I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and most of the people I have worked with could deliver an hour-long presentation without the slides (or speaker's notes), from memory - with the details and flow of the presentation intact.
The issue here may not be that they lack public speaking ability, it's that what they are saying is complete bullshit... So in order to stay aligned with the other speakers spouting complete bullshit (which may have changed five minutes ago), they have to speak from a script. Extemporaneous speaking is simply too dangerous.
If you believe in what you say, even if you do speak badly, it will show. If you have truly studied what you say that you believe in, that will also show.
If all you have are words written by others that you don't believe in anyways, you already have been chosen and put in your position by the wealthy, the elites, often with the help of the deep state, to be a tool, not a functioning politician, or an adult human being, or heaven forbid, a statesman, that also will show.
Ethos, Logos, Pathos: if you master those, the rest follows.
Sadly, most if not all politicians can as you say only follow a script (even if it's their own), and can therefore only pour on the Pathos, which doesn't work at all on its own.
Yes. I have delivered keynotes, corporate trainings, and host a podcast. I can speak extemporaneously. But then again, I'm not trying to lie and manipulate people via 60 second TikTok clips with "complete bullshit."
The hollow shell of the blustering politicians is a demonstration that they in fact have no authority, that they are not in charge. That's my conclusion since the election was called Nov 2020.
Our political class are at best branch managers of the global-corporate state, with the greatest need and goal being to climb the party hierarchy to be granted a higher perch with all its added benefits and connections, with each of these branch managers being replaceable, indistinguishable, as programmed and programmable as any basic machine, and devoid of charisma, wit, intelligence as these things might alienate someone somewhere who could help with your career.
The Party and its owners do all the thinking for our thinking classes, with everyone else lining up to be good soldiers and true believers for the Cause, whatever it might be that day.
The Empire mostly runs on autopilot, at least till the cash runs out.
Years ago, my wife and I belonged to a boating club. I noticed that previous years’ Commodores RARELY came to the clubhouse. One of the older members explained it: The first decision you make pisses off half the members. The 2nd pisses off half the remainder, and so on to the end of your year of torture. It takes the former Commodore & spouse at least 3 yrs to recuperate and remember why they ever joined. All of this for a nonpaying hobby.
Any resemblance to governmental politics is completely unintentional. 🤣
I have observed something similar with homeowner and condo board presidents moving away. When one of my friends asked for the reason why I wouldn’t serve on my HOA board, I told him it was because I like my neighborhood.
The main principals of all the largest hedge funds and investment groups—Black Rock ($10 Trillion! in assets), State Street ($4 trillion), Berkshire, Goldman, etc—have more power than almost any politician, and can hire or fire most of them. Then throw in the boards of the largest corps, esp Silicon Valley.
The political and managerial classes are like a school of fish who live their whole lives following and feeding off the same enormous floating island of plankton—and that plankton is global capital.
CS Lewis in his book "The Abolition of Man" talked about 'Men without chests' I think he was pointing to folks who's sense of truth was fully relativistic. That without the anchor of what our ancestors called a "moral compass" or in reference to ships "a man without bottom" (meaning without a keel) that we are no longer whole or complete. There is a void right in the middle.
I know that I can talk on many subjects I have passion about, and engage without notes extensively with a single person or with a larger audience for as long as it takes. But it has to be a subject that either connects to conflicts with that I have inside me.
Many leftists, and most politicians believe that power is the sumum bonum, and they have jettisoned everything else to make that so. And in so doing, they have become men without chests. Empty Suits if you like.
What if US presidents are nothing more than actors?
What if Trump was tipped to play the role of raging blowhard with the odd hair and spray on tan?
What if Biden, who sometimes appears to not know where he is and shakes hands with ghosts or tries to sit on a chair that does not exist, yet at other times is perfectly lucid, is faking dementia?
Why have we not seen Trump or Hunter in jail? Is this all Potemkin Theatre? Is it a political version of the World Wrestling Federation for the purpose of inciting mass demoralization using the Operation Clown World strategy (Tranny Freaks flashing their ball sacks in primary schools while parents clap and sing along is also part of Operation Clown World). A demoralized herd is more likely to accept extermination. It is also very effective in keeping the mob of imbeciles from the truth.
