Questions Nobody's Asked Joe

One issue that puzzles me is that the Comer committee, and probably any potential House committee that investigates impeaching Joe Biden, has been focusing almost entirely on things Joe, Hunter, and the rest of the Biden family did while Joe was vice president. So far, the most damaging set of circumstances looks to be Mykola Zlochevsky's claim to have tapes of Joe himself demanding a $5 million bribe to get Viktor Shokin removed as Ukraine's special prosecutor and end investigations into Burisma.

The potential defect in that or any similar case is simply that it all took place when Joe was vice president. But after that, Joe was out of office for four years, and now he's president. There's probably a good argument that the Burisma stuff is in the past, you need to impeach Joe for any treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors he's done as president, not back when he was vice president. At best, no matter how well you can prove that Zlochevsky or anyone else bribed Joe, it's just a political embarassment to him now, which may or may not lead him to resign, but it's not an impeachable offense -- and Joe, who thinks he's Caesar, isn't gonna just resign.

But this brings me to simple human nature. The picture we inevitably have of Joe right now, granting even the worst of the current allegations that have come to light, is that he was basically an average politician up to the time he became vice president -- sure, he put Hunter on the Amtrak board in 2006, or he got Hunter a cushy job with MBNA or got him into Yale Law, but all of these are perks that US senators from either party routinely collect. Remember that Joe used to claim he was the poorest man in Congress.

So the inescapable inference is that Joe had been an OK if mediocre guy all his life, but once he became vice president, it suddenly all went to his head, and he turned into this monstrous grafter that nobody foresaw. In 2009, at age 67, he went from the poorest man in Congress to a master influence peddler and money launderer, running a family franchise of brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and Hunter, all with their hands out to have their palms crossed with cash. By the same token, atfer Joe left the vice presidency, all the graft suddenly came to an end. Well, maybe there were little side deals at the Penn Biden center and so forth, but weren't they just more or less wrapping up the old vice presidential frammis? Joe could withdraw to a modest but comfortable retirement.

I don't believe that. In fact, I don't believe anyone is specifically pushing that argument. A person's character is well formed by age 67, and no matter how much older they get, they just keep on keepin' on. Joe has an expensive lifestyle, and several of the family progeny have expensive addictions. There's got to be more. In fact, I'm inclined to think Burisma is just the low-hanging fruit. And let's just add what we learn from criminology: crooks have habits. They work within a comfort zone. They keep doing the things that work for them, and with which they feel comfortable. And just as important, they mostly keep doing their thing until they're dead or in jail, because life is a series of habits.

Now and then, people turn up odd tidbits about Joe that suggest the mediocre-but-honest narrative doesn't hold up, like this recent thread on X, formerly Twitter:

My first assignment as a junior editor at the Harvard Journal on Legislation (1999-2000) was to cite check an article submitted by one Sen. Joseph R. Biden. I was shocked by the plagiarism I discovered. 🧵 https://t.co/0CSqJBZR7E

— Roger Severino (@RogerSeverino_) September 4, 2023

Allegations of plagiarism have surfaced and resubmerged throughout his career, most famously during his brief 1987 presidential campaign, but he initially failed a Syracuse University Law School course for plagiarism. He was allowed to repeat the course without a permanent penalty. He's repeated other personmality traits like fabricating stories about himself throughout his life. I suspect that a detailed investigation would also uncover one or another version of under-the-table baksheesh throughout his career.

So I've got to ask if we've really looked into what Joe might be up to now. I've noted here that he can no longer do a traditional news conference with a range of questions from a variety of reporters, because too many potential questions could still come up, not just about Hunter, but about things like his own e-mail aliases or the Biden family shell companies that receive payments from overseas. But even without the ability to pose those questions in that forum, there are questions a Peter Doocy could raise with Karine Jean-Pierre in the White House press room, or a Robert Kennedy Jr could ask in a TV interview.

For instance, "Can the president assure us that there are no longer any Biden family shell companies still receiving money from foreign sources?" Remember that as homicide detectives say, a lie is as good as a confession. All it wouid take would be for an investigator or whistleblower to uncover one such company still with an income from Ukraine, China, Romania, Kazakhstan, or wherever. But this leaves aside the whole other Biden network that extends to the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Biden Center.

