Even The Nation is worried about Genocide Joe (but not really), but the Pentagon is!

The Nation, home of virulent duopoly upholders and third-party haters such as John Nichols? Yes.

Indeed, it is Green Party hater Nichols himself who wrote earlier this week, with this headline:

"Biden Can No Longer Avoid Questions About His Fitness For A Second Term." (Somebody at The Nation doesn't know AP style for headers, as in reality, every word after "Biden" should be in lowercase, but that's another story.)

John-Boy is writing about the Biden classified documents special counsel report where counsel Robert Hur said, among other things, that Biden is:

"(A)n elderly man with a poor memory."

He is, even if Biden got indignant. (Cue Irish Alzheimer's issues.)

And, in the act of getting indignant, proved Hur right:

Biden insisted "my memory is fine" — and then referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the president of Mexico when talking about the war in Gaza. Earlier in the week, the president made similar gaffes, referring to Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of French President Emmanuel Macron, and the late Helmut Kohl instead of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Oy. At least both Sisi and actual Mexican president AMLO are still alive.

Elsewhere, Dear Leader-era White House counsel Dan Pfeiffer called it a "partisan hit job" and Kamala Is A Cop said it was inaccurate. (She doesn't even have the excuse of being elderly and with a poor memory for her flubs.)

Contra Jeet Heer, not even Taylor Swift may be able to save him.

The Dan Pfeiffers of the world who say it was partisan, gratuitous and more are right. 

The Kamala Harrises who say it's inaccurate are wrong, even before Alzeimer's Joe proved them wrong. Back to Nichols:

In reality, the debate about Biden’s age was a stubborn problem before Hur released the report, in which he wrote, “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” but then damningly described the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and asserted that, during interviews with the special counsel, Biden had failed to remember the dates of his tenure as vice president and, most painfully, couldn’t recall when his beloved son Beau had died. Biden pointedly, and at times emotionally, rejected Hur’s claims, but they reinforced an impression that has been a lingering challenge for the president.

That's the bottom lime. Hur made it worse, arguably, with a semi-condescending backhanded politeness.

That said, let's not give Nichols too many kudos. He says:

But Biden has always been known for his gaffes.

And then goes into spin mode about the Sisi comment. And, he then doesn't ask the bottom-line question:

Are these gaffes more frequent now?

And, speaking of Jeet, he calls out Biden for abortion ambivalence. That's no gaffe and never has been.

That said, if Nichols and Heer were really worried about Biden, they'd be apoplectic over some of the "swing states" polling numbers that Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair presented in yesterday's Roaming Charges.

Don't worry, though, Blue Anon. The Nation won't give Jill Stein, Cornel West or anybody even further to the left the time of day, and will loyally sheepdog this fall.

And, on Nichols? It's not generic Green/leftist hating. I called him out four years ago for "licking Biden's green taint."

And, if all of the above REALLY wanted to worry along duopoly lines, they'd read Ken Klippenstein at the Intercept. The Pentagon is worried about older elected officials in general, though not mentioning any names in a story from last September. There is this:

The U.S.’s current leadership is not only the oldest in history, but also the number of older people in Congress has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1981, only 4 percent of Congress was over the age of 70. By 2022, that number had spiked to 23 percent. In 2017, Vox reported that a pharmacist had filled Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. 

With little incentive for an elected official to disclose such an illness, it is difficult to know just how pervasive the problem is. Feinstein’s retinue of staffers have for years sought to conceal her decline, having established a system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone and risk having an unsupervised interaction with a reporter.

That's even as Ken talks about Ms. Russiagate, Nancy Pelosi, announcing she was going to run again.

The late Dianne Feinstein and the still alive Mitch McConnell, as part of the "Gang of Eight," did ineed have access to classified material from the CIA, and presumably at times from the NSA as well.

But, Ken doesn't update for ... possibly Dementia Joe.

Various forms of dementia, whether Alzheimer's, Lewy body, or atherosclerotic or arteriosclerotic (types of vascular), can do more than affect memory and intellect. We're not stereotypical Vulcans, androids or whatever; our intellect includes our emotions, per David Hume et al.

Let us remember that it's Joe Biden who can get fixated in anger against the Houthis not "submitting" to him and say it's time to bomb them again. It's Joe Biden who can get fixated in anger when Hamas proposes an "unacceptable" truce.

But, the intellect is also involved, and not just memory. It's Joe Biden who may not be able to cipher through Israeli lies about the UNRWA.

Finally, since Klippenstein went Russiagate, if you will, with Pelosi, and we're in Cold War 2.0 with Russia and China, and backing Ukraine in a proxy war?

