Mitch McConnell freezes during GOP news conference, escorted away | LiveNOW from FOX

Politics@beehaw.org – 114 points – 12 months ago

Mitch McConnell freezes during GOP news conference, escorted away | LiveNOW from FOX

We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?

Looks like Turtle stroked out. Fortunately he gets the best medical care available paid for by the taxpayer, whereas he is adamantly opposed to Medicare for All to provide this benefit to all Americans.

To answer your question, most people aren't against age limits. But the elderly are the single strongest voting population and the people already in power won't do anything against their own interest without significant voter follow through.

Everyone is for age limits until they would be affected.

I hope I have the wherewithal to maintain my convictions at that age. Perhaps that's naivete, but I never became conservative, either.

I'm still ardently pro-youth and against exclusion even at almost 40; I would like to believe I'll still be for age caps when I'm old. Like actual old. I know I'm already fuckin' old. You know what I mean.

I've got over a decade on you, and if anything I'm further left and more pro age-limits than I've ever been in my life.

Ditto. I recognize my cognitive slide from even 10 years ago... And Mitch has decades on me... I also realize that the older my kids have gotten, the more out of touch I've become.... These fossils dinner gaf though... Having strokes on live tv won't even stop them.

Because the elderly don't work, so they can vote while everyone else is busy propping up the economy they built.

We should move to a system where votes are weighted based on age. Up to, say, 40 years of age your vote has a weight of 1.0. Above 40 the weight should reduce linearly each year until it reaches 0.1 at the age that equals the current life expectancy. Basically: the closer you are to death the shorter you are affected by the consequences of your votes, so you should have less influence. Older people are probe to short term thinking as they won’t live to see the long term effects anyway.

Ah, Dred Scott vs Sanford raises its ugly head again.

When you get old enough to be worth 0.6, shall we call it “3/5” just for old times’ sake? As a compromise?

What the fuck. What the fuck.

McConnell is a liar and has done a lot of harm to the US. He and many others like him should have retired many years ago.

I"m old too. I will retire from my job at retirement age. Other people could use the job opening I'd leave.

And I think Trump is a criminal/liar and too old to run for president. And Biden is just too old to run. Looks like I'll be forced to vote for Biden because he doesn't know when to bow out gracfully.

<This post was all over the place> McConnell is too old and needs to retire. Back on topic!

Looks like I'll be forced to vote for Biden because he doesn't know when to bow out gracfully.

Is there another well enough known (and well supported within the party) Democrat candidate who could have a reasonable chance to beat the orange sack of shit at this point in time?

No, but that's mainly because the DNC fell around Biden and hasn't moved away from him since before he was elected. If he'd decided not to run, you've have seen several Democrats get bigger coverage as well as be more active, with help do the DNC to make sure you knew about a few of them.

Unless I'm mistaken, we got Biden or RFK. Between the two, I'd go for Biden any day.

lmao rfk is a fucking idiot of gigantic proportions.

RFK is a science denier and republican's donate to him to pull votes away from Biden.

Even RFK's family thinks he is an idiot and say please don't vote for him.

RFK talks crazy too.

No, Biden said he was running. If Biden wasn't running there would be a primary to decide.

Yes, Biden is this elections candidate, but who is growing into the next nomination?

For 2028? I think that is too far away to know. My pick for the last 2 elections was Bernie-and he is too old. Did you have someone in mind?

That's so weird that he came back. God that looked like a stroke.

If it were any other situation he'd be going to the hospital immediately. That's definitely either a stroke or a seizure and he needs a CT or MRI ASAP.

However, the optics of him freezing like that and then getting rushed to the hospital are bad, even worse than him looking like a wax sculpture and freezing, so he came back to say he's okay. Then he goes to the hospital, but they drive him around the block a few times before arriving to throw off the press.

He could just have Parkinson’s and it’s not public knowledge.

We aren’t really doctors and not really able to diagnose someone based on a clip.

Eh, frankly, I’m not a big fan of age limits or term limits, I think they’re fundamentally undemocratic. If people in a state keep electing someone then it is their right to do so.

Banning people over a certain age or who have served a certain amount of terms doesn’t solve the core issue in such circumstances, that being gerrymandering, voter suppression, and wide spread misinformation and disinformation spread by bad actors. There are plenty of old representatives and senators who I have endless respect and trust for, and it would really be a shame if they were forced to leave office just because they hit some arbitrary number of years or terms.

The Constitution says that a person can't be under 30 to serve in the Senate. Is that saying that there aren't any sub-30 year olds who would be great Senators? Why is one arbitrary limit OK, but one on the other end of the range suddenly undemocratic? That just makes no sense to me.