Another question would be, "We've learned that while he was vice president, the president, like others in the Obama administration, used alias e-mail addresses to disguise certain of his business arrangements. Can the president assure us that neither he, nor other high-level people in his administration, are using alias e-mail addresses to disguise business arrangements now?" Again, a lie is as good as a confession. And homicide detectives know those sorts of questions are best asked when they already have the answers.

Some of the Republicans in Congress do know this trick, especially Sen Grassley, and so far, the tactic has been effective as a way of prying documents like 1023 forms loose from the Justice Department when lawmakers have made the point that they've already seen them. I can only expect that things will heat up when the House comes back into session on Tuesday, but I continue to think the real revelations will have to come over e-mail aliases and foreign payments to the Biden family now, not six years ago.

What Is Kamala Telling Us About The 2024 Campaign?

I've already cited uncertainty among some observers about the state of Joe Biden's fire in the belly as next year's presidential campaigns get under way. But another indication comes from Kamala Harris:

Vice President Kamala Harris has had 27 work days with nothing on her public schedule since the launch of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, a Daily Caller analysis found.

On days the vice president had something on her public schedule, her schedule frequently consisted of having one event during the entire day. The events included having lunch with President Joe Biden, receiving a brief with the president, and eating with foreign leaders, the Daily Caller found using Politico Playbook records of Harris’ schedule.

The piece goes on to enumerate each of her schedule lacunae for individual months, which are pretty awful -- for instance,

The vice president spent seven weekdays with nothing on her public schedule in June. She spent one day with nothing but lunch with the president on her public schedule, one day attending a Juneteenth concert, one day receiving a briefing with the president, one day meeting the Indian prime minister on the South Lawn and eating lunch with the prime minister the next day.

But other than note the inactivity. it draws no conclusions, except to say that Joe hasn't been much busier:

Biden has also spent extended time away during the campaign. The president reached a personal record away from the Oval Office in August — going on two week-long vacations during the month.

On one hand, we might say this is almost a wise decision on the part of their handlers, since neither is articulate or especially charismatic, and if anything, Kamala's record is more consistently mediocre than Joe's. On the other hand, the Biden-Harris handlers seem at least to recognize the need to show some effort at rehabilitating Kamala. In Pollitico a couple of weeks ago:

Harris’ term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate. They’ve fueled whispers about whether she’ll be a drag on the reelection ticket as the 2024 race heats up.

Now her political future, and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket in 2024, hinges on a simple question: Is it possible for Kamala Harris to make a second impression?

The story goes on to say that in her own mind, she doesn't see what the problem is:

“You could have followed me around in Iowa [ahead of 2020],” Harris told POLITICO in one of two exclusive interviews. “You would have seen the same thing four years ago. It’s always who I’ve been. So I can’t get into people’s heads about why they characterize things as being one way or another. It’s not as though I’ve just found myself. I’ve always been here and never went away.”

But the same stories were going around even then. On October 30, 2019, as Kamala's prospects for 2020 faded even before the primaries, Vanity Fair wrote:

With the Iowa caucuses only a few months away—and her poll numbers not improving—Senator Kamala Harris's 2020 campaign is changing course.

. . . News of Harris's campaign overhaul came within hours of the newest disappointing poll for the California senator, as a USA Today/Suffolk poll released Wednesday put Harris at just 3%. The senator's polling was tied with entrepreneur Andrew Yang, while Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who did not even qualify for the September debate, finished slightly ahead with 4%. (Former Vice President Joe Biden led the poll with 26%, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren followed with 17%.)

The story went on to suggest that by retargeting resources, the campaign could turn things around, but the basic problem seems to have been Kamala from the start. One puzzling thing about her as a candidate is that like Barack Obama, she has strands of African DNA, but she isn't the descendant of US African slaves. Despite that, Obama has always been able to seem authentic to African-American voters despite his privileged upbringing and elite education, while those same voters have never trusted Kamala.

Thus she had no credibility of her own to bring to the 2020 primaries, where her performance was dismal from start to her early finish. Her benefit to Biden was simply as a diversity hire to fulfill his promise to name a black woman as his running mate -- exceept she was about the least black of any black woman he could choose.

Was this a bug or a feature? We may surmise there was never any serious debate about dropping her from the 2024 ticket, notwithstanding in the absence of Joe at the top, she would be a weak candidate and a disastrous successor who could bring nothing positive with her presence -- at best, by remaining, she would forestall criticism from the people who'd put her on the ticket in 2020. I suspect the answer has something to do with what Franklin Foer in his new book calls Joe's "swaggering faith in himself".