What if corrupt politicians are not a flaw in the system rather a feature? Might The Club encourage venal idiots to seek office because they will do what they are told and are only interested in enriching themselves.
It’s not hard to imagine that if a POTUS was to oppose The Club, he’d be ushered into the private cinema at the White House and shown the Zapruder Film. No doubt The Club’s directors prefer not to blow out the brains of its members (again).
Trudeau was a drama teacher. Ardern was a DJ with PR certificate (and bad habit?)
Being able to speak extemporaneously is what made Rush Limbaugh so amazing. While his monologues were always great, I looked forward to Open Line Friday where he addressed whatever anyone wanted to talk about. I miss him.
At the risk of revealing maximum nerd levels, my friends and I used to watch Prime Minister’s questions every week during college in the 90s. It was fantastic. Entertaining, informative, combative. There aren’t many American elected officials who could handle it. It would be quite revealing, and great for our country, if we made them do it.
As a Briton I have to disagree. I was never entertained (or very rarely) and they never answered the questions (see above - whatever question Blair was responding to, it wasn't 'Have you seen my leaflet from the Scottish by-election?'). It was quite combative, but I'd have preferred them to be given a sword and a net and be forced to go at it like Spartacus.
But I guess we're all most jaded by our own troughers and thieves.
The problem is, in America 99% of our politicians either (1) don’t know what they think until a lobbyist tells them, (2) can’t coherently articulate what they actually think, or (3) are too afraid to publicly state and defend what they really think.
If you believe in something, if you think it's important, if you're passionate about it, you can talk about easily. Because you really know it. You grok it. And your passion shows.
When you see Democrats giving dull speeches about inflation and poverty and kitchen table issues, speeches that sound phony, it's because they are. They don't care about those issues. They don't relate to them, so they have to read speeches about them. Get them talking about LGBT or antiracism or Palestine (the one in Israel not Ohio) or other virtue-signaling concerns of the uber-educated laptop class, and they'll show you passion. But not about your concerns, because they don't share them.
So their speeches must be anodyne and read off teleprompters. They have nothing to say from the heart because their hearts simply aren't in the issues that might win them the election. And that's what they're most passionate about: winning and holding power.
I think three minutes is being generous. 30 seconds I'd say for the under-30 crowd, before they start fidgeting like smackheads going cold turkey. Incidentally, three minutes was the limit for one of my standard exercises for students doing basic rhetorics; pull a note with a verb, noun or adjective out of a top hat (yes, I used a top hat as a prop in class) and hold an impromptu three-minute talk about it then and there. Used it as an ice-breaker to get them out of the "I'm afraid of speaking in front of crowds"-bullshit, pardon the french.
Few people can be great speakers, it's not just a skill you can train, it's a knack and a gift too - but everyone can be a good speaker if they do two things:
Find their own spontaneous style, and learn the basic rules of rhetorics.
Three things: practice, practice, practice. Four things: sticking to the style and the rules (and breaking style or acting against type can be part of that). Five things (godsdamnit this turning into a Python-skit): natural, flow, seemingly spontaneous, act out a persona, and practice in front of a live audience with no obligation to clap on command.
Of course, that means being willing to fail and be laughed at and embarrassing yourself: that's the currency of learning how to do it.
Oh, and props are to speaking like salt and pepper is to food: they can add to the meal, but they ain't food and they'll ruin anything if you use too much.
I remember being tasked in speech class with speaking extemporaneously for 5 minutes about a paper clip, and was proud that the teacher had to tell me to shut up after 7 min as nobody really needed to know how steel was formed into wire… 😂
Compared to the current marionette in chief, I agree that Obama was less sleep inducing, and he pronounced sentences that I could understand. That is a pretty low bar. In my opinion he wasn't a good public speaker. He wasn't persuasive, he wasn't thought provoking.
We seem to alternate between suits that are empty and suits that are full of 💩. We can’t be too shocked though, as what competent people would submit themselves to the meat grinder of modern politics?
Obama was a master manipulator who used his brown skin color to push a racist ideology hoping to drive distrust & division among Americans who mostly got along just fine. An imposter & hypocrite in the White House that created more damage to this country than most realize.
