So what to write for a first post? There’s a famous quote, misattributed to Lenin, which states, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” It seems like we live in one of those times
One of my dirty secrets is that I follow the corporate media, scanning stuff like the NY Times and W. Post on a regular basis not such because I need to be informed by events but because as PR outfits of the Left those outlets offers insights into what the other side is thinking.
So this past weekend I saw this column from Maureen Dowd regarding the effort to get Biden to quit the race, “The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup”. As a friend of mine put it, Dowd is the “catty conversationalist for the coastal cognoscenti” who alerts her smug fan base to what is both acceptable to talk about and what opinion to hold. So when she uses the word “coup”, a term many other leftist outlets have condemned the Right for using, it gets my attention.
It’s paywalled so here’s the key quote:
“Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.”
Putsch? An unfortunate term given its history; did Obama, Hakeem, and Pelosi meet in a beer hall before driving over to talk to Biden? What exactly did they say to Biden to get him to quit the race? It must have been pretty good because Biden’s re-election campaign did the equivalent of a car smashing into a wall at 60 mph, one morning he was all in and by the time lunch was finished that day there was the tweet announcing his withdrawal.
Dowd doesn’t go into the particulars, and the real intention of her column is not to offer such explanations but to signal to her faction of the Left that yes, Biden was forced out, but it’s okay and now we need to move on. She is like the trial lawyer who gets out in front of facts that might reflect negatively on her client so that she can spin them. She’s fulfilling the media’s historical role in taking what would be nasty news for the Left and covering it… with a pillow until it stops moving (h/t David Burge). The limited hang-out par excellence.
However we are still left without an explanation of what went down that day when Nancy met Joe resulting in an event unprecedented in American history. If we don’t respect the man then we should respect the office he holds and as even Dowd admits the President of the United States was toppled. To add insult to injury, he was overthrown, but not by by a delegation responding to an ongoing Constitutional process as was the case when Goldwater and Rhodes told Nixon that he was going to be impeached, but by a cabal which found Biden’s presence on the ticket inconvenient for their partisan purposes.
So what offer did Obama, Pelosi, and their fellow cabalists make that Biden couldn’t refuse? What was the kompromat? Biden the man has two personal weakspots, his family and legacy. Hunter was already on his own trajectory through the legal system, but did they threaten Jill or Ashley? Did they threaten to “leak” damning information about those tens of millions in foreign bribes?
The most plausible action was that they threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment, the ultimate hard ball, which would permanently mark his entire presidency as being an invalid.
The buried lede is that all those theories are nothing new, which means of course that their use to blackmail the President of the United States has been a permanent aspect of the past four years. That there always had been an ejector seat upon which Biden had been seated and that his presidency was never his own.
Leave aside that by threatening to invoke the 25th Amendment, the implication was that they were more than willing to put the country at risk and keep an invalid Biden in office as long as he would do their bidding regarding the election. The real problem is that Dowd’s column allows the world a fleeting and final glimpse behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain and exposes the cabal that has been running the country with Biden as its compromised puppet for the past four years.
A final peek to let us all know how things really work, that behind the pretense of a constitutional republic is only a filthy cabal. Now that we have had our look, this whole episode can be safely packed away in the same warehouse as Matthew Crooks, Audrey Hale, and Indiana Jones’s Ark of the Covenant, never to be seen again.
That’s the purpose of Dowd’s column; it’s a psy-op, to let you know that what you see is a lie and to convince you that you are powerless to stop it.
Onto the Joy of Kamala.
To a large extent, the Democratic Party is the agent of the major media, Ivy League intellectuals, and senior unelected government officials, as argued in my posts Rage of the Prince-Electors and Rule of the Prince-Electors:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67520.html
https://ricochet.com/1318369/the-rule-of-the-prince-electors/
Biden’s angry speech last night, and the insult of being put last after a series of nobodys, left us with a taste of his bitterness but the deal held. He directed his hate at Trump rather than his real enemies and with lies long debunked. Biden has been a sad example of Democrat politics, from his 1988 presidential campaign, which ended with the plagiarism charges, to his imaginary accomplishments recounted over the years.