So far, we might conclude that Joe is either firm in a belief that 2024 is a sure thing, or he just doesn't care much either way.

Is Biden Obama's Puppet?

I ran into this take on Barack Obama, or maybe Obama and Biden, at Gateway Pundit:

I’ve always had Obama’s number. I understand what makes him tick. I understand his goals.

First, let’s get the “gay issue” out of the way. I’ve reported on both my radio and TV shows for 15 years that my wealthy, connected friends in Chicago have always said, “Obama frequented gay bathhouses and gay clubs. Everyone in the know, knows Obama is gay.”

Now that we’ve heard from Obama’s biographer that Obama wrote about his daily gay fantasies, I think it’s pretty clear my Chicago pals were right. Tucker is onto something!

I've got to say that I'd been off Gateway Pundit since Sidney Powell released the kraken or whatever she did, but mainstream Conservative Inc has kept extending spring break into summer vacation and now an extended Labor Day, and only sites like Gateway Pundit have been fun to visit. The writer, Wayne Allyn Root, moves on to the meat:

But all of this is small potatoes. This is not the big story.

Why does any of this matter now? Because Joe Biden is a brain-dead puppet. This is the third term of Obama. The proof is we are all reliving the nightmare Obama economy. Great for Wall Street and billion-dollar multi-national corporations. But a disaster for the American middle class and Main Street.

. . . I’ve had Obama pegged from the first day. Obama is the ultimate “Manchurian Candidate.” Gay is unimportant. What matters is he was groomed to be president by the Deep State and communist, fascist, globalist enemies of the United States. What matters is Obama is a radical Marxist tyrant carrying out the destruction of America.

. . . Now he’s working behind the scenes to finish the job. He is the man who ordered the spying on Trump. The framing of Trump.

I'll go for Joe as a brain-dead puppet, but I don't think Obama is pulling the strings. Just for starters, for Obama to pull Joe's strings would be a hellacious amount of work, and I don't think Obama wants to work that hard. When Obama left the White House, I had an inescapable sense he said, "I'm done", and he was perfectly happy to retire into high society. The biggest Obama headline in recent memory has been the drowning of his longtime personal chef. This man is gay. He is not a Soviet plant.

Second, I've been studying Joe since 2020, and the information that's slowly trickled out about him substantiates my surmise: he seriously believes he's the smartest guy ever. Not just the smartest guy in the room, he's the smartest guy ever. After all, he's Caesar. The most we've heard specifically about the Obama-Biden relationship is this:

Former president Barack Obama, at a private lunch with President Biden earlier this summer, voiced concern about Donald Trump’s political strengths — including an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem and a polarized country — underlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize.

At the lunch, held in late June at the White House residence, Obama promised to do all he could to help the president get reelected, according to two people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversation.

The story is pretty clearly from the Obama camp, including Obama's promise to do "all he could" to help Joe, but of course, now Barack's got to hire a new personal chef, so his ability to help Joe out might be more limited. And notice the need for tact in handling Joe:

During their lunch, Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Biden’s political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party, according to the people.

The real Joe, as we've come to understand, is vain, prickly, short-tempered, and vindictive. You do not cross Caesar. Even Barack Obama has to be careful about how to bring things up with Joe. Whatever Joe's handlers tell him to do, he resents them, and as I've noted several times, he'll deliberately turn the wrong way when he leaves the stage or deliberately ignore his briefing notes just to show them who's Caesar.

On one hand, we've heard occasional hints of what Obama really thought about Joe as vice president, especially in this pre-2020 election story at Politico:

[M]any senior aides, sometimes tacitly encouraged by the president’s behavior, dismissed Biden as eccentric and a practitioner of an old, outmoded style of politics.

. . . Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”

Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”

And of course, there was Obama's well-known caution, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.” For anyone to try to keep Joe on the straight and narrow would be a fool's errand, and we've got to give Obama credit for being smart.

But this brings us to a different, but related set of questions: Joe is certainly a puppet, although the brain-dead part is partly an act. But if my hypothesis about Obama is true, and Obama doesn't want to work that hard to puil Joe's strings even if he could, then who in fact is the puppeteer? We can probably go back to Joe as vice president to get some insight.