So true, Dena. I didn't vote for him but truly thought he might at least minimize the racial divide. Instead, the "I am Travon Martin" crap made it so much worse. He hated our country and it showed.
Blair was a skilled speaker but that wasn't thinking on his feet Chris - those are prepared remarks, based on PMQs war gaming he'd have done with his staff that morning. It's all theatre.
He still wasn't just reading it -- he had the skill to carry it home without his staff writing down the words for him. I watch members of Congress literally just reading off pieces of paper at hearings, now, and it just baffles me.
Yes true - but he was a barrister (used to speaking and thinking on his feet) and they literally rehearse PMQs.
But I completely agree that whatever standard they were at, across the western world, they are far below it now.
It's a terrible thing that the very job where selflessness, insight, articulacy, comprehension, determination etc are maybe most needed seems to select out those with those qualities.
For a few years now, I’ve described our government like a nuclear powered aircraft carrier (a ship that I served on for a couple of years)that was taken to sea and ramped up to flank speed by a competent crew under better than average leadership…now the officers and crew have been switched out with a bunch of incompetent morons…the machinery is starting to break down, the reactors will scram, the steam generators will stop producing steam, the engines and generators will stop, and the ship will go dead in the water…but it will continue to plow on through the water for many miles just from the sheer momentum of when it was operating properly…but it will eventually stop…
Thank you Bandit, it was my pleasure!! Your Dad was a real Seabee!! I’m just a cheap imitation!! I spent my first 6 years as a fleet sailor, got out for a while and went back into the Bees for a few years after 9/11…absolutely loved the Seabees, my funnest time in the Navy!! Hoorah!!
I loved my Dad's stories about drinking. Many times on duty. Or the C.O. giving him cases of whiskey. It sounded like adventure to me as a 9 or 10 year old.
Many of his pix from "Oki-nog-nog" tell a different story though. 🥺
"Completely aside from content, ignoring ideology and substance, the striking thing about the performance of politics now is how much it feels like touring the waxworks. "
I moved in with my parents back in 2018, and the first thing I noticed was the -sound- of MSNBC. They had it on all the time, and it was maddening. I'd gone for a couple of years without listening to televised news, so I was fairly well shocked.
The best I can describe it is, it was like someone had filled a row of blenders with gravel and old nails, and turned them all on high, and trained them to do a Beavis and Butthead routine.
I was still fairly liberal at the time, so I didn't have much of a substantive argument against what was being presented. But my gut instinct was that something was seriously wrong here, and if you were to listen to this shit for too long, it would drive you insane.
I stayed overnight with dear old friends a couple of years ago, who likewise had it on much of the time. I can only say that the joy of our reunion, for me, was mixed. Rather like the taste of chocolate-covered dog poop.
My county in TN implemented a 2 step new voting machine a year ago.
You vote on a screen, it prints out a sheet with your readable votes, and you feed it into a reader, which makes a quiet grinding noise as the sheet feeds in. We are told the reader records the vote, thus eliminating the need for warehouses full of hundreds of thousands of ballots being plopped into optical readers.
Back to that grinding noise: the alternative is that it’s actually a paper shredder…
Our county votes 71% Republican on a recurring basis. We’ll see this fall if the county had a collective aneurysm and chose Kamala.
We probably won't hear Joe Biden's name mentioned the rest of the convention. He's been unpersoned like Stalin use to do. The Party has spoken and Joe Biden doesn't exist anymore. They'll probably stoop low enough to use AI to remove him from pictures and videos. The Democrat Party is pure collectivism now. It doesn't believe in anything the U.S. was founded on. There's no such thing as the individual in the Democrat party, just groups.
Thankfully they were offering free vasectomies and abortions at the convention. The Democrats are removing themselves from the gene pool. Hopefully it won't take too many generations for them to go extinct.
I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and most of the people I have worked with could deliver an hour-long presentation without the slides (or speaker's notes), from memory - with the details and flow of the presentation intact.
The issue here may not be that they lack public speaking ability, it's that what they are saying is complete bullshit... So in order to stay aligned with the other speakers spouting complete bullshit (which may have changed five minutes ago), they have to speak from a script. Extemporaneous speaking is simply too dangerous.
