84-year-old Nancy Pelosi says that 81 is too old to be a government worker

“Pelosi Suggests That Biden Should Reconsider Decision to Stay in the Race” (New York Times):

Representative Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Biden ally and the former speaker, is the most senior member of his party who has so far suggested he consider dropping out.

Ms. Pelosi, 84, a longtime ally of the 81-year-old Mr. Biden and one of the most seasoned and cutthroat politicians in the House, has been more aggressive in her public comments about the president’s candidacy than other party leaders, who have publicly stated only that they remain behind him.

The 84-year-old is “seasoned” and “aggressive” (like Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever?) while the 81-year-old is too old to work for the federal government.

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What was so bad about Joe Biden’s debate performance?

After four years of celebrating Joe Biden as one of America’s smartest and sharpest residents, the New York Times watched one TV show and decided that the former Savior of our Democracy was too feeble-minded to run for reelection (but it is okay for him to be Commander in Chief of the world’s largest military for another six months?).

I was mostly peacefully sleeping in Portugal when the debate happened, but the kids asked to see some of it so we cued up a highlights reel for them this evening. Now I’m even more confused. Biden behaved exactly like the Democrats I know in Massachusetts, New York, and California. Given the slightest prompt, he expressed rage about Donald Trump supposedly having sex with a paid female 20 years ago, “lying”, or saying something outrageous. I’ve heard plenty of 20-to-65-year-old Democrats respond in exactly the same manner.

I’ve also poked around in a transcript of the debate and can’t find anything in the wider event that seems unusual. If anyone questions the wisdom of open borders in a cradle-to-grave welfare state at a gathering in Cambridge, MA, the Harvard graduates come back with a prepared script of anti-Trump talking points: sex with porn star, praised Nazis as “fine people”, is a convicted felon, is a racist, will end our democracy, etc. The talking points have no relevance to the policy question, e.g., whether the border should be open or whether the working class should be forced to pay back student loans for college graduates. Joe Biden stumbles over his words more than a 25-year-old Harvard graduate would, but he conveys the same scripted anti-Trump message.

I was, actually, more surprised by what I saw of Donald Trump in the video. I hadn’t seen a video of him since 2020, I think, and it was remarkable how little he’s changed. God loves Trump and is preserving him for some reason known only to Him/Her/Zir/Them?

One thing that I was pleased to see in the transcript was Biden repeating his prophecy of doom for the human race:

He had not done a damn thing with the environment. He – out of the Paris Peace Accord – Climate Accord, I immediately joined it, because if we reach for 1.5 degrees Celsius at any one point, well, there is no way back. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I’ve done.

Humanity is on track to be wiped out, in other words, but there is no need for Democrats to rush into congestion pricing, no need to cut back on importing humans from low-carbon economies into our high-carbon economy, no reason to redirect almost all federal spending into solar cells and windmills, and no reason to lock Americans down to prevent CO2 emissions from unnecessary trips. (We had lockdowns to fight a virus with the potential to kill a small percentage of old/sick people, but we shouldn’t do anything significant about a situation in which 100 percent of humans might die, including the young and healthy.)

Separately, what if Donald Trump should win and our democracy actually does, therefore, end? Our local Palm Beach County library is preparing both Black and white patrons for the (horrifying) possibility:

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A Constitutional amendment to impose an age limit of 67 on the President?

An immigrant physician friend, simply based on videos that she watched in 2020, diagnosed Joe Biden with dementia four years ago and referred to him as “the senile puppet” long before the New York Times editorial board noticed that anything was wrong. Democrats now believe that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are insufficient to handle the job of U.S. President. Democrats also hate Donald Trump and there are at least some Republicans who prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to Mr. Trump.

I wonder if these groups could get together and do a quickie amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a mandatory retirement age of 67 (the current Social Security full retirement age for those born after 1960) on the job. We need three-fourths of the states to ratify such an amendment and then both the Republicans and Democrats would have to nominate younger politicians for the November election.

We’ve already got a minimum of 35:

Why not a maximum?

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New York Times elite admits to having no better access to information than peasants have?

We’re supposed to follow the guidance of the New York Times because the people on their editorial board have better access to information than we do. We wear cloth face coverings as PPE against aerosol viruses if they tell us to because they have direct access to the Science. We vote for whomever the NYT recommends because they have direct personal contact with America’s top politicians. We buy Teslas because they tell us that they’ve done the analysis and concluded that a 4,750 lb. electric car will heal our planet while a 2,500 lb. gas-powered car will destroy it.