As vice president, we're beginning to learn, Joe was bought and paid for at retail. A Ukrainian oligarch wants favors, he antes up, and he gets them -- that's the most clear-cut case. As best we can tell, there are also Kazakh, Chinese, Romanian, and whoever else figures in the shadows, and Hunter's unofficial presence on Air Force Two's foreign flights, as well as the e-mail aliases, suggest there were similar deals, all apparently retail, specific favors in specific countries at a specific price.

Nobody was pulling Joe's strings in an overall scheme, as far as I can see. Hunter was executing Joe's plan for Joe's enrichment, as part of which some customers got to pull specific strings for a specific price. But here's another of the related questions: how much did Barack Obama know about this? How much did he tolerate as Joe's tacit price to stay on board as number two?

And here we have a third question, is this still going on? Wayne Allyn Root in the Gateway Pundit piece postulates that someone is pulling Joe's strings, and that someone is pulling them now. He thinks it's Obama. and I disagree. But if it isn't Obama, who is it? This piece at Red State asks the same questions:

I don't think the Obamas are pulling any strings; they seem to be enjoying their relaxed post-presidency years too much, with Barack raking in huge speaking fees in between relaxing at one of their many luxurious homes. Why, with all that, would you want to be bothered with propping up old Joe Biden, especially since there seems to be little love lost between current and former President?

It comes to something like my own conclusions:

Jill Biden is clearly the most likely candidate. Why? The Biden Administration's clear and present ineptitude. "Dr." Biden has never shown any particular competence, even in her supposedly chosen field. That explains volumes about this Dunning-Kruger presidency; the person who is supposed to be in charge doesn't know what's going on, and the person who is actually in charge doesn't know what she's doing.

She's oult for her own aggrandizement; she's certainly not a Soviet plant, nor a Chinese one, although if, as some might suspect, Zelensky has something on Joe, she's going to keep Zelensky happy just to preserve her own perks and lifestyle. But this is strictly a retail operation, there's no grand scheme afoot.

Lessons From Catch-22

In a sign of impatience with the counteroffensive's progress -- probably too late at this stage -- Zelensky has fired his defense minister:

Ukraine’s Minister of Defense has resigned after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intentions to replace him amid the struggling counteroffensive against Russia and mounting corruption scandals.

Oleksii Reznikov, who has led the Ukrainian war effort since the Russian invasion in February of last year, tendered his resignation on Monday, writing on social media: “It was an honour to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the Ukrainian Army for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.”

A week ago, I posted a tally of the major Ukraine corruption scandals to date, but it appears that yet another is in the background of Reznikov's resignation:

Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the [New York] Times went on to admit that the resignation has “elevated the issue to the highest level of Ukrainian politics”. Unnamed Ukrainian officials even told the paper that some funds intended for military contracts “failed to produce weaponry or ammunition and that some money has vanished,” while claiming that the issue was merely confined to the early days of the war.

Legacy media reporting has been slim on specifics, but as of Saturday, Reuters reported,

A Ukrainian court ordered tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky to be held in custody for two months on suspicion of fraud and money laundering on Saturday, a striking move against one of the country's most powerful businessmen.

The detention of Kolomoisky, who is under U.S. sanctions and is a one-time supporter of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy whose election he backed in 2019, comes as Kyiv is trying to signal progress during a wartime crackdown on corruption.

. . . "It was established that during 2013-2020, Ihor Kolomoisky legalized more than half a billion hryvnias ($14 million) by withdrawing them abroad and using the infrastructure of banks under (his) control," the agency said in a statement.

So, who'd he been paying over those years? Anyone connected, say, to Hunter Biden? It's hard to avoid this is happening only because it's convenient for Zelensky now, and well after the alleged crimes took place. But for coontext, Larry C Johnson, a talking-head fixture on the PBS News Hour on matters of terrorism and intelligence in the 1990s and 2000s until he seems more recently to have moved to the right, had this to say on Gateway Pundit:

The leaders of the [US intelligence community] and the military still believe in their initial conclusion that Russia is weak because it did not steamroll through Ukraine and rout Zelensky off 12 months ago. . . . Putin also gets a heavy share of the blame by these leaders for allegedly not listening to the Russian military leaders and Wagner chiefs to do what is necessary to achieve victory. /p>

. . . Because the US intelligence and military leaders are looking at the war in Ukraine through this prism, the analysts and their managers, for the most part, face enormous pressure to conclude that Russia is a feckless and incompetent near-peer adversary and cannot last. /p>

. . . Reports that the West is going to pressure Ukraine to go on a complete, mobilized war footing and train a new army of 300,000 men [are] delusional. Unlike Russia, which outnumbers Ukraine by a factor of at least 8, Ukraine does not have a healthy, young pool of potential recruits. . . . New recruits assigned to operate battle tanks are looking at a training cycle of at least 12 months just to acquire minimal competence to maneuver and fire. If they start in October those new bodies would not be ready until September 2024 at the earliest.