That's a very good point, that they simply have to be non-committal by-way-of-BS, because there's no capital-T truth to anything about them.
Made me think of how I get the chickens out of the brambles and into the enclosure: just make noises that attracts them.
If you believe in what you say, even if you do speak badly, it will show. If you have truly studied what you say that you believe in, that will also show.
If all you have are words written by others that you don't believe in anyways, you already have been chosen and put in your position by the wealthy, the elites, often with the help of the deep state, to be a tool, not a functioning politician, or an adult human being, or heaven forbid, a statesman, that also will show.
Thank you Chris for your continued willingness to submit yourself to this torture.
I cannot handle more that 20 seconds before trying your swallow my tongue.
bsn
TWENTY seconds?!? Wow! You outdo me by 15!
Like!
Same! I didn't even go for 20 seconds. Chris always does the heavy lifting and I so, so, so appreciate it.
Like!
Democrat voters don't care.
Pedo Pete, the child sniffing cretin, wears blue and that's good enough for 81 million votes apparently.
Perhaps they only care about power. Not about how they get it.
Yep.
Ethos, Logos, Pathos: if you master those, the rest follows.
Sadly, most if not all politicians can as you say only follow a script (even if it's their own), and can therefore only pour on the Pathos, which doesn't work at all on its own.
🎯 on the chicken analogy.
Like!
Yes. I have delivered keynotes, corporate trainings, and host a podcast. I can speak extemporaneously. But then again, I'm not trying to lie and manipulate people via 60 second TikTok clips with "complete bullshit."
Exactly. When you speak from your heart, you don't have to memorize anything. And it's really hard to speak from your heart when you don't have one.
It can't be this, because their base can't remember what they said a few minutes ago, or why it completely contradicts what they're saying currently.
Actors always follow a script... always https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/what-if/
OK, then. That's all the coverage of last night's DNC that I needed. Thanks, Chris!
That's all the coverage I'll be able to provide. Three more nights of this!
The hollow shell of the blustering politicians is a demonstration that they in fact have no authority, that they are not in charge. That's my conclusion since the election was called Nov 2020.
A compelling interpretation.
Our political class are at best branch managers of the global-corporate state, with the greatest need and goal being to climb the party hierarchy to be granted a higher perch with all its added benefits and connections, with each of these branch managers being replaceable, indistinguishable, as programmed and programmable as any basic machine, and devoid of charisma, wit, intelligence as these things might alienate someone somewhere who could help with your career.
The Party and its owners do all the thinking for our thinking classes, with everyone else lining up to be good soldiers and true believers for the Cause, whatever it might be that day.
The Empire mostly runs on autopilot, at least till the cash runs out.
Years ago, my wife and I belonged to a boating club. I noticed that previous years’ Commodores RARELY came to the clubhouse. One of the older members explained it: The first decision you make pisses off half the members. The 2nd pisses off half the remainder, and so on to the end of your year of torture. It takes the former Commodore & spouse at least 3 yrs to recuperate and remember why they ever joined. All of this for a nonpaying hobby.
Any resemblance to governmental politics is completely unintentional. 🤣
I have observed something similar with homeowner and condo board presidents moving away. When one of my friends asked for the reason why I wouldn’t serve on my HOA board, I told him it was because I like my neighborhood.
Heavy is the head that wears the Commodores cap!
You married to Joni?
Again - who does Number 2 work for? Who's the big cheese?
Global capital rules the world.
The main principals of all the largest hedge funds and investment groups—Black Rock ($10 Trillion! in assets), State Street ($4 trillion), Berkshire, Goldman, etc—have more power than almost any politician, and can hire or fire most of them. Then throw in the boards of the largest corps, esp Silicon Valley.
The political and managerial classes are like a school of fish who live their whole lives following and feeding off the same enormous floating island of plankton—and that plankton is global capital.
Yes, it’s plankton, it’s not a supervillain in a lair. Somebody is choreographing much of this though.
CS Lewis in his book "The Abolition of Man" talked about 'Men without chests' I think he was pointing to folks who's sense of truth was fully relativistic. That without the anchor of what our ancestors called a "moral compass" or in reference to ships "a man without bottom" (meaning without a keel) that we are no longer whole or complete. There is a void right in the middle.
