The great coverup
The Democrats are rallying around Joe Biden while the rest of the country wonders out loud about the extent of his degeneration and decline. Biden’s mental health has become the talking point in the US, if not the whole the world. That other “d” word, dementia, is trotted out routinely. In political terms, it’s worth remembering dread and doom also start with “d”.
It’s an almost perfect mix of denial and derision. The DNC has tried to rally the troops. Big and powerful Democrats have come out, hand on heart, declaring Biden a man untroubled by the ravages of age, while other senior colleagues who urge Biden to withdraw his candidacy receive calls politely and then not so politely telling them to please stop talking about Biden’s neurological shortcomings.
It’s not working.
Questions were asked directly of Biden as to his state of cognitive function on Sunday in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on America’s ABC network.
Had the President undergone “specific cognitive tests and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?”
“No one said I had to,” Biden replied. “No one said … No. I’m good.”
It wasn’t reassuring. Biden’s descent into geriatrics could not have been more marked if Joe and Jill were seen patiently waiting outside Arby’s for the early bird specials to kick in.
When directly asked if he would undertake cognitive testing and release the results publicly, Biden baulked and claimed that, as President, he does a neurology test everyday. No, Joe. That’s the lunch menu.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham went a step further in calling for mandatory presidential cognitive testing of a type he probably does not know exists but is a standard, quick diagnosis tool in gerontological medicine around the world, known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MoCA).
“All nominees for president going into future should have neurological exams as part of an overall physical exam … Let’s test Trump. Let’s test Biden. Let’s test the line of succession”, the 68-year-old Graham told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, local time.
“This is a wake-up call for the country,” he added. “We need to make sure that the people who are going to be in the line of succession are capable of being commander-in-chief under dire circumstances.”
Graham believed Biden was in denial and posed all manner of perils for the smooth functioning of the executive branch, saying: “This is a dangerous time for the American people to have somebody … leading the ship of state who seems to be compromised.”
Asked if Trump, 78, should have the test, too, Graham said: “Yes, yes, I think both.”
But Trump did have a version or a form of the MoCA in 2018 and we know this because in the Donald’s own words, he “aced” it.
The precise results? We don’t know if the 30-minute MoCA test ran from go to whoa or was truncated in some way. What we can safely conclude from Trump’s test is that the baseline for determining a POTUS’s neurological health or otherwise is now set at him or her remembering five unrelated nouns in a passage of speech read out for a minute containing around 60 nouns. If you can remember five of the 60, congratulations, you can be president of the United States.
Trump proudly repeated his noun mantra for the camera four times to a startled Fox News journalist: “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
“It’s actually not that easy,” Trump said. “But for me it was easy.”
Telling the story later, Trump got the doctor’s name wrong. But at least he did it. Biden is refusing.
One wonders how Biden would handle a MoCA. I don’t want to be unkind but if the leader of the free world can’t perform the same basic memory functions I’d expect of your average adult Labrador, then it might be time for a long lie down. But that’s where we are now. Pass the Adderall and the Penny Pads.
Biden’s speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of NATO in DC on Tuesday was said to be a great opportunity for him to recover after the debate. The general view after the speech was that Biden had been “strong” and “confident”. The talk earlier from some Democrat sources had been that Biden’s NATO speech was his last chance at a recovery from the disaster of the first presidential debate. That race has been run. Shutting the gate now after the horse has not only bolted but fled, galloping wildly, only to appear as a dot on the horizon briefly before vanishing altogether three weeks ago is a fool’s errand.
It does raise the delicious though unlikely event that the presidential debate could be scrapped in favour of televised cognitive testing where Presidents Biden and Trump line up and work through a series of exhaustive word association tests, mnemonic exercises and building things with blocks before a live television audience.
Then it’s onto the physical trials. Jenga at 20 paces. Hungry, Hungry Hippos moderated by Sean Hannity. And as the two men quibbled over Biden’s golf handicap at the first debate, Bingo Bango Bongo over 18 gruelling holes at the local pitch and putt. Winner takes the White House.
