Our brain doesn’t perceive time as a clock. Instead, time flows with experiences, study finds ZME Science
Is The Future Worth It? The Break Down
The puzzle as propaganda Africa Is A Country
Climate/Environment
In Alabama’s Bald Eagle Territory, Residents Say an Unexpected Mining Operation Emerged as Independence Day Unfolded Inside Climate News
‘Forever chemical’ polluters land hefty contracts to meet electric vehicle battery demand The Examination
Water
Lithium Critical to the Energy Transition Is Coming at the Expense of Water Inside Climate News
Pandemics
Everyone Is Getting Covid In Summer 2024 Because Covid Is Over And Seasonal And Getting It Again Builds Your Immunity So You Won’t Get It Again But You’ll Definitely Get It Again This Winter And Maybe Next Summer Because It’s Seasonal And Over But It’ll Be Fine, Honestly… pic.twitter.com/3KpudE9J0Y
— The Vertlartnic (@TheVertlartnic) July 20, 2024
When Does a Pandemic End? Pandemic Accountability Index
The end of the official Covid emergency now potentially hindering bird flu outbreak analyses. Inside Medicine
I also hear from farm workers who believe they’ve been exposed & infected w/ #H5N1, very symptomatic. They’ve reached out to @CDCgov for help, guidance, and mostly testing.
They say, outreach has been ignored; no follow up, no call back, no investigation, no help getting… https://t.co/2fEhNrlkK5
— Rick Bright (@RickABright) July 19, 2024
None of the blood samples collected from people who had been exposed to infected dairy cows in Michigan showed H5N1 antibodies. This is an important finding because it suggests that asymptomatic infections in people are not occurring. https://t.co/A7rbmeEEw9
— Marguerita Cattell (@MegCattell) July 19, 2024
Africa
Kenyan Protests, Part Three: Thoughts on potential pathways forward An Africanist Perspective
Whom the Gods Want to Destroy, They First Make Mad The Elephant
India
India-Russia relations march ahead Gateway House
The End is Nigh As Government Crackdown Sparks Bloodshed and Fury Across Bangladesh The Wire
Understanding the quota-reformation protests in Bangladesh The Leaflet
China?
Trump says Xi wrote him ‘beautiful note’ following shooting Politico
‘Protection fees’: can Taiwan still rely on US defence if Trump returns to office? South China Morning Post
It’s a pity that some of the US experts don’t understand the nature of Taiwan’s public opinion. If US only presses Taiwan to defend itself, Taiwanese people will feel unease and “Skepticism on US” will spread in Taiwan. CPP has been trying to create this situation for years. https://t.co/w43FpojRtg
— ogasawara_yoshiyuki (@ogasawara_yoshi) July 20, 2024
Syraqistan
Netanyahu claims Al Hudaydah port in Yemen that Israel struck used to supply Iranian weapons to Houthis Anadolu Agency. Commentary:
Israel bombing a Yemeni port critical for humanitarian aid is on brand, and a consequence of letting Israel weaponize starvation.
Now there’s accounts on here calling for Israel to starve Yemenis…because starving 2 million Palestinians in Gaza is apparently not enough for them.
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) July 20, 2024
5,000 UAVs could be fired at central Israel, and the IAF is not remotely prepared – analysis Jerusalem Post
🇮🇱🇾🇪 BBC on the Houthi drone attack that hit a target in Tel Aviv.
“This attack calls into question the billions of dollars spent by the American and British coalition in the region.
This is Yemen’s deepest attack yet and is significant in terms of both timing and location.… https://t.co/QjlM6KDJNb pic.twitter.com/RVm8REcPPx
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) July 20, 2024
Without Tanks or Trainers, Israel Reveals Its Inability to Open Any Other Front Elijah J Magnier
CENTCOM chief urges ‘broad expansion’ of illegal war against Yemen: Report The Cradle
Saudi Arabia denies involvement in the Israeli attack on Hodeidah Al Mayadeen
***
Iran ‘now probably 1 or 2 weeks away’ from nuclear weapon breakout: Blinken Anadolu Agency. Commentary:
🇮🇷 🇮🇱 39 Years later on, they’re still trying the same “Iran is in the final stages of a nuclear bomb” line.
They’re getting desperate to start WW3. pic.twitter.com/yWYWXleqxA
— Ken O’Keefe (@KenOKeefe1TJP) July 19, 2024
***
US warns ICJ ruling on Israeli presence in West Bank, East Jerusalem will ‘complicate’ peace efforts Times of Israel
Why are North American synagogues selling West Bank real estate? The New Arab
***
Anyone who interrupts Netanyahu’s Congress speech could face arrest, US House speaker says The New Arab
Polio outbreak in Gaza threatens Israelis as much as Palestinians, experts say Ynet news
European Disunion
Slovak PM blasts Ukraine’s Lukoil sanctions as oil flow stops Euractiv
Hungary facing fuel crisis as Ukraine turns up heat on Russian oil supplies Politico
Orban’s Peace Efforts Raise Suspicions of Hidden Agendas Dagens News
REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBÁN TO CHARLES MICHEL, PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL CABINET OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER
New Not-So-Cold War
NATO at the Crossroads Big Serge Thought
Blinken points to wider pledges to support Ukraine in case US backs away under Trump Politico
Poland to Triple Forces on Belarusian Border From Next Month Military Watch Magazine
Old Blighty
A failure of state: the damning verdict of Covid Inquiry Counterfire
The Bonfire of Structures Tribune
Existence vs Expansion Craig Murray
South of the Border
United States Spied on Lula for Decades, US Government Documents Reveal Orinoco Tribune
Biden
Biden eyes Georgia and Texas trips from Rehoboth bunker Axios
A PRESIDENCY’S BITTER END Seymour Hersh
US: Joe Biden completes his sixth dose of Paxlovid.
Has KP.2.3 variant. “Still experiencing a loose, nonproductive cough and hoarseness”
Letter from White House Physician, 20th July 2024https://t.co/19ToEYIDyr pic.twitter.com/FIoFR5vOiv
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) July 20, 2024
Obama’s unseen but clearly felt presence has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out. One former aide at last month’s Hollywood fundraiser said Obama seemed shaken by how much Biden had aged and appeared disoriented. https://t.co/eiFCtLVCGI
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 19, 2024
2024
Professor Who Accurately Predicted Past Elections Says ‘Biden Can Win’ Newsweek
Ready for Round 2: Why we Need Hillary more than ever The Hill
Clintons privately urge donors to keep giving to Biden as long as he remains presumptive nominee CNN
Trump
Does Trump deserve a clean shave? David Ignatius, WaPo. Spook mouthpiece gives a thumbs down.
Secret Service says it denied Trump additional resources even as his team complained CNN
Vance
J.D. Vance, the Tech Oligarchs’ Populist Nonzero Newsletter
His investment firm, Narya Capital, still owns a significant stake in this company.
It says here that Vance stepped back from running Narya Capital. But there’s no sign that he’s sold his stake or handed over control of his ownership.https://t.co/9Y7f8vPRDI
— Dr Sarah Taber (@SarahTaber_bww) July 17, 2024
Realignment and Legitimacy
Pro-Trump multimillionaire and election denier boosts funds to far-right voter-conspiracy groups The Guardian. Commentary:
So important. The rise of conspiracy theories is not just some natural expression of an alienated working class it is an intentional strategy funded by billionaires so that they can steal our money and destroy the planet. https://t.co/ksWAA4NwXU
— Alex Vitale (@avitale) July 20, 2024
Boeing
Exclusive: US-Japan Patriot missile production plan hits Boeing component roadblock Reuters
Imperial Collapse Watch
Liars, war-mongers and politics at the apex of power Gilbert Doctorow, Armageddon Newsletter
Abortion
Groves of Academe
Columbia removes 3 senior administrators over ‘very troubling’ texts High Ed Dive
Universities, police spread ‘jaw-dropping’ misinformation about encampments The Breach
After today’s ICJ ruling, any university presidents who sent police to dismantle protest encampments or threatened to do so are explicitly on par with their counterparts in the 1980s who worked to shut down campus protests of apartheid South Africa.
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) July 19, 2024
Healthcare?
Private Medicare Plans and Vertical Integration Yields UnitedHealth $15.8 Billion in Profits Between January and June HEALTH CARE un-covered
Police State Watch
The Body Camera: The Language of our Dreams Yale Journal of Law & Liberation
Crowdstrike
CrowdStrike ‘close to rolling out fix’ after IT outage crashes 8.5m Windows devices globally Irish Times
CrowdStrike is the cyberfirm that generated the claim that Russia hacked the DNC, setting off Russiagate. Even though CrowdStrike was working for the Clinton campaign, the FBI relied on it rather than independently investigate the “hacked” DNC servers.
It only emerged four…
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 19, 2024
Global IT outage shows dangers of cashless society, campaigners say The Guardian
Class Warfare
99% of Disneyland Workers Authorize a Strike! Mice Chat
As Florida temperatures soar, Disney World workers struggle and pass out from the heat Orlando Weekly
Screening Room
Egalitarian Production Dollars & Sense
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
“Anyone who interrupts Netanyahu’s Congress speech could face arrest, US House speaker says”
Is anyone really going to try to disrupt Netanyahu’s speech to Congress if he does make the trip over? When he spoke to Congress back in 2015 he got 28 standing ovations in 47 minutes which meant that members of Congress were up and down like that Assyrian Empire. Must have been hard on the elderly members of Congress as jumping up and down on command is kinda hard on the knees. And this time around, will female members of Congress dress in blue and white to show their support and loyalty? We will have to wait and see.
Maybe Netanhayu and the standing ovations is a medical benefit for the gerontocracy?
https://jneuroengrehab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-0003-10-86
Ha. I remember when I realized we were getting old, when I went to a Hot Tuna concert and Jorma had to play sitting down because of a bad back, and, when it came time for the standing O, the front row took forever to get up out of their seats. Then I was dragged to a Steve Miller concert, and we were seated by the walker and wheelchair section.
“Come back Baby I Wish You Would.”
Yesterday there was discussion about VT Senator Bernie Sanders… Independent. He is running for reelection to his Senate seat this year. He’s 82 years old. I don’t see any net positive in holding an official position for such a long period of time, House or Senate or on the Supreme Court. Life long appointments or very secure positions in Congress, either scenario, should have a mandatory age of retirement…just maybe.
He’s at least still coherent and functioning as a pol. I think the final retirement age for any and all jobs should be 75. You can quit working at 60 or 62 and start collecting that sweet pension cash but nobody should be allowed to work after 75.
Totally agree. There is plenty of volunteer work and mentoring that can be done if you can’t step away from the work world.
” You can quit working at 60 or 62 and start collecting that sweet pension cash but nobody should be allowed to work after 75.”
That “sweet pension cash” may not be enough.
And Medicare doesn’t kick in until age 65.
(Don’t get me started on Obamacare as an option.)
Pensions? Wht are those?
My husband and I are 67 and 69.
We are both professionals and neither of us have a pension – our firms got rid of those before we were vested in anything
I retired recently to take care of my grandson during the workweek so my kids can eat and pay their mortgage (childcare is appallingly pricey) but husband plans to work to 72- not because he wants to but because we are scared for ourselves and for our kids and want as much a cushion as we can.
My FIL 93 with slowly worsening dementia who retired at 62, STILL can’t get it through his head that a pension like his is no more for most people- he keeps telling my husband he worked for the ‘wrong’ company and it’s his fault- lol
I’m 71 (and don’t look it!) and have to work until I DROP! Not everybody has a retirement package they can “retire on”. So you see a limit to experience and wisdom? So according to YOU, I
can work 4 more years and then starve? Bugger off!
I meant this as a reply to Griffen in reference to Bernie and other government employees who all have very nice retirement packages and not the folks on Main Street.
Yeah my suggestion was rhetorical in nature, but suggesting a limitation on just our most senior, national politicians does not appear too far fetched when there just could be younger people capable of having newer or different ideas.
Appointed (once confirmed) as they are to the Supreme Court, or when elected by voters from the respective district or state; it is no longer that surprising when say a Feinstein is wheeled out to vote mere weeks before her passing. Or for a Republican, Mitch McConnell’s freezing status while at a podium which was a few months back. Death and the splendid state funeral should not be the official end of holding elected office for these individuals….once they reach past 85 years, if that is sufficient and broad enough to cover most bases.
Added, I’m not spreading the analogy any further than that. Heck I’m hoping to be in the best position for retirement in next 10 to 15 years, but life don’t care about my plans as the saying goes…
Ageism anyone? I’m 77. My life has been dedicated to being good and getting better at what I do. I won’t pretend that I have the mental or physical acuity that I enjoyed at 50 but I now know more and have way more perspective on the process of the work. I also enjoy keeping one ore in the water. Every day brings problems, puzzles to keep me sharp
To suggest that an arbitrary line be drawn at some age that determines competency is simplistic and small minded. My contemporaries are dropping like flies. Age related decline is a serious factor but your solution ignores that capacity is the problem not age.
But if mental capacity was the measure then most of the young (not sharp) ones working at Lowes would loose their job.
“Every day brings problems, puzzles to keep me sharp…”
I like this comment.
I’m not sure you didn’t contradict yourself by claiming ageism whilst admitting your contemporaries are dropping like flies. I’m 53 and would happily be put out to pasture if I could afford it. Only megalomaniacs like Biden and Mitch McConnell can’t see that retirement is a goal.
I only know a couple of people who have pensions; they are government employees. Most people I know have social security and a 401K that is far too small. If they quit working at 60 or 62 they will be homeless and have no health care except maybe Medicaid.
Ageism! Federal judges regularly have to be carried out feet first. Jed Rakoff is a fantastic jurist and he is 80.