I know that I can talk on many subjects I have passion about, and engage without notes extensively with a single person or with a larger audience for as long as it takes. But it has to be a subject that either connects to conflicts with that I have inside me.
Many leftists, and most politicians believe that power is the sumum bonum, and they have jettisoned everything else to make that so. And in so doing, they have become men without chests. Empty Suits if you like.
CS Lewis and Chesterton were men of common sense.
100% correct.
Villains and Heroes
What if US presidents are nothing more than actors?
What if Trump was tipped to play the role of raging blowhard with the odd hair and spray on tan?
What if Biden, who sometimes appears to not know where he is and shakes hands with ghosts or tries to sit on a chair that does not exist, yet at other times is perfectly lucid, is faking dementia?
Why have we not seen Trump or Hunter in jail? Is this all Potemkin Theatre? Is it a political version of the World Wrestling Federation for the purpose of inciting mass demoralization using the Operation Clown World strategy (Tranny Freaks flashing their ball sacks in primary schools while parents clap and sing along is also part of Operation Clown World). A demoralized herd is more likely to accept extermination. It is also very effective in keeping the mob of imbeciles from the truth.
What if corrupt politicians are not a flaw in the system rather a feature? Might The Club encourage venal idiots to seek office because they will do what they are told and are only interested in enriching themselves.
It’s not hard to imagine that if a POTUS was to oppose The Club, he’d be ushered into the private cinema at the White House and shown the Zapruder Film. No doubt The Club’s directors prefer not to blow out the brains of its members (again).
Trudeau was a drama teacher. Ardern was a DJ with PR certificate (and bad habit?)
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/what-if/
this is what happens when you let the computer make all your decisions for you. leave the plane on autopilot for long enough and you forget how to fly
Who Runs the World?
And how do they exercise control?
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/who-runs-the-world
Being able to speak extemporaneously is what made Rush Limbaugh so amazing. While his monologues were always great, I looked forward to Open Line Friday where he addressed whatever anyone wanted to talk about. I miss him.
SO INCREDIBLY HARD TO DO. Hours of extemporaneous speech, day after day, fluid and clear. It's like he had talent on loan from somewhere.
He was indeed a very rare talent and an incredible human being. What I wouldn’t give to have him around today commenting on all this insanity!
And Rush rarely stepped on a land mine.
“…fluid and clear.”
And INTERESTING!
Like!
At the risk of revealing maximum nerd levels, my friends and I used to watch Prime Minister’s questions every week during college in the 90s. It was fantastic. Entertaining, informative, combative. There aren’t many American elected officials who could handle it. It would be quite revealing, and great for our country, if we made them do it.
Same. Loved it.
As a Briton I have to disagree. I was never entertained (or very rarely) and they never answered the questions (see above - whatever question Blair was responding to, it wasn't 'Have you seen my leaflet from the Scottish by-election?'). It was quite combative, but I'd have preferred them to be given a sword and a net and be forced to go at it like Spartacus.
But I guess we're all most jaded by our own troughers and thieves.
Fair enough, but compared to what passes for debate in Congress, the Brits were much closer to Spartacus. Our version of Spartacus is Corey Booker….
That's why they banned swords in the House of Commons I guess.
I do take your point, and it was better in the 90s.
But I expect you'd have to go back to the 1890s to find adults having sensible discussions.
For most of my life it's been Potemkin bollocks.
You lot do seem to have it even worse, though. It's all grimly fascinating.
The problem is, in America 99% of our politicians either (1) don’t know what they think until a lobbyist tells them, (2) can’t coherently articulate what they actually think, or (3) are too afraid to publicly state and defend what they really think.
lol, like
I'm afraid I'm going to have to borrow "troughers and thieves" on many future occasions.
Dear God please have mercy on our country.
If you believe in something, if you think it's important, if you're passionate about it, you can talk about easily. Because you really know it. You grok it. And your passion shows.
When you see Democrats giving dull speeches about inflation and poverty and kitchen table issues, speeches that sound phony, it's because they are. They don't care about those issues. They don't relate to them, so they have to read speeches about them. Get them talking about LGBT or antiracism or Palestine (the one in Israel not Ohio) or other virtue-signaling concerns of the uber-educated laptop class, and they'll show you passion. But not about your concerns, because they don't share them.
