I agree, the speculative execution failure feels like the start of the bad times for modern Intel.

The problem is Biden’s team has been saying the economy is great, look at all the metrics… but people don’t feel that it’s great for them. It would be helpful for Biden to validate people’s concerns and feelings instead of dismissing them.

The economy is doing well, let’s admit that. But the first question of the debate demonstrated that things are not great. Denying that reality and pretending otherwise is extremely damaging. I don’t want a grandpa who will lie to me to make me feel better, I want a grandpa who will sell it to me straight but help me through what I’m going through.

If Biden could accept and be upfront that people are struggling day-to-day, he may not alienate as many people over to Trump on economic success.

Agreed.

Biden could have started saying, “you know, I’ve never been a good debater – especially with a bit of a campaign cold – but what I have been good at is running this country. I’ve clearly been around for a while and, since I’ve dedicated my career and life to being a servant to this great country, I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s economy. Yes, we’ve taken a few punches recovering from the pandemic, but compared to our international neighbors we are doing ok. Not great, but not bad. There is still a lot of work left to do cleaning up from the mistakes of my predecesor, but we are making good progress and will continue to do so. <insert list of capping medication prescription costs, FED interest rates have stopped and not rising, historically low unemployment with 11 million new jobs, taxes on corporations>”

This.

You’d be surprised how much of a place’s physical infrastructure depends on a physical line. Automated fire alerts for high rises, security alarms, remote access for gates and doors, backup phone connections. A lot of this still uses old physical lines because it is easy to fix and highly reliable.

Now consider the infrastructure needed for specialized services like EMS, police, secure and classified buildings, federal agencies, embassies, smart traffic signals. Shutting down a network like that has massive implications for anything in society that relies on it, which is well beyond your cell phone plan.