On the Biden Withdrawal Whitewashing (Or Whitewashington?) Narrative

Author Mary McCarthy (“The Group”) famously said of playwright Lillian Hellman (“The Children’s Hour,” “The LittleFoxes”), that “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.” The Democrats and their mainstream media minions have just about reached this point trying to not merely excuse the way Joe Biden was unceremoniously dumped from his re-election campaign, but to recast in the public’s mind as some kind of noble sacrifice Biden, which it was anything but. In other words, once again, “it isn’t what it is,” the motto of the New Democrats—you know, the ones who pretend to be defending democracy while they are dismantling it.

Is nobody paying attention? Is everyone devoid of critical thinking skills? Biden went on ABC and told George Stephanopoulos that he didn’t believe the polls, that he was the best chance of defeating that evil fascist Hitler monster Donald Trump, that there was nothing wrong with his brain, and that nothing short of God himself coming down and telling him to quit would make him do so. That pretty much wrapped it, don’t you think? Short of a burning bush’s signature being found in the White House logs, I’d say that it is indisputable that Biden’s decision to suddenly pull out was anything but voluntary.

God didn’t come down to guide Joe, but the nearest thing for Democrats, Barack Obama, might have. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersch wrote on his substack that his sources in Washington DC and the White House confirmed to him that former President Barack Obama pushed Biden out of the 2024 presidential race by telling him that he would orchestrate a humiliating 25th Amendment removal process if Joe didn’t bow out gracefully. “I went over [reports] this week with a senior official in Washington who helped me fashion an account of a White House in complete disarray,” Hersh said. “Obama called Biden after breakfast [on July 20] and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment.’” Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries were reportedly directly involved. “[Obama] had an agenda and he wanted to seek it through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.” Democracy! Seymour Hersch’s reputation is a bit tarnished, and so are his mysterious sources, but that version of events makes more sense than the one being peddled by the Axis liars.

Continue reading

Confronting My Biases, Episode 12: Actors Hosting TV Game Shows

I guess I should begin by saying that it is a sign of the collapse of civilization that game shows, once almost solely the slightly embarrassing denizens of morning and daytime TV, are now all over the networks in prime time. They are cheap to make, they appeal to morons, and it reduces the need for, you know, comedies and dramas, actual entertainment with lessons to teach and emotions to convey. Quiz shows were big in prime time during the mid-Fifties, then the rigged questions scandal killed them. They crawled back to daytime TV.

The source of my bias, however is that even in the daytime game shows, the role of game show host has been almost completely taken over by actors, or, in some cases, comics. The profession of game show host, as once practiced by worthies like Art James, Art Fleming, Alan Ludden, John Daly, Bud Collyer, Jack Barry, Monty Hall, Bob Barker and my personal favorite, the immortal Wink Martindale, has almost totally vanished, like the Tasmanian tiger.

Continue reading

Pssst! Bill Maher! The “Saved By God” Belief Has Inspired Some of Our Greatest Presidents. Shut Up.

Atheists and agnostics in the public sphere don’t have to be obnoxious, but an awful lot of them are. Their explanation for where the universe came from is no more persuasive that that of the faithful (The Big Bang? Come on.) but they just can’t restrain themselves. HBO’s Bill Maher is a prime example: along with mocking committed relationships (he hates the concept of marriage), extolling drugs and debauchery, and generally keeping his Axis of Unethical Conduct membership current, he ridicules Christianity at every opportunity.

The fact is, and it is a fact, that the United States of America had a much healthier and ethical culture before organized religion had discredited itself so thoroughly, driving whole generations away. Moral codes are especially essential for those who don’t have the time or ability to puzzle through ethics, and believing in God is the best catalyst for an ethical society that there is….and it has always been thus.

Heck, just look at what a jerk Maher is. That’s what atheism can do to you. But I digress.

Continue reading

A Required Presidential Historical Note…

After Donald Trump’s long, schizophrenic, rambling acceptance speech, one of the Fox News hosts on the convention floor, it doesn’t matter which one, said that earlier in the year Trump had asked him if his coming back to win the 2024 election would be the greatest political story in U.S. history. “Maybe in the top five or top three,” the Fox News talking head opined.

Nonsense. It wouldn’t make the top 10. In fact, it wouldn’t even be the top Trump-related political story: his upset win over Hillary Clinton completely upended both parties and all of American politics. A win next November would be an impressive comeback from the ruins of January 6, 2021 but still nowhere near as stunning as that first victory.

For the record, here are the top 17 in chronological order:

Continue reading

Today’s “Nah There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” (Or “Nah, The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want to Rig The Election!”) Note Of the Day…[Expanded and Corrected]

From Axios…

Nice.

