The CCP are actively engaging in genocide (remember the Uyghurs? Probably shouldn’t if you don’t want to piss off the CCP) and have a long history of “reeducation” camps.

While I have very serious problems with how the majority of western nations handle immigration and human rights violations, that is more along the lines of “oh, please stop isreal. By the way, here are all those bombs you asked for. Don’t use them all on one mosque!” or actively turning people back to be executed in the horror they are running from (although, the US is doing a great job of having some stuff that looks a lot like concentration camps on the Southern border…).

But it is still night and day in terms of horror. The day is pretty shitty but the night… holy fuck.

But also? That doesn’t change anything. It is a nation’s responsibility to engage in basic espionage if only to protect its people’s interests. And governments all have the power to basically shit on a visitor’s human rights so long as they can keep the embassies from finding out. So why take any risks you don’t need to?

Oh yeah. I DEFINITELY have some horror stories over needing to access GUI apps remotely (my favorite involved a secure tunnel to one facility to then tunnel back to a machine that was literally three doors down from my office…)

But stuff like the web interfaces to ms/google office make the vast majority of this trivial. Since SSH always worked in Windows via (god awful) putty. And increasingly other applications are understanding they need to support server/client setups so you are just connecting over a tunnel rather than using a remote desktop protocol.

Plenty of companies are, rightfully, adopting security models where even domestic workers never have a copy of anything sensitive on a laptop (sometimes even desktop) and rely on corporate servers to do work. Yes, it really fucking sucks during an outage but it avoids the never ending problem of people leaving their laptop at a starbucks. There is absolutely zero reason to not do that on foreign travel.

Also: The point of business travel is to have meetings or collaborations that can’t be done remotely. For the former, you basically just need that set of slides and the ability to fetch a limited subset of other data. For the latter? You are by necessity taking corporate secrets and having a secure connection back home is a bare minimum.

And if your IT department have problems reprovisioning laptops to contain basically a VPN client and a web browser? Then you have even bigger problems. In a semi-competent world, you just reimage a laptop in a closet to the minimum machine that you give to a new hire and then you flag the user’s account for heightened security in whatever VPN setup you have. Because it is REALLY easy to detect if something is connecting from where it shouldn’t be (e.g. Fred is in Canada but suddenly is trying to connect from Australia) or is anywhere near a government facility or airport (… no comment).

As an aside, I’ll point out that I have worked with various government and government adjacent orgs over my years. Their security is complete dogshit next to a decent sized company. Because they are just protecting government secrets and focused on covering their asses. A company is protecting potentially billions of dollars and everyone’s livelihood. Which makes for an environment where you aren’t ten years behind the state of the art because nobody wants to risk jail time (which they would not get if they are acting in good faith…) over approving something as crazy as a VPN.

I mean… I actually agree with (aspects of) that ruling. A nation’s leader is going to have to, by necessity, do some really sketchy stuff. Simply put “war”

The issue is defining what counts as an “official act” and having any kind of checks and balances on that.

For example: Let’s look at the purely hypothetical example of an outgoing president engaging in a violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to prevent losing power. Crazy, right? But, in that example, it is not at all a stretch that said former president is an enemy of the state. There is a lot of legal discussion on whether it is legal to pop them in the head without a series of trials but it is in that range where it is probably better than not to give the elected POTUS immunity in that situation.

But what if that outgoing president insisted that it was an “official act” to lead that violent insurrection? No intelligent person would at all consider that a defense.

I’ve personally never done the trip to China for a lot of reasons (you know you are living your best life when a postdoc explains that you should never under any circumstances go to China because of what you have said) but do a lot of foreign travel for work:

No company should let any employee bring corporate electronics on international travel. Have burner phones and laptops that are set up to do incredibly minimal work locally (basically just have the slides… maybe) and to remote in. And work with your IT department to “randomly lock” them if a wrong password is detected in an airport or government facility.

It doesn’t matter if it is the UK asking if we want the left or right hand this time or the CCP: It is just an unnecessary risk that is easily avoided.

