"Staying Alive" (opens in separate window)
our three silent mice
friday, august 16th, 2024
president Biden was forced, unceremoniously and unwillingly, to abdicate from his impending reelection nomination. Since then, we have neither seen nor heard much from our sitting President. He has vanished, poof, gone.
This is quite unusual if not alarming. Unlike prior to the June 27 debate, the left now makes no effort to hide Biden’s debility. Indeed, it accepts the reality that an infirm Biden might not be able to finish out his remaining six months. Yet it still cannot decide whether the nation’s exposure to a President Harris prior to November 5 would lend her the advantage of incumbency or (more likely) ensure her defeat given global exposure to her puerility.
The president, the Democratic presidential candidate, and the vice presidential nominee all either cannot or will not speak casually and publicly to elected representatives, reporters, or the people.In the past, when a vice president took over the party nomination from his sitting president boss, the lame duck president was nonetheless evident and in charge until the duration of his tenure.
When Lyndon Johnson belatedly decided not to run for reelection in 1968, he claimed that he needed to devote his full attention and remaining months to finding a solution to the then-raging Vietnam War. Indeed, Johnson sought to steal interest away from his often-underappreciated vice president, Hubert Humphrey, and the latter’s ongoing (and failed) bid as the Democratic nominee to replace Johnson.
Ronald Reagan was still very busy in 1980 in his last six months as president—even as his sitting “a thousand points of light” vice president, George H.W. Bush, became the Republican nominee and was fixated on campaigning to replace Reagan.
At times in late 2000, during the waning days of Bill Clinton’s administration, a restless, lame duck Clinton seemed almost to compete for the spotlight with his then vice president, party nominee, and would-be Democratic presidential replacement Al Gore.
The vanishing Biden caught another case of COVID in mid-July shortly after his disastrous and historically early presidential debate with Trump. And in the subsequent month, Biden simply disappeared.
He is rarely seen, more rarely heard, even as Iran has promised a theater-wide war against Israel, Putin has more frequently threatened to escalate Russian attacks to existential levels, and the economy has witnessed dramatic stock shocks, dismal job news, and increasing talk of an impending recession.
Americans have wondered what happened to their president. Apparently, Biden was deemed unfit by his party bosses and donors to remain its nominee but still considered hale enough to continue for half a year as America’s president.
Rumors swirled that a depressed, embittered, and unwell Biden was in seclusion licking his wounds, acidic over being betrayed by his erstwhile allies—the Obamas, former speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, the left-wing squad, a traditionally obsequious and in-the-tank left-wing media, and perhaps his replacement, the machinating Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden gave a so-so endorsement of Harris. After that pro forma act, he has somehow evaporated in a fashion that has left the White House even more vacant than during the octogenarian Biden’s prior three years of customary three-day workweeks.
Will or can Biden campaign this summer and autumn for Harris?
And if he were mentally and physically able to do so, would it help or hurt her?
Are his policies—especially those toward Israel at the brink of a war with Iran—unchanged, or will he shift somewhat to help the Harris cause with pro-Hamas/anti-Israel voters in Michigan?
Or perhaps in his sullenness, will Biden remain indifferent to Harris, or at some point, reassert his lost authority even if, or perhaps because, it might prove injurious to her candidacy?
So, for the present, no one knows who is in charge of the United States.
Is it the three-year consortium headed by the omnipresent Obama tandem that had heretofore used Biden as a convenient waxen effigy?
Or is Jill Biden still playing the Edith Wilson role for a non compos mentis and invalid presidential husband?
Or is our de facto Commander-in-Chief the new presidential candidate Kamala Harris? She seems ebullient in welcoming to her team both Obama old-hands and Biden defectors eager for new jobs and billets, in “The king is dead; long live the king!” fashion.
The next six months may be the most dangerous in our modern history. Key geostrategic decisions concerning an opportunistic world eager to fill the widening American void will be made by whom, if anyone, and in what manner?
Harris
But stranger still is the month-long vaporization of Vice President and the now de facto Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. How weird that she sought to hog airtime and attention as vice president (although not via interviews or impromptu remarks), but once she gained an even wider portfolio as the Democratic presidential nominee, she recoiled from interviews and went into hibernation.
In the last month amid the frenzy of the Biden collapse, her coronation, and the selection of her running mate Tim Walz, a mute Harris has made up all the ground Biden lost as the prior nominee.
She is flooded with hundreds of millions of dollars in left-wing tech and Wall Street cash. All are eager to donate given their money will no longer be wasted on a sore loser but might now earn something in return from a future president.