We’ve been getting guidance from the NYT for at least five years regarding Joe Biden, a man whom an immigrant physician friend, after reviewing what was available to the masses, characterized as a “senile puppet” back in 2020. Using their elite connections, the NYT found “a professor of psychology and neuroscience and the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis” to tell peasants to ignore what they might be seeing in videos. “I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.” (February 2024):

As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. … age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. … Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than Forgetting. … Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than the Berkshire Hathaway C.E.O., Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger.

NYT reminded peasants again in March that age is an irrelevant number when you’re propped up by elite advisors… “The Overlooked Truths About Biden’s Age”:

The presidency isn’t a solo mission. Not even close. It’s a team effort, and the administration that a president puts together matters much, much more than his brawn or his brio. … But he’s not Atlas; he’s POTUS. And the president of the United States is only as good as the advisers around him, whose selection reflects presidential judgment, not stamina. … Yes, Trump is about three and a half years younger and often peppier than Biden. Biden is about 300 times saner and always more principled than Trump.

While I was traveling back to the U.S. from Portugal yesterday, the NYT’s Editorial Board published a radical about-face:

Based on their elite access, they had full confidence in Joe Biden until Thursday morning. After watching a TV show intended for peasants on Thursday evening, they’ve decided that their great leader should retire to a Memory Care unit. Doesn’t this undermine their claim to having better information than the masses? If they wanted to throw Genocide Joe under the bus, shouldn’t they had said that their withdrawal of support was based on private conversations with top officials who requested anonymity?

(The Wall Street Journal did this right. “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” (June 4, 2024). Their journalists got behind doors that are closed to peasants, at least via interviews with the elite, and brought back the truth. Ergo, if you want to know what is really happening in the U.S. and elsewhere you need to keep paying for a WSJ subscription. You can’t just watch TV.)

Who would you all like to see as a replacement? My dream is Michael Avenatti with Hunter Biden as VP. “Avenatti’s actions on potential presidential run speak louder than his words” (CNN):

Michael Avenatti, the boisterous lawyer who has risen to national fame in recent months by publicly pestering Donald Trump, will continue his public flirtations with running for President in 2020 by headlining two more Democratic Party events this weekend, sources tell CNN.

Avenatti’s near constant presence at Democratic events over the last two weeks has caused some Democrats to reconsider their belief that the lawyer’s run is a publicity stunt aimed at annoying the President.

After each speech, he has been asked to speak at more Democratic functions. He will follow up that appearance on Sunday – after an early morning flight – by appearing at “Hillsborough County Democrat’s Summer Picnic” in New Hampshire, a crucial state for presidential contenders.

Avenatti has made two trips to Ohio in as many weeks, where he met with David Betras, the chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, and had dinner with Rep. Tim Ryan, another possible 2020 Democratic contender who represents Youngstown.

“I think he is a phenomenal guy and I have gotten to know him a bit in the last week. We went to dinner last week, he was in Youngstown and I really like him,” Ryan told CNN after commending Avenatti’s work against Trump over the last few months.

So that’s a President that Democrats can love and follow. What about Hunter Biden as VP? Americans love recovery stories. See half of Hollywood films (The Lost Weekend (1945); Flight (2012)) plus tons of books (see Dave Pelzer, for example). Hunter Biden has already written a bestseller about his “years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction” that was favorably reviewed in the New York Times as “ineffably sad and beautifully written” and it “tears the tabloid face off the story about an American family that has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows” (i.e., if you don’t pay for a NYT subscription and buy the book you might be mislead by headlines from the Daily Mail suggesting that $millions were collected from China and Ukraine because of and for “the big guy”).

If I had to use a wish from an omnipotent being before choosing a dream Democrat line-up I would wish that the most-frequently-praised-by-Democrats American be resurrected and selected as the Democrat presidential nominee:

If I got a second wish and had to use it, I would wish that the Constitution be changed so that someone born outside of the U.S. could serve as President and that Palestinian leader Yahya Sinwar be selected as the Democrats’ VP candidate. A Floyd/Sinwar candidacy would encapsulate the dreams of Democrats who’ve taken to the streets since 2020.