On the other end of the spectrum, my great uncle continued to haul lobsters half a day without a winch into his mid 80s. I last saw him at age 88. He moved and looked like a man in his 50s, albeit one who’d been in the sun and wind a lot.
It’s not just a question of working or not working, surely, but what you do. I don’t think many people would agree to 80 year-olds flying an F22, for example.
If you accept that running the country (or a portion of it) is a big, important job that requires finesse, diplomacy and attention to detail, then surely generalized, neutral testing over a certain age might not be a bad idea?
And below a certain age too – there’s no way mentally or psychologically someone like Sebastian Gorka or Stephen Miller should be allowed anywhere near a government…
If the Dems in Congress push ahead with Biden’s proposed Supreme Court mandatory retirement age surely they should apply that same requirement to themselves?
Ha ha just kidding. Of course not.
LOL, the Supreme Court will just strike down a mandatory retirement age as unconstitutional. And they are right, since federal judicial appointments are for the lifetime of the holder.
More evidence that the Dems have no real interest in changing things
The problem with SCOTUS is it increasingly relies on ideology not the law for making decisions. Ginsburg was too decrepit, had lost her edge and should have stepped aside. The real problem with the supreme court is many people don’t agree with the majority. If they were all over 100 and making the decisions popularly agreed with maybe it would be fine.
He knows the seat is not “his”. He knows his temporary enseatment thereupon is only as secure as his ability to win the next election. If a ballot-casting majority of his Vermont constituents feel he represents their interests well enough to be worth it to them to elect him again, that is their perfect right. ( This is assuming he has the decency to retire early if his mind starts going and he realizes it in time. He might pull a Feinstein, but I don’t think he would).
It is not like a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, with no hope of removal.
Ah, the Spice must flow and it’s good to see the Big Boss once in a while. Mazel tov. Uneffing believable.
Stephen, want to thank you for the tip the other day about presearch.com. It’s a huge improvement.
It is clarifying that the PM of Israel seems to be regarded to be more worthy of deference than, say, the President of US (thinking of the famous “you lie!” charge at a BHO SOTU address; it’s hard to imagine that BN will utter fewer falsehoods in the upcoming address than BHO did in that one).
Lawmakers who try to interrupt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress next week may face arrest, US House Speaker Mike Johnson warned on Friday.
Geez – I thought the law was that while in session Congress and it’s members cant face arrest for anything short of murder. Mike Johnson certainly knows how to speak out his hind orifice.
I was thinking about Code Pink up in the peanut gallery, but maybe they don’t have room for the plebes at combined sessions in Congress? Certainly by the time you get the fourth branch of government (AIPAC) in there, it would start to be getting pretty tight.
For all our faults in the UK it is good that an MP cannot be prosecuted for what they say in the House of Commons. The Speaker might censure them but the things that our secret courts are increasingly forbidding can be said.
Jess Phillips MP on Have I Got News For You was challenged to explain something she claimed knowledge of but said she’d only say it in Parliament, not on the BBC.
(Reposted after internet burp caused it to not go into appropriate thread)
Quiet…Nutty-yahoo is giving his first official State of the Union address.
The visitation lingering in my mind was in 2002. Bibi gave testimony to a Congressional committee that if we didn’t invade Iraq, Saddam would supply nukes to terrorists around the world. His divine proclamation also predicted an invasion would bring a flowering of democracy throughout the region, including in Iran.
A mere 22 years ago.
Institutional memory in Washington appears kaput.
What happens if ICC issues the arrest warrant prior to the visit?! Oh, the hypocrisy! Putin charged for actually trying to save children’s lives. Even The American Conservative had an article about the issue, fully validating the Russian stance and giving examples of family reunifications with the help of UAE…
About the only thing any DemParty members can do is to not even attend to begin with. Perhaps Sanders will not even attend to begin with. But he is not a DemParty member.
Will any DemParty members not even attend to begin with?
They could get up and leave when he enters. That might drive the point home even more forcefully. I doubt any of them will, though.
Well . . . Sanders might. But he is not a DemParty member.
“Report of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Charles Michel, President of the European Council”
Sounds like that Orbán thinks that the fighting will intensify and nothing will change externally until the US elections are over in November. What happens internally to the Ukraine is another matter altogether. Naturally the EU was keen to learn his direct insights for the main characters involved and what Trump might do if he becomes President. Nah – just kidding. When Orbán scheduled an informal meeting of EU foreign minsters in Budapest to expand on this report, the EU immediately scheduled a meeting of those same foreign ministers in Brussels the same day and made attendance mandatory. They are nothing but petulant children.
Fingers in their ears, “I can’t hear you.”
When leaders believe their own bs… The most dramatic example right now is ofc in Israel. It’s the insanity that marks the ruling elite in the process of losing legitimacy, power and control.
The “Israelis” really should have exterminated the “Judeans” when they had the chance, right after the Rabin assassination.
Now is entirely too late.
“launch of a coordinated political offensive towards the Global South whose appreciation we have lost concerning our position on the war in Ukraine resulting in the global isolation of the transatlantic community”. This is very rich, and underlying the Hypocrisy of EU, and ultimately Hungary as well, or at least the lack of awareness, given that Hungary was one of the few Western countries that intervened openly on behalf of Israel on the issue of the legal implications of Israel’s ocupation, ruling published by ICJ a couple of days ago and which legally buries Israel.
China? Trump says Xi wrote him ‘beautiful note’ following shooting Politico
The world needs more humanity. Trump at least still has some (not an endorsement just an observation feel free to disagree). In contrast, Neo-liberals respond with scripted neo-liberal robotic idealogues.
Has anyone watched a recent movie “Arrival” 2016 with Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker? It contains a crucial scene with an actor clearly meant to represent China’s Xi and even looks like Xi. It is a revolutionary clarifying and emotionally moving scene providing the missing link that pulls together the entire plot puzzle in one brilliant stroke. Human encounter with aliens extremely intelligent and more advanced. The human response is…sadly predictable. The lead, Amy Adams, is a linguist expert as the govt at least understands is needs to learn the language of the aliens.
The scene shocked me when I first saw. Portraying a Chinese leader as a multidimensional, humane good guy? Wow.
1000 X Yes! I just rewatched it and had totally forgotten the militaristic aspect of the plot. And the music is also amazing. Sorry but I wept at the end…
Yes I wept also The script does a not-dumbed-down yet succinct job of highlighting fundamental clashes involving morals, principles, language, meaning, methods between Amy the linguist and the military types who are running the show, as she challenges their very core language and methods telling them how dangerous and threatening they can be, are brilliant as they go to the very core of meaning and principle. The scene where she explains “war” in ancient time translates literally to “lack of cows” is a jaw dropper moment (pardon if my detail are slightly off).
Wiktionary has “Two hands on a plowshare” as ancient origin of 爭, the second character in 戰爭 “war, invasion.”
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%88%B0%E7%88%AD
It goes without saying but NC Commentariat is best on planet Earth. Appreciate youse!
A wonderful film IMO. Coincidentally today’s first few links pair nicely with the ruminations on time in ‘Arrival’:
https://www.space.com/35696-arrival-movie-alien-language-explained.html#:~:text=Circles%20are%20a%20very%20important,movie%20has%20a%20circular%20layout.
and Einsteins observation:
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”
Bit disappointed how it was a religious nut that tried to sabotage first contact, just like happened with the film “Contact.” They could have tried something original. But agreed that that part with the Chinese leader was an outstanding part of that film,
I didn’t see Arrival‘s rogue Captain as so much a religious nut. The segment of the Rush Limbaugh type TV host saying something like: give them a shot across the bow, you know what I’m talking about people… was the predicate. Said Captain was more a run of the mill WingNut, to use the term of the era. Contact‘s villain was definitely a religious nut, and I found that very disappointing.
Arrival was meticulously crafted.
Amy Adams should have received an Academy Award for that film, what an extraordinary performance. The film should have won an award. It did win for sound editing, which was richly deserved as it moved the plot along so skillfully. The composer should have won, except that other works were used. I have watched it three or four times even though its time premise is highly problematic, to say the least. But hey, its science fiction at its best. No whiz bang shoot ’em up technology, just a 1,500 foot space vessel defying gravity. And the humanity.
Did I mention that I liked it?
Every time the USA saber-rattles at China, I think of this:
https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-faq/why-do-chinese-call-america-beautiful-country/
In Chinese slang, the United States of America is colloquially known as 美国 (meiguo), a word composed of two characters: the one for “Beauty” and one for “nation,” or “country.” This is not the official name, but it is widely used in informal contexts.
Must be referencing our national parks. The actual geographic area.
“widely used in informal contexts”
That could mean many things.
They use the character 美 because its pronunciation (mei) sounds like the second syllable in America. The character for rice (米) must have been used in the past because that is the character that Japanese uses on the rare occasion that it doesn’t spell out a mei ri ka with kana syllabic letters. In Japanese, 米国 is pronounced Beikoku, so they must have borrowed that usage from Chinese.
Using the same principle of writing a country name with a kanji with the same sound, Germany is Alone Country and France is Buddha Country.
Another example of Xi’s down-to-Earth nature. 40 plus years ago, when he was on the lower rungs of the ladder and was responsible for agriculture in of one of the provinces, he made an extended visit to eastern Iowa. The American person who was responsible for guiding him arranged to meet quite a few people and agricultural related businesses, and he frequently stayed as a guest in the homes of farm families, farm implement dealers, small town feed & seed sellers, etc., when not lodging in small town motels. Fast forward to November of 2023 when Xi came to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. He had previously instructed the embassy to get in touch with a list of people he had met during that visit decades previously and arranged for their transportation to San Francisco where a several hour reunion was held with them, all expenses paid IIRC by the Chinese government. Needless to say this touching gesture did not receive wide coverage in the MSM.
Blinken, at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, looks a LOT older than in previous photos. Looks like he hasn’t even had time for a haircut recently.
It must be all the stress. He first off he has his loyalty to the Ukraine because of his family connections to that country. Then he is also loyal to Israel and when he arrived in Israel after the October attack, he immediately declared himself to be Jewish and not the US Secretary of State. And in his spare time I am sure that he is loyal to America as well. So it is kinda a three way split for him and the stress is telling.
Perhaps repeated CV infections are adding up, too. It seems that the top levels of US government are not all that safe a place to work from a “CV mitigations” perspective. JRB is presumably getting CV protection as good as anyone in USG gets, and he recently notched his 3rd publicly acknowledged infection. Shame on the Secret Service (/s)!
In local observation, many people seem beaten down. Doubtless there’s a “stupidest timeline” malaise/dread psychological aspect to it, but I suspect that there may be accumulating CV sequelae as well.
I’m slow this morning. I initially read “CV” here as in “Curriculum Vitae.” Appropriate for a regime dominated by Professional (but incompetent) Managerial Class. Scans either way.
I did the same thing. Both Republican and Democrat neocons are usually filtered through elite institutions and marked with prestigious credentials. But this seems to be more important in the careers and self-perceptions of the Dems. Perhaps this self-image is also related to their more “humanitarian” justifications for war-mongering. Not much difference in outcomes, though.
A CV is very often a list of repeated infections.
Except that the list is written by the organism responsible for the disease . . .
They are replaceble, that is the main point. Tools. Buffets and Kochs and Gates, and Bezoes, never mind the Wall Street Titans are quite resilient, going on an on like Skeksis…
Yes. Precisely put. He looks alternately puzzled and alarmed to me. Perhaps it is nothing more than his divided loyalties whipsawing him. Of course, the fact that he has not a diplomatic bone in his body is a large factor. He is at best an over matched clerk, out of his depth from day one. The March 2021 Anchorage debacle put paid to any regard I might ever have had for him or his equally unqualified running mate, Jake Sullivan. I sometimes think of the saying, “The boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die not in fun but in earnest.” They know not what they do, but I do not forgive them their errors.
The guy does not look like it but he is actually a thug in his behaviour with other diplomats. As an example, before the war he told Lavrov that of course the US was going to station nukes in the Ukraine and the only question was just how many. But that reminder about the Anchorage fiasco was a good reminder. Was that all his idea of what to do to the Chinese?
I have a feeling that Biden and Blinken were trying to re-assure the Israeli leadership elites right from the start that they ” were in Israel’s corner” “had Israel’s back” etc. so that they could then play ” The Israel Whisperer” who would “whisper” Israel into doing things the ” wiser American way”.
Biden’s speech about “not revenge”, “learning from our mistakes” etc. supports this theory in my mind.
It’s from too much rocking in a free world.
Ha! That’s what I thinking. No haircut. Maybe he wants to look more the part next time he picks up his guitar.
How would you look if you were chasing nuclear war with putin and pushing genocide on Palestine?
“US warns ICJ ruling on Israeli presence in West Bank, East Jerusalem will ‘complicate’ peace efforts”. There seems to be zero recognition on the part of the State Department that the de facto support of the Gaza genocide by the US will itself complicate and undermine the US’s “peace efforts” for decades. And Mike Johnson has done as good a job as Blinken and Biden in covering the dung heap with the American flag before the next load is tipped over it.
The credibility of the Collective West as coherent military, political and economic powers has shrunk to an all time low under the Biden Presiduncey, and we can only hope that President Trump’s transactional – ie realist – and personality-based approaches to international politics, coupled with Senator Vance’s willingness to examine opposing viewpoints and to change stance when he is incorrect, will provide a pathway to reconcile the West to it’s change in power and status in relation to the Global Rest.
As a down to the bone Corbynite leftwinger, and as a member of the Workers Party of Britain, the Trump-Vance ticket makes me feel more hopeful of achieving a better, more prosperous and peaceful world than any Presidential ticket since the murders of the Kennedy brothers.