This matches reports I've seen elsewhere that the new-model battle tanks that NATO promised Ukraine won't be available in sufficient numbers until late this year, while promised F-16s and trained pilots won't arrive until 2024. As autumn and bad weather loom again in Ukraine -- last year's counteroffensive ended with the seizure of Kherson in early November -- it's looking like 2023 will be a waste for Ukraine, except that Russia has managed to wear down Ukraine's forces over much of the year in attritional battles like Bakhmut. Johnson continues,

One other major questionable assumption — the rest of the world stays quiet and their are no other foreign policy crises that distract America and/or Europe. Given the coups in Africa and tensions with China, that does not seem to be a safe bet.

But if we're looking at a drawn-out war with an uncertain outcome years in the future, who benefits? Certainly not Ukraine, or at least not the Ukrainian people at large, who are subject to power outages via drone attacks from Russia and conscription from their own government. Not the US, which remains preoccupied there, while depleting contingency stocks of ammunition to supply Ukraine as other potential problems emerge in places like Taiwan. Possibly Russia benefits a little more than Ukraine, since in an extended war of attrition, Russia has vastly more personnel and ammunition to squander in Warld War I style confrontations.

On the other hand, I'm drawn to the figure of Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22:

Minderbinder, unlike most characters in Catch-22, who are the subject of only one chapter, is the subject of three chapters . . . He is one of the main characters in the novel. His most interesting attributes are his complete amorality without self-awareness, and his circular logicality in running his Syndicate.

Minderbinder's enterprise becomes known as "M&M Enterprises", with the two M's standing for his initials and the "&" added to dispel any idea that the enterprise is a one-man operation. Minderbinder travels across the world, especially around the Mediterranean Sea, trying to buy and sell goods at a profit, primarily through black market channels.

Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men.

The only people who are benefiting at this point from the Ukraine war appear to be Ukrainian oligarchs, many of whom live outside the country, who are likely to continue their skim despite occasional crackdowns for public consumption by Zelensky; elements of the NATO military, defense, and intelligence apparatus whose careers and prestige benefit from the continuing war; and Milo Minderbinder. There has got to be someone acting as the avatar of Milo Minderbinder in this case.

In other words, the skim includes kickbacks to an ultimate Milo Minderbinder who's allowing all this to continue -- indeed, delaying delivery of necessary advanced weapons that would shorten the war. It would help if that person had long-established contacts with politicians and oligarchs in Ukraine. Indeed, it would help if that person were fully embedded in a long-standing network of favors and obligations extending from Ukraine to the US Deep State.

This is why I think we need to keep asking what Zelensky has on Joe Biden.

Let's Look At The Latest Episode

There's been the usual chatter from the usual suspects over Joe's latest breach of decorum, walking out of yesterday's Medal of Honor ceremony for US Army Cpt Larry Taylor before it had finished. Once again, Sean Hannity, among others, called Joe "dazed and confused", which I didn't see at all.

Joe begins speaking for his part of the ceremony at 2:45 in the video at the top of this post. He's aware of the chaplain offering the opening prayer, and he waits respectfully as the chaplain speaks for over two minutes. Then Joe moves to the lectern and begins his scripted remarks. He's aware of the lectern, the circumstances, and his role in delivering the prepared address, which he reads mostly with some degree of expression. He knows where the teleprompter is, and he reads from it in mostly coherent sentences.

While I'm not a medical professional, as a layman, I don't see him appearing to be unaware of his surroundings or seeing people who aren't there. On the other hand, just for starters, I went to the undergraduate institution that was the model for Faber College in Animal House, and I know a thing or two about functioning in an impaired state and seeing other people who are this way. If I didn't know better, I'd say Joe was drunk at the ceremony, not suffering from some other state of cognitive impairment.

I understand Joe officially doesn't drink. For instance, this statement issued during his 2020 campaign says,

Joe Jr.'s family and neighbors also, inadvertently, taught him about the dangers of alcohol—and it's the reason he doesn't drink, according to him.

