• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    330 million people in the US and both parties are going to run a candidate who should, by rights, be considered medically unfit for office.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Do you have any proof at all that Biden is mentally unfit, or are you just repeating what TikTok says?

      All I see is that he’s old, his stutter has gotten worse, and he tripped over a sandbag once.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        his stutter has gotten worse,

        He was a favorite in the 1988 presidential primary because he was such a a great public speaker…

        He got over his stutter when he was a child, and a stutter doesn’t make someone say something completely different than what they meant to. Hell, he wasn’t even doing it while Obama’s VP, and he was in his 70s then.

        Stop pretending he just has a stutter, he’s 80 years old and he gets confused sometimes. It’ll happen to all of us if we’re lucky to live that long.

        That doesn’t mean he’s still fit to be presidet, and he sure as shit isn’t the best option for a Dem candidate even if he is mentally fit for office.

      • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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        8 months ago

        In 2020, his campaign had to stop scheduling evening events with Buden because he would start sundowning. He’s an 80 year old man who is clearly starting to show signs of his age.

        • dhork@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I agree with you that he’s showing signs of his age, but isn’t it possible he simply gets tired by 8PM, and since hes the boss, he can simply say “Dont schedule me for late nights thst arent necessary”?

          There’s a whole lot of daylight between that and “sundowning”.

        • cranakis@reddthat.com
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          8 months ago

          Source?

          Edit: 1 day later. There is no source. Consensus wins. They pulled it from their ass.

          • takeda@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            His ass.

            I could believe though of not having events past 8pm. Anyone with good sleep hygiene would do that though.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        My favorite part about all this is both sides just kind of ignoring that their candidate can’t string together a coherent sentence, gets confused a lot, and mistakes people for others all the time as if those aren’t signs of cognitive decline.

        Cheers. Thank you for doing your part to ensure this never changes.

        • donuts@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          Here’s an excerpt from the very beginning of Biden’s speech two weeks ago:

          In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks: to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire that existed in the world at the time.

          His mission was clear. Liberty, not conquest. Freedom, not domination. National independence, not individual glory.

          America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king.

          And here’s an except from Trump’s speech from his most recent rally just a few days ago:

          By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley … did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it? All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security, we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.

          Biden is old, just like Trump. Nobody denies that. But surely you aren’t trying to “both sides” this one by equating the two mentally or physically, right?

        • cranakis@reddthat.com
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          8 months ago

          I don’t see anyone ignoring it. In fact, it appears to be all some folks can talk about.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      “The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.”

      ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

      One of my favorite books, but depressing people were pointing shit out 50 years ago and society at large is still ignoring it today.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        It’s obvious from this excerpt that Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead. Of perhaps the Royalty, who aren’t elected but hold even less power and are even more of a distraction.

        The US president, by contrast, is not elected by the government and has a shit-ton of power, and increasingly so as the US congress is less and less able to govern due to Republican infighting. The US president can start and win a foreign war in less time than it takes congress to even form an opinion on the matter.

        Zaphod spent two years in prison for fraud, meanwhile the US president is protected by more military firepower than literal nukes and has a chain of succession longer than most Kings because the US government literally cannot function without a President.

        • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Adams was mostly talking about British Prime Ministers, who are elected by the government and do not wield much (if any) power beyond that of being a figurehead

          That’s not true though.

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            I’m not British so I might be off-base, but my understanding is that like other European parliamentary monarchies, the PM is the effective head-of-state but their title rests entirely on the good graces of the MPs who can (and often do) replace the PM.

            Furthermore the Executive branch of government isn’t particularly powerful, unlike the US. Maybe I’m fundamentally misunderstanding things but I don’t often hear about a British PM spending billions or starting wars without parliamentary involvement, which US presidents regularly do even if they don’t enjoy a majority in Congress (which is not a situation that British PMs can find themselves in by definition).

            Of course the UK has the problem of FPTP voting which leads to (quasi) bipartism which means the PM has a rather symbiotic relationship with over half of parliament, but it’s still a very different dynamic.

            • Ooops@kbin.social
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              8 months ago

              No, that’s the monarch (where it still exists) or the president in parliamentary democracies (not presidential democracies).

              The PM is in fact the leader of government and relies on the good graces of the governing party or parties, not unlike the US president candidate effectively needs to unite his party behind him.

              The difference is mostly the ability to get removed/replaced hy his party but usually no term limits, where presidents are term-limited and there are explicit regulations how the parliament can remove them (something that is already inhently given in parliamental systems where the government leader is selected via parliamental majority in the first place).

    • zak@lemmy.l0l.city
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      8 months ago

      Has he ever been mentally fit? Didn’t they say he was too big of a bully for military school?

      • trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com
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        8 months ago

        I definitely thought his daddy bought his way out of military school using the excuse of ‘heel spurs’.

        I could be wrong though, I only heard about it in passing I was never terribly interested in DJT

          • trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com
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            8 months ago

            Thanks for the clarification, I had been under the impression that a military school was supposed to prepare you for the military, not try to ‘reform’ you for the public.

            Now I know even more about a man I objectively dislike. I don’t know how I feel about that.

            • zak@lemmy.l0l.city
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              8 months ago

              “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

              • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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                8 months ago

                “If you know your enemy… and there are a lot of enemies out there, people… those enemies want to attack us… and we know them. We know them. Right now Nanci Pelosi has an army of woke lesbian snipers… they’re outside your houses, and they want to shoot your dogs. Yes, to shoot your dogs. And when they shoot those rifles and they WON’T when I’m president… when they shoot them… when they shoot them… it’s very bad. Yes, it’s very bad… I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a dog. Horrible, so very horrible.”