“Presiduncey”. Very good. Hadn’t heard that before. An apt description.
dream on
Mecouris comes up with an interesting take on Harris replacing Biden, beginning by insulting her, but, cannot say he isn’t right. About 20 minutes in. Harris should do this. Only has to deal with the office for a few months, then live with “The First Female Person of Color to be President” for the rest of her life. It could be worth hundreds of millions, in this ex president’s market, as it stands. She’s an attractive woman, looks good on TV. Hire a good agent, and she’ll live very well, with little effort.
https://youtu.be/qQ1-GWnJAzg?si=UYv-c_OR91TNcPuV
But there’s also a public humiliation aspect, recapitulating (but probably much worse) HRC’s humiliation in 2016. And perhaps forever after remembered (wrongly, IMO; BHO deserves the credit, for his “thumb on scales” in 2020) as the person who gave us a 2nd DJT term.
She’s married to a wealthy person already; may not need the $x10^8 from a personal comfort perspective; marginal utility of money and all that.
The CNBC article linked above is worth reading, and some on the ground reports from the latest campaign event where Harris was speaking.
“… Biden as one of the most consequential presidents in history.”. Make space on Mt. Rushmore? Vomit worthy statement, just my opinion.
Maybe an inadvertently correct statement, by KamelHumpa, if JB’s actions and staffing choices bring global nuclear war and megadeaths, beyond those already counted, from plague and war and starvation and hopelessness. “Out of the mouth of (Willie’s) Babe…”
The statement might be true — it depends on how one conceptualizes the “consequences” of the person’s time in office.
James Buchanan, for example, was an exceedingly consequential President, but the consequences were dire.
If DJT really is an existential threat to “Democracy in US” and JRB governance paved the way for DJT’s 2nd term, … I’d say that is a highly consequential presidency.
Not meant to sound snarky. Sometimes, the reality is such that however one chooses one’s words, it comes out sounding like snark.
She would be the first female period to be President of the USA.
Twofor. She’d be elevated to Democratic sainthood if she was LBGT.
I wonder what the equivalent is to “I tried but didn’t inhale” ;)
2nd female. Edith Wilson. A little over a century ago. Unofficial, but real.
3rd female. Nancy Reagan forty years ago.
(Why does no one give credit to Dolly Madison? She saved the main contents of the original White House from the depredations of His Majesties Marines and thus started a long and continued Tradition; the exiting Administration tries to strip the White House of everything valuable as they leave.)
That’s a bit harsh. From demented to da menstrual.
(We would say first female, full stop…)
I think of her more as a female ellipsis.
How about an interrobang?
And is it time to fire up the generator again?
This would mirror the fate of the Julia Louise-Dreyfus VP character in the VEEP series: after serving out the president’s term (he resigns after a mental breakdown) she loses the general several months later. (She returns to serve a single lackluster presidential term 4 yrs later.) The series finale ends at her funeral in the 2030s, a brilliant “what happened” to the rest of the cast of incompetent functionaries.
https://www.dw.com/en/serbia-activists-warn-of-protests-if-rio-tinto-lithium-mining-goes-ahead/a-69707176
Serbia: Protests on the cards if lithium mining goes ahead
As Olaf Scholz travels to Serbia for a summit on critical raw materials on Friday, Serbian activists have labeled their government’s decision to greenlight lithium mining “an epic crime against people and nature.”
Please run HRC! Help us, you are the only hope as one of the most qualified ever to run for high office. You win if we choose who as a candidate is least likely to die next! \Sarc
God help us, or your deity of choice if you got one in mind and heart. Good grief the cope, and the hope. This isn’t real….I hope it isn’t real.
Granting the present assumption that the election is DJT/JDV’s to lose, perhaps we powerless mopes should be rooting for a D nominee who would provide the greatest entertainment (and, n.b., “schadenfreude” is a form of entertainment) value.
HRC might score high by that metric.
This is how I’ve been looking at it. Biden staying in is my number one choice but Herself is a second.
They all seem pretty entertaining to me. Actually the whole party. And here I thought the adults were now in charge. The opening song at their convention should be the theme song from Benny Hill.
What a complete $hit show.
Tried and true for a DNC convention. Dare I suggest that Joe and Mika can also sing at their top of their lungs.. Don’t Stop Believing… “Don’t stop believing, hold onto that feeling..”
Journey’s anthemic song from the early 80s just seems about right. And it’s catchy, every one in the audience will know the words.
Yes. A lot of us have been using the WWE analogy for a long time to describe our electoral politics. The Trump Republicans get it: Amber Rose, Kid Rock, Dana White, the Hulkster, hell, the Great Reality Show Host himself. The Dems need to up their game. Pretending this is real isn’t working. The audience is too “sophisticated” to fall for it anymore. I say bring Hillary back. Maybe the Boss and what’s left of Fleetwood Mac can perform. Sean Penn should have a spot tool
“time traveling Hillary Clinton warns self to do everything in exact same way”
https://www.theonion.com/time-traveling-hillary-clinton-warns-self-to-do-everyth-1821196436
Will we be presented with the Aluminium Dossier this time, proving Trump a traitor?
Eagerly awaiting those Wikileaks disclosures about Hillary. Those should bury her, even without the vampire method of the stake and the crossroads.
The dems running Clinton might be the only thing that could prompt me to vote for Trump. I’d be positively gleeful to see her lose to that mountebank a second time.
Trump
Larry Johnson posted an informative 3D animation of bullet trajectories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz8xdWeLtUc
Looks like that kid got off two or three aimed shots at Trump but missed and then in frustration, sent a whole bunch of bullets downrange not caring who they hit.
It was at that moment that he knew he f*cked up.
There are various reports of audio analyses that show three distinct acoustic profiles.
The first one appears to be the kid.
The second is as yet unknown.
The third had just the kill shot from the counter-sniper.
That second one needs further review as part of the deeper dive into the Secret Service et al.
That was from Stephen Bryen but doesn’t sound very reliable (he’s not vouching for it).
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-trump-assassination-attempt-a
Forget the source but somebody sitting behind Trump was asked and said the shots all seemed to come from the same direction.
Here is a link to a Chris Martenson video analyzing the acoustic profiles of the shots. He believes there were at least 2 shooters, a view with which Larry Johnson does not agree.
The video is about 30 minutes but fascinating and compelling. Chris Martenson is well-regarded here isn’t he?
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1814398580154872092
All the shots were within 6 seconds and per the visual Larry posted, all accounted for. If there was more than one shooter, you would expect him to keep shooting at the body pile on the stage. AR 15 rounds penetrate some body armor and bulletproof vests cover only part of the body…
https://tacticon.com/tactical-products-know-how/breaking-down-bulletproof-vs-bullet-resistant/
Watching the national news last night, probably on ABC here in the states, the depiction of the one shot that killed the assassin was to be a “1 out 1 million”. Those dudes are not called sniper for nothing. That designation is earned.
Re: Drug Traffickers Said They Backed an Early Campaign of Mexico’s President.
They would say that, wouldn’t they? All the cited traffickers seem to be facing charges in the US. I’m rethinking my temptation to click ProPublica’s Donate button. Looks like they’ve found new donors.
Re: “If US only presses Taiwan to defend itself, Taiwanese people will reel unease.
Our Taiwanese friends feel unease over how the “defense of Ukraine to the last Ukrainian” translates into Taiwanese.
Probably something along the lines of ‘Yew Go Dai!’ Doesn’t help to know that the US has promised to blow up Taiwan’s chip factories just so the Chinese do not get them – along with the rest of the world. You wonder if they will destroy the infrastructure as well just so that they can create problems for China – while blaming them for all that damage.
In foreign policy the US has become the ultimate dog in the manger. I say again. Russia is not going to fold. Ukraine is a slaughter pen for Ukrainian bodies and the pretensions of the hubristic West. Iran is an enemy only if it is made into one. Israel is an unruly client state. Support is one thing. Giving genocide a free pass is another. Finally, do you really want to provoke a nuclear war? Climb down off your high horse, a high horse that more and more resembles Rocinante.
Bad choice of association: Don Quixote was motivated by pure energies. US rulers riding a demon horse..,
He had good intentions, but lived in the realm of the ridiculous as does US foreign policy.
Motivated by the tales of knightly deeds of valour.
See Girard – Mimetic desire.
You need to be careful what you read. You never know what it might cause you to do.
More like the White walkers horses…
The “Yew go dai” line instantly made me remember that monumental blunder when a US news broadcaster was tricked into telling viewers the flight crew of an Asian crashed plane had names like “Ho Lee Sheet” etc.
Awful US news standards but remains on YouTube to this day to show up the crappification of news.
Seriously, how do you not spot that kind of stuff?
A very old joke among Newcastle United fans used to be about their Chinese players: Wee Wun Wunce and Hau Lang Sins.
Sum Ting Wong, Wi Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, and Bang Ding Ow.
The war in Ukraine barely gets any coverage in Taiwan. Most young Taiwanese are naive when it comes to war, thinking that US and Japanese soldiers will do most of the fighting (I kid you not). Starting from this year, military service for males has been extended from 4 months to one year, which sounds pretty serious until you consider that Singaporean males have to do 2 years of military service followed by reservist duty every year until they reach 40 years old (50 years old for officers).
What’s funny is the Japanese also think that US soldiers will do most of the fighting when war breaks out, so honestly this song and dance needs to stop already. There’s a Chinese idiom that perfectly describes the whole situation which is 慷他人的慨, the literal translation of which is “being liberal with other people’s generosity”.
As has been pointed by NC and other commenters including yours truly, Mainland China does need to go to war with Taiwan. The later is not self sufficient in terms of food or energy (100% of its energy is imported), so draw your own conclusions.
I must confess, I don’t think our Taiwanese friends had heard of “fighting to the last Ukrainian” until we explained it to them.
More like blokade Taiwan firstly, see what private companies will risk the blockade…
“Most young Taiwanese are naive when it comes to war, thinking that US and Japanese soldiers will do most of the fighting (I kid you not).”
“What’s funny is the Japanese also think that US soldiers will do most of the fighting when war breaks out, so honestly this song and dance needs to stop already.”
Bless their hearts…
Is it really different from most countries, including, ironically, United States? The political creatures and other moralizers think that their job is to talk grandiloquently about how great and righteous they are, and it’s somebody else that’ll go to war, fight, and die. That they are (often) their own countrymen doesn’t matter–actually, they don’t really have a “country” as such anyways).
Sassoon’s “Base Details” sussed this ages ago
“Secret Service says it denied Trump additional resources even as his team complained”
Can’t confirm it but I heard that the SS guys doing security weren’t regular security detail people but those taken from other departments. This could be very well true. There is a clip of this female SS agent who has all sorts of trouble trying to holster her gun until she gave up as if she was unfamiliar with how to do it. And remember how it was only after this shooting and at Trump’s request that RJK jr was assigned a detail as well. Hopefully the SS will start training their people in how to deal with sloped roofs soon.
That concern echoes the first item (DJT detail in Butler was not his regular SS detail) in a substantial list of concerns raised in a discussion between Larry Johnson and Larry Cunningham. Here’s the text summary (the discussion, which is an hour long, is embedded in the post).
I don’t know what to make of it, but hope that it really is “stupidest timeline” level stuff and not something even more disturbing. This many goofs, if intentional, seems very disturbing, as if TPTB don’t care if it looks bad.
https://www.mlive.com/reckon/2024/07/the-secret-service-agent-who-protected-trump-is-now-the-target-of-a-vicious-body-shaming-campaign.html
The secret service agent who protected Trump is now the target of a vicious body-shaming campaign
“Some bad ass white male Marine or Army Ranger was passed over for Melissa McCarthy,”
.“So we’re just supposed to believe that the 5′5″, objectively unfit, obese woman beat out all able-bodied men for Trump’s Secret Service detail? #AbolishDEI”
“I’m so sick of DEI hires. Why is this woman Secret Service? As a woman, we don’t need woman in Secret Services. And especially ones that look like they can’t even run the mile in less than 15 minutes.”
When you are going to assassinate a protected official the first task is to strip security.
Donald Sutherland’s X character explained all of this straight away to Kevin Costner’s Garrison character in the best scene in Oliver Stone’s JFK.
These guys in the assassination business have a play book. Post pattern. Corner pattern. It isn’t too difficult to see if you look.
I have heard and read that Donald Sutherland’s X character was somewhat based on the real life person Colonel ( Retired) L. Fletcher Prouty. It was in something Prouty wrote that I first read that to get a powerful protected official assassinated, strip away their security. And then quietly let their many enemies ( and every protected official has enemies) know that their security has been stripped away. And let the official’s enemies do the rest, if they are capable of it. If not, then the “Secret Teams” may have to be brought in.
Here is a wiki about L. Fletcher Prouty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty
Here is a sentence from that wike naming two major books that Prouty wrote.
” Prouty authored two major books during his life, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World in 1973 and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy in 1992. ”
Here is the ” L. Fletcher Prouty referrence site” its own self.
https://prouty.org/
This may be related to a concern raised in the discussion between Larry Johnson and Larry Cunningham linked in the 7/20 (just yesterday; it feels like more than one day has passed since then) NC daily news links. Their first concern is that the regular SS detail was re-assigned and new people brought in.
When did Jill decide on her Pittsburgh jaunt? That could be a mighty foily gambit. /s
Pittburgh? She is now off to Paris as in ‘First Lady Jill Biden will host a fundraiser while she’s in Paris leading the US delegation to the Olympic Games opening ceremony in Paris.’ Tickets will range from $500-$25,000 so only Americas can then attend-
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/jill-biden-fundraiser-paris/index.html
Maybe Joe should step aside and turn it over to Jill? Heck she may have been running things for years for all we know.
Oh sorry Dr.Jill. There have of course been Congress people who died and had their wives appointed to filll their terms.
