Sympathy for the Devils...

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 28, 2024 3:47 pm

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Really Think About What It Means That The US President Has Dementia

It’s very revealing how everybody’s focusing on what Biden’s dementia-addled debate performance says about his ability to win re-election instead of on the fact that the current, sitting president of the United States has dementia.

Caitlin Johnstone
June 28, 2024

It’s very revealing how everybody’s focusing on what Biden’s dementia-addled debate performance says about his ability to win re-election instead of on the fact that the current, sitting president of the United States has dementia.

If you were lucky enough to have missed the debate, Biden was so confused and zoned out that not only did CNN’s audience overwhelmingly say Trump won while the word “dementia” was sent trending on Twitter, but it was also uniformly acknowledged to have been a horrifying catastrophe by Democratic Party operatives and liberal media pundits, who are now widely suggesting that the president should withdraw from the race.

But the conversation has almost entirely revolved around Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, with relatively little attention going to the fact that this person is the president right now. Everyone’s talking about whether Biden can assure American voters that he has what it takes to be president, and nobody seems all that concerned about the fact that he is already president and will remain so for half a year.


What this suggests is that people already kind of know on some level that the president of the United States doesn’t really run the United States, but are still mentally compartmentalized away from this reality enough to care who wins the presidential election.

If people really believed the president runs the country, they’d be freaking out that Biden in his demented haze might order an attack on the Soviet Union or nuke Libya to kill Muammar Gaddafi or something. They’re not worried that this will happen because they know their government is actually being run by unelected empire managers from behind the scenes, and that Biden is just the official face on the operation.

So in order to hold their mainstream worldview together, liberals are simultaneously straddling the two completely contradictory concepts that (A) it doesn’t matter who the president is because the country is actually run by unelected empire managers, and (B) that Biden’s debate performance was very concerning because it means Trump will become president.

If they let go of (A) then they’re no longer in the mainstream worldview where their country works how they were taught it works in school, and if they let go of (B) then they’re no longer in the mainstream worldview where presidential elections are super duper important and all their country’s problems are the result of Americans voting incorrectly. So they straddle them both and try not to think too hard about the obvious contradictions between them, in order to avoid the crushing cognitive dissonance they’d experience if they looked at them too closely.


In reality the US empire has marched along in all its usual depravity despite its official leader having Swiss cheese for a brain this entire time. They got their genocide in Gaza and their world-threatening proxy war against Russia, as well as China policy that is vastly more hawkish than that of Biden’s predecessors. The imperial murder machine hasn’t skipped a beat in its nonstop campaign of steadily increasing global tyranny.

This has happened because US presidential elections are fake and the results don’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if Americans elected a labrador retriever or a bottle of Tabasco sauce; the empire would roll forward without the slightest interruption. The wars would continue. The economic injustice would continue. The surging authoritarianism would continue. The oligarchy and corruption would continue. The ecocidal capitalism would continue. The imperialist extraction would continue.

US elections are just a diversion to keep Americans from pushing for real change in ways that pose a meaningful challenge to power, and Americans already kind of know this. The sooner they stop compartmentalizing away from this fact that they’re already dimly aware of and face reality, the sooner they can start bringing health to both their nation and the world.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06 ... -dementia/

******

I Am With Larry...

... 100% here. For starters:

If you’re looking for a post on the Biden/Trump debate, sorry to disappoint. I watched a few minutes and, to put it bluntly, it is a horror show for Democrats backing Biden. The expressions on his face remind me of a small child lost in a busy shopping mall. Panic and bewilderment peek out at you from his vacant eyes. I don’t care how many tubes of lipstick the Dems breakout to try to pretty up this pig, it will not work and is likely to accelerate calls for Joe to step down. We will see.

It is essentially a shit-show and senior citizen abuse. In the end, Joe is nothing more than barely moving carcass of a man, and even being a very bad man does not exonerate those people who run Joe from not offering him a serious senior care and letting him live last days of his pathetic life in peace.

And then this:



He, and his curators from the West are genocidal maniacs who understood that the gig is up. Suddenly, these pieces of shit want "negotiations". Well, the conditions are known and they are with the expiration date which is nearing, after that more horror will be visited upon Kiev regime and his NATO handlers. US desperately needs "regrouping" in a futile attempt to somehow match Russia in what many in Washington see as a decades-long war. They have issues with basic math and Russia's industrial machine cannot be stopped now and is firing on all cylinders.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/06 ... larry.html

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Trump-Biden Debate Furthers Replacement Talks

Last night's Trump-Biden debate has turned into a disaster for the Democrats.



About two-thirds in Biden is clearly deteriorating. I guess his meds were losing their power. His speech got sloppy. His reactions were mechanical and unemotional.

Every news outlet seems to have come up with these observations:

President Biden hoped to build fresh momentum for his re-election bid by agreeing to debate nearly two months before he is to be formally nominated. Instead, his halting and disjointed performance on Thursday night prompted a wave of panic among Democrats and reopened discussion of whether he should be the nominee at all.
Over the course of 90 minutes, a raspy-voiced Mr. Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter a sharp though deeply dishonest former President Donald J. Trump, raising doubts about the incumbent president’s ability to wage a vigorous and competitive campaign four months before the election. Rather than dispel concerns about his age, Mr. Biden, 81, made it the central issue.


Such pieces come to the same conclusions:

President Joe Biden’s debate performance has set off alarm bells among top Democrats, leaving some to openly question whether Biden can stay atop of the Democratic ticket.
“He seemed a little disoriented. He did get stronger as the debate went on. But by that time, I think the panic had set in,” longtime Democratic operative and CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod said.

Axelrod also gave voice to a conversation happening among many Democrats on Thursday night: “There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue.”


Scanning the rather uniform news I suspect that the common negative critic of Biden's performance from the Democrats was preconceived.

Rod D. Martin @RodDMartin - 3:29 UTC · Jun 28, 2024
Thing we know:

The insiders knew Biden was like this.
They didn’t have to agree to any debate at all. They certainly didn’t have to propose and show up for the earliest debate in history.
So they humiliated Biden deliberately, but only after the primary voters get no say, yet early enough pre-Convention for the insiders to pick his successor before the fall campaign.

This has been the plan for a long, long time.


Indeed. Plans to replace Biden before the convention have been discussed publicly for several months now.

There are however hurdles that will be hard to take:

Dan Rivers @danriversitv - 5:20 UTC · Jun 28, 2024
That was a catastrophe for the Democratic Party. Biden’s halting, rambling mumble fest will totally eclipse Trump’s outrageous lies and rewriting of history. Now the panic and internal arguments will erupt inside the Democratic Party. But the only one who Biden will listen to is the First Lady. And there’s no sign she’ll tell him to stand aside for a successor.


Which other candidate have the Democrats in mind when they plan to replace Joe Biden?

Posted by b on June 28, 2024 at 7:10 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/06/t ... .html#more

******

Is ‘Duel’ the better 4-letter Dream word for ‘Debate?’
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 26 Jun 2024

Image
Joe Biden and Donald Trump debate in 2020

Donald Trump and President Joe Biden debate in 2020 Photo: ABC News
Sun drenched morning. Silver bullet-loaded, matched gold-plated
Glocks gleam above gilded dress swords. Above bump-stocked
AR-15s, strapped across slumped shoulders of two 1% men of
Limited vision. Mediocre men brandishing usurped Peoples’ Power …

The NRA, RNC and DNC searched far and wide for a S***hole
Country—boots on the ground—who’d host the gentlemen’s
Gun-powdered dustup. The People are excited! Ticket scalpers’ pockets
Got the mumps! Pay-per view revenues explode like 2,000 lb. bombs!

Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium would’ve hosted it. But fans were
Civil War split on who they’d ‘Tomahawk Chop’/ faux Native chant for.
Miraculously, Bechtel built Weehawken Stadium seating well over
100,000—provided Boeing bombs it/Bechtel rebuilds it …4 yrs later …

A Peach State nut job/aka ‘Driving Miss Crazy;’ a Rocky Mountain
State gun moll; an Empire State inquisitor; an ex-Palmetto State
Governor who scribbled, “Finish them off!” on bombs destined for
Gaza were chosen as cheerleaders for the combatants

A dock built for bringing in more supplies and equipment split apart.
Kegs of beer, pallets of peanuts and pretzels were airdropped into the
Stadium … Standing back; standing by; looking skyward for
Snacks, Proud boys momentarily walked in Palestinian sandals …

WE The People face fierce trillion dollar dilemmas—
Bought and bossed ones offer
Dollar store ‘solutions.’ Performative politicians promise to
“Fight like hell!” and, hopefully, spare us trauma of bipartisan
Buffoonery … Policy-lite/Solution-absent/Mad monologues …
Dumbed-down discourse … Disguised as debate …

They opt for “Trial by combat” instead! For Jumbotron spectacle!
Standing back-to-back—French-style—and stepping off 20 paces
To cherry ‘red lines’… As breathless billions worldwide watch!
And proceeds go to
House the Unhoused; Healthcare For All; Free Education; go
To clean up rivers and oceans; to Green Jobs and empty jails …
“Thoughts and prayers” to the loser’s family …
Winner’s allowed— like U.S. troops in Afghanistan—to
Urinate on loser’s body; to cut off fingers for souvenirs.
Body will lie in state—wrapped in stars and stripes—
Capitalist Hill rotunda … 21 gun-salute! Burial, Arlington
National Cemetery.

Winner gets next biggest imperialist strongman. Next biggest authoritarian
Supreme Leader/Embassy Butcher/Nationalist Pogrom Master—lending new
Meaning to “sudden death over … time.” And buying the
International Working Class time … to reorganize … Before the alarm goes off?

© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

https://blackagendareport.com/duel-bett ... ord-debate

I heard some wonk from Dem Central 'splaining how Joe won the debate hands down cause Trump was a convicted felon and spewed nothing but lies while his boy was a Boy Scout and Paragon of Decency. The tame and compromised npr interviewer couldn't swallow that, that's how bad things are for the Dems.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 29, 2024 3:48 pm

Biden Crashes, Trump Lies: A Campaign-Defining Presidential Debate
Posted on June 28, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. The presidential debate last night is likely to go down as being of historical importance, in the same league as the Kennedy-Nixon debate. But here, instead of demonstrating how the then-young medium rewarded good looks and a confident affect, here it showed two men, which as often happens with the aged, having become even more of who they are, and not in a good way.

There is no way Biden will be in office for a second term after last night’s performance. As blinkered as Biden himself is, too much rides on having at least a semi-functioning incumbent, and voters and donors realize that. Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was not apparent when he ran for a second term and stayed well-hidden. But a big reason why was his strong Cabinet, something Biden abjectly lacks. The members of his top team, in their various ways, are more often than not as weak as he is.

That does not mean Trump will be president. He could choke to death on a burger or suffer a George Wallace or worse assassination attempt. Or perhaps the Democrats will do the seemingly impossible and rally successfully around a last-minute contender like Jay Pritzker or Gretchen Whitmer. But odds considerably favor he will be back in the White House.

I suspect Lambert will cover the panic in the Democratic party and suddenly-perceived-to-be-urgent need to usher Biden out as quickly and gracefully as possible and settle on a viable replacement candidate with a minimum of infighting.

Even though some Twitterati and no doubt other commentators were speculating that party operatives had put Biden up to this debate in order to sink him, that does not appear probable. It appears Biden has surrounded himself with yes-men and bites the heads off those who dare to oppose him. The tweet below was extracted from June 26 New York Times story, Joe Biden: The Old-School Politician in a New-School Era.


So even if the idea of an early debate did not originate with Biden, it seems improbable that he was railroaded into it.

The very end of the debate provided a sad image of Biden’s frailty:


Yet the Financial Times reports that Biden thought he put in a fine performance. Is this an effect of the meds?

But Biden seemed undeterred, telling reporters at a late-night stop at a Waffle House restaurant in Atlanta: “I think we did well.”

Asked about calls for him to step aside, and whether he had any concerns about his debate performance, Biden — who said he had a “sore throat” — replied: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar.”

In today’s Links, Lambert featured a story from Axios, Democrats may want to replace Biden, but it’s his call. Key sections:

The big picture: Biden already has almost all of the pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention because of state primaries he has won. Those delegates must vote for Biden on the first ballot unless he withdraws beforehand.

Democrats plan to undergo their formal nominating process weeks before their Aug. 9 convention, so new candidates would have to emerge before that virtual roll call.
To win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot, a candidate needs a simple majority of the estimated 3,933 pledged delegates. Biden has well surpassed that threshold.
Reality check: It’s incredibly unlikely that Biden agrees to step aside as the Democratic candidate.

As Betty Davis warned, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Now to the main event.

Update 10:30 AM EDT. Just as this post fired, The Hill published White House, Biden campaign slam replacement chatter after debate. From the story:

President Biden’s campaign aides and top surrogates scrambled Friday to shut down talk he might drop out of the race following a disastrous showing at a debate with former President Trump.

A campaign official dismissed talk of Biden withdrawing, while top Democrats viewed as potential successors to Biden worked to stamp out any talk of replacing the president.

And the Russians are running out of missiles, yes siree!

Biden has to get through a second debate. Perhaps his team still believes in better living through chemistry.

By Mary Kate Cary, Adjunct Professor of Politics and Director of Think Again, University of Virginia and Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University. Originally published at The Conversation

With four months to go until Election Day, the earliest-ever general election debate featured two presidents – one current, one former – and a lot of bitter personal attacks. Joe Biden’s universally acknowledged poor performance surprised and even panicked Democrats; Donald Trump gave a more forceful – if not truthful – performance.

The Conversation asked two scholars, Mary Kate Cary and Karrin Vasby Anderson, to watch the debate and analyze a passage or a moment that stood out to them. Anderson is a communications scholar with a specialty in gender and the presidency, as well as political pop culture. Cary teaches political speechwriting and worked as a White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, for whom she wrote more than 100 addresses.

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University Department of Communication Studies

One of the first definitions of good public speaking I learned as a college debater and student of rhetoric came from the ancient Roman scholar and rhetoric teacher Quintilian. In his 12-volume “Institutio Oratoria,” Quintilian said the ideal orator was a good person, speaking well. He was particularly concerned about the danger that a skilled rhetorician who lacked character could pose to society.

A presidential debate ought to showcase ideal orators – skilled speakers who are also people of character. The June 27 debate offered voters an either-or scenario.

Former President Donald Trump was aggressive, confident and disciplined, but he peppered his remarks with a steady stream of lies, half-truths and misinformation. President Joe Biden focused on Trump’s documented record – both criminal and political – but failed as an orator, demonstrating none of the charisma and command on display during his most recent State of the Union address just four months ago.

The contrast was clear early in the debate when CNN’s Dana Bash asked Trump whether he would block access to abortion medication. Trump said that he would not. He then falsely claimed that, in the lead-up to the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the federal protection for abortion rights, “everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception.”

Trump then went on offense, accusing Democrats of taking “the life of a child in the eighth month, ninth month, even after birth.”

Biden’s response was initially clear and resolute: “It’s been a terrible thing, what you’ve done,” he said. And he pushed back against the preposterous claim that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, saying, “the idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states (and) let each state have a different rule.”

But the rest of Biden’s response was muddled. After “veering inexplicably” into an anecdote about a woman murdered by an undocumented immigrant, Biden expressed his support for people’s right to choose by saying on three separate occasions that the decision should be up to a doctor, rather than the pregnant person.