Related:

I asked claude.ai to write a pitch:

Dear Supporter,
President Biden needs your help to continue fighting for our shared Democratic values. While some have raised questions about the President’s age, what truly matters is his decades of experience, unwavering commitment to progressive policies, and the strong team he has assembled.
The role of President is about leadership, vision, and surrounding oneself with capable advisors – not about personal cognitive ability alone. President Biden has demonstrated he can effectively delegate and lean on the expertise of his administration to govern.
Your donation will help ensure we can continue pursuing vital priorities like combating climate change, protecting reproductive rights, and expanding access to healthcare. Every contribution, no matter the size, makes a difference.
Stand with President Biden and donate today to keep moving America forward.

I think Anthropic AI did about as well as a human fundraiser! Note that Americans love to hear promises to “fight” from their politicians and this ends up in the first sentence.

Those closest to Joe Biden say that he’s the smartest person in the room. Here’s the open border guy:

Update, July 2: the New York Times NOW tells us that they have inside information and Biden is on a mental decline. “Biden’s Lapses Are Increasingly Common, According to Some of Those in the Room” (they’re in the room with the President of the U.S. and don’t have to rely on watching TV as the rest of us do):

People who have spent time with President Biden over the last few months or so said the lapses appear to have grown more frequent, more pronounced and, after Thursday’s debate, more worrisome.

In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.

The most serious lapse:

On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday.

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Celebrating Juneteenth here in Portugal

Portugal so far has been short on what Americans would consider Social Justice. We witnessed one pro-Hamas march on a Lisbon synagogue and the number of participants (about 50) was a tiny percentage of the Lisbon metro area population (nearly 3 million). The pro-Hamas encampment at the University of Coimbra was also poorly attended (and they let a dog walk on the sacred Palestinian flag; see future post). Our almost-9-year-old’s sharp eyes spotted a single rainbow flag, rather faded, above a bar in Lisbon (i.e., that’s one rainbow flag in a 10-day period). At Portugal dos Pequenitos, a theme park of miniature houses and architectural monuments designed to delight children, the Portuguese “voyages of discovery” are presented as great achievements, not as pernicious precursors to slavery and colonization:

Does all of the above mean that I am not participating in Juneteenth? Au contraire, as they say in Lisbon! Today I tried to return a phone call from John Hancock regarding my 90-year-old mom’s insurance. I turned on my Xfinity Mobile SIM ($10 per day of usage, with a meagre 0.5 GB data allotment that one will blow through in less than a day of using Google Maps, uploading a few photos, etc.) and called John Hancock. I spent about 15 minutes dealing with their automated system before an attempt was made to connect me with a human. My reward was a recording: “Our offices are closed today in observance of Juneteenth” (this became a new paid day off for government workers in 2021; see “Biden Signs Law Making Juneteenth a Federal Holiday” (NYT)).

Readers: How did you observe Juneteenth? Were you obstructed in any of your attempts to be productive?

Here’s Joe Biden crediting Black Americans as having “led the march from slavery to freedom”, but weren’t the relevant marches for Juneteenth led by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman? Is he saying that Grant and Sherman identified as “Black”?

Related:

A video of the “Free Palestine” march on the synagogue in Lisbon that was around the corner from our hotel:

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Hunter Biden can be imprisoned for 25 years?

Bom dia from the mostly-gun-free capital of Portugal! Checking in on U.S. news, I noticed the following…

“Hunter Biden guilty of felony gun charges, faces 25 years in prison” (New York Post, so we know that it is true):

a federal jury found him guilty of three counts related to lying about his drug use in order to buy a gun … making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer, and possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance. … Hallie testified about finding the gun inside Hunter’s Ford Raptor pickup on Oct. 23, 2018 — 11 days after he bought it — and throwing the weapon away in a panic at a Wilmington grocery store.

So Hunter Biden had a gun for 11 days, but didn’t use it in any way as far as we know and now he can be put in the slammer for about 100 times as long as a typical San Francisco career criminal? (See below for what happens to a criminal in San Francisco who actually shoots and kills someone.) Were his statements knowingly false? If you ask a typical addict “are you addicted?” the person will respond “I can quit at any time.” That would be his/her/zir/their truth and not a lie.

I think the answer is “the judge won’t impose the maximum sentence”, but why should an individual human be given the discretion to imprison an important contemporary artist for what would essentially be the entire rest of his life?

Related:

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What are you doing to act in George Floyd’s memory?

From our President:

George Floyd changed the world and we should “act in his memory”.

Readers: what have you done today (or recently) to act in George Floyd’s memory? What did this American hero do that we should also do so that our children can see an ideal way for an adult to act?

