2023-24 Political Thread

[bjdeming]

Trump will flap his gums enough to make the race close. The Dems likely want to push Biden through the election and then 25th him after the inauguration to put Harris in his seat.

Haley: "It's either gonna be me, or it's gonna be Kamala Harris," Haley warned while campaigning in Orangeburg, S.C. last weekend."

'Warned.'

Maybe that is how to sell herself in this climate, but is her goal POTUS or the Veepery? She won't get the latter if Trump gets the nomination, for sure, and he seems most likely to at this moment

Can she get to the White House? Haley/DeSantis after all (he said he would support whoever won the nomination, right?)?

 

[bjdeming]

Simply because it's not being covered (had to do a name search), Haley won the DC primary yesterday and, according to this radical rag:

Haley also got another potential boost on Friday when she received Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) endorsement ahead of the state’s caucuses on Tuesday. Murkowski, a vocal Trump critic, is the first sitting senator to endorse Haley.

No cheering for imminent victory here, by any means, but the other day Jonah Goldberg wrote what I feel even though I'm an independent and he is a conservative.

 

[Mike S]

I would like to congratulate our stupid primary/caucus system rendering my vote practically meaningless yesterday. I didn't even bother with POTUS as I decided to vote in the Libertarian primary.

In all honesty, it would not have made a difference but I would have at least liked to think Haley, or anyone other than Trump, had a chance when all votes were on the table.

 

[ghost]

Agee totally

 

[ghost]

 

[Evan]

I didn't even realize we had a nationwide Presidential election this year. Here I was thinking it was an election for President of the Whistling Creek retirement home's bingo commission.

On one side you've got a guy who's a demented fool, and, then, on the other side you've got Joe Biden who's barely cogent most days. I'd love an across the board age cap for both POTUS and VPOTUS and SCOTUS. You have to be playing with a half-deck of cards yourself if you think either of these doddering geriatrics should be anywhere near the White House.

 

[bjdeming]

Every now and then, while following the Iceland eruption with Google's help -- stay with me, please -- some local news article on another topic hits me.

Yesterday it was RUV's coverage (autotranslated) of the sentencing in that Michigan shooting case.

They just presented the facts but it also conveyed a sense of the full tragedy, in so many aspects.

And that has led me to realize that both sets of Boomer-era radicals -- leftists who seized control in 1968 and rightists who came to power some ten or twenty years later -- have jumped the shark in 2024.

And I say that as someone who watched the Happy Days segment when it aired and didn't understand -- then -- why it felt so stupid.

There is SO much needing to be done in the middle! People are doing it where it matters, face to face, out of the spotlight, in families and other quietly vital parts of this country , but it takes so long. I wish the media and those who mistakenly think that matters and therefore exploit it, would get the message.

 

[bjdeming]

Either the world's drinking water is laced with LSD or the people running politics in the US have left the shark far behind and are on their way to the Kuiper Belt.

Dave Barry last year summed up among other things the Republican House leadership crises nicely, and that party's presumed presidential candidate is a mess in so many ways plus being in his prime back in the 1980s.

On the other side of the aisle, I have to share this autotranslated story from The Onion The Babylon Bee a foreign country's national media company:

Biden can hardly believe that his cousin was eaten by cannibals​

The leader of Papua New Guinea plays down US President Joe Biden's comments that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in that country during the Second World War. The uncle's plane crashed, but nowhere near land, but in the Pacific Ocean.​

Markús Þ. Thorhallsson
April 22, 2024 at 06:45 GMT

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape.
EPA-EFE/MICK TSIKAS
James Marape, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, also downplays US President Joe Biden's comments that his uncle had been eaten by cannibals in that country. Marape says he does not believe the president believes his own words, nor do they reflect his feelings towards the country and its people.
The relations between the countries are good, but it can happen that people let one thing or another wander. Biden said last week that his cousin Ambrose Finnegan had been shot down along with the crew of a cargo plane over Papua New Guinea during World War II.

...

