A brilliant friend from college just posted on Facebook, “Mitch McConnell froze twice and nobody suggested that he should step down.” And got dozens of “likes” and “loves.” It’s a moronic, silly argument. He’s far too smart to think it’s valid, unless bias has literally made him stupid. Or he’s deliberately trying yo confuse people dumber than he is, which is despicable. I just commented, “(Come on.)”
To state the obvious:
- Many did suggest that McConnell step down.
- Mitch is too old too, and should have retired years ago. The fact that Mitch, a jerk, has hung around way past his pull date is not an argument for why other elected officials should do the same.
- Being a Senator, however, isn’t like being President. At all.
- How does the Senate leader displaying an alarming cognitive episode have anything to do with the copious evidence of Biden’s progressive dementia? The McConnell episode doesn’t make Biden’s performance less serious, and the response to it, adequate or not, doesn’t justify pretending Joe’s meltdown was just a “bad night.”
- There is literally no critical thinking path or logical process that makes my friend’s infantile “whataboutism” response defensible or persuasive, except to fools clutching at straws.
It’s very depressing.
Ethics Alarms 
I remember those incidents — there were two that I recall. I don’t know how they were played in the MSM, but they got coverage on the GOP sites I read, and yes there were people saying he should retire.
If memory serves, he has said he’ll step down from the leadership, but not retire as Senator. That is one difference being minority leader versus president — there are other senators. Those episodes ought to have been a warning to McConnell that he needed to retire.
One of the nice things about McCarthy when he became speaker (and I think it’s true of Johnson as well), was that he was a veritable kid compared to most of the other leadership. I really think we deserve to have our national leaders be folks who are younger than the Social Security program. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently!
Politics tends to make people act juvenile. That includes making stupid arguments like the one your friend made. Politics also tends to kill critical thinking, which is why people will vote for a ham sandwich if it has the right letter next to it. It stopped being about what was best for the country a long time ago.
I don’t understand how anything can kill critical thinking if one is genuinely capable of it. Even Julie admits in her “Showboat” song that her unconditional love makes no sense.
When your arguments reach the level of mere whataboutism, I’d say you’re just about out of ammunition. What’s left, “Neener, neener, neener?”
One of the (several) downsides to all these older pols clinging to their offices is the failure of the parties to actively and consistently build a “bench” of able, ethical, talented younger people to replace them when they’re gone. I’m not talking about “anointed” successors, but a slate of vetted and electable candidate choices for the voters. Like most changes in politics, this needs to start at the state and local level.
I spent a good deal of my last 20 years as an administrator and trainer recruiting and developing talent in the ranks, and the whole command staff of my agency spent time on succession planning for their areas of responsibility.
After I retired at 61, I have retained a sort of “emeritus” status with the agency, with no formal authority (my title is “Policy Advisor”) but a degree of influence. I am pleased to offer my experience and training (mostly paid for by the taxpayers after all) to help the younger generation now at the helm.
If I were a politician, I would much rather be revered as a retired “elder statesman” than remembered as the guy who imagined himself indispensable to the point that he clung to his office well past his pull-by date, or even died in the saddle struggling to fulfill his duties ably. Power corrupts, certainly.
Of course, that whole “statesman” idea seems to be little more than a fond memory these days.
A guy I had known since ninth grade (I sat behind him alphabetically for most of the four years) ended our relationship by telling me, as a Navy pilot, that he “had taken an oath to defend the constitution!” and I was an idiot for thinking Trump could very well win the 2020 election. Whereupon another friend (dating back to grade school and through high school) merrily chimed in that I was an idiot as well. What is it about Trump that does this to people? I can’t think of a single precedent. Well, honestly, maybe William Jefferson and Hillary Clinton did the same thing to me, but I didn’t hack of old friends as if I was running around with a chain saw.
I just experienced someone have a full-blown break with reality and regurgitate all the mainstream media talking point. In one rapid-fire, head-exploding exchange. In it he emphatically asserted
No abortions are or have ever been conducted in this country past the first trimester. There are no states that allow third-trimester abortions, much less abortions up to birth or after.
All ‘abortions’ in the third trimester were actually babies delivered by emergency c-section who didn’t survive.
