The whole country has lost its bleeping mind. I see that the Dump Biden Hysteria is back with a vengeance. Republicans, meanwhile, feel invincible. And through all this, the polls don’t seem to be budging.
I missed this yesterday — How J.D. Vance Won Over Donald Trump. A lot of the Right really didn’t want J.D. Vance. “It was uncertain down to the final hours, with a frantic lobbying effort until the last possible moment by anti-Vance forces, including Rupert Murdoch and his allies, with some of it playing out in public.”
So what made the difference?
When word got back to Tucker Carlson a few weeks ago that Mr. Trump might be wavering on Mr. Vance, he intervened. Mr. Carlson, who was visiting Australia on a speaking tour, phoned Mr. Trump and delivered an apocalyptic warning, according to two people briefed on their conversation. He told Mr. Trump that Mr. Rubio could not be trusted — that he would work against him and would try to lead America into nuclear war. Mr. Carlson, who declined to comment for this article, told Mr. Trump that Mr. Burgum could not be trusted, either.
Mr. Carlson told Mr. Trump in that June phone call that he believed that if he chose a “neocon” as his V.P. — an abbreviation for Republicans who favor using U.S. power to implant democracy abroad — then the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president.Mr. Carlson told Mr. Trump in that June phone call that he believed that if he chose a “neocon” as his V.P. — an abbreviation for Republicans who favor using U.S. power to implant democracy abroad — then the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president.
I may be misjudging Tucker, but I suspect he’s not really stupid enough to believe that. But he knows Trump is stupid enough to belive that. Strange that I seem to remember Tucker being all rah-rah about the neocons back during the Bush II Administration.
Vance has pretty much re-made himself into undistilled MAGA, so exactly what he adds to the ticket but More of the Same is hard to say.
Stormy Weather
I’d heard this elsewhere, but The Atlantic has an article by Zoë Schlanger that says Project 2025 calls for mostly dissolving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You know, the people who collect weather data and tell us when hurricanes are coming and such.
NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. The proposals roughly amount to two main avenues of attack. First, it suggests that the NWS should eliminate its public-facing forecasts, focus on data gathering, and otherwise “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which the authors of the plan imply will improve, not limit, forecasts for all Americans. Then, NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.
NOAA is expecting an especially bad hurricane season this year, so this could become a campaign issue. I’d say this idea is nuts, except that it sets up a situation in which weather reports can become a valuable commodity that will make somebody a lot of money.
Did I mention the whole country has lost its bleeping mind? I believe I did.
Biden has covid and it doesn't look good.
Another wrinkle. I'm reading his symptoms are mild, and they are no doubt giving him one of the antivirals like Paxlovid, which are very effective. But obviously this will take him away from campaigning for several days.
I'm gonna be clinically (or cynically) political here. Trump picked JD Vance which gives the GOP ticket a double-dose of testosterone. So if the top of the Democratic ticket was a woman in an election where women's rights are a crucial issue, you might further energize women, especially women of color to turn out. And here I'll be cynical. Who is inspired by Joe Biden?
To give Joe his due, he's turned in an outstanding performance. The economy, Covid, jobs, and Wall Street are excellent. Yep, we had some nasty inflation but that's coming under control – wages are growing faster than prices (which are declining some.) I've said – I don't care if it was Joe personally or Team Biden who delivered – they did. But running for president is not just about numbers (which are boring, even if the underlying facts the numbers count are crucial.) It's about charisma and image. Think Kennedy and Reagan. Whatever Joe is, it's not movie star stuff. The failure of the electorate to look past the posturing and see character and quality is repugnant, But it is what it is – in a close election, image is the deciding factor.
Four years ago, I predicted Joe could not run for a second term. In the debate, he confirmed my guess from 2020. I will concede it's entirely possible that Joe would deliver into his 80s. It's very possible his cabinet and staff could fill in for him on days he's not up to it. They say FDR was entirely propped up at the end.
But would Harris be a stronger candidate against Trump/Vance? My instinct says yes but my record as a prognosticator is less than perfect. Am I being disloyal to President Joe Biden? I don't think so – it's not about him and never has been, in my book. It's about the country and the importance of people, especially people on the lower rungs who will be crushed by Trump/Vance.