  • modifier@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    Whatever, really. She’s probably 6-8 weeks from turning around and endorsing him anyway.

  • nbafantest@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Haley needed to be saying this stuff 2 years ago.

    She’s clearly just a spineless flip flopping politician.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Just look at loser Ronny. He waited far too long to be negative about Trump and his dreams ended in kissing Donnie’s ass and walking away with nothing. Best case scenario he gets to be the wannabe mango Mussolini’s puppet VP

  • rusticus@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Narrator: of course he’s not fit.

    But neither are his voters, who would rather burn the world down out of hatred and spite than accept defeat.

    • FireTower@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This could be weaponized as a tool of discrimination to keep minority groups or the impoverished out of office by constructing purposefully confusing questions. Just like the Jim Crow Era laws requiring people pass literacy tests to vote.

      • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        This.

        It has to be something really really unassailable. Age would be a good starter.

        Requiring candidates to release their IRS records in order to appear on the ballot is another close second.

      • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        I get the problem, but I don’t think it’s really applicable. Voting is a basic right of every citizen of the country. Presidency is not for everyone. You wouldn’t want a translator who doesn’t know the languages they’re supposed to translate? Why would you accept a president who is, let’s say mentally challenged?

        I could understand objecting to specifics, like why should mental aptitude get tested, but I don’t understand being against the whole idea. IMO presidency is like a job and like most jobs there are specific requirements that a person needs to meet to be fit for that job. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have certain expectations of people who are running for president.

        • rusticus@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          It’s a good idea but completely meaningless because the “tests” will be biased and run by sycophants on both sides.

        • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
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          8 months ago

          Think about it this way. Many LGBTQ+ identites have been considered to make people “mentally unwell” (even to this day, the way stuff like being trans or asexual is talked about is… >.<). Or what about, say an autistic person who may do exceptionally well in one part of the test but fail some other parts (or even be unable to complete them).

          This isn’t even starting on the issues of socioeconomic and cultural biases (which have been discussed elsewhere in depth).

          The problem is “mental competency” is a pretty damn flexible concept and one that is frequently weaponised en-masse against various groups of people to strip away agency >.<, as it is often based on ideas which have primarily been from very specific perspectives, which can be malicious (see disenfranchisment of black people), or dehumanisation (see the fact that the Double Empathy Problem associated with autistic people was only really acknowledged in the past 10 years when they actually considered how their behaviour could appear from autistic people’s perspective, and only really because autistic autism researchers got some publishing and papers <.<), or simple incompetence, or any combination.

          There’s many more examples of this, that I haven’t even started covering. The fact is that any “mental competency” requirement for a public office implies some kind of testing and barring process, which is ripe with all the flaws listed many times :p

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        This could be weaponized

        COULD, not WOULD.

        If you don’t make any rules that the fascists might want to abuse, you don’t make any rules.

        Your slippery slope fallacy does not invalidate the need to make sure that public officials are fit to carry out their duties.

      • Kool_Newt@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        This makes sense when it comes to voting restrictions. I’d say anyone seeking office in the U.S. should be able to speak fluent English (as that’s the language their job will be conducted in) and be able to pass an aptitude test.

        This test should be taken alone, in public view, and on camera, probably only after winning an election and failure means the runner up gets the position assuming they can pass the test.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          failure means the runner up gets the position

          It has to be before even filing to run for office if we bother with such a thing. I’m skeptical of the idea as a whole, but doing it after the election would cause a crisis of faith and legitimacy in the government. Not only are you depriving voters of the chance to learn the mental fortitude of candidates before they cast their vote, but you’re also invalidating their votes after the election.

      • BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 months ago

        And monthly tests if they test positive for drugs, daily if they within the last two terms have voted to criminalise that drug.

        And toss in a breathalyser test for everyone before entering to vote.

    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 months ago

      There’s basically 3 rules to be president:

      • Born in the US
      • Over the age of 35
      • Never lead an intersection against the United States

      If Trump can’t be barred from running for his role in Jan 6, there’s no way adding more requirements will somehow fix things.

    • Perfide@reddthat.com
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      8 months ago

      I mean… Trump did take a mental fitness test, and failed so miserably he genuinely thought he had passed it. Person-woman-man-camera-tv, anyone? And that was years ago, he’s certainly lost even more of his faculties since then.

    • Mamertine@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Man, woman, person, camera, TV

      The doctors were so impressed with how well I did on that intelligent test.

      Fwiw, he passed a cognitive stroke exam 4 years ago.

  • Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    No. The answer is no.

    Go gloves off you pussy bitch Nikki Haley. You think your orange idol would hold back?

  • recapitated@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Haley waited too long to go in for the kill, and that just shows she isn’t the right material. She’s going to pander to Trump’s base who believe his obvious lies. They will vote for Trump. These clowns don’t have the first idea about strategy or commanding power or assessing the electorate.

    • Stern@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The kill-shot should’ve been to point out that he’s a loser who lost the election… but they can’t get his base if they do that because his base doesn’t think he lost.

  • Juigi@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    What is with america and demented old fools as presidents? You guys have some kinda fetish or what

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    In his defense, I see the resemblance. Plus, they both enjoy policymaking as a medium for enriching themselves and their friends!