In response to the Dept of Ed report that states that 10% of public school children are sexually assaulted by school staff at some time in their education, he stated that NO children are assaulted because there are cameras everywhere so it can’t happen.
He states that no private or charter schools have better educational results than any public school.
He said we don’t need to worry about war with Russia because Russia can’t get their missiles close enough to use to use them. When pushed on this, he claimed that Russia doesn’t have nuclear weapons and has and has never had ballistic missiles. Whem pointing out that their ballistic missiles are the same missiles used to put Soyuz capsules in orbit, he said nuclear warheads are too heavy to put into space by rockets.
This is what Biden’s debate did to the true believers. This is an example of the 33% who believed that Biden won the debate and won it decisively.
If it helps at all, this is just pure, thoughtless tribalism, which isn’t only relegated to America.
Right now, there’s a general bias against incumbents. While the markets look ok, and the normal indicators look good, inflation is up, interest is up, debt is up, food bank usage is up and the foreclosure rate is up. People are hurting, and they don’t want to be gaslit out of that.
And so this is a test for politicians: Can you connect with your constituents, convince them that you’re a real and feeling human being, and enunciate a vision for their more positive future that they can understand and believe?
Which is going to be hard, because as an incumbent, you can’t really blame anyone else. But if you can manage to do those things, you’re probably OK.
Justin Trudeau can’t do that.
In Canada people tend to be more left-of-center than right-of-center, but still kind of close to the center. The Liberals have historically straddled that line and that’s made the Liberals the Naturally Governing Party. but right now, the Conservative Party of Canada has more support than the Liberals and the NDP combined, and current polls show them picking up 65% of the seats in the House. There was a by election last week in Toronto-St. Paul’s, the conservative pulled off a +26% swing from 2021 and won the riding for the Conservatives for the first time in 30 years.
The Liberal’s problem is twofold: First, they’ve been in power for nine years, and things kind of suck right now. Second, their leader is a lead balloon. Trudeau is a narcissistic ideologue with a God complex and a negative slope on his learning curve. His deputy PM (a new position so Trudeau could pander to women) is an unlikeable, thoughtless ideologue. In response to people’s economic concerns, they increased our carbon tax by 20% and talked about the environment.
But people still want to support the Liberals, I have no delusions about this election: Right now people are holding their noses and supporting the CPC because they’re so pissed off at Trudeau. Fully half of the difference between 2021 and 2024 in Toronto St. Paul’s were Liberals that stayed home.
Faced with that, and the fact that our election is October next year, you’d assume that the Liberal Party would consider a leadership race, and do it now, to give the new leader some time to try to bring Liberal voters home. But in order to do that, either Trudeau would have to step aside, or the caucus would have to revolt, and so far we’ve heard rumblings of either, but neither seems to be happening.
Which leaves all the usual suspects on Twitter in a pickle… If you’re a blind partisan, twelve seconds away from a sugar coma because you’ve drank literally all of the Kool-Aid, what do you do? Support the party? Call for a leadership race? No. Noooooo. You support Trudeau! You say he’s the best thing that’s ever come out of Canada, you profess love for the man, undying support.
It’s so fucking sad. I understand supporting the Liberal Party in 2024… I mean, really, if our leader were unfit, it’s not like I’d swap all of my political positions for their polar opposite out of spite, I just wouldn’t embarrass myself by carrying water for him publicly either.
“Tribalism” may explain it, HT, but what we’re seeing in the U.S. since Trump won in 2016 is simply completely without precedent. Something’s happened.
“what we’re seeing in the U.S. since Trump won in 2016 is simply completely without precedent. Something’s happened.”
Something like a dangerous, yet voluntary, immersion into a catatonic, apoplectic, pillow-biting, pants $#!tting, bed wetting, wind-sucking, chest palpitating, vital sign ramping, mouth-breathing, fist-pounding, foot stomping, safe-space seeking, triggering, weenie-whiny, simpering-whimpering, complete metaphysical, emotional, physical, secular spiritual, existential, psychological, philosophical, full-throated, freaking out, melting down, spittle-flecked, furiously-frothing, totally collapsing free-fall…?