It could lead to the resurrection of free-to-air television if handled properly. Or it could end up in a fully blown civil war in the US. Either way, circling the wagons around Biden, with or without cognitive testing, should be shouting, if not screaming, to all senior Democrats, including Joe and his wife Jill, that when questions of the President’s mental decline are being asked directly during a softball interview, it is a sign time is up. Or to quote a line from Joseph Heller’s parody of US government and academia, Good As Gold: “Don’t force anything mechanical, never kick anything inanimate, and don’t fart around with the inevitable.”
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Biden administration agrees to ship 500-pound bombs to Israel
The US will soon begin shipping to Israel the 500-pound bombs the Biden administration had previously suspended, ending a two-month pause it had imposed in a bid to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, US officials said.
The decision came as the Israeli army said overnight on Wednesday it had completed its mission in Shujaiya, a neighbourhood in the east of Gaza that had been the scene of violent fighting for two weeks.
The bombs “are in the process of being shipped”, and are expected to arrive in Israel in coming weeks, an administration official said. Heavier 2000-pound bombs meant to be part of the same shipment were still on hold, the official added. The US announced in May it had held up one shipment that included 2000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs. Israel sent a ship to Charleston, South Carolina, to pick up the shipment before the decision was made.
President Joe Biden’s decision to hold delivery of certain types of bombs marked an escalation of tensions between his administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Mr Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, where more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed since last October, according to Palestinian officials. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants.
The US suspension came in response to Israel’s plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah without what the Biden administration regarded as a credible plan to protect civilians. More than one million people had taken shelter there, fleeing fighting in other parts of Gaza.
Mr Biden had described a major operation in Rafah as a “red line”, but not one that would lead to a total cut-off of US arms supplies.
“Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza,” a US official said. “Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process.”
The Israelis had argued they needed heavy bombs to destroy tunnels. US officials said that was outweighed by US concerns about potential civilian deaths when such large bombs are used in densely populated areas.
Axios reported last month that the 500-pound bombs would be shipped soon. During its Rafah operation, Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, achieving one aim of the war by cutting off what it said was a key route for smuggling weapons. The operation forced a majority of the displaced Gazans in Rafah to flee the city.
At least 46 Palestinians were killed on May 26 during an Israeli airstrike in Tal al-Sultan, a refugee camp in Rafah. The White House said the strike didn’t cross the “red line” the President had drawn in March during his MSNBC interview.
“This is an example of the administration folding their hand. They were called out on their bluff of Rafah and now they’re relenting,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy for the Middle East Democracy Centre, a policy institute in Washington.
A State Department spokesman said on Monday it believes the Rafah operation caused fewer civilian casualties than previous phases of the war. Israeli officials have in recent weeks signalled a shift to a lower-intensity phase of the war. Some security analysts said the perceived reduction in civilian deaths could be because of a slower pace of strikes in recent weeks, rather than a change in Israel’s approach to targeting.
“There’s not much evidence of that, but certainly some evidence the operational tempo is lower,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department official and now a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group.
Reducing civilian casualties continues to be a challenge for the Israeli military in Gaza. An Aair strike on Tuesday in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killed at least 25 people and wounded 50 others in a school where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, Palestinian health officials said.
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ALG Urges Yes Vote on SAVE Act
July 10, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the House to pass H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act:
“There is no excuse not to pass the Safeguard American Voting Eligibility Act. The sacred right to vote by citizens which so many have fought for from Selma, Alabama to remote corners of the world where freedom has continued to be won, is under attack. Rep. Chip Roy is right when he says, ‘Federal law currently PROHIBITS states from verifying citizenship status during registration for federal elections. The SAVE Act requires proof of citizenship to register and would remove non-citizens from voter rolls. What are Democrats fearful of?’
“The answer is simple. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrat members of Congress oppose democracy by seeking to destroy the one-person, one-vote constitutional principle, through annihilating chain of custody of live ballots and engaging in a deliberate campaign to register illegal aliens to vote as they enter the country and sign up for free stuff from the government.
“Joe Biden has stated many times that this election is a battle for the soul of America. He is right and protecting the fundamental principle that American citizens have a unique franchise to determine the direction of the country is essential to maintaining our freedom and liberty.
“Americans for Limited Government strongly urges a Yes vote on the SAVE Act.”
https://getliberty.org/2024/07/alg-urges-yes-vote-on-save-act/
************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
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