“so only Americas can then attend”
There may be a law against foreign nationals buying tickets (hah-hah), but if so I’ll wager there will be many grateful foreign nationals in attendance with tickets ‘bought for them’ by their USian delegates.
Well, maybe not ‘many’. It will be interesting to see exactly how grateful they are.
and from the department of strange coincidences:
Jimmy Dore about some stock market action. X-twtr:
Jimmy Dore covered my initial thread that shows the odd 801% increase in trade volume of DJT the day before the attempted assassination.
https://x.com/JoshWalkos/status/1814039725130264713
Looking into it seems the volume jump was in put contracts, shorting the stock.
CrowdStrike:
Make of it what you will:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/crowdstrike-insiders-sold-stock-cac5e509/
CrowdStrike Insiders Sold Stock Before the Outage. How That Happened.
Thanks.
foil bonnet on/ After the failed assassination attempt there were proffered explanations that Iran might have done it. (right.) Following on the heels of that near miss came the CrowdStrike “infected” (heh) computers going dark. Some immediate questioning in the MSM if a foreign actor was the culprit behind the outage.
Imagine if the assassination had succeeded followed by CrowdStrike-Windows computers going dark and MSM whispers about Iran. Would that make a good narrative to start a war with Iran? Sounds crazy, I know. On the other hand, I remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident, among other incidents. / ;) /foil bonnet off
As it is, a couple of guys at CrowdStrike made a bunch of money and an investment fund almost made a boatload of money. / ;)
Well since we’ve broken out the foil bonnets…
– Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv occurred Friday early AM (not exactly sure of the time but the video of the drone flying prior to the explosion has a dark sky, so it was before dawn)
– Crowdstrike outage started after a code change was pushed at 4:09 UTC
UTC is 3 hours behind Israel Daylight time, so the change was made around dawn in Tel Aviv, aka after the extent of damage was known and likely after decisions were made to counter attack. Maybe someone needed flight lanes cleared to make counterattack plans?
It’s just amazing to me that no matter how bad the disaster or chaotic the situation, bandits make out like bandits.
Every time.
Perhaps there are so many bandits each betting on a few things apiece that a lucky few of them get lucky for any one particular disaster or another.
Somebody shorting that many major airlines just before 9/11 does seem suspicious, though.
Anti sniper protocol is not rocket science, nor new!
Incompetence!
Not limited to DHS!
Plan A – try to stop Orange Man from running for Prez thru intervention in courts (ie Lawfare).
Didn’t work out as planned.
Plan B – Take him out. Missed!
Plan C – Make sure the vote count is rigged! (needs votes to be close in swing states).
Re: Body camera kabuki
A promising long read. Worth a glance just for the Langston Hughes epigraph.
RE: Ready for Round 2: Why we Need Hillary more than ever The Hill
So, to recap…
In 2016, hrc and her deranged fanatics unleashed the soft coup of the Russiagate hoax on the country with the help of “cybersecurity” firm crowdstrike, which has just unleashed a shitstorm of chaos of its own on the world through its incompetence.
crowdstrike’s perfidy was also responsible for the torture and near murder of Julian Assange, who has now been freed, hrc’s wish to drone him dead notwithstanding.
twitter, social media “platform” extraordinaire, which enabled this gross criminality at the time through its censorship in conjunction with its fbi/cia overlords is now owned by Elon Musk, who has just purged the hapless crowdstrike from all of his companies’ systems in addition to pledging $45 million per month in support of Trump.
(Even zuckerberg is calling Trump an american “badass” and claiming to be staying out of the political game this time around.)
Then there is the clinton/biden/crowdstrike (founded by “ukrainian-american” alperovitch) connection to the massive money laundering operation and all around clusterfuck known as the ukrainian “war” facilitated by ftx sap sam bankman-fried.
All of which is to say that there’s a LOT of water under that “one of the most qualified people ever to run for office” bridge in the eight years since 2016 that ain’t goin’ away any time soon if Trump has anything to say about it.
Maricopa County said its voting machines were impacted by the Crowdstrike outage. Curious for those non-internet devices. More investigative journalists to the case.
“The breakdown affected the devices that Maricopa and Pima counties use at voting locations to check voters in, verify voter eligibility and print ballots. It did not affect the machines the counties use to count ballots, which are not used during early voting because voters place their completed ballots into envelopes to be counted later.
The outage hit in the middle of the night, and when polls opened, the counties had chosen different plans on what to do about it: Maricopa only opened four of its planned 41 locations at 9 a.m.— the locations where it was able to immediately get new equipment. Pima decided to open all six sites it had planned to on time at 8 a.m. but switched to using provisional ballots. It’s unclear if any other Arizona counties faced outages that affected early voting, although many others said they did not.”
https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2024/07/19/microsoft-windows-crowdstrike-outage-arizona-primary-early-voting-disruption/
Do you actually believe that?
When I lived in the big city and these voting machines were being rolled out to a very skeptical public at large it was repeatedly stated and emphatically stated that NOT ONE BIT – absolutely nothing that has to do with voting will be online. We were told without hesitation that having anything to do with voting online would be too much of a security risk. Interestingly, an election does not go on there TO THIS DAY that does not have multiple side stories of machine malfunctions.
Paper ballots, hand counted in public. It is the only way. And it is the only way the populace at large will ever believe in this system again.
I find it very curious that the mayhem started in “the middle of the night” – for that is exactly when stuff started to implode in the computer systems at my work – FRI AM – SAT AM – and now yet again today.
After all the knowing lies that I have seen reported in the media THAT I AS A PHYSICIAN KNOW ARE BALD-FACED LIES, I no longer believe a thing these people say about the things like voting that I know little about.
It is clear I am not alone. The leaders of this country decided in the past 10 years or so to sacrifice public trust in their goals. Unfortunately, that is going to come with consequences.
Absolutely.
The words in the excuses and “explanations” are always the same–middle of the night problems, only certain counties (usually the biggest and most consequential), issues with determining voter eligibility (ferchrissakes!), ballot printing problems, provisional ballots placed in envelopes to be verified and counted (or not) later.
Not to mention literally lopping off the legal heads of anyone who points any of this out.
jeezus h. christ. Enough already.
AZ votes with hand-marked paper ballots, so the tabulators would be a vulnerable point for hacking the totals. I’m not qualified to evaluate (or even understand) their process to audit equipment, but in Maricopa county – where Trump and his allies focused their claims of fraud – they reported on the results after the 2020 election (many links and links to other links here:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/02/links-2-25-2021.html#comment-3513860
In addition to whatever the state required in audits of procedures, ballots, and equipment Republican partisans organized and conducted a full hand recount Maricopa county ballots for the 2020 presidential and senate election. Yet the claims of fraud persist.
The Votebeat reporter quoted above has been doing on-the-ground reporting on AZ elections for years, previously for the Arizona Republic. I have found her reporting to be reliable.
Make of this what you will. From utube. ~40 seconds, from 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M96Ja9rMopw
Here’s a longer version, by the same Votebeat reporter. There have been some Republican efforts to promote hand counting in AZ.
https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2023/5/23/23734617/arizona-elections-voting-machine-ban-fact-check-sonny-borrelli-letter/
I believe you are missing my point.
I can show you any number, probably hundreds, of articles and pieces from all kinds of “reliable” reporters in the summer of 2021 – stating to the American people emphatically that the vaccines were 100% effective. That you will never get the virus if you are vaccinated. And that they are completely safe. And not only that, almost all of them went the extra step of denigrating and slandering anyone who said otherwise. Meanwhile, doctors on the ground like me, were already seeing major problems with this entire narrative. Both efficacy and safety issues. Those who dared to stand up to the lying were immediately deplatformed, delicensed, slandered, and run out on rails. I may add to the loud applause of not only all of these “reliable” reporters and a huge chunk of the populace as well. I do not hear much about all of this now, do you? Despite all kinds of my patients who were absolutely impacted by safety issues and the mandate issues that came after…
It was crystal clear to any one with a medical degree that we elected a dementia patient in 2020, and certainly by 2022, it was plain for all to see who had a medical degree. I heard it among colleagues literally all the time. Awaiting the detonation. But there was a good percentage of docs who refused to note the obvious – and they either engaged in self-censorship or actually punished the evildoers. The entire press corps of “reliable” reporters for the past 4 years has been lying about their own observations in this story. And yet again, anyone who dared say a word were slandered and smacked down. And what is going on now?
My entire point – outside of my own field of expertise, I no longer know what is true or a lie. There were large numbers of “reliable” reporters on the medical beat for 4 years. And now it turns out that large amounts of their reporting was actual knowing lies or exaggerations or refusing to follow up on contradictions. What is going on now? Why should I expect things to be any different on any topic?
The lack of trust of our media and all of our institutions is corrosive. I do not see any kind of path to improve this in my lifetime. So forgive me, if I hold anything said about something I know little about as a “lie until proven otherwise.” In my profession, lives may depend on that level of skepticism.
At least the “first footprint” in the trail of ballot footprints is hand-marked paper ballots.
Here in Michigan, we cast our votes on hand marked paperboard ballots which are then fed into an opti-scan reader machine. But that first step is the hand marked paperboard ballot. If every one of the ballots casted are saved, as they should be, then they continue to exist to be counted by hand and by eye, if that is the only way to resolve otherwise unresolvable doubts.
If I lived in an electronic touch-screen ballot-casting jurisdiction, I would not vote. I would stay registered to vote. But I would stay non-voting until my jurisdiction went to hand-marked paper ballots.
Luckily I live in a jurisdiction with hand marked paper ballots.
And already-voted paper ballots, not traceable to the voters who cast them, were declared public records subject to inspection under FOIA requests in 2010 by the Republican Attorney General at the time.
https://www.ag.state.mi.us/opinion/datafiles/2010s/op10324.htm
(Though not until 30 days after the election has been canvassed and certifiedd.)
“Most qualified” to do… what, exactly? / ;)
Lose to Trump.
No one else shared that dream!
Now that’s settled, I won’t have to break my post 2016 habit of not voting for evil, if they ran HRC I’d have had to vote for Trump.
Well, when they ran HRC in 2016, I voted for Trump that time. If they run HRC again, I will have to vote for some vanity pink-pony third party this time.
‘Even zuckerberg is calling Trump an american “badass” and claiming to be staying out of the political game this time around.’
That’s just Zuck trying to suck up to Trump. Last time around Zuck unleashed Facebook and everything else against Trump to stop him but now that it looks like he might become President again, is worried how Trump might retaliate against him. Maybe breaking up Instagram from Facebook as Alex Christoforou has suggested. Hopefully Zuck is sweating bullets for the next coupla months.
To everybody that read that article:
Thank you for your service!
I couldn’t do it.
(Even zuckerberg is calling Trump an american “badass” and claiming to be staying out of the political game this time around.)
Remember when there was a bit of speculation that Zuckerberg had an interest in the office?
It would have been the first robot President. No more puppets.
While we’re on the subject of Zuckerberg, here is a purely funny video called Interrogating Zuckerberg, from the good people at Bad Lipreading Videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCDvOsdL9Q
I saw an amazing photo the other day of the fires from the Yemen port bombing.
Anybody able to estimate the amount of CO2e released due to the bombing/fires? It’s not my area and I’m not sure where to begin with such an estimate.
This CO2 is not released but liberated. It’s estimated as carbon negative by default.
Yes, “liberated” insofar as we went through the trouble of extracting it only to set it alight instead of at least using the energy for productive ends.
So we now have novelty troll accounts like on Reddit?
Hey! Comedy’s hard. Even Wuk doesn’t homer on every at bat!
I read the comment as satirising the Party’s Orwellian commitment to Net Zero and War. Destruction of enemy hydrocarbon facilities is CO2 negative on a discounted mass flow basis. We have always been at War with EastAsia.
Well, if the relevant Yemeni authorities were to release an estimate of how much oil burned in that fire, it would be easy enough to calculate how much carbon dioxide would have been released by the burning of that oil.
One would have to know how much oil, by volume or by weight or whatever, had burned to be able to do the calculations involved.
Even if this professor is correct (and his model seems impressive), at this point even if Biden legitimately won somehow—hard to believe but maybe, just maybe, the Democratic apparatus can marshal enough discipline to do so by cajoling, blackmailing and threatening voters with the ‘lesser evil’ as always—it would most likely end up in an actual civil war, since no one would believe that’s the case, and would lead to immediate and obvious charges of tampering, sabotage and fraud. Not a pretty moment for the creaking US system! Guess it’s never really much fun to be in the “end of empire” stage of empires.
Does his model factor in ‘candidate X is rapidly fading mentally’? I doubt that was one of the parameters of the model design. A Black Swan can fly right through a model which is ‘always right’.
The read is really ‘no other Democrat than Biden can win.’ As Lambert says, Biden is still the best politician in the Democratic Party.
Professor is wrong because you can’t win if you don’t play.
That’s right! And Genocide Joe quit seeking the nomination this afternoon! So long Professor, and your predictions.
“Our brain doesn’t perceive time as a clock. Instead, time flows with experiences, study finds”
This is entirely logical when you think about it since clock time is really only a recent invention but it does make me wonder . What happens if you are trapped in a job or situation where each day is more or less the same as before or those in retirement that have few interests so that the days flow into each other. I wonder how the brain perceives time then.
Amusingly (I think), this rhymes with (what I recall of) Julian Barbour’s book “The End of Time”.
I don’t recall much beyond his reworking of dynamical equations to express elapsed time as a function of the changes in the coordinates of the particles that constitute the system under consideration. “Passage of time” is not something that causes state changes; rather the change in state of the system is the passage of time (or, at least, that’s how I interpret it); one can use the dynamical equations to compute the elapsed time from the change in state of the system.