The problem with calling it a “coup” is that it gets a key point exactly backwards. Harris et al didn’t say “hey, if we have to, we can remove you on 25th amendment grounds and cackle cackle cackle we can get away with it because we have the votes, even though you are still sharp as a tack”. They would have said something more like “we can get rid of you on 25th amendment grounds if we have to, and it won’t really cost us many votes, because pretty much all the voters will recognize that it was completely justified, you clearly are mentally incompetent”.
The real problems are 1) given that he is incompetent, it’s pretty irresponsible to leave him in office until January and 2) he was all along, and everybody knew it.
What a deconstruction, Mike. Here is a parallel, perhaps more humorous presentation.
https://sashastone.substack.com/p/the-weirdness-of-manufactured-joy
Fascinating while reading (and chuckling…and wincing) thru that to pursue some of the links it had. Strength thru Joy. Quite a history…not surprised at all by the connection. And a Kamala impersonator/mimic whose discussion with Meghan Kelly shows an astonishing list of insights gained simply by the attempt of accurate mimicing.
As the absurdity of the paradigm, the transparency of its vacuum (pun sorta intended, but it so captures the nothingness, the no hope believed anyway despite the hollowness) hits me, I find myself wondering. Not only why does anyone buy it? But how can anyone buy it?
Then I recall Romans 1: 20-24 and following to the end of the chapter with its emphasis on “gave them over”.
Speculations about invoking the 25th Amendment always strike me as strange given that Pelosi and Schumer are always mentioned delivering the message. Congress plays no role in invoking the 25th Amendment unless you assume a preliminary step of appointing a group to study the question per the first sentence in Section 4. The VP and the Cabinet officers are directly charged with making the determination unless Congress specifies another group. I suppose the threat to appoint such a group, so as to avoid speculation that the VP and Cabinet officers with Presidental aspirations are biased, would cast such a cloud after the debate disaster that it could force Biden to withdraw but not resign. However, invoking that provision as well as upholding a determination of unfitness would require Republican support, and I’m just not sure I see the upside for the GOP of getting embroiled in essentially an intra-party dispute over Biden’s candidacy. In addition, it would have given Harris a huge publicity boost from taking up the Oval Office, and likely though not certainly have generated a fight over replacing her as VP. I could see the NeverTrump/RINO GOP faction liking this plan as a way to kneecap Trump’s re-election bid but it seems risky for the Democrats, unless you assume Uniparty.
I think it’s more likely Pelosi and Schumer said essentially the same thing to Biden that the GOP said to Nixon, that they would no longer roadblock impeachment proceedings against Biden and various Cabinet officers.
Sooo… Democrat Party selects their ticket without ONE VOTE from party members necessary for the coronation to take place.
The selected candidate has gathered exactly ZERO votes for the office she seeks, dating back to 2020, perhaps before.
The ‘leaders’ all having their own gerontologists on retainer(except Hakeem?) note the failings of the current POTUS, yet fail to look in the mirror and examine their own aging competences. They deserve to lose.
How do they square the circle of being incompetent to stand trial for mucking about with controlled documents as a Senator while poking at an ex-POTUS, who had authorization for anything he chose, and being unable to continue the campaign, with STILL being competent to handle the burden of actually being POTUS? Contradictions abound, but then, Democrat Party, and it is to be expected.
What really opened my eyes to all of this is that previous to the Trump debate, Biden was still the same. And yet anyone daring to suggest that he was infirm and incapable of doing his job was viciously attacked. It was only when after the debate all the world did the media and fellow pols turn against him.
I suspect that like Wilson if he had been a vegetable and hidden it still would have been all right for those who pull the strings and relish the power.
What’s good for the country?
Not in the equation.
I suspect that he was threatened with the invoking the 25th Amendment with full co-operation of the House dems was the stick – as for the carrot?