So, a silent Harris is rising in the polls, once the Biden albatross was cut away and relieved Hollywood/Wall Street/Silicon Valley grandees poured in their riches.
Harris has been instructed to xerox the successful tripartite model of the 2020 Biden victory:
One, keep the incoherent and cackling Harris away from the public and journalists, and ration even her teleprompted and staged speeches.
Two, erase 30 years of left-wing demagoguery and socialist activism. Replace her radical chic with faux-centralism of the ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton sort.
In shameless fashion, Harris is now running ads bragging she will hire more border guards, and secure and stop illegal immigration—this from someone who called for ICE to disappear, championed illegal immigration and an open border, and demonized any who sought to secure it. In some sense, she is even appropriating much of the Trump agenda for the next three months.
So, her message to the public is simply, “Before June 27, I was for what you, the public, hated and never gave a damn about the consequences. And now I am going to fool you for 90 days into thinking I am your real border czar— on the expectation that I can delude you a third time once you naifs elect me and I destroy the border again.”
Three, count on 70 percent of the electorate not voting on Election Day without serious audit.
When will Harris give an unscripted interview? In a month as promised, two months, or after Election Day? When will she dare to speak to a neutral audience? Or mix it up with Donald Trump in no-holds-barred debates? When will she be asked, as incumbent vice president, why she doesn’t begin her promised agenda right now during the last six months of the Biden-Harris tenure?
No such candor will follow until she falls 5 points in the polls behind Trump and is thus forced to speak.
So far now, why would Harris confirm to the electorate that she indeed quickly exhausts her five-hundred-word vocabulary, turns off listeners with adolescent cackling, and is a puerile left-wing ideologue mouthing stale platitudes?
The Trump challenge then is to keep hammering her extremist record, her dangerous agenda for 2025 and beyond, and her weird, indeed historic refusal to mix it up with journalists and to speak ex tempore.
Harris knows that Biden thrived by remaining mute and when he could not, he crashed in the polls. So, she accepts that she too would rather be attacked as evasive, afraid, and cowardly than lose when confirmed as childishly incompetent—given the state media can far more successfully reconstruct her silence as incidental to her mellifluous oratory.
As for the objection that surely Harris cannot pull off such a surreptitious candidacy for 80 more days, Harris would surely answer, “If Biden pulled it off for over three years, I certainly can manage it for 10 weeks.”
Walz
Ostensibly, Tim Walz is a boon to the Trump campaign. His home state Minnesota will likely not be in play in 2024. His strange selection only confirms that Harris is proudly “woke” and a far-left “woke” “radical”—as she herself once put it.
Otherwise, we are learning very quickly that Walz is as erratic, error-prone, and dishonest as Harris. He too is already heading for seclusion from the media. The man of the people from the countryside has scoffed, in self-incriminating Mike Bloomberg fashion, that rural Minnesota is little more than “rocks and cows.”
In mere hours after his nomination, he has grown mute about his past and politics except for teleprompted rah-rah speeches—avoiding reporters, interviews, and unscripted moments.
Why?
Because, in less than a week, the nation learned that Walz lied about his military rank, lied that he had deployed to Iraq, and lied that he had carried a weapon in war. The more we learn about Walz’s record as governor in Minnesota, the more it trumps even the disastrous tenure of Gavin Newsom in his imploding doom-loop state that Walz apparently saw as a model for a once can-do stable Minnesota.
The Insurrectionary Radical Mind
Add it all up, and the president, the vice president, the Democratic presidential candidate, and the vice presidential nominee all either cannot or will not speak casually and publicly to elected representatives, reporters, or the people themselves.
Worse still, they retire from their responsibilities of public engagement because these selected officials accept that the alternative of transparency is nearly suicidal to their own agendas. No one is now in charge of America—neither the ghosted president nor the campaigning vice president candidate who both act as if they hold no office.
It gets far worse still. Joe Biden was created by a soft coup of sorts in March 2000 when all his unpalatable left-wing radical rivals mysteriously vanished in unison at a time when an inert “centrist” Biden had not yet won a single primary.
Then Biden was dethroned abruptly 38 months later by the same inside plotters who deemed his sock puppet role was no longer viable—but only after their sure loser in November had become more a liability to the left than any longer a useful, empty vessel of governance. But as for his fitness as a man of the left to continue ruling us, he was just fine.
It continues to get even worse.
Then the same donors, the same politicos, and the same obsequious media grandees pivoted yet a third time. On the morning of June 27, a fit-as-a-fiddle Biden needed not to step down both because of his brilliance and dynamism—and the unthinkable succession of the Harris mediocrity.