Re: subjective sense of passage of time, I wonder whether “reading NC links” contributes to this — that’s a lot of (vicarious) experiences to pack into a day. That might account for the weird sense of prolongation of time I have experienced during the pandemic. I wonder whether that might be mentally ageing me. Too many internal state changes?
Scientists and historians measure time by “events”, but they also time events by clocks. There are atomic clocks, circadian clocks. Respiratory rhythm and heart rhythm are “clocks” stabilized in the brain’s autonomous networks, and menstrual cycles are stabilized by … the moon??
I, too, am amused by the idea that we can capture time’s wave function in a system of dynamical equations, but I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure if the cat’s dead or alive.
“There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” (Lenin) Those weeks seem to be piling up on each other these days.
“I wonder how the brain perceives time then.”
That’s an easy answer. If “time flows with experiences”; then someone trapped in a repetitive job experiences time as a fish trapped in an aquarium filled with still, brown, murky water. I use that description because as the fish, you couldn’t see anything different. You couldn’t tell up from down, or right from left…until you hit the edge of the fish tank. Have you ever watched animals who exhibit stereotypy in a zoo? It’s heartbreaking. It is the last vestiges of their body and mind seeking experiences, or stimulation, but are trapped by the confines of the enclosure from any new stimuli. They end up repeating a behavior over and over again hoping that something new will occur… which, according to some, is the definition of insanity. People trapped in jobs doing a repetitive behavior are essentially paid to act like these animals in the zoo. How long do you think it takes before it starts affecting their mental health? I would say no longer than a year.
As for retired people, I think that all depends on their physical and mental capability. There’s people like Yves who move to Tailand well into her “retirement”. I dare say that she experiences time as a gushing river full of wild rapids. Then, there’s people like my mother who is 84 years old and has rarely left her house since her retirement 10 years ago. Since I live on another continent, I’m not able to visit her that often. My guess is that she probably lives like the primates I’ve observed in the zoo. Walking back and forth in her house; her steps keeping track of the passage of time.. the last vestiges of her body and mind seeking new experiences.
I’ve always felt my experience of time is discrete rather than continuous. The brain is driven by electrical impulses. I feel like there’s a refresh rate. Like time passes in intervals of perception, however brief. Or maybe that’s the processing time for stimuli and it buffers.
“Shadows and dust, Maximum! Shadows and dust!”
Peter Baker, NYT, and the, errr, drama
Shakespeare? Evoking Shakespeare?
Like the time Fred Mertz lost his mind and Desi Obama had to cut short a lucrative tour. To be “visibly shaken.”
Meanwhile, Hillary “Lucy” is touching up her makeup to give the Nation another season of madcap Shakespearean comedy. Special guest star: Jake Sullivan as Puck.
LOL.
It’s the first as tragedy, second time as farce Shakespeare company. Of course for the melodramatic maybe Corn Pop Joe is Lear?
ok
Biden = Mad King = Lear
Hunter = The Bastard
Jill = Lady M
Hillary = Margaret of Anjou
Obama = Iago
Mitch = Polonius
Trump = Richard III
Possible:
Seth Rich = Ophelia
Assange = Richard II
Sullivan & Blinken = Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern
Query:
Pelosi = ?
Pelosi has wandered in from the Ring Cycle. She is Hagen, the schemer and gold-lover who brings the whole house down.
https://walkurepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Gibichung
When I produced a Ring Cycle with the avant garde director Peter Sellars (he cut each opera to about 40 minutes and used recorded music, live actors, and puppets, many of them spectacular), the Gibichung were dressed in punk (daring for 1979) and he cut away from Wagner to Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny, specifically Moon of Alabama, for their motif.
“The people of King Gibich who live by the Rhine. They are ruled by his son Gunther. They also include Gibich’s daughter Gutrune and the half-Nibelung Hagen, illegitimate son of his wife Queen Grimhilde.”
Brilliantly referenced.
The mention of puppets and some suggested YouTube vids (is there some anniversary of Jim Henson’s passing/achievement or something?) got me laughing.
The brilliant “mahna mahna” song in the first episode of the Muppet Show was so utterly subversive. The song came from a Swedish soft-core pron film and there is NO way Henson didn’t know that. He was infamous for interjecting stuff that sought to subvert TPTB.
The late great Lew Grade (who during my childhood ran ATV, the UK Midlands part of ITV) made sure the Muppet Show happened. It was aired early Sunday evening in UK. Which was also “bath night” for me and my sister. My parents accepted the inevitable and ensured we NEVER had bath time overlap with the Muppet Show. UK Muppet Show had extra fun because commercial advertising slots were shorter than in USA so additional skits are on the UK region DVDs that were never shown across the pond. Same thing happened with Friends. The UK DVD/BLURAY typically has one extra minute of stuff per episode compared to the North American broadcast version.
Thank you. Greer has his second installment on The Nibelung’s Ring: The Legends, from a couple of days ago.
And here’s the program from the Sellars production.
Let’s not forget this classic analysis, from Anna Russell:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m69aPAo1rXE
Pssst, Fred Mertz (seriously) is likely to become the chancellor of Germany after the next election…
– “So important. The rise of conspiracy theories is not just some natural expression of an alienated working class it is an intentional strategy funded by billionaires so that they can steal our money and destroy the planet.”
So true Alex! As soon as the Powers that Be started pushing the Russiagate conspiracy through all of their political and media assets I was thinking the same thing. Dastardly!
Remarkable birds in today’s Antidote du jour. Had to look to see what they re and it turns out that they are Asian green bee-eaters-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_green_bee-eater
Altruism in birds! Asian green bee-eaters, are all the more remarkable for being helpers-at-the-nest.
“Is The Future Worth It?” The Break Down
After reading, it may be worth it if there is a society or community comes first and marketplace is further down the priority list.
Taking care of people in the NOW, could create caring people in the future.
And…joy happens in the present.
The thing about Biden either resigning or quitting the race is I am not sure if he is able to perceive his illness. Lack of self awareness is a feature of some dementia types? The focus being reported is the “you can’t win” approach, but I could see that not convincing him.
“Egalitarian Production” Dollars & Sense
I’ve noticed when I’m choosing something new to watch, after my day has wound down, often the films that grab my attention from their description turn out to have A24 involved.
https://x.com/AlexThomp/status/1815013119434924537
I would hope that the Pelosi/Obama camp or whatever we are calling it has a few PCPs as advisers on how to deal with dementia patients. Because as this spools forward, it certainly has all the look of needing some serious medical input. I am speaking as someone who has done this for 35 years. I have done countless hundreds of interventions in situations just like this.
She is going to ratchet up the pain……I have been a PCP to dementia patients for 35 years. This is literally the last thing you want to do. This is breathtaking incompetence.
And a piece of advice for them – about this issue and others in the future – avoid like the plague the highly credentialed elite Med school faculty and members of Boards, etc. Like most highly credentialed in this society, they have done everything they can to avoid work. They are very good at sitting up on high and pontificating but they actually never lay hands on an actual patient. Accordingly, they have no idea what the real world is like. Therefore, you may as well be getting advice from Bozo the Clown. Bozo May actually be better, he probably had grandparents at one time.
re: Columbia removes 3 senior administrators over ‘very troubling’ texts High Ed Dive
Normally when there are incidents like this (i.e. alleged racism, alleged sexual harassment, etc) the employer is obligated to investigate quietly, discreetly and impartially. The fact that the employer in this case is publicly demolishing employees BEFORE any findings is interesting.
Those texts were pretty tame and I couldn’t spot the offensive bits but at the same time in my world even this back and forth would be unthinkable, especially if over company platforms. Generally, we don’t refer to religion or religious groups in any context in a conversation, for the reason these admins are learning.
We’re not told what platform was used, school owned or what, but there’s a “Josef-Personal” early on in the conversation who is mostly quiet throughout, suggesting someone was using a personal email on what may be a work platform.
If a work platform then there’s likely an organizational social media policy in play and the question becomes whether that policy was violated.
I see the deans expressing disgust at falsities peddled as truth, I see conversation participants surprised and taken aback at some of the claims made by the presenters, I see them fact checking, researching backgrounds, they appear to be doing due diligence sorts of activities, they seem to be concerned about wildly false and irresponsible claims being made. I see “at this point they’ll have their own dorm” – which actually seems like a logical conclusion to the wild fear mongering they’re hearing. And concern about segretation in a university context is valid.
I don’t see anything that might come close to violating a typical social media policy and that, coupled with the fact that the employer has already broken a process rule in publicly “outing” and condemning the admins before any findings, suggests to me the employer will be on the receiving end of some lawsuits around this.
And that would be a very good outcome here, for this to be publicly examined.
‘Assal Rad
@AssalRad
Israel bombing a Yemeni port critical for humanitarian aid is on brand, and a consequence of letting Israel weaponize starvation.
Now there’s accounts on here calling for Israel to starve Yemenis…because starving 2 million Palestinians in Gaza is apparently not enough for them.’
When the receipts come in, I am sure that the US and the UK helped with this mission and at the very least provided aerial refueling. So which countries did they fly over. Did they land briefly in Iraq like they have before? i am sure that the US, UK & France also wanted to hit that port but the optics would have been really bad. But by helping the Israelis to do it, they have deniability and can claim that it is the Israelis being Israelis. I would not be surprised then to soon see an uptick on attacks on western Navy ships as payback.
I agree. The US could have destroyed every port or possible port location in Yemen then moved on but “optics”. Israel clearly does not care. I expect any future attack by Yemen will result in a similar response.
If the Houthis know that, will they go right ahead and attack again anyway?
Re; Iran nuclear weapon
Once again, Iran is weeks or months away from being able to build a nuclear weapon.
If you’re up for a game, find another headline from previous years similar or identical to this: I’ll begin.
NOVEMBER 24, 2021
The Institute for Science and International Security, a non-profit think tank that specializes in nuclear weapons analysis, issued a report in September that found Iran could produce enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon in a month under a “worst-case breakout estimate.” After breakout begins, Iran could produce a second weapon in less than three months, then a third in less than five months.
https://time.com/6123380/iran-near-nuclear-weapon-capability/
(This “game” may be more difficult than it may seem: the internet’s “memory” seems short-lived these days, and search engines only seem to find the most recent headlines)
Once again, the intern who wrote the headline didn’t read the story. Enriching uranium to weapons-grade, whilst not easy, is the easiest part of building a nuclear weapon. If the Iranians decide to do so, then with the centrifuges they have, they could probably do so quite quickly, and have been able to do so for many years. So in that sense Blinken is technically right. But enriched uranium is only a weapon in the sense that a barrel of petrol and a can of oil means you have a car. It’s true that you only enrich uranium beyond a certain point if you want the have the entry-level capability to produce a nuclear weapons, but there are one or two intermediate steps, like producing an actual warhead, developing a guidance system and having a delivery system, which may take a little while to actually perfect.
With respect, the Iranians have the missiles and the guidance systems, and if you’re using uranium, a gun-type warhead is so simple that the Manhattan Project didn’t bother to test it before they dropped it on Hiroshima. So I have to acknowledge that Blinken is probably right, even though he is channelling his spiritual guides in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Same think tank calculated already in 2013 (ISIS online) that Iran was 2 months away from “significant quantity” of weapons grade nuclear material.
This “news” is a lay-up for the Prime Minister in Charge’s address to the Congress next week.
OTOH, someone should call and tell him that Grandpa is not home, so don’t bother to visit.
I’ve been unable to shake off the perception that the GAE wants China to invade Taiwan more than China wants to invade Taiwan
It appears I’ll have to stay off the internet if I want to stop hearing about “the professor who correctly predicted the last X elections.” As if that was difficult. For the entire television age, starting with let’s say 1952, the more charismatic candidate won. Every single time, without exception. Until 2020, when for some reason that aspect no longer seemed to apply.
“Until 2020, when for some reason that aspect no longer seemed to apply.”
Global pandemic. More confusion than anybody living could remember. Lots of things can slip through the cracks during confusion.
Appropos of nothing at all, unrelated, I’m just noticing that ChatGPT is remarkably and robustly defensive of HRC. So much so that I think there may be a story here. I highly recommend folks play around and ask probing questions, you lot tend to know the backstory better than the average netizen, see if you think there’s a bit of ministry of truth going on here.
West Wing brain speaks:
Aaron Sorkin: How I Would Script This Moment for Biden and the Democrats
For once I’m thankful of the paywall!
Thankfully I’m here to ruin your day! ;)
Who misses the Sunday funnies when you have this.
https://dnyuz.com/2024/07/21/aaron-sorkin-how-i-would-script-this-moment-for-biden-and-the-democrats/
Lol. You can tell he’s a fiction writer. It’s like he’s paid no attention to politics for the last eight years.
Trump is where he is today precisely because both parties have taken the left/right for granted and decided to contest the election among establishment centrists. But sure, let’s have even more of that. That’s what it will take to beat him!
If only white people were allowed to vote, this could work
That let’s you know the articles about all of discontent being because of Biden’s age is a load of mess. It’s because of a degenerative illness, but all the puppeteers are afraid of being held accountable.
Romney – 77
Then:
Ready for Round 2: Why we Need Hillary more than ever -The Hill
H. Clinton – 76
Looking at this Morning’s links reminded me that at any given time every Human being is doing the best they can with what they have.
Oh.
Shit.
Shameless gaslighting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-21/campaign-2024-don-t-let-trump-benefit-from-biden-s-economy?srnd=homepage-americas/
https://archive.ph/7rkWJ#selection-1355.0-1355.44/
Don’t Let Trump Benefit From Biden’s Economy
If you can barely stomach most of the article, towards the end you may vomit:
“…For Democrats, meanwhile, the economic situation may provide a reason over and above the president’s age to think about a new candidate…”
WTF? Like there is no reason other than his age that has people worried. Nobody that tries to play people for fools like this is any better than the threats they claim that are on the horizon.
