There are two things about the upcoming US presidential election that are not really worth agonizing over. One is that that Joe Biden and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) will be the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, unless something major happens. The second is that both are old. We just have to live with that reality.
There is far too much focus on Biden’s age and not nearly enough on SSAT’s age, even though the latter seems much more cognitively impaired. In one post, Kevin Drum lists some of the wrong and crazy things SSAT has said recently that indicate that he is losing it.
- Pointed at Matt Gaetz and repeatedly called him Rick Gates.
- Confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.
- Claimed that Obama was still president.
- Said that Russia should feel free to attack NATO if they “don’t pay.”
- Posted an endless stream of unhinged rants on Truth Social.
- Snidely asked why Nikki Haley’s husband is never around (he’s stationed overseas).
- Explicitly told Republicans to kill an immigration bill so things would stay chaotic during his presidential campaign.
- Confused E. Jean Carroll with Marla Maples, his ex-wife.
- Asserted that the United States is “an institute in a powerful death penalty,” whatever that means.
- Said that Viktor Orbán is the head of Turkey (he’s the prime minister of Hungary).
- Claimed that Jeb Bush started the Iraq war.
- Said that Nancy Pelosi started the January 6 insurrection.
- Insisted that he never endorsed James Lankford (he did).
In another post, Drum says that when it comes to a comparison as to whether Joe Biden or SSAT is more mentally competent and up to the job of being president, it is no contest.
I know how dispiriting it would be if the presidential campaign devolved into a battle over which candidate is the worst dotard. But it’s absurd to obsess over Joe Biden’s age just because a partisan special counsel decided to cover his ass by highlighting a couple of occasions where Biden momentarily couldn’t remember a date.
It’s true that Biden looks old and has trouble enunciating certain sounds. But look below the surface. Every personal report about Biden is the same: he’s engaged, knowledgeable, lucid, and in charge.
By contrast, we’ve heard an endless stream of personal reports about Donald Trump’s behavior when he was in office, and they were also the same: he watches a lot of TV, can’t be bothered to do any reading, flies off the handle routinely, and lacks understanding of even simple issues. This comes from from aides who worked directly with him. Adjectives include: unhinged, idiot, off the rails (John Kelly), has the understanding of a fifth grader (Jim Mattis); racist, misogynist and bigot (Omarosa Manigault Newman); dumb as shit (Gary Cohn); dope, intelligence of a kindergartner (H.R. McMaster); wholly unfit to be in office, the most divisive president in history (Cassidy Hutchinson); idiot (Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus); like an 11-year-old-child (Steve Bannon); moron (Rex Tillerson); detached from reality, shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office (Bill Barr); fucking liar (John Dowd); threatens our democracy (Mark Esper); laughing fool (John Bolton); failed at being the president (Mitch Mulvaney); utter disgrace (Tom Bossert); racist, conman, cheat (Michael Cohen); wholly unfit to hold office ever again (Sarah Matthews); has never cared about America, its citizens, its future or anything but himself (Ty Cobb); shown time and time again that he’s willing to put his political ambitions ahead of what’s best for the country (Alyssa Farah Griffin); doing great and irreparable harm to my country (Gen. Mark Milley); undermine[d] a peaceful transition in accordance with our Constitution (Gen. Joseph Dunford); threat to democracy (Miles Taylor); very little understanding of what it means to be in the military (Richard Spencer); off the rails, crazy, nihilistic (Anthony Scaramucci); cares about no one but himself (Stephanie Grisham); absolutely failed (Elizabeth Neumann); flat-out disregard for human life (Olivia Troye); has no principles. None. None. (Maryanne Berry Trump); fucking maniac (Mary Trump).
How much clearer can things get?
There is no point in agonizing over things that one cannot change. Biden and SSAT are both old but they are what we have to choose between whether we like it or not. But SSAT seems much worse cognitively.
Drum’s lists are good to keep handy if you are ever in a debate with a supporter of SSAT.