I think a fair number of the young adult, black, Hispanic… voters may have been hoping Biden would magically make housing more affordable and decree a drop in all other cost of living prices, and since he failed they’re giving Trump a gamble. Plus they don’t intend on getting pregnant, shot, sick, or adopting a Muslim anytime soon. And they’re also just plain very poorly informed.
One clue about the very poorly informed voter part, I’ve been getting multiple phone texts from various Trumpian campaign numbers, and they always talk at me as if I’m either a MAGA cultist, or some very poorly informed idiot. Even though my number once belonged to some Hispanic male a good 20 years ago, they keep calling me Carol. I’ve gotten nothing from the Biden side.
I understand that among young people there is a HUGE gender gap in how they are polling. A significant majority of women aged 18 to 29 plan to vote Democratic, but men the same age are less likely to vote Democratic than they were four years ago.
Yeah, the old bit where FDR wasn’t seen in public in his wheelchair because his advisors didn’t want him to appear weak, and therefore ineffectual, to many. Me, I’d assume a wheelchair cripple (or any other physically weak brainy geek) would be way smarter than your common slick-talking political charlatan. But based on who was deemed popular back in high school, most others seem to assume the opposite.
And so the GOP takes advantage. Who cares if Trump doesn’t Build The Wall, or Lock Her Up, or Drain the Swamp, etc… even when he has the power to do so, when so many loser and sucker males think it’s his bullshit bombast manly man-ness which makes him competent.
Well, well. I am sorry to hear of the death of the old Republican Party and the emergence of one with its head office in the Kremlin. Let me just welcome a host of new Democrats to our fold. I worked with a lot of Red Dog Republicans in the past and they are generally saner than the Tucker Carlson fans. It won't be a big adjustment for them, though they will have to learn to eat the smaller size of shrimp. They can adjust. It is better for them to do that than to take orders from Moscow.
I can't believe I am on the same page as Lindsey Graham on this one, though he will change colors shortly in all probability. Hard to cover all that red though, he may need several coats of primer first.
Project GOP: Shut it all down, say goodbye to public service, privatize everything. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
Of course, the French are starting to get the picture. Maybe we can too.
I don't think that Americans are getting the clue: the population of the US of A is proud to be uneducated, home skooled, know-it-alls who are happy to go along with the MAGA feel-good reality show because they are pissed that they are the victims of late-stage capitalism and have zero analytical ability to know this fact. With only access to filtered information from their masters in the international corporate internet media who demonize talk of anti-cartel, anti-monopoly ideas. The free market is dead and only mass media bromides exist. Electoral College politics fit the international oligarch cartel's agenda quite nicely.
Instead, I see the oligarch psy-ops and propaganda, led by the Kremlin, working… as well as the GOP blackmail of "there will be violence/chaos if the election does not go our way so get on the band-wagon or be a target". The MAGA weirdos have a bit of hate for every demographic to latch on to and discontent is easier to sell than reason. If you are explaining, you are losing.
Yes. of course, our country has lost its mind.
And yes, of course, the GOP wants to shut down NOAA because it pays honest scientists to gather data and hone Climate models which might "impact" the profits of the Fossil Fuel Zillionaires who fund the Party. (Privatizing weather prediction is just a bonus).
Frankly, the most surprising and appalling thing here is the NYT's blatant attempt to rehabilitate the Neocons, conveniently redefining the term as "an abbreviation for Republicans who favor using U.S. power to implant democracy abroad". I generally view the NYT as a decent and reliable source of information, but I cannot forget their role in publishing Neocon lies that led to the US invasion of Iraq (see: Judith Miller).
First, Neocons are not necessarily Republicans. The original cohort (Wolfowitz, Perle) got their start as staffers for Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-Boeing) in the 1970's; at that point, they were just called "hawks". Reagan gave them their next step up, and gave the next cohort (Abrams, Bolton, etc) key positions in US policy toward Central America. Their actions there were decidedly anti-democratic; they actively supported right-wing dictators and (illegally) funded the Contras (and other groups) to violently overthrow democratically elected governments.
