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[Starver]

a bump in palm oil oligarchy

Big Palms!

[Kagus]

a bump in palm oil oligarchy

Big Palms!

LATEST: Big Palms Sweating After Oil Tariffs

[sluissa]

In other oil news:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/judge-says-trump-cant-re-open-arctic-waters-that-obama-closed-to-drilling/

Trump admin tries to roll back Obama protections of arctic waters from oil and gas leases. Judge says that's a one way street.
Quick reading does suggest it'd be difficult for even a conservative panel of judges to argue, based on the letter of the law, that the president can unilaterally revoke those protections, but we'll see.

Also:

Creepy Uncle Joe's weird touches come back to bite him.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47770953

Lucy Flores, a Nevada-state Assembly Member, is accusing Joe Biden of making her uncomfortable and kissing the back of her head before a rally. This is one, based on Biden's past behavior, I'm inclined to believe. Still, waiting to see how this plays out.

[JoshuaFH]

My female friend says that no matter how true Lucy's statement is, it's a stupid allegation and makes her look stupid. She's a big proponent that women should be strong and defend themselves in the moment, not go pointing fingers years after the fact; especially for (what she considers) such an minor offense.

[Frumple]

I'd like to not have a handsy president, personally. Whatever your friend is spouting about shrugging off and subsequently ignoring inappropriate touching, it doesn't reflect well on a goddamn POTUS candidate regardless of what it says about the people they've made uncomfortable.

If we could get one that's under like fucking sixty it'd be great, too, really. I'm getting increasingly tired as I get older of sucking up shitty old people in our highest office.

[sluissa]

I'm not even suggesting that Biden necessarily did anything all that bad. And further interviews by Flores suggest that she wasn't doing that either. She simply felt uncomfortable in the situation and since nobody is really taking these behaviors seriously, there's been no real pushback against it other than some comedy sketches, she felt like someone had to be the first to speak out about it.

I think it's important to get this conversation going, since it's something that's going to have to be addressed at some point.

Here's the thing. I LIKE Joe Biden. I think as a leader he'd be pretty damn good on a relative scale. He's got good policy stances. He's got the charisma to work an audience and build hype. He's got a good background... at least as good as a career politician can have. But I also don't think he's electable. He's got too close ties to Obama. He's too old. He's just damn creepy in some specific cases.

If he's the nominee, I'll happily vote for him. He's one of the better (potential) choices on the still changing roster. But I also think he's got too much baggage that can be used against him, and just the association with Obama is going to mobilize the opposition even harder than they might under someone else. (Although if a Warren or a Sanders gets the nomination, I don't see them being any better on that front, so he's not alone with that sort of downside.)

I'd also like to see someone a little younger as well. I'm tired of our candidates being people who could plausibly keel over at any time despite no outstanding health issues. Especially with such a high stress job. You can see it in presidents, how hard it is on them. Dubya looked terrible after his 8 years. Obama looked much older by the time he left. Trump started terribly, quickly hit "Old man yells at cloud" levels and has gone even beyond that as of late. We go in knowing that the VP could potentially be the president if the worst happened. But let's not make that any more likely than we have to.

[JoshuaFH]

I'd like to not have a handsy president, personally. Whatever your friend is spouting about shrugging off and subsequently ignoring inappropriate touching, it doesn't reflect well on a goddamn POTUS candidate regardless of what it says about the people they've made uncomfortable.

I'm just relaying what the gist of her side of the conversation was, she's a sixty yr old woman who went through her own share of male dominated spheres that rarely punished harassment, but her underlying concern was the threat of whiners who scream about any thing that made them uncomfortable de-legitimizing the complaints of the victims of more severe harassment, and therefore removing force the cultural movement to actually get all the harassment stopped.

[smjjames]

I think Trump was already at 'Old Man Yells At Cloud' levels before he was even elected, and yeah, I figured that Bidens 'Creepy/Crazy Uncle Joe' thing and general gaffe proneness would come back to bite him. It would be easy to just shrug it off for a VP and just go 'Oh it's just Uncle Joe again', but since Presidents are under greater scruitiny, it'd be harder to shrug off. Sure, Trump and his crew shrug it off easy, but still.

Theres likely also a 'at least he's not Trump' factor because he's, well, being compared to Trump.

[Karnewarrior]

Trump worked the media cycle to his favor using gaffes and scandals that were way worse than creepily familiar touching. Not saying that it's necessarily a good look for a Dem candidate to use the same strategies, but it's been proven that it's not certain death. And hey, at least he's creeping out other old people and not just waltzing into the dressing rooms of post-pubescent children because he gets off on having the power to do that.

[EnigmaticHat]

The problem is that the democratic voter base did care about Trump's grab her by the pussy scandal.  Joshua just explained pretty clearly why Trump got away with it and why Biden might not: the average democratic voter isn't 60.

[bloop_bleep]

I'd like to not have a handsy president, personally. Whatever your friend is spouting about shrugging off and subsequently ignoring inappropriate touching, it doesn't reflect well on a goddamn POTUS candidate regardless of what it says about the people they've made uncomfortable.

I'm just relaying what the gist of her side of the conversation was, she's a sixty yr old woman who went through her own share of male dominated spheres that rarely punished harassment, but her underlying concern was the threat of whiners who scream about any thing that made them uncomfortable de-legitimizing the complaints of the victims of more severe harassment, and therefore removing force the cultural movement to actually get all the harassment stopped.

Well, that explains part of it, as older women as well as older men are more accepting of creepiness like this.

I think it's a pretty terrible thing that Joe Biden is allowed to do these things repeatedly and very publicly, and the masses just shrug it off and meme it into insignificance. If you can describe someone as "Creepy Uncle Joe," then they should not be President.

[Dunamisdeos]

It's because celebrities we like aren't spun that way in the US.

Attractive? Charismatic? Politically agreeable? It's cool, it was just a touch. Missing some of those? We're not saying they're a rape-crazed monster, but they definitely are.

[SalmonGod]

Somewhere out there is a better quality copy of this image, but you'll have to make do with my shitty screencap that I saved when I first encountered it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I personally prefer "Joe Biden defended resisting desegregation and still does".

[Magistrum]

You guys don't have any luck with those old guys, huh?
Maybe Bernie, but that one is even older.