That probably isn’t some verbal gaff, rather it represents the limit of Trump’s understanding of NATO. He is trying to understand NATO as if it was a defense pact like he would have drafted. The lesser countries pay in and in exchange the US provides protection, like it was a national level protection racket. In his sort of view the idea that the smaller countries should be pressured to pay by threats makes sense.
The idea that the US might have strategic goals that make protecting NATO countries important even if they are not paying 100% of what they are supposed and that NATO get strength from unified and strategically located borders is very foreign to his thinking.
This whole ploy looks to me like Trump’s handlers decided to make an issue of Biden’s age specifically to deflect criticism’s of Trump’s behavior. If Team Trump gets the shots in first, any criticism of Trump can be ignored as a childish move by Team Biden of the “I know you are, but what am I?” school of rhetoric.
My understanding is that Biden has trouble articulating certain sounds, or words, is because of his life-long stutter. One thing that people who stutter do to control it is switch to another word if they’re going to have trouble with one.
So, in “assessing” how he talks for age degeneration, you have to take into account that the cause of a slip-up may be a speech defect, not a mental defect.
But, of course, no republican will do that.
Let us not forget that Biden “will lead us into World War II”.
And if Biden wins he “will change the name of Pennsylvania “.
Making Pennsylvania woke? Trans?
Transylvania?
Wull, let’s pretend for a sec that they are equally senile and far gone (they ain’t: Trumpy-Dumpty is about 100 miles ahead on that sad road).
One is a traitor and wannabe tinpot tyrant, the other is not. What’s the best choice?
Decisions, decisions…
I get the impression that both are showing serious signs of mental deterioration and both probably should be getting some serious help. Neither are competent to hold any elected office.
One is a traitor and wannabe tinpot tyrant, the other is not. What’s the best choice?
Both appear to want to overfund the pentagon but Biden is actively providing top cover for Israeli genocide. Then again Trump encouraged annexation and making Jerusalem the capital.
Two bowls of shit, one has sriracha sauce on it. Which do you eat? Extra complication: sincere well-meaning people will tell you that refusing to eat either bowl of shit is tantamount to eating one anyway.
@Marcus Ranum
Sincere well-meaning people will tell you to lookup false equivalence.
If you have a choice of only two outcomes and both are bad, choose the least bad. Ignore fools trying to tell you to reject the choice.
Sincere well-meaning people will tell you to lookup false equivalence.
I don’t think its a false equivalence, unless you were reinforcing my point.
If Israel/Gaza is the only issue you care about, I can see how it would look that way. But I don’t think single-issue voting is a very smart way to participate in democracy.
When it comes to the general running of the government, Trump and Biden aren’t even remotely comparable, and those differences matter.
Not that Gaza doesn’t matter, obviously. It’s just a problem that can’t be solved in a single presidential election. A lot of problems are harder to solve than that, unfortunately.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, if implemented fully, will bring the US close to complying with its commitment to the Paris Agreement (and some action by states can make compliance full). Guess what Trump is planning to do about anything related to the environment, and particularly climate?
Which of the two would sign and which would veto a federal abortion ban or a federal trans rights ban if such were to pass in Congress?
Lives both inside and outside the US are at stake. This is not a joke, this is not a drill.
I stand with anat on this one. 100%.
Also, @7, jkrideau, your understanding is informed by sources with an agenda. Biden’s doctors and the people who work closest to him say he’s fine.
@ 14 Katydid
Biden’s doctors and the people who work closest to him say he’s fine.
As did the people around Regan at the end of his tenure and the people around Churchill after his rather serious stroke.
Biden talking about President El Sisi, the President of Mexico, is not reassuring.
@Marcus Ranum @11
Democrats and Republicans , both support Israel and both increase military budgets and defense spending , therefore the only difference is whether or not you get Sriracha on your bowl of shit is a textbook case of false equivalence.
If you cared about womens rights , treatment of minorities , the climate or democracy (or perhaps more personally impacted) then you might say the difference between the two parties is the difference between a curable std and a fatal one.