Joe Biden controls the nuclear "football." What if, as humongously unlikely as it is, Vladimir Putin launched a nuclear first strike and Biden couldn't remember the US codes? Or, back to emotions plus intellect, without bad memory. What if a new version of an Able Archer happened and Biden refused to accept NSA staffers saying there was an error situation of some sort?

This should scare the shit out of people.

And, ditto for the degree Donald Trump faces the same concerns. And, yes, Dementia Don looks more and more real, too. (Waiting for Republicans or conservative media to go John Nichols and say "Trump has always done this.")

And, the scariness of a second-term Biden should be held just as true of a second-term Trump.

America as failed state: Colorado v Trump

Caught snatches of the live argumentation in front of the Supreme Court on NPR. Here's one of the stories from Thursday. SCOTUSBlog has more.

A few thoughts, with an intro before that.

First, not only poor countries "out there" can be failed states, i.e. Afghanistan. The tail end of Weimar Germany was quite arguably a failed state even before Hitler took the oath of office as chancellor.

Second and related? If not a failed state, the USofA, aka Merikkka, is a failing state. Period and end of story, especially to backers of both duopoly parties.

OK, to the story itself.

First, this is obviously a reason to get rid of the electoral college. That's what, reason No. 412 or something?

Second, this is a good reason to move beyond that and officially make the election for president a national, not a "federal," election. If that meant different rules on absentee ballots, etc., than currently more restrictive states, so be it. Arguments by various justices in the SCOTUSBlog piece underscore that.

Third, it's also a good argument to, if possible, truly overhaul our government into a parliamentary system. It's harder to do the Hillary Clinton attempt at controlled opposition when a prime ministerial candidate is already leader of the opposition and depends on coming to power on nationwide vote for MPs. Arguments by various justices in the SCOTUSBlog piece underscore that, too.

That said?

A. Parliamentary systems are no guarantee against becoming a failed or failing nation. On the former, see Weimer Germany, above. On the latter, see post-Brexit Britain. 

B. The mechanics are partly at issue. Westminster-type systems with first past the post single-member districts tend to squeeze out third parties. Systems that are purely proportional and don't have modern Germany's 5 percent hurdle let in all the nutters.

Fourth, and related, we'll likely have more and more Russiagate-type bullshit claims in the future. After all, the NYT tried to revive it for the 2022 midterms. Note also former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, not content with anti-Republican smears, claiming that Russia and president Vladimir Putin are behind pro-Palestinian protestors. (Code Pink and founder Medea Benjamin recently confronted her on this.)

Fifth, it's funny how people can always shape shift on federalism = states as "laboratory of democracy" when their ox is being gored. That includes, per the top link, a possible majority of the black-robed Kourt Klan Konklave thinking Colorado can't do what it did.

As for the black-robed KKK trying to reason its way to keeping Trumpy safe?

The only reason I would agree is "ripeness" grounds. Trump hasn't been directly charged with insurrection, or aiding and abetting. Blame Jack Smith, #BlueAnon. Trump's attorney, Jonathan Miller, tried to put a spin on this by differentiating between an election and actually serving. (Not that he thinks Trump should be disqualified should he be re-elected, of course.)

Otherwise? John Roberts et al seem to have a semi-novel interpretation of the 14th Amendment being written to rein in state powers.

If he, Slammin Sammy Alito et al are worried about different states reaching different conclusions, see the top of this piece. Colorado's attorney, Jason Murray, addressed much of his objections, and his fellow travelers, per SCOTUSBlog. Besides, there's that old Gorsuch ruling.

I will actually credit Alito for discussing what all might count as "insurrection." This gets much deeper, really, and beyond both duopoly parties, to things like undeclared wars and "cold wars."

There's also the issue of general deference to political parties on primary election ballots vs general election ballots. That said, given that Trump's going to win, it would be stupid to put him on a GOP primary ballot, if the Colorado plaintiffs are right about the 14th Amendment in general.

Sixth, doesn't this ultimately show what a clusterfuck the Constitution of the United States is? And, that gets us back to America as failed state.

HD-68 race has a true whackadoodle

Cooke County Republican Women had another candidate forum Feb. 1, and it was a doozy. The House District 68 race features a wingnut incumbent vs a wingnuts squared, wingnuts on steroids or whatever, challenger.

Challenger Kerri Kingsbery, on HD-68, is an idiot, pure and simple. All she could do was attack Dade Phelan for being too kind to Democrats, and then claim that incumbent David Spiller is a pawn of Democrats. I felt like I needed a shower after her drivel. And, I know that people believe this bullshit.

This is the David Spiller who is a lawyer, and as a lawyer, willingly rammed the unconstitutional special session SB-4 through the House.

