Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
A Biden Replacement? Obama Involved?
By Matt Wolfson
Conspiracy stories come out of Hollywood, and insider plays come out of Washington, D.C., but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much difference between them.
Four years ago in March, before Super Tuesday, Pete Buttigieg, seen as a plausible contender against then–former vice president Biden, dropped out of the Democrat presidential primary, and within a year was appointed secretary of transportation. Reports indicated he’d spoken, before making his decision, with former president Obama. A little over a month later, Bernie Sanders, the left-wing candidate whom Biden’s Buttigieg-enabled consolidation of establishment backing had left facing a monolith, withdrew, and within a year was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. A left-wing journalist in The Guardian at the time compared Biden to the Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev: an aging apparatchik guaranteed to push forward the prior Democrat president’s policies and not rock the boat.
Last Thursday, those leftists who saw this 2020 shift as a decisive Democrat turn away from authentic populism got some measure of satisfaction from a disastrous debate performance by the anointed apparatchik. Briahna Joy Gray, the leftist writer and commenter who is also a scourge of Washington shibboleths, was direct, connecting the night’s disaster to Super Tuesday four years before: “YOU people brought this on yourselves. ... You applauded Obama calling on the other candidates to drop out so Biden could win.” Matt Stoller, the antitrust crusader, accused the party of incompetence and wrote flatly: “No one’s in charge.”
This last statement may be true, or it may not be. What the party may do next is stick with President Biden, who does not seem fully in charge of anything. But Democrats also may revert to someone else being very much in charge: former president Obama, who in 2015 encouraged his vice president not to run for president as an exercise in political risk management, and who in 2020 lent him support for the same reason. This year, as a third exercise in risk management, President Obama might again attempt to slide his successor out.
* * *
For the past seven and a half years, former president Obama’s post-presidency has been a great unwritten story: the strange piece of furniture in the room no one comments on yet everyone knows is there. Nominally spending his time increasing his net worth, he lives in Washington, D.C., the first ex-president to do so since Woodrow Wilson, who was incapacitated by a massive stroke. At first, this choice was explained as Obama’s second daughter, Sasha, wanting to finish her high school education in the city, but soon Sasha was out of the house, and the Obamas remained in Washington. By 2023, two Washington journalists, speaking anonymously to the reporter David Samuels, told him that Secret Service vehicles bearing White House officials were regularly seen pulling in and out of the Obama residence at night, but no one was reporting on the story.
Staffing at the Biden White House seemed to support what this fact implied — that Biden’s first term was Obama’s third. Susan Rice, Neera Tanden, Samantha Power, John Kerry, Antony Blinken, Robert Malley, Wendy Sherman, John Podesta, Anita Dunn, and Bob Bauer — from domestic to foreign policy to political operatives, the Biden administration has been a reformulation of the Obama world. When the former president visited the White House, footage captured staffers crowding around him as President Biden wandered, vacantly, through the crowd.
In this context, it’s instructive to consider an article in Axios that appeared some hours before last Thursday’s debate, purporting to explain why Michelle Obama was not campaigning for President Biden: her distaste for politics and her dislike of the way the Biden Family had treated her friend Kathleen Buhle, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife. Both of these reasons were less than sturdy. After all, the “unwilling” political participant Michelle Obama coined what the media deemed the most memorable line of recent election cycles — “when they go low, we go high” — and the idea that a woman who famously values family cohesion would take offense at a family’s rallying around its son after a divorce seems like an anomaly. But, viewed politically, this information and the date of its release make sense. If Michelle Obama is seen by her husband or the party as a plausible replacement for President Biden, then there’s real incentive to make her lack of participation in the Biden re-election effort seem like something other than a potential candidate avoiding sullying-by-association.
* * *
Viewed from this angle, well placed Democrats’ response to the Thursday debate disaster supports the view that the Biden implosion was part of a planned obsolescence. There was something ritualized about the self-described Democratic “freakout” after the debate: these spontaneous eruptions all used the same language. Biden, it was said, had one job — to “reassure” his “neurotic” party — and he failed. These Democrats were “heartbroken,” and their “voice[s] cracked” as they critiqued the President. Biden was “doing his best,” but his best was not good enough.
Meantime, members of the party’s right flank made their voices heard in distinctive ways. The financier William Ackman talked about the country “rally[ing] around” President Trump while also floating JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon as a replacement Democrat candidate. The message here seemed clear: certain big money players would reconsider their drift toward Trump were a suitably pro-corporate (and anti-antitrust) candidate selected in Biden’s stead.
Embracing this interpretation of what happened Thursday night means assuming that the signs of the president’s decline, and its irreversibility, were clear not just to his close advisers, but to a wide swath of Democratic insiders as well. Both common sense and historical precedent support this view, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s widely reported failing health in the winter of 1945, which was known around Capitol Hill.
It’s hard to believe, in an era where the presidency has become much more public, that similar interactions didn’t occur with President Biden and get widely reported this winter and spring. It’s also hard to believe that President Obama, living nearby, was not aware of these reports. In context of a failing President Biden being unwilling to step aside, a play may have gotten formulated: to allow for a planned disaster followed by a gentle replacement urged by President Obama, the one figure in the Party with near-universal authority.
Following this line of reasoning down a logical path, it makes sense that advisers close to President Biden who are also Democrat loyalists with ties to the Obamas (including, reportedly, Anita Dunn) might have supported the unprecedented debate framework, which allowed for an early debate — giving time for the party to take Biden off the ticket, but not too much time for a replacement candidate to be smeared by too much scrutiny other than in a second debate, which might not be too hard to handle. (As President Biden’s slow revival on Thursday showed, even the most frail of candidates can score shots in a 90-minute debate.) It also makes sense that many of the liberal columnists who set the terms for and justify the party’s policy and political shifts (Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Thomas Friedman) have been of one accord in their post-debate urgings for the president to step aside.
This wouldn’t be the first time such a play was made. Concerted insider aggression against elderly players deemed to be hurting the party’s interests has become common among Democrats these past few years. This aggression has ranged from plays against former Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer to those against the late senator Dianne Feinstein. The first play worked (Breyer resigned), and the second did not (Feinstein stayed on), but, in the context of a presidential election, making the same play against an elderly president might have seemed worth the risk.
* * *
Politics is paradoxical because it’s both intensely human and intensely transactional. It turns on connection and persuasion, but also on negotiations and détentes. In times when power is closer to the ground, these two qualities intersect: interests get played out, and so do personal relationships, in the scrum of local political contestation and the quiet but known intensity of backroom politics.
But when politics centralizes, it enters the genre of theater, where scripted tableaus are staged by small coteries to gain public support for particular moves, whether out of Versailles in the 1780s or Northwest Washington in the 2020s. In the process, a gap gets created between what’s said to be happening and what’s actually happening, between narrative and reality.
Hypocrisy fills this gap, and so, sometimes, does collateral. That the collateral in the Biden debate tableaux may be a corrupt elderly man becoming an emperor with no clothes in full view of 48 million people is one of the more human, though not the most egregious, testimonies against our centralized style of government.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/a_biden_replacement_obama_involved.html
What Now that the Gaslighting is Over?
By Clarice Feldman
In the famous psychological drama, Gaslight, it took a Scotland Yard detective to prove the heroine had been driven half-mad by a gaslighting husband. All it took us to see how we had been deceived was a CNN debate. Who was the villain? How much was the American public the victim of gaslighting designed to dispel the notion that President Biden was mentally and physically unfit to hold the office of president? Let me count the ways.