If true, it will be easy to prove. Simply schedule one or two hour long personal interviews a day for the next couple of weeks. Problem solved.
So, marner, you want to tie up the President’s time for one or two hour long personal interviews a day for the next couple of weeks in order to “prove” the truth of what people who make personal reports (that is, interact with him) are saying. After all, not like he’s got anything better to do, right? 🙂
Left unsaid is how these personal interviews are going to be believed any more than the personal reports and thus solve the “problem”.
(Care to elaborate, marner?)
Sweet Jebus we’ve hit a low bar. It’s starting to feel like we’re in the first couple of chapters of a dystopian novel. Yes, I think it would be a valuable spend of Biden’s time to engage with the media to assuage the concerns of 86% of Americans who think he is too old to be President. Especially in an election year. I know I would feel a lot better if I could watch some interviews of Biden acting “…engaged, knowledgeable, lucid, and in charge.”
Prove that and it’s Biden in a landslide.
Cause you know what one of my biggest worries is? Watching a Trump/Biden debate where Trump comes across as an energetic buffoon while Biden proves he is a “well meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” in serious cognitive decline.
marner, I do appreciate your response.
Fair enough. I can’t deny that is your opinion.
Thing is, if you’ve thought of it, presumably so have his strategists, yet it’s not a thing.
(Or do you fancy yourself more cluey than they?)
Again: Left unsaid is how these personal interviews are going to be believed any more than the personal reports and thus solve the “problem”. What makes you believe it would be seen to prove anything, especially among those who have a vested interest in not believing it, for whatever reason?
I mean, how much more proof could there possibly be that the 2020 election was not stolen?
And yet…
That’s very poor reasoning; whether or not the populace believed the proof that your personal interviews you think would provide were it the case that he actually is competent, the debate would be the debate.
(Independent variables/events, basically)
Do you honestly not know why Biden’s “strategists” don’t want video of him answering questions in a long form interview?
@ 18 Morales
So, marner, you want to tie up the President’s time for one or two hour long personal interviews a day for the next couple of weeks in order to “prove” the truth of what people who make personal reports (that is, interact with him) are saying. After all, not like he’s got anything better to do, right?
Let me see, the President of Russia. In the midst of a SMO with Ukraine can do it. A US president cannot? Putin showed himself as well-briefed, knowledgeable and generally well informed.
Can not a US President match this? Well. maybe Eisenhower could have.
Um, are you not presupposing your conclusion there, marner?
There’s more than a whiff of disingenuousness about your claims.
And, more to the fucking point: the Presidency is not about answering questions from interviewers.
Here’s a take from a historical perspective: (https://www.ushistory.org/gov/7e.asp)
And, most to the fucking point, how well do ya reckon SSAT (we all here know to what that term refers, no?) would comparatively do in a long form interview?
Because when it comes to narcissistic ramblings, he is truly peerless.
—
I note you’ve twice avoided this, so of course I repeat it.
Again: Left unsaid is how these personal interviews are going to be believed any more than the personal reports and thus solve the “problem”. What makes you believe it would be seen to prove anything, especially among those who have a vested interest in not believing it, for whatever reason?
(Still waiting for a response to that)
Ah, the Russian stooge.
<snicker>
Fucking Tucker Carlson, even a fucking idiot could do better than that specimen.
Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aR8FJ9hlTw
Here:
Putin needed a sap who is sympathetic to him and to his cause and who would soft-pedal and suck up to him, and Tucker was just the man.
To anyone who is a Russian patsy and fucking clueless, sure.
To anyone with any nous, no.
Look at my link to Vlad Vexler’s analysis, if you want a rundown of the bullshit the loony person Putin has become vomited forth.
(Bad history, bad arguments, bad claims)
Yeah, well, you would say that, just like you claimed Russia was an unstoppable juggernaut that would quickly triumph, back in the early days of their “SMO”.
Also, remember you wrote this?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2022/10/08/another-crimean-war/#comment-2152757
I haven’t forgotten, O Russian stooge.