By late night June 27, it was decided that a now suddenly enfeebled and unelectable Biden could be forcibly removed. Harris was Phoenix-like just as quickly reborn as the second coming of Obama—glib, in control, cool, and competent.
We are now witnessing yet a fourth coup from the party that warns us that democracy dies in darkness.
They have removed their once robust now demented nominee, nullified 14 million primary voters, repackaged and selected Harris in his place who has never won a single primary—and now plan to continue in power for another four years by silencing the outgoing president, secluding the vice president and muting the Democratic ticket itself.
In sum, leftists endlessly conspire not only because they have little confidence in the people, but because they have absolutely none in themselves.
© 7.12.2024 by Victor Davis Hanson, "American Greatness".
A Day In The Life.
Up at 8:00a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made coffee and had an Apple Fritter for breakfast, took two 50mg Tramadol and a 300mg Gabapentin for various pains, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the HOT garage and checked the leftover errands list.
It's Friday, already. How'd that happen?
It was 76°/ 90%+ humidity outside, headed to 80° and probably not much worse, and VERY humid, as Tropical Storm "Debby" moved up the East Coast. I had some wonderful Kona "Peaberry" Coffee, then scanned the news and weather sites, and missed the entire "Chris Stigall Show LIVE" (CS Show) from 6-9a, also missed part of the "Chris Plante Show LIVE" (CP Show) 9-12noon. A ***TORNADO WATCH*** was posted until 2p, and a ***FLOOD WATCH*** until 7p. We'll take all the rain we can get. Natch. It was a wet sauna outside; everything was sticky and feeling nasty, but the moisture was paramount. The next few days would be nice, low humidity and in the low-80s.
I had a couple of errands to get done, and left at 11:15, in the heavy rain. Back at 12:30p, the rain began tapering-off as the Tropical Storm moved northward. I had some lunch, worked on a pile of paperwork on my desk, and by 3:30, grabbed a 3hr snooze on the LR couch. The skies were still gray, but the rain had stopped. (Upstate NY is getting hammered with floods.) I checked the radar maps, and we were just getting some of the back winds from the storm, but the rainfall was out of this area. After a huge plate of Lobster-Filled Ravioli, I settled-in with Discovery's "Gold Rush" until 12 midnight, and unplugged.
Up at 7:45a on Saturday, to a bright, sunny, low humidity, clear 71° morning, and it was nice outside, for a change. I started coffee, with a different brand of Kona bag waiting on the counter, fired-up the HP desktop, had a couple smokes in the garage, and fed peanuts to the Bluejays and squirrels. Heh. Plenty of that new, delicious Kona Coffee variety, breakfast, and the news and weather headlines, I did a couple errands. And the rest of the day cleaning-up the niggling stack of paperwork on my desk.
Another "NBC Day". I watched the 6p news, switched to History's "The unXplained" until 11:30p, and bagged it for the night.
Up at 8a on Sunday, I made coffee, had a couple of smokes in the 67° garage, partly sunny morning; no complaints whatsoever. After the morning shave and shower, 2 loads of laundry, some minor condo chores, I did a quick errand, and refueled the Jeep, and was home for the afternoon. The front garden needed weeding, but it can wait until tomorrow. I did some hard surface weed spraying with RoundUp® and washed-up after using that insecticide. I scanned the news and weather headlines, and spent too much time reading the news articles, at this news aggregator. While watching some TV in the mid-evening, I fell asleep watching a TRASHCAR race, in one of the director's chairs, in front of the HUGE 82" (now 85" model) , wall-mounted Samsung QLED 4K Smart UHD TV. Heh.
My recycle bin, and those of the other 39 condos in the complex, have been sitting out at the curb, since last Sunday afternoon. It seems that Republic Waste Services Co is having either equipment or personnel problems, and keeps delaying this area's collections day-by-day all last week, and poof, here we are 7 days later, with large blue bins decoration the street. Switching to Motor Trend's "Shorty's Dream Shop" and "AFV" (America's Funniest Videos), I finally quit for the night, at 1a. Busy day tomorrow.
Up at 5:30a on Monday, to a 55°, blue sky, sunny, a most pleasant COOL and dry morning, with a forecast 83° for the day. Good weekly forecast too, so I'll get some outdoor work done, too. It was truly a pleasure, once more, to sit outside and have a smoke, in the fresh, cool air. My COPD and I appreciated it. Heh. I tuned into the "CS Show LIVE" from 6-9, and then to the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12, got ready for the day, and left for points south and several errands in Red Lion and Dallastown. No AC in the Jeep today; windows and panoramic sunroof wide open. Glorious!