. . . Joe Jr. has specifically said why he doesn't drink at all: "There are enough alcoholics in my family," he said in 2008 on the campaign trail.

The problem I have is that, at least to my ear, he in fact struggles to talk as if he isn't intoxicated, not much different from Otter and Bluto. Just take the excerpt that begins at 6:35 in the video:

So when Larryas ordered [pause] uh ayun Larry, as ordered, offered a spot eh to fly in the Fighting First in Viet Nam, he jumped at the chance.

At 8:18:

Overz radio he said "let's get to work!" A flare went up, and the flight -- fight was on. The enemy fire lit up the night. Lt Taylorn is copilot dove down positioning's cobra nearly -- parallel -- with -- the -- Viet -- Cong -- fighters.

There's quite a bit of slurring in the sentences that follow. Those who watch the current On Patrol: Live police ride-along program, or who've watched previous shows like Live PD or Cops know that such patterns of speech are one good potential indicator of driver intoxication. Linguistic studies reflect this as well, for instance:

[T]here is a 2001 study entitled Effects of ethanol intoxication on speech suprasegmentals by Harry Hollien and colleagues.

Hollien, et al., administered controlled amounts of alcohol to a group of young adults, and quantified the aspects of their speech that changed the drunker they got.

. . . The researchers also found a decrease in the subjects’ speaking rate as they become more intoxicated. There seems a specific point at which this slowing of speech occurs: men slow down the most at a blood alchohol level between 0.04 and 0.08; for women, this occurs between 0.08 and 0.12.

Finally, the researchers found that the most striking impact of alchohol on speech was an increase in ‘nonfluencies.’ That is, people stammer, stutter, and trip on their words a whole heck of a lot more when they’ve had a few too many. Just how much does this intensify? The researchers found that in the severely intoxicated, the rate of these ‘speech errors’ nearly triples.

The writer adds,

Something that isn’t mentioned in the study is what I find to be the most salient feature of ‘drunken speech:’ hypercorrection. Drunk people, aware of their intoxicated state, often overcompensate by overenunciating evvvveerrry ccconnnsonnantttt and vowel. Perhaps this relates to the higher rate of stuttering and stammering: when you put such pressure on yourself to pronounce everything perfectly, you’re bound to trip up!

Stammering, stuttering, tripping over words, sudden extra care in enunciation, sudden slowing, and slurring are all routine features of Joe's speech. His defenders have insisted it's a speech impediment he's had all his life, but looking at earlier clips of Joe's speech even while he was vice president suggests the problem has worsened in recent years.

There are two reasonable explanations for this. The first, which I think is especially likely with Speaker Emerita Pelosi, who also claims not to drink, is that this claim is false. I've posted on her case. Another explanation, which may be more likely for Joe, is that although he doesn't drink, one or another prescription drug, quite possibly used more than recommended, is having an effect comparable to alcohol.

I get the impression that the Overton window of acceptable discussion attributes Joe's problems with enunciation and his frequent breaches of official decorum to age exclusively, but it then declares the subject off limits due to tact. This happened most visibly yesterday in an exchange between Fox's Peter Doocy and Press Secretary Jean-Pierre:

During Tuesday's press briefing, Fox News' Peter Doocy pointed out that Biden, at age 80, is the 'oldest president in U.S. history,' and then asked why White House staff treated him like a 'baby.'

'No one treats the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, like a baby,' Jean-Pierre answered. 'That's ridiculous.'

But that same day, Joe had stumbled and slurred through his remarks at Cpt Taylor's ceremony, fastened the medal around his neck, and simply walked off before the ceremony was over. As I've felt all along, I don't think this was a result of Joe being unaware of his surroundings or even the requirements of ceremonial decorum. I think he was either drunk or under the influence of prescription drugs used to excess, he felt like walking out, and he could, because Joe is Caesar. Peter Doocy began a necessary process of calling this out.

Both Republican and Democrat challengers to Joe for 2024 need to start bringing this up. As I've been saying all along, I don't think this is a matter of age, or not age exclusively. Joe acts drunk. He acts drunk all the time. It's affecting his ability to do his job, at minimum at official ceremonies. We need to start asking why.

Can They Reboot The COVID Panic?

