Note: I had this post just about in the bag when the news of the shooting in Pennsylvania hit. I thought about trashing it, as it seemed just noise with everyone's time and attention focused elsewhere. I had already put in the time and effort, though, so here it is for what it's worth. My thoughts on the shooting coming soon.
JOE UPDATE
The first thing on everyone's mind: Will he or won't he? All the world's abuzz over Joe Biden's candidacy. Will he or won't he drop out? Will his strong showings in public quell the doubters' doubts?
His every move is being scrutinized. Besides some campaign stops, he has had an interview with George Stephanopoulos and a press conference after the NATO summit that he hosted in Washington. All eyes were on him, watching every single word, every movement. The first two events were unscripted, and we wondered if he could be cogent for them.
It kind of reminds me of when my dad had a massive stroke, which was the ultimate cause of his death. As his daughter and as a speech-language pathologist, I tried to elicit responses from him, hoping that he would respond, but more, hoping that he wouldn't. The family had to make the choice whether to let him go with dignity or be ready for a very long, hard recovery, which itself would not be a good situation for Dad.
Watching Biden, each step and word that he makes, I hope Joe will be strong, but hoping more that he will fumble so badly that even he could see he needs to step aside.
Biden's showings after the debate were ok. His interview with George Stephanopoulos was ok. He didn't stumble. He was defiant, but some of his answers were troubling. Question: "And if you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you're warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?" Answer: "I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that's what this is about."
NO! Wrong answer! That is not what this is about! Your opponent is an autocrat set to destroy the country!!!
His press conference after NATO was pretty good. He illustrated again that he is a master at foreign policy, and he was able to speak deftly about it. That isn't to say that he didn't have gaffes. Shortly before the presser, at the end of the NATO conference, he had introduced Ukraine's President Zelenskyy as "President Putin," and in the opening moments of the press questions, he referred to Kamala Harris, his own V.P., as "Vice President Trump." Yikes.
His campaign events have beens fiery. He has been able to make his points clearly and energetically. Remember, he has his teleprompter at those events. He won't have the teleprompter when he takes the 3am call.
Thought it all, Joe has been defiant. He has emphatically and repeatedly stated that he is running, and that he is the only one to beat T****. During his interview with George Stephanopoulos, he said he would only quit if "the Lord above" told him too.
Well.....
This week, Congress came back from their summer break and more voices have joined the chorus. Democrat House members who have publicly called for him to step down number 20. So far, one Senator has made the call, Peter Welch from Vermont.
It's not about the President anymore. Members of Congress are terrified that they will lose their seats if Joe Biden runs. We face potentially losing the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Then where will we be?
Actor George Clooney, who has been a huge supporter and fundraiser for Biden, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling on him to exit the race, saying that the Biden he interacted with at the massive fundraiser in LA was a diminished version of the man he once was.
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Nancy Pelosi was pointedly not to the point when she said this. (I'm showing you Stephen Colbert's take. I started it at the Pelosi part, but it's worth watching the whole monologue.)
What about Barack Obama? There is speculation that Obama is in the same camp as many concerned Dems and has been privately talking with Joe. Obama knew about George Clooney's piece and did not dissuade him from publishing it. Both Pelosi and Obama are considered the ones with the most clout to influence the President.
And all the pundits. Oh my! If you open the newspaper or turn on a cable news show, everyone has an opinion, and most of them suggest that he should step aside.
Of all the voices, the one from American philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris might be most pointed and powerful. He wrote:
We have watched the waves of conflicting emotion undulate for two weeks now—fear, patience, recrimination, compassion—I can’t recall a political storm quite like this one. But there is an outside set rolling in, clearly visible against a darkening sky. Very soon, contempt will be all that anyone feels for President Biden and his circle of advisors.No need to search the man’s biography to discover the seeds of his self-absorption, because the mighty tree now stands before us. It is all about him: he wants; he needs; he can. One wonders which lunatic in his inner circle convinced the President that his personal story matters to anyone. “Joe, they’ve been counting you out all your life. Stay the course! You’ll show them.” Satan, if he existed, could do no better than to whisper such blandishments into the old man’s ear.There might be still time for President Biden to resign his campaign with dignity, but he is already a cautionary tale. So is his wife, Jill. And so are the people they trust most in this world. There is more than enough opprobrium to go around.Of course, most of us will never carry such responsibilities as the Biden’s have, nor would we want to. So it is hard to know how one would behave under such a dangerous load. But my first thought up on seeing Biden unravel at the debate was, “There is no way that Annaka [Harris's wife] would let me go out on stage if she thought I might perform like that.” This was a consoling thought. And looking in the mirror today, I know that I would never respond to such a failure with insouciance and bravado and glib dismissals of the obvious, unless I had brain damage—which, of course, may be the point.But what is the excuse of Biden’s team? They are not merely courting disaster now—they are having tantric sex with it. By Monday, we’ll all want their names, so that we can know who should never work in politics again.
As Sister Resister Anne pointed out, one good thing about this kerfuffle is that the other guy is not getting press. All the attention is on Joe, and a lot about his accomplishments is being shared. Joe is also able to voice what evils lurk on the other side, including Project 2025.
The other camp is scrambling to get air -- and to figure out the next steps if the candidate does change. T**** will have to retreat to his golden throne to come up with new nicknames for the next opponent.
LSR is trying not to be angry with the President and to ignore all the pundits. There is nothing we can do but wait and see. But at my heart, as painful as it is, I agree with those who want him to go.
Though Biden handily won a strong majority in the popular vote in 2020, and a solid majority of electoral college votes, the reality was that due to our wonderful electoral college system, he won by a slim 44,000 votes in a handful of swing states. We cannot afford to lose a singe one of those voters.