PWS
Is it just tribalism? Another wonderful friend of mine, a neighbor, just posted on Facebook a meme about how Biden only “lost the debate” because Trump cheated by lying. This is another DMC talking point that Biden tried in the interview with George, saying that he was thrown off his game by Trump’s “28 lies.” To his credit, George pointed out that Biden had already started crashing before Trump had said much of anything.
Biden didn’t “lose the debate,” he exposed his whole campaign, party and administration as a nest of lies and liars while face-planting during the debate. Posting the meme makes the poster complicit in the lie. This isn’t a stupid woman: how could she do that? I’d love to ask her, “Do you really believe that? What’s the matter with you???”
Just 28? According to MSNBC here is the list.
The number one lie was about January 6
Trump’s Lie about January 6th: “Nancy Pelosi, if you watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter who is a documentary filmmaker they say, but she’s saying, ‘Oh no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this,’ because I offered them 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”
Fact Check: Nancy Pelosi never claimed to be responsible for January 6th. She can be seen on film during the January 6th attack on the Capitol asking local officials to deploy National Guard troops to the Capitol when it became clear Trump wasn’t going to deploy the D.C. National Guard.
The above fact check is absolutely FALSE. First Trump cannot deploy the National Guard without Muriel Bowsers approval which was not given. Second, there is contemporaneous evidence that showed he offered the troops and were rejected because of “Optics”. The film MSNBC is referencing is the one where she is sheltering in place with her documentary filming daughter using it for her full advantage on January 6. The film trump is referring to is the one in the car in which she is caught claiming it was her responsibility.
Here is the complete list of every lie Trump told during his debate with President Biden on Thursday:
1. “We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well, and everybody was amazed by it.” (Opinion)
2. “The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID.” (Mosts were)
3. “[10% universal tariff proposal is] not going to drive [prices] higher.” (It can but if the entire proposal to eliminate federal income taxes is included it can offset those price increases and incentivize saving and investment in domestic production of manufactured goods. Only price inelastic goods will be subject to price increases)
4. “[Tariff proposal is] just going to just force [other countries] to pay us a lot of money.” (We are the biggest consumer market so tariff revenue could generate a large revenue stream especially from China)
5. “I gave you the largest tax cut in history.” (Relative to what)
6. “I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we’re getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.” (Not a lie a plan was in place for withdrawal but Biden wanted to accelerate the pullout to correspond with 9-11.
7. “The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen.” (Opinion – greatest economy is ill-defined)
8. “Now, when we cut the taxes…we took in more revenue with much less tax.”
9. “We had largely fixed [COVID].” (Actually Covid had run its course and states were beginning to reopen. Vaccines -love them or hate them – were developed under Trump and released only one week after the election in 2020. The Biden administration simply forced the administration of shots on the public)
10. “Throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore. We’re like a third world nation.” (Opinion but it is obvious that our adversaries see us as weak)
11. “He allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.” (Hyperbole but millions have entered and certain countries did empty there jails and mental institutions which is why they will not permit the return of their citizens)
12. “He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.” (You can make this argument if you are adding millions of people to the Medicare roles. States are having to pick up the tab for dealing with the health, welfare and education needs of those caught and released into the country)
13. “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.”
(Effectively correct, but the court did not approve of the drug it just said that the doctors that sued the FDA for allowing its use lacked standing. So Trump’s use of such language is equivalent to the left saying a court found no evidence of fraud when in fact it simply tossed the case based on lack of standing by the plaintiff.
A challenge to the prescribing of Mifepristone which is used in 60 % of abortions was denied USA Today WASHINGTON − Two years after erasing the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court went the other direction Thursday and tossed out a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone that would have curbed access to the drug and jeopardized the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.)
14. “Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted [abortion] brought back to the states.” (Use of a superlative does invalidate this statement however I would bet a majority of the most respected legal experts agree the Roe was poorly decided. Calling this a lie is deception because its goal is to get the reader to assume the exact opposite
15. “They’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth. After birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we’ll put the baby aside, I will determine what we do with the baby, meaning will kill the baby.”
