order him to do anything with respect to the report.

I don't fail to recognize anything.  You don't seem to understand and never have that a Special Counsel is intended to be independent of the Attorney General.  Therefore, an Attorney General that respects the intent of the Special Counsel rules is not going to ORDER him to change his report, or unilaterally change the report before its release.

For the 100th time since the Mueller investigation commenced, the ONLY reason for existence and appointment of a Special Counsel is an apparent conflict of interest between the administration, of whom the AG is a cabinet official, and an investigation target. Therefore, they are intended to operate outside the chain of command of the DOJ and free of the direction of the Attorney General.

Edited February 12 by TwiceHorn

[jimmyjazz 45953]

Just now, TwiceHorn said:

It was Garland's choice, maybe, but I don't think Garland saw it as a choice.  He was not going to order a Special Counsel to change his report.  He publicly requested that he do so, pointing out the problem, but is not going to order him to do anything with respect to the report.

 

THIS IS EXACTLY MY POINT.  Hur could have written "Communist Agent Joe Biden lied to investigators" and you would be fine with it and feel Garland had no need to intervene.

 

Quote

I don't fail to recognize anything.  You don't seem to understand and never have that a Special Counsel is intended to be independent of the Attorney General.\

Fuck you.  I recognize that, within reason.  It was a political hit job and that goes outside the bounds of proper investigation

You are a startling example of someone who is incapable of sussing out shades of gray.  Fuck it, I'm out, I'm tired of this bullshit argument.

[WhatTheBuck 28781]

Way to go, Dark Brandon!

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13585]

7 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Even Barr didn't try to tell Mueller what to do with his report.

He was just misleading to an extreme that strains credibility under oath in whether he was aware if Mueller supported his initial public summation of the Mueller investigation. 

 

[TexEx15 17528]

 

[jimmyjazz 45953]

[Willfully Horn 8017]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Rare neg. But well earned. 

#bothsides?

Not in this timeline. Fuck you.

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13585]

Quote

During his press conference, Barr claimed that “the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.”

That’s contradicted in the report. Mueller notes that after Trump learned that his own conduct regarding obstruction was being investigated after appointment of the special counsel, “the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation.”

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/what-the-mueller-report-says-about-obstruction/

[atomheartbevo 89668]

 

[RDCanecutter 26443]

5 hours ago, DixonHur said:

I do because I feel bad for the sweatshop chickens.

I like my eggs to come from pasture raised hens.  

We get hippy eggs. It costs extra for all the Grateful Dead the chickens listen to.

The mark-up could just be to pay the kid who takes regular factory eggs and dyes them shades of brown.

[DixonHur 11304]

11 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

We get hippy eggs. It costs extra for all the Grateful Dead the chickens listen to.

The mark-up could just be to pay the kid who takes regular factory eggs and dyes them shades of brown.

Hmm, THC infused eggs...now that's something I could get behind 

[hookemATL 11734]

13 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Hmm, THC infused eggs...now that's something I could get behind 

Three over easy, made with canna butter and some keef coffee?

[UpperWestside 6163]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

I notice this A LOT, but again I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at prices and portion sizes in grocery stores so I instantly recognize when companies do this. I am glad the President is filling in the gap here to do something to stop this farce. 

[JohnnyRage 1617]

6 hours ago, David Dennison said:

If you pay more than three bucks for a dozen eggs, that's on you.

If you pay less than three bucks for a dozen eggs, you've never owned chickens.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

7 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

I notice this A LOT, but again I spend an inordinate amount of time looking at prices and portion sizes in grocery stores so I instantly recognize when companies do this. I am glad the President is filling in the gap here to do something to stop this farce. 

Yes, if some consumers are just now noticing this, then they've haven't been taught by family or teachers because this is nothing new. When I was learning how to cook/bake, my mama had a lot of old recipes that had to be adapted because the ones that had instructions like use one box yellow cake mix would turn out awful if one didn't account for the shrinkage (i.e. volume matters). The Betty Crocker company, along with Pillsbury, etc have been doing this for years, and I rarely buy mixes unless a recipe specifically calls for it and then just do the math but it's a pain. Across the board, it's those little amounts every aisle, every product and nationwide adds up. IIRC, weights and measures are regulated by state not federal although there is a federal office (Office of Weights and Measures underneath the aegis of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Dept of Commerce). Not sure if I have that correct, but a friend back in college was a food science major that was really interested in candy bar weights and how much $$ profit was in getting that bar perfectly weighed. Now, it's Snickers bars in various sizes from King sized to bite sized so that consumers don't even think about what they're doing.