Marape says that he met Biden several times, he always spoke nicely about the country and never mentioned a single word about cannibals.

There is historical evidence that cannibalism was once practiced among a few tribes in remote areas of Papua New Guinea. For many years, the countrymen have done everything to shake off outdated rumors that only cruel savages live there.

US Department of Defense documents show that Finnegan's plane was indeed forced to make an emergency landing, but that it happened over seas. The cargo barge crew rescued one, but no trace of the other three has been found.

Prime Minister Marape further urged Biden to thoroughly clean up after the world war, as the country's citizens fear that unexploded bombs will kill them. By doing so, the spirits of the lost soldiers on Finnegan's table can be given a long-awaited rest.

Biden has let things slip before, confusing people and their names...

Please tell me that someone out there is playing a cruel joke on us. I'll be in the den, watching a replay of the De Santis/Haley debate, wondering which competent younger adults the Democrats might have fielded instead of their own incumbent 1980s-prime candidate, and dreaming of what Election 2024 might have been and what I hope 2028 will be.

 

[ghost]

 

[ZexityViking]

What about trump eats food

 

[KoD]

Guilty

 

[Evan]

 

[Evan]

I didn't even realize we had a nationwide Presidential election this year. Here I was thinking it was an election for President of the Whistling Creek retirement home's bingo commission.

On one side you've got a guy who's a demented fool, and, then, on the other side you've got Joe Biden who's barely cogent most days. I'd love an across the board age cap for both POTUS and VPOTUS and SCOTUS. You have to be playing with a half-deck of cards yourself if you think either of these doddering geriatrics should be anywhere near the White House.

Like I said...

 

[bjdeming]

<Den door> I go to Iceland online news for geology, not the socialist attitudes, but this story on the debate is worth sharing since it was published in that leftist political setting by what seems to me like the media site there most likely to appeal to what we would call progressives here:

...Biden may have lost the election with his performance, but that will become clearer in the coming days...

-- Source (autotranslated)

If they end up going that route and President Botox gets yoinked for medical reasons before the election, then Harris becomes president until Inauguration Day at the same time -- if it were anyone else, even Dan Quayle if this were the 80s and Mr. Reagan failed like that, the VP would move in today to run the country, now that they can't hide Mr. Biden's senility any more -- and the next-highest vote getter in Democrat primaries becomes the candidate.

That's how it would work in the America I grew up in, I think.

Less clear but desirable would see The Donald yoinked for his conviction, and the next-highest Republican vote-getter in the primaries become the de facto candidate.

True, that's wishful thinking, and I'll continue by hoping he would choose Haley for VP.

In any event, the powerbrokers are in one heckuva fix now.

</den door >

 

[bjdeming]

Almost 3/4 of the Americans that CBS/YouGov polled believe the president is incapable of doing his job -- and...so what, apparently. I saw nothing about this poll in a scan of UPI and AP top headlines online just now but allies are concerned, as well they should be -- I think.

Maybe it's good news. Maybe it's one of the first post--WWII signs that the US, unlike other countries, really does depend on its people, not its federal government sometimes?

And now is one of those times?

This election really has hit bottom, on both sides of the aisle. But when I don't look at politics but instead at the society around me, of course it isn't perfect, but I actually feel pretty good about this country overall.

With their different forms of government, allies could not possibly see that. Maybe their people can, though.

Allies defend Biden as poll suggests growing age concern​

20 hours ago
By Ana Faguy, BBC News, Washington
Share

Getty Images

A new poll suggests that some Democratic voters are increasingly concerned about whether Joe Biden is mentally fit to serve as president after a shaky debate performance on Thursday.

A CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday indicated that 72% of registered voters believe the president does not have the mental and cognitive health to serve as president - a sharp increase from the 65% who said the same in an earlier poll.

Forty-nine percent of voters said the same of former President Donald Trump.

-- Source

My question to all politicians from now on: "What will you do with the power and resources my vote gives you to see to it that America comes into its tricentennial in its best-ever economic, social, and geopolitical condition?"

