canpakes wrote:Dr. Shades wrote:No they couldn't, 'cause men can't have abortions.
Waitaminute. He could have agreed, at the insistence of the boyfriend or husband of the woman that he slept with, to pay for an abortion of the potential Trumpkin. This would then ‘involve men’.
Can men perform them or know about them? Or does that require having a vagina?Dr. Shades wrote:EAllusion wrote:There’s an accusation floating out there that people sometimes forget that he’s paid for mistress abortions. Men could be involved in that.
No they couldn't, 'cause men can't have abortions.
Doctor Steuss wrote:I don’t understand what the Cohen testimony is supposed to accomplish. Pretty much everyone has known that Trump is a garbage human being since at least the 80’s; and, the one common thread in his life is that he tends to surround himself with other garbage human beings.
Having Cohen reaffirm that we have a willfully ignorant piece of ____ for a President doesn’t exactly accomplish anything. I think legislators are wasting time on this. President Trump is unlikely to lose any supporters, and is unlikely to gain any detractors. Conservatives will still despise him, Liberals will still clumsily demonize him, and Republicans will still adore him (with the occasional “I wish he wouldn’t ______, but…” to pretend some kind of morality or ideological consistency).
EAllusion wrote:Can men perform them or know about them? Or does that require having a vagina?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is coming off as one of the most competent, well-prepared questioners here. That annoys me, but credit where credit is due.
I think her sharp in the sense a replacement middlebrow young progressive would be sharp. I also think the feverishly stupid right-wing media criticism makes her look better than she is.
Look at Fox News having wall to wall coverage attacking her for saying that people should not have children so they don’t contribute to global warming. In actuality she was saying young people are questioning if it is ethical to bring children into the world if they will have to live through ecological catastrophe.
Smarter criticism might point out that this concern might reflect the cloistered interests of her political circle and not reflect the attitudes of younger adults in general. Or they may point out that it wasn’t that long ago that a very large % of children didn’t live until the age of 5 and that life frequently could be brutal for those that did. Or that as soon as that faded, prospective parents had to worry about birthing children into a world on the precipice of nuclear holocaust. The dilemma of raising children in a potentially hostile future is not new. It’s ongoing.
Instead we get hurr durr and the messsge to her less self-reflective fans that she’s making slam dunk arguments that require insane dishonesty to rebut.
To be clear, my annoyance here is in how incompetent and poorly prepared the various Congressional questioners/grand-standers were. Because they're bad at this, it makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look good by comparison. I don't think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was doing anything special. She was doing what I'd expect as a baseline level of competence. It's a testimony. After you've clarified what is known, try to find out new information.
We have the most robust higher education system in the world, and our leaders in government are awful at their job. It's a problem.
EAllusion wrote:Elsewhere, during Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's questioning I wrote this:Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is coming off as one of the most competent, well-prepared questioners here. That annoys me, but credit where credit is due.
Because that's a place that understands my politics, I got an immediate response pointing out to me she's actually very sharp and not someone who, as I've argued, looks better than she does because she has a social media account that's very effective at highlighting and dunking on bad criticism.
So I wrote,I think her sharp in the sense a replacement middlebrow young progressive would be sharp. I also think the feverishly stupid right-wing media criticism makes her look better than she is.
Look at Fox News having wall to wall coverage attacking her for saying that people should not have children so they don’t contribute to global warming. In actuality she was saying young people are questioning if it is ethical to bring children into the world if they will have to live through ecological catastrophe.
Smarter criticism might point out that this concern might reflect the cloistered interests of her political circle and not reflect the attitudes of younger adults in general. Or they may point out that it wasn’t that long ago that a very large % of children didn’t live until the age of 5 and that life frequently could be brutal for those that did. Or that as soon as that faded, prospective parents had to worry about birthing children into a world on the precipice of nuclear holocaust. The dilemma of raising children in a potentially hostile future is not new. It’s ongoing.
Instead we get hurr durr and the messsge to her less self-reflective fans that she’s making slam dunk arguments that require insane dishonesty to rebut.
To be clear, my annoyance here is in how incompetent and poorly prepared the various Congressional questioners/grand-standers were. Because they're bad at this, it makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look good by comparison. I don't think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was doing anything special. She was doing what I'd expect as a baseline level of competence. It's a testimony. After you've clarified what is known, try to find out new information.
We have the most robust higher education system in the world, and our leaders in government are awful at their job. It's a problem.
Since I wrote that, I've noticed the Twitter personalities I read are pretty much unanimous in noting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the few effective questioners and commenting on why that be.
Adam Serwer noted:
"a lot of things Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez distinguishes herself by doing is just ... her really doing her job as opposed to just trying to look like she's doing her job, which is what a lot of legislators do"
That seems more or less right.
Julian Sanchez said:
"This is what blows my mind about the useless bloviating so many hearings devolve into: It doesn’t even accomplish its goal. You’ll get SO much more press extracting one new fact than you will rehashing talking points in your shouty voice."
and in response to the comment that: is a reason Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can actually ask questions and get answers is that she doesn't need to raise her profile locally or nationally by giving a speech?
"And yet she’ll get 1,000 times the media attention from asking good questions than the tedious speechmakers on either side."
That seems exactly the case.