that's nice for Ken Jennings. When Ken Jennings said this he was 46 years old or younger.

I remember lurking in the tri forum 10 years ago as a 40 something listening to the 60 somethings explain how training and racing needed to change as one got older and thinking yeah whatever old man that's you I'll still be able to pound out 40mpw with speedwork.

Biden is not the same guy who left the VP position 4 years ago. Call that whatever you want. But he has "evolved". Exponentially not incrementally. To not acknowledge that and not project that out into the next 4-8 years is as disingenuous as those who excused "grab her by the pussy" and all the other baggage 4 years ago.

Based solely on my personal experience, seeing Dementia in real in person, seeing my older relatives decline in mental ability and simply watching Biden on a TV screen.

I don't need an expert to tell me the homeless guy yelling at the clouds on the street corner has mental illness.

Likewise, I don't need an expert to tell me my grandmother that stares off into space, can't recall names or places, looks absolutely lost any time she speaks, or has changed the pace, inflection, and manner of speaking has dementia or cognitive decline.

It is a legitimate point of analysis in someone that is going to be the President based upon simply pulling up old videos of Biden with how he speaks now. Did you see any of the debates back when he was running for president or younger? He was quick witted, spoke with a quick pace, was on point, most of the time. When he made a gaffe it was because he was just a little goofy, not because he looked confused or things were not firing upstairs. That is simply what I see, but you are right, I am not an expert.

Same analysis should be made of Trump and anyone else we put up for office. I don't think it matters either way, as Biden will still win. His VP pick is very important and everyone agrees with that. And no, the Dems cannot admit or even suggest Biden has any cognitive decline so might as well put up the wall on this topic. Biden should stay in his house, refuse to debate and pick a good VP and he will be President in January. Then we go from there.

It’s odd to me that there would be a dividing line between the cognitive and the physical, wherein we need expert assessment from a mental health professional to discuss cognitive decline, but there’s no problem spending time talking about how a candidate can’t hold a glass of water or walks slowly down a ramp, or how the President’s doctor must be a fraud because he obviously isn’t as healthy as the medical report claims.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

My understanding is it’s because things are ahead of Facebook and Twitter.

When they catch up they will explain

You guys are all free to discuss a candidate's dementia. Elsewhere. I saw what happened in the last election. Not going to happen here. Why don't you find out where spot went and follow him there? Then you won't have to deal with my stupid rules that deprive you of your liberty?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Calm down, sport. I never whined about my liberties, and I've posted here numerous times that this is your forum with your rules.

I find the policy odd, and transparently biased in the way you made the decision to implement it, but I don't think cognitive ability is a decisive issue for this election so I haven't been bothering to comment and test the rules. I would prefer not to have Presidents pushing their mid to late seventies, partially because of the physical and mental decline that typically takes place in people as they age, but that's not a differentiating factor since both likely candidates for these elections are roughly the same age.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

as i have said, every time this issue is raised, i don't mind you discussing as a negative the concept of age as a voting imperative. i don't mind the discussion (accusation) of dementia leveled at a candidate. but it has to be real. not fake. i can already see the trump campaign cocked and ready to launch the same fake attacks on biden's health that they did to hillary.

and as for the other user's claim that of knowledge of dementia because of his personal relationship, i wrote here about a family member who spent the last 2 years of her life with us, here because of her dementia, and she died in the room next to mine. this is in addition to my mother in law, with dementia, with my wife as the primary caregiver. and, no. that does not qualify me to know whether either candidate has dementia.

dan rather's incareful and harmful reporting about bush 2's national guard service during that election cycle cost him his job, and rightly so. but the same tactics and worse against a democratic candidate will not cost anyone his job. biden's phantom dementia is this election cycle's swiftboat attack. you are free to consider this rule transparently biased. it is certainly transparent. i'm telling you exactly why this rule is here. as to whether it's biased, you can think what you want.

if i see any propagandistic text here, that is fake (doctored video, faked documents) targeted at either candidate running up to this election, i'll react likewise.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I don’t believe any current candidate for President suffers from dementia as per formal diagnosis.

This is your forum. You pay for it. You can use it for whatever you want and make whatever rules you want.

I do think candidate West suffers from bipolar disorder but I admit my citations might include a Kardashian so I will not make that assertion.

It means, forget he is a bafoon. He gets the job done.

Is his job mishandling a pandemic resulting in 160,000 dead Americans?

Please, give your insight into the proper way to handle COVID-19, starting with what information was available until now. Then, let me know who would have implemented your ideas well.