[Aqua Buddha 14596]

Lulz:

 

[bolverk 29672]

57 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Yes, if some consumers are just now noticing this, then they've haven't been taught by family or teachers because this is nothing new. When I was learning how to cook/bake, my mama had a lot of old recipes that had to be adapted because the ones that had instructions like use one box yellow cake mix would turn out awful if one didn't account for the shrinkage (i.e. volume matters). The Betty Crocker company, along with Pillsbury, etc have been doing this for years, and I rarely buy mixes unless a recipe specifically calls for it and then just do the math but it's a pain. Across the board, it's those little amounts every aisle, every product and nationwide adds up. IIRC, weights and measures are regulated by state not federal although there is a federal office (Office of Weights and Measures underneath the aegis of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US Dept of Commerce). Not sure if I have that correct, but a friend back in college was a food science major that was really interested in candy bar weights and how much $$ profit was in getting that bar perfectly weighed. Now, it's Snickers bars in various sizes from King sized to bite sized so that consumers don't even think about what they're doing.

 

Oh, we're aware. We are all very well aware.

 

[wildcat09 29354]

12 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

It was Garland's choice, maybe, but I don't think Garland saw it as a choice.  He was not going to order a Special Counsel to change his report.  He publicly requested that he do so, pointing out the problem, but is not going to order him to do anything with respect to the report.

I don't fail to recognize anything.  You don't seem to understand and never have that a Special Counsel is intended to be independent of the Attorney General.  Therefore, an Attorney General that respects the intent of the Special Counsel rules is not going to ORDER him to change his report, or unilaterally change the report before its release.

For the 100th time since the Mueller investigation commenced, the ONLY reason for existence and appointment of a Special Counsel is an apparent conflict of interest between the administration, of whom the AG is a cabinet official, and an investigation target. Therefore, they are intended to operate outside the chain of command of the DOJ and free of the direction of the Attorney General.

Garland's mistake wasn't not forcing Hur to alter the report, it was in picking Hur in the first place.

[Brisketexan 105139]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

 

Oh, we're aware. We are all very well aware.

 

That link will get you posrep from me 100% of the time.

[Incredulity 11671]

"....Fuck! ..I wanna eat God dammit."

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13512]

Biden needs to thread the needle by reminding the investor class, including 401k holders, that their investing health has NEVER been as good as they are today, Feb 12th. Make Wall Street Great Again. But without shoving it in the face of the non-investor class who are struggling with paying rent and grocery bills.

Of course with today's world of targeted advertising, emails, etc, this isn't an impossible task. 

Now many people with investments are going to vote for Trump no matter how you target them but you want their enthusiasm for Trump to be brought down a level or two. 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Biden needs to thread the needle by reminding the investor class, including 401k holders, that their investing health has NEVER been as good as they are today, Feb 12th. Make Wall Street Great Again. But without shoving it in the face of the non-investor class who are struggling with paying rent and grocery bills.

Of course with today's world of targeted advertising, emails, etc, this isn't an impossible task. 

Now many people with investments are going to vote for Trump no matter how you target them but you want their enthusiasm for Trump to be brought down a level or two. 

nyt had a good article the other day about how partisan perceptions of the economy are now.  d's think it is good, r's think it is bad, no matter what.  just more of the politics-before-everything that exists now.

[6th Street 6403]

Americans are obese - smaller portion sizes are not the worst thing.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13512]

4 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

nyt had a good article the other day about how partisan perceptions of the economy are now.  d's think it is good, r's think it is bad, no matter what.  just more of the politics-before-everything that exists now.

Hence why some Rs and Independents need a message that has Biden + stock market = your high net worth. And the goal isn't to flip 100% of them because that ain't happening. Convincing a few to vote for Biden, or a few to not vote at all, or to not give Trump/GOP a donation matters. A few thousand votes in the right state may decide this race.

As the true incumbent, Biden has to run on his record. And the truth is that some people have never been as well off as today. Biden has to exploit that fact. 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

It was Krugman.  Here's the punchline from one November article:

 

Anyway, the analysts at Briefing Book delved into one possible reason for this disconnect, which I speculated about right from the start — but they’ve done the math. It’s now a well-established fact that partisan orientation affects expressed views about the economy: Democrats are more positive when a Democrat holds the White House; Republicans are more positive when the president is a Republican. What Briefing Book shows is that this effect isn’t symmetric: It applies to both parties, but the partisan effect on sentiment is two and a half times as large for Republicans as it is for Democrats.