The Villains
Jeremy Carl is on target about some of the villains. He says the party apparatchiks, and more specifically the Biden apparatchiks, were responsible for agreeing to the debate under terms they thought would be sure to help in hiding Biden’s decline:
They wouldn't enjoy anywhere near the same power and access with his successor. For better or worse, their fates are tied to Biden specifically. They had the debate early because they knew that while Biden was not in great shape, they had drunk the Kool-Aid and convinced themselves, at least to some degree, of the lies they have been telling for years to the American people about his mental state. They thought that if they worked with the most favorable rules, on the most favorable network with the most favorable moderators, and gave Biden a full week to prep, they would be able to get through it and even if they didn't "win" it would be far enough from the election that voters would ignore a mediocre performance. They were not counting on what a disaster it would be to have Biden fully unmasked 1:1 vs. a competent and energetic opponent. Yes, Biden's performance was such a disaster that it's tempting to think "this was all planned" but that's only if you ignore the levels of self-deception, lying and magical thinking that have dominated the Democrat party for years now.
(Agreeing to split screen coverage really helped disclose the choice was between a vigorous candidate and one on his last legs.)
To be sure, they were hardly alone in hiding Biden’s decline. Both Nate Silver and Bari Weiss have additional candidates.
Nate Silver says:
Biden has been graded on an incredibly generous curve, like after his substantively fine but poorly-delivered State of the Union address. And the White House has been playing hide-the-ball, from Biden’s declining to do a Super Bowl interview to reducing the number of debates from three to two to using executive privilege to block the release of the audio of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur -- who concluded that Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory” and was pilloried for it, even though Hur had been appointed by the White House’s own Attorney General, resistance hero Merrick Garland.
White House staffers who unskew the polls showing Biden trailing, charlatans selling you “hopium,” columnists who predicted (!) that Trump was going to drop out of the debate (!!) -- if you’re a Democrat, you should be angry at these people for putting you in this predicament. The same goes for special interest groups who insisted that Kamala Harris ought to be VP -- against Biden’s initial instincts -- even though she’d just run one of the most underperforming campaigns in primary history. Without that, Democrats would have a better set of options, or Biden might not have run again in the first place.
Bari Weiss is even more straightforward about the media’s gaslighting role:
It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.
Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”
Cast your mind back to February, when Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, came out with his report that included details about Biden’s health, which explained why he would not prosecute the president.
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him -- by then a former president well into his eighties -- of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Can anyone doubt that characterization after watching Biden’s debate performance?
What Now?
Whether Biden willingly withdraws or not, his poor polling suggests the Democrats are in a very tough position, and I see no bright choices available to them.
A couple of days ago there was a rumor that Barack Obama was in a private meeting with Biden urging him to withdraw. But Obama scotched that in a tweet reiterating his support and dismissing the debate as a “bad night” which anyone even he could have. (I guess he’s hoping for yet a fourth term running the country, albeit once again under cover of a vastly diminished Biden.) I see no indication of his willingness to withdraw.
The truth is if Biden doesn’t willingly withdraw, the Democrats are in big trouble, and even if he does -- at this late stage -- they still are. The problems are legal, political, and financial.
The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the Democratic ticket would not allow anyone else to replace him: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death.
In Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year or 'a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.'
If Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election Georgia his name will remain on the ballot but no votes will be counted.
In Texas, the two party's nominees have until the 74th day before the election to withdraw from the ballot. Some states, like South Carolina, do not allow candidates to withdraw for political reasons.
If he does not withdraw, Nate Silver is right -- he “will have to survive what will be both relentless media coverage and unsparing Republican attacks against his age on every slow news day between now and November.” (The media, after all, has been exposed and must try to cover its nakedness.)
Charles Lipson points out more reasons the Democrats are facing a deluge.
? Pres. Biden has already won enough votes to clinch the nomination. That means you cannot get rid of him unless he agrees to step down. Or Jill Biden does.
? There is no coherent party leadership to force him out, much less pick a replacement. That’s a big change from the two parties’ structure a few decades ago.
? Because there is no consensus replacement, there would be a fight at the convention. That would hurt Democrats up and down the ballot.
There are multiple plausible contenders. Even if Biden drops out, it will be hard to coalesce around a single replacement candidate. A fight for that spot would be extremely damaging to the party’s chances up and down the ballot in November, and it would be even worse because it comes so late in the cycle.
? As VP, Kamala Harris is heir apparent, but she's unpopular. Really, really unpopular, even in her party. The dreadful number two in the White House stands in the way of an effective replacement. She will naturally demand to step up as the presidential candidate. But she is a constituency of two: herself and her husband. The rest of the party, indeed the rest of the country, doesn’t want her. They loathe the prospect. They’d rather send her to Central America to find the root causes of the immigration crisis… and have her stay there.
? Replacing Harris would alienate a crucial Democratic constituency. If the Democrats manage to figure out a way to ditch Kamala as the nominee, they will pay a very heavy price. They will surely lose a constituency they must have to win: black women voters. They won’t vote for Trump; they won’t vote at all. It doesn’t matter that Governors Whitmer (of Michigan), Shapiro (of Pennsylvania) or Polis (of Colorado) would all be stronger candidates than Kamala or Joe in the general election, if they had they won a fair primary fight months ago. That didn’t happen. Joe stayed in and nobody could force him out. (Did Obama try? Seems like he didn’t, or at least didn’t try very hard.) Mr. Slick Hair from California is a sure loser. And a convention fight would be a bloody mess, yielding only a Pyrrhic victor.
Under the 12th Amendment Newsom and Harris can be on the same ticket only if the California voters pick one of them -- of course, as a practical matter the vice president -- from another state, which means a Republican and that seems unlikely.
As to finances, Biden has hosed in a lot of campaign cash, but he can’t turn that over to any other candidate, only to a super PAC, so any new contender would have to ramp up fundraising fast and would be fishing for it in a rather dry river.
The New York Times ignored the debate entirely on its front page, maybe to spare its loyal readers further shame, but the editors asked Biden to withdraw. It’s five months to the election, seven months to the inauguration, during which the nation’s enemies must certainly smell weakness.
A major campaign charge by the Democrats against Trump is that if he wins, he’ll be a dictator, instituting lawfare against his enemies, censoring the media, and engaging in intelligence meddling. Wherever did they get that idea? (From them.) To the contrary they should find some relief in that the Supreme Court just reduced the power of the executive in LoperBright Enterprises v. Raimondo, restoring legislative actions to the Congress, and in Fischer v. U.S. excised the power of prosecutors like Jack Smith to prosecute people for prosaic conduct using “novel interpretations” of the law.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/what_now_that_the_gaslighting_is_over.html
Barack Obama and the Stupidity of the American Voter
By Pete McArdle
So, as president, Barry pretty much had his way for eight years, growing government; siccing the FBI, CIA, and IRS on his opponents; using the imbecile Joe Biden as impeachment insurance; and making our country just as gay as a man who dreams daily about sodomy with other men could.
Biden’s Failing Brain Exposes Deep State Treachery
By J.B. Shurk
with Biden and Harris occupying the top two leadership spots at the same time, the American people feel as if they have been forced to watch another unwatchable Dumb and Dumber movie that refuses to come to an end.
Biden Debate Boondoggle: Heartlanders Crow as Supporters Scatter
Will there still be a Biden-Harris ticket come November?
by Sarah Cowgill | Jun 30, 2024 |
Heartlanders have talked about nothing but the presidential debate that so rudely woke the sleeping liberal left into retooling panic. After calling flyover folks conspiracy theorists, MAGA extremists, and just plain mean for making fun of a stutterer, even many Democrats are worrying that Joe Biden is mentally and physically unfit to govern. Ah, validation is so much sweeter than the dish served cold.