That's all that really matters, after all.

What if there has been a silent but widespread "revolution" (commitment to the country born out of the original one and its outrageous but very constructive E pluribus unum) all this time, while some ambitious folks tried to foment trouble in various ways?

What if We The People are actually masters at the old game of Cheat the Prophet?

Hope it's the case, because that means that life in the US will pretty much stay the same.

 

[bjdeming]

Perspective aside, seeing such an untenable 2024 election choice on the Fourth of July bothers my old-fashioned political reflexes.

Though an argument for them could be made (and probably would be made, if stakes weren't so high), elder-abuse charges wouldn't go far, given the influence and resources of the many 2008-2016 or 2016-2020 power players whose fortunes depend on having a Biden or a Trump, respectively, back on the prow of the ship of state to love/hate.

That said, I pity both of those tired old men and those who care for them -- Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are being worked to death, just as Diane Feinstein was.

So I was curious whether the Constitution allows for a medical panel to step in (not that a really impartial one could be formed).

It doesn't, but it does appear that the Vice President and Congress can be key players.

If they believed that the 72% of Americans who polled for CBS/YouGov saying that Mr. Biden is incompetent also wanted the VP and Congress to do something about it, this could happen no matter what the current President and his handlers and loyal party members said:

Section 4​

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.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days 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. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

-- Source

That looked like a good solution after the last demented old man left the Oval Office -- "Never again," the amendment's supporters were probably thinking -- and it would be a good one still in 2024, if We The People wanted it and didn't mind the inevitable resulting furor.

Our future is at stake, but the least painful approach to the problem does seem to be the deeper game: Cheat the Prophet.

A pity that, by the rules of this game, I won't be around to see how it all works out. But I think things will stay the same overall.

 

[bjdeming]

Saw this at RUV (autotranslated) but would not be convinced of her qualifications as a decision maker until she demonstrates her fitness right now by stepping up and doing her job as Vice President in this tough but historic situation -- if Schiff is saying this, there is apparently support in Congress:

Says sure Kamala Harris would beat Trump by a landslide​

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff says he's confident Vice President Kamala Harris has what it takes to be a good president. She would put Donald Trump on the field if Joe Biden decided to step aside.​

Thorgils Jonsson
July 7, 2024 at 19:07 GMT,updated July 8, 2024 at 09:07

Adam Schiff says he's confident Vice President Kamala Harris could make a great president. She would beat Donald Trump by a landslide, but first Joe Biden has to decide if he wants to continue running.
EPA – JIM LO SCALZO
One of the leaders of the Democratic Party in the United States House of Representatives says he is sure that Vice President Kamala Harris would beat Donald Trump with an advantage if Joe Biden stopped running.
Adam Schiff, congressman from the state of California and one of the party's most powerful spokesmen, appeared on the Meet the Press program on NBC today,...

 

[bjdeming]

I don't think Harris will do her job as outlined by the 25th amendment -- you wouldn't think that amendment existed, judging by the glamour headlines out there at the moment.

It's too bad -- I think this was a perfect opportunity for her to show some backbone, make tough decisions, work with members of Congress, and generally show that she's got what it takes to become this great nation's chief executive.

Not only guiding the US through a difficult summer, she would have won the election in a landslide, with Democrats surging into Congress on her coat-tails, and after eight popular years, could have handed over the reins to her chosen successor.

Instead, it appears that she lacks what it takes to really do the VP job and is not qualified for the Oval Office. Sigh. I never was crazy about her as a politician but it's still a disappointment.

Meanwhile, allies apparently are facing hard realities, too:

...It must be considered more likely than less, as the situation is now, that Donald Trump will ... sit down in the president's chair again...

-- Source (autotranslated)

Yep. And I'm just as thrilled about that as this writer seems to be.

 

[Blountwolf]

"The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories." -Page 696.

I'm just going to leave this here.

 

[GeneralChow]

"The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories." -Page 696.

I'm just going to leave this here.

Why? To get a rise out of people?

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