So their speeches must be anodyne and read off teleprompters. They have nothing to say from the heart because their hearts simply aren't in the issues that might win them the election. And that's what they're most passionate about: winning and holding power.
Points for using "grok".
Insightful.
I think three minutes is being generous. 30 seconds I'd say for the under-30 crowd, before they start fidgeting like smackheads going cold turkey. Incidentally, three minutes was the limit for one of my standard exercises for students doing basic rhetorics; pull a note with a verb, noun or adjective out of a top hat (yes, I used a top hat as a prop in class) and hold an impromptu three-minute talk about it then and there. Used it as an ice-breaker to get them out of the "I'm afraid of speaking in front of crowds"-bullshit, pardon the french.
Few people can be great speakers, it's not just a skill you can train, it's a knack and a gift too - but everyone can be a good speaker if they do two things:
Find their own spontaneous style, and learn the basic rules of rhetorics.
Three things: practice, practice, practice. Four things: sticking to the style and the rules (and breaking style or acting against type can be part of that). Five things (godsdamnit this turning into a Python-skit): natural, flow, seemingly spontaneous, act out a persona, and practice in front of a live audience with no obligation to clap on command.
Of course, that means being willing to fail and be laughed at and embarrassing yourself: that's the currency of learning how to do it.
Oh, and props are to speaking like salt and pepper is to food: they can add to the meal, but they ain't food and they'll ruin anything if you use too much.
I remember being tasked in speech class with speaking extemporaneously for 5 minutes about a paper clip, and was proud that the teacher had to tell me to shut up after 7 min as nobody really needed to know how steel was formed into wire… 😂
Like!
me too!
Absolutely nothing wrong with a Python skit!
“…indescribably repulsive and dimwitted display from a lifelong sack of shit…
Disgusting worthless pig of a man, dumber than dirt.”
C’mon Chris, don’t mince your words, tell us how you really feel.
As an aside, Obama wasn’t a bad speaker, and look where that got us!
Compared to the current marionette in chief, I agree that Obama was less sleep inducing, and he pronounced sentences that I could understand. That is a pretty low bar. In my opinion he wasn't a good public speaker. He wasn't persuasive, he wasn't thought provoking.
He absolutely turned English into gibberish when forced to speak w/out notes/teleprompter.
We seem to alternate between suits that are empty and suits that are full of 💩. We can’t be too shocked though, as what competent people would submit themselves to the meat grinder of modern politics?
agree
True, though at least Obama wasn't embarrassing on every level. Like Clinton, he at least seemed Presidential in the way he presented himself.
Obama was a master manipulator who used his brown skin color to push a racist ideology hoping to drive distrust & division among Americans who mostly got along just fine. An imposter & hypocrite in the White House that created more damage to this country than most realize.
So true, Dena. I didn't vote for him but truly thought he might at least minimize the racial divide. Instead, the "I am Travon Martin" crap made it so much worse. He hated our country and it showed.
He was identified as a very capable ...charismatic ... acting talent... early on by the Ministry of Truth
That acting talent is on full display at the dnc this week. I can’t stomach a minute of it.
Telegram is overwhelmed with clips of the DNC/pro wrestling charade... as if it is all real...
I cannot watch it...
And I cannot wait for the great extinction ... cuz this is the only solution
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-extinction-plan-uep
Yeah, I could listen to him for almost a full minute before everything I had eaten all week started to come back up. 🤢🤮
Blair was a skilled speaker but that wasn't thinking on his feet Chris - those are prepared remarks, based on PMQs war gaming he'd have done with his staff that morning. It's all theatre.
He still wasn't just reading it -- he had the skill to carry it home without his staff writing down the words for him. I watch members of Congress literally just reading off pieces of paper at hearings, now, and it just baffles me.
Yes true - but he was a barrister (used to speaking and thinking on his feet) and they literally rehearse PMQs.
But I completely agree that whatever standard they were at, across the western world, they are far below it now.
It's a terrible thing that the very job where selflessness, insight, articulacy, comprehension, determination etc are maybe most needed seems to select out those with those qualities.
