Slither

I take no joy in observing Joe Biden seems to be slipping into dementia. I’ve got family suffering from one degree of senile dementia or another – if you need to know the details, you already do – and it’s a horrible thing.

Of course, there needs to be a reckoning for the elder abusers propping him up in this run for the Presidency.

But fear not. To his biggest, most powerful supporters, dementia isn’t the problem. The system is! It’s time to scrap the debates!

But not, of course, because of the candidate’s mental state, nosireebob:

This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests. The point is that “winning” a debate, however assessed, should be irrelevant, as are the debates themselves.

Sarah Palin – derided as an anti-intellectual joke by the usual suspects these days – fought Biden to (I’ll be charitable) a standstill in 2008, when nobody was attacking his mental state. Ethics, yes – acuity, no.

Trump vs. Biden would be a little like Mohammed Ali vs. Jerry Cooney.

This is a bald-faced evasion.

64 thoughts on “Slither

  1. JD – your long, brilliant analysis was out of moderation by the time I arrived at Mitch’s blog this morning. Thanks for laying it out in simple terms even I could understand. (comments here @ SITD are almost as good as Mitch’s writing itself) Not everyone will be able to understand this analysis since it does not contain the word “Trump” ……. dang it

  2. The individualistic streak in American culture did not prevent the country from pulling together to fight WWII.

    Trump could easily have rallied his base, even the libertarian segment, to do what was necessary to contain the virus. The power of his tweets alone might have been sufficient but amplified by Fox and the right wing network would have been most effective.

    Why, at an early stage, Trump decided to promote miracle cures and magical thinking instead of following the science is the question that will be debated for years.

    From the ineffective China travel ban to the present, Trump and his political aides have made major missteps. In a pandemic, when short term political expediency drives decisions, the results are predictable.

  3. And I thought this post was about Biden’s mental acuity – or lack thereof to be exact. 52 posts and half of them are threadjacks by the usual suspect. If Biden’s last emergence from the basement have not shown he is unfit to guide a spoon to his maw, never mind guide a country, even as small as Lichtenstein, nothing will.

  4. Emery’s 9:45 illustrates the problem: people who aren’t Americans don’t understand how this nation operates.

    America came together under one national policy during World War II because Congress passed a Declaration of War which gave the President extraordinary powers as Commander in Chief. Congess had the power under Article 1 to give the President those powers under Article 2. It was all perfectly Constitutional, even FDR’s decision to remove Japanese-Americans to concentration camps (see Korematsu v. US) and FHA’s requirement that real estate developers include racially restrictive covenants to keep Blacks out of White neighborhoods (see “A Forgotten History of How the US Segregated America” on NPR). Congress went along willingly with everything the President wanted.

    America could not come together under one national policy to fight the Covid virus because Congress didn’t give the President the extraordinary powers to act as Commander in Chief. It would have been unconstitutional for his to try it. And Congress isn’t willing to give an inch to help this President with anything.

    Blaming President Trump for failing to act unconstitutionally is unreasonable, illogical, and un-American; a sure sign of Trump Degrangement Syndrome.
    .

  5. I can’t help but think of World War II, the sacrifice, the coommon purpose, the victory gardens, the rationing, etc…is this even the same country anymore?

    Nothing about why is complicated at all. Incompetent failed leadership from the top down, period.

    National disasters require national responses not half assessed hodge podge piecemeal obfuscation and lies aimed at hiding reality purely for political purpose.

    The virus is doing what it has done since day one. Nothing has changed, it does not think it does not react it simply goes where it is allowed to go.

  6. Emery is the worst sort of ignoramus. He is especially proud of his reasoning on topics about which he knows the least (politcs, economics), and never willing to examine, when his analysis has proven wrong, to examine the poor reasoning that brought him to incorrect conclusions (see his previous posts on the inevitibility of Hillary’s election, the truth of the Russian collusion hoax, and pretty much everything he has written about the covid epidemic.

  7. Again, what does this have to do with Biden’s cognitive abilities, demonstrably below those of a hamster and they fact he is the left’s champion?

  8. ^^ I enjoyed it when Trump said our troops took over the airports in the revolutionary war. Not sure he’s senile though. Just really, really, really dumb.

    In his defense; nobody is giving Trump the credit he deserves for not saying that the Continental Army rammed the man parts.

    “The Continental Army suffered a bitter winner at Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our Army manned the air, it ran the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.” ~ Donald Trump
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-6OpkqNn4M

  9. Get off it, Emery.

    In World War II, people believed the Axis posed a threat to the existence of the nation. Nobody believes Covid poses a similar threat.

    So far, the percentage of Americans killed by Covid (rounded to the nearest whole number) is . . . zero. It’s not a national crisis. It’s not even a very big deal.

    The only people who claim it’s a crisis are the people trying to prevent President Trump from being re-elected, and they don’t actually believe it, they’re just saying it. If they actually believed it, they wouldn’t be going to ballgames without masks, attending political funerals, or encouraging rioting.

  10. Trump is responsible for the deaths of 160,000 Americans on his watch. That’s 53 times the number of dead Americans on 9/11. The man is a unnatural disaster to America.

    Put in a way that conservatives should understand: That’s another Benghazi (4 American deaths) every five minutes.

  11. Trump is responsible for the deaths of 160,000 Americans on his watch.

    Such a statement show how unserious Emery is as a commenter. Put all the blame at the top, and absolve state, county, and municipal governments of their ill-advised decisions.

  12. ^^ It’s true—leaders at all levels made mistakes during this pandemic. What matters is whether they change course and don’t politicize the science. That’s where Trump is on the hook.

    The US was in the best possible option to handle this pandemic: the best scientists, labs and biotech firms, and billions invested in pandemic preparedness since SARS.
    There are many reasons we handled this terribly. Lack of pandemic preparedness is not one of them.

    Less pandemic politics = good.

  13. Idiot. Hindsight is always 20-20. What we want from you is foresight. What should have been done differently this time, so we’ll know what to do next time?

    Close the borders earlier?
    Impose martial law for a unified national response?
    Restrict interstate travel?
    Round up infected people and put them in detention camps?
    Shoot people not wearing masks?

    What, specifically and exactly, should Trump have done differently?

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