(That was the interpretation of many when Governor Northum made the statement)
16. “Under Roe v. Wade, you have late term abortion. You can do whatever you want depending on the state. You can do whatever you want.” Trump is wrong on this point. Roe specifically states that at some point the state has a duty protect the interest of the unborn. What pro choice zealots want are no restrictions which is why when asked about what would be acceptable restrictions the filibuster a try to change the subject.)
17. “He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists.” (see claimed lie #11 – our porous border has been an invitation for those bent on terrorism to enter. We just had a trial run at Quantico by 2 Jordanians)
18. “He didn’t need legislation because I didn’t have legislation. I said close the border.” (This is true)
19. “[Migrants are] living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.” (This is true in New York)
20. “He doesn’t care about our veterans. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn’t care about our veterans.” (Opinion)
21. “I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA. He has the worst. He’s gotten rid of all the things that I approved.” (Opinion)
22. “First of all, that was a made-up quote, ‘suckers and losers.’ They made it up.” (The veracity of the person relaying the comment has been challenged by those who were with the group when it was supposedly uttered)
23. “Our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand this guy. They can’t stand him. They think he’s the worst Commander in Chief, if that’s what you call him, that we’ve ever had.” (Many do)
24. “He did nothing to stop [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine]. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”
25. “Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke.”
26. “You had no terror at all during my administration.”
27. “Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter, who’s a documentary filmmaker they say, but she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this’ because I offered them 10,000 soldiers or National Guard. And she turned them down.”
28. “The unselect committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all the information they found because they found out we were right. We were right. And they deleted and destroyed all of the information.”
29. “Telling the Ukrainian people that we’re going to want a billion dollars or you change the prosecutor, otherwise you’re not getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that’s quid pro quo.” This is on tape with Biden smugly applauding himself. A simple request to look into the goings on at Burisma resulted in his first impeachment with the Dems claiming it was a quid pro quo.
30. “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” I believe he was confusing E Jean Carrol with Daniels. I don’t think the Innocence Project will take up his case but juries are imperfect.
31. “He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.”
32. “He made up the Charlottesville story.”
33. “He caused the inflation and it’s killing Black families and Hispanic families.”
34. “They can’t buy groceries anymore, they can’t, you look at the cost of food where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live, they’re not living anymore.” (This depends on what is measured. Using the proverbial market basket approach prices on average have risen about 22%. However the proverbial market basket does not include the types of prepared products low and middle income consumers typically purchase. Home equity line interest rates have more than doubled
35. “[European countries] don’t want anything that we have.” Opinion
36. “Almost every police group in the nation from every state is supporting Donald J. Trump. Almost every police group.” (prove him wrong – what does almost all mean)
37. “And what he’s done to the black population is horrible, including the fact that for ten years he called them super-predators.” (He called them that in 1995 when he headed up the judiciary committee- whether he still truly feels that way is anyone’s guess.
38. “And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”
39. “The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion and China nothing and Russia, nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip off of the United States and I ended it because I didn’t want to waste that money because they treated us horribly…. Nobody else was paying into it and it was, it was a disaster.”
40. “I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.”
41. On migrants: “They’re taking over our schools our hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over our schools or hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over Social Security.”
42. “But Social Security – he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security. They’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid. They’re putting them in our hospitals.”
43. “He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters.”
44. “He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.” Biden only promised to extend them one year after that all bets are off. It should be noted that Biden is not campaigning on keeping those tax cuts so it stands to reason that he wants them to quietly expire after the election with no debate in Congress.
45. “He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.” – I have no idea what he is talking about
46. “We now have the largest [trade] deficit in the history of our country under this guy. We have the largest deficit with China.” Trade deficit did grow under Biden but it may not be the largest trade deficit. I would have to dig into the tables.
47. “He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. So I think he’s afraid to deal with them.” ( Opinion based on evidence of money transfers from Chinese business people tied to the CCP. )
48. “We had two cases, we paid $6 billion for five people.” (We did release 6 billion to terrorists to secure the release of 5 Americans)
49. “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol, and in many cases were ushered in by the police.” (Quite a few were and documents that are claimed to be potentially exculpatory were destroyed by the Jan 6 committee)
50. “I would have much rather accepted these [election results in 2020], but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.” (Opinion)
When people claim that he Trump lies I treat their accusations as misleading because they themselves routinely misrepresent the truth.