This tied in with one of three candidate questions, based on SD-30 state Sen. Drew Springer's recent open letter to Lite Guv Danny Goeb, asking about the possibility of reopening the impeachment proceedings against Ken Paxton, discussed by me here.

Kingsbery didn't actually use the word “illegal,” though she did kind of beat around the bush on that, and did claim it was all partisan. Because Dade Phelan's Demo-love, of course.

INNNterestingly, whoever drafted the questions, which were NOT taken from the audience, did not ask about vouchers and Spiller's flip-flop on that.

Sidebar: One county commission race's candidates were also at the forum. Showing the anti-tax nuttery of the GOP, challenger Anderle said he opposed possible future bond issues “while we're raising the tax rate,” which the county is not.

Sidebar 2: WHY didn't the GOP Wimmin take questions from the floor? They did in 2020 and 2022. Are even county-level GOP organizational folks afraid of the wingnuttery level of the rank and file?

All things Texas border: A roundup

First, I think it's kind of funny that Wallbuilder Joe has either actually pissed off, or else, more likely, caused major loss of face at home, to Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Speaking of? The Monthly drops in on Eagle Pass and says it's become a "movie set" fulled with political posturing, especially by wingnut media and then by wingnut state guvs, non-Texas division. 

A second piece looks at how the Border Patrol and DPS, once, and recently, bosom buddies enough that Strangeabbott's Operation Lone Star got takeoff assistance from the BP, have now become frenemies at best. The Lone Star aid from Wallbuilder Joe is itself semi-disgusting, and probably is a partial explainer of why Biden has yet to federalize the Texas National Guard. That aid didn't just start with the tonks on the ground with the BP. Oh, the piece is another good argument for us going back to the old system of putting BP agents on a 4-5 year rotation, like Methodist preachers.

In light of all that, is "Texit" moving closer to reality in light of the SCOTUS ruling on border razor wire? Maybe Texit lite? The Monthly looks. Realistically, as people who read such things know, in terms of dinero, Texas is a "taker" state, not a "donor" state, on net federal government money. If it seceded, all US military bases would close. All defense contractors would have to leave the state to keep US DoD dollars.

Steve Vladeck takes his own long look at federalism versus state immigration enforcement.

Texas Progressives talk Paxton, Palestine, more

Off the Kuff writes about the Supreme Court of Texas hearing the appeal on the gender affirming care ban and putting a temporary pause on Ken Paxton's depositions.  

SocraticGadfly looked at Drew Springer's open letter to Dan Patrick asking about reopening Ken Paxton's impeachment and dropped some heavy snark.

UT is joining other major universities in trying to gag students supportive of Palestine. And, again, even though this is something inside Texas, because it's A. Foreign policy tied and B. Gives national Blue Anon like Biden a black eye, the likes of Kuff won't talk about it.

Multiple sites, like this, have recent polls citing a certain subset of Republicans saying they won't vote for Trump if he's convicted. 

Per Mike Elk, the Teamsters' long, off-and-on history of playing footsie with Republicans appears to be making a comeback.

Biden takes a powder on a pre-Super Bowl interview with host broadcaster CBS. 

At the Monthly, Chris Hooks talks about Abbott and Paxton coming up empty in the special election to replace Bryan Slaton.

The Guardian details how CNN makes the decision at the top of its corporate food chain to publish all its stories about all things Israel with a Zionist hasbara slant. It also notes that this should not be a surprise as editor in chief and CEO Mark Thompson was accused — with good evidence— of similar kowtowing to Israel when he was at the Beeb.

Joe Bien gcut off aid to Palestine via the UNRWA based on a lie — and, even more, probably knew it was a lie at the time. Think about it, BlueAnon.

Read all the environmental-related lies Tesla has told the state of California, as well as how often Cal state officials willingly swallowed them.

Neil at Houston Democracy Project said Councilman Mario Castillo asked the right questions about John Whitmire's autocratic behavior regarding Houston Ave. safety improvements.  

OutSmart lists ten LGBTQ+ candidates on the Democratic primary ballot in Harris County.  

Deece Eckstein speculates on the cause of Taylor Swift Derangement Syndrome. 

The Austin Chronicle picks apart Ken Paxton's war on marijuana decriminalization.  

Deceleration argues that Greg Abbott's belligerence on the border is intended to cover up his own culpability in the climate crisis that helps fuel the migrant surges. 

Aliens in UFOs or UAPs still haven't visited us

Great piece about the hooey from NY Mag's Intelligencer, much of it focused on "journalist" UFO pusher Leslie Kean. When I saw the bits about her and psychics, I was already thinking of one blast from the past name from Harvard. When I saw the afterlife bits I was convinced.

