The Democrats knew this was going to happen. There’s no way they couldn’t. And I don’t mean Democrat supporters, many of whom were vehement that Biden was fine like so many anecdotes in this thread recount. I mean the Democrat leadership, who manage his campaign and more than likely manage his presidency. Unlike the public, they have access to him. They have his medical records, the reports of his doctors and caregivers, everything. There’s no way they didn’t know this would happen if he debated.

They might start seeding support for a different candidate into their supporter’s discourse after this, but they will have been planning for this outcome long ago. And when a left-leaning (left from a US Overton window) news platform hosts a debate that shows him up that badly and then publishes commentary like this, you have to wonder if that caused friction with the DNC or if they assented to it.

As the party starts singling out a replacement, the question I hope people start asking is why they didn’t replace Biden earlier? Did they need to wait until the urgency of imminent elections made their new candidate more palatable? And if they don’t replace Biden, why are they letting Trump win?

He gives lots of reasons, but if one of them isn’t “oil-producing countries are starting to escape US hegemony and your gas-guzzling motor industry is on borrowed time” then I don’t think he’s really appealing to the US government’s interests.

That’s not just research, molten salt heliostats are in active use already.

How’d that work out for Australia and Gough Whitlam trying to close Pine Gap?

It doesn’t matter what the people outside China think. The people inside China - on both sides of the Taiwan strait - think Taiwan is part of China. They all call themselves Chinese except the tiny minority that speak with American accents. There are indigenous ethnic minorities on Taiwan whose ancestors were not part of China, but they didn’t call themselves ‘Taiwan’ because that’s a Chinese word.

isn’t there a single candidate that thinks more about the humans than for the money.

Yes, plenty.

Any of them that will be allowed anywhere near power?

No, none.

Have a gander at the people behind Brave Software. They’re all cut from the same silicon wafer as everyone else in the Silicon Valley executive biome. And the (lack of) readiness of the information about who is behind Brave is another tell in itself.

Interestingly enough I went to a lecture by a Chinese lawmaker yesterday who said the exact same thing. When it’s codified in law, you know what they can and can’t do, and what they can and can’t use in court against you. When governments just do it covertly and subvert due process, your right to privacy suffers a lot more. She didn’t have to point out what Snowden uncovered about the NSA for everyone to know what she was referring to.

Yeah same. I was there, and seeing what was happening and what was being reported was a huge WTF experience

I wonder if there’s going to be some sort of culture crisis across The West when reality hits, or if Western media is strong enough to distract everyone with something new like they did with Afghanistan.

the ultimate destination of neoliberal thought, where every employer is an unregulated sovereign into themselves.

Refined it for ya, comrade

I think the fediverse should replace popular socmedia, but it will never be able to compete financially.

We’ve already got Bluesky, which is the same thing but controlled (and sponsored) by the usual suspects, poised to snap up any users that bail from twitter. And popular opinion favours Bluesky thanks to the positive coverage it gets compared to fediverse projects.

The fediverse in the form it’s in now will never replace twitter while the free market controls the distribution of users. They’ll always go to the places controlled by big money.

The British army only needs to be strong enough to perform its two real roles: performative presence to lend ‘international’ credibility to American projects, and suppressing the people of the British Isles.