The Frankish Reich

Of course he could just fire all his Cabinet members and have occasional meetings with the Acting Something Something and the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director just like his predecessor did.

Can he make Obama VP? Nothing says he can't run for that! Then he drops dead and we have Obama III. I like it.

Astoundingly hard for you to understand, but I'll try again. 1. Not o.k. that a senile octogenarian is president. 2. More not o.k. that a power-mad septuagenarian who tried and almost succeeded in thwarting the will of the people is made president again.

Was 2nd term Reagan an effective president? I think so. And yet there's this: https://www.history.com/news/reagan-health-25th-amendment The president was acting strangely. In the wake of a scandal about his illegal dealings with foreign powers, White House aides felt he was so “inattentive and inept” that a memo sent to the chief of staff raised the prospect of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The president was Ronald Reagan, who was dealing with fallout from the Iran-Contra scandal. His chief of staff ultimately dismissed the possibility of using the 25th Amendment to remove him, but the incident is one of the few cases in American history in which White House staff seriously suggested it as an option for removing a president from office, based on his ability to perform the job.

So he's running as a figurehead for the fourth Obama Term? Sign me up!

I agree = the famous belong in the Hall of Fame. When I was a kid I obsessed about these things. Why was the aging Brooks Robinson starting the All Star Game at 3B for the AL? He's hitting under .200! But then you realize that the stars are the ones who changed the game, or our perception of it. A Hall of Fame without Joe Namath (even those his career stats don't support it) would be just plain weird. So is a Hall of Fame with a generally fine but inconsequential player like Harold Baines in it a weird thing.

They were all fired up about Trump. Just like Ol' Tarheel still is.

the Clinton/Republican Congress put the country on the right trajectory. It was up to Bush 43 to undo all of that. Tax cut, Iraq War, goodbye balanced budget.

Because he thought it was loaded with blanks. Because it was expressly someone else's job to ensure that it was loaded with blanks before she handed it to him. We overuse that joke "You had one job ... ." But here she literally had one job. She failed. Ridiculously, preposterously, in an absolutely unprecedented way. She should be doing a lot more than 18 months or whatever. She quite clearly "killed" the cinematographer. You don't like these analogies, but here's another one: The scene calls for an actor to set fire to a house after soaking it with gasoline. I've seen this scene in way too many films. The director failed to take a propane tank out of the vicinity of the fire. It explodes and kills someone. Actor's fault? No.

I get that. Here's a tepid defense of continued Bidenism: It is kind of a Comparative Government 101 core understanding that the U.S. is a little unusual in having the Head of State and Head of Government both held by the same person, the President. There's no King to go to the funeral of the President of Kazakhstan. Big elections in the last few weeks in France and the UK changed the heads of government, but not the heads of state. Macron and King Charles both get to continue to go to state dinners. So Biden's government is kind of moving along fine. I know people disagree with his policies, but I see no indication that his policies - what he believes (or at least believed in 2020, when he was elected) aren't being enacted. In fact, the point that they are being enacted (for example, on immigration) is what pisses off his opponents. On foreign policy we've seen NATO strengthened, Israel defended (perhaps too much), but I don't see any wild deviations from what we would have expected from, say, a formal third Obama Term. He may struggle with those state dinners and funerals. So send Kamala. As an old Senator once said, the Vice President's office ain't worth a warm bucket of spit. So make her the substitute Head of State. The Republic will continue to stand. I hope he withdraws. He was always an old compromise candidate. Nobody was fired up about Biden. There's better Dems out there. We personalize the presidency too much in this country. To me the main danger is one man/woman trying to assume too much control, particularly (Trump) when he thinks he knows more than he actually knows. He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; shun him.

Exactly. Bill Clinton - with a Republican Congress - was the last administration to balance a budget. And it will probably be the last balanced budget in history.

Look at the history ... debt tends to grow fastest when one party controls Congress + the White House.

Gary Cohn, Trump's former chief economic advisor, on CNBC now. "The chief risk is slowing down (inflation) too fast now."

Use some reason. Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Come on.

Do actors take a weapon safety course? Is there evidence of that? Let's say it's some ultra-realistic movie about a junkie. It requires an actor to actually use a needle to inject what is ostensibly saline solution into the vein of another actor. It turns out the needle has fentanyl instead of saline. Actor's fault?

I like divided government. What's wrong with that?

Idiotic prosecution. I'm no Alec Baldwin fan. "Name a good Alec Baldwin performance?" I have to go way, way back to Glengarry Glenross. But really. He's an actor. An actor handed a prop to be used in a scene. There's a requirement that a movie set has an armorer (I had never known that such a job exists) precisely to make sure that any firearms on set are safe an properly handled. She failed in a preposterous, almost unbelievable way. The script has him shooting a gun directly at someone. I fail to see any criminal liability, or even civil liability.

If you find these to be comprehensible policy goals, well, then