 

And here is a more recent one.

Quote

The economy is good, but Americans feel bad about it. Or do they?

The more I look into it, the more I’m convinced that much of what looks like poor public perception about the economy is actually just Republicans angry that Donald Trump isn’t still president.

Last year was a very good one for the U.S. economy. Job growth was strong, unemployment remained near a 50-year low and inflation plunged. Some reports I’ve seen suggest that this favorable combination was somehow paradoxical and contrary to economic theory. In fact, however, it’s exactly what textbook economics says to expect in an economy experiencing an improvement in its productive capacity. And I do mean textbook economics. Here’s a figure from one of the leading introductory economics textbooks — OK, Krugman and Wells, seventh edition (forthcoming) — on the effects of adverse and favorable “supply shocks”:

 

 

Image

 

Credit...Krugman and Wells

 

 

Setting aside the added details that you can read about there, you can clearly see that the right panel, showing the effects of a positive supply shock, exactly matches what happened in 2023: strong growth combined with falling inflation.

Furthermore, the source of the positive supply shock is obvious: The economy finally got past the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Working out those disruptions took longer than almost anyone expected, then happened faster than almost anyone expected, but there’s no great mystery here. If some prominent economists denied that such a thing was possible, well, that’s their problem.

 

 

What is a mystery is why the improving economy hasn’t been reflected in public perceptions. There have been some fairly elaborate analyses of the divergence between economic fundamentals and consumer sentiment, but here’s a simple version:

 

 

Image

 

Credit...FRED

 

 

The blue line is the economic sentiment index that has been produced for decades by the University of Michigan. The red line is the “misery index,” the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, inverted so that up means improved conditions. Until a few years ago, these two measures generally moved together. But despite an uptick in the most recent numbers (not shown), consumer sentiment remains at levels that in the past were associated with severe recessions, very high inflation or both.

As I and many others have pointed out, consumers’ behavior doesn’t match the grim answers they give pollsters: Actual consumer spending remains strong. Still, where is that negative assessment coming from?

Now, Michigan isn’t the only game in town. Another long-running survey, from the Conference Board, paints a more favorable picture, especially for perceptions of the present situation as opposed to expectations. And there’s a newer, internet-based survey, from Civiqs; I am by no means an expert on economic surveys, but Civiqs seems to be using fairly sophisticated methodology.

And their results on economic views by political affiliation look broadly in line with those found by Michigan for “current economic conditions.” The difference is that the Michigan numbers, which are based on a small sample, are very noisy, while Civiqs uses a bigger sample plus statistical wizardry to produce “smoothly trending estimates.” I wouldn’t bet my life on the Civiqs estimates, but in what follows I’m going to use them to suggest that one of the factors everyone knows is affecting consumer sentiment — partisanship — may be even more important than most economists realize. Indeed, weak consumer sentiment may be almost entirely about MAGA.

 

 

It has been obvious for a while that views of the economy have become increasingly partisan. It’s also clear that this partisanship is asymmetric: Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say that the economy is good when their party holds the White House and bad when it doesn’t.

 

But the Civiqs charts show this asymmetric partisanship especially clearly. Here are their results for self-identified Republicans:

 

 

Image

 

 Credit...Civiqs

 

 

Republican assessments of the economy soared when Donald Trump took office. Even during the pandemic recession, when unemployment rose to almost 15 percent, Republicans had a more favorable view of the economy than they did in the Obama years. And when Joe Biden came in, almost all Republicans declared that the economy was bad — a view that has barely budged in the face of good macroeconomic news.

Democrats are not Republicans’ mirror image. Here’s what the Civiqs numbers look like:

 

 

Image

 

 Credit...Civiqs

 

 

If you squint hard, you might see some decline in Democratic economic optimism around the time of Trump’s election, but it’s small. Democrats did feel better about the economy after Biden won, but the economy actually was improving as we recovered from the Covid shutdown. And Democrats’ economic sentiment thereafter followed economic fundamentals, declining as inflation rose, then improving as inflation came down.

 

 

What about independents? Never mind. True independents, voters without partisan leaning, barely exist; data for independents is basically an average of voters who think like Democrats and voters who think like Republicans.