They are not people that should be trusted under any circumstance.
And this gaslight is all over the press. Look at “nothing but Trump headlines for nearly 10 years” Alternet.
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/dems-biden-step-aside/
Dems telling Biden to step aside must show their demands are based on more than just vibes
This is an actual sentence from this piece of crap:
“…The debate was a disaster. Lots of people recoiled in horror at the sight of an old man on stage. But the stakes are too high. If he leaves, it better be for reasons beyond vibes….”
It’s about his illness, you dishonest #$%@!!
Yep…they’re pulling out that “it’s just vibes” BS card like they did about people’s actual economic difficulties.
These are dangerous liars too!!
Okay I clicked on the first link to the opinion piece. Matt Y, whose opinions on most things I will concede don’t follow. Yeah the very idea of a robust, strong economy under Biden now; surprising we have not entered a recession, so yeah that’s one shiny positive aspect. But please ignore those ignominious equity returns and bond market returns during calendar year 2022. And also ignore the pace of inflation that had to be wrangled down, and remains for many of the little people in America, an ongoing concern in 2024. Is Yglesias in the camp with a Krugman, or Noah Smith by comparison?
Ignore the cost of your meals out of the home, the cost of goods in grocery carts, all you nonbeliever Americans! Behold what Dear Leader has brought forth upon you! \sarc
Yikes, much as I thought earlier today…the coping and hoping. Strong with the forces of hope, young Skywalker. They’ll keep up the Jedi mind tricks for as long as they possibly can.
While I was perusing for Dem talking points…
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/20/the-clearest-message-of-the-convention-is-no-country-for-maga-women/
This part:
“…Along with the James Brown song, Trump used “Macho Man” by the Village People as intro music, still indifferent to the irony of the song…”
But then also in Salon:
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/20/the-grindr-super-bowl-gay-dating-app-saw-influx-of-users-during-national-convention/?in_brief=true/
The Grindr Super Bowl”: Gay dating app saw influx of users during Republican National Convention
—————————-
Trump understands the most important thing about taking the stage: know your audience.
Biden out:
Let the games begin! Really begin!
Now things get interesting!
Jill cancelling her Michigan trip Monday was, in retrospect, a sign (though she could have wanted to be home with a sick husband). I’m wondering if it was today’s Michigan polling that pushed Joe over the edge.* That and Covid.
Meanwhile, Vance seems to be Trump’s attack dog:
“He’s talkin’ sense, Merle.” Because it’s a good argument.
NOTE * Combine having lost Michigan with, in my view, having lost Pennsylvania as a given, thanks to Thomas Crooks.
That 3rd covid infection is the charm. Lets stepping aside be for health reasons and nothing to do with cognitive abilities no-siree, JD.
> the charm
The side effects of Paxlovid don’t look fun, either.
anecdata – only side effect I had was that it tasted like I was sucking on a penny the whole time I was on it. Solution: Haribo gummy bears 24/7. Love those things.
I tested negative after 3 days, 4 days post infection (I know exactly where I caught it) which I thought was very effective.
ymmv
IDK what they gave him Paxlovid!
All of the Biden handlers and other apparatchiks would have a lot more to answer for if they admit that.
I have tried to steer clear of political judgement but I have spent 20 years working with clinicians specialising in elderly care and concluded that there were grounds to allege a case of elder abuse.
I hope Biden gets the medical help he so obviously needs.
I also worry that the President of the USA may be senile and incapable of doing his job. He should resign immediately. Whatever we think of his VP she really should be in the Oval office until the general election.
> I also worry that the President of the USA may be senile and incapable of doing his job. He should resign immediately.
I don’t think the hounds will stop baying… And Vance is right. If he can’t campaign for President, how can be be President? Perhaps the powers that be can work out a way to make the 25th Amendment work with some dispatch. Then we could all sit back and say “The system worked.”
Yes. A weird thought occurs: might the Republicans in Congress backpeddle on any moves to impeach him, to make sure they utterly decimate the Democrats at the general election?
Whilst we all know Harris ain’t Ms Popular, going against a senile bloke is best case scenario and it probably helps the Republicans if Biden remains president. Or am I overthinking?
Jill HATES Kamala Harris for the way she treated Joe in the debates, this is about denying Harris the opportunity to become America’s first Female President.
And NO ONE in the Party Apparat wants her as the candidate, which she would be if she took over before the Convention.
I’m not sorry to see her shafted so publicly (No one deserves it more) But she may not go quietly because she already had picked a place on the mantel for her Nobel Peace Prize.
I think you underestimate the Democrats’ tolerance for cognitive dissonance. It’s practically their specialty.
Whether Biden can do the job is probably far down the Democrat list of concerns in comparison to whether they can hold onto power. With a bit of wishful thinking, I can imagine Kamala maybe learning how to be President well enough so that she doesn’t totally embarrass herself. Or, I can (barely) imagine her building a campaign team from scratch and managing to recoup the massive head start that Trump has over her. There is no possible universe in which I can imagine her pulling off both of those at the same time, in four months.
So now that Biden isn’t in the race, I would expect a 180 degree pivot to hagiography. Of course he’s up to the job! He always has been. In fact, he was one of our best Presidents ever. What do you mean, we pushed him out? That was just ol’ Joe, putting America’s interests ahead of his own, like he has done all his life. What a guy!
Yes JD. That’s a great question. And I hope more people start asking it.
it is a great question that will not be acted upon – fer sure – remember that Johnson hung up his spurs too – as Lambert wrote –
“Let the games begin! Really begin!” – fun times ahead!!!
the Electric Flag did a wonderful take of Killing Floor with part of a Johnson speech as the intro – Bloomfield is scalding – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq3NwCHm-4U
One might attempt to make the case that it is possible to be well enough to complete the remaining 6 months of office but not well enough to serve for another 4-1/2 years. That this is true of JRB, I doubt, but the argument is at least conceivable.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129
It’s all part of the plan, Uncle Joe lost the plot on account of, well, just having too much fun, I guess.
My grandfather shuffled off his mortal coil pretty soon after the kids took away his driver’s license, I think within a year. I wonder what effect the realization that it’s curtains for Joe Big F*ckin Deal Biden will have on his, say, focus for the remainder of his term.
Could be rejuvenating, I know I’ve always had the most fun at work after I’ve given notice.
Could be long days of shuffling from the freezer to the bed, eating ice cream in his bathrobe.
Precisely. Just who is wielding supreme executive power right NOW?
obama/pelosi/schumer win. Was there ever any doubt?
No but the game becomes who else is going to lose? I mean aside from us.
“The Inner Party decides.”
Contrast: “Democratic Party chairs in 7 battleground states reaffirm support for Biden.” But who cares what the little people think? Even little party people….
But the little people vote in November, no? I am curious if how many of them will stick to the script they’d been assigned.
Let the hunger games begin. For the political class no less. Pass the popcorn.
Are all DNC primaries going to be like this going forward? What it lacks in the democracy side of things is certainly eclipsed by the entertainment value.
Mayo Pete has suddently been showing up all over my Twitter feed.
I saw a little of that yesterday. The most diversified ticket evah…?
He seems to be angling. He’s been almost in hiding for months it seems. / ;) I’m still impressed by his work during the rail and plane transportation crises. / heh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIWBIOtX3Rk&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow/
Buttigieg Smiles Creepily Instead Of Talking To Reporters About Iowa
3:00 to 3:11
An image that lives rent free in my head.
To this day no group has ever stood up and taken credit for Pete’s impressive Iowa showing in 2020.
I think it was the teachers and they haven’t taken credit because they almost immediately realized they’d been bamboozled.
This time around, I think Twitter is all Buttigieg’s got.
I think you may be underestimating how badly everyone was campaigning there. Iowa has always recognized he’s a jerk and rejected Joe. Kamala had none, not even a minuscule understanding of Iowa and its concerns. Klobuchar has the charisma of warm spit. Of all of the acceptable Democrats, Pete had a better relationship with Iowa’s concerns, was a clean cut American boy even if he was gay, and that gay thing had its own appeal.,We know he didn’t win, despite the deep fake, but he was the only one even plausible as a spoiler winner
> Are all DNC primaries going to be like this going forward?
The thought occurs that between this year, and (more importantly) 2016/2020, the question of trying to push the D party leftward from the inside has been answered definitively — not realistically possible given what the D party actually is.
This might be a boost for small parties, in that people of Left orientation with political skills will realize that it is pointless to try to work within the D Party.
“None of the Above” — I like that as a possible name for a notional protest party, … but then I have a quirky aesthetic.
This is the weekend that Biden became presidential. Ironically.
perfect response! LOL!
> the weekend Biden became presidential
…Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it. He died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed
As ’twere a careless trifle.
Hillary Clinton is ready for her close-up.
Remind me how that movie ends….
Final scene. utube, ~6 minutes.
Sunset Boulevard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHT6cMzByjs
Ready for Round 2: Why we Need Hillary more than ever
The strongest argument against replacing President Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee is the notion that no suitable successor exists. But there is, and not just a good one but one of the most qualified people ever to run for the office: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4780301-hillary-clinton-2024/
I’m already tired of hearing people slobber over how “great” Biden was. The greatest president of my lifetime says one. Unbelievable.
As bad as they messed this up, one wonders how bad they will mess up the rest?
It would all be funny if it wasn’t funny. Who’s really in charge with all these wars going on, and their finger on the big button? Dangerous times IMO.
Saw that tweet. That dude has a short lifetime I guess. A China expert as well. Lol.
When I heard the Biden news I turned on CNN first. They had Van Jones on. You haven’t heard slobbering until you’ve heard Van Jones’ routine. He was literally tearing up, voice trembling, about St. Joe. He did that the night of the debate as well.
I heard that Maddow was commenting on MSNBC. I was tempted, but I can’t watch her live anymore. Van Jones just makes me want to throw up. Rachel might cause me to throw a shoe through the TV.
It’s safer just to read my news these days.
“are you going to scarborough fair”
the greatest joe biden of all the joe bidens,
slurrrrrp slurrrp
what will the blue-anons do now?
Disappointing. I felt the party deserved him as their candidate and that voters deserved the chance to dismiss him from office. I felt he deserved the humiliation of four more months of campaigning on his record of war and genocide and his pro-investor, anti-worker policies and then losing. Instead we’ll have the silly comedy of Harris blathering incoherently.
It really makes me angry. The party foisted him on us twice, first as the slayer of Sander’s class politics faction and this year as a deranged racist genocidal maniac. He was their choice. And now they get to just swap him out for drunk auntie Kam?
> I felt the party deserved him as their candidate
We are not voting only for Kamala; we are voting for the the Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy who successfully maneuvered to get her on top of the ticket. That might not matter to Democrat loyalists — except for those who carry grudges, of course — but I can’t see how this entire process can possibly sit well with independents.
Incidentally, I agree with AOC on the mechanical/technical difficulties involved in the change the Democrat Inner Party has just made. Presumably, now that Biden has endorsed Harris, there will be no open convention, so that obstacle has been removed, but imagine, say, this were an enormous software project, and think of the project management issues involved.
Not sure we’ve heard the end of having an “open” convention. Has Obama endorsed yet?
I agree with you but feel that we are beyond a logical world where acts lead to consequences for the elites, no matter how minimal those consquences may be. Lambert is right, the Mos Eisley faction rules us now and we must chose to use the blaster first, or flee.
And definitely avoid Imperial entanglements.
That’s the real trick isn’t it?
“Sorry about the mess.”
He should resign, now.
Failing that the 25th Amendment is the only right action.
If he can’t campaign…
US is.a nation of laws and cannot have a disabled chief executive
“US is.a nation of laws and cannot have a disabled chief executive”
Mentally disabled.
Presidents have remained in office with only physical ailments.
Biden: “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country from me to stand down….”
Interesting word order.
The interests of the party come before those of the country.
Now how soon can we get Biden, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, John Kirby, and Victoria Nuland arrested for war crimes and shipped over to the Hague for trial?
Biden endorses Harris:
Harris’ 2020 campaign was a mess. If she ends up atop the ticket, this time could be a lot different. NBC.
My guess is not well; IIRC, she’s had consistent difficulties retaing staff. It will be interesting to see who her
minderscampaign team turns out to be. Presumably not O’Malley-Dixon, et al.Oh boy. The Border Czar is running.
The Nicholas II of the borders…..
Or the Alexandra I.
My money is on the Anastasia. No one is sure if she is real or not.
‘Harris Roulette’
This Casino action is almost too easy.
“Everything on the Red and the Black!”
“But sir….”
“But me no buts. Harris is well worth a Mass, is she not?”
“But the protests?”
“Indulge them not. Our tastes are catholic.”
> Harris is worth a mass
Ha ha! I should have thought of that!
Harriswheel
Overton’s Roulette Wheel? Spin it to the Left or spin it to the Right. Put your money down donors!
As in all Casinos; the House always wins.
I don’t think she accepted that mission. Too thankless.
“What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
“Can” is doing a lot of work there.
What an extraordinary year so far. Maybe bird flu will be next!
Heck, an extra-ordinary week: 1) Presidential candidate nearly assassinated, then 2) nominated; 3) Global IT collapse; 4) Boeing pleads guilty to a felony charge (not even news); 4) Millions without power in Texas after Hurrican Beryl (not even news); 5) Covid surge finally part of the narrative; 6) Biden quits campaign, 7) coronates Harris.
Overly dynamic! There are probably other stories I’m missing, but this is quite a list. Beryl sounds as bad as Katrina, and that story dominated, and even had a part in taking down Bush the Younger (because of his poor reaction).
Still waiting for no. 8: Biden resigns.