The Biden campaign cannot blame anyone for what they did in exposing their candidate – not CNN, not the common cold, and not even the orange guy. Frankly, Donald Trump did not need to show up to win, and he might have done better staying at home. CNN conducted a flash poll of viewers and found that 67% said former President Trump won the debate, leaving 33% to Biden.
Before the debate, you couldn’t find an establishment media talking head who thought Joe might falter. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, for example, crowed: “Best. Biden. Ever.”
But Scarborough whistled a different tune after debate: “What all of us saw last night. The inability to complete sentences. The inability to make easy layups. One after another after another after another. It was the worst debate performance in modern political history.”
Mike McGee, checking into Liberty Nation News from Utah, went further: “Post-debate, the talking heads of the left couldn’t find a single reason to continue supporting Biden. They were busy paving the way for a replacement candidate to jump in and save the day. If that happens, and it may not, then I suspect they will seduce RFK.”
Joe Biden, on the other hand, thought he “did very well.” Bless his heart.
Debate Camp Did Not Help
What heartlanders noticed from the get-go was a man who shuffled to his prize place on the podium and the two-handed firm grip on each side. From the Four Corners, Carissa King couldn’t believe her eyes: “I feel like my heart almost stopped when Biden actually showed up.”
They also picked up on obvious rehearsed and memorized sound bites that the president stuck in places they didn’t quite fit – much like this answer: “[We’re] making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with …” Cue the gaping mouth and blank stare freeze before going somewhere unknown with: “The covid – excuse me, with – dealing with everything we have to do with – look – if – we finally beat Medicare.”
Michele Harrison in Mobridge, SD, said: “Best comment I saw on Facebook ‘It seems like I’m watching a Saturday Night Live skit.’” Probably the Celebrity Jeopardy skit would be my guess. Champ Van Curen in Attica, IN, said: “I was on my couch watching, and me and the dogs were laughing out loud.”
Cheryl Little “went there,” concluding: “Very sad day for America. I’m also angry. It’s rather apparent that Biden hasn’t been in charge, so who has been?” In the Valley of the Sun, James Tunnell agreed: “These are my thoughts exactly, and the implications of what has been happening for the last three years are horrifying. When Trump dropped the ‘Manchurian Candidate’ reference, I cringed. But what else do you call it? No glee in this [Trump’s] undisputed victory.”
Biden Boondoggle Backfires
Joe Biden should have sailed through the debate after intense preparation, rest from the campaign trail, and a set of conditions and rules that most Middle Americans thought were geared to make the president look strong and capable. Instead, Biden appeared frail and demonstrated a lack of acuity. Even the strongest Trump supporters didn’t expect the performance. Lori Hitchcock Sanders chimed in from Texas: “I can’t believe he ducked out of work for a week for this! Everything was in Biden’s favor, yet he was unprepared to speak to the ugly truths his policies created.”
Anne Voita Grimes commented in real time from Tucson. “Trump summed up the terrible problems that Biden has created; hopefully, more people will realize the recent degradation of our nation,” she said. “The lying media has duped so many Americans. The ads on the media outlet I watched all said, ‘Reject Trump.’ That’s all they have.”
Heartlanders in Chicago and Indiana noticed the president seeking a life jacket or phantom props throughout. At times, he stared blankly off-stage for minutes in search of a cue card. Other normal presidential helpers, including ear buds and note cards, were also not allowed. In northern Illinois, Suzanne Hanson Rose asked: “Did everyone just see Biden touch his right ear?” Lyn Martin replied, “More than once.”
Steve and Brenda MacIntosh also tuned in and entered a lively discussion after the proverbial presidential face plant. Brenda, a retired elementary school teacher, couldn’t understand Biden-speak and admitted, “I nodded off.” Lucy Cowgill had the same idea as Brenda: “I just shut it off. I had the feeling I was watching Weekend at Bernie’s. Biden is a wreck of a human. Mumbling through everything and intelligible on nothing.”
Steve, however, posited the question: “Was this a coordinated power play to remove Biden from the ticket? They did everything wrong rather than show Biden’s strengths. It was late – not good – no energy – no audience – Just wondering what we all witnessed here?”
A Coordinated Coup? That’s Low
Lyn Martin wondered the same thing: “There was talk of this debate being a setup, and Trump shouldn’t have bothered. Well, after watching the left-leaning reporters and how they are talking about their leader after this debate…it appears it was a setup. Just not for Trump. Wonder who they think they can put in Biden’s position and if he will go willingly anytime soon?”
Could this have all been a political power play to get rid of Joe? It’s hard to dismiss that every major daily, network, and cable news outlet was blatantly talking about Biden stepping down. Obama-era campaign alumnus Ravi Gupta posted on X: “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission,” Gupta continued. Well, that was dark, Ravi.
Even celebrities and late-night folks had a field day. Jon Stewart referred to Biden’s mouth breather, no blinking stare as “Resting 25th Amendment Face.” Bill Maher, who wavers between moderate and leftist, had fun, too. “It’s okay if you missed it; so did one of the contestants,” he quipped.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) took the hint and called on President Biden’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. All it took was 90 minutes.
“I sat there and watched it, and I could not believe it. I said, not only is this a political hydrogen bomb for him and the Democratic Party, it, you know — what happened? What happened?” Bob Woodward – yes, that Bob Woodward—might think it’s time to deselect the president.
The Lone Star State’s Greg DeFore wasn’t ready to chalk it up to a political coup quite yet: “Setting him up would imply they put him in an unusual circumstance, which was not a part of HIS JOB.” DeFore continued: “What they are really mad about is the debate showed everyone (including the TDS sufferers) that their guy is as bad off as the other side has been saying.”
Heartlanders Have Heart
For some, watching the president in his current state was uncomfortable and unnerving amid a Trump victory. He needed help off the stage, and Jill was on hand to steer him down the stairs to shake hands with the moderators. Sally Blair in rural Texas was somewhat shocked at his presentation and appearance: “Abuse at its finest. Biden is not fit, and shame on his family.” She wasn’t the only one with a soft spot for the befuddled old man.
“I certainly have my thoughts and opinions, but…” began Kim Conway Edwards in Scottsdale. “Regardless of which political party any of us are in, I am saddened to see that those close to, that care for and love President Biden do not intervene on his behalf. I shake my head to think that he clearly struggles, and he’s left by himself on a huge stage in America, alone.”
Takeaways?
Amanda Garcia in Farmington, NM, noted during a rambling childcare answer: “I am so glad Biden is going to fix lead pipes! I can sleep better knowing that.”
“First 15 minutes. Biden has lied in every response he’s given,” stated Dave Metcalf. “Trump is mostly sticking to issues and not going into full bully mode. His answer on Roe v Wade and abortion pills was perfectly balanced, IMO.”
And Brian Huslig in Albuquerque wrapped it up this week, saying: “I am amazed at how quickly his party is throwing him to the curb.”
https://www.libertynation.com/biden-debate-boondoggle-heartlanders-crow-as-supporters-scatter/
Dumping Joe Biden: The Amen Chorus Gets Louder
The left is saying “It’s time to go, Joe.”
by Liberty Nation Authors | Jun 30, 2024
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” LBJ’s Address to the Nation – 1968
As the shock from President Joe Biden’s debate performance begins to sink in, his most stalwart supporters are hoping that he will echo Lyndon Baines Johnson’s address to the nation in 1968. Many prominent names on the progressive left are openly making the case for Mr. Biden to step aside. Here are a few excerpts:
The New York Times Editorial Board: “… the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.
“Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader. The confidants and aides who have encouraged the president’s candidacy and who sheltered him from unscripted appearances in public should recognize the damage to Mr. Biden’s standing and the unlikelihood that he can repair it.”
Maureen Dowd: “He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself.
“I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.”
Michelle Goldberg: “I think Biden has to get out. As you know, I’ve been arguing since 2022 that he’s too old to run for re-election. But recently, when people have asked me about it, I’ve wondered, is it too late? While it would have been much better if Biden had stepped aside earlier and allowed a normal process for picking a successor, the debate demonstrated that the status quo is untenable. And I think that’s rapidly becoming the consensus not just among panicky pundits, but among senior Democrats.”
Washington Post Editorial Board: “Little good ever came from panicking. Mr. Biden cannot be coerced into doing something he doesn’t want to do. Nor should he be. What he can do is what many Americans are doing this weekend — wondering whether he is up to the job.”
David Ignatius: “Biden’s closest counselors — political adviser Mike Donilon, former chief of staff Ron Klain, the first lady — have an obligation to be honest with him now. If he has the strength and wisdom to step aside, the Democrats will have two months to choose another candidate. It will be a wide-open and noisy race, but that will be invigorating for the country. It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
Thomas L. Friedman: “I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime, precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.
“I had been ready to give Biden the benefit of the doubt up to now, because during the times I engaged with him one on one, I found him up to the job. He clearly is not any longer. His family and his staff had to have known that. They have been holed up at Camp David preparing for this momentous debate for days now. If that is the best performance they could summon from him, he should preserve his dignity and leave the stage at the end of this term.”
Paul Krugman: “Given where we are, I must very reluctantly join the chorus asking Biden to voluntarily step aside, with emphasis on the ‘voluntary’ aspect. Maybe some Biden loyalists will consider this a betrayal, given how much I have supported his policies, but I fear that we need to recognize reality.”
Nicholas Kristoff: “… Mr. President, one way you can serve your country in 2024 is by announcing your retirement and calling on delegates to replace you, for that is the safest course for our nation.”
~
Should President Biden remove himself from the Democratic ticket, the road ahead is fraught with peril. Former Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, expounded on this during an interview on FOX News:
“You can’t just simply swap these people out and look, this ship sailed. A long time ago, Joe Biden should have stepped out. He should have been taking his victory lap and shame on the media. They should have been doing their job asking these questions, having the intellectual curiosity. And this is on Joe Biden. It’s around those people that are closest to the president.
“But this whole idea and this whole notion that maybe they should get a different candidate. That’s not the way the system works, folks. You can’t just go to your convention and say, well, it’s not going to be Joe Biden. We want it to be Gavin or Gretchen or somebody else. That’s not the way democracy works.
“They can’t switch out names on ballots. No, it depends on the states. Elections are not run by the party. They’re not run by the federal government. They’re administered by states. Each state has state law. Once you go through the primary, once you go through the caucus, you have to follow that law.”
https://www.libertynation.com/dumping-joe-biden-the-amen-chorus-gets-louder/
Joe Biden and the Perils of Blind Ambition
The root cause of his meltdown in front of millions.
by Tim Donner | Jun 30, 2024
Maybe the Democrats should have realized what the nation had discovered as far back as 1988, and then again in 2008. Those years were the building blocks of an endlessly ambitious quest for the highest office in the land by a man who bragged from an early age that he would one day become president. Those who recount the first signs of his enormous ambition say Joe Biden spoke of the what – becoming president – but never of the why. Why, beyond his own personal ambition, would this son of a used car salesman believe himself qualified to lead the nation?
That question is now front and center in the minds of millions of voters in the wake of a virtually disqualifying performance by the sitting president under the klieg lights on Thursday, June 27, 2024, a day that will undoubtedly live in infamy on the left. A history all but buried by elite media, now under attack for shamelessly covering up the man’s decline, ultimately reveals Biden’s single biggest character flaw, the root of all his troubles. It’s not plagiarism, rank dishonesty or incompetence. It is not the economy, the border, inflation, or even his age or transparent infirmity. It is his blind ambition.
As a three-term senator from the deep blue state of Delaware in 1988, Biden entered the race for president, and then quickly face-planted with multiple revelations about plagiarism that forced him to withdraw. Two decades later, in 2008, perhaps believing the public had forgotten about his transgressions, he ran again, and after failing to garner even 1% of the vote in the first contest in Iowa, he immediately withdrew from the race – only to have his career revived when Barack Obama picked him for vice president. It seems Biden took Obama’s selection of him as affirmation that he was presidential timber, resuscitating dreams of the Oval Office that had twice been buried.
What other than blind ambition would lead a man so thoroughly humiliated and rejected twice to seek the presidency again? While it’s true that Joe Biden is hardly alone as a career politician driven by hubris, what Democrats so anxious to shove him onto the ticket in 2020 failed to account for was his ultimate unwillingness to relinquish the power they gifted him in the wake of another failing campaign, even when it became obvious to all – except, perhaps, to him – that he had turned from the savior of 2020 to a millstone around their necks.
Some politicians run for office to do something, others to be something. Donald Trump was already quite a something when he entered politics and was intent on doing things – for better or worse – to fundamentally transform the relationship between the federal government and the people. On the other hand, if we didn’t already realize it over the course of a 50-year career in a safe Senate seat, as vice president, and during four presidential campaigns spread over more than three decades, Joe Biden is clearly in it to be something, to prove he is something. Blind ambition is what crushed Hillary Clinton’s best-laid plans, and the same is happening right now in real time to Joe Biden.
Joe Biden and the Road Not Taken
While he has now finally been unmasked for all the world to see, stop for a minute and consider how Joe Biden could have completely reversed a legacy now irreparably damaged by a performance that had some Democrats even openly expressing thoughts of suicide. That’s how bad it was.
Biden accomplished the one thing they wanted out of him. By simply being a stick figure in a basement who was not-Trump during a worldwide pandemic in 2020, he found his way to the White House. Then came the Dobbs decision on abortion that led to a surprisingly strong showing by Democrats in the 2022 midterms. That was the pivot-point. That was when Biden could have thanked the gods for his good fortune, announced that he has accomplished his mission, and that he is passing the torch to a new generation. If he had done so, he would have entered the pantheon of Democratic heroes simply for taking down Trump.
New banner Memo - From the Desk of Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner 1Or he could have convinced himself that the 2020 election proved not that the voters rejected Trump but that they really love him (not dissimilar to George HW Bush, who seemed to think he became president because of his own popularity rather than Ronald Reagan’s). He could carry on with the belief he is the only one who can beat Trump, and that the nation revered him enough to allow him to reverse course on his implied promise to only seek one term: “ I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” he said in 2020.
As always, Joe Biden chose blind ambition. So now, instead of departing the stage a hero to his people, he will leave with his tail between his legs, undone by his own thirst to retain power at all costs – power for its own sake. It brings to mind the old skit on Saturday Night Live about “the thing that wouldn’t leave,” in which a visitor refuses to leave the house even as his hosts drop one hint after another, and the lady of the house finally shrieks in horror. Is that not precisely what panicked Democrats are feeling right about now?
And with the most popular Democrat in the nation, Barack Obama, giving his blessing to Biden remaining in the race by posting that “bad debate nights happen …” the prospects of getting him to leave the race appear unrealistic. But of course, when the first batch of post-debate polls hit land, likely reflecting significantly changed contours in the race, Democrats may be forced to rethink their unwillingness to confront Biden with reality. If not, they will have little choice but to hand the keys to the White House back to a man they despise with every fiber of their being and focus their attention on limiting the Biden downdraft as they seek to retain the Senate and capture the House.