Traffic was light, and I made the round-trip of 3 stops in 90mins, unpacked, had a Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese, Chives & Dill Sandwich for lunch, and worked in the gardens for 3hrs. Nice day for it. Since the squirrels chewed-up my front garden hose, looking to get water out of it during the extreme drought and heat 2 weeks ago, I got a new one but will hold off swapping them, until I can figure a way around any further squirrel damage. Otherwise, I have to kill them. Heh.
A person with an experience, is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.
After 6 huge, really good Beef Tamales w/ Salsa, Chili & Cheese for a late dinner, I watched the news, and Motor Trend's "Iron Insurrection" until 1a, and unplugged.
Up at 7a on Tuesday, to a beautiful, blue sky, cool 65° morning. Nice days ahead in the forecast. I made the new Kona Coffee, fired-up the HP desktop, had a couple smokes in the garage w/ fresh aid, fed the squirrels, Bluejays and Cardinals, and tuned into the "CS Show LIVE" until 9, and then switched to the "CP Show LIVE" until noon. After a large lunch, I did a final load of laundry, grabbed a 2hr nap, and by 5p, the day was a few degrees cooler, and a pleasure to sit out on the back patio, feed the squirrels, and get the TV's Woo-hoo, the Republic Waste Services Co did come today -- 8 days late -- and emptied all 40 units' recycle bins. Better late than never, I guess.
After dinner, I watched the usual NEWSMAX or FNC news, and listened to a few minutes of the 2hr Trump-Musk Interview from last evening. I switched over to Motor Trend's "Bitchin' Rides" until 1a. Lights out.
Up at 8a on Wednesday, to a cool 66°, sunny morning, I made coffee, had a couple smokes in the garage, fed the squirrels, several Cardinals and Bluejays, scanned the news and weather headlines, and settled-in with the remainder of the "CS Show LIVE" until the "CP Show LIVE" at 9-12. Sherry's here today and we've got a couple of quick errands to do. I checked Thunderbird eMail and got a landslide just since late yesterday afternoon; wowzer. And damn; if you're on Medicare, as I am, you'd better read this.
Sherry arrived around 1p, and we left for Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market, and then to Saubel's Market on the way back to my condo. We got LOTS of food and goodies, loaded-up her car with her purchases, and she left, after we had a couple hours together. I had dinner, missed the 6p news and tuned into Discovery's "Expedition X" until midnight, and unplugged.
Sucks to be me.
Sleeping-in until 9a on Thursday, a beautiful, sunny morning, 74° and forecast to be near 90° later, with a wildfire smoke-filled hazy sky... huh? AIR QUALITY: POOR/UNHEALTHY. Swell. Sucks to be me. The damned full-socialist Cannucks can't seem to get that crap under control. I made coffee, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", had a smoke in the now-open garage -- despite the milky white (pollution) overcast sky and bad air -- and just lounged around until 1:30p. I scanned the news and weather headlines, swapped some garage and new patio chairs around, and got rid of another style which had broken seat webbing. I had a couple Rxs at nearby Rite Aid to p/u, and would go over in a few hours to get them.
Reading some articles involving the Deep State, unending foreign wars, corrupted local, station and national elections, a few thoughts occurred to me:
• 2020 and 2024 were the Deep State flexing its muscles and asserting its rule over our Nation.
• It was the Deep State who released Covid to derail Trump’s magnificent economy, foreign policy and strength in the face of impeachments, RussiaGate BS, etc.
• It was the Deep State who engineered the change in election laws, allowing vote by mail, ballot harvesting and early voting.
• It was the Deep State who selected Biden, sheltered him during the campaign and protected him from what his son had admitted on his fabled laptop.
• It was the Deep State who dethroned Biden in favor of long-time, hard-left communists Harris/Walz. The same Deep State is keeping them sheltered, protected and whitewashed.
• If Harris/Walz win in November, the Deep State will have asserted itself as the true ruler of the United States in no unequivocal terms.
• Few will have the courage to oppose them going forward. Those that do will be imprisoned, bankrupted or destroyed.
• This is happening not just here in the US, but all across Western nations. Canada is full communist. The UK has abandoned all appearance of freedom for its citizens. France staged an election to destroy the rising freedom-minded voices, and the Deep State came out on top.
After 2hrs at Rite Aid's Pharmacy delays, with a lot of new personnel, and refueling ($87.23 /19.5 of 25 gals) the Jeep, I finally got home around 4p. Sucks to be me, once again. I unpacked, grabbed a mug of the morfning's Kona Coffee, and replayed some of the "CP Show Podcast", much which I'd missed, while rescanning the news. Trump & Musk can sure dance, can't they? LOL.
