I kept on checking throughout the day yesterday- Verizon’s website said no outages, but istheservicedown showed most of the east coast of the US was down.

I also heard from friends with business class Internet that they were fine.

Even as late as the 2016 RNC debates he was still speaking clearly, responding to his opponents, and occasionally making a coherent point.

The president can’t unilaterally decide whether tips are taxed or not either.

This article is not discussing an action Harris can or will take. This is discussing policies she supports- she can use political influence to help get it through and past Congress.

This applies to like 95% of all political discourse by the way. People want to blame the president because it’s easier to blame one name and face than to try to pick out one of the hundreds in Congress.

I meant in terms of establishing good diplomatic relations between the US and Russia. From the fall of the Berlin wall up until the Obama administration it looked like relations were steadily improving as Russia was becoming more capitalist. Also at least from the US perspective it’s probably the most famous case of exposing a hostile foreign diplomat to American values.

I remember reading articles about how Russia was giving away land and paying people to come populate their rural eastern provinces. I’m not sure exactly when the sentiment changed- Putin clearly didn’t like Obama, but at this moment I can’t remember any specific incidents pior to the Crimea invasion. Before that, I remember them being seen as an economically inferior, but developing, potential ally. Similar to Japan before it’s “miracle”, lumped into BRIC with Brazil, India, and China as a potential new place to do business.

As for Yeltsin being bad for Russians? Eh, probably. I’m content leaving discussion to those whose special interest is recent Russian history.

In other cases? Perhaps. There is the famous story of Boris Yeltsin visiting the US in 1989, visiting a grocery store, and realizing that capitalism was superior (honestly the whole thing never smelled right to me and I’ve never seen a direct quote from Yeltsin about it, but whatever). I’m sure there are other cases where normalizing relations and sharing culture has helped to ease tensions.

Kim Jong Un doesn’t need any of that. He grew up and went to school in Switzerland. He’s a huge fan of basketball and American movies. He is familiar with American culture already. North Korea’s hostilities aren’t about competing ideology, but about Kim Jong Un maintaining power by carefully maintaining a balance between his own military leaders, China and (to a lesser extent) Russia versus the US, South Korea, and their allies. It’s in China’s interest right now to have a belligerent puppet state who is annoying to the west without actually escalating to war. Until those geopolitics change, taking Kim Jong Un to see America’s least favorite past time is only promoting and encouraging authoritarianism.

For comparison, this is how Trump used to talk, back in the 2016 RNC debate.

He’s always been an obnoxious and crass New Yorker, never what you’d call an intellectual or academic. But he used to stay on topic, finish sentences, make coherent points, and generally function. Now he’s reduced to somehow shouting and mumbling at the same time, confusing names and years, connecting vague concepts together until he gets applause from the audience.

He’s gotten worse over time. I remember during the 2020 cycle seeing video comparisons even between his 2016 and 2020 debates.

I don’t exactly enjoy going back and watching him talk, but it’s shocking going back and comparing seeing how drastic the change has been.

Here’s a bit of the 2016 RNC debate. Trump is still rude and crass. He’s not coming off as an intellectual, but he’s completing his sentences and making coherent points. He wasn’t getting obviously confused like he has been since- talking about airports being involved in the Revolutionary War, claiming Nikki Haley was responsible for January 6th, the famous rant about his uncle being a genius, etc.

Thecomment I replied to listed Biden’s accomplishments. I agree that I wish he was even more progressive, but we aren’t going to get anyone like that without either disenfranchising 40-50 million voters or convincing them to stop voting against their best interests.

Biden already beat Trump once, when Trump has the incumbent advantage. Biden now has that advantage and has a much, much stronger resume of accomplishments than Trump did.

Who is the anti-genocide candidate who has a chance of beating Trump? Biden’s stance on Israel is my biggest criticism of him, but I have yet to see a better option. There’s hundreds of issues to consider when voting, so I’m not going to let one issue(where the other candidate is even worse) dissuade me from voting for the candidate who is in my best interests.

Just dismissing my points without addressing any of them lol.

The person I replied to listed Biden’s accomplishments. I was the same as you back in the 2020 election - I thought Biden would be just a regular corporate Democrat, but he proved me wrong within his first year. I can admit that. He’s definitely not as progressive as I would prefer, but he’s far exceeded my expectations. I look at what he’s actually done, not what Fox News wants me to believe he is.

You mentioned that his climate change bill was a fossil-fuel industry handout… I’m searching the Internet and can’t find any publication with that take. I can see plenty of other criticisms (supporting hydrogen is controversial, Republicans have plenty of complaints as expected, we probably need to do more, it doesn’t solve international issues, etc), but I can’t find any indication from anywhere that it was too kind of fossil fuel corporations. Do you have any more information on that?

No successfully elected US president in history has ever started a campaign so late. If there was some front runner, a really strong candidate who had a legitimate shot, perhaps I’d entertain the idea. But that is simply not the case. Biden dropping out now is exactly what the GOP wants.

This isn’t just a matter of younger candidates volunteering.The primary already happened. There was a time and a place to have this conversation and Biden won. You and I don’t have to like it.

Comparing Biden to Hillary is laughable. Incumbents generally win the presidency, and Biden was popular enough to unseat Trump in 2020. Now he has a pretty good record of accomplishments to run on. He was never as hated as Hillary. That could be personal charisma, misogyny, the scandals the Clinton’s had as a couple, her own racist comments resurfacing, the supercuts of her taking both sides on literally every issue, or other things. Biden isn’t perfect, but as far as presidential candidates go the best the GOP has been able to do is Hunter’s laptop.

Supporting the incumbent president and primary winner, who has the perhaps the most progressive accomplishments since FDR, who already beat Trump in the last election… Is supporting Trump?

That’s some gold medals mental gymnastics.

I’m disappointed in Stewart for this. I understand he’s just a comedian, but he seemed to actually have some good takes and be getting more involved in serious politics over the past few years.

Changing the nominee at this stage would be effectively ceding the election. I’m convinced that most of this anti-Biden rhetoric is coming from right-wing astroturfers.

It’s also bizarre seeing so many so-called progressives claiming that anyone could beat Trump… Did we learn nothing in 2016? Even the 2020 election was way too close for comfort. I wasn’t a huge fan of Biden back then, but he has exceeded my expectations significantly. I’m disappointed that there aren’t any viable younger candidates (that’s still a problem that needs to be solved in the next primary), but that’s certainly not going to stop me from voting for Biden again.

Viable candidate? Dude, I could personally beat Donald Trump with the dem nomination, and im nobody

That strategy worked so well for the DNC in 2016, didn’t it?

People who think Biden has dementia have clearly never seen actual dementia patients

I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I’m a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn’t?

Then I remembered Starlink exists.