The Biden Boomerang
How ironic that the one task they chose Joe Biden for has now boomeranged right in their faces, as Trump’s odds of returning to the Oval Office have risen sharply, if not exponentially. His rise from the ashes was the direct result of Democrats’ multiple politically motivated prosecutions and is now being propelled by the jet fuel of a frightening debate performance by his feeble opponent. And while tens of millions watched disaster befall the leader of the free world, you can bet those who didn’t tune in have, one way or another, become aware of Biden’s slow-motion meltdown.
Left with little else to do since defending Biden again was no longer an option, the media tried its best to focus on – wait for it – Trump lies. Rinse and repeat. But the problem is that Biden – who touts his honesty as a night-and-day contrast to Trump, the man with the morals of an alley cat (perhaps Biden’s only decent laugh line of the entire debate) – is not so honest after all. You need no more evidence than his assertion that inflation was raging at 9% when he took office when, in reality, it was 1.4%. That is a lie of mammoth proportions. Or that no American soldiers died on his watch. Or that he had done everything he could to secure the border, only to issue an executive order to slow down the wave of illegal immigrants in the midst of the general election campaign, proving that his claim was completely and knowingly false. Then there was his malarky about being a civil rights warrior, a truck driver, or that his uncle was eaten by cannibals, and the rest of his lies that the media has mostly written off as just Joe being Joe.
Still it is Trump who is called a liar.
Biden and the Democrats have now reached the mountaintop in the art of gaslighting and are finally paying a steep price for it. They tried to say rising prices were not really rising; that inflation was “transitory;” that the border is secure despite thousands crossing illegally every day and the brutal murders of multiple teenagers by illegal immigrants. And then they paraded out every top elected or appointed official they could think of to swear that Biden is nothing in private like he is in public, that he’s focused and sharp as a tack. Finally, in advance of his shocking failure on stage, they started claiming with a straight face that the unedited videos of Biden looking dazed and confused – classic signs of senility and dementia – were “cheap fakes.”
And now that house of cards has collapsed in a heap – all because of Joe Biden’s blind ambition.
So many cliches spring to mind about the bizarre situation in which we find ourselves. The chickens have come home to roost. Payback is hell. But perhaps the most apt expression is the one now staring Joe Biden and the Democrats in the face: you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time. The Democrats are no longer fooling anybody.
https://www.libertynation.com/joe-biden-and-the-perils-of-blind-ambition/
LOL Gmenfan,he better hope Hillary doesn't see that.
..................al
Now for the sitdown: Obama, Klain and Biden meet to discuss replacement, Kamala becomes Fredo -report
By Monica Showalter
Like mafiosos, or the old gray men of the Kremlin trying to figure out how to get rid of Leonid Brezhnev or Konstantin Chernenko, Democrat power players have called in Joe Biden for a sitdown.
Dougie Kass, a hedge fund shark who leads Seabreeze Capital Partners of Palm Beach, Florida, reports the dirt:
What I am hearing regarding Joe Biden. Ron Klain and Barack Obama are having a sit down with the President today. Jill Biden is insistent that Joe runs. Kamala is furious that she is not being considered as a replacement (Whitmer and Newsom are). Interestingly my neighbor in…
— Dougie Kass (@DougKass) June 28, 2024
He's echoed by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace who says roughly the same thing. Kass, being a hedge fund guy, thrives on getting and acting on information before the herd stampedes, so he may well know what's going on. It wouldn't be surprising if Wallace, a consumate political operative and dirty trickster herself, might have some kind of inside track, too:
🚨MSNBC'S NICOLLE WALLACE JUST SAID CONVERSATIONS WILL TAKE PLACE TO REPLACE BIDEN TOMORROW!
It's not just a coincidence the left is railing against Joe.
The debate was a SETUP to replace Biden with Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama, or Kamala Harris.
Share to make this go viral! pic.twitter.com/lP1QjsRRFE
— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) June 28, 2024
For those of us who have been wondering who pulls the puppet strings, now we have the answer -- Obama, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who's got 'political operative' written all over him.
Since the meeting is supposedly going on around now, one can just imagine how that may go -- with Biden bitter and resentful at Godfather Obama's smooth manner, knack for words, two terms, and continued popularity, while Biden himself has none of those gifts. Now he's being told by Obama to step down because disaster is going to be what he gets if he doesn't. Klain the consigliere will be there to suggest muscle. Jill Biden, happy to play the role of Mrs. Wilson, and fond of the perks and travel she gets as first lady, will fight back hard. Joe will stare off into space, losing his train of thought.
And more laughable still, as Obama, and Klain discuss replacing Biden with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, or California Gov. Gavin Newsom, no doubt offering up sweeteners -- business deals, immunity from prosecution for corruption -- and warn him Trump will throw him in jail if he wins, so he best save himself, outside the room, Vice President Kamala Harris will be fuming. Hadn't she served her role? Hadn't she done what she was told? They will treat her like Fredo as she pleads her case, thanks but no thanks. Perhaps she may be offered the California governor's slot in exchange for her cooperation. If she doesn't cooperate, she gets nothing. An offer she can't refuse.
While Democrats are hardly sticklers for following their own laws and rules, there could be a few poison pills lying around:
🚨🚨
How conservatives could make it very hard for Democrats to replace Biden on the 2024 ballot if he has a disastrous debate or steps aside.
“The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the…
— Janis Saxon (@JanisSaxon2) June 28, 2024
After all, any Republican worth his or her salt would want to make sure the Democrats keep Biden at the top of the ticket.
Maybe they'll get even more mafia-like and arrange an 'accident.' But most likely, they will just let it get ugly and word will leak out to the press.
Wouldn't that be a pretty picture? Doesn't sound like a recipe for success for the Democrats as the walls come crashing down around them.
Let's get out the popcorn.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/now_for_the_sitdown_obama_klain_and_biden_meet_to_discuss_replacement_kamala_becomes_fredo_report.html
Perverse military
By Mike McDaniel
It would seem in Joe Biden’s military, training for and posturing about LGBTQWERTY+- issues take precedence. I hesitate to think what might be producing sweat in that sort of training, and hesitate to think even more about how much blood our troops will be shedding in combat.
Their uniforms, however, will be much more colorful, and their survivors can talk all about their pride as they view their flag-draped coffins.
I'm looking through you
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
For many Americans, it was going to sleep and wondering how in the world this man got elected in the first place. He did because he was protected and hidden from us in the name of seeking power.
Who knew and when did they know it?
By Jeff Dill
Our nation is certainly not being run by this desiccated shell of a formerly mediocre politician. At best, his unelected subordinates are making all the decisions, likely at the behest of behind-the-scenes unelected Democrat party leaders. We can easily see the disastrous results of those decisions
What price Trump?
By Matthew G. Andersson
Trump is telling Americans exactly what they need to hear, right now, versus a deceptive fantasy about some new imaginary world. The U.S. is under attack on all flanks, and especially within, and as Trump clearly repeated, the country is on the verge of potential war and collapse from other groups that want to destroy it, and from incompetence internally. This isn't a message that most people want to hear, and many will simply pretend things are still normal when they are not.
An MSM fairytale
By Alison Tempestilli
The thing we must keep in mind is that the MSM is largely responsible for where we are now. Whether duplicitous or not, they have abdicated their most basic duties and responsibilities to give us the full, unadulterated, unbiased, uninfluenced truth. They have instead let a political party ride roughshod over the tiny amount of credibility they had left. They went all in on an easily debunked fairytale about a hail and hardy king and have driven themselves over the cliff to obscurity.
