Joe Biden is a victim of elder abuse

Laura Rosen Cohen, parent of a special needs child in Toronto, for Newsweek here, who calls this the Abuse That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

Recent reports confirm what's obvious to everyone on the planet: President Joe Biden is a frail 81-year old who requires physiotherapy daily for his increasingly stiff gait and must wear slip proof sneakers to prevent frequent falls. Staff reportedly can only schedule important meetings for him from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, because that is when he is most lucid.

This is a pattern in keeping with many dementia patients, as are other symptoms: Rarely does a day go by without video of Biden looking completely confused. He also frequently shouts angrily at reporters and confuses things, like Mexico and Egypt, or the names of dead leaders with current ones.

It's increasingly alarming, and the general consensus in America and around the world is that Biden is both too old for the job and not well.

In most normal families, a frail 81-year-old grandfather insisting on working but showing clear signs of diminished mental capacity and repeated episodes of falling and physical fragility would be encouraged to quit, enjoy his retirement, golf and garden to his heart's content. Quit your day job, Gramps, they would rightly say. And it's not like the Biden family is strapped for cash. Aside from any potential extended family business earnings, Joe Biden himself is reported to be worth approximately $10 million.

President Joe Biden faces a clear and present physical danger to his person due to his decline. But the public spectacle of his enfeebled nature also begs a different question: Why is the First Lady not putting an end to her husband's repeated and consistent public humiliation? Why aren't his children or grandchildren doing the right thing for their loved one? ...

If insisting on keeping a frail and doddering senior in the White House (or any job for that matter), exposing him to daily physical risk, demanding he perform tasks beyond his mental and physical capacity or stamina and world ridicule isn't elder abuse, what is? Are there any adults in the Biden family "room" who will finally call a lid not just on the President's repeated public humiliations but on his tenure writ large?

The leader of the free world is now an actual physical representation of the decline of American power and the American Republic. The President's diminished capacity is being willfully and purposely ignored by those closest to him, something that is very well-appreciated by America's enemies. As a result, the world is in chaos.

Sky News Australia does the job American journalists won't do, showing Biden's cognitive decline in front of the nation's governors

 In Biden's defense at the end, it appears to me that with "I'm right here?" he's confirming with his aides that he's to move next to the table directly in front of the podium to have his meal. He's not demonstrating confusion exactly, but the constant need for direction is a sign of the loss of what is called "executive function", which is sad to see in anyone, let alone a Chief Executive.

Do you want a president who must ask which button to push in a nuclear war?

The rest, showing both the Xi Jinping and Abraham Lincoln remarks, is hard to watch.

 

Biden barely remembers major events in his political career and personal life, yet easily recalls things that never occurred

 

Biden has never been an honest man, but his inability to tell fact from fiction puts the nation at risk. 

 

Read it all here.

While Drudge spent the day smearing Trump, Biden spent it slaughtering a speech in front of the nation's governors

 

Biden Calls Xi the Russian Leader, Botches Lincoln Quote, Forgets Obama’s Name in Disastrous Speech :

... an unmitigated disaster from start to finish. ...

 Biden humiliated himself — and by extension, the office the presidency — by constantly botching historical quotes and being unable to correctly identify some of the most powerful world leaders.

In famous 2003 eulogy Senator Joe Biden, having no trouble delivering oratory, said Reagan was 85 when he and Strom Thurmond met with the then 71-year old president

"The president [Reagan] then was about 85 years old".

"And I swear to the Lord in the Lord’s house this is a true story. ...  And the President -- true story -- President looked very sternly at Strom ..."

Ronald Reagan turned 85 in 1996 during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Biden in 2003 was off by nearly fifteen years.

The Thurmond-strong-arming-the-president anecdote, if it actually happened at all, must date to late 1982 because Reagan vetoed the Biden-Thurmond crime bill on January 15, 1983, which was what the meeting Biden recounts was about.