> Biden resigns
Yes, the next drumbeat. Will Pelosi et al. be “in for a penny, in for a pound,” especially since the Republicans are already beating the drums for it?
Doesn’t endorsing Kamal constitute grounds for a 25th amendment action?
Possibly yes, though the two-thirds supermajority of both chambers of Congress won’t be forthcoming.
Still, it could be an opportunity to draw attention to the DemParty’s conniving, exceedingly poor judgment, installing Joe against the wishes of voters (Bernie), covering up four years of dementia, etc.
Many people are still in the dark about the Inner Party.
Not a chance. The D’s need the extra vote in the Senate and need Kamala Harris to run the electoral college vote in January.
NYT:
Live Updates: Biden Drops Out of Presidential Race, Endorses Harris
She is photogenic, so there is that.
I would like to see a woman as president, just not one from the duopoly.
So maybe the debate with Trump and Harris will have a swimsuit portion?
Good idea. The next debate should be held poolside at Mar-A-Lago.
With J.D. Vance holding the towels?
I heard Trump has JD on Speedo dial…
Oh! My eyes!
Oh yes! I cannot unsee that.
It must be the extra thin air pressure at the elevation at which Wuk et. al. live that accounts for it. A political “True Believer” would describe it as “an noxia” of the brain.
I was thinking more of cardboard cutouts!
If there’s a Trump / Harris debate, the Dems may expect the Prosecutor vs The Defendant story line to carry the day.
F— me. I give up. I tried to write an informative comment on Biden and Harris, but all I can say is that Harris, in own neurotic way, is probably worse than Biden is.
A crueler, dumber, less responsible person than Biden, albeit with less(?) brain damage, and visibly, it appears, physically healthier. Biden has been a more effective public speaker in the last year than Harris anytime since she became VP.
I said the only nice thing I could say about Harris.
Is that even possible?
I can think of a lot of jailbird single mothers in California who would beg to differ.
Is this in reference to Harris’ love of punching down?
I mean one of more unpleasant things I have seen and heard is of Her Kamalaness gleefully describing to a large audience of her program of arresting the parents of truants. It was not just the senselessness of it because aside from trussing up and physically caring students into the classroom, there is no way to guarantee attendance. No, it was the damn glee, cackling as she cheerfully explained her program smiling broadly. It’s been years, but I still remember.
Then there was her not charging the crooks at Countrywide for crimes and the justification used by her people to keep people imprisoned, which was that the state needed them for their labor.
What an unpleasant human being.
I can think of words other than “unpleasant”…
…but adding to your point, I seem to recall Harris argued that the prison labor was badly needed to fight all the wildfires in California, 31 of which were found in court to have been started by PG&E infrastructure, leading to 113 deaths, and nearly 1.5 million acres and 24,000 buildings torched to the ground.
Because the PG&E execs were too busy looting the company to worry about maintaining the infrastructure.
So perhaps we can add the PG&E looters to Harris’ “cover list”?
Of course, California is a solid-blue winner-take-all state, but even the GOP voted in support of that last year, as they see it potentially favoring Trump.
California swinging to the pachyderm — wouldn’t that be something?
And then there was the refusal to investigate the corruption in the D.A.’s office in Orange County, where they were alleged to have used cell-block snitches to get convictions which seemed more than a bit dubious. There was a lot of anger about that, although not among the people who count.
All I said was she’s photogenic! Crikey!
So was the Beast of Buchenwald, if you saw her in poor light . . .
Wellie but she is awfully aged. I can’t find the image but a colleague sent me a recent picture of her, and she looks older than I do despite being my junior by 6 years. And no time now to take a few days off for some nips.
I find it ironic that a “weird thought experiment” re O’Malley I cooked up before 2016, thinking it would never be realistic, made me rehabilitate it a few days ago when I started wondering if a seismic shift was coming in the USA.
I rehabilitated the exercise on a blog site just a few days ago when debate about changing the voting system in the UK resurfaced.
Colour me amused.
Got a link?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/21/us/biden-drops-out-election
I didn’t link to it because I have broken NC rules before and don’t want to annoy you.
But if you’re interested in an alternative to ranked choice voting: how O’Malley could have upended everything in Iowa.
Well, I did ask. We don’t generally encourage self-promotion, but this does seem like something important to nail down. Thanks.
You’re welcome.
I’ve done a lot in the field of public preferences but whilst I’ve always had a “side interest” in voting, I never did any official work in that area. Thus stuff like MLV has been something I never contributed to but like my co-author Tony (RIP) is an application of what we developed that looks most intriguing.
Smells Like Truss Spirit
That photo deserved a caption competition.
Hepatitis C, you said? Whatever will Bibi think of next?
Glass cliff? Or Peter Principle writ large?
It’s fitting that Biden is giving Kamala one more thing to do that he couldn’t handle. If she wasn’t such an awful person, I could feel sorry for her.
This is going to be FUN!
With any luck the “Democratic” party will disintegrate after a few more Months of this clown show.
(ala maK’s first campaign speech…)
‘I represent a thousand islands of opportunity in being with you on the ranch, where balsamic pastures contain French, Italian & even Russian dressings. Nothing will fundamentally change in my term as your leader.’
a.k.a. “Mala.”
“I can imagine what will be, unburdened by what was.” I tried to find an anagram generator to create something more sensible from this input, but I failed.
One could argue that the “MAGA” slogan is the exact opposite : i can imagine what was, unburdened by what will be.
If I was managing Kamala campaign, this cleavage between backwards and forwards looking is where I’d focus
“Twirling, twirling, twirling, towards freedom!”
I think that was Willie Brown’s focus.
You forgot the “Imperial” aka. Caesar ‘Word’ Salad reference.
“We have always been at war with “The People.”‘
Life is a series of missed adventures, and now how do I miss not having used Caesar in lie of leader.
Fear not gentle soul. You still maintain your status of primus inter pares in the political pontifical promulgiatory praxis.
Republican will win a historic landslide, independent of Biden’s status. I’ve been fighting the system since the late 60s regardless of political party. This changes nothing for those of us who work for revolutionary change. The silver lining is that it is easier to fight the Republicans than it is the Democrats. As Glen Ford told us, “The Democrat’s are the more effective evil.”
My personal goal is to get the Greens over the 5% threshold for ballot access & matching funds.
Biden, you coward! You were supposed to hold out in the Führer bunker under the white house until the last second. Throw out the nonbelievers, hold the party hostage. The last stand of an aging narcissistic man.
Oh well. I’ll probably throw in a vote for Jill Stein. Man, I wanted RFK to be somethin’ and he stills says interesting things from left field.
After Biden’s performance he deserved ejected from office in a historic landslide. Now we’ll just get a KH controlled flight into terrain and then they blame sexism and racism and/or Iran.
I’ll have to go with pompadour & circumstance for Veep…
…what can Brown do for you?
Ask not what Willie Brown can do for you….
Just put that old fossil on the shelf
Pelosi’s gonna do it by herself
Today’s donkeys don’t need no doom-n-gloom
I like that old time smoke-filled room!
let’s do the needful down in Frisco
We’ll nudge him off the fifteenth floor
Todays donkeys don’t need doom-n-gloom
I like that old time smoke-filled room
Chorus
Still like that old time smoke-filled room
That kinda place that lifts the doom and gloom
Todays democrats don’t need no consent
We’ll find a full-in who can pay the rent
[Guitar break]
There’s gonna be a lot of wrangling
We’d rather have that than some ossified soul
In ten minutes we’ll be lifting the gloom
In that old time smoke-filled room
Call up the Clintons call up Chuck and Barack
We’ll hash this whole thing out by Ten o’clock!
Today’s donkeys don’t need voters consent
We’ll find a fill-in who can pay the rent
[Repeat Chorus]
Sung to the tune of “Old time rock and roll” by Bob Seger
Love this!
Biden isn’t quite as lame a duck as LBJ was, but a lot lamer.
I’ll bet the snide asides just quack “Creepy” Joe up.
Also, our new Motto: “On a wing and a payor.”
Come to think of it, we should have noticed he wasn’t 100 % when he stopped sniffing girl hair.
Well, LBJ simply walked without a push, and Joe From Scranton got his number…ca-ching!
Do I understand this correctly, the Dem convention delegates are now unbound but the Biden-Harris donor money isn’t?
They can ask for their money back. A lot of it is in the form of pledges.
And now we know why Kamala was all “Joe Biden is the kindest,bravest, most wonderful human being I have known in my entire life.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate
Flattery works!
Kamala is more properly the Anchurian Candidate.
{Sarcasm alert.}
“Exist!”
And, Gods protect me, I can see Hillary as the Angela Lansbury character, up to and including the hints of “inappropriate behaviour.”
Stock up your supplies up there in the Defensible Position. It’s going to be a wild three months at the least.
> They can ask for their money back.
They can ask; in fact, “they can whistle for it.” More seriously, campaign finance is horribly complex; I’d want to wait for expert opinion on how or if the money gets re-allocated. I also think re-organizing the staff is just as important, if not moreso. Biden opened a lot of offices and presumably staffed them with loyalists; how is that to be handled?
The staff call reported Thursday (?) said to keep working despite the news (cable). It wouldn’t surprise me if they were worried about leaks of employee paperwork potentially going out.
I understand that the @ $250,000,000 in campaign funds is now in the cackler’s hands.
If so, it will be interesting to see how much she sends down ticket, if she’s realistic I’d say 40%.
It’s a nice way to make friends!
Friends who can be very helpful in so many ways as time goes by.
How sick is Biden? Should he even be making this decision when he has COVID? Couldn’t it wait?
I say this because when I am sick, I don’t do anything important – much less drop out of a Presidential race!!
I was just in the ER for a day. They asked me a number of times who the Prez was, I said Joe Binden, unfortunately, but the next one will be worse. I’m sticking with that. :-/
Trump reacts:
Susie Wiles should slap him around for this; Trump doesn’t have to play all the parts on the stage, now. He has Vance for an attack dog; let Vance do that. If Trump wants to be a Face, not a Heel, that’s what he should do.
Of course, Trump is 100% correct, although Trump’s reasons are almost certainly not my reasons.
> If Trump wants to be a Face, not a Heel,
I get the sense (I’ve tried to avoid listening too much for the last 9 years, but it’s hard to be completely unexposed to the man’s rhetoric) that DJT genuinely enjoys rhetorically denigrating adversaries. Like the hypothesis of bullsh!tter disregard for truth/falsity, perhaps the question of “Am I Face or Heel?” is not even in view; perhaps it’s just a question of what comes naturally in the next moment.
I hope that there are competent people around him, and that what they want to accomplish is not bad for the nation and the world.
Here’s your answer…
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=utube+donald+trump+and+vince+memahon&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1f6244ee,vid:jkghtyxZ6rc,st:0
Agreed agreed agreed. At best, he should have said nothing and let Vance do it. But he just cannot help him self. And yes, he is correct too.
I dunno. The nice Trump at the convention was kind of boring. Ridicule got him this far. Those who hate him are going to hate him no matter what.
But I do thiink he needs a serious mode to go with the Don Rickles mode. He may not have that in him or at least care to have it. The zingers are too hard to resist.
> The zingers are too hard to resist.
They are. OTOH, if you read the New Testament, Jesus had a ton of zingers, no doubt from disputing with the elders in the temple. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is an uber-powerful zinger… All I’m saying is that zingers don’t have to be snarky (and I’m always hated Don Rickles).
Kamala still needs to survive the Convention voting. Biden ‘endorsing’ her may mean she gets his delegates for the first round vote. It may not. Even if she gets them, there is wiggle room among the superdelegates, and among delegates who suffer the pangs of conscience.
There is room enough for Hillary to step into Joe’s shoes in Chicago.
There’s the frying pan, then the fire, and then…..I’ve never heard what comes after that.
> I’ve never heard what comes after that.
The floor. As in the convention floor?
Joe’s been wearing flip-flops lately…
And hanging out at the beach, Rehoboth Beach.
> wiggle room
It would be hilarious if the Inner Party didn’t actually want Kamala (there are rumors to that effect) and if Biden’s endorsement got in the way of their maneuvering (which would be why Biden did it; a two-fer that takes down both Harris and Pelosi). What a bucket of snakes.
Donkey Show charges for admission…
I hate to post another “I agree” but, I agree. The old man is just enough with it and ornery enough throw a spanner in the works on the way (shoved) out the door.
I also really wonder what he and his clan got in return for standing down.
“I also really wonder what he and his clan got in return for standing down.”
Pardons.
That feels like a safe guess. If it is, I’ll be curious how they plan to pull it off.
I’d bet all of Hunter’s legal troubles suddenly disappear
I thought it was interesting that Obama was non-committal regarding a successor, as was Pelosi. But the Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) immediately endorsed Harris. Recall that Harris was the early choice of the Clinton wing of the Democrats in 2020, crashed and burned in the primaries, but then was chosen as VP candidate anyway. Apparently she’s still the Clintons’ gal. I don’t know if that means anything in regard to intra-party intrigues. I guess we’ll see.
Re: intra-party intrigues
“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead. But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”
https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-president-bidens-announcement-1eb78b3ba3fc
> create a process
Oh. A process needs to be created. That’s encouraging. Isn’t that what the DNC Rules Committee does? Its reason for existence?
These legacy Parties have been doing this for how long now? What ever happened to “institutional memory?”
The template for this eventuality should already be available, say, from the Democrat Party 1940 Play Book.
Harris was the early choice of the Clinton wing of the Democrats in 2020, crashed and burned in the primaries
Slight correction, pjay: she crashed and burned before the primaries. As I recall, she was polling at 1% in her home state of CA in December 2019 so she folded before the first primary.
I am darkly amused by the possibility of a coalition forming among those who The Wizard had [family blogged] over.