Joe Biden is not the problem
By Earick Ward
It is not Joe’s policies that have failed the American people. It is leftism writ large.
Five actions by Democrats which sunk Ukraine
By Fred Farrokh
American hegemony is in question. American weakness has emboldened Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.
Biden: Realization and Betrayal
By Mike McDaniel
The debate revealed how badly America has been losing and for how long, and began the process of realization, of the sparking of memory, of just how badly America has been betrayed. What political hack will D/s/cs serve up to replace Biden, to continue the betrayal, and what will be the last straw as the realization of betrayal explodes into rage and retribution?
The Debate Was A Kabuki Performance That May Have Opened Democrats’ Eyes
By Vince Coyner
“If all of that is a lie, what else is?” And that’s the last thing the Democrat elites need or want: A voter who actually starts to look and learn for himself, particularly one with a skeptical eye to their approved media and the Democrats’ propaganda.
All of a Sudden, A Crisis Is Revealed
By John F. Di Leo
The first official presidential debate of 2024 was held on June 27, and the reactions are fascinating.
Joseph Robinette Biden, who has held offices in the Newcastle County Council, the United States Senate, and the White House for the past 54 years, was clearly as close to incapacitated as one can imagine for a person currently holding public office.
Biden frequently mumbled, often appeared not to know where he was or what the questions concerned (despite it being public knowledge that he had been given the questions in advance), even needed to be guided on and off the debate stage.
This has embarrassed the politicians and pundits of the Left, with some exhibiting horror that he could be in such bad shape, and amazement that it was displayed for the world to see.
Such reactions indicate an acknowledgement of this thoroughly shameful situation, and a recognition that it reflects badly on their party, their supporters, and the nation, for anyone to see him like this.
While the Right has been talking about this issue for years, this is the first time that most such voices of the Left have done anything but deny the fact of Biden’s incapacity.
Here’s the fascinating part: a presidential debate is about politics, not about governance. They are embarrassed by his performance as a political candidate, in the partisan political setting of a campaign debate. Why weren’t they this embarrassed by such performances when he was performing the role of America’s head of state?
To all these voices in the media and the political class who are now suddenly saying that the DNC needs to somehow dump him from the ticket and find someone else, America has questions about these past four years.
Biden, senileThey weren’t embarrassed when he lost focus in public meetings honoring veterans or mourning military losses, wandering off in the middle of the event, leaving the honorees and attendees insulted. Why?
They weren’t embarrassed when he gave speeches, recounting the life stories of others as if they were his own, as a fabulist imagining histories that could easily be fact-checked and disproven in real time, again and again. Why?
They weren’t embarrassed when he sniffed the hair of a prime minister or literally bumped heads with a pope.
They weren’t embarrassed when he had “bathroom malfunctions” on stage in the middle of speeches and meetings with foreign heads of state.
They weren’t embarrassed when he spouted insulting gaffes to his own constituents, shouting such insults as “I don’t work for you!”, and “They should learn to code!” whenever his policies attacked a business, a profession, or a state.
They weren’t embarrassed when he fell asleep in the middle of cabinet meetings, state events, even one-on-one press conferences with other world leaders.
But most importantly, they weren’t embarrassed when mountains of undeniable evidence proved his criminality -- and the criminality of his family -- in a pay-for-play pattern that has been going on for decades.
And they weren’t embarrassed when he appointed incompetents, criminals and freaks to be cabinet secretaries and department heads, ranging from an airport kleptomaniac in drag to a man wearing a plastic nursing chest prosthesis for imitation breastfeeding.
And they weren’t embarrassed when his policies caused record deficits, unprecedented inflation, a collapse in the American standard of living, a flood of illegal aliens, a lethal crime wave, and the destruction of our standing as a net exporter of energy.
None of this has embarrassed them about Joseph Biden. These are the things that matter -- to our nation’s standing in the world at large, to the security of our allies, to the peace and prosperity of our people at home.
And none of it is new; none of it has changed since January 20, 2021 when he first usurped the office of the presidency.
But the Left is embarrassed now. Today, they recognize a crisis, because they now see that their own hands on the reins of power are in jeopardy.
Much was revealed about Joe Biden in this debate.
But much more was revealed about his party in its aftermath.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/all_of_a_sudden_a_crisis_is_revealed.html
Money Talks: The Corrupt Marriage of Money and Politics
When money talks, it has a lot to say.
by Guest Author | Jun 29, 2024
By Ed Thompson
For more than a decade, no Hollywood movie has featured China as the enemy. The huge market for films and the major investment by CCP oligarchs ensure the whitewash will continue. When an NBA coach dared to mention the rampant human rights violations levied against religious minorities in China, the NBA was shocked – not by the revelations, but that one of their own stepped out of line. He was criticized by a cowardly chorus of officials and players forced to cow-tow to their CCP masters and fired. American schools can teach Chinese and whitewashed propaganda through something called the Confucius Institute for free, all bankrolled by the CCP. Money talks.
There is a reason you can’t watch television without seeing half a dozen drug ads. Mainstream media and television are financed by more pharmaceutical ad money than any other industry. In 2020, Big Pharma spent $4.58 billion representing 75% of TV ad revenues. Estimates now top $6 billion. Kids who used to quote cereal cartoon characters now reel off the names of pharmaceuticals. Memorable TV slogans like “Got milk?” and “Just Do It” have been replaced with “Brought to you by Pfizer” and “Safe and Effective.” Is it any wonder that Americans are the most medicated people in the world?
More than four in ten older adults take five or more prescription medications. Nearly two in ten take ten drugs or more. Every day, 750 older people living in the United States are hospitalized due to serious side effects from medications. But because of all that TV ad money you won’t see much negative about Big Pharma in TV shows, let alone the news. Money talks.
The wealth gap has gotten so great that individuals can now produce Black Swan events that wrench politics one way or the other. George Soros has been buying US prosecutors and attorneys general through a dark web of non-profits. Now we have the planned chaos of crime erupting in major cities. Without Elon Musk brute-force bulldozing his way into Twitter, now X, we could have lost sight of free thought and speech under the avalanche of government censorship. That is still an uphill battle far from won.
The most corrupt marriage is money and politics. Once they were not so tightly bound together; now you can hardly tell them apart. Yes, moneyed men have always claimed privilege and sought to influence politics. That likely won’t change anytime soon. And yes, successful men of means have often risen to political office. When they do so because they have first demonstrated vision and skill in a field of endeavor and the decent treatment of men under their watch, they are welcome. But today’s career politicians spend half their time raising money for re-election. Committee assignments in Congress actually have a price tag and are sold much like the Catholic Church once sold indulgence certificates that granted supposed relief from punishment for sins.
In Washington, influence peddling is the national sport. The untraceable tangle of PACs and non-profits is a black hole that would make criminal organizations jealous. While lobbyists are quick to defend their industry, most people would see little difference between lobbying and bribery. Big Pharma tops the list of spenders. The fact that it’s a multi-billion dollar industry says a lot. Lobbying has become so lucrative that many national politicians leave government to become lobbyists. To complete the corruption ad absurdum, lobby groups now write the laws they want that the politicians vote for without even reading the bills.
The worst affront is when rich politicians, after sinking the economy, causing inflation, and putting people out of business with lockdowns and mandates, all the while getting rich themselves, beg the working class for money to run for office. I get multiple emails, texts, newsletters and fliers from politicians and PACs. Full-color fliers paid for with taxpayer money clog my mailbox. Some are invitations to vote for a candidate. Others invite joining a group or an event. Still others request I fill out a survey. Every single one asks for or requires me to give them more money.