At about the 7 minute mark (the crowd is already skeptical of the previous anecdote's truthfulness at the 3:30 mark):

 

This story by Tim Stanley is both lazy and stupid, which is quite an achievement

Inside the plot to replace elderly Joe Biden

The story offers no evidence whatsoever of any such plot. It's ridiculous on its face.

And it is laughably mistaken about involuntary removal of the president:

The DNC is hierarchical, disciplined and packed with Biden supporters; there’s no mechanism in place to move against the president if he doesn’t want to go.

Of course there's a mechanism if he doesn't want to go. It's just that it has nothing to do with the DNC. It's called the 25th Amendment:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

But Stanley's evidently never heard of it. He spends zero time, zip, zilch, nada, telling us anything about Biden's cabinet secretaries' possible support for removing Biden on grounds of senility. Stanley doesn't even speculate about why Attorney General Merrick Garland allowed Robert Hur to get away with showcasing the president's incompetence to stand trial in the first place.

Is Garland actually the ring leader of a cabinet plot to remove Biden? We know Biden has been unhappy with Garland for now many months. Maybe Hur's report was the trial balloon, hoping to sniff out support in the rest of the cabinet.

But we'll never know because Tim Stanley was too lazy to do the leg work as a reporter to find that out.

Last week's terrible Thursday was Joe Biden's, this week's belonged to Fani Willis

 

A Terrible Day in Court for Trump Prosecutor Fani Willis

Charles Lipson, Spectator :

 

As DA, Willis has full authority to hire outside attorneys and pay them generously. The problem arises only if she received personal (corrupt) benefits from her decision. That’s what makes Thursday’s testimony such a problem for Willis, regardless of when she began the affair. After Wade began work for her, the two went on expensive trips together and cannot prove they split the costs. The question whether Willis acted corruptly is underscored by her decision to hire an attorney who spent his career dealing with small cases.  

Most of the damaging information that came out Thursday stems from a nasty, ongoing divorce case between Nathan Wade and his wife of twenty-six years, Joycelyn. When Nathan began his romantic relationship with Fani Willis, he was separated but still married. That’s how Joycelyn managed to get hold of the credit card statements showing the expenses for Nathan and Fani’s jaunts together. Joycelyn has said she was nearly penniless while Nathan was spending lavishly and hiding their joint income.

But of course it's not too late for Joe Biden to drop out

 

It's Too Late for Democrats To Switch Out Biden

Jonathan Martin, Politico

 

LBJ announced he wouldn't run on Mar 31, 1968. Humphrey announced he would on Apr 27.

 

Molly, Molly, Molly, you watch too many movies

 

Robert Hur's Pro-Trump Hit Job Is a Trap

Molly Jong-Fast, MSNBC  

Molly thinks it's completely normal for Anthony Fauci not to recall 174 times in a deposition, and thinks Merrick Garland did all this to Joe Biden on purpose! He must be a closet Republican in league with Robert Hur! He's as bad as that Republican James Comey who sabotaged Hillary!

They don't call it PMSNBC for nothing.

Shame on Attorney General Merrick Garland for letting this partisan hit job be released. ... Garland didn’t need to appoint a Republican special counsel. Garland didn’t need to let Hur release this report filled with talking points for the right-wing media echo chamber. Hur may be a partisan, but Garland let this happen.

 

 

 

No country for old leaders

 

Joe Biden just had to come back to that podium

 

President Biden's disastrous Thursday Feb 8, 2024 news conference the White House hopes you forget, or never see

 In my opinion the president actually acquitted himself quite well for an old man in a difficult job, however much he avoided the controversial conclusions of the special counsel as to what he did with the classified materials, who saw them, and about his mental state. If only he had not returned to the podium after ending his remarks he wouldn't be in the same mess he's in, immediately proving the special counsel correct when he mixed up Mexico and Egypt.

For a change, the press acted like the jackals they always were with Trump. Its Hamas wing thinks this is their opportunity to oust the befuddled old man who stands between them and their enemy Israel.

The White House has de-listed the video.