I don't think they agree with that lower limit either. They didn't say anything to make me think it's not included in the age limits they're talking about.

Legislative work is a career. One gets better at their career the longer they do it. I don’t hire rookie electricians, and I hate that my state forces to vote for useless green legislators. They don’t know what they are doing and they kowtow to lobbyists and interests who write all the bills that pass here. Term limits are step one in legislative capture.

Thanks for making room for an opinion that is often unpopular in left dominated online spaces.

The funny thing is, the “term limits for legislators” and “age limits for legislators” did not come out of left wing theorists or even social liberal theorist, they came from Koch funded think tanks like the heritage foundation! It’s another example of how effective astroturfing and targeted political “advertising” can be at manipulating both side of the political spectrum.

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Please, what old senators do you have respect and trust for?

Bernie Sanders

Yes, of course literally the one and only. I trust him too. He is the only one. Literally the only senator that I would actually trust to do the right thing, in both the Senate and the House.

1 person against 99 can't do almost anything though. OP said plural senators

And just look at all the young, horrible GOP house reps. Or the young neo-lib reps. They're certainly no better than the old ones.

An age limit would just result in the same exact situation as now, but with everyone younger.

The house and senate are old and terrible, but they're not terrible because they're old. The system just happens to promote both things.

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Somehow I really don't fucking care. He's just another psychopath in a suit. If karma bites him, so be it.

We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?

Probably because some people age better than others? I'd argue term limits are probably a better solution to this problem. Although, people could also have the courtesy of resigning when they're clearly too old for the job.

Some people also young better than others, though. There are 18 year olds in the world I've have no problem voting for, if I could.

But yeah, a lot of age limit sentiment seems to be just straight up just ageism to me, as if every person becomes senile as soon as they turn 80, or even just 70 or 60, which just isn't remotely true. Intelligence can remain sharp as ever, and sometimes elderly wisdom is indeed a thing. And every politician is surrounded by aids who will notice if something starts to go wrong.

I'd be sort of okay with a very high age limit, like 90, I guess, but on the whole I agree term limits are better anyway.

I disagree, even if you're not senile you should be moving out of the way for younger generations. Wisdom doesn't count for much if you're completely out of touch with modern problems (see climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, "series of tubes" guy). Part of the reason millennials have been infantilized and poor for so long is that boomers won't relinquish power in government or business.

There are plenty of older politicians who have good stances on those issues, and plenty of younger politicians with abhorrent views.

Sure, older politicians are more likely to have outdated views, but if the voters oppose those views than they should vote them out.

The issue of so many politicians being old and out of touch with the values of the citizens is merely a symptom of large problems in the electoral process and those issues would persist even if all the legislators had to be young.

There are 18 year olds in the world I’ve have no problem voting for,

I never knew such 18 year olds. I think the brightest who were forced to grow up fast will able to take up a serious leading role around 23-24.

Frankly, I oppose term limits as well, if people want to keep electing a politician they like, they should be able to, and it’s really anti-democracy to insist they have to pick someone new after an arbitrary amount of time.

The issues with bad politicians are not coming from them being allowed to keep running, it’s that the systems around elections are so broken that bad politicians can keep winning.

This is exactly it. We need to move past first-past-the-post voting and do something like ranked-choice.

I’d say we need to go one further than ranked choice to multi member districts with ranked choice voting, that way even those groups who aren’t a majority still get represented but larger groups get a roughly proportional amount of representation.

Interesting, this is the first time I heard of multi-member districts but it makes a lot of sense. I'd certainly be in support of them.

I really like them because they would solve a lot of the issues around minority representation.

So by that logic we should repeal the 22nd Amendment?

Yah I think we should, it was literally just put in place because some people realized that a genuinely popular president could make serious positive changes that undermined extant power structures.

If a totalitarian president were to take control of the government enough to continuously win elections without popular support, they could certainly ignore a term limit, so all it really does is prevent the public from re-electing presidents they legitimately like.

Must have lost radio contact to C&C.

The worst part is having to send a technician all the way to Washington to reset the system. Do they still have anyone posted on the detail who is closer than Moscow or Beijing?

(quick edit - I'm making light because it's political, but I legitimately sucked in a breath when I saw it happen, as both my father and FIL are in their 80s and I'm not ready to lose either of them yet.)

Same (to your edit). It's sad, really.

Yeah, it is. I think McConnell has been a blight on our political system and he has the capacity to be a pretty awful dude, but it's tough to see a human being going through stuff like this.

Agreed

The Music Factory? I guess this really is one of those Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

Because old people made the rules. It's a lot easier to take from people who are excluded from voting than it is to get the guys who made the rules to give up their power.