Those same politicians will say that’s how politics works, that’s how the game is played, and they can’t get elected without more of my money. It would be more honest to point a gun at my face and demand my wallet. But then again, you can’t expect criminals to be honest.
Donations are great. I make them all the time to actually worthy causes. But I’d prefer not to give money to multimillionaire politicians who waste it on campaigns that lie to get my vote. Politicians who take the money I already pay for their always rising salaries and spend it like drunken sailors on things I don’t want or need. Politicians who borrow trillions more in my name with no consideration for the inflation they are causing that is driving me to the poor house. Politicians who use that money to buy more power and wealth for themselves by supporting projects that destroy my country. To quote noted financial expert Phillip Patrick, “The government has upgraded from pork barrel spending to a fiscal slaughterhouse churning out debt at an industrial scale.”
The deadly infection of money into politics is immoral, despicable, reprehensible, and it should be illegal. Of course, corrupt politicians will never make it so. We need term limits, and no pensions or lifetime healthcare for most government employees. Serving in government should be a sacrifice and duty, never a career. Lobbying with special interest money or promises – any form of tit for tat – should be outlawed. Campaign finance should be controlled to level the playing field, not tilt it. Do that and you would see the worst of the rats jump ship.
For 2024, political campaign spending will top $10 billion, and that’s only the direct ad money we can track. Until we take the corruption of money out of politics and make serving in government a duty rather than an opportunity, money will talk loudly enough to drown out the voice of reason.
https://www.libertynation.com/money-talks-the-corrupt-marriage-of-money-and-politics/
SCOTUS: Justice Jackson and Conservatives Kill Jan 6 Prosecutions
It was a 6-3 ruling, but Ketanji Jackson and Amy Barrett switched places.
by Scott D. Cosenza, Esq. | Jun 29, 2024
A January 6 convict convinced the Supreme Court that the Biden DOJ improperly charged him via a novel use of a financial crimes law. The 6-3 decision in Fischer v. US affects over 350 defendants charged similarly, including, perhaps, Donald J. Trump. Why did Biden’s DOJ use it against so many Jan 6 defendants? It turned misdemeanor trespassing into a felony carrying a 20-year sentence – a fearsome cudgel against the pro-Trump protesters caught in the crosshairs of a government agency at war with its political enemies. More news in the case was that Justice Ketanji Jackson – Joe Biden’s sole Supreme Court appointee – voted with the conservatives, while Trump’s last pick, Justice Amy Barrett, wrote the dissent.
Justices Jackson and Barrett Perturb Progressives
Jackson’s agreement with her conservative colleagues and Barrett’s dissent had two profound downstream effects, both devastating to the progressive movement. The campaign to undermine Supreme Court rulings has been well-received by the press and seemingly well-financed. Whether it’s a granular investigation into Justice Clarence Thomas’ RV pump-out fees or Justice Samuel Alito’s wife’s flag flying, the attempts have been a novel front line in the war against decisions leftists don’t like. That storyline, however, depends on 6-3 rulings along conservative/liberal voting blocs. The results here in Fischer just blew that argument right out of the water.
The cases this term have not generally come down the line with 6-3 lineups according to the nominating party of the justice. That this Jan 6 case has two line-crossings – Barrett voting against the pro-Trump rioters and Jackson voting for them – is the coup de grace against claims of a tainted Court. The damage is done even if Trump’s immunity bid, likely to be released on July 1, is decided along those lines. Further, the case reveals that the Department of Justice has been massively overcharging defendants – as many anti-establishment types have argued.
Instead of faithfully applying the facts to the law, as Merrick Garland swore to do, the DOJ twisted and turned a law drawn up to prevent paper shredding in financial crimes into a hammer to smash into the heads of an ultra-rare group: Republican rioters. It’s hard to understate how much wind will never reach the sails of the progressive left due to Justice Jackson’s agreement that the most severe charges should never have been submitted to the grand jury. What about Justice Barrett – has she abandoned conservative principles? No. Her dissent is written from a conservative perspective.
How Broad Is the Law?
The controversy here concerns a provision of the federal law designed to fix a previously poorly written version. The Enron scandal revealed that federal law prohibited ordering someone else to shred documents corruptly, but not doing so upon one’s own volition. After that, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, including 18 U. S. C. §1512(c)(2) – the provision of federal law challenged in Fischer.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote:
“It would be peculiar to conclude that in closing the Enron gap, Congress actually hid away in the second part of the third subsection of Section 1512 a catchall provision that reaches far beyond the document shredding and similar scenarios that prompted the legislation in the first place.”
Justice Barrett’s argument is conservative because it does not come from results-oriented decision-making. It is a conservative position to say it is up to Congress to write laws and that Justices shouldn’t legislate. Barrett says the majority agree the rioters delayed proceedings and yet still rule as they did – why?
“Because it simply cannot believe that Congress meant what it said. Section 1512(c)(2) is a very broad provision, and admittedly, events like January 6th were not its target. (Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?) But statutes often go further than the problem that inspired them, and under the rules of statutory interpretation, we stick to the text anyway. The Court, abandoning that approach, does textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2). I respectfully dissent.”
Both newer justices likely angered the political bases of the party that put them on the Court, but they both ruled according to their respective judicial philosophies. Jackson wrote in a concurrence: “Our commitment to equal justice and the rule of law requires the courts to faithfully apply criminal laws as written, even in periods of national crisis, and even when the conduct alleged is indisputably abhorrent.” Ketanji Jackson is the only former public defender on the Court, and it shows here.
Nonviolent Jan 6 defendants will be helped the most by this ruling; we should expect new filings by those convicted of violating 1512(c)(2), challenging the convictions in light of this holding. Special counsel Jack Smith may want to amend his indictment of Donald Trump, which included a violation of the same statute.
https://www.libertynation.com/scotus-justice-jackson-and-conservatives-kill-jan-6-prosecutions/
The Blame Game: Who’s Responsible for Our National Nightmare?
The big Joe Biden cover-up is over, and now it’s time to face the music.
by Leesa K. Donner | Jun 29, 2024
It’s the day after the day after, and much of America is still reeling from a shocking debate performance by President Joe Biden. It was humiliating for him and an embarrassment for the nation. Anyone who has ever served as a leader in any capacity knows that at times like these, someone must step up to the plate and take responsibility because it’s vital to learn from our mistakes in order to avoid repeating them. So, who is to blame for placing a man with obvious signs of dementia on the world stage only to make a fool of himself?
Rambling, mumbling, checked out for long periods, and just plain confused, the president of the free world, arguably the most powerful man on Earth – a man with the nuclear football by his side 24 hours a day – was having a great deal of difficulty making sense. Even an objective observer might have thought they were watching a Saturday Night Live skit, expecting the Democratic standard bearer to turn to the camera and shout, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
It would be comical were it not so profoundly sad.
National Nightmare – Suspect Number One
Heading up this list of those responsible for putting an ailing president in this position, one must pivot to the helpmate, the protector, the woman who promised “to love and cherish in sickness and in health” – Dr. Jill Biden. Over the last 48 hours, cable news networks have been shoving microphones into the faces of ordinary Americans, asking for their reaction to Mr. Biden’s performance. Not ones to be easily bamboozled, members of the public have often pointed the finger at Dr. Jill. Mean as it may sound, the president’s wife needs to bear at least some of the responsibility, if not the lion’s share, for what can only be termed as elder abuse.
What on Earth was she thinking?