Again:
Oh, BTW: Slava Ukraini!
So, joke ridyou, I take it you support SSAT, who wants to get the USA out of NATO and wants Ukraine to give away all the territory Russia has conquered and is trying to conquer, right?
Like, if your neighbouring mob came in and took over your shed, and shot your dog, and was fighting over your house extension, you’d come to an agreement and grant them your shed and forgive them for your dog and share the extension just so they would stop attacking.
Until the next time your neighbouring attacked, where you’d concede the verandah and the back room and the bathroom, so they would stop attacking.
Then, one day, you’d find you’d lost everything you owned.
(Too complicated an allegory for ya?)
You know, the best and kindest thing I could possibly say to you, joke one should be rid of, is that you are a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Fucking joke you are, jrkrideau. You support wars of conquest, you support a dictatorial regime, you deny the very history of an entire country, and you ignore the many, many, many war crimes Russia has made.
You ignore how they’ve emptied their prisons of their worst and sent them into a war of conquest (though, handily, they’ve wasted their manpower big-time). You ignore how they’ve co-opted the population of the conquered provinces of Ukraine and wasted their male youth via pressgang tactics to fight their endless war of conquest. You ignore the hundreds of thousands of young children abducted from Ukraine and sent to Russia to be inculcated. And so much more.
I know you shan’t watch either the economist nor the political scholar nor the historian nor the military expert in those videos. Because you are a coward, and because you are a fascist ideologue.
But know this: I am very, very much looking forward to your response. If you dare.
[sorry, Mano. I do get a bit excited and vehement sometimes]
^ Yikes. Still insist you don’t feel an urge to comment at all?
Holms, your apparent idiocy grows by the day.
Still obsessed with me, still popping into comment threads to try to make a jibe (and still getting it wrong), and nothing about the topic at hand, but only about me.
I’ve long ago noticed how you are far more interested in me than in whatever the topic at hand may be.
Anyway. I said I didn’t need to comment, any more than anyone else does.
Do you even know to what the concept of a category error refers?
What about ontological dependence?
(Urges are not needs)
@ ^
Funny how everywhere you go people see you as a dickhead. It’s like a weird superpower you have. What do you think could possibly explain it? Must be something wrong with everyone else right? What else could it be?
Silentbob, your obsession with me is stupid, and you are the troll.
“Still obsessed with me” -- because I made one comment about you? From the guy that had a spree of ten? Amazing. You’re either an unusually self-blind guy, or you are no longer trying to hid your bad faith approach.
Yes, Holms. Obviously.
Because it was purely personal. Purely a holdover from your previous pouty exit.
Me, me, me. Nothing to do with what I wrote, just that I wrote.
And being pestered by you provokes a touch of asperity, which is hardly bad faith.
Ah well. Back to the usual grind with you and the Not-At-All-Silent-bog.
That’s fine, been going on for years now, I’m perfectly used to it and inured to it.
But I will respond, each and every time.
So, in a week where Biden dealt with both the President of Mexico and the President of Egypt, while also dealing with the I/P and of course the situation in Ukraine and the idiocies of Congress…he made a momentary slip-up and identified the President of Egypt by name and flubbed the country as Mexico--which he corrected!
On the other hand, there’s Trump who identified the woman he raped and just lost to in court as his wife, repeatedly called Nancy Pelosi by Nikki Haley’s name and then falsely claimed Nikki Haley/Nancy Pelosi was “in charge of security” on Insurrection Day and lied about “offering her 10,000 soldiers” (for what--he insists it was just a tourist visit?!?!)…and you think that man is capable of being President? We have before us four years of evidence that he’s not mentally capable of understanding what NATO does, and he lies, lies, lies and enjoys inflicting pain on others.
Everyone makes silly flubs. Spanish is my native language, and in a literature class in college, what I once meant to say about a passage in a story we were dissecting was “corriendo por la calle” (running down the street) but what came out of my mouth was “cocinando por la calle” (cooking down the street). I was 18 at the time so it wasn’t a senior moment; just a misconnection between brain and mouth. It happens. There are gag reels dedicated to public figures (tv reporters, actors, other recognizable people) flubbing lines.