Some other things that happened on May 25 that Joe Biden isn’t talking about (source):

  • 1241 1st attack on Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
  • 1784 Jews are expelled from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek
  • 1787 Constitutional convention opens at Philadelphia, George Washington presiding
  • 1927 Henry Ford announces that he is ending production of the Model T Ford
  • 1942 First commercial fluid catalytic cracking facility begins production at Exxon – now produces half the world’s gasoline, developed by the “Four Horsemen” research team at Exxon
  • 1945 Arthur C. Clark proposes relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit (also on May 25, 1945: final U.S. fire bombing of civilians in Tokyo)
  • 1961 JFK announces US goal of putting a man on the Moon before the end of decade
  • 1961 NASA civilian pilot Joseph A. Walker takes X-15 to 32,770 m
  • 1968 Gateway Arch in St Louis dedicated
  • 1973 US launches 1st Skylab crew Kerwin, Conrad, Weitz
  • 1977 Original “Star Wars” movie (Episode IV – A New Hope), directed by George Lucas and starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, premieres
  • 1979 Israel begins to return Sinai to Egypt
  • 1986 Hands Across America – 6.5 million people hold hands from California to NY
    1991 Israel evacuates 14,000 Ethiopian Jews
  • 2017 Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg receives an honorary degree from Harvard University, after dropping out in 2004 (a Harvard commencement without a pro-Hamas component!)
  • 2018 Harvey Weinstein turns himself in to New York police to face charges of rape, a criminal sex act, sex abuse and sexual misconduct (conviction overturned in 2024)
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Joe Biden’s complex mind (examples of cognitive dissonance)

Loyal readers know that I’m a huge fan of the human ability to hold beliefs that are apparent logical contradictions. Here’s an interesting collection from one Tweet exploring the interior of Joe Biden’s mind:

The basic mental disease present in all Biden foreign policy is the bizarre need to take both sides in every conflict. Condolences for the mass-murdering head of a terror regime. Humanitarian aid for Hamas, which Biden also says Israel should defeat. Weapons for Israel but also constant condemnation and criticism. Arms for Ukraine that they’re not allowed to use against targets in Russia. Taking the Houthis off the sanctions list but also bombing them.

Full tweet:

A reminder of my personal favorite collection of logical contradictions, from 2020:

And let’s not forget the mental gymnastics around immigration. The border is not “open”, but Joe Biden is considering “closing” it (and would “close” the non-open border if Republicans in Congress would cooperate). Native-born Black Americans are not being “replaced” by immigrants; it is just that their former houses and jobs are now occupied by the Latinx (Politico and NBER).

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Climate change is an existential threat, but China is a bigger threat

Joe Biden, 2023 (whitehouse.gov):

You know, I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change.

“Biden to Quadruple Tariffs on Chinese EVs” (Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2024):

The Biden administration is preparing to raise tariffs on clean-energy goods from China in the coming days, with the levy on Chinese electric vehicles set to roughly quadruple, according to people familiar with the matter. … signs that China was ramping up exports of clean-energy goods prompted concern in Washington, where officials are trying to protect a nascent American clean-energy industry from China.

Officials are particularly focused on electric vehicles, and they are expected to raise the tariff rate to roughly 100% from 25%, according to the people. An additional 2.5% duty applies to all automobiles imported into the U.S. The existing 25% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles has so far effectively barred those models, often cheaper than Western-made cars, from the U.S. market. Biden administration officials, automakers and some lawmakers worry that wouldn’t be enough given the scale of Chinese manufacturing.

In other words, it is better for all humans to be killed by climate change (the “existential threat” turning out to be real) than it is to drive a Chinese car or use any other “clean-energy good” from China.

One might think that the cognitive dissonance would start to become apparent even to climate change alarmists themselves. Greta Thunberg has switched to pro-Hamas activism (e.g., protesting against the 20-year-old Eden Golan singing in the Eurovision contest; this reminds me to wonder if there will be a sequel to the Will Ferrell movie). Even if we accept that Palestinians are the world’s most noble people, how is the status of their war against the Israelis more important than the impending death of all humans that she previously warned us about? Of course, there are the climate change alarmists who use private jets. And we have the Biden administration, which says that climate change is on track to kill all humans and also keeps the border open so that millions of migrants from low-carbon societies can become high-carbon-output residents of the U.S. (the quickest method of accelerating CO2 emissions imaginable). Finally, we now have these huge tariffs to discourage Americans from adopting what we’ve been informed are planet-saving/humanity-saving technologies.

Separately… the YANGWANG U9 from BYD, with the 1 horsepower that is required for moving at Miami Beach traffic speed and 1,299 hp in reserve.

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