As the person closest to the president, Dr. Jill knows her husband of 47 years inside and out. She likely has had conversations with the president’s personal physician and learned to make accommodations for his tragic, chronic condition. Why, then, would she agree to prop him up like Howdy Doody on a stage with no ventriloquist in sight? One could argue that Jill is so used to the medically compromised Joe Biden that she doesn’t even see it any longer. But this beggars belief.
Anyone who has had even one conversation with someone suffering from dementia intuitively understands that a hoarse, whispering voice spewing incomprehensible thoughts is part and parcel of this disease. Liberty Nation News has written extensively about the various symptoms of Mr. Biden’s malady – not to be malicious, but to tell the truth about the condition of the president. Does Dr. Jill love the trappings of the White House so much that it’s worth eviscerating her husband’s dignity before 100 million people?
It’s not like these are uncharted waters: Jill Biden could have taken a page out of Nancy Reagan’s playbook. Knowing her husband was losing it, Mr. and Mrs. Reagan decided the proper thing to do was have the president pen a personal message to the American people. After making the hard decision to say goodbye, the president rode quietly – with dignity – into the sunset. And if that wasn’t enough of an example for Jill, perhaps she could have looked across the pond and found another instance of poise when Queen Elizabeth II gracefully tried to run cover for the ailing Margaret Thatcher.
Yes, examples abound of how not to publicly expose a loved one to the indignities that come with dementia. Dr. Jill may be to blame for putting her husband in such a tight spot, but she is not the only one who should bear the guilt for such a shameful and unloving act.
The Leftist Media
For months – no, actually, for years – those on the right have been watching Mr. Biden struggle through the demands of the presidency while suffering from a chronic and degenerative disease. Complicit in this cover-up are the members of the leftist press. They’ve been running interference for the commander-in-chief since before he took office.
Mid-debate, the Biden campaign floated the urgent message that the president was suffering from a cold. But the progressive media, finally and fully awakened from their slumber, were not buying the spin. An ordinary head cold could not explain Mr. Biden’s uneven performance and they finally saw that the jig was up. This was not a cheap fake; this was a national nightmare.
Thus, watching the medically compromised and cognitively impaired Mr. Biden came as a shock to those who get their news from leftist sources. The progressive news glitterati claimed their phones were blowing up during the debate, replete with phrases like “Freaking out!” and “Panicked.” Their presidential hopes in shambles, it didn’t take long before talk of dumping good old Joe from the Democratic ticket was being seriously considered.
It’s difficult to ascertain when the media began running cover for Mr. Biden, but their abject hatred of his opponent opened the door to their duplicity, and once it began, it was hard to stop. Their lies became a runaway freight train – but they ran out of track on Thursday. When the media starts covering up the facts in deference to its preferences, it is complicit in shielding people from the truth. This is precisely why the news has become balkanized, much to the detriment of the public at large.
The consequences of a cover-up are now coming home to roost. As the national nightmare unfolded in real time on Thursday night, the shrill lamentations of the leftist cable TV commentariat were heard from coast to coast. Indeed, they are in a pickle, wondering if there is a way to get their guy to bow out gracefully or decide to ride the horse they brought to the racetrack all the way to the finish line. Either way, both Dr. Jill and the leftist media must take some responsibility for treating Joe Biden as a commodity to use up and throw away. No matter how one feels about his politics, his character, and his public performance, he is a human being who should not have to suffer every indignity of his illness in the public square. The other injured party, it must be said, are the American people who deserve better. Shame on those who allowed this to happen.
https://www.libertynation.com/the-blame-game-whos-responsible-for-our-national-nightmare/
'Who’s A Good Boy? Huh? Who’s A Good Boy?’ Says Jill Biden Congratulating Biden With A Treat
ATLANTA, GA — Following Biden's debate performance, First Lady Jill Biden offered her husband a treat for his efforts at a rally following the event.
"Who's a good boy?" Jill asked a glazed-over Joe. "Does my Joey want a snacky-snack? Good boy! You did so great up there, not dying and totally staying upright for so many minutes. Atta boy!"
Jill then energized the assembled crowd by having Joe jump through a hula hoop and walk around on his hind legs. At one point, the President attempted to lift his leg on a chair, prompting Jill to give him a quiet correction.
"No no, bad Joey! Come get your scooby snack! There's a good boy! Sit Joey, sit! No, no biting, walk away from the underage girl…"
Secret Service agents were on high alert in case the President became spooked by the bright lights and loud noises and tried to bolt or possibly bite a bystander. They say they've had lots of practice with the First Dog back at the White House.
As of publishing time, Jill Biden was trying to corral her husband back on stage after he ran off in pursuit of a passing ice cream truck.
https://babylonbee.com/news/whos-a-good-boy-huh-whos-a-good-boy-says-jill-biden-congratulating-biden-with-a-treat
Democrats Ask Kristi Noem To Take Biden Out Behind White House Shed
U.S. — Kristi Noem's penchant for putting down untrainable animals made her popular with Democrats following last night's Presidential Debate, with her phone reportedly ringing off the hook ever since.
Democrats from all over the country were calling to implore the South Dakota Governor to "please please" take Biden out behind the White House shed and put him out of his misery.
"I just can't imagine how hard it must be for the poor guy," said one caller, later identified as California Governor Gavin Newsom. "The president can barely move. That's not a life worth living. He deserves the dignity of ... you know... the thing."
Other callers didn't beat around the bush as much. "He's blowing it for all of us!" Vice President Kamala Harris argued. "Just take him back there and bury him in a box or something, okay? Hahahaha!"
"Kamala? It's 3:00 in the morning!" Noem reportedly said, irritated, though all she could hear on the other line was laughter.
Political experts suggested Gov. Noem may be exactly what the world needs right now. "She's the only human that can do it," political commentator James Carville told reporters. "I certainly couldn't kill anyone that wasn't an unborn baby."
According to sources, Kristi Noem initially refused the requests before agreeing that it was something that must be done. "My country is calling on me to do a great service for all Americans," she said.
At publishing time, Kristi Noem reluctantly accepted the job after realizing it was her only chance to hunt the most dangerous game.
https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-ask-kristi-noem-to-take-biden-out-behind-white-house-shed
Alarming Study Finds 33% Of Americans Are Dumber Than A Bag Of Hammers
U.S. — As summer ramped up heading into the important home stretch to the November presidential election, an alarming new study found that 33% of Americans are dumber than a bag of hammers.
News channel CNN conducted a poll asking viewers who won last night's debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, with a shocking 33% of people responding that they suffer from advanced cognitive impairment, officially placing them at or beyond the stupidity of a box of rocks.
"We can confirm over one-third of the country is drooling morons," said Dr. Bradford Doran, head of the research team conducting the poll. "While it's always been suspected that a significant number of Americans were mindless idiots, no one ever suspected that there were this many of them. It's fascinating and yet terrifying at the same time."
Experts confirmed that anyone who holds the opinion that Biden performed well enough in the debate to win could only be scientifically classified as a total imbecile. "It's true," Dr. Doran confirmed. "While people are entitled to their own opinions, anyone who honestly believes Biden won the debate can be clinically classified under the technical term ‘nincompoop.'"
Though many people were shocked by the study's findings, others were not taken aback whatsoever. "You've been out in public, right?" asked an unsurprised citizen Chad Gleiser. "You can't go fill up at the gas station without running across at least a few blithering oafs. It's not surprising at all that 33% of people in this country are as sharp as bowling balls."
At publishing time, results of the study also confirmed that a majority of the 33% work within the federal government in Washington, D.C.
https://babylonbee.com/news/alarming-study-finds-33-of-americans-are-dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers