Biden's Smile

The remark I quoted from a commentator yesterday, that it was difficult to see the whites of Biden's eyes, set me to thinking. I started to review his photos in general, and his eyes are frequently just slits, especially when he's "smiling". The combination of slit eyes and perfect white teeth is chilling; those teeth are clearly manufactured, and they look sharp. None of this speaks to cognitive decline.

But this raises another question. Does this guy actually know what he's doing? And although I've mentioned that I'm studying Spanish so I can talk with the lizards in the back yard, I'm not the only person starting to think this way.

It’s one thing for us to believe that a single addled, stupid, narcissistic old man might plan something this bad. But why would so many people go along with it? Are they all merely dumb? I doubt it. Frightened of Joe? I doubt it. The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment. Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again?

I debated just replacing the last bit about never being a world leader with an ellipsis, because I don't think it's necessary to conclude the object of this faction is to prevent this. I don't think they've even thought that part through. But I do think what they're doing is deliberate.

It's revealed in yesterday's astonishing smirk in reply to a reporter's question:

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021, just as Biden was wrapping up the public portion of a cybersecurity event, NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander asked him, "Mr. President, if Americans are still in Afghanistan after the [Aug. 31 withdrawal] deadline, what will you do?" In response, Biden smirked.

. . . His response: 'You’ll be the first person I call.'

(Note yet again, by the way, the ill-fitting suit in yesterday's photo, vis-a-vis the suit in the photo at the top, which was taken in 2020.)

The implication of the reply is that such an outcome -- any Americans left in Afghanistan -- is so remote that one can only joke about the possibility. Yet as of yesterday, as Biden spoke, Reuters published an estimate of 1500 Americans remainiing which came from Secretary Blinken. As of that time, Blinken said they were being given instructions on how to get to the airport, but since then, US authorities have backtracked and told them again not to do so. (As I write this, multiple explosions have been reported at the airport.)

Biden must certainly have been briefed on this as of his remarks yesterday. It's hard to avoid thinking he believes whatever takes place will last for just a news cycle or two, and his people will be able to spin it. Next year's election is 15 months away. Anyone who questions anything now is simply naive. As I've said, Biden sees himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations -- even those of a silly legacy media reporter.

What's the aim here? I'm actually beginning to think that the Democrat faction aligned with Biden, in the ascendant at least for now, actually believes the voters in the working and middle classes who elected Trump in 2016 need to be punished. I'll have more to say about this.

Nothing's Changing

I didn't get a chance to watch Biden's speech yesterday; I was expecting to, but it was delayed, and I had another commitment. I looked at the post-event accounts and got things like this:

As I said, his eyes were bloodshot and glazed over. It was difficult to even see the whites of his eyes at times. His presentation was cold, with no empathy to be found. Upon finishing his teleprompter reading, he simply stumbled out, taking no questions, clearly unable to physically and mentally do so. It was obvious why he was five hours late for this presser. Something is bad wrong with the president, and there’s no way it can be ignored anymore.

What strikes me about the photo above, including the difficulty in seeing the whites of his eyes, is that although this is a different suit, it fits no better than the one I noted on Sunday. The collar still stands away from his neck. But also, compare Biden's sleeves above to Bill Clinton's in a similar pose at right. Biden's suit rumples up and pulls away, while Clinton's is smooth even when he lifts his arms.

Biden has been losing weight, and he probably needs a whole new wardrobe, but nobody seems to notice. Again, US presidents can afford whatever wardrobe they need. His handlers are incompetent. Do they themselves expect him not to last very long? This may be another ramification of the Götterdämmerung strategy: things will turn to poop, but Biden won't be around to account for it.

The substance of Biden's speech was also bizarre. Accounts generally noted that he conducted a long tour d'horizon of the Götterdämmerung agenda, showing great deference to Speaker Pelosi, before eventually getting to the August 31 deadline. This, it's noted, has been his strategy in all his recent addresses, treat Afgthanistan as just a single blip in the wide range of his accomplishments.

An intriguing data item from yesterday is a couple of House back benchers, Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA) znd Peter Meijer (R-MI), flew to Kabul to "conduct oversight on the mission to evacuate Americans and our allies". Moulton appears to be a maverick Democrat who in the past opposed Pelosi's candidacy for the speakership. He appears to be ambitious and wants to raise his profile. Meijer, a first-termer who was among the Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, is a jerk; this is a vanity project, probably for both.

Acco,rding to the link,

According to John Hudson of The Washington Post, Pentagon officials are reportedly furious with Moulton and Meijer for making the surprise trip to Afghanistan, denouncing it as performative at best and reckless at worst.

“It CANNOT be overstated how angry Pentagon & State Dept officials are at Rep. Moulton & Rep. Peter Meijer for flying to Afghanistan in the middle of an evacuation,” announced Hudson on Twitter. “‘It’s as moronic as it is selfish. They’re taking seats away from Americans,’ official says.”

That may well be, but this is the environment Biden is creating for opportunists.

Ia Biden ill? That may be, but I would guess stress accounts for the bloodshot eyes, the weight loss, and the lack of energy and engagement. Is he senile? Again, no. Even if his policy choices are disastrous, he's completely aware of outcomes; he's fully aware of how much he's alienated NATO, for instance, and this is shown by how clearly he lies about it. His responses differ little from Bill Clinton's in the Lewinsky scandal.

The difference is that Clinton got himself into a personal mess of little overall consequence. Biden has got the US into a national humiliation and policy dilemma of enormous consequence that will continue to play out in very bad news over coming weeks.

Clinton was Br'er Rabbit. Biden is more like Captain Queeg frozen at the controls.

The End Of The World May Not Take Place As Scheduled

The situation, as our generals like to say, is fluid. But I'm getting more and more of a sense that the Democrat post-2020 Götterdämmerung strategy, whereby they would steamroller a series of "transformative" Great Reset measures through Congess with tiny majorities while Biden would pull out of Afghanistan and open the southern border, with repercussions delayed until after the 2022 midterms and Speaker Pelosi's expected retirement, is starting to collapse.

The weakest point looks to be the Afghanistan debacle, with Press Secretary Psaki's disastrous misstep yesterday, when she allowed Fox's Peter Doocy to maneuver her into all but stating the administration's position was that nobody was "stranded" in Afghanistan. The administration's position does continue to be a vague hope that all US citizens and Afghan associates can be flown out by August 31, but this is now contradicted even by loyal Democrat Adam Schiff:

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill following a classified intel briefing, Schiff said that it’s “very unlikely” evacuations in Afghanistan will be over by August 31 due to the overwhelming number of Americans, Afghan allies, and potential refugees currently stranded in the region amid an increasingly hostile security threat.

. . . Biden’s credibility was further damaged when a classified State Department cable from July suggested that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was warned Kabul would fall into Taliban hands by the August 31 troop withdrawal deadline.

. . . According to CNN congressional correspondent Ryan Nobles, Schiff was echoing Intel Committee Member Jason Crow, who said, “I do not believe at this point, sitting here today, that I have any evidence of an intelligence failure.”

It looks as though the intelligence community won't just sit quietly if Biden continues to blame it for the debacle.

However, although Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to try to negotiate with the Taliban over an extension of the August 31 deadline in Kabul yesterday, the Taliban continues to be adamant. In concert with the vaugeness of administration policy, the Pentagon is unwilling to specify either how many Americans remain in Kabul or how many have been evacuated so far.

Meanwhile, Biden's clear decline in prestige seems to have emboldened a slowly growing number of moderate Democrats to oppose the Great Reset legislative package.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent House members home after midnight Tuesday following a stalemate over Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget framework that fell short of an agreement after hours of negotiations with Rep. Josh Gottheimer and other centrist holdouts.

Pelosi and Gottheimer (D-N.J.), the de facto leader of the moderate opposition to Pelosi's strategy, had been edging toward a deal that would commit to House passage of a bipartisan Senate-passed infrastructure bill by Oct. 1. But at least five centrists in Gottheimer's group still resisted the plan by early Tuesday morning, leaving Pelosi to gauge her team's appetite for a potential floor fight on President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes, but so far, ten Democrat House members seem to be wobbly, while Kyrsten Sinema is opposing the plan in the Senate, where Democrats can't lose even one vote:

As House Democratic leaders hold back Sinema’s own Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill in order to push the Arizona Democrat and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support a multitrillion-dollar spending bill, Sinema is making it crystal clear that her mind can’t be changed. And that applies even as her own legislation becomes a bargaining chip in House Democrats’ internal discussions.

Biden was supposed to call the racalcitrant House members yesterday to try to change their minds, but I question if he actually did this. And I have a sense that if Biden's prestige were greater, no Democrat would be breaking ranks, since Pelosi in particullar has been able to maintain discipline effectively for several years up to now. I think it's unavoidable that she's a lame duck, while the moderates still want careers.

And finally, Dr Fauci has flip-flopped yet again.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted making his latest mistake in coronavirus guidance, this time over when he thinks the pandemic will come “under control” — apologizing by saying, “My bad.”

The White House coronavirus czar had told NPR on Monday that if enough people get vaccinated, the US could “really get some good control over this” by the fall or winter of next year.

ut quizzed on it by CNN’s Anderson Cooper later the same day, Fauci — who has been under fire repeatedly for flip-flopping on his public advice from the early days of the pandemic — said he actually thinks that control will come even sooner.

“Anderson, I have to apologize. When I listened to the tape, I meant to say the spring of 2022, so I did misspeak,” he said.

The problem is that every time he flip-flops, he loses more credibility, while at the same time, his credibility as the White House COVID spokesman has upheld Biden's credibility. This suggests to me that pretty much the entire Democrat post-2020 strategy is falling apart.

Here's What Hit Me About Biden's Speech

There were a lot of odd things about Biden's speech yesterday -- it got remarkably little coverage yesterday evening -- but I watched it. The one thing that bothered me all night was that his suit didn't fit. I don't mean it hung loosely (though to some extent it did) or the sleeves were too short; that would have been obvious. But the subtler sign of a cheap suit is that the collar stands away from the neck, as it does in the photo above. Presidential suits normally fit extremely well. Check Dubya, for instance, in the photo at right, for how a presidential suit should actually fit.

Both Obama's and Trump's suits always hugged their necks. This is to be expected. A president can afford suits that fit. Reagan's tailor even watched his public appearances for signs that lapels weren't sitting exactly flat or whatever and made ongoing alterations.

It's plain that Biden's handlers, having prevailed on him to remain in the White House over the weekend, set up the Sunday speech on short notice in an effort to stop his decline in credibility, The ultra-serious dark suit was part of the package. But normally his suits fit better. Was the good dark suit still back in Wilmington? They clearly coached him this time to appear more engaged, sharper, less woozy, but somehow the loose collar kept everything from quite coming together.

His prepared remarks were a little less otherworldly than they were on Friday, though I think his writers are as bad as his tailors -- why should writers actually compose word salad for the teleprompter, which they clearly do? But he continues to slur and stumble in his presentation. This may give the impression of mental decline, but I think it's more habit borne of laziness. He just never felt the need to speak effectively, he was in a safe seat and did what he was told anyhow. The picture for me isn't cognitive decline, it's laziness and flawed character that do contribute to the other impression.

Commentators noted chiefly that his remarks were designed not to make statements that could be contradicted on the evening news, as they clearly were on Friday, but they continued to be largely happy talk leavened by warnings that nothing is perfect, and no matter how well planned things might be, there could be unspecified horrible things, which would be unavoidable but not his fault. We'll have to see how that plays out.

But generally, commentary on the speech itself has been sparse. This may be because it was announced at short notice on an August Sunday, when nobody was paying attention, and it dwelt primarily on appearances. But one passage has gone unremarked. In the transcript, it goes,

One, planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases and transit centers around the world.

Number two, at these sites where they’re landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. Anyone arriving in the United States will have undergone a background check.

Why are they taking such different measures with arrivals from Afghanistan vis-a-vis arrivals at the southern border? As far as I can see, the people at the southern border are waved through and quickly flown to the US interior without security screenings or background checks. But of course, we're talking about tens of thousands in any case, with no real resources available to do screenings and checks based on non-existent or inaccessible records back in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if these promises are impractical or inconsistent with existing policy, it's all happy talk anyhow.

Yesterday and last week, Biden and his spokespeople have hedged and danced around whether they'll need to stay beyond the August 31 deadline. The consensus seems to be they'll almost certainly need to do that, but now the Taliban has threatened "conequences" if Western forces remain beyond that date. It's plain that the Biden administration in particular is treating the Taliban very gingerly; after all, they have thousands of hostages.