The far worse public perceptions of Biden than of Trump have been confirmed by the special counsel report released yesterday and the disastrous Joe Biden news conference last night

 

The Democrats’ continuous calls during his four years in office to use the 25^th Amendment to remove President Trump from office on the presumed grounds of mental instability took a disastrous turn this week, as the effort self-combusted in a Hindenburg-sized blowback.

More.

A number of people stated emphatically in the last year that Biden would drop out, maybe after today he will have to

Dems Panic Over Hur's Report on Biden’s Mental Fitness

Peter Nicholas, NBC News

  

 

Biden holds press conference to show his brain really is applesauce

 

Biden's Unannounced Press Conference an Absolute Disaster

Matt Margolis, PJM

Trump has talked about Category 5 hurricanes before, now says he never even heard of 'em

Thread.

He's never heard of The Wall, either.

25th Amendment anyone?

Yesterday showed us that Trump is in fact 25th Amendment material

He didn't remember he let the drug dealers out of prison by just recently signing the criminal justice reform bill when he was riffing on executing them in the Rose Garden yesterday.

That means even if he read what was in the border deal, it didn't penetrate, didn't register, and didn't matter to him. Nothing was going to get in the way of signing the bill.

This denial of reality is religious fanaticism level stuff, courtesy of Norman Vincent Peale but grown especially virulent in this unique DNA combination known as Donald Trump.

What he needs is deprogramming, but the best thing we can do is depend on the sturdiness of our institutions, the separation of powers and the ensuing gridlock to sequester him until the voters do the intervention in 2020.  This is the gift of the founders and we should embrace it and thank them for it.

Unfortunately, expect Democrats to have no mercy, but to press their advantage against crazy King Ludwig. If Republicans know what's good for them, they'll refrain from any more big compromises, but they should work with Democrats to give Trump some nice shiny objects to stroke his vanity in the meantime and keep him distracted.  

If Angel Moms can't count on Trump, can the country when it's under attack by nukes?

#25th Amendment, Section 4.

#Trail of Tears

#One term president

 

McCabe memos appear to have been leaked to NYT saying Rosenstein wanted to entrap Trump by wearing a wire

From the story Rosenstein Suggested He Secretly Record Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment:

Mr. McCabe, who was later fired from the F.B.I., declined to comment. His memos have been turned over to the special counsel investigating whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s election interference, Robert S. Mueller III, according to a lawyer for Mr. McCabe. “A set of those memos remained at the F.B.I. at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich, said of his client. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.” ...

One week after the firing [of Comey], Mr. Rosenstein met with Mr. McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.

During their discussion, Mr. Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Mr. Trump had conducted the search for a new F.B.I. director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including Mr. McCabe, were under consideration.

To Mr. Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Rosenstein then raised the idea of wearing a recording device or “wire,” as he put it, to secretly tape the president when he visited the White House. One participant asked whether Mr. Rosenstein was serious, and he replied animatedly that he was.

If not him, then Mr. McCabe or other F.B.I. officials interviewing with Mr. Trump for the job could perhaps wear a wire or otherwise record the president, Mr. Rosenstein offered. White House officials never checked his phone when he arrived for meetings there, Mr. Rosenstein added, implying it would be easy to secretly record Mr. Trump.

The suggestion itself was remarkable. While informants or undercover agents regularly use concealed listening devices to surreptitiously gather evidence for federal investigators, they are typically targeting drug kingpins and Mafia bosses in criminal investigations, not a president viewed as ineffectively conducting his duties.

In the end, the idea went nowhere, the officials said. But they called Mr. Rosenstein’s comments an example of how erratically he was behaving while he was taking part in the interviews for a replacement F.B.I. director, considering the appointment of a special counsel and otherwise running the day-to-day operations of the more than 100,000 people at the Justice Department.

Mr. Rosenstein’s suggestion about the 25th Amendment was similarly a sensitive topic. The amendment allows for the vice president and majority of cabinet officials to declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Merely conducting a straw poll, even if Mr. Kelly and Mr. Sessions were on board, would be risky if another administration official were to tell the president, who could fire everyone involved to end the effort.