The polls will have to be watched carefully. It's those battleground states we need to worry about. The numbers-crunchers will have to do their thing and Joe should listen. This is no ordinary race. The Dems have got to win.
I, like all the others talking about this, think Biden has done a good job. He has given the nation stellar service since he entered politics in 1970. Just in his presidency he has accomplished big stuff like the infrastructure bill, lowering drug costs, and overseeing the country's economic recovery, but also a ton of things that you may have missed. It's not a referendum on those decades that we ask him to step aside. It's for the stark, scary future ahead of us. We must choose a person who can energize the voters on November 5. It's just that simple.
I would love if the torch was passed to Kamala. I've always admired her. It would be so exciting to have a young woman candidate of color, one who can show the world that in this moment, we can pivot and do what is right for the country. Biden himself can pivot and do what's is right for the country and leave his legacy intact and dignified.
Whether it is Biden, Harris, or a ham sandwich at the top of the Democratic ticket, I will still voting blue and will work tirelessly to get the sandwich elected. I hope you will, too.
The Parkinson's Question
In a recent post, I posed the question that perhaps Joe Biden has Parkinson's disease. I should have caught it earlier, but his symptoms were quite evident at the debate.
It has come to light since then that a movement disorder specialist has been making frequent visits to the White House. Nothing official has come out, but the speculation is rampant. If Joe Biden has PD, he needs to make it public. And he needs to step aside. PD is a progressive neurological condition, and though cognitive difficulty is not always a part of the disease, it can be. Fighting the disease should be his priority; let another do the work for the country.
The Other Talk of the Town is Project 2025
I gave a little intro about Project 2025 in my post "A Project 2025 Primer." But if you haven't read any of the manifesto for yourself, I encourage you to do so. Reading just a little of it will make your stomach churn. Its tone, style, and content are shocking. Here is the whole manifesto. If you read nothing else, at least read the Foreword for yourself.
Below are some quotes from just a bit of it, from the "Department Health and Human Services" section, authored by Roger Severino, starting on page 449. This is just one small part of one section of the nearly-1000-page document.
Goal #1: Protecting Life, Conscience, and Bodily Integrity. The Secretary should pursue a robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.
From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.
...
Radical actors inside and outside government are promoting harmful identity politics that replaces biological sex with subjective notions of “gender identity” and bases a person’s worth on his or her race, sex, or other identities. This destructive dogma, under the guise of “equity,” threatens American’s fundamental liberties as well as the health and well-being of children and adults alike.
The next Secretary must ensure that HHS programs protect children’s minds and bodies and that HHS programs respect parents’ basic right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children.
...
Goal #3: Promoting Stable and Flourishing Married Families. Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society. Unfortunately, family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are fraught with agenda items focusing on “LGBTQ+ equity,” subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage. These policies should be repealed and replaced by policies that support the formation of stable, married, nuclear families.
Working fathers are essential to the well-being and development of their children, but the United States is experiencing a crisis of fatherlessness that is ruining our children’s futures. In the overwhelming number of cases, fathers insulate children from physical and sexual abuse, financial difficulty or poverty, incarceration, teen pregnancy, poor educational outcomes, high school failure, and a host of behavioral and psychological problems. By contrast, homes with non-related “boyfriends” present are among the most dangerous place for a child to be. HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies.
...
CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed “rhythm” or “calendar” methods.
...Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion....Since its approval more than 20 years ago, mifepristone has been associated with 26 deaths of pregnant mothers, over a thousand hospitalizations, and thousands more adverse events, but that number does not account for all complications. Of course, this does not count the hundreds of thousands to millions of babies whose lives have been unjustly taken through chemical abortion. FDA should therefore:Reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs because the politicized approval process was illegal from the start. The FDA failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women. It never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions, and eliminated necessary safeguards for pregnant girls and women who undergo this dangerous drug regimen. Furthermore, at no point in the past two decades has the FDA ever acknowledged or addressed federal laws that prohibit the distribution of abortion drugs by postal mail; to the contrary, the FDA has permitted and actively encouraged such activity.Now that the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion, the FDA is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval, which was premised on pregnancy being an “illness” and abortion being “therapeutically” effective at treating this “illness.” The FDA is statutorily charged with guaranteeing the safety and efficacy of drugs and therefore should withdraw this drug that is proven to be dangerous to women and by definition fatally unsafe for unborn children.
The people at the Heritage Foundation have been busy over the last few years drawing big circles in the Authoritarian-edition Sears Wish Book. Let it soak in that if T**** gains power, he will install the people who will implement the wish-list. The Heritage Foundation has already impacted our government. T****'s picks for Supreme Court justices came from lists that The Heritage Foundation provided to him, funded by dark money from the far right. It's one back scratching the other.
We have the power to stop it.
We have checks and balances for a reason. The Heritage Foundation and T**** are the reason. Please share information about Project 2025 with your friends. Point them to my post A Project 2025 Primer or one of the numerous news articles about the plan.
Now, memes and 'toons.
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| Michael Ramirez |
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| Pat Bagley |
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| Kevin Kallaugher |
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| Clay Bennett |
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Finally, if you want to support an unabashedly lefty business, buy your spices and seasonings from Penzeys. They are some of the best dang spices you will cook with! Sign up for their email and get cheeky, left-leaning entreaties on the regular. They are ready for the GOP Convention in their home-base city of Milwaukee. And they have some yummy popcorn seasonings for your convention-watching pleasure!
BTW, I'm sure it's obvious, but LSR does not get any advertising money, from Penzeys or anyone else.
Now go, RESIST!
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