It's been a long time since I've posted on COVID, but with the uptick in masking recommendations from the usual public health suspects and the reemergence of Dr Fauci, I decided to see what I could do to compare current COVID statistics with those from a couple of years ago. What I discovered was that I can't. As of even last year, there were daily statistical updates locally and nationally. Now, at best, they're weekly, but the California state breakdown by county that's at the top of this post is updated only monthly. The old graphs I used to copy are no longer posted.

Now and then I've done a quick check of how many people are wearing masks at Sunday mass. This would be a population that skews older and more prudent -- prudence is a cardinal virtue among Catholics, after all -- and as late as six months ago, I was gauging it at from 25 to 35 percent. Last Sunday, it was well down into single digits. By the same token, I've seen far fewer people wearing masks outdoors on the street. The old social-distance calibrations and footprint reminders on floors and sidewalks have long since been power washed away, for all the good they ever did.

As of this past April, LA County stopped requiring masks even in hospitals and doctors' offices. But can they make us all go back? In July, 2022, more than a year ago, I posted on LA County moving to the brink of reimposing an indoor mask mandate and stepping back at the last minute. At that time, I linked to a news account:

The threat of returning to the mandate stirred up controversy. Several cities, including Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Long Beach, and most recently El Segundo, had announced this week they would not enforce any mandate.

Additionally, two [of five] members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors had indicated they opposed the reinstating of a the region-wide mask mandate.

In an open letter, Supervisor Kathryn Barger said “masking mandates lack empirical evidence to back their effectiveness, are unenforceable, polarizing, and take a huge toll on the social-emotional well-being of children and youth.”

I commented at the time,

It appears there was a massive back-channel campaign against restoring the mandate, given Supervsior Kuehl's remark about the "snowflake weepies" who were opposing it. Sounds like the snowflake weepies won the day, and I would guess the supervisors put a lot of pressure on "Dr" Ferrer to decide she needed to look more closely at the data before they themselves would be pressured to vote against reimposing the mandate, which would likely put[LA County Public Health Director Barbara] Ferrer's own job at risk.

Dr Ferrer so far is still choosing to err on the side of keeping her job. As of last Thursday, she announced,

“There’s nothing that’s changed. We’re not announcing new safety measures today,” assured Barbara Ferrer, Director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

But, when asked if officials would ever make masks mandatory again, Ferrer was less committal.

“‘Ever’ is not a word I’m comfortable with,” she said. “There’s not that level of certainty with this pandemic. I’m never going to say there’s not going to be a time when we all need to put our masks back on. I am going to say we certainly don’t all need to put our masks back on now. We are at a place where people make their own assessment.”

I think we're also at a place where the population at large has understood that public officials had been crying wolf, and they'd been crying wolf for a number of reasons. One was certainly to increase their budgets, salaries, and prestige. But another was to create an atmosphere of panic that put Trump's 2020 campaign at a disadvantage by ending his public rallies and linking a populist uprising with the idea of an epidemic and the need to fight a social malaise, to "heal our city".

I think one big indicator that this moral panic is over is the counterproductive effect of Trump's indictments: each one has driven Trump upward in the polls and spiked his fundraising. If the general attitude is "fool me once," I don't see a good prognosis. But Dr Fauci's holding on, at least for now:

CNN asks Fauci why the highest quality scientific evidence consistently shows that masks do not work?

"The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 —… pic.twitter.com/GUdGak0AZh

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) September 3, 2023

In contrast to Dr Fauci, his old sidekick Dr Birx is urging restraint:

"We don't need to mandate," Birx, who was a White House COVID response coordinator, told Newsmax on Saturday.

Birx was responding to an increasing number of hospitals and businesses requiring masks amid an increase in COVID-19 hospital admissions across the U.S.

"We need to actually empower people with the information that they need for themselves and their families because every family is different," Birx also said. "And by the way, outside is safe, and playgrounds are safe.”

How Goes Ukraine's Propaganda War?

From Reuters on Thursday:

Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials who say its forces are advancing too slowly.

Since launching a much vaunted counteroffensive using many billions of dollars of Western military equipment, Ukraine has recaptured more than a dozen villages but has yet to penetrate Russia's main defences.

Stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and other news organisations last week quoted U.S. and other Western officials as suggesting the offensive was falling short of expectations. Some faulted Ukraine's strategy, including accusing it of concentrating its forces in the wrong places.

As I've pointed out here many times, Kyiv simply has to wrap up its counteroffensive this year. In fact, Ukraine's early success in 2022 for a time prompted the talking-head retired US generals to predict a capture of Crimea by the end of that year, but certainly in 2023.

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges predicted on Saturday [January 8, 2023] that Ukraine will retake control of Crimea by the end of August.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his "special military operation" on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, hoping for a quick victory. However, the war has exposed weaknesses within the Russian leader's military, such as its difficulties maintaining well-trained troops.

These challenges—coupled with Ukraine's spirited defense effort bolstered by Western military aid—has allowed Ukraine to retake thousands of miles of formerly occupied territory and turn the tide of the war in its favor.

I think Gen Hodges was one of those who'd predicted the capture of Crimea much sooner and was maintaining the happy talk while moving things back to summer. But as of March, Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley had become much more realistic:

“I don't think it's likely to be done in the near term for this year,” Gen. Mark Milley said Friday in an interview with Defense One.

“Zelenskyy has publicly stated many times that the Ukrainian objective is to kick every Russian out of Russian occupied Ukraine. And that is a significant military task. Very, very difficult military task. You're looking at a couple hundred thousand Russians who are still in Russian-occupied Ukraine. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying it's a very difficult task,” the Joint Chiefs chairman said. “But that is their objective. They certainly have a right to that, that is their country. And they are on the moral high ground here.”

The problem for Ukraine right now is not only are they making little progress on the battlefield, but the chief US cheerleader for continuing the war, Joe Biden, is preoccupied, while Trump's current success in the polls makes the prospects of US support after next year's elections less likely. At the same time, the Comer committee's focus on Ukraine corruption and Joe's role in firing the corruption prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to protect the Biden family client Burisma puts Ukraine in a less favorable light with the US public.

That is the likely context of this news release:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday praised the effectiveness of long-range weapons after a series of drone attacks damaged multiple facilities deep into the territory of the Russian Federation and a missile strike hit a Russian facility in occupied Crimea.

The Ukrainian government said an indigenously developed long-range missile was used to strike a target 434 miles away.

"Ministry of Strategic Industries reported on own production. Successful use of our long-range weapons: the target was hit at a distance 434 miles," Zelensky posted to Telegram Thursday after meeting with officials.

These drone attacks hundreds of miles behind the front lines are likely insignificant militarily but are intended to produce favorable headlines. This won't work in the face of strategy by the Republican opposition to juxtapose Ukraine aid against US domestic needs:

President Joe Biden is asking Congress to approve $24 billion more in aid for Ukraine, which would bring the total amount of U.S. taxpayer-funded aid to Ukraine since February 2022 to $135 billion.

In contrast, Biden announced Wednesday that he would send $95 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to aid in rebuilding Maui after the nation’s deadliest fire in over a century, which has claimed more than 115 lives, with hundreds still unaccounted for.

I was convinced last year that short-term expenditures at that level were justified if they brought the promised results, namely, defeat of Russia, defined as complete retreat from Ukraine's pre-2014 boundaries, within the initially expected time, roughly the end of 2023. This clearly isn't going to happen. Instead,

The Biden administration is seeking to hammer out a long-term Ukraine aid agreement with European allies in hopes of both preventing Russia from gaining an edge on the battlefield and hamstringing a future president’s ability to scale back U.S. commitments, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

. . . European capitals want to cement support and restrict ways countries could renege on pledges, fearing what might happen during a second Trump administration, according to the WSJ. At present, Western European nations lack the industrial and financial capacity to match the billions in annual military aid provided by the U.S.

The problem is that Western war objectives have never been clearly stated, other than to predict a quick and relatively inexpensive outcome using obsolescent NATO and Warsaw Pact weapons pulled out of NATO reserves. When that didn't work, there was never a clear Plan B, but a consensus default appears to have emerged that NATO countries will continue token support for the war while expecting most of the cost to be borne by the US, its taxpayers, and its contingency supplies of ammunition.

In other words, it's a bait and switch, with the actors more or less hoping the US taxpayers won't notice. But there's been a creeping recognition that a new forever war in Ukraine will include a forever skim of US funding into the pockets of Ukrainian oligarchs -- and how much of that is still being kicked back to the Bidens? (That's a question that so far, nobody has asked.)

Ukraine is under martial law and won't hold elections until that's lifted. On the other hand, both the US and UK will hold elections next year, and Ukraine is likely to figure in both. At the moment, its propaganda war isn't going well.