Of course, they really came into the limelight with the Cheney/Bush invasion of Iraq; does anybody here actually believe that they were trying to "implant democracy" there? Cheney motivation for the invasion was obvious – control of the oil – but the Neocons motivation was more likely related to their links to Israel (google "real men go to Teheran"). The links – in personnel and content – between the 1996 strategy paper written by Perle's group for Netanyahu ("A Clean Beak: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm"), the subsequent PNAC manifesto, and the invasion of Iraq aren't exactly "proof" of AIPAC/Israeli influence, but IMO it's no mere coincidence that US Neocons have consistently supported the worst aspects of Israeli expansionism.
Sadly, when Obama took over and appointed Hillary Clinton as Sec. State, she allowed too many of the Neocons to remain in positions of power. The most obvious example is Victoria Nuland – wife of Robert Kagan, co-founder of PNAC (and a strong supported of the US invasion of Iraq).
The Neocons have essentially infiltrated *both* Parties using a bureaucratic strategy described as "personnel is policy" – get people loyal to your ideology into key positions in the bureaucracy, then have then hire more loyalists and fire or sideline those they don't trust.
I will never trust, support, or vote for either Trump or Vance. But it really galls me to see the NYT using our disdain for them to rehabilitate the Neocons who I consider to be even more dangerous than Trump.
OTOH, I suspect that Vance is a dangerously smart chameleon who will quietly pivot back towards traditional Big Money GOP (and Neocon) policies once Trump is out of the way (before or after 2028).
My previous post was quite a few days ago, when I shared my thoughts on aging, "senior moments", and the challenges arising from the inability of most people to understand that for older people, mixing up names or temporarily not being able to find the correct word for the thought in mind, these are not signs of dementia. In that post I was describing my thoughts the weekend after the debate.
I see positives and negatives in Biden's candidacy. I'll start with the negatives, and first will share where I'm coming from.
Sometime around the start of the 21st century, my dad fell and had a long surgery to replace his hip. He never regained the ability to walk. He had retired a few years before this. In his life, he graduated from a prestigious northeast university and then got a PhD in a scientific field. The first 2/3 of his career was in industry, the last 1/3 in academia. He' in "Who's Who." He was no dummy. After the fall, his decline was observable and some time before passing away, he was considered to have "vascular dementia". In those later years on weekends I would go to the multi-level facility he lived in and take him in the wheelchair outside for a "stroll" around the campus which he always enjoyed. We would talk, but not about current affairs; we'd talk about the weather, and the trees and other plantings around the campus, and the freshness of the air. He often talked about his earlier life in academia, and sometimes he would confuse events from different time periods. Eventually, a TIA messed up his ability to speak. When it first happened he would try to speak a sentence and the words just came out as garbled sounds. It wasn't long before he stopped trying to talk. Who knows what thoughts may have been going through his head? But the reality for him was that he couldn't communicate. A couple of years later he passed.
End of life. It happens at different ages for different people. I suppose that some people are sharp as a tack up to their last moment, others decline over several years, and some in between. Physical aging and mental decline are separate things. But most younger people and probably a significant percentage of the middle-aged don't see a distinction between physical and mental decline. But most people out there have seen aging in their grand-parents or parents. And a huge percentage of people think Biden's too old. That doesn't mean they'll vote for TFG instead, but they might go third party of skip the presidential line on the ballot.
I'm not a doctor but I think Biden is fine mentally. But he LOOKS old. Who can predict the impact of that on votes cast in November?
In a normal election, the incumbent can use his/her record as a way to earn another term. But this is NOT a normal election. I think those elected D's that are calling for Biden to "pass the torch" are not saying his current term isn't praiseworthy. They're just worried about what is the best strategy to have the best chance at keeping TFG out of the White House. And it's unpredictable.
Over the weekend immediately following the debate, I was wondering if Biden would be able to communicate with voters well enough to win. The SOTU Biden would be up to it. The debate Biden, not. Even if he's been the most impactful POTUS since FDR, in the current political environment, if he can't communicate with the voters, and connect with them, it would be bad.
Since then I have been thinking along some different lines which have included some pretty strong positives about Biden himself. I think we need him and the country needs him. Somehow. More on that later.