There have been a lot of iconic or otherwise memorable photographs of Presidents over the decades that placed a sitting POTUS in a positive or sympathetic context. They were all liberally used to promote that President’s leadership and popularity. Such as…

and…

and

and…

and…

and..

and…

and…

Continue reading

Is J.D. Vance Qualified To Be Vice-President of the United States of America?

As Bill Clinton might say, “It depends on what the meaning of ‘qualified’ is.”

The Vice-President has only two clearly defined jobs. The first is to preside over the Senate, and that’s a job even Joe Biden could do in his current state of confusion. The second job is to be the President’s back-up, insurance policy, and stunt-man. That’s a bit trickier, and as Kamala Harris has proven, it’s too challenging for some people. Still, paraphrasing Woody Allen, “Ninety percent of success as Vice-President is just showing up.”

I have this idealistic notion that a VP candidate should be at least minimally qualified to be President, since 9 out of 45 Presidents got the job when the top of their ticket couldn’t perform his duties any more. That’s 20%, one in five. Despite these ominous odds, most Presidential candidates choose their understudies without any concern about their fitness to be President, not to say that most of the choices weren’t at least theoretically qualified. Joe Biden was, in my view, one of the least qualified VPs ever, and look where he ended up.

Continue reading

Trump-Deranged Asshole Media Headline of the Day: The Economic Times

I had to wrestle with myself about whether to post this first, or the next post.

Here’s the headline from The Economic Times:

“Trump’s Raised Fist: What the gesture means which is widely used by fascists, socialists, and communists”

…yeah, and also Rocky, Norma Rae, the much-lionized protesting American runners at the Olympics on the winner’s platform, baseball players after they have hit game-winning home runs, my Vietnam War protesting fellow students at Harvard,

and, oh, just about everyone in the past few centuries or so who wanted to symbolize defiance, victory, strength and resistance to forces that would abuse and persecute them.

Continue reading

Oh, Just Shut Up, Professor Lichtman…

OK, I should get this out of the way up front: I’m unalterably biased against any 77 year old man who wears his hair like that, if indeed that is the professor’s real hair, which I doubt.

Then there is the fact that a vast majority of historians are Trump Deranged or have otherwise migrated into the progressive propaganda camp. Presidential historians are particularly shameful in this regard, and one of the worst is American University Professor Allan Lichtman. He was all over the TV this weekend, chasing another 15 minutes of fame as a commentator on the Democratic Party’s Joe Biden problem from an alleged historical perspective. The Big Whoop about Lichtman is that he has developed a formula that predicted the results of nine of the 10 most recent presidential elections, so that is supposed to make him an expert. It doesn’t. To begin with, his system doesn’t have “the incumbent can’t think or talk clearly any more” feature.

Continue reading

Jill Biden: An Ethics Villain’s Route to Power

This explains a lot…

Since there is some reason to suspect that Jill Biden has been doing an Edith Wilson impression for at least some of her husband’s ill-starred term as President, a substacker decided to do a deep dive into Dr. Jill Biden’s dissertation to assess exactly how intellectually qualified she is to be shadow-President. What she found was, to understate it, horrifying….and yet, all in all, not surprising.

To summarize, the doctorate of education Jill received from the University of Delaware in January 2007 was based on a “scholarly” dissertation that was objectively crap. It is riddled with typos, mathematical errors, and horrible writing. Holly Mathnerd (not her real name, presumably) writes in part (this is a huge essay),

Continue reading

Apparently Whom A Presidential Candidate Chooses As VP Hardly Matters To Voters. Should It?

Is the Pop Catholic? Is Joe Biden demented? Of course the VP choice should matter. In fact, it is irresponsible and incompetent for voters not to regard the second slot on national tickets as potential deal-breakers. However, who is running for VP is firmly in shrug territory for the vast majority of Americans, and always has been.

Rasmussen Reports found in a recent survey of both Democrats and Republicans that Trump’s VP, soon to be announced, won’t make “much of a difference” on Election Day. 82% of Republicans and 81% of Democrats said that they didn’t care. Just 12% of Republican and Democratic likely voters told pollsters that Trump’s VP might tip the scales for them on Election Day.

I’m surprised it was that high. Not only voters, but parties and Presidents have been insanely unconcerned with the qualifications and leadership ability of Vice-Presidential candidates from the very first one, John Adams, who had no governing experience when he was named George’s back-up and was temperamentally ill-suited for leadership—as he quickly proved when he was elected President to succeed Washington. [Note: for some reason I gave Adams a pass when I posted the first installment of the “Worst President Ever” series, and have revised that post. He wasn’t the worst President, but he was definitely one of the worst.]

Continue reading