However, it appears you hate Joe Biden and nothing anyone can say will move you from your attachment to hate.
(off topic)
@ Morales
Your mate turned up at PZ’s. I mean your second mate after the pretend Japanese one. Go and say hello.
(/off topic)
Silentbob, your obsession with me is stupid.
Delude yourself however you wish, but a spree of ten posts is strong indication of a petulant boy beyond any of Bob’s rants. You say “because it was purely personal…” as if unaware of the personal and abusive comments to jrkrideau in particular; “Purely a holdover from your previous pouty exit” as if unaware of your repetitive formula in reply to Bob across multiple threads now. Your bad faith is fully intentional or your self-blindness is total, the only two options.
Katydid, SSAT is using one of his routine transparent excuses, which of course MAGAs will lap up:
(https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4469054-trump-says-purposely-conflated-pelosi-haley-hard-to-be-sarcastic/)
Holms, your obsession with me is stupid.
@ John Morales
Sorry John, Ukraine has lost. It is not clear if it will still exist as a country though I think a much reduced version may.
I am a full- fledged Russian supporter and have been since the Crimea return to Russia.
Of course I wrote that and I stand by it[1]. I did not support Ukrainian Nazi genocide then any more than I support Israeli genocide in Gaza now.
1. I actually know a little bit about Russian history.
@ 39 Katydid
he made a momentary slip-up and identified the President of Egypt by name and flubbed the country as Mexico--which he corrected!
I see your point but the president of a world power should not make these mistakes.
There is a story of a US officer, suddenly recalled to duty, desperately trying to figure out why the US was attacking Spain until he realized it was the island of Grenada not the city.
I like to think he cancelled the bombing raid on Madrid after that.
jrkrideau, ah good. For once, you try to engage:
You are bullshitting. Had they lost, Russia would not have switched to a war economy.
They would not have lost nearly two million people either dead or fled.
(And you are not sorry, most fucking obviously)
There is no “Ukrainian Nazi genocide”, but there is most certainly a Russian invasion and a shitload of war crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre‘
Already addressed you about that back in Pharyngula, a little before your fled and spoke no more about your support for the massacres, tortures, occupation, thefts, attacks on civilian infrastructure, and the genocide Russia is inflicting on Ukraine. All because Putin is getting on and since the mid 2010’s has had a sense of destiny, once he made himself the effective dictator of what is left of the USSR.
I honestly don’t know how many times I’ve pointed you to the Budapest Memorandum and you have just ignored their lying and revanchist volte face.
You are a Putin stooge. The person in that video is an actual historian.
(But hey, you want to dispute what any actual scholarly historical source says — other than the Russian ones after Putin’s massaging — go for it. It should be fun)
Here: Ukraine Update: Russia lost an entire army, now they’re losing a second one
Putin imagines Ukraine is not a country.
I refer you to my #27.
(though, to be fair, Putin is only the boss of a regional power)
Is there? Citation, please.
Your bullshit is weak as fuck.
Meh, I do get exercised when someone supports genocidal invasions.
Here: Ukraine Update: Russia lost an entire army, now they’re losing a second one
Hey, jrkrideau, you want to challenge me about the effects on Russia and on Ukraine resulting from Putin’s hubristic and delusional grandiose dreams? I’m 100% up for it.
(Military, historical, social, economic or political — you choose, I’ll hammer)
SMO, two years, so far.
Frontlines? Check for yourself how much they’ve changed since late 2022.
War over? Heh heh heh. Not even slightly.
As for the thread… well, Putin is now claiming he supports Biden over Putin.
(Psyops aimed at idiots, of course)
Also, remember: this war of conquest began in 2014.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrainian_War)
I love how our resident idiot troll -- still calling people names that would make an eight year old in a playground blush -- calls jrkrideau both a “Russian stooge” (#27) and a “fascist ideologue” (#31).