I had dinner, watched the news and switched to History's streaming c hannel of "American Pickers" 25th season, until 1a, and bagged it for the night.
Tomorrow starts another week here in the "Jornal", and I've got another clear week. Shewrry's stopping by later today, after she's finished filling-in for Daughter, Hollie, and we'll get some time set aside for US. The weather's nice now, and matbe we can get out to the park for some enjoyment.
The Weird, Creepy, Surreal — and Dangerous — 2024 Campaign.
The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history.
Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world:
1. How can Kamala Harris merely promise us fixes to come in 2025 for inflation and an open border when she is still vice president for another six months? Why can’t she enact her proposed solutions to these problems (which she helped create) right now?
2. Would the media prefer to help her win but lose further credibility themselves by failing to ask why she has disowned her last three decades of leftist agendas, or to reclaim some of their reputations and thereby risk her losing?
3. Does the left appreciate the new campaign and election protocols it has now established?
That is to say:
Cancel by fiat their virtual nominee four months before the election when he sinks in the polls?
This warped election violates every prior precedent and is not just creepy but dangerous—even before the campaign was supposed to formally begin.Nullify the outcome of a year of primaries and the will of 14 million voters?
Threaten a sitting president with removal by the 25th Amendment process unless he steps aside as his party nominee?
Anoint a replacement nominee before the convention and without a single primary—and then prevent any rival candidates from challenging her?
4. After the precedents of 2020 and 2024, is the future orthodox protocol for any Democratic nominee now to avoid all interviews and ex tempore speaking, and stick to teleprompted speeches and scripted responses only?
Is the fear that a transparent progressive messenger with an overt and honest left-wing message will double down on it and thus guarantee defeat?
5. For the next 80 days, has the chameleon-like Kamala Harris now become a temporary MAGA candidate, as she expropriates Trump’s positions from border security to no taxes on tips? Does the media care to ask the new 80-day MAGA Harris why she has renounced many of her once emphatic beliefs?
6. If Democratic presidential reelection candidate Joe Biden was pronounced fit as a fiddle before June 27, but after July 21 was abruptly forced off the ticket as too debilitated to continue as his party’s nominee, what exactly is his status now?
(Half-cognizant and thus able enough to continue his not-so-important task as America’s president, but also half-enfeebled and thus utterly unable to continue as the far more important Democratic nominee, it appears.)
7. Does the new anti-Semitic Democratic Party prefer to risk losing with the radical nonentity WASP Tim Walz as vice presidential candidate rather than likely win with a popular, successful, and moderate Jewish Josh Shapiro?
8. If one vice presidential candidate went to a war zone to serve with his deployed unit, while his counterpart preferred to retire from the military to avoid doing the same and lies about his abdication, how can the media credibly assert that the former’s tour was militarily suspect and yet pronounce the latter’s absence as heroic?
9. If the current president canceled his reelection bid because he was too debilitated and unpopular, and is now rarely seen or heard, and if the vice president is out of Washington running a campaign in his place, but avoiding all press conferences, interviews, and unscripted addresses, who exactly, if anyone, is running the United States for the next six months of the lame duck Biden-Harris administration?
10. If Donald Trump all summer has been compared by his enemies to Hitler and his murderous Third Reich, and if a 20-year-old would-be assassin and murderer with ease took up a sniper’s position to kill Trump—without a notified Secret Service or other law enforcement attempting to abort the shooter’s attempted assassination—what signal does that send to other would-be assassins for the next 80 days of the 2024 campaign?
Is the message that if a 20-year-old amateur sniper can brazenly and visibly for nearly an hour breach all Secret Service security perimeters to shoot eight times at the president, hit him in the ear, kill one innocent bystander, and wound two others, then almost any future, more-experienced serious shooter could match or exceed the ability of that disturbed amateur to get close enough to Trump to fire more than eight shots at his head?
And that shooting Donald Trump in many leftist quarters would subsequently earn the unhinged killer eternal fame, applause, and immortality?
And that if there are such anticipated rewards and perceived opportunities, then we may well see more attempts on candidate Trump’s life?
In sum, presidential campaigns traditionally kick off after Labor Day and mostly follow accepted protocols. But this warped 2024 version violates every prior precedent and is not just creepy but dangerous—even before the campaign was supposed to formally begin.
© 8.15.2024 by Victor Davis Hanson, "American Greatness".