I will add that, they initially thought 10% would die, so 160,000 is a low number in my mind.

It’s been discussed here in great detail how other countries have handled Covid dramatically better. Taiwan began aggressive preparations in January. See their results.

Just read an article saying Taiwan was hit hard by SARS in 2003. They admitted to spending 17 years planning for the next pandemic. 17 years! So, this is Trump’s fault? Look- USA screwed the pooch, but everyone needs to stop pointing fingers. Luckily for us, it isn’t as bad as they claimed back in March and the numbers are not piling up as high as anticipated. Funny that Fauci claims New York “did it right” and they have led the way in USA with about 30k deaths. New Jersey right behind them. Those 2 states alone account for over 30% of USA total death count.

Apparently Taiwan has universal healthcare and easy access to people’s health information on top of using app’s on their phones for contact tracing. Do you see USA adopting this? I know the latest iPhone update included tracing and everyone I know didn’t turn it on and never wants to.

While I’m not suggesting to be a medical expert, the virus is here and doesn’t “go away” to my knowledge. So, does Taiwan plan to just keep social distancing and wearing masks forever? How do you get to heard immunity that way? Also, being on an island... doesn’t that present differing circumstances? Not to mention, they have 7% of the population as the USA

Stick with car painting.

Well, we've spent the past few decades also planning for pandemic response, and all reporting seems to indicate this administration chose to sideline, ignore, or poorly execute those plans. Does Pres Trump get all the blame for COVID? Of course not. But does he bear a large share of responsibility for our response? Yes. He's the President, and holding that position comes with responsibility and accountability for how the nation executes a national pandemic plan.


Vaccine. Certainly you're aware that we're expending a lot of effort (worldwide) to build a vaccine.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Don’t like Taiwan? Ok, how about Canada? Or New Zealand? Or Korea?

The Obama Administration actually wrote a pandemic response playbook in 2016, which Mitch McConnell lied about when he said, “ the Obama administration did not leave any kind of game plan for something like this.” We were well aware another pandemic could hit. We didn’t need to have been hit by SARS. Just look at Bill Gates’ 2012 TED Talk. Our CDC was (was) the envy of the world.

Taiwan used to import all its masks, but by the end of January (January!) they were producing 25m masks a day. Why didn’t Trump invoke the DPA to do the same? Oh yeah, sorry, we shouldn’t point fingers.

We screwed the pooch on testing early on. We keep screwing the pooch on testing. We screwed the pooch on not shutting out all foreign nationals from all nation early on when the pandemic was ravaging Italy. We kept thousands of flight arrivals in immigration halls for hours and hours. We screwed the pooch on contact tracing. We screwed the pooch on PPE distribution early on (wtf was Jared Kushner doing?!)... oh but let’s not point fingers!

And yes, for now, until there’s a vaccine, Taiwan WILL keep social distancing and wearing masks, and contact tracing. And their case numbers will remain low, and their economy relatively unscathed, and their number of deaths may even stay in SINGLE DIGITS. Yes, Taiwan has had 7 deaths total and none since May.

They have 7% of the population of the US and have 0.004% of the number of deaths of the US.

Your healthcare argument is specious. That is not the reason we have 160k deaths.

What we need is crisis leadership, bringing the country together in a fight against a common enemy. We need people to embrace wearing masks in public and to understand that doing so protects others, less so ourselves, we need to persuade people to cooperate with contact tracers and use the app. We need to tamp down hot zones with temporary lockdowns, and reopen based on data. We could have done all this already with a coherent national response and clear messaging.

The NE was indeed hit hard and mistakes were made under difficult circumstances using the best available knowledge at the time and desperate needs for hospital space. But the NE has reopened sensibly using the CDC guidelines and the results are clear.

But we can just hope it will disappear:
That seems like a good policy, amirite?

Wait, the virus doesn’t just “go away?” But trump keeps saying that it will go away. If I didn’t know better I might think he was full of shit. Shirley a superpatriot like trump wouldn’t mislead and lie to the country out of self interest?

Generally The type of response from a person who doesn’t have any answers. Further, car painting is one of my many hobbies.

That’s an option, although the question is- will Taiwan all take the vaccine and do you believe USA will? I know many that don’t want the vaccine including me.

Better question for you- if Hillary won, do you think CoVid-19 would have been handled better? Is Hillary more of a Patriot than Trump with less self interest?

Well you can’t cure stupid.

The solution to a few people deciding they don’t like vaccines is not to allow everyone to get sick in the hopes of establishing herd immunity.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Easy....get rid of trump. Maybe sanity will be restored.

This is a joke right?