Hahaha. X-D
Tell me you know nothing about the last century in Eurasia without telling me you know nothing about the last century in Eurasia, Juan Ramón. You’re hilarious. 🙂
Silentbob, your obsession with me is stupid, it is you who trolls.
Sprees of short and abusive posts shat out within moments of each other StevOR style, evident rising anger, emoty formulaic responses to certain disliked people purely to have the last word over them… I don’t think I’ve ever seen an FTB commenter as helpless to resist their own rage as John.
Ocyz qtlq diapp mj fzsbe bd fvbyltnbx fbp ftfdgfl.
Holms, your obsession with me is quite stupid.
BTW: https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/03/13/russia-s-real-aims-in-crimea-pub-54914
This was posted on March, 2014. Rather accurate, no?
Ten years later, it seems prescient.
@ 32 John Morales
Another thing, and I talk to myself as well: Don’t post comments you know are shitty, and then beg forgiveness, “oh golly gosh Mano I’m a bit of a shit aren’t I”…
Just don’t fucking post it! There’s a preview button. You can in fact self censor.
This goes especially for Morales obviously who routinely posts idiotic bullshit and then begs forgiveness -- but it’s true for everyone. Maybe ask yourself if you’re going to be begging forgiveness tomorrow, and if so don’t post.
Just a thought.
Silentbob, your obsession with me is exceedingly stupid.
I should elaborate, in case there’s anyone who doesn’t get the joke of how idiotic it is to call someone both a Russia supporter and a fascist -- fascism was invented as an anti-Russian movement (following the 1917 revolution). It was explicitly anti-Communist and anti-Jew and implicitly anti-Russian. It would only be a slight exaggeration to call fascism “anit-Russianism”.
Here’s a popular patriotic Russian song with lyrics translated into English:
The Sacred War English Lyrics
But all this is news to Morales, the ignorant muppet, who thinks “fascist” is just some generic insult he can hurl at anyone he dislikes regardless of context and without any evidence whatsoever. Fuckwit.
Silentbob, your obsession with me is remarkably stupid.
My encrypted text was a vigenere cipher with ‘formula’ as the key. Decrypted it gives:
John will prove me right by repeating the formula.
PS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruscism
Holms, it’s remarkable how stupid your obsession with me is.
Another take on that interview, from another geopolitical analyst:
An Australian take, from Media Watch:
I suppose I should’ve added that Media Watch is an independent show on the national broadcaster with very high credibility, and very long-running, which has been known to criticise its host, the ABC.
The thumbnail shows the first segment, the second is directly related to the post topic, there are 4 segments in this episode.
Ah yes, Putin’s Russia. Lovely place.
Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was a true political animal, perhaps a bit too brave, but he knew what he was facing and took the punt. Alas. Tortured for three years, now dead. Defiant to the end.
“On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service announced that Navalny had died in prison in Yamalo-Nenets.”
(Wikipedia)
Morales has now posted six comments in a row in the same thread.
Can someone notify the Guinness people, I think he’s going for the self-absorbed world record. X-D
Nah sorry it was seven. Miscount. I jumped the gun. X-D
Silentbob, your obsession with me is most evident.
Silentbob@52,
@59
This really is the most egregious nonsense. There have been Russian fascists at least since 1925. Fascism was not invented as “an anti-Russian movement” (there was a significant element of anti-Slavism, but this was directed at Slavs occupying areas of the Balkans which Mussolini coveted). Even if it had been, this would not mean Russians as much as anyone else (fascist parties existed in just about all European or European-settled countries) could not adopt similar ideology: extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-liberalism, anti-pluralism, racism, sexism, homophobia… and practices: leader cult, suppression of dissent, persecution of opponents and minorities, aggressive war… pretty near all of which fit Putin’s Russia. One can argue over whether the latter is close enough to the original to be given the same name, but there’s certainly nothing at all absurd about the identification, or the idea that one can be both a Putin stooge and a fascist ideologue.