And then inform the traveler of whether they want to bring their personal devices or not.

I mean, this is pretty standard for Biden. He has had that stutter and aphasia for decades.

And yes, if your goal is a Reaction video or to call him weak and push an accelerationist agenda, that is horrible.

Anyone else? “Okay, he said th-th-thousands when he meant millions. It happens and it shouldn’t but people should also not be taking hard statistics from political speeches. Wait, they made fourteen fucking million jobs??!?”

There is no argument that Biden did not accomplish what he needed to on Wednesday. He and the Democratic Party fucked up. But trump also did not accomplish what he needed to do and I think we mostly came out net neutral. Is net neutral at all acceptable at this point? No. But Biden has shown, time and time again, that he is really good at winning people over over time.

It is always worth remembering. During one of (their last?) debates in 2020, trump made a comment that Biden took as an attack on Beau (it was actually Hunter). Biden went fucking ballistic and trump visibly cowered. That basically destroyed the strong man routine instantly and shut everyone up about “Biden is weak”. Another moment like that would have almost guaranteed a win.

But also? Biden is a traditional politician who believes that there should be a debate so that people can make informed decisions. So the usual Democrat bullshit of trying to play by the rules.

But ALSO: If Biden had refused then the news cycle would be nothing but “Biden is a coward” and “Biden is weak”.

There was no winning. But if there had been fact checking and the rules were even kind of adhered to and Biden hadn’t drank a bottle of Nyquil or whatever the fuck happened there? It would have been good. Hell, even just one of those would have probably led to a decisive win.

Nobody has, to my knowledge, ever faulted Biden in a crisis (… well, except the zionism and racism but those are carefully considered platforms and not knee jerk reactions). I know I get a stutter when I need to say a LOT of technical jargon in a row and others have the same issue. When your goal is to get shit done, rather than to clown on someone, people are a lot more able to understand what is being said and will ask for clarification where needed.

It does not matter. If I have trouble saying something then the person I am talking to can immediately key in on “foo?” and I can nod and move on.

It has absolutely zero bearing on leadership unless a bunch of terrorists have taken a building hostage and will kill one person every time Biden stutters while going through an actor’s warm-up exercises. And if Biden hadn’t gone up there sounding like he was dead this would not be an issue outside of the most chuddy of morons and useful idiots.

The problem is that he had all the same stutters and aphasias he has had for decades but ALSO sounded feeble.

People having the metric of “President sounds good when throwing schoolyard insults at people” is how we got less than half of the country voting for the orange fuckstick.

I don’t know the details for how far ahead all the rules were decided. I would have assumed months but clearly not.

A BIG news story yesterday was that republicans were angry that there would be live fact checking during the debate. So CNN got rid of that literally the afternoon of the debate. That makes a massive difference because it means that Biden now needed to actively refute the increasingly blatant lies in addition to getting his talking points across.

And the format always went against Biden. His stutter and aphasia do not mix well with short 3 minute responses. With proper debate prep and a focus on talking points, he is mostly good. We had a few moments but even when he was at his most feeble sounding he was fine. But once he had to respond to things like “you are a manchurian candidate” and “you are basically a Palestinian but a bad one”? Then it becomes “okay, call this prick the c-word. Now I need to also cite this fact that is part of my border security answer. And then I need to talk about… jesus christ are we actually talking about global warming right now?”

And that fucked Biden. Because that is not something a POTUS needs to be able to handle. If Kim Jong Un started talking like that during a meeting… we might literally invade North Korea. Almost all meaningful conversation between world leaders is basically heavily scripted speeches or closed door conversations where people acknowledge others are human.

But also? CNN didn’t even follow their own format. They repeatedly unmuted candidates (mostly trump but a few times Biden) so they could get a juicy comeback in.

I mean… for anything but the primaries (so basically candidate selection), there is zero benefit to publicizing that. NOBODY will benefit from “Yes, I agree that UBI and climate change are essential to focus on but we need to get this bill through before all of our airports collapse. We’ll focus on that later” being a public discussion.