And, so I posted on Twitter without even scrolling down the story further, but when I did, yep, John Mack was indeed prominently there.

Nuff ced.

Actually, to add to it, this:

Mick West, who runs a website called Metabunk, explained on YouTube that the “Gimbal” video shows the heat image of a jet from behind and the aura is an artifact of image sharpening.

NEVER trust a photo that's been edited at all. INSIST on a memory card photo where the image in question has the same date as those on other file numbers in a row, and when the metadata reflects that, too. And, even then, have some competency in, and confidence in your skills in, photo editing. Especially, maybe have done some "Photoshopping" yourself, i.e., cloning, but not just cloning; also use of more creative filters and such.

The author goes on to cite an (in)famous alleged siting on June 24, 1947 in the Pacific Northwest, not too long before Roswell. It notes that the touted Kenneth Arnold was not the only person to spot items that day, and that these were almost certainly balloons from Project Skyhook. And, if not Project Mogul, as at Roswell, it was another balloon project, he says. Related? Bigger balloons with different material got launched after that, and into the early 1950s, and yep, inspired other UFO scares. More disgustingly, contractors for the CIA apparently were looking at germ warfare by high-altitude, long-distance balloon in the 1950s. Were they used?

Unfortunately, this is another thing where blogging friend Skeptophilia seems to want to be be a bit less hard in his skepticism than I am. Since he's not on Twitter any more, and his version of Blogger doesn't want to save comments and I'm not on TikTok (shoot me), I can't heads up him about this.

He remains skeptical in end, overall, but pooh-poohs Jason Colavito's explanation on one of the four events he cites. And, on the last, he claims that a 1.5 meter woman is "small." That's approximately 5 feet tall, which would be of exactly average height in Japan of 225 years ago (if the tale were true).

C'mon, Gordon; do better.

Sadly, he won't. I forgot that I wrote about his relative lack of skepticism 11 months ago, and updated it in late July to specifically note his lack of skepticism toward David Grusch.

And, we haven't even discussed the Fermi paradox.

Top blogging of January

All posts in the 10 most read of January actually were from last month.

No. 10? A personal roundup of oil and gas pollution and infrastructure issues.

Ninth? A Texas Progressives roundup of early 2024 election news.

No. 8? I said Drew Springer's semi-call, semi-question to Lite Guv Danny Goeb to reopen the Ken Paxton impeachment was about saving face, then wondered why.

No. 7? I had some trans-itory thoughts about Ohio transgender and transsexual political candidates.

No. 6? I called out Bernard Tamas for spouting anti-third party candidacy bullshit when he should know better.

At No. 5, riffing on Nate Silver, I pondered how many #BlueAnon type Democrats might already be numbed out to a possible Trump re-election.

No. 4? I said we should be furious AT former Harvard prez Claudine Gay, not just furious FOR her.

No. 3? Democratic climate change minimalism mirrors that of the religious, I noted, hoisting Ryan Burge by his own Pew data petard to show that there's not THAT much difference on really taking climate change seriously as a crisis between Rethugs and Doinks, or between fundagelicals and other religious.

No. 2? Cooke County Republican Women's first candidate forum was an eyeroll. (The second was even worse.)

And at No. 1?

The big reveal of science research fraud on antidepressant ineffectiveness.

SBOE District 12 candidates are whackadoodle

Cooke County Republican Women had another candidate forum Feb. 1, and it was a doozy.

First, it allowed candidates in contested races who weren't part of the forum to speak briefly.

Doug Robison, the one candidate for CD-26, talked about how “we have a bad debt problem” without mentioning how much of that was caused by Trump. Scott Armey, appearing later, talked about an meet and greet he has in the Denton area next week, featuring his dad and Phil Gramm, touting them as old fiscal conservatives, which is halfway true and came off as a call-out against many modern Republicans as well as Democrats.

Two other candidates for CD-26 talked about how they had escaped from “communism,” aka California.

Now, one of the three races on the forum was for State Board of Education, District 12. And it's there that the real fun started.

Chad Green for SBOE 12, the deliberately over the top bubba from McKinney, touted how incumbent Pam Little was criticized by places like Texas Express. Jamie Kohlmann wasn't far behind. The Texas Rangers WERE racist, per the book by Doug Swanson. (You have to love how people who claim to worry about school kids being indoctrinated are actually the biggest indoctrinators.)

Supporting multi-family housing in smaller communities is also, according to Green, liberal.

Kohlmann talked about Harvard and DEI policies, ignoring that Bill Ackman's ultimate goal there is is wingnuttery and Zionism.

Both Green and Little, by proxy, mentioned HB 900 without mentioning how the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had just ruled broad chunks of it unconstitutional.