On the other hand, in the present election cycle it seems to me that no one smart enough to do the job of replacing Biden would be dumb enough to take it.
“There is room enough for Hillary to step into Joe’s shoes in Chicago.”
Hillary vs. Kamala…. “Cat Fight!!”
From Seinfeld – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdPV-mh1js
Hillary probably wrote Biden a big check. I bet Kamala hopes Cheatle resigns on Monday.
I heard that Obama did not endorse Kamala. That could change but it may be significant. Hillary is the only possible candidate who will be too old in 2028 to run. All of the others have ambition to run then so they will not declare now for fear of offending the DEI crowd in the party. If the balloting at the convention fail to nominate Kamala on the first round it will be Obama and Hillary’s work.
Oooops! Clintons endorse Kamala. My bad.
Perhaps whatever price the Biden gang named ($200+ Mil ?) has been met.
Yes. And someone else mentioned pardons. Which makes complete sense. Biden,et al. Scott free. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQDKDDzqPzY&ab_channel=WayneWard/
1964 / B&W * THE BEST MAN (President) with HenryFonda
Free.
Drama about an open convention – among other things.
These days, don’t know about the stomach for this or all the current rules…but…grab your popcorn.
Well she made to show time with a little help from friend.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13604289/kamala-harris-affair-san-francisco-willie-brown.html
The Zelensky Curse claims another!
So it’s all over but the shouting?
Adding, looks like this Tweet needed more research:
I guess we will find out if it is a real curse.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/334369157620
$ 7 bucks seems cheap.
The sweatshirt is missing.
well…i guess ill be avoiding mom at all costs for at least a week,lol.
she was already batshit over trumps survival and that iconic picture…this will burn even worse, i reckon.
last driving miss daisy event, i chewed my tongue as she went on and on about how biden’s age is a non issue…”i mean, hes the same age as me!…”
sigh.
ive been expecting the decline and fall of usa,inc for a long while…never expected it be this frelling silly.
” i chewed my tongue as she went on and on about how biden’s age is a non issue…”i mean, hes the same age as me!…”
Right? They really bought the gaslight that age was the main issue. If age was the main issue, he wouldn’t have been nominated four years ago.
I’m seeing my moms later this week and will not discuss politics
ive been expecting the decline and fall of usa,inc for a long while…never expected it be this frelling silly.
MAGA = Make America Grotesque Again.
And it’s only getting rolling. By next weekend Kamala will be making presidential-type speeches and the MSM will be offering hosannas, and who knows what else
But America’s not a serious country, right? It’s just a movie studio with an attached casino. And nukes.
And a mall with a flag, but the mall is going broke.
On a slightly different note, a bit of satire for those who enjoy the genre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYgx75WHHlw
Gotta indoctrinate the next generation of Zionists while they’re young!
fwiw,
Andrew Yang on July 8:
https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/america-votes/andrew-yang-on-scripps-news-some-democrats-are-staffing-up-as-biden-resists-calls-to-step-back
Andrew Yang on Scripps News: Some Democrats are ‘staffing up’ as Biden resists calls to step back
My 2 cents…
Note to Kamala:
You better get out there ASAP and define yourself before Trump defines you.
She needs to show what she can be, unburdened by what has been.
LOL
Time is a factor because it flows, from what we have been, to what we could be, with no sense of what it has been. Or will be. The importance of time, in this moment, is what we need to consider, because it is so important. This moment and all the moments before it. And behind it. Flowing. Like time. Thank you for this moment.
Perfect!
>.. what she can be, unburdened by what has been
Sooo funny. .
New Kamala memes on X are absolutely brutal (OMG).
My advice to Kamala:
Sleep on your back until at least Aug 19. Hire a food taster. Look both ways when crossing the street.
Keep a crysknife under the pillow:
https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Crysknife
Avoid sudden meeting invites to parks at night.
I’m sure this is on no-one’s Bingo card, but if the D Party seriously wants to defeat DJT — and, granting that they believe their rhetoric about the mortal peril DJT is to “our Democracy”, surely they do — then could they do better than nominate … Bernie Sanders?
Of course, it won’t happen. The Party has already shown that it reckons that defeating Sanders is preferable to defeating Trump. My question, I guess, is “would Sanders as nominee have a better chance of prevailing over DJT than the alternatives on the D Party bench?”
Nope. Sanders is spent. He couldn’t draw a bath right now, let alone a crowd of supporters. No one on his alleged side of the political spectrum is interested in running because odds are still on a Team Blue murder up and down the ballot. If they convince a candidate who is considered progressive to run it is because they want to drown that possibility while it’s still young. The loss will be displayed as the reason American Democracy(tm) died, and they’ll pin that loss on the progressive wing of the Democrat party. If Nina Turner was a candidate they’d probably put her forward to lose just so they could cement their pro-Israel and pro-Wall Street credentials for the next generation… because she would be put through a wood chipper between now and November.
Having followed the R party to the right, would it be fair to say that the D party will emphatically not follow it back in the direction of “pro-worker”?
If not, then to hell with ’em.
turley on the dem’s next big own goal:
https://thehill.com/opinion/4784733-biden-withdraws-democratic-party-nominee/
Good article. We will see what happens. My guess is they are banking on the Republicans being all bark and no bite and running out the clock while everyone focuses on the election.
I really think for their best interests, they should have taken the L on the president and focused on avoiding a down ticket wipeout. But what do I know?
I think he’s optimistic. If they invoke the 25th Amendment to throw Biden out of office, the Democrats would be indicting themselves for four years of “the emperor has no clothes,” which would absolutely destroy the party. He’s going to limp to the finish line and retire. Biographers and historians alike are going to make their entire careers on how it ever came to this.
I’d wager that a Harris/Kelly ticket defeats Trump?Vance handily.
I’ll take Trump-Vance over Harris-____ or _____ – Harris.
Name your stakes.
A Henry Moore…but I’m only wagering on Harris/Kelly, as I think Mark Kelly is her strongest running mate possibility.
My vote’s still for Stein, but I’ll take that bet.
Another Stein voter here. Nobody is stopping Trump by even halfway fair means at this point. The Democratic movers and shakers should’ve shut Joe up as soon as he started talking about running for another term and given voters some say in who the candidate would be. Just so some enthusiasm could get stirred into their side of the campaign. Too late for that now, the donkey is dispirited for the duration.
Now Joe could resign after Thanksgiving and give the badly trounced Harris two months to be the first female President (and issue pardons for everyone on the list he gives her). That would have some value to the many guilty figures in Biden’s upper echelon. She could also do the Gerry Ford act of watching the fall of Kiev from afar while Z-man and the other stooges fly out with suitcases full of money. A time-honored tradition.
And the latest turn of events makes me doubly sure that RFKjr was really dumb not to pick Jesse Ventura as his running mate. That could’ve injected some real fizz into his campaign, which seems to have gone very flat.
Notice how once he choose the rich wife from Silly Valley everyone stopped caring?
Or was it when he said he hearts capitalism and is OK with genocide?
Why? I mean this as a legitimate question. What evidence or reasoning do you have for this wager (especially “handily”)? Everything I’ve seen over the last four years leads me to the opposite conclusion. Just curious.
My guess is that the Democrats will end up coalescing behind Harris as their candidate. Of her possible vp candidates Sen. Mark Kelley offers the best potential for attracting voters that she might not. He would be an excellent running mate, and a good matchup against opponents.
While Trump’s 30% base is ardent, support for him up here in rural northern NH drops off rapidly (to non-existent) after that. So I think about that. Vance’s initial attractiveness will sour soon because he’s basically some sort of jerk, as will gradually now be disclosed. While Trump may have peaked last week, it’s all downhill for him from here. Many commentators have been talking him up, convincing themselves that he is some sort of inevitable big winner, but everyone will think again with a new matchup. The negatives will now return to mind.
Personally, I’m still a Bernie Sanders/Noam Chomsky type supporter. I don’t think Harris is a particularly strong candidate, but she is the incumbent, and the alternatives are not remarkable.
Of course, Harris/Kelly may not end up being the ticket, in which case my wager doesn’t work. But I think it is the strongest ticket the Democrats can muster at this point, and will be strong enough to swing Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania… and defeat Trump?Vance…
Biden flubs exit speech (The Onion)
https://www.rawstory.com/obama-harris/
Obama doesn’t immediately endorse Harris
Newsom and Pelosi as well. I believe some fault lines are becoming visible in the power structure.
What . . . is Harris not “Black enough” for Obama?
Perhaps the Black Leadership Women for Harris can finally wise up about Obama and take steps to exterminate his presence and reputation in the Democratic Party and then in visible public life.
For TINA to be TINA, Harris has to be endorsed as the presumptive incumbent and then withdraw due to lack of donor support.. noting that Harris is pro pro-Palestinian protestors which isn’t going to go down well with the donor class..
Can someone help me understand why we the voters (registered Democrats)don’t get to choose the presidential nominee? For the Republican ticket, there were choices.
For the Democrat ticket, there was only Biden.
Now Biden is out and we have to accept that it’s Kamala who’s running?
We the voters ( registered Democrats) deserve and certainly deserved to get to choose the presidential nominee. The problem lies in the difference between “deserve to get to choose” as against ” get to choose”.
The DemParty rulers of the Inner Party conspired together over time to take our “getting to choose” away from us. They did it over and over. We all saw it.
If we want to “get to choose the presidential nominee” for the DemParty, we will have to figure out how to conquer the DemParty in detail and purge and erase all its current Inner Party leadership in individual and personal detail. Those who think it is still possible would have to commit themselves to the same multi-decade plan of conquest which the current owners of the Republican Party committed themselves to starting decades ago with Goldwater’s defeat. It would take at least that long. It would have to be a grinding endless-feeling Long March through the Democratic Party institutions.
The problem is that several-decades-from-now may be too far in the future for such a plan of conquest to allow us to make any difference to our near-term and mid-term survival chances. If there is only enough time to Build Survivalism OR conquer the Democratic Party, it is more important to Build Survivalism for those who believe in Building Survivalism and not spare effort and attention and time we no longer have on trying to reconquer the Democratic Party.
( I wonder if part of Building Survivalism might involve the creation and founding of a Survivalist Party advancing an agenda of a few basic items designed to enhance the chances for Survivalism on the part of those socially coherent groups of people who practice and advance those agenda items in a coherent way).
Now that Biden has gracefully bowed off the ticket, Democrats and “Democrats” might think about electing a DemParty Administration just one more time so as to buy four years for Building Survivalism
and gaining a four-year-delay on the hard permantentization of the Trumpopulist Republican goal of ” Drill baby drill”, “frack everything everywhere” and make America ” not just energy independent but energy dominant.”
All sounds good, well reasoned, though I don’t follow the last part:
IIUC, we don’t get any say in the composition of the Inner Party, so any “electing” will be squarely out of the hands of the voters.
The purpose of “voting” in an “election” is that it is the means by which the voters signal their consent to the prior decisions of the Inner Party.
. . . ” Iran ‘now probably 1 or 2 weeks away’ from nuclear weapon breakout: Blinken ” . . .
If that is true, that outcome is the joint achievement of Trump and Biden; Trump for cancelling the JCPOA and Biden for viewing the restoration of JCPOA as an opportunity for extorting new and different conditions from Iran.
The Yes Men or some other Social Satire performance group should create the Ignoble Anti-Peace Prize and award it to someone every year. I think Trump and Biden could share the Anti-Peace Prize for their joint effort to destroy the chances of long-term peace with Iran.
Press: “Vice President Harris, Iran has obtained a nuclear weapon. If they were to use it against Israel would you respond by using a nuclear weapon against Iran?”
Harris – “I’m so glad you asked that question. A nuclear weapon is a big weapon, and it has nuclears in it. Nuclears are atoms. There are a lot of atoms in a nuclear weapon. When you use one, all the atoms blow up. It makes a big cloud – perhaps you’ve seen pictures of them. Once you blow them up, you can’t undo the past, or be burdened by it. I see what can be, not what has been. Next question? (giggle)”
The creation of an IgNobel Anti-Peace Prize is a good idea.
How would it differ from the regular one?
Biden. Met COVID.
https://www.mcknights.com/news/cdc-report-cognitive-disability-tops-list-of-disabilities-in-us-adults/
Hey how about Hilary as VP to Kamala?
gag me with a chainsaw
Hey, I like it! We shall see if a human can actually spontaneously combust.
A human?
Do you think Hillary is the type of person who likes to get consolation prizes?
Devastated to learn that the political scientist James C. Scott recently passed away. Such a generous, brilliant, and original thinker, from “Weapons of the Weak” to “Moral Economy of the Peasant” to “Seeing Like a State” to “Against the Grain.”
Glenn Greenwald yesterday. utube, ~24 minutes.
The Dem Party’s Growing Civil War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpF1scJ2xa8
The Democrat party state edition
https://x.com/callforcongress/status/1814456908146978901?s=46
jess keeps on gettin weirder:
https://x.com/ACPMain/status/1815163137164754960
Really? Audio…they would choose “Jesus Loves the Little Children” church song, with a cinematic arrangement?
ACP fully embraces AI, but no fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Sure. Of course. Why not?
Now, where is my Giant Meteor 2024 shirt?
Liability risk higher in entertainment?
https://x.com/covidcaution/status/1814647788782952931?s=46
I wonder what the chances are that Biden will wake up on Monday morning having forgotten all about his withdrawal from the race on Sunday afternoon.
I pity the senior White House staff.
Curious that several hours later no video or photo of JoeB. Just the statement. Did he write it? Does he even know about it? Is he merely asleep dreaming of sniffing women? Sick? Dead?
Just crickets
Also strange that he decided to underline his signature.
He’s never done that before.