By the way, somebody should be talking to John Kirby about his cheap suits as well. The guy's a retired admiral, now double-dipping as civilian Pentagon flack. He can and should afford better. Not a good look at all.

Tucker Asks Glenn Greenwald, "What Do YouThink Is Happening?"

In the clip above, Tucker Carlson, puzzled at why legacy media and some senior Democrats have effectively abandoned President Biden, reaches out almost in desperation to Glenn Greenwald, not your ordinary Fox talking head, to ask him what's going on. Greemwald puts it to a combination of Biden's cognitive decline and the permanent war faction of the deep state. I disagree on both counts.

First, if the deep state wants to get you, they don't need to rely on the Taliban. They'll just make up Russian hookers peeing on the bed. They didn't get Trump that way, and so far, they won't get Biden with the Taliban.

Second, even up to the clip of Biden wandering through the White House shrubbery, I would have signed on to the cognitive decline story, but I no longer do. Part of it is the folk wisdom that dementia isn't when you forget your keys; dementia is when you forget what your keys are for. As I said yesterday, senile people are disorganized. Lying, evading, and manipulating are organized behaviors, even if poorly done.

As a true crime fan, I think it's related to the legal issue of insanity. No matter how "crazy" a killer may seem, legally, if he does anything to cover up his crime, escape from the scene, dispose of the weapon, or anything like that, he's aware of the potential consequences of his act and thus legally sane. He's engaging in organized behavior. He's neither crazy nor senile. Biden has the same issue.

Biden's problems aren't medical, or if they're medical, they aren't a major issue. Biden's problems are with character. I don't think it's too far off to suggest he's shallow, obtuse, stubborn, and dishonest, and those who know him are fully aware of this. It's now well known that Obama is reported to have said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--k things up.”

I think it's significant that Maryland Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, an establishment member of the Senate club like Biden himself, is making criticisms of the Afghanistan mess that come close to Biden:

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said the chaotic situation in Afghanistan was predictable because “We had information about how the Taliban could likely control the country.” And that many of the questions that were asked at a Friday briefing with lawmakers and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley “went unanswered.”

Cardin said, “[W]e should have been able to predict the chaos that is occurring today. We had information about how the Taliban could likely control the country. We should have been prepared to take necessary steps faster.”

The Friday cabinet-level briefing with lawmakers didn't go well. Secretary Blinken made highly damaging admissions, Regarding the State Department internal dissent memo predicting the fast collapse of the Afghan government,

Blinken admitted reading the internal cable cautioning Kabul could fall when he and Gen. Mike Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, were briefing lawmakers Friday about the post-Taliban takeover chaos engulfing the country.

In response to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) asking, “when he read the dissent cable that said the Taliban would take over Afghanistan quicker, Blinken said he read it in mid-July,” Punch Bowl News Founder Jake Sherman wrote on Twitter.

It sounds as though enough other questions went unanswered in the session that firings and resignations would normally be in order. Democrat Rep Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a statement Friday that said in part,

The mistakes made in the execution of the withdrawal are also clear to me: The plan to evacuate civilians was wholly inadequate. In the coming months, we need to examine why it has happened this way and make sure it never happens again. We must also scrutinize the intelligence behind this operation to understand whether it provided any clarity regarding how swiftly the Taliban would move in and what our response should have looked like.

. . . Finally, and most importantly, our immediate focus must be the safe evacuation of all U.S. personnel from Afghanistan, and as many Afghan nationals as possible.

The problem seems to be that, even if Democrats and legacy media see only a political threat in 2022, they're beginning to focus on its seriousness. There are few good solutions, either for them or the country. If Biden is removed or prevailed upon to resign, this would simply be yet another evidence of elite failure, and in fact it could lead to more, not fewer, disasters down the road in a Harris administration.

An interesting vignette is the wavering that took place all last week over when, or whether, Biden would return to the bunker in Wilmington. As late as Friday or even Saturday morning, the plan was that he would. Ultimately, he stayed in the White House. Now he's scheduled to address the country again this afternoon. It sounds like he's being persuaded by his own party, possibly even his inner circle, at least to give the appearance of trying to control the situation in Kabul. The problem is, again, that he's shallow, obtuse, stubborn, and dishonest, and that's what they have to work with.