Also… if people ARE interested in those discussions? Work with your local party. You would be shocked at how many fairly low level organizers end up getting on the various calls related to defining a platform.

Like, the internet loves to paint the DNC as this evil shadow organization (mostly for reasons dating back to 2015/16…). And there is definitely a lot of politicking between the politicians (gasp!). But if you put in the time you would be shocked how much of a voice “community organizers” have if they have even basic social skills.

If it were June of 2023? This would go to the primaries.

It is June of 2024. There is no time for a vote. So all having shouting matches and screaming about how Biden is unelectable on camera does is fuck the party as a whole. See: 2016

Looks at instance Yup, that explains it

If your only goal is accelerationism with the misguided view that you’ll benefit from the violent revolution: Go back to playing Call of Duty and let the adults discuss politics.

I have absolutely zero issues with lefties. Hell, I am one.

I do have an issue with the tankie dumbfucks who will STILL talk about “Genocide Joe” when we have video evidence of trump saying he outright wants the Palestinians eradicated and thinks Biden is too soft on them.

But also: The average person didn’t watch that debate. Or they ducked out in horror when Biden came out sounding like death. They are going to be listening to what influencers say. Some of those influencers are people with incredibly smart teams behind them who focus on the issues and social justice (e.g. John Oliver). Others literally go to the bathroom while playing the work of others and then shit on said work while claiming to be a leftist.

And others still are “that friend who is really political” who is mostly parroting what other influencers have said.

Certain outsiders aside, Democrats are really good about getting their shit together behind closed doors.

So I think the convention will be pretty boring. The closed room meetings and email chains are batshit insane and someone is going to make bank on a tell-all book when they leak that… assuming literacy is not illegal by that point.

That said: We can’t get rid of Biden. He can’t “run away” from trump and we still had a pretty good four years all points considered. But we need to replace Kamala. Even ignoring that significant parts of the country hate her because she is brown, asian, and a woman, she is also a cop and has done nothing to really build her profile.

So make up an excuse for Kamala to need to step aside and get someone more charismatic as the VP. Basically what the republicans tried with mccain (ugh) and palin (ugh!). This immediately makes people a lot more comfortable with “what if Biden dies?” but also builds up a candidate for 2028.

I guess…

Biden fucked up. But I don’t think this really changes anything.

Nobody is voting for Biden because we like him. We are voting for him because we give a shit about human rights and democracy. And democrats generally are good at actually listening to what is being said because… we want things.

republicans hate biden and are just happy they heard that brown people are killing and raping everyone. Nothing changed there

What Biden needed to do was win over the dumbass moderate/“undecided” voters. Which… is not talking points or policy. It is strongman bullshit. And that… is going to almost be entirely up to The Internet. Do we focus on Biden stuttering and having aphasia that he has had for decades? Or do we focus on trump blatantly lying and still talking about asking Nancy Pelosi to lead an insurrection for him?

John Oliver and the rest of the late night hosts are going to be working overtime to remind the country that having a deranged fascist in charge is bad. The Hasans of the world are going to keep talking about “Genocide Joe” because they are useful idiots, at best. But… I don’t know beyond that.’

That said, I do think about the questionably accurate story that nixon (ugh) won his debate against kennedy (lesser ugh) among radio versus television listeners.

Biden mostly won in terms of text. He lost in terms of audio. But… people live on twitter and social media. How many people are going to be watching clips versus reading excerpts and tweets?

Trump is not memorizing answers. He is just ignoring questions and giving rally speeches.

Also, Biden has had a stutter for decades. It doesn’t actually matter from a leadership standpoint. Just from a standing next to a school yard bully one

Still a clip the Internet can run with.

But yeah…

“president xi of China” versus “Putin”.

Orange fuck has a new sugar daddy and he loves him some honey

Oh shit. The height and weight comment was amazing.

He kept talking. The moderators let him finish thoughts. Biden shut up when he was told.