ANOTHER ATTEMPTED END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION

People who think one state, Florida, jammed an unwanted president down the throats of the American people in the year 2000 now want to make sure this happens more frequently, but on a broader scale. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. It's called the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign, an innovation of recent provenance whose latest progress is in Massachusetts, reported here.

I think these people are motivated by a vendetta against George Bush. They still can't get over the guy, and it makes absolutely no difference to them that the country ratified Florida's decision in 2000 by re-electing George Bush decisively in 2004. 

Massachusetts is about to join five other states in what is really an attempted power grab for the Democrat party. I say they are a pestilence on the body politic, and it's time to stop them before more states join Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts and attempt to sully a presidential election and throw the country into another constitutional crisis.

Imagine what would happen if enough states with 270 electoral votes got together to agree to this, and tried to force their will on the rest of us because their states individually voted to do so. Can you imagine your president elected by just 11 states? That's all it would take under their proposal: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia, the eleven most populous states with 271 electoral college votes in all. Do you want them deciding who your president should be?

In 2008, only Texas and Georgia went Republican, giving the Democrats 222 electoral votes. Of the next ten most populous states, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Missouri, Washington, Indiana, Minnesota, Arizona, Maryland and Wisconsin, only Tennessee, Missouri and Arizona went Republican, giving the Democrats another 77 electoral college votes, more than enough to win.

So in any given election, just 21 of the 50 states could control the outcome of the election, with Democrats highly favored to win the White House every time, by a margin of 299 to 81 in those states. The supporters of the NPV complain that under the present arrangement where it's "winner takes all electoral votes," more or less, in 48 states, elections get determined by battleground states, where candidates actually have to compete for votes. The horror. Their solution? Eliminate the battle.

These five, and now six, states don't want to award their electoral college votes based on who won the election in their respective states, but rather to the winner of the most votes nationally, so that not only can the will of the people of their own states be subverted if necessary, but the will of other states as well, for that is what this revolution of elections would accomplish. It marginalizes the 29 states with fewer than 10 electoral votes by telling them their votes for president don't matter.

And it is easy to imagine a situation where the voters in a state are told that even though they voted for president X the electors of their state are going to vote for president Y because their state is a party to the NPV sponsored law which requires them to cast their votes for the overall winner. It is amusing to imagine electors attempting to hide behind the skirts of this law in this way and pointing the finger at voters in another state exclaiming "They made me do it!"  

The constitution is deliberately arranged as it is to protect the smaller states by population from being lorded over by the states with the larger. That is why even the smallest states have two senators, same as the largest do, to act as a counterweight to the power and interests of the larger states. That is also why changes to the constitution must be approved by states, 75% of them, not popular majorities. The NPV is an end run around this amendment process, which stands in the way of changing the electoral college system, the real enemy of the NPV. On those grounds alone it should be challenged in court as an extra-constitutional attempt to change the constitution. 

Can you imagine a country where a minority of states vote to ignore the electoral college system and try to force their president on the majority? To do so really would be to create two countries, because what the NPV campaign does in actuality is create a rival electoral college. If that isn't seditious, I don't know what is. 

Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man frames the issue helpfully:

The fourth and most worrying element of the NPV campaign, in my eyes, is that it's a blatant attempt to bypass the Constitution of the United States. The provision of an Electoral College is a federal, constitutional matter, not determined by each individual State. You'll find it in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, as modified by the 12th, 20th and 25th Amendments. If we want to change that (or any other) part of the Constitution, there's a mechanism provided to do so (Article 5). The NPV campaign ignores this altogether, and seeks to alter the way in which individual States allocate their electoral college votes without modifying the Constitution itself.

Appropriately quoted in the Boston Globe article, linked above, is Massachusetts Senate minority leader Richard Tisei, who says: "The thing about this that bothers me the most is it's so sneaky. This is the way that liberals do things a lot of times, very sneaky. This is sort of an end run around the Constitution."

Truer words were never spoken.