Trump closed out the segment by reiterating his blatant lie in stronger terms: “So that means, he can take the life of the baby, in the ninth month and even after birth because some states, Democrat run, take it after birth.” The Associated Press’s fact check of this claim is succinct: “Infanticide is criminalized in every state, and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.”

After nearly a decade of exposure to Trump’s habitual misinformation, lies about states murdering babies may not stand out as shocking in a presidential debate. And, certainly, it’s an argument that should have been easy for Biden to refute.

But if the populace must choose between a good person and someone who spoke well, Quintilian would remind us that someone who speaks well but has no integrity is dangerous.

The consequences for the republic could be dire.

Mary Kate Cary, University of Virginia Department of Politics

I think America just saw history being made.

Within 10 minutes, a very hoarse President Joe Biden, was asked about deficit spending, lost his train of thought, and ended his answer by muttering something about “beating Medicare.” It was awful.

There were so many moments when Biden looked confused and unable to process what was happening. I took notes on key exchanges, but the number of embarrassing episodes, unfinished sentences and incoherent phrases by Biden is too long to list. His answer on why he should be president in his 80s somehow veered into computer chips being made in South Korea.

Former President Donald Trump made his own share of missteps, but overall, he was relatively sharp, and restrained when he was provoked. He scored some points on the issues and did much better than he did in their first debate four years ago. Trump did better than I think many people thought he would.

Our assignment tonight was to find a moment to react to and put it in context. I’ve been to multiple presidential debates and watched many more on television over the years, and have never seen anything like this.

Is there any way the Democrats can convincingly argue for keeping Biden as their nominee?

The bottom line: Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did a good job of asking substantive questions and keeping control of the debate; Trump missed an opportunity to knock it out of the park but got through it; and Biden will most likely have caused a disaster for the Democratic Party.


This entry was posted in Banana republic, Doomsday scenarios, Guest Post, Media watch, Politics on June 28, 2024 by Yves Smith.
SUBSCRIBE TO POST COMMENTS173 COMMENTS
Benny Profane
June 28, 2024 at 10:27 am
So, after all this time, this is what it took for the Dem power base to freak out?

Reply ↓
Acacia
June 28, 2024 at 10:40 am
Strangely, yes. Seems they never learned a basic rule:

“Don’t get high on your own supply”

Reply ↓
mrsyk
June 28, 2024 at 11:28 am
Thank you. That is an excellent observation. The “true believer” mentality reminds me of my mom’s bible banging’ side of the family and the infuriating non sequitur “god works in mysterious ways”, a ritual chant they used to explain away the unexplainable hypocrisies between real life and their beliefs.

Reply ↓
James P McFadden
June 28, 2024 at 2:41 pm
I wonder if anyone saw what I saw in the debate. It looked to me like Biden knew the questions ahead of time and had memorized answers. As I recall Hillary got access to the questions in a town hall when she ran against Trump. Biden started out rattling off a string of “facts” so fast it came off as fake – so fast you could hardly follow it. It looked like he had been pumped up with amphetamines. But his face lacked any emotion suggesting thoughtful responses – just memorized answers. And then when Trump went off script, Biden just looked confused – a blank stare. Sometimes his “Joker” smile would briefly appear, then disappear. It looked like he was searching around in the attic through the cobwebs of his brain for something related to say as a comeback — closing his eyes to try to find a thought or response — then bumping his head on the attic beams. But after each question from the moderator – he had a pat answer to rattle off faster than he could possibly think — although on several occasions he seem to trail off at the end or finishing with some unrelated memorized answer. Then things would go off script again and he was lost in the fog. It was really bizarre. And Trump gave the most bizarre and lying performance I have ever seen, but that won’t matter. People won’t recall details of his lies — just that Trump seemed to be alive — and Biden looked like an Alzheimer patient half the time.

I wonder if the debate will boost third Party candidates — or just cause more people to not vote.

Reply ↓
JustTheFacts
June 28, 2024 at 10:29 am
I found it sad. Biden was lost. Trump said nothing new. These clearly aren’t the best people the US could offer. Biden thinking he did well, reminds me of a disastrous interview with Prince Andrew…

Kennedy had an alternative debate. Unfortunately his voice sounded worse than usual to me.

Reply ↓
IM Doc
June 28, 2024 at 10:33 am
After really thinking about this overnight and all the possible replacements ( again – that may not even be an option as you discuss above ) – I am convinced the only way the Dems can salvage this is to replace Biden with RFK. I strongly believe of all their options he is the only one who has even a chance of beating Trump at this point – and that is based on what I am seeing and hearing in my blue hive. Every single one of the others is fatally flawed in one way or the other.

The chances of them actually doing that are precisely ZERO.

I have never in my life seen such political incompetence as the current Dem DNC crowd. What a complete and totally fraudulent joke they have become

Reply ↓
Samuel Conner
June 28, 2024 at 10:46 am
I’m not sure that it’s “lack of competence”; I think the problem is fundamentally “what are the Party’s goals?” The Party very competently suppressed significant challenges from the Left in 2016 and 2020. They can be effective at the things they are most concerned about.

They have done a bad job of preparing a deep bench, but if the goal of preventing the emergence of a politically effective Left is the overarching goal (as has been proposed by various people at NC; the D party keeps the Left down or at bay so that the R party can do whatever it wants), then perhaps the Party has been highly successful at what most matters to it.


Reply ↓
tegnost
June 28, 2024 at 11:05 am
The Party very competently suppressed significant challenges from the Left in 2016 and 2020. They can be effective at the things they are most concerned about.

yes to this. They live in a silo and can’t and or are uninterested in others.

Reply ↓
Dr. John Carpenter
June 28, 2024 at 11:39 am
The only thing I’d add is in addition to beating back the left, they also intend to insure nothing fundamentally changes. Again, mission accomplished.

Also worth noting, they’d rather fund-raise off Trump for another four years than have to deal with the multiple messes the Biden administration has teed up right now. Even if they had a bench, who wants to jump on this landmine?

(Many more comments, but I think you get the idea...)

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06 ... ebate.html

'Red' added.

********

The DNC Campaign To Oust Biden Has Failed

Yesterday's assault by the Democratic National Council on the Joe Biden campaign has failed.

Thursday night, as soon as the Trump-Biden debate had started, anonymous DNC officials contacted their usual 'liberal media' contacts and denounced Biden's performance. Even those media, like CNN and MSNBC, who have for years denied the obvious problems Biden has had, jumped onto the train. Biden, they said, should retreat.

The New York Times mobilized a slew of its opinion writers to convey the message:

To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race (Editorial)
Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race. (Friedman)
‘God Help Us’: 12 Writers Rate Biden’s Performance at the First Presidential Debate
‘Is It Too Late?’ Four Writers on What Democrats Should Do About Biden.
Kamala Harris Could Win This Election. Let Her.
After That Debate, the Risk of Biden Is Clear
Is Biden Too Old? America Got Its Answer.


But Joe Biden's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, resisted the move:

President Biden knew immediately after stepping off the stage in Atlanta on Thursday night that the debate had gone wrong. In those first stricken moments after a raspy, rambling and at times incoherent performance, he turned to his wife, Jill Biden.
...
The first lady’s message to him was clear: They’d been counted out before, she was all in, and he — they — would stay in the race. Her thinking, according to people close to her, was that it was a bad night. And bad nights end.
...
So Dr. Biden spent the 24 hours after the debate putting her decades as a political spouse to the test, projecting confidence and normalcy while effusively praising her husband.


Pushed along by his wife Joe Biden did not step back. The DNC assault on his campaign had failed.

Late last night former President Barack Obama, likely the man behind the 'oust Biden' campaign, publicly through the towel.

Barack Obama @BarackObama - 18:36 UTC · Jun 28, 2024
Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit. Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November. http://joebiden.com


Glen Greenwald commented on Obama's intervention:

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald - 19:17 UTC · Jun 28, 2024
Once the media starts to realize that they're not going to get Biden out of the race, they're all going to quickly retreat from the past 24 hours and get back on board.

Obama is directing them to do that and giving them the script to use:

The campaign to oust Biden has failed, but the damage is done.


Even pro-Biden voters will, from now on, watch diligently to find the flaws in the next Biden speech or debate.

It will be hard to rebury that issue.

Posted by b on June 29, 2024 at 6:48 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/06/t ... l#comments

******

Foreign diplomats react with horror to Biden’s dismal debate performance
By Kylie Atwood, Nic Robertson, Luke McGee and Jeremy Herb, CNN

Updated 7:27 AM EDT, Sat June 29, 2024

President Joe Biden’s dismal showing at the CNN presidential debate against former President Donald Trump resonated around the world, with foreign diplomats expressing shock and concern while raising questions about the implications for a consequential US election that could upend the foreign policy status-quo should Trump be elected again.

“Hard to watch” is how multiple foreign diplomats described Thursday night’s debate between Biden and Trump to CNN.

The overwhelming sentiment among more than half a dozen diplomats from Europe, the Middle East and Asia whom CNN spoke to was that it was “a bad night for Biden,” as one European diplomat put it.

“It is a sad reality that Biden is old, and he is getting older. We saw it. I had difficulties understanding what he was saying, and I understand English pretty well,” said a second European diplomat.

“Trump ate him alive,” said an Arab diplomat.

“I was shell-shocked. I could not believe my eyes,” an Asian diplomat said of Biden’s performance.

Biden’s debate flop was front-page news across Europe, with left- and right-leaning newspapers excoriating the president – even in France, where the country has its own elections coming up this weekend.

The president’s debate performance also compounded already pronounced concerns about the policies Trump would likely enact if he wins in November. Trump on Thursday once again displayed his isolationist tendencies and his NATO-skeptic worldview that often alarmed US allies during his first presidential term. At the debate, Trump questioned continuing to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia and falsely claimed that the US had given more in aid to Ukraine than all other European countries put together.

Trump even suggested that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about his “dream” of invading Ukraine. He also attacked Biden over the Afghanistan withdrawal and argued it was the reason Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.

“When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my – this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream. The difference is he never would have invaded Ukraine. Never,” Trump said.

A Ukrainian politician told CNN he found Trump’s statements on the war in Ukraine “worrying.”

“We’re very concerned because we, more or less, understand what it means for Ukraine, (a) Biden presidency, and we really don’t know what it means for Ukraine, a Trump presidency,” Oleksiy Goncharenko told CNN. “It can be very good, it can be very bad. We just don’t know. And that’s definitely concerning.”

‘If they can change the horse’
Biden’s showing Thursday did not make the diplomats CNN spoke to question his ability to serve as commander in chief at this moment, with many noting that he has a good team working with him. But it led some to question how the Democratic Party will handle the issue.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski wrote on social media that Biden should now responsibly manage a succession plan.

“Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commudos (He, from the Gladiator). Whose disastrous role started Rome’s decline. It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset,” he wrote.

Another Polish diplomat didn’t mince their words, calling Biden’s performance “a horror, what a car crash.”

Post-debate, it wasn’t just Democrats raising the prospect of replacing Biden on the ticket for November – foreign diplomats were also wondering whether Democrats could turn to a plan B.

“If they can change the horse, they should,” said the second European diplomat. “If it was possible to call the governor of California and have Biden say, ‘You go and I’ll step out,’ that would be the right thing to do.”

But like many Americans, the diplomats woke up Friday unsure of what could be done.

“There are many options that are discussed, but we don’t see, any that are self-evident,” the first European diplomat said.

Some of them are reaching out to US contacts to get a sense of the likelihood of Democrats moving on from Biden.

“Some US contacts say there was always simmering debate about replacing Biden, but they say that now the doubts are in the open. There is fire on the roof,” said a third European diplomat. “I am told that if the Democrats do this, they have to go with Kamala (Harris), because they cannot skip over a Black woman vice president, but they wonder what that will do to their base. They think they could still lose.”

‘The problem is there is no strategy’
The diplomats were not surprised by Trump’s comments on foreign policy during the debate – with one calling it the “same recipe as usual” – but they added that they felt even more concerned about his lack of commitment to Ukraine and what that might mean for European security.

“Trump certainly won this. His worldview is problematic. So for those who believe in a rules-based order, Trump isn’t good,” said a NATO official. “Rules mean predictability, so Trump means unpredictability. He could go soft on Russia - he has a penchant for getting on with strongmen. He could also double down in supporting (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky. The problem is there is no strategy, it all feels like it’s done on impulse.”

Other diplomats also observed that Trump’s comments on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war would likely hurt him among Arab American voters.

“When he called Biden a Palestinian, that was bad. It was an insult to the Palestinians – he lost Arab voters,” the Arab diplomat said. “He could have said that he is the bigger Israel supporter in multiple other ways.”

Still, despite Trump’s reinforcing of longstanding issues, there was a real sense of shock and concern about Biden’s performance and what it might mean for his chances in November.

Biden pilloried in European media
The diplomatic reaction was echoed by the British media. In unusual unanimity, the usually staid Financial Times declared, “Democrats panic,” with the irrepressible tabloids, famous for their stinging critiques, joining the chorus – “Joe’Matosed” declared The Sun, Britain’s most popular tabloid. Another outlet, the left-wing Guardian, piled on, stating, “Biden Bombed.”

Biden’s stumbles on the Atlanta debate stage touched a nerve across the continent. Europe woke up to radio stations playing his at times halting, seemingly confused, comments.

No nation was immune to concerns about Biden’s performance. Even in France, which is facing its own surprise elections this weekend where President Emmanuel Macron’s alliance confronts a far-right challenge, newspapers took time out to lament the frailties of the man who visited the country only a few weeks ago.

The ubiquitous left-leaning Le Monde declared: “An old, worn-out, absent Biden: How the debate against Trump turned in to a disaster.”

Indeed, waves of worry seemed to ripple around the Mediterranean. Questions were raised about Biden stepping aside, from Greece’s To Vima headline, “Biden’s time to exit the race,” to Italy’s Ansa and La Repubblica suggesting that Democrats are “looking for an alternative.”

But where much of Europe’s media seemed shocked, Russia’s was positively gleeful. Moscow’s state TV station, Russia 1, lampooned Biden’s debate performance.

The show host, Olga Skabeeva laughingly congratulated him for not falling over, then criticized him for what she called a 20-second freeze, saying he had trouble remembering who and where he was.

Putin’s spokesman said the Russian leader didn’t stay up late to watch the debate and it “is not on the list of the main issues on the agenda (of Putin).”

However, it seems reasonable to surmise he will be up to speed with it now, if only through the unfriendly filter of his own media.

That Russian TV parodied Biden so soon after the debate likely reflects the Russian president’s mood, probably buoyed that Trump, who criticized NATO, hinted at cutting funding for Ukraine and said there would be peace in Ukraine before the end of the year.

Behind closed doors, no doubt, Europe’s leaders will be reflecting less on the froth and flailing of Biden’s performance and more on the substance of what they heard. After all, many of them met Biden at the G7 summit in Italy a fortnight ago, so his frailty was likely not a surprise.

Both days at the luxurious resort hotel in southern Italy’s spectacular Puglia region, Biden kept them waiting for half an hour, showing up late for no apparent reason, and even then, at times seemed slightly out of sorts

A Trump redux is the last thing most European leaders want, with the world far more dangerous than when he last left of

https://us.cnn.com/2024/06/28/politics/ ... index.html

Of course the European and other world leaders so shocked and dismayed by Sleepy Joe's trainwreck are the toadies, tools and compradors who have submitted to US imperialism.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 30, 2024 5:10 pm

Bi-Done!
June 30, 12:32

Image

An aerial poster flew over the site of Biden's meeting with campaign sponsors.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9236584.html

Google Translator

*******

It Is An Admission...

... of what is now obvious to anyone with half-brain. It never was about American population, forget it. As NYT panics and laments:


The Democratic Party’s perennially nervous donor class descended into deep unease on Friday, as some of the wealthiest people in America commiserated over President Biden’s weak debate performance and puzzled over what, if anything, they could do to change the course of the race. There were discussions with political advisers about arcane rules under which Mr. Biden might be removed from the ticket against his will and replaced at or before the Democratic National Convention, according to a person familiar with the effort. In Silicon Valley, a group of megadonors, including Ron Conway and Laurene Powell Jobs, were calling, texting and emailing one another about a situation they described as a possible catastrophe. The donors wondered about whom in the Biden fold they could contact to reach Jill Biden, the first lady, who in turn could persuade her husband not to run, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

You see, these are people who know only one thing in their life--how to make money by selling useless shit to teenagers and call it "investing" (get a load of this "megadonor")--and they decide how to go about destroying the last vestiges of common sense in the US. As much as I cannot stand GOP which is utterly corrupt and is in AIPAC's pocket, the DNC is even worse. The US doesn't have good options. As Colonel Macgregor constantly states--the US is run by the donor class. He is right, should he stay away from Russia and Great Patriotic War of which has no clue--he certainly should have ran for the office. He may yet get to some high position in presumably Trump's Admin, but I don't see how anyone can address America's systemic crisis which cannot be resolved anymore by therapeutic means--a euphemism for voting. America's long standing and extremely well hidden for a while insecurities are surfacing now non-stop akin to inflatable life rafts from the sunk cruise liner.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/06 ... ssion.html

*****

SITREP 6/29/24: Biden's Unraveling Sets New Course for Ukraine

SIMPLICIUS
JUN 30, 2024

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Let’s start off with the debate which indirectly segues us into Ukrainian war developments.

First off, we all know the debate is inconsequential and nothing more than a charade. That being said, it’s obvious a large psyop was pulled off given the fact that Biden was in no way any worse in the debate than he has been in any of his recent interviews or speeches. In fact, if you really had to objectively score it, it’s arguable he won the debate against Trump, given that despite his obvious mental decline, he at least was able to recite the memorized facts given him after CNN undoubtedly leaked all the questions to his camp. But even despite those advantages, Trump rarely cited any facts or semblance of a plan, and merely squandered his time defensively backbiting, repeating the same three talking points or tediously boasting how everything associated with his administration was ‘the greatest ever’ and anything of his opponent’s is ‘the worst ever’.

So what I mean to say by that is: the sudden, totally coordinated “outrage” and faux-shock from pro-regime media pundits and MSM outlets is clearly orchestrated in order to merely use the debates as the springboard to let Biden off gracefully. They couldn’t do it before because it would have required them to admit Biden was mentally compromised at a time they were still hoping to hold out and prop up the desiccated corpse. But the concerted nature of the now contrived apoplexy allows them to use the debate as a smokescreen to sort of collectivize their hypocrisy and previous covering for Biden by hiding each individual voice in the loud chatter of the wider corporate media cacophony—this way you can’t call out a particular one of them for being a hypocrite, but are rather forced to chalk it up to an organic process, which it clearly wasn’t.

But to attuned observers, the fabricated nature of the outrage is clear to see because Biden is obviously no worse today than he was just a day ago, a week ago, or even months ago. The debate showed no sudden inexplicable “change”, apart from his slightly hoarse voice, claimed to be the result of a ‘cold’. As other commentators have noted, it’s obvious they moved the debate up to a much earlier date than normal (the first 2020 debate was nearly in October) in order to give the DNC time to dump Biden and find someone new. That much is indisputable and is only confirmed by the contrived “shock” by people who long knew—but purposely concealed and dismissed—Biden’s total mental incompetence.

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In essence, the conversation went like this: “Look, something’s gotta be done—we need to get rid of him. But for now let’s hold the line and continue pretending everything’s rosy. Once the debates go down, we’ll announce he’s suddenly suffered a catastrophic decline and declare him unfit in unison, in order to protect us individually from accusations of contradicting ourselves.”

It was, nonetheless, amusing to see how quickly corporate media switched up on Biden, here suddenly characterizing his administration as ruled by the ‘oligarchy’:

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https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sit ... eling-sets

(Much more at link, not relevant to this topic.)

******

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How Does Anyone Still Care About This Bullshit?

It’s so obvious at this point that the US is being run by unelected empire managers who throw up half-dead, half-brained presidential candidates to trick Americans into thinking they live in a democracy.

Caitlin Johnstone
June 30, 2024



I truly could not care less who wins the US election; in my mind Dementia Meat Puppet and Reality TV Oligarch are both perfectly suitable symbols to represent the US empire. And that’s all a US president is: a symbolic representative with no real power.

I truly do not see how anyone can still give a fuck about this bullshit. It’s so obvious at this point that the US is being run by unelected empire managers who throw up half-dead, half-brained presidential candidates to trick Americans into thinking they live in a democracy. Those empire managers are going to do whatever they want to you regardless of how you and your compatriots vote. Your electoral system is a fake plastic toy they give you to play with so you won’t interfere with the gears of the imperial machine.

There are no answers in electoral politics. Start looking for answers elsewhere.



Another military coup was thwarted in Bolivia on Wednesday when the people flooded the streets in support of their socialist government.

Everything in our society is geared toward making the people forget how many of us there are and how easy it would be for us to impose our will by rising up in massive numbers. The global south is the only place where anything real is happening politically these days.



The way US officials keep falsely asserting that Israel has accepted a peace deal and Hamas is the only party rejecting it reminds me of that time they kept insisting that the real president of Venezuela was some random guy they chose for the position. They’re just trying to impose a narrative which has no factual basis whatsoever by rote repetition and sheer force of will.




The biggest scandal Julian Assange exposed about the empire which rules over us was not its classified war crimes, nefarious covert operations or hidden corruption, but the fact that it will openly destroy the life of a journalist for exposing its criminality.




The “Hamas uses human shields” argument is essentially “We have to attack civilian areas because Hamas hides in civilian areas knowing that we would never attack civilian areas, so that’s why we attack civilian areas every single day.”



It must suck to be a supremely talented artist or a brilliantly insightful comedian and know you’ll never achieve mainstream success because nobody who says real shit attacking real power gets elevated in our fake plastic civilization.



One of the biggest challenges when raising kids in this dystopia is being a good parent and protecting them from trauma while also making sure that, despite your good parenting, they still grow up with an aggressive distrust of authority figures.



Keep opposing US warmongering for the rest of your life. Don’t let Gaza be a one-off. The US and its allies ALWAYS do evil murderous things like this, and they ALWAYS lie about it, and the media ALWAYS help them lie about it. This isn’t new, it’s just the first time in years that a large number of westerners have been fiercely critical of the foreign policy of the US-centralized empire, because it’s more obvious than the empire’s other crimes.

This shit has been happening continuously, and will continue to happen after the butchery in Gaza is done. You just need to pay very close attention to the US war machine and the critical voices who monitor its crimes.



Opposing the US empire’s murderous foreign policy is where it’s at, resistance-wise. It’s where the lion’s share of imperial murder and tyranny takes place, and it’s the area the empire managers themselves place most importance on.

If you focus on domestic issues you’ll find yourself relatively well-tolerated by at least one mainstream political faction, but if you attack the imperial war machine you’ll get empire apologists jumping down your throat from all directions. This is because the ability to freely inflict mass military violence upon disobedient populations is much, much more important to the imperial power structure than domestic issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, or even issues like police brutality and economic justice. This doesn’t mean those issues are unimportant, it just means they’re unimportant to our rulers compared to the emphasis they place on unrestricted mass military violence.

War is the glue that holds together the undeclared globe-spanning empire that is centralized around the United States. The war machine is the most aggressively-protected aspect of the empire for the same reason our bodies form protective bone barriers around our most vital organs with the skull and ribcage; it’s what’s most crucial for the empire’s survival. But, much like vital organs, it’s also the softest and squishiest part of the empire.

It’s much easier to point at the footage of what they’re doing in Gaza and go “This is bad” than to explain the abusive dynamics of economic injustice, exploitation and oppression taking place in your own country, because it’s so much more self-evidently evil at a glance. That’s why the mass media propaganda about the empire’s wars, militarism and genocidal atrocities is so much more aggressive than on domestic issues: it requires much more defending and apologia.

So the warmongering of the US and its allies and partners is the weakest, most vulnerable part of the imperial power structure, and it’s also the most vital, and it’s also the most dangerous and destructive. That’s why I personally choose to focus most of my energy on these issues. Not because other issues don’t matter, but because it’s the most energy-efficient use of my resistance.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06 ... -bullshit/

*****

Donors stress over path forward after Biden’s debate performance
By Gregory Krieg, MJ Lee, Jeff Zeleny, Arlette Saenz, Betsy Klein and Camila DeChalus, CNN

Updated 8:52 AM EDT, Sun June 30, 2024

CNN

Less than 48 hours after President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance, the Democratic donor class is in crisis, racked by anxiety over what — if anything — the party’s wealthiest backers can do to reinvigorate or replace Biden, whose campaign has commissioned new polling to assess the damage.

The vast universe of wealthy Biden backers and their political whisperers has split along three lines. One faction is arguing that a pressure campaign urging the president — who has been adamant he will not step aside — to drop out would be a self-defeating nonstarter. Another is calling for a middle-of-the road approach, saying party leaders should consider drastic steps only after the fallout from Thursday night is more closely examined.

Democratic fundraiser and strategist Dmitri Mehlhorn, who often works closely with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, another prominent donor, told CNN that while the first 10 or 15 minutes of the debate “was very upsetting to see,” Biden’s performance later in Atlanta and then at a high-energy rally on Friday in North Carolina had begun to settle his nerves.

In any event, he reasoned, Biden alone controlled his fate as the Democratic nominee.

“The smartest thing is to think through how you (as influential outsiders) operate, assuming no change,” Mehlhorn said. “And if there’s no change, if Biden wants to remain president, then any kind of a pressure campaign is just a waste of time and energy and effort and money.”

A third group of donors and advisers, with fewer direct ties to Biden world and less influence within it, is proactively calling on Democrats to quit wasting time and immediately begin the process of seeking out a new nominee with a little more than four months before a general election clash with former President Donald Trump.

The would-be favorites to step in for Biden, should he reverse course and leave the race, have been careful to pledge their support to the president and, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has done, get out-front defending him.

“All this other talk … it’s unhelpful and unnecessary. We aren’t going to turn our backs because of one performance,” Newsom said in an email to supporters on Friday. “What kind of party does that?”

As the Biden campaign conducts extensive research in battleground states about the president’s standing, other leading Democrats have been less inclined to circle the wagons — instead warning that the party is doomed to defeat if it does not act decisively to change the equation.

Former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who served alongside Biden in the Senate for decades, sought to set the tone in a pointed letter he dashed off to friends after the debate.

“All incumbent Democratic Senators should write to Biden asking him to release his delegates and step aside so the convention can choose a new candidate,” Harkin wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNN. “A couple of Governors may need to do the same.”

Harkin said there was still time for a course correction and a new Democratic ticket, which he believes “would energize the party at all levels and capture the general public’s attention — many of whom would like an alternative to Trump.”

“This is a perilous time and is more important than Joe Biden’s ego,” Harkin wrote, “or desire to stay president.”

There does seem to be agreement among all sides over one thing: Ultimately, the decision will be Biden’s to make. There is no appetite for a clash at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Chicago — partly because there is no clear apparatus for pushing Biden aside, but mostly due to concerns that a floor fight, no matter the outcome, would do more harm than good.

“The party is in President Biden’s hands — for better or worse,” a Democratic senator told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid disrespecting the president or alienating the campaign. “He deserves our respect and space to reach any decision.”

The absence of an heir apparent to Biden who could satisfy the party’s perpetually warring factions while quickly bringing together competing donor networks is another significant hurdle for those pushing for immediate action.

“A true succession plan does not exist,” a senior Democratic adviser to the Biden campaign told CNN on Saturday. “That’s what makes all of this not just heartbreaking, but very problematic.”

Democrats are conducting new polls and research, throughout the weekend and into early next week, in an effort to gain a better understanding of the political fallout, particularly in key contests that will determine whether the party can win back its House majority and maintain its narrow control of the Senate.

A second longtime adviser said the only way Biden would even consider stepping aside — a move that is still very much an open question — is if he was presented serious data showing that he would not only likely lose his reelection bid, but also endanger down-ballot candidates in House, Senate and competitive local races across the country.

The Biden campaign has long had polling that found Democrats would still support those candidates even if they didn’t vote for Biden. If the president’s debate setback would make some of these voters far less inclined to vote at all — handing a turnout advantage to Trump and Republicans — Biden could be confronted with a starker decision.

Without that information, for now, the most prominent national Democrats, led by former President Barack Obama, are asking party donors to keep the faith.

For years, the relationship between Obama and Biden and their circle of advisers was strained by Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2015 and urge Biden not to run. This moment “is even more fraught,” one longtime Obama adviser said Saturday, noting that Biden would have to ultimately reach “any decision about his next steps on his own.”

At a fundraiser for House Democrats on New York City’s Upper West Side late Friday, Obama did not take questions from donors in the audience as he spoke with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in what Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was in attendance, told CNN was more like a “fireside chat.”

The former president, as he did in a social media post earlier in the day, recounted to attendees his own dismal debate experience from 2012, repeated a message about the stark contrast between the two presidential candidates and said Biden’s values “reflect the best in America.”

Asked about the debate by Jeffries, Obama pivoted to a more expansive view of the situation.

“An appropriate message for this evening is that this is a team sport. The president is captain, and we need the White House, because of the enormous power of the executive branch,” Obama said. “But the critical need for us to regain the House and have Hakeem Jeffries as speaker should be sufficient motivation. And if we do our jobs on that front, that is probably the most important thing we can do for the Biden reelection campaign as well.”

But signs — literally — of dissent have been more prominent outside the fundraising circuit. When Biden arrived at hedge fund manager Barry Goldstein’s event in East Hampton, New York, on Saturday, his motorcade passed a group of people holding signs appealing for the president to drop out.

“We love you,” one said, “but it’s time.”

Once inside, Biden acknowledged the angst among the donors.

“I understand the concern about the debate — I get it,” the president said. “I didn’t have a great night.”

But he also pushed back against the some of the concerns voiced in recent reports.

“Voters had a different reaction,” Biden said, claiming that post-debate polling showed little movement except for some figures that “moved us up, actually.”

Goldstein told CNN more than 200 people were expected at the event, which brought in additional donations the Friday morning after the debate. Actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were among the hosts, and former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci was also on hand.

As he made his swing through the Hamptons, Biden was accompanied by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul serving as a co-chair of his campaign. Biden’s team has tried to point to some fundraising bright spots in the days after the debate, saying the campaign brought in more than $27 million during a two-day period. Biden will be in New Jersey on Saturday night for another fundraiser, this one hosted by wealthy New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a former Democratic National Committee finance chair.

Those gatherings follow the mixed reviews that emerged from a Friday night event in New York City attended by Biden and headlined by rock ‘n’ roll legend Elton John.

“The vibe in the room was completely bizarre,” said a Democratic strategist who attended the event. “You’re having fun and the drinks are flowing, and Elton John was there — but you’re waiting for the gaffe, you’re waiting for the slip — magnified by the terror of the night before.”

Another donor in the room, Charles Myers, told CNN the panicky narrative around a donor exodus from Biden’s campaign was “frustrating” and “not what’s happening.”

“Yes, donors were nervous after the very bad debate performance,” Myers said, “but still very much on board and some want to do more.” The gathering in the East Village, he added, saw Biden in “great form,” and he had a “general sense” that while the debate “was really bad … the campaign is doing a course correction and all of us want to double the effort to help with that turnaround.”

“It’s time to do polling and find out if there are any potential replacements that poll higher than Trump,” billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, who recently came out in support of Biden, told CNN. Trump is politically weak, Cuban said, so a Democrat who could “step in and immediately change the race” would be “worth considering.”

For now, though, Cuban — who said he is not a donor to the Biden campaign but did attend a fundraiser in March to show his support — made clear the task of replacing Biden this late in the cycle would be uniquely challenging.

The former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, who previously supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the GOP primary, used a sports analogy: “At this point, it’s more like discussing an NBA or NFL game after the fact and wanting to trade players,” Cuban said.

Hoffman offered a variation on that theme in a Friday night email to friends — some of whom, he wrote, had been asking him “whether there should be a public campaign to pressure President Biden to step aside after his (very) bad debate performance last night.”

“I think such a campaign to get Biden to step down would be a bad idea,” Hoffman wrote, arguing that such steps might harden Biden’s resolve to prove his doubters wrong.

He also pointed to the president’s lively performance at the rally in Virginia and to the way Republicans reacted following Trump’s felony conviction last month.

“They ruthlessly and immediately closed ranks,” Hoffman wrote, “because they understand that at this stage of the race, they must spend every minute and dime either boosting their old man, or tearing down ours.”

Another Democratic donor was more blunt about the state of play and the party’s choices.

“I don’t think (Biden) is going anywhere,” the donor told CNN. “This is the old horse we’ve got, and we need to ride him ‘til he’s ready for the glue factory."

https://us.cnn.com/2024/06/29/politics/ ... index.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 02, 2024 2:27 pm

DECLINE ON STAGE: BIDEN, DEMENTIA AND ELECTORAL FARCE
1 Jul 2024 , 10:00 am .

Image
US President Joe Biden at the election debate (Photo: Reuters)

The first televised face-to-face between President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, broadcast on June 27, has left a bittersweet taste among Democrats and has fueled debate over the current president's ability to face re-election.

A significant part of the debate was devoted to the domestic agenda, with Biden pointing out that the country's economic problems were caused by Trump's previous presidency. For his part, the former president defended a better economy during his time in the White House and blamed Biden for the inflation that is currently "killing" the United States. In addition, Trump linked most of the country's problems to the crisis situation on the border with Mexico and uncontrolled immigration.

However, it was on the international stage where the debate became more intense. Trump boasted of having succeeded in eliminating Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and criticised the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, calling it the "most shameful" in the country's history. He did not hesitate to affirm that, under his mandate, the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine would have been avoided.

Joe Biden defended the massive funding of the war against Russia and accused Trump of wanting to withdraw the United States from NATO.

The truth is that the debate was not defined by the solidity of the arguments of either candidate. Rather, it was a mutual exchange of accusations about the economic collapse, the migration crisis and the failed US foreign policy, among other issues. However, Biden came out at a disadvantage, largely due to the negative perception left by his physical and psychological state. He was seen to be hesitant and having difficulty clearly articulating several of his arguments.


Politico is not short on criticism when describing Biden's performance . The outlet notes that the President "opened the debate with a harsh voice and rambling, disjointed answers," which "rekindled Democratic concerns about his age and ability to stand up to former President Donald Trump."

At one point, seemingly losing the thread, Biden said “we finally beat Medicare,” badmouthing his own earned-benefits policy.

Trump, for his part, although with unfounded claims, was tougher and more convincing. The former president stood out basically because he did not appear deteriorated and senile in front of his rival.

A resounding 67% of viewers gave the victory to Donald Trump, compared to a scant 33% who opted for Joe Biden, according to the results of the poll on the debate. These numbers, far from going unnoticed, have unleashed a wave of criticism towards the current president and sowed panic in the Democratic ranks.

An anonymous NBC analyst was quoted as saying that Democrats committed “collective suicide” with this debate. The Financial Times reported that “the incumbent President has failed,” while The New York Post claimed that “millions of people witnessed the end of Biden’s career.” According to Politico, Democrats have begun discussing the possibility of replacing the incumbent leader with another candidate.

The president’s performance was widely criticized online and will likely reinforce the impression that he has lost his step. Biden’s age, 81, has long been a liability, and poll after poll shows that even many Democrats are concerned about his age.

Debates play a key role in the American electoral process. A convincing performance can boost a candidate and give him a small but vital percentage of votes. Conversely, a failure like Biden's can translate into a loss of support that can determine the fate of the presidency.

US debate 2

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Spectators watch the broadcast of the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump (Photo: Reuters)

The next presidential election in the United States is scheduled for 5 November 2024. Party conventions are due to be held in August-September, at which one candidate from each party will be officially approved.

“'It's time for an open convention,' a prominent law enforcement official wrote in a text message,” Politico notes.

Normally, Biden, having won the majority of delegates in the primaries, would be assured of the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August. However, in a hypothetical case of his withdrawal, there is no established process to replace him. This means that the nearly 4,000 delegates, although theoretically "pledged" to Biden, would be free to vote for whomever they wanted.

"Presumably, Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately they would be free to do what they wanted when it came to supporting a replacement.

"That could spark a frantic race among Democrats who want a chance at the nomination," the BBC reported .


After 90 minutes of rambling, Joe Biden’s political ineptitude, evident to many, became impossible to ignore. But as political analyst Caitlin Johnstone points out , concerns about Biden’s mental condition as a potential reelection candidate ignore an even more disturbing reality: He has governed the state for four years without seeming to raise much alarm. The reason is that there is a tacit understanding that Biden is not the one who actually governs America.

"If people really believed the president was running the country, they would be terrified that Biden, in his demented confusion, might order an attack on the Soviet Union [...] They are not worried about this happening because they know their government is run by unelected empire managers acting behind the scenes."

Foreign policy aggression, covert wars and militaristic expansion continue unabated, confirming what Johnstone argues: “The American presidential election is fake and the results don’t matter.”

Biden's case, far from being an anomaly, becomes irrefutable proof of a system where power resides in the shadows, manipulating the narrative and perpetuating its agendas regardless of who occupies the presidential chair.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/de ... -electoral

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Jul 03, 2024 3:31 pm

Biden Slips a Cog: Second Time as Tragedy, Second Time as Farce, or Both?
Posted on July 2, 2024 by Lambert Strether
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” –Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

As a former humanities major, an English professor manqué, and a humble blogger pressed for time and words, I strove to avoid and did not yield to putting the word peripeteia in the headline, and in the end succeeded by substituting “plot twist” (from the invaluable TV Tropes):

One of the basic building blocks of plot, a Plot Twist is a sudden, unexpected change in the fortunes or situations of the characters, setting, or plot.

Plot Twists are usually based on the assumption that there is something going on that we, the readers/viewers/players, don’t know about; if we had known about it, it would hardly be surprising. When it is revealed to us, we are surprised and shocked. This includes hidden aspects of particular characters’ backstories or their personalities (“I never would have thought Alice could kick Bob’s head into the locker!”)

Sometimes even when we do have all the information, the twist can come as a shock due to a sudden, unforeseen action by other actors in the plot, the setting or place it’s occurring in. We could see an action that we’d long predicted but not all its ramifications, so the shock value is still there. (There is also the “hidden aspect” of Jill Biden’s character, which we’ll get to.)

Here for your viewing pleasure is the plot twist in question (repeating from here). Biden’s slippage, in his June 27 debate on CNN with former President Trump:

Never thought thought that "because you'd be in jail" could be eclipsed but this just topped it. The most devastating 30 seconds in presidential debate history. pic.twitter.com/W2HpKwPR2L

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) June 28, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1806526336397132032


Whether or not Biden “slipping a cog” is “shocking” (or perhaps “shocking, shocking”) is “unexpected” or not (2020; 2024), it certainly has shock value from “setting or place”: seen, live, on national television, by 51.3 million viewers, and never to be unseen[2]. So, from the standpoint of sense-making, “Plot Twist” is pretty good. However, the Aristolian peripeteia is much better, as we shall see[1].

In this post, I will present some sense-making tools for the dramatic series of events that followed and will follow Biden’s emission of grinding, clunking, and clashing sounds on the national stage. A caveat: That doesn’t mean I’ll actually be able to make sense of the situation, for reasons I will explain. However, we can at least make sense of what we area allowed to see as “the narrative” plays out. To help with that, I will first consider Biden’s slippage as a farce; I will then argue that Marx’s “tragedy” vs. “farce” epigram, though witty, is false; and I shall then consider Biden’s slippage as a tragedy, with particular attention to the individuals who surround him. Throughout, I will take up issues current in the news flow; just not using the frames many are accustomed to.

Biden’s Slippage as a Farce

Imagine you are sitting in the audience at a play, watching the characters speak their lines on the stage, enjoying the spectacle. Suddenly the scenery collapses, along with the “legs” that hide the wings, and everything that’s going on backstage is revealed! Hilarity ensues. Until order is restored, you see frantic stagehands, managers, costumers, make-up artists, maybe even intimacy coordinators and investors running around waving their hands and shouting. Something similar happened following Biden’s slippage:

What’s been fun has been to see people speaking openly and honestly, and with passion, under the belief that what they say might matter. And that they are free to say what they think.

This rip in the blanket will be quickly sewn back up, but this genuine space for authentic…

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 30, 2024


Of course, this “genuine space” will be quickly suppressed. However, the imagined spectacle I just posited reminds me of a wonderful farce called Noises Off, which I saw in London back in my traveling days. Noises Off is a play within a play, and it too collapses the distinction between stage and backstage, between on-stage and off. Here is a sample from the script (video of the full play, starting in the same place). Use Monty Python voices in your mind for the characters:

Image

In this rehearsal, we see a process surely much like that Biden insiders must have experienced when they “overprepared” their candidate. After all, “I open my mouth, and I never know if its going to come out three oranges or two lemons and a banana” describes Biden’s performance to a T, doesn’t it? (Dotty speaks “openly and honestly,” which is one reason Noises Off is so entertaining.)

My OED defines farce as “a dramatic work intended only to excite laughter,” and really, what else can we do? Wikipedia goes a little further, and defines farce as, among other things, “characterized by heavy use of physical humor” (Dotty’s sardines; Biden’s slippage. For this reason, farce is considered the lowest dramatic form, with tragedy the highest). Farce also includes “situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd,” “ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances.” Finally, in farce the characters are static; they are implacably who they are. We don’t watch Fawlty Towers for Basil Fawlty’s character development, after all. All these characteristics apply to the dramatic incidents following Biden’s slippage which I will now present.

(1) Situations that are highly absurd. Donor hysteria:

A debate watch party in Los Angeles on Thursday night happened to feature Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff, Pritzker, Whitmer and Beshear. There were other high-profile attendees – by a few answers in, Rob Reiner was screaming about losing and Jane Fonda had tears in her eyes, according to people in the room.

(2) Physical humor. Via alert reader randy, from Politico, What’s wrong with the picture:

Image

Just like the sardines! (“Ron, which way do I hold the phone? Did I hold it that way before?”)

(3) Situations that are extravagant:

Camp David: Biden family spent morning not having a summit but in hair and makeup for a shoot with Annie Leibovitz, Vogue photog who shot Biden/Obama/Clinton in March then suggested doing something informal with the Bidens. Family suggested this week, bc Hunter & family in town.

— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) June 30, 2024


(4) Static characters:

I will respect the limits of presidential powers that I have for three and a half years. But any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law.

I concur with what Justice Sotomayor wrote today:

"With fear for our democracy—I dissent."

So do I. pic.twitter.com/YmrPBMQhgY


— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 2, 2024

Four minutes, no questions. No action. Just as static as Basil Fawlty.

So much for farce. Let us now turn to The Bearded One.

Marx’s Epigram is Wrong

The country has had an impaired President whose condition was kept from the President at least once before now (if we omit both FDR and Reagan in their last terms[3]). President Wilson:

Following his attendance at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. However, the president suffered a stroke that October which left him bedridden and partially paralyzed. The United States never did ratify the Treaty of Versailles nor join the League of Nations, which had initially been Wilson’s concept. At the time, non-interventionist sentiment was strong….. Edith Wilson and others in the President’s inner circle (including his physician and a few close friends) hid the true extent of the president’s illness and disability from the American public. Edith also took over a number of routine duties and details of the executive branch of the government from the onset of Wilson’s illness until he left office almost a year and a half later. From October 1919 to the end of Wilson’s term on March 4, 1921, Edith, acting in the role of First Lady and shadow steward, decided who and which communications and matters of state were important enough to bring to the bedridden president.

The historical parallel between Wilson and Biden (or, more precisely, between Edith Wilson and Jill Biden) is clear: The presence of “an inner circle” — that is, an extra-constitutional entity at the head of the executive branch. (Article II, Section 1: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of Ameria.” We elect one person, not that one person’s family, friends, or milieu.) Thinking about this topic makes me queasy: I’m more used to using tools like Ferguson et al.’s industrial model, or class analysis, or institutionalism. In blogging as in life, I’m less than comfortable with small group dynamics, let alone individual personalities.[4] Presumably, the humanities can help me with that! But here we are; in a crisis, things correlate, and I suppose they do correlate in the persons of people who happen to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and embody the titanic forces at play.

Small group dynamics entered the chat just before the debate on June 18 with a short Daily Mail story: “‘The only people who could force him out would be Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,’ one Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com. ‘It would have to be the four of them collectively'” (first time I’ve heard a Democrat use the word “collectively” in a long time). The interlocutors on the Biden side are not named, but presumably they are a small group too). Small group dynamics make their next appearance on June 22 in the New York Times:

with dozens of people close to the president reveal a truth at the heart of Mr. Biden’s political life: While he is surrounded by a diverse and multigenerational crowd of campaign operatives, policy experts and cabinet secretaries, he reserves his full trust for a small circle of insiders who are the definition of old school.

(The three are Mike Donilon, Ted Kaufman, and Ron Klain. Mike Donilon’s brother, Tom, is married to Jill BIden’s former chief-of-staff. Klain, of course, set the course for Biden’s Covid policy of mass infection without mitigation before Jeff Zients took over. Kaufman, among other things, headed the Biden-Harris Transition Team.)

Another small group story came on June 29, from Axios, this one closer to the bone: “Behind the Curtain: Biden oligarchy will decide fate:”

The only way President Biden steps aside, despite his debate debacle, is if the same small group of lifelong loyalists who enabled his run suddenly — and shockingly — decides it’s time for him to call it quits. Dr. Jill Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden; and 85-year-old Ted Kaufman, the president’s longtime friend and constant adviser — plus a small band of White House advisers [who?]— are the only Biden deciders.

So, although everybody who is anybody agrees that Biden trust and works in a very small group, nobody is quite clear on who the group members are (Franklin Foer, who wrote a book on Biden’s White House, writes “The group around President Joe Biden is familial to the core,” but doesn’t name the group members (!)). I’m inclined to believe that Axios got it more right than the Time because Jill Biden is part of the group:

Prepping for the G7. pic.twitter.com/drPmb2vBwI
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— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) June 9, 2021


However, Joe Biden is also, as it were, clan leader of the Bidens, who are all lending each other no-interest loans and wetting their beaks in the money stream generated for them by Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling operation. Dear Hunter! Surely they must have a representative in the small group as well, and Hunter’s presence makes sense from that perspective.

I’ve been trying to think of a word for this extra-constitutional entity, this small group that would play — or perhaps is already playing the same role in the Biden Presidency that the group around Edith Wilson played in Wilsons. The Axios URL shows the original headline was something like biden-debate-replace-advisers, but the editors jacked it up to read “Biden oligarchy.” But that’s wrong; oligarchy is an entire political system. (“Biden oligarchs” might have been OK, but to me, an oligarch is a member of the only small group that really matters: The squillioniares, and although Biden et al. may service the squillioniares, they are not, themselves, squillionaires.) I thought of cabal, milieu, gang, clique, crew, faction, team, troop, club, coterie, posse, and finally settled on the term “circle,” since a circle has a center (Biden), connotes repetitiveness and stability, and has allied terms “social circle” and “inner circle.”

So to repeat, everybody agrees that Biden has a tight circle, and must be approached through it, but everybody is much less clear about who the members of that circle actually are. To me, that’s an interesting result!

Oh, and the subhead: Marx’s epigram is wrong, because although the Wilson and Biden circles as extra-constitutional entities are historical parallels, the Wilson circle, so far as I can tell (Wilson-era historians please correct me) was neither tragedy nor farce, and the Biden Circle is now mired in both farce and tragedy, as I shall now show. (Note that I will not map current events to an Aristolian plot line; I am simply appropriating the concepts and twisting them to my purposes.)

Biden’s Slippage as Tragedy

We have already spoken of Plot Twists; here is the more rigorous Aristotelian theory. From the Brittanica:

The most powerful elements of emotional interest in tragedy, according to Aristotle, are reversal of intention or situation (peripeteia) and recognition scenes (anagnōrisis), and each is most effective when it is coincident with the other. In Oedipus, for example, the messenger who brings Oedipus news of his real parentage, intending to allay his fears, brings about a sudden reversal of his fortune, from happiness to misery, by compelling him to recognize that his wife is also his mother.

We can see that Biden’s Cog Slippage was both peripeteia and anagnōrisis. The reversal of fortune: The Biden campaign wanted and early debate because they hoped both dispatch Trump and to show that Biden’s cognition was unimpaired (as they successfully did with the SOTU). Instead, to anyone but a party loyalist, the debate was a disaster; it revealed precisely what the campaign hoped to conceal. The recognition scene, multiple levels: Biden himself (“‘I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,’ he said, as the crowd chanted ‘four more years'”); Biden’s circle; much of the Democrat Party; and many, many millions of viewers all recognized the Cog Slippage as serious and undeniable.

Another Aristotelian term: hamartia. Again from the Brittanica:

Hamartia, (hamartia from Greek hamartanein, “to err”), inherent defect or shortcoming in the hero of a tragedy, who is in other respects a superior being favoured by fortune.

Aristotle introduced the term casually in the Poetics in describing the tragic hero as a man of noble rank and nature whose misfortune is not brought about by villainy but by some ‘error of judgment’ (hamartia). This imperfection later came to be interpreted as a moral flaw, such as Othello’s jealousy or Hamlet’s irresolution, although most great tragedies defy such a simple interpretation. Most importantly, the hero’s suffering and its far-reaching reverberations are far out of proportion to his flaw. An element of cosmic collusion among the hero’s flaw, chance, necessity, and other external forces is essential to bring about the tragic catastrophe.


I believe that the tragic flaw common to Biden and his circle is loyalty. From Politico in 2020, “Biden Rewards Loyalty“:

The best way to get a job in the Biden White House is to have once worked for President-elect Joe Biden

That much has become clear this past week, with 13 of the first 14 White House appointments going to former Biden staffers. Several were high-ranking officials on the 2020 campaign or were in the vice president’s office but many also go back decades — to his Senate office or even his 1988 presidential run. Biden’s transition team is also full of Biden veterans, suggesting many more are likely to pop up in his administration.

The hires are part of a larger dynamic in Biden-world: he values loyalty.

President Barack Obama’s Defense secretary, Leon Panetta, who also served with Biden in Congress, described Biden’s approach to politics as “street smarts” versus “Harvard smart.” He said that “part of that street ethic is loyalty to people and loyalty to friends.”

Biden can sometimes put loyalty above optics, even when it’s politically risky — a dynamic to watch closely for in the administration when a scandal inevitably hits.


Loyalty as one of Biden’s central values goes back to Biden’s family upbringing. From Marie Claire:

Jean Biden passed away in 2010.

When Jean passed away, she was surrounded by loved ones including her great-grandchildren. “At 92, she was the center of our family and taught all of her children that family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times. She believed in us, and because of that, we believed in ourselves,” the Bidens said in a statement. “Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us.”.


“Family is to be treasured, loyalty is paramount and faith will guide you through the tough times.” Couldn’t describe the Biden circle better (and not in a good way). From People:

“My dad used to say, ‘Family is the beginning, the middle, and the end,’ ” Joe shared in a speech at the White House in 2023.

As Harry Truman is said to have said: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Certainly it’s A Good Thing not to be surrounded by betrayers and schemers. And loyalty, like courage, is a real virtue (of course, some Nazis had courage, so it’s not the only virtue). But the loyalty in Biden’s circle seems to be so strong that they can’t bear to take the car keys away from him, when they clearly should.

Here, from a source outside Biden’s circle, is a description of Biden’s fate:

Good morning everyone pic.twitter.com/TxxA87Twn8
Image
— Lindsay Ballant (@lindsayballant) June 30, 2024


This is the part where “far-reaching reverberations are far out of proportion to his flaw.” No doubt the people in Biden’s circle think of themselves, and want to be thought of, as good, as do most of us. But the elder abuse they are visiting on Biden is not good, and that’s their tragedy, brought about by the tragic flaw they share with Biden.

Conclusion

There is much else to write; extra-constitional entities making decisions for the executive branch could certainly be seen as tragic by a constitutional scholar[5], but I must stop here with a final Aristotelian term: catharsis. Once more from the Brittanica:

In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator. The use is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek: “purgation” or “purification”). Aristotle states that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of these emotions…. The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged. Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.

We can only hope. I’m here for the pity and terror, but I don’t see when or how catharsis will take place in 2024.

NOTES

[1] My use of Peripeteia is not the hotdoggery it may seem; the term is known in the gaming community, as one would expect it to be.

[2] All the tweets I saw from the fraction of the political class that wants Biden to drop out medicalized the slippage (“dementia,” “senility”). All the tweets I saw from dull normals and muppets spoke of signs they saw before they had to “take the keys away” from an elder family member. Here is the single thread I saw — not from the political class — that mentioned the possibility that Biden had suffered cognitive damage from his two Covid infections. See NC here: “A sociopathic elite is one thing, that we’re used to; but a sociopathic elite with brain damage is quite another.” Interestingly, Biden comment on boxing:

My dad had an expression. He said, “Champ, it’s not how many times you get knocked down. It’s how quickly you get up.”

I'm told there's even a song about it. pic.twitter.com/0DG2lj1Zz7

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2024


I’d say the brain damage counts for something with boxing too!

[3] To my surprise, CBS: “Physicians diagnosed Reagan with Alzheimer’s approximately five years after he left office but the date of the onset will likely be pondered by political historians and medical experts for years to come.” Leaving the medicalese of “dementia” aside, it’s not clear to me that Reagan ever reached the “take the car keys away” stage. Of course, Reagan had a better staff, an even more compliant press, and better hagiographers than Biden has ever had.

[4] I vehemently oppose the “great man” theory of history.

[5] There are rather a lot of extra-Constitutional entities playing roles just now, as if we had an unwritten Constitution like the U.K.: Political parties, the intelligence community, even the press…

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07 ... -both.html

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The Emperor has no mind: The scripted “overthrow” of Biden

Joaquin Flores

July 3, 2024

You can follow Joaquin as XF on Telegram @NewResistance

Both candidates performed as we had expected. And therein lies the rub, Joaquin Flores writes.

The first 2024 U.S. Presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump was, in itself, somewhat uneventful. It was the aftermath which gave us the big surprise which now dominates headlines across the country – Democrats want Joe Biden to drop out.

The uneventfulness of the debate itself runs contrary to the current buzz in the corporate-owned legacy media, but it is an important truth to remember as we try to parse out what indeed is the strategy of the American political elite for Election Day come November.

Besides the hilarious exchange between a mumbling bumbling Biden and an uber-confident Trump over declared height and golf handicaps, both candidates performed as we had expected. And therein lies the rub.

Biden performed at least as well, if not better, than anything we’ve seen in the past two years, perhaps the past four. The week-long break at Camp David which Biden enjoyed, no doubt under medical supervision and with a whole team of personal trainers reminiscent of Ivan Drago’s entourage, was probably a successful intervention. We can imagine the scene at Camp David: Hard facts being dished out by Biden in training (like Drago’s 2100 psi punches), interrupted by long syringes into his arm filled with Risperidone (instead of anabolic steroids).

Does Biden clearly have dementia? Yes. Has it been known for years? Yes. Was this among Biden’s top performances in the past four years? Also, yes. Risperidone is a wonder-drug for controlling psychotic and dissociative episodes associated with Alzheimer’s, but its side effects include the very Parkinsonism that we so often see with him.

So what’s going on inside America’s deep state, or the DNC, or among the donor class, or the CIA, or any and all of the above? This is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

If there was anything like a surprise, it was the performance given by Donald Trump. He was polite, unobtrusive, and lacking in the over-the-top sardonicism which most definitely characterized his approaches in both the 2016 and 2020 debates. It was perhaps aimed at the very demographic which, in the present year, are ‘undecided’ voters. The odd debate rules which cut off the mic of the candidate ‘not allowed to speak’ absolutely aided Trump, (even though by most accounts it had been put in place to assist Biden), and perhaps this factor also played a role in the ‘taming’ of Trump.

Now these undecided voters are themselves a strange lot, which almost certainly guarantees that they are in the very category which concerned citizens would almost like to see banned from voting, or at the very least, pass a literacy test. As Americans, we have already had four years of Trump, and four years of Biden. If any would-be customer at the ice-cream line is still asking for tiny pink plastic spoon samples of either candidate, perhaps it’s just that ice-cream categorically isn’t for them, and they ought to stay home.

Be that as it may, Trump came off cool-headed, and collected. Naturally, both candidates are prone to cite figures and statistics which reflect particular ways of parsing the numbers, that in turn may or may not be genuine reflections of actual reality.

It wasn’t a surprise that senile Biden had difficulties remembering figures, facts, arguments, proper nouns, and English syntax, throughout the debate. Or that he would simply blank out at times, mouth agape, spittle forming at the corners, looking confusedly at his podium, his shoes, or imaginary objects in his periphery.

The insufferable Cenk Uygur, an unconvincing actor cum two-bit salesman, went so far as to blame CNN for using a split screen when Trump was speaking. This is because as Trump was speaking, instead of just cutting to/framing Trump, they continued to show the candidates side-by-side.

Cenk wasn’t upset that we have an unfit president, but that CNN didn’t bother to hide it. It was reminiscent of the ongoings in abusive households when the abusers want the surrounding community to think everything at home is kosher.

CNN, by the way, is a strange media organization in its relationship with Trump. A recording released by CIA asset/operative Tucker Carlson a few years ago revealed CNN’s then-president Jeff Zucker referred to Trump as ‘the boss’ in a phone call with Trump fixer, Michael Cohen as far back as 2016.

This suggested different things to different people, and could mean on the one hand that Trump was just another establishment politician, or, on the other, that there was indeed a split in the establishment and that counter-hegemonic forces up-high were backing Trump from within, i.e., “patriots are in control.” The hyper-reality simulacrum in the U.S. these days is certainly off the charts.

CNN’s high-intensity, unrelenting denunciations and paranoia over Trump over the years, which even made MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow blush, had the “reverse” (i.e. predictable) effect of launching Trump to hero status, or at least helping him considerably along the way. It’s almost as if the blowback was the goal.

Given the reality of things like this, Cenk’s rant may point to something larger at play. His take seems to have been that CNN’s role in this was just too convenient for Trump to not have been a matter of complicity or criminal negligence. While Cenk would probably publicly say ‘negligence’ if pushed, other more sinister possibilities no doubt rattled around his brain much like his peanut-sized brain rattles in his skull.

It wasn’t just that the camera also stayed on mouth-frothing, mind-blanked Biden while Trump spoke. It was that Trump was allowed to use his answering and rebuttal minutes to speak to any subject he wanted without interruption. He was furthermore allowed to ‘lie’ (speak inconvenient three-quarter truths) without being fact-checked. Lastly, the several-minute simulcast delay in the live broadcast (only seconds are technologically required) was believed by both DNC and RNC insiders to be an ‘out’ which would allow Biden-friendly forces at CNN to edit, in real-time, the incumbent’s performance so that we at home didn’t see the ugly truth: The Emperor Has No Mind.

After four years of following an active order to gaslight the American public and the world about Biden’s obviously deteriorated condition, the same print, internet, and television stenographers for power, in the harmonious unison of the Vienna Boys Choir, began suddenly to enchant us with the truth, in glorious vibrato, that Biden was not fit to run.

“And did Biden’s feet, in ancient times, walk upon Washington’s grass so green?”

The synchronised chorus used a particular word: PANIC. MSNBC said panic. WaPo said panic. The NYT said panic. The DNC is in ‘panic’. It actually isn’t, at least not because of this. Paradigmatically, yes – but this chapter in the broader story of the collapse of the Democrat Party, is characterised by its planfulness, not panic. The broader panic is that they are losing credibility in the eyes of the powers that be, whomever they are.

Somehow, and for some reason, something everyone not suffering from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) knew all along, was squeezed out of the toothpaste tube as if something new. Now, 40% of the voting population came to know something that the other 60% has known since April, 2019. The toothpaste can’t go back in the tube.

There is nothing natural about this, and yet the scripted nature of the whole ordeal is the most obvious point – a point so clear, that our subject here and in the forthcoming installment(s) – will absolutely not be dedicated to establishing such basic facts.

What we want to know is what is going on in the DNC, the CIA, AIPAC, the Deep State, the Donor Class, the crony Capitalists, the Technocrats, the secret Communists, the Bankers, the Ruling Class, the Globalists, the Intel/Info Elite, (insert your own power-analysis here) or whoever or whatever is running things in the U.S. (as it’s rarely if ever been measly elected officials, whom only on the brightest of days we can cleanly elect in to office). As far as terms go, the Ruling Class probably covers it all.

First, we will need to understand the relationship between competing strategies rolled out by the various would-be system managers – power juntas – and how these are presented to the ruling class as the various options: Team A with plan A, Team B with plan B, and so on, within the rubric of a broader agreed-upon grand-strategy, under which all competing management teams must frame their specific strategies, stratagems, and tactics.

Since the early 1990s, a period marked by the rise of ‘third-way’ politics under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the Western political system has been rebranded along the aesthetically and notionally progressive lines expected by that generation. However, this rebranding lacked genuinely progressive elements, (as defined by the old left), focusing instead on austerity, job outsourcing, strike-breaking, the importation of cheap third world labor, pink-washing in the polity, and regulatory tyranny masked as environmentalism. Metastatic cancer, after all, technically ‘progresses.’

We can add to this two other related phenomena: a.) the rise of the World Economic Forum, mirroring the ‘third-way’ ideology of New Labour in the UK, and the corollary NDLC in the U.S.; and b.) rise of the so-called ‘Rules Based Order’, an approach to IR based on unipower/unidirectional mandates which stand opposed to international law and treaties derived from mutual consent between sovereigns.

Second, we will need to analyze the particular managerial juntas in Beltway/MIC/IC power circles, which are the various technocratic management teams which jockey for power and position within a fixed and arbitrated system of the ruling class.

Third, and providing there may be some additional requirements to numerate, we will need to look at more paradigmatically fresh grand strategy, and a whole new potential vector for competing juntas to propose specific plans within the paradigm – which the ruling class may have to entertain, being promulgated by a new team outside the framework of the various failed strategies of the prior management juntas or teams. That much, hypothetically, would refer to Team Trump.

That third question is also fascinating, because it raises the question of whether and to what extent the Western ruling class is able, planful, part of, or prepared to execute new strategies within a new grand-strategy, in the aftermath of the failure to destroy Russia, contain China, launch a bio-medically induced economic reset, and more.

In conclusion, the first 2024 U.S. Presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden and challenger Donald Trump, while uneventful in itself, has sparked a seismic aftermath dominating headlines across the country: calls from within the Democratic camp for Biden to step aside.

Contrary to the mantra we are being hit over the head with, the debate’s lack of surprises underscores critical truths, and poses for us even more difficult questions, as we analyze the American political elite’s strategy leading up to November’s Election Day. The real intrigue lies in deciphering the DNC’s internal dynamics, and the broader competing geopolitical strategies at play and the various managerial juntas that promote them. It is here that we find the real ‘panic’.

Looking forward as we continue our investigation into “The Emperor Has No Mind”, the unfolding drama forces us to try to understand the DNC’s response, the influence of intelligence networks, and the potential for paradigm shifts in Western strategies in the wake of rising multipolarity and the end of the U.S. as a uniquely global hegemon.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -of-biden/

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New US govt official quits citing Biden's 'funding and enabling' of Gaza genocide

At least a dozen US officials have resigned since October in opposition to Washington's continued support of Israel's campaign of genocide

News Desk

JUL 3, 2024

Image
(Photo Credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The White House on 2 July was hit by a new resignation from an official opposing President Joe Biden's unrestrained support for the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“I am resigning today from my position as a Biden administration appointee in the Department of the Interior. As a Muslim American, I cannot continue working for an administration that ignores the voices of its diverse staff by continuing to fund and enable Israel's genocide of Palestinians,” Maryam Hassanein, the former special assistant and assistant secretary for land and minerals management, said in a letter posted on social media.

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“Instead of using US leverage to stop the killing, President Biden has continued funding this violence, while fueling hate crimes against Palestinian Americans by repeating anti-Arab tropes and outright lies,” Hassanein's letter adds.

Her resignation came just hours before 12 former US government officials who quit in opposition to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians issued a joint public statement recommending the White House “change course,” calling Biden's policy on Gaza “a failure and a threat to US national security” that “dehumanizes both Palestinians and Jews.”

“This failed policy has not achieved its stated objectives – it has not made Israelis any safer, it has emboldened extremists while it has been devastating for the Palestinian people, ensuring a vicious cycle of poverty and hopelessness, with all the implications of that cycle, for generations to come. As a group of dedicated Americans in service of our country, we insist that there is another way,” the joint statement reads.

“Our nation’s political and economic interests across the region have also been significantly harmed, while US credibility has been deeply undermined worldwide at a time we need it most, when the world is characterized by a new era of strategic competition … Who does not now laugh when Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken describes the ‘rules-based international order’ while simultaneously undermining it in favor of Israel?” the statement goes on to add.

Several US military and government officials have resigned since October in protest against Washington’s support of Israel. In February, US airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in protest to the official US position outside of Israel’s embassy in Washington, DC.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell said in a live stream before the act. After lighting himself on fire, he could be heard yelling “Free Palestine!” through the flames before collapsing.

https://thecradle.co/articles/new-us-go ... a-genocide
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 04, 2024 3:38 pm

Democrats No Longer Have an Excuse for Holding a Virtual Convention
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 03 Jul 2024

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Biden’s debate meltdown has Democrats scrambling, but they no longer have an excuse for holding a virtual nomination.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been planning a virtual, videocast , online convention like that occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic . In another carefully stage-managed event, the pro forma nomination of Joe Biden and the party platform approval was to take place prior to the terrestrial convention, avoiding any sort of disruption that might somehow make it inside the doors of Chicago’s United Center between August 19 and 22.

Indeed, anyone who actually bothered to watch the videocast would likely see no point to watching another big boring rubber stamp broadcast from Chicago.

The excuse for holding this event virtually, in advance of the terrestrial convention, was that the delegate-rich state of Ohio had an August 7 deadline for filing a candidate’s name to appear on the ballot. However, lost in all the news of the Democratic Party’s post-debate chaos is one detail—that this excuse for holding a virtual convention no longer exists. On June 2, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed a bill into law moving the state's filing deadline to September 1, 2024.

That development was little reported, and three weeks later, on June 24, the DNC voted to go ahead with the virtual convention, with 360 members voting yes, five no, and two abstaining. Why? What could be the reason aside from total control of a top-down process?

Democrats, meaning anyone willing to identify as such, are invited to submit “platform testimony ,” meaning statements as to what they’d like to see in the party platform, online. They have no way to talk to one another and no way of knowing whether their “testimony” is shared by others or whether it’s ever even seriously considered. If the composition of the platform committee is anywhere on the convention website, it’s very difficult to find.

There’ll be nothing like the messy vote on a resolution to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the 2012 convention.

That resolution required a two-thirds vote in the affirmative, but “yes” and “no” votes sounded at least equally divided on a voice vote, and the “no” votes were arguably louder. However, instead of calling for a roll call vote, Antonio Villaraigosa, then Mayor of Los Angeles and Convention Chair, announced that the “yes” votes had prevailed, and resounding boos rang out in Charlotte, North Carolina’s Spectrum Center.

There’ll be none of that this year.

Could Biden’s debate disaster force a real convention?

Three days after the Democrats voted to nominate and approve the platform virtually, Joe Biden stumbled through a debate with Donald Trump, often seeming to lose his train of thought and turning the Democrat Party nominating process inside out and upside down.

So what now for the virtual convention and the subsequent terrestrial convention in Chicago?

Bloomberg reported that the Democratic National Committee may arrange Biden’s virtual nomination as early as July 21, a month before the terrestrial convention, “to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance.” Once again, the goal seems to be total, top-down control.

However, although only Biden can choose to step down, it’s harder and harder to imagine that he and his family can withstand the din of high profile voices , beginning with the New York Times , and now more and more editorial boards , all calling on him to step down. Voices accusing Jill Biden and Biden’s other advisors of elder abuse are an undercurrent, not only on social media.

Short of an uprising of his pledged delegates, which is technically possible, but practically all but impossible, only Biden can step down.

Nevertheless, creating a “dignified exit” is now being widely discussed , and the New York Times reported it as a real possibility:

“While the campaign has forcefully rejected advice that Mr. Biden step aside for another candidate just weeks before the roll call vote to formalize his nomination, many Democrats, including some working for the president, said they did not think the door was yet closed on that possibility.

“But Mr. Biden is a proud man, and they said they believed that the odds of him trying to gut it out were still 4 or 5 to 1. The only way they said they could imagine him reversing course was if he could be afforded a dignified way out in which he could claim credit for ousting Mr. Trump in 2020, restoring the country and serving as a transition to the next generation.”

Would Biden step down before or after the virtual nomination roll call? No telling, but either way, the names of a slew of possible contenders are being bandied about every day, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and of course Vice President Kamala Harris.

Distressed donors and high profile Democrats have even gone so far as to inquire about what will become of Biden’s $91 million war chest if he steps down. Some say Kamala Harris will be able to use it, but only if she is the nominee.

Some writers and pundits are suggesting that there’ll be a real, contested convention in Chicago, with competing candidates, maybe even a good old-fashioned floor fight , as in conventions of old. However, there are no possibilities representing a populist surge, as Bernie Sanders did in 2016 and 2020. There’ll be nothing like the walkout that Bernie Sanders delegates staged in 2016 after their standard bearer called to nominate Hillary Clinton by acclamation, thus denying them the voice they would have had in a roll call vote.

The Democrats will nominate a Zionist, corporatist, militarist however this shakes out, but something closer to a real convention will at least give television viewers a drama to watch. They may even see the mass pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide protests planned for outside the convention, as social media users most undoubtedly will.

https://blackagendareport.com/democrats ... convention

Debate: What are elephant excrement/donkey dung ‘Double-Hater’ Millions to do?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 03 Jul 2024

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Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Getty Images

Cluster bombs of ‘alternative facts …’ Stampeding
Lies televised from lips of an iron-domed dunce—
Never tiring of lying … Versus bumbling, mumbling,
Curmudgeon making February 30th postmarked promises

See-thru Third Reich robes, like White Supreme Courtesans,
Two cruel and unusual ghouls—multibillionaire tools—
Trap and strap US in high-chairs— force-feeding us
Shovel-sized soundbites of elephant excrement/donkey dung

Another fossil-fueled, War House, charlatan chat, spewing
White phosphorus propaganda. Another Wall Street warlord-loved
Bull session. Another diatribe hoping to live rent-free in our heads;
Disregarding needs of The People

Another Pentagon pimp/War-profiteer pow-wow. Another War
Criminal confab. Another bomb, missile, drone, shell-shipping
Session. Another Hospital-razing, home-flattening, animal/elder-
Charring caucus rechristening children: “Collateral Damage …”

Another golden shower from fiscal cliffs of Capitalist Hill.
Another assurance trickle down works! And “The economy
is strong!”… Another ‘debt ceiling’ for
Tent and car sleeper cells … encampments and co-workers

Another forty-eight hours … And D.C. sun lifts itself like
Peoples’ Power writ large and lovely!

It’s the Poor Peoples’ Campaign in Million Worker March garb
Exuding Occupy- George Floyd Summer- Striketober- Arab
Spring-March On Washington
Energy

Reminding us:
Robust, multiple movements, militant millions-strong are Our
Wind; Our sun; Our water; for iridescent futures … We dare
Dream …


© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

https://blackagendareport.com/debate-wh ... illions-do
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 05, 2024 4:02 pm

Regime Media Utters the Un-utterable

SIMPLICIUS
JUL 05, 2024
It’s quite shocking what’s happening in American politics right now, but only because processes long buried ‘behind the scenes’ have come to the forefront like never before. The Democrats and establishment in general are panicking amid the crisis to extricate Biden from his roost. Listen to the frank discussion in the regime media below, which is eye-opening in its blunt admissions: (Video at link.)

Meanwhile, the Economist debuted another stunning headline and cover:

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https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/ ... t-withdraw

Uncannily they admit in the opening sentence to the coverup they themselves were party to for the duration of the stolen term:

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Recall their earlier coverage:

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The headlines now appearing are more shocking than ever—what would have passed for The Onion or Babylon Bee is now standard fare at the top regime corporate news agencies. From CNN:

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There are two telling revelations from recent events: the first is how the regime is using the current political crisis merely to preserve its own power, and find ways to save face and shield itself, rather than even remotely acknowledging the utter damage being done to the country and its people by what they’ve wrought. This includes the national security damage of having a clearly cognitively disabled ‘leader’ in power, whom they’ve protected up to now. And then there’s the fact they’ve compromised years worth of American development, letting society wither and degrade at the hands of a clearly demented sockpuppet. The country has been utterly wracked by historic crises, from hyperinflation to crime and drugs, rampant illegal migrant invasion, and more—and this corrupt self-serving and self-saving political class has knowingly enabled a puppet to preside over it all, who was mentally incapable of doing anything about it.

The second mother of all revelations is the now openly verbalized reality that an oligarchic ‘donor class’ and deepstate actually run the country. Last time we saw Axios make the blatant acknowledgment that Biden’s rule is at the behest of an oligarch class. Now, everywhere you turn are headlines describing the ‘donor class’ as scrambling into secret conclaves to discuss some coordinated strategy on shooing off their formaldehyde-preserved commander-in-chief.

Over and over we hear the “donors” have decided this, or are going to do that—and it becomes clear that the so-called ‘Democracy’ we’ve been bamboozled with is a figment, and in fact is nothing more than a kind of auction for the elites, where the highest-bid puppets are given privilege to entertain billionaires like Ari Emanuel—the Democrat ‘megadonor’ who’s not only brother to chief Obama-handler Rahm Emanuel, but son to arch terrorist Benjamin Emanuel of the infamous Israeli Irgun terror group:

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The fact that a secret camarilla of donors (read: billionaire oligarchs) is meeting behind closed doors to decide on the presidential candidacy of the United States tells you everything you need to know about how the country actually functions, who holds the real power, and whose interests are really at the center of all political decisions.

Today’s New York magazine’s story surprisingly covered the orchestrated smokescreen while making some shocking admissions:

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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article ... biden.html

Read the hair-raising excerpts below, which first describe Biden’s deterioration:

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The almost too-big-to-ask question which has loomed over America like an extinction-level asteroid is consequently floated: Who is actually in charge of this country?

Then comes another unthinkable: years of QAnon level conspiracies are openly being validated on the pages of a mainstream corporate rag:

“There has to be a secret group of high-level government leaders who control Biden and who will soon set into motion their plan to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.”

Years of covering for the cabal has finally come full circle and all the most uncomfortable—and patently dangerous—questions are now being publicly asked.

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In fact what the article details is in some parts a long-standing streak of Normalcy Bias amongst the intelligentsia, too horrified to utter into words—or even admit to themselves—what they were witnessing:

When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that. Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”

And again, that fateful, smoldering question (emphasis my own):

Those who encountered the president in social settings sometimes left their interactions disturbed. Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names. At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all.

It goes on to describe what in effect is literally the live ventriloquism of a sitting American president by a bureaucratic deepstate (of mostly the ‘dual-passport’ variety, it seems. Is that another “rightwing conspiracy theory”, or are those all being quietly written off now?):

Others told me the president was becoming increasingly hard to get ahold of, even as it related to official government business, the type of things any U.S. president would communicate about on a regular basis with high-level officials across the world. Biden instead was cocooned within mounting layers of bureaucracy, spoken for more than he was speaking or spoken to.

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An NY Times article about Biden’s meeting with a roundtable of Democrat governors gives us another eye-opening look:

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https://archive.ph/s7KPf

Read the highlighted below:

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Worry not, folks—it’s only Biden’s rotten brain that is totally gone, his health is fine. After all, according to top Ukrainian propagandists, it was a Russian brain-beam responsible for Biden’s mental hiccups:

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Relieved yet?



These wider developments are something now increasingly obvious across the world, embedded into the tactics of the global establishment:

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The only thing on the regime’s mind is self-preservation of its power, nothing else matters.

In fact, the best theory proposed thus far for why they pulled ", I think I can parse that: 'The Jews!"the rug from under Biden just now is the establishment was hoping to prolong the charade of Biden’s ‘competence’ to buy themselves time to derail Trump’s campaign via the criminal convictions ploy. They had hoped that piling felonies on him would tarnish Trump’s ratings such that Biden would have nothing to worry about, and the act could continue on unchallenged. But since plan A didn’t work, and they realized Trump may be here to stay, the only thing left was plan B: throw Biden under the bus and swap him for someone that can go blow-for-blow against Trump without soiling his or her pants.

With each wantonly corrupt step, the Democrats are undermining the nation’s already-fragile trust in ‘Democracy’. People are becoming awakened like never before to the naked sham of the country’s political process. It has been exposed as nothing more than a moneyed pageant for a detached class of elites, unbeholden to citizens’ interests or any principles—moral or otherwise.

On that note, Happy 4th! Drink up, for it could be the last.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/reg ... -utterable

There is indeed a whiff of conspiracy in this piece, " a bureaucratic deepstate (of mostly the ‘dual-passport’ variety", I think I can parse that: 'The Jews!' jfc... As though 4.3M in donations, perfectly legal according to those watchdogs of democracy, the Supremes, don't do the trick. All this 'deep state' jive, guess what, there's one in every nation, which provide experience and continuity of policy. It's just that here at the center of the capitalist empire 'policy' reflects the wants and desires of the Owning Class, and that ain't just the relative handful of billionaires(though they do have outsized influence) but includes millionaires, which reaches down into the upper middle class. And yes, a majority of them do want Biden, at least as a figurehead, because he's obedient and predictable. They don't want Trump because he's a loose cannon at a time their hegemony is at great risk and the wiggle room which existed in Trump's first term has evaporated as they have double-downed' themselves into a corner.

'Simple' gets his rw talking points in, 'Jews and Hollywood' but they're just rich assholes, just as the extractive industries/ racists/ religious bigot rich assholes back Trump. There is a common denominator here....

Plan 'B' seems weak because they ain't got nobody, a Kennedy nomination could win it for them he's unpredictable too and equally has some 'funny ideas'.

I will not at all be surprised if 'Plan C' gets the call, the 'Chavis option'... Careful with those Big Macs, Donnie, give your bodyguards a fat bonus and more promises.

Whatever plan gets the call there will be trouble. Perhaps lots of it, but not to the degree of civil war except in the sorts of minds that consider the Jan 6 riot at the capitol an 'insurrection'.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Jul 06, 2024 2:51 pm

How Many People Knew About Biden? Turns Out, A Lot
Posted on July 5, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Biden, whether or not he and his claque are willing to face up to it, is in the blood-in-the-water phase of a fight for survival. There is no way to come out of this alive, in the political sense. The press and pundits are keeping up the drumbeat of demands that Biden must not run in 2024. The criticism, expressed as concern, has hit the level of a legitimacy crisis.

A big element of the campaign to stick the knife in and twist is making it irrefutable that Biden did not merely have a bad night, but has been deteriorating for some time. Tom Neuburger provides some examples from the historically Biden-friendly CNN and influential Politico

To that we can add even more pointed warnings, from the spooks, who were in a position to have close tabs on Biden. CIA whisperer Sy Hersh wrote earlier this week (emphasis mine):

The real disgrace is not only Biden’s, but those of the men and women around him who have kept him more and more under wraps. He is a captive, and as he rapidly diminished over the past six months. I have been hearing for months about the increasing isolation of the president, from his one-time pals in the Senate, who find that he is unable to return their calls. Another old family friend, whose help has been sought by Biden on key issues since his days as vice president, told me of a plaintive call from the president many months ago. Biden said the White House was in chaos and he needed his friend’s help. The friend said he begged off and then told me, with a laugh: “I would rather have a root canal procedure every day than go to work there.” A long retired Senate colleague was invited by Biden to join him on a foreign trip, and the two played cards and shared a drink or two on the Air Force One flight going out. The senator was barred by Biden’s staff from joining the return flight home.

And another data point. Tucker’s giddiness when discussing Biden’s decline is unseemly. But don’t let noise crowd out his signal. Readers in comments and via e-mail have said that the press in Europe and China have been unsparing about Biden’s condition, and thus his debate performance was not as much of a surprise abroad as at home:
MUST SEE: Tucker Carlson discusses the Democrats' purported surprise following the debate, despite widespread assertions in 2019 that Joe Biden was experiencing dementia, yet no action was taken. #tuckercarlson #biden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1807472299139801345
And while on the topic of the foreign press being less circumspect, even allowing for Sky News being part of the Murdoch empire, this fresh clip is pretty pointed:



Now to the main event.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies

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This will be fairly short for the holiday weekend. I’m staying with one of the week’s two big stories, the press explosion of concern over Biden’s condition after years lockstep denial.

The week’s other big story — what’s going on in the Court and how that relates to the Project 2025 plan — that we’ll reserve for more thoughtful coverage. We touched on it briefly here, but the topic is massive.

Hint: I’m going to veer away from most people’s analysis — in that I’ll be much more specific. This country is not a republic at the moment. But what are we?

Coupling Project 2025 with decisions from Dobbs through Trump gives a strikingly clear picture of where we’re headed, even absent a change of Occupant.

After literally years of close study, I think I finally see how all the Right Wing pieces fit together. It’s different, though just as bad, as what you’ve been hearing. And we’ve been on this path for longer than most of you have been alive.

But that’s for later. Stay tuned.

Links

These links are all of a piece. They add to this earlier piece.

• Carl Bernstein: Sources say concerns about Biden have been growing for a year(CNN)

This matters since it speaks to the White House cover-up. He doesn’t make clear who knew and who didn’t, exactly, but awareness of Biden’s diminished condition went beyond a knowledgeable few.



Well, these are people, several of them, who are very close to President Biden, who love him, have supported and been among … among them are some people who have raised a lot of money for him.

And they are adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not a one off, that there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed.

And what’s so significant is the people that this is coming from, and also how many people around the president, are aware of such incidents, including some reporters, incidentally, who who have witnessed some of them.

But here we see tonight [when the president gave prepared remarks], as these people say, President Biden at his absolute best.

And yet these people who have supported him, loved him, campaigned for him, see him often, say that in the last six months particularly there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline and physical infirmity.

There’s more to the interview than this. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already. Note “including some reporters.” This confirms lies.

File under “Gods, what a mess.”

• ‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate (Politico)

For those who wonder who’s acting as gate-keepers — colloquially, “who’s running the show” — when Biden is indisposed, this Politico piece names several key names. It walks on eggshells to get there, but do read it through.

Over the course of his presidency, Joe Biden’s small clutch of advisers have built an increasingly protective circle around him, limiting his exposure to the media and outside advice — an effort to manage public perceptions of the oldest person to ever hold the office and tightly control his political operation.

But inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate, with the senior team’s management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”

That’s the opening. Notice the switch in the second paragraph, from the focus on the “senior team’s management of the president” to, inexplicable, the president’s temper: “people are scared shitless of him.”

Clearly, Politico wanted to drop this second idea into the opening paragraphs, and do it without saying why. They’re not the first, by the way, to comment on Biden’s temper.

As to who might be running interference and, perhaps, acting as occasional Biden regents, Politico spreads the answer through the second half of the piece (emphasis mine):

No one has done more to keep the president isolated — and shielded from tough conversations — than his wife, first lady Jill Biden, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens.

[…]

A Democratic operative in frequent communication with the White House and the campaign said suggestions can be quickly dismissed. “If I’m talking to Anita [Dunn], and I say, ‘what about X?’ She’s quick to say, ‘The president’s not going to do that. No chance.’ It shuts off options, yes, but it also [lets] you move more quickly because they know him so well.”

[…]

From the earliest months of his term, Biden was carefully managed by senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, [Ron] Klain and others. After a campaign spent largely inside his Delaware home, the president remained in a protective bubble at the behest of senior staff and family, who believed it was the best way to manage the president’s health given the ongoing Covid-19 risk and his reelection chances, according to five people familiar but not authorized to publicly discuss internal decisions.

Bernal and Tomasini, in particular, have grown particularly close to the president and first lady. […]

In my research, the names that come up the most as the curating crew are Jill Biden, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. But as Politico and Bernstein point out, a great many others knew what was going on.

File under “The public should also be told. Right? Right?”

The Fall of Athens and Rome

Two points before we conclude:

• When the Roman Republic fell, it wasn’t a one-day job. It took place over time, several generations, starting with the Gracchi reforms and murders in the late second century BC, through Marius, Sulla and Caesar. Over time, the institutions themselves were changed, both by the people and leaders in deadly contention.

We’ve walked more than half of that path already ourselves. We were a republic. We’re now in transition from that. Bush v Gore is not the original Original Sin, but it’s one of them, and that has been embraced. Bush, you recall, was the author of our modern Surveillance State, which was never rolled back.

Image
Democrats embrace Bush in more ways than one

We’re not a republic, though many are denying that fact. What are we today? Stay tuned.

Those who have access to the Great Courses “History of Ancient Rome” by the excellent Garrett Fagan should listen to the story of the transformation. Start with Lesson 20. You’ll see what I mean about changing institutions from with no path to return.

• The lesson the Athenian Empire learned in its (literally) ill-advised war with Sparta was simple: You can’t be have an empire abroad and democracy at home. Just can’t be done. Plato despaired of democracy, having witnessed its fall, one reason he wrote the Republic.

Music

Some soothing Dave Brubeck. This piece grows from a delight tune he wrote called “Brandenburg Gate.” (YouTube can serve up a few live versions of that.)

This version is “Brandenburg Gate Revisited”, played by quartet with full orchestration. Did you know Brubeck was classically trained? He studied under Darius Milhaud. It shows in this piece.

Click the image to play, or use the link above. Enjoy.



https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07 ... a-lot.html

******

Biden: ‘I’m Running the World’
July 6, 2024

The comment by the sitting U.S. president in Friday’s interview has been ignored by the mainstream, but its megalomania is at the heart of why Joe Biden is defying his party and remaining in the race, writes Joe Lauria.

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Biden interview Friday night. (ABC/YouTube screenshot)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News



About midway through what was billed as the most consequential interview of Joe Biden’s political career, he uttered the most consequential words in the interview: “I am running the world.”

Those five words explain why he refuses to withdraw from the race and confirm what most Americans deny, but which most of the world knows: U.S. presidents act as world emperors.

The interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos was supposed to be Biden’s chance to show the country he is mentally fit to remain in the presidency and run for a second term, at the end of which, if he is still alive, he’d be 86 years old.

Biden is trying to recover from a debate performance on June 27 that showed 43.7 million television viewers the debilitated state of his mind. On the whole, he was as addled in the debate as he has been for years now, but not live in front of such an immense audience before.

The reaction from the Democratic Party and its media was unprecedented: pundits and editorialists; Democratic members of Congress; party political operatives and analysts demanded in apparent, coordinated uniformity: Stop being selfish Joe and quit the race so Donald Trump doesn’t win.

But it’s had the opposite effect. Biden has resisted the chorus from the party elite: “I’m not going anywhere,” he told a rally on Friday, saying erroneously he’d beat Trump again in 2020. Earlier he met with Democratic state governors at the White House. He told them he was fine. “It’s just my brain,” he said, according to The New York Times.

And to show the public he’s still got his marbles he sat down with Stephanopoulos in a taped interview, the subject of which was only his brain.

“GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit– cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not– and that’s not hi– sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world..

Madeleine Albright was right. And every single day, for example, today before I came out here, I’m on the phone with– with the prime minister of– well, anyway, I shouldn’t get into detail, but with Netanyahu. I’m on the phone with the new prime minister of England.

I’m workin’ on what we were doin’ with regard to– in Europe with regard to expansion of NATO and whether it’s gonna stick. I’m takin’ on Putin. I mean, every day there’s no day I go through there not those decisions I have to make every single day.”


Biden thinks he’s running the world and he’s not gonna give it up. No matter that he’s losing his mind for all to see. No matter that he is fully supporting an ongoing genocide in Gaza. No matter that he provoked and keeps expanding a conflict in Ukraine that is heading towards nuclear confrontation with Russia.

Biden is obsessed with power — with the power of “running the world.” And he won’t let go.

America is the first world empire. The U.S. president is the first world emperor. The debate to win the emperorship between Biden and Trump, the “stable genius” deranged in his own right, was an end-of-empire spectacle, as though it were Caligula debating Nero.

The rest of the world shudders in apprehension at what will come of this.



https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/06/b ... the-world/.

*******

Fact-checking Biden’s high-stakes ABC interview
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Published 9:36 PM EDT, Fri July 5, 2024

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President Joe Biden speaks during an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in Madison, Wisconsin, on July 5. ABC News
CNN

President Joe Biden sat down with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos for a high-stakes interview on Friday, the week after a poor debate performance prompted questions about his fitness for the presidency and calls for him to withdraw from the 2024 race.

Here is a fact check of some of Biden’s claims in the interview.

New York Times polling
Biden claimed that “the New York Times had me down 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is."

Facts First: Biden’s claim that he gained a point in New York Times polling after the debate is false. In fact, the Times’ post-debate poll, conducted with Siena College, showed Biden doing three points worse against former President Donald Trump than he had done in the final Times/Siena poll before the debate.

Biden’s specific numbers were also wrong. He was not “down 10 points before the debate” in Times/Siena polling. In fact, he was down three percentage points with likely voters and six percentage points with registered voters. In the Times/Siena poll after the debate, those margins grew to six percentage points with likely voters and nine percentage points with registered voters.

Biden did acknowledge his uncertainty about the data when he said “or whatever the hell it is.” But he was wrong, nonetheless.

Sen. Mark Warner and the presidency
When Stephanopoulos noted a Friday report in The Washington Post that said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is trying to put together a group of fellow Democratic senators to ask Biden to withdraw from the election, Biden responded, “Well, Mark is a good man. We’ve never had that – he also tried to get the nomination too. Mark’s not – Mark and I have a different perspective. I respect him.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim that “he also tried to get the nomination too” needs context. Warner has never run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He did make extensive preparations for a possible run for the 2008 nomination, including hiring staff and raising millions for a political action committee, but he announced in October 2006 that he had decided not to launch a campaign after all. And he has not sought the nomination since then.

Biden did run in that 2008 presidential primary, which was won by Barack Obama.

Trump and bleach
Biden repeated his familiar claim that Trump “is a guy who told us to put bleach in our arms to deal with Covid.”

Facts First: Biden’s claim is misleading. Trump never portrayed his ill-informed and widely denounced musings about using disinfectants to address Covid-19 as advice to Americans. Rather, Trump was talking about the possibility of scientists conducting tests of this idea.

Trump made his remarks, at a press briefing in April 2020 after Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, outlined tests in which he said sunlight or disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the coronavirus on surfaces and in saliva.

When Trump jumped shortly afterward to the dangerous idea of injecting disinfectants inside people’s bodies, he said: “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see.”

Trump’s comments were slammed by medical experts as highly dangerous, and they prompted urgent warnings from public health authorities and companies that sell household disinfectants. But he never actually said he was suggesting citizens go and use such products.

Trump and jobs
Biden repeated another one of his regular campaign claims about his Republican opponent, saying Trump was the only president other than Herbert Hoover “who lost more jobs than he created.”

Facts First: This is true, but Biden left out some important context. While there was a loss of about 2.7 million jobs from the beginning of Trump’s four-year term to the end, there was a gain of about 6.7 million jobs until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country about three years into that term.

Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March 2020 and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. The US then started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million from May 2020 through December 2020, but not enough to make up the massive early-pandemic losses.

https://us.cnn.com/2024/07/05/politics/ ... index.html
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 07, 2024 5:48 pm

As New Campaign Implores Him to ‘Pass the Torch,’ Biden Rejects Calls to Drop Out
Posted on July 7, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

Conor here: The group behind the effort to push Biden out, “Pass the Torch, Joe,” is only described on its website as “a network of Democratic activists, organizers, and voters who came together around the belief that nothing matters as much as making sure Democrats have a ticket that can beat Donald Trump.” I wonder how the Democrats will try to preserve this way of doing business for future elections.

By Jake Johnson, a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday delivered a defiant response to those within the Democratic Party urging him to drop out of the 2024 race, characterizing his abysmal debate performance against Donald Trump as a “bad episode” rather than validation of longstanding concerns about his age and cognitive health.


At a rally in Wisconsin and in a later sit-down interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, Biden acknowledged his poor debate showing but said emphatically that he’s staying in the race, a message that came as Democratic activists and organizers launched a campaign imploring the president to step aside in the interest of ensuring Trump’s defeat in November.

“I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me,” Biden declared Friday, downplaying recent polling data showing him faring worse against Trump than potential Democratic alternatives, including Vice President Kamala Harris.

Asked how he would feel if he stayed in the race and Trump—a would-be authoritarian who’s plotting a devastating attack on basic freedoms and the planet—won another four years in the White House, Biden suggested he would be at peace “as long as I gave it my all.”

“That’s what this is all about,” the president said.

Hours before the ABC News interview, a network of Democratic organizers, activists, and voters teamed up to launch the “Pass the Torch” campaign in a coordinated attempt to push Biden to “make good” on his 2020 pledge to be a “transition” president.

“President Joe Biden has achieved great things. His administration led us out of the pandemic and has been rebuilding our economy, standing up to corporate greed, taking urgent climate action, and so much more—domestically, he is arguably the most accomplished progressive Democratic president in generations,” the campaign’s website states.

“All of that—and much, much more—will be lost if Donald Trump takes back the presidency,” the website continues. “Democrats need the strongest possible ticket to maximize our chances of winning in November. It has become very clear, based on both long-term polling and the recent debate, that Democrats’ current ticket is not the strongest one we can put forward.”

The campaign includes a petition urging Democratic members of Congress and delegates to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to join calls for the president to step aside.


Thus far, five sitting Democratic lawmakers—Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), and Angie Craig (D-Minn.)—have urged Biden to drop out of the race, but more are expected to do so in the coming days as the party’s August convention approaches.

The Washington Postreported Friday that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is “attempting to assemble a group of Democratic senators to ask President Biden to exit the presidential race.” Earlier in the week, Reutersreported that “there are 25 Democratic members of the House of Representatives preparing to call for Biden to step aside if he seems shaky in coming days.”

Major Democratic donors, meanwhile, have “undertaken a number of initiatives to pressure” Biden to drop out of the race, according toThe New York Times.

“A group of them is working to raise as much as $100 million for a sort of escrow fund, called the Next Generation PAC, that would be used to support a replacement candidate,” the Times reported. “If Mr. Biden does not step aside, the money could be used to help down-ballot candidates, according to people close to the effort.”

But Biden still has the support of top congressional Democrats, with both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) backing the president in the wake of the debate.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the upper chamber’s leading progressive, has also declined to join calls for Biden to end his reelection bid.

“He’s not a great debater, he’s not necessarily a great speaker,” Sanders told Semafor. “People are just gonna have to say: Okay, you know what? Yeah, he’s old. Yeah, he’s not as articulate as he should be. But you’re voting for somebody whose policies will impact your life.”

“Biden is the candidate,” the senator added. “I suspect he will be the candidate. I’ll do my best to get him elected.”

House progressives, too, have thus far not backed the push for Biden to drop out and pave the way for an alternative candidate.

“There has been not a peep from the Squad or the other members of Congress known for barnstorming progressive activism,” Slate’s Alexander Sammon noted Saturday. “The reason is that the question of whether Biden should run again is an internecine fight within the centrist wing of the party. Joe Biden has, for his lengthy, decadeslong career, always been the man in the middle, if not slightly to the right, of the Democratic continuum.”

“Now many of the same centrists who previously pushed for Biden are freaking out about his ability to win the election,” Sammon wrote. “There’s no real upside for Squad members to put themselves in the line of fire during an already bitter public deliberation.”

The Timesreported late Friday that Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos appears to have done little to change the minds of people on either side of the question.

“A handful of current and former Democratic officials who had called on Mr. Biden to end his reelection campaign said the interview had done little, or even nothing, to address their concerns,” the Times observed. “Reliable supporters of the president’s reelection campaign similarly fanned out to television networks, declaring once more that they were sticking with Mr. Biden.”

“Other Democrats who had raised concerns about the president’s performance, but had not gone as far as to call for Mr. Biden to drop out, said the interview did not significantly change their views of his candidacy,” the newspaper continued.

Doggett, who was the first congressional Democrat to urge Biden to step aside, toldCNN following Biden’s Friday interview that “the need for him to step aside is more urgent tonight than when I first called for it on Tuesday.”

The Texas Democrat warned that “every day he delays” dropping out “makes it more difficult for a new person to come on board who can defeat Donald Trump.”

Biden, Doggett added, “does not want his legacy to be that he’s the one who turned our country over to a tyrant.”

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07 ... p-out.html

This begs the question, 'Do the Dems have anyone who can beat Trump? Damned if ya do....

******

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Saying Democracy Is In Jeopardy In America Is Like Saying Beaches Are In Jeopardy In Wyoming

Saying democracy is in jeopardy in America is like saying beach front properties are in jeopardy in Wyoming. Your country is run by a few billionaires and government agencies. You don’t get a real vote, and even if you did you’re all propagandized anyway. It’s not a real thing.

Caitlin Johnstone
July 6, 2024



Liberals will often say you are privileged if you don’t care who wins the US election.

Actually, you’re privileged if you DO care. You think people in Gaza give a fuck whether Biden or Trump is genociding them? You think the US empire will be any less murderous and tyrannical with a (D) or an (R) over it?



Saying democracy is in jeopardy in America is like saying beach front properties are in jeopardy in Wyoming. Your country is run by a few billionaires and government agencies. You don’t get a real vote, and even if you did you’re all propagandized anyway. It’s not a real thing.



It’s actually pretty obnoxious to live in the imperial core and yet spend most of your political energy fixating on a presidential race whose outcome will have no effect on the murderousness and tyranny of the imperial war machine abroad. Focus on opposing the empire itself.

“Foreign policy” gets treated as just one of many issues in the politics of the imperial core, but it’s actually almost all of the issues. The overwhelming majority of the empire’s abusiveness happens outside the borders of the US and its pale-complexioned allies.



Note the date on the tweet below. Normal people were talking about this shit five years ago.
Biden’s Brain Is Swiss Cheese And It’s Creepy That We’re Not Talking About It
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone

·
Follow

9 min read
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Sep 15, 2019
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Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, according to the activist group Peace Now.

One of the leaders of Israel’s settlement movement, Daniella Weiss, explained the push to expand West Bank settlements in remarkably frank language during an interview with The New Yorker back in November:

“In Israel, there’s a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years. The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”

That one paragraph right there will teach you more about the present-day realities of Israel and Palestine than an entire year of watching CNN. It’s horrid, and it’s jarring to hear it spoken out loud in a favorable way… but it’s true.

The “two-state solution” that mainstream western liberals keep babbling about is a complete lie. There is no two-state solution as long as the entity known as Israel continues to exist in the way that it exists. Until there is a complete overhaul of everything the Zionist entity is and always has been, saying you support a Palestinian state is no more a “solution” than saying Palestinians can grow wings and fly away to Narnia.



The main arguments for supporting Democrats these days all revolve around pretending really really hard that the capitalist warmongering ecocidal tyranny of mainstream liberalism is significantly different from the capitalist warmongering ecocidal tyranny of Trumpism.



To be a Democrat in 2024 is to spend half your time praying November gets here before Israel starts a full scale war with Lebanon and the other half praying November gets here before your president’s brains start visibly leaking out his ears.



The central political argument of the mainstream so-called “moderate” is that we can solve our problems by working collaboratively with the giant corporations, banks and imperialist interests who are causing all our problems.



Think about the manic, frenzied way that western politicians, pundits and celebrities focused on unconfirmed reports of rapes on October 7, and their complete lack of interest in all the reports that have been coming out about Israel using rape as an instrument of torture.

Why the discrepancy? Is it just political bias, or is it something uglier as well? Do Israel apologists perhaps focus on one set of rape allegations with such freakish intensity because they know that it resonates with generations of superstitious paranoia in white societies about dark-skinned men wanting to rape white women? That it appeals to deeply racist and xenophobic notions that dark-skinned foreigners are going to come to your cities and begin raping your women if they are not controlled or exterminated?

The gibbering, shrieking hysteria that Israel apologists have demonstrated toward one set of rape allegations while ignoring much more well-evidenced ones perpetrated by Israel suggests there’s a lot more going on there besides one narrative being more favorable to one side than another. It points to something deeply unwholesome lurking just below the surface in our society, and the fact that it’s being knowingly inflamed and exploited by Israel’s supporters shows how deeply depraved these people are.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/07 ... n-wyoming/
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 09, 2024 5:22 pm

The Biden Donor Convention
Posted on July 9, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. Tom Neuburger’s latest on “What to do about Biden” raises a lot of interesting points for discussion, even if yours truly does not necessarily agree with them. The one that bothers me the most is the premise that voters should have a say. Operationally, with the primaries past, there is no mechanism by which this can happen. On top of that, it has long been evident that the Democrats regard regular voters as mere chumps, to be used and then tossed aside. The party does not support policies that the majority of Americans, and not just self-identified Dems, want, starting with higher minimum wages, strengthening Medicare and Social Security, taxing the rich, and cutting military spending. The party cheated like crazy to beat Sanders and then did not even deign to toss any policy bones to his backers. They also employed incredibly aggressive methods to bar primary competitors to Biden, most of all RFK, Jr. and even frontally declared that Biden was the candidate, no opposition allowed.

And as for legitimate-looking, feel-good conventions, come on. Trump had an absolutely awful convention in 2016, where his team had difficulty getting anyone other than members of his family to appear on the stage with him. And recall the horrible and protracted fight he had with the father of the deceased Gold Star soldier? Didn’t keep him from winning.

And as to the deal Biden might take, I’d hazard to the reverse of what Tom suggests. The Bidens appear to spend at the limit of their means and then some. A contact who has a very fine eye (as in points out the Bidens own expensive-to-maintain house, among other lifestyle indicators) estimates it would take $200 million to get Biden to go away, as in that is what it would cost to keep him and his extended family at the standard to which they have become accustomed, as well as pay for legal bills, particularly Hunter’s.

By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies

The Donor Convention is happening as we speak — the behind-the-scenes (sort of) discussion being had by big money Party donors and grandees to (a) force Biden to either resign or withdraw, and (b) figure out who should replace him.

The takeaway: None of this includes voters, except indirectly. (Questions like “Can Harris beat Trump?” include voters indirectly, by guessing their choices.)

The problem: Even though everyone in the Party seems to want to beat Trump, including most Party-adjacent voters, some may feel miffed at the obvious undemocratic nature of the process and thus stay away. At this point the Party needs all the votes it can get. That’s a hard circle to square.

Candidate Requirements

What are the requirements for the candidate in this process? I think there are four:

Donors must approve of that person and give freely to her or his race.
Party office-holders — House members and senators, especially those up for re-election — must fully support the choice.
The press must also fully support the choice. No more talk about “uncertain futures.” No more “Dems in disarray.”
Voters, both Democrat-adjacent and true independents, must think either
• The donors chose well, or
• Voters had a real say in the process.
All these seem required, but especially 1 and 4. When the donors decide to whom to open their wallets — and do so together — the Party and press will follow. Nervous Democrats needn’t worry about them.

But to voters, the process can’t look too undemocratic. As Ryan Grim wrote, “The key for an open convention to be legitimate in the eyes of the public is that it has to feel open.”

Grim is exactly right. A product can’t just be good for you; it has to feel good for you too. That’s why they put fizz in some toothpaste brands: It fizzes; that means it’s working. Of course, the fizz is often hydrogen peroxide, which does provide benefit. But it also feels beneficial, and that’s what moves product.

If the various candidates and their allies are on TV regularly and giving speeches on their behalf, with regular breaking-news around endorsements from big-wigs, unions, environmental groups, etc., it will feel like what we understand today as authentically real and democratic: reality TV.

Reality TV. Why would that work?

The spectacle will captivate global attention and create a bond between the viewer and the stars of the spectacle – especially if it seems like social media sentiment is playing a real role in how things are unfolding. If that sentiment is seen as helping choose the next nominee, Trump is toast. If Democratic bosses anoint somebody, that person is toast.

Not sure I’m as confident in the outcome as Grim is, but I agree the process has to feel right to voters, or few will buy into it.

Intelligence Community Speaks

I would be remiss in not saying that the “vote” of the intelligence community matters as well. They’ve already weighed in at least twice, and they don’t want Biden.

The first time was September of last year. David Ignatius is as spook-adjacent as a reporter can get. In 2023 he wrote in the Washington Post, “President Biden should not run again in 2024”. His reason, Biden’s two “liabilities”: his age and Kamala Harris.

After all, if every donor knew early that Biden was frail (as Krystal Ball said on her show), did the spook state not also know? Ignatius and his whisperers may have changed their mind about Harris, but not about Joe.

The second time came just this week. Matt Taibbi wrote this about Senator Mark Warner (subscriber post; emphasis added): “The [Washington] Post report said the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, was planning to gather prominent Democrats to ask Biden to consider stepping down. The optics of the elected official with perhaps the closest ties to the intelligence community dropping that news so shortly before Biden’s biggest televised interview since the debate were not hard to decipher.”

Court-watchers and King Lear’s “God’s spies,” please take note. Do you think they want Trump? The IC gets a vote too.

How Donors Could End Biden’s Reign

Before I say this, remember, I don’t have a horse in the Democratic Party race. There’s no real progressive option. I do want the strongest candidate though, and I’d like it soon. To that end, I offer this.

If every donor agreed that Ms. Somebody Else is their choice, the way to remove Biden and the people who’ve stiffened his spine is simple and clear: Refuse to finance his and his family’s retirement.

You know what I mean. No library money, fewer speeches, a total cold shoulder from all the big money types. It’s not even a bribe; it’s a post facto carrot that’s also a perfect stick. Even the Court says post facto tipping’s all right.

And it would work. Every modern ex-president would take that deal. The Bidens and their closest friends, if they choose right, would sail to the islands of sun on boats made of gold, surrounded by flowers and praise.

And we, the public, would know who our choices are … finally.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07 ... ntion.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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