It’s disgusting that any media organization would call the vast majority of those lies and not be factchecked itself. Typical example: 43. “He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters.” That’s called “an opinion.” Opinions someone disagrees with are not lies. Then there are the examples like 39. “The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion and China nothing and Russia, nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip off of the United States and I ended it because I didn’t want to waste that money because they treated us horribly…. Nobody else was paying into it and it was, it was a disaster.” If he had just said, “The Paris accord was crap and a sham,” which it is, would that have been called a “lie” too? Because that’s 100% true.
If “Not a Lawyer” hadn’t self-banned, this comment would have gotten him banned, because he would have bleated, “See? See? That proves Trump lies all the time!” I’m through tolerating these fools and tools.
Is there anything on that list that comes close to Biden’s claim last night, “I’m the guy who put NATO together”? In 1949???
Somebody let me know if anyone does a factcheck on Biden’s sad interview last night. I’d do it myself, but I have a sock drawer crisis. Can you imagine what the Axis would do with “not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world!” for example, if Trump said anything that stupid? “He’s insane He’s deluded! He thinks he Emperor! He isn’t even really President, and he lies about “running the world”!
Jack
Politifact fact checked both to some degree but only called out the whoppers of Biden. I know I missed a few above (24,31,32 33, 38, 39, 41,42, 43 because of going back and forth between pages of data. Unfortunately when I tried to add those as a reply to my comment WP said I could not comment on those because my comment was in moderation
Fact checking requires a great deal of effort and the media pays people to spin information
24> Biden stated that a minor incursion into Ukraine by Russia would not result in action by the US. That is seen as an encouragement. Trump gave anti-tank weapons (Javelins) to Ukraine to stave off the assault and Biden has spent billions on arms and paying Ukrainian government officials and employee salaries. Biden argues that weapon create business for our weapons makers.
31. I don’t understand what he meant.
32. Biden repeats the lie that Trump called neo nazis good people. Whether he made the first reference is unknown thus it at best unverified who started the lie.
33. Trump is technically correct. Assuming that Black and Hispanic families have lower average incomes, inflation harms those families more than upper income families. Wage gains at lower incomes in terms of absolute value are far lower than those in upper income brackets. Food and housing, two of the highest in terms of inflation are a larger percentage of the lower income group’s budget. therefore they are harmed more than upper income people who are able to defer consumption and invest in other income generating opportunities.
38. What are we measuring. Without it being defined it is neither a fact nor a lie. See facts in 39 from EPA
39. BRIC countries are exempt from the Paris accord and are doing little to curb emissions of any type. Western nations, principally the US is spending the lions share of expense to CO2 emissions.
Every year, the EPA produces a report called “Our Nation’s Air,” which describes in great detail the latest trends for each of these pollutants. It’s the most comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of our nation’s air, put together by a team of scientists and non-political agency experts. The most recent report shows that between 1970 and 2017, the combined emissions of these six pollutants has dropped by 73 percent. In other words, our air is 73 percent cleaner today than it was in 1970 and at its cleanest point since the EPA started monitoring these trends. More startling is that this progress has occurred alongside significant economic growth, increased population, increased vehicles miles traveled, and more energy consumption. Internationally, our air quality is the envy of the world. We are the only highly populated nation that meets the World Health Organization’s most stringent air quality standards. According to the State of Global Air report, the United States has achieved the largest global decrease in percentage of people living in areas exceeding the WHO guideline, plummeting from 50% in 1990 to just 3% in 2017.
40. Trump got a firm to voluntarily limit the price of insulin to $30 Biden later pushed HHS to require the price cap.
41 and 42 are related the increase in migrants has in fact caused negative impacts on local jurisdictions. Schools, housing, medical care are all being affected. Medicare is being used to provide medical care for parolees To suggest that this is a lie is just BS. In addition the migrants are adding to aggregate demand without any significant increases in aggregate supplies which in turn raises the price level for all.
43. All I can say is the Democrats claim “demographics are our destiny” The implication is that by bringing in millions of people who will get public assistance they will be inclined to vote for democrats. There really is no other reason for an insistence that our immigration system is broken and must be overhauled to make a quicker path to citizenship.
I think I got the all now.