Why bother with all the doing stuff?
Your Aug 16th post "The Council" Who Runs the United State's of America further opened my eyes.
Many of those that comment here and other substacks I read hopefully have read that one.
Eyes wide opened.
For a few years now, I’ve described our government like a nuclear powered aircraft carrier (a ship that I served on for a couple of years)that was taken to sea and ramped up to flank speed by a competent crew under better than average leadership…now the officers and crew have been switched out with a bunch of incompetent morons…the machinery is starting to break down, the reactors will scram, the steam generators will stop producing steam, the engines and generators will stop, and the ship will go dead in the water…but it will continue to plow on through the water for many miles just from the sheer momentum of when it was operating properly…but it will eventually stop…
Sorry for butting in.
My Dad was a Seabee in WWII on Okinawa. They built the landing strips.
Thank-you, Bill M, for your service. Love the Navy!
Thank you Bandit, it was my pleasure!! Your Dad was a real Seabee!! I’m just a cheap imitation!! I spent my first 6 years as a fleet sailor, got out for a while and went back into the Bees for a few years after 9/11…absolutely loved the Seabees, my funnest time in the Navy!! Hoorah!!
I loved my Dad's stories about drinking. Many times on duty. Or the C.O. giving him cases of whiskey. It sounded like adventure to me as a 9 or 10 year old.
Many of his pix from "Oki-nog-nog" tell a different story though. 🥺
Chris, you don’t understand our luck in this situation. Can you imagine the excruciating torture of modern day Lincoln-Douglas debates?!?
Trump for 60 minutes
Kamala for 90 minutes
Trump rebuttal for 30 minutes.
Trump would be OK for maybe 20 minutes, and then would recycle 3.5 times.
Kamala would be cackle-punctuated gibberish for 90 min.
Americans would be borrowing guns to kill themselves, or jumping from buildings or bridges just to make the pain stop.
"Completely aside from content, ignoring ideology and substance, the striking thing about the performance of politics now is how much it feels like touring the waxworks. "
I moved in with my parents back in 2018, and the first thing I noticed was the -sound- of MSNBC. They had it on all the time, and it was maddening. I'd gone for a couple of years without listening to televised news, so I was fairly well shocked.
The best I can describe it is, it was like someone had filled a row of blenders with gravel and old nails, and turned them all on high, and trained them to do a Beavis and Butthead routine.
I was still fairly liberal at the time, so I didn't have much of a substantive argument against what was being presented. But my gut instinct was that something was seriously wrong here, and if you were to listen to this shit for too long, it would drive you insane.
I stayed overnight with dear old friends a couple of years ago, who likewise had it on much of the time. I can only say that the joy of our reunion, for me, was mixed. Rather like the taste of chocolate-covered dog poop.
Touche’! We’re of the same mindset.
Politicians only have to convince their Oligarchs of their vote nowadays, they need no crowd persuasion at the circus of "Useless Voters..."
And now they don't even need to acknowledge useless voters because ... Dominion!
My county in TN implemented a 2 step new voting machine a year ago.
You vote on a screen, it prints out a sheet with your readable votes, and you feed it into a reader, which makes a quiet grinding noise as the sheet feeds in. We are told the reader records the vote, thus eliminating the need for warehouses full of hundreds of thousands of ballots being plopped into optical readers.
Back to that grinding noise: the alternative is that it’s actually a paper shredder…
Our county votes 71% Republican on a recurring basis. We’ll see this fall if the county had a collective aneurysm and chose Kamala.
That's what we have in PA. Still no proof what the OUTPUT is from the "reader" either to a memory stick or the Ethernet.
FACT!!!
We probably won't hear Joe Biden's name mentioned the rest of the convention. He's been unpersoned like Stalin use to do. The Party has spoken and Joe Biden doesn't exist anymore. They'll probably stoop low enough to use AI to remove him from pictures and videos. The Democrat Party is pure collectivism now. It doesn't believe in anything the U.S. was founded on. There's no such thing as the individual in the Democrat party, just groups.
Thankfully they were offering free vasectomies and abortions at the convention. The Democrats are removing themselves from the gene pool. Hopefully it won't take too many generations for them to go extinct.
We have always been at war with East Biden.