What I find most interesting about Democrats’ numbers is what we don’t see: a clear drag on sentiment from the level of prices. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence — and innumerable posts on social media — to the effect that Americans are upset about how much things cost rather than the inflation rate over the past year. But that’s not obvious from the Civiqs chart on Democrats, who are roughly as positive about the economy now as they were in Biden’s early months, before the big price increases of 2021-22.

I’m not prepared to completely dismiss the issue of the overall price level, which is backed by academic research as well as anecdotes. But as I said, it’s not obvious in the survey data.

So maybe we should at least entertain the hypothesis that the historically anomalous behavior of consumer sentiment reflects the historically anomalous nature of the modern G.O.P., two-thirds of whose supporters believe — based on no evidence — that the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe economic polling, like everything else with this crowd, is all about MAGA.

If that’s really true, the political implications are somewhat ambiguous. Poor economic sentiment may not weigh on Biden because it’s being driven by people who would never vote for him anyway. On the other hand, this interpretation suggests that most of the political upside of an improving economy may already be baked in, since Democrats have already accepted the good news, while Republicans never will.

 

 

In any case, the general point is that you just can’t interpret surveys of economic sentiment, or for that matter anything else, without taking into account the fact that the modern G.O.P. bears no resemblance to the Republican Party of past years, or for that matter any political party in modern U.S. history.

 

[Dahobbs 17534]

12 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

That's just companies trying to fight our obesity epidemic. 

[Incredulity 11671]

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

[Brisketexan 105139]

4 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

So....it will resonate loudly with the American people.  That's just good campaign work right there.  The last decade or so has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, you gotta speak fluent stupid if you want to have any chance of winning.

[Dahobbs 17534]

24 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

If Trump sent the exact same thing you would have loved it. 

[Incredulity 11671]

2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

If Trump sent the exact same thing you would have loved it. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33870]

22 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

If Trump sent the exact same thing you would have loved it. 

Incredulity just hates when the topic of shrinkage comes up.

[gmr548 16580]

48 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

I actually agree with this, though probably not for the same reasons. It's low effort pandering and if anything gives fuel to the idea that the POTUS has an real control over consumer prices.

41 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

So....it will resonate loudly with the American people.  That's just good campaign work right there.  The last decade or so has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, you gotta speak fluent stupid if you want to have any chance of winning.

But, yeah, this. Maybe the stupid is the point. Seems to work pretty well for Republican messaging.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

49 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

if you want to win hearts and minds in this country, you gotta promise the people more doritos.  

[South Austin 52504]

3 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

Incredulity just hates when the topic of shrinkage comes up.

HE WAS IN THE POOL!!!!

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

1 hour ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

It was Krugman.  Here's the punchline from one November article:

 

Anyway, the analysts at Briefing Book delved into one possible reason for this disconnect, which I speculated about right from the start — but they’ve done the math. It’s now a well-established fact that partisan orientation affects expressed views about the economy: Democrats are more positive when a Democrat holds the White House; Republicans are more positive when the president is a Republican. What Briefing Book shows is that this effect isn’t symmetric: It applies to both parties, but the partisan effect on sentiment is two and a half times as large for Republicans as it is for Democrats.

 

And here is a more recent one.

 

meanwhile, nate silver thinks it is all rational.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/opinion/biden-trump-consumer-confidence-economy.html

[Incredulity 11671]

46 minutes ago, gmr548 said:

I actually agree with this, though probably not for the same reasons. It's low effort pandering and if anything gives fuel to the idea that the POTUS has an real control over consumer prices.

no, its similar reasons.

 

48 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

if you want to win hearts and minds in this country, you gotta promise the people more doritos.  

dinomitas are the new hottness.

[Boss Hogg 808]

2 hours ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

nyt had a good article the other day about how partisan perceptions of the economy are now.  d's think it is good, r's think it is bad, no matter what.  just more of the politics-before-everything that exists now.

 

That 6% indy number is pretty surprising. 

[South Austin 52504]

If "better that expected" means that Trump didn't get us involved in a nuclear war, then yes, his presidency was much better than expected over Biden's.

Edited February 12 by South Austin

[nbmishoid 949]

They just don’t remember shit  from 3-7 years ago

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Incredulity said:

That tweet is astoundingly stupid.

It really is. Just kind of cringey with the "if you're anything like me, you love to watch the Big Game™ surrounded by your favorite snacks!" Damn those "sports drinks bottles" getting smaller!

Needs to be more natural on the script. "This bottle of Gatorade used to be 32 ounces for $2.19. Now it's 28 ounces and costs more. That's malarkey!"