Let's Revisit The Götterdämmerung Strategy

A week ago, I posted on what in early 2021 seemed to be a consensus "Götterdämmerung strategy" among the elites, whereby Speaker Pelosi, possibly expected to retire after the 2022 election, would use slim congressional majorities, plus control of the White House, to enact a massive Great Reset agenda and ignore the post-2022 consequences because, well, she'd be retired by then. I likened this to someone who, assuming the world would end on December 21, decided to run up a huge credit card bill that would never need to be repaid.

The dificulty arises with scheduling. If for any reason the world doesn't end exactly when you expect it to, or even if you run your card up to its limit too soon, you'll be forced to make those extravagant payments after all. President Biden summed up the scheduling problem with his remark, “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” In other words, the collapse of Afghanistan had been programmed into the agenda, they were just figuring it would take place around the time the world would end and they didn't need to worry about it.

But this and the subsequent events of the past week gave me more insight into Biden's character. Look at his now well-quoted remarks on July 8:

Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

. . . The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

There's really no difference between his glibness on July 8 and his happy talk in his presentation at the White House yesterday:

We’re going to do everything — everything that we can to provide safe evacuation for our Afghan allies, partners, and Afghans who might be targeted if — because of their association with the United States.

But let me be clear, any American who wants to come home, we will get you home.

But make no mistake: This evacuation mission is dangerous. It involves risks to our armed forces, and it is being conducted under difficult circumstances.

I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or what it will be — that it will be without risk of loss. But as Commander-in-Chief, I can assure you that I will mobilize every resource necessary.

What he's doing at this point isn't just hedging his bets, he's anticipating that things are definitely going to turn to poop, and he's programming in the excuse he'll use after August 31: hey, I never promised you it would work out, I just said we'd do all we could. And we flew out blah blah blah in an unprecedented blah blah blah. My heart goes out to the blah blah blah.

The problem now is that his strategies have become predictable and pro forma. His situation reminds me of an insightful remark Jordan Peterson made some years ago that's stayed with me: he disagreed with the opinion we've often seen that corporate executives are narcissists and sociopaths. "They can't be," he more or less said. "Narcissists and sociopaths wear out their welcome."

I think this goes to what I;m beginning to recognize about Biden's character. He isn't senile. A senile person is disorganized. Biden is all too organized. His lies are deliberate, and his evasions are planned. However, he's wearing out his welcome. The dilemma is they actually can't use the 25th Amendment or force his resignation. Biden isn't senile, to start with, and he's stubborn, but notwithstanding Harris's utter unsuitability for the office, if she leaves the vice presidency, she also ceases to be the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, with the confirmation of a new vice president a fraught issue. This would completely unravel any remaining hopes for the 2021 agenda.

His current strategy appears to be to hunker down, kick the can down the road for a few more weeks with some happy talk, and hope something intervenes -- but that's effectively to hope the world ends in time for him to get out of making payments. I don't think this will work, but I don't see the end game yet.

I Lived Through The Nixon Resignation

I keep trying to find a parallel set of circumstances to what we're seeing now -- there's a general acknowledgement that there's some similarity to the withdrawal from Viet Nam, and we're just beginning to see calls for Biden's resignation a la Nixon, but it was fairly plain to observers in 1973, a year after the Watergate burglary, that a coherent plan was afoot. In October of that year, the deep state quickly ushered Spiro Agnew out of the vice presidncy in what one commentator at the time called "the first shoe of a two-shoe drop." Gerald Ford replaced Agnew as vice president in December 1973. Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974, with Ford succeeding him in what turned out to be a caretaker role. Nelson Rockefeller, with lizard ancestry clearly in his DNA, waited in the wings.

What strikes me in retrospect is how orderly this process was in contrast to what we're seeing now, which in many ways is looking like a very fast-action version of Nixon's collapse. Biden has retreated to a Wilmington bunker, and I'm not sure how long his position can remain tenable as deep-state sources leak documents daily that contradict Biden's own self-contradictory public statements. Jen Psaki, the press secretary, returned from vacation but seems disinclined now even to spin at press briefings. I strongly suspect that, even as establishment media begins to ask why Biden won't answer questions, he'll continue to have nothing concrete to say.

The whole Watergate episode lasted a little over two years, where the country had leisure to savor the circus and the people in charge had plenty of time to game things through. This will be nothing like Watergate.

UPDATE: As of now, Biden has changed his mind yet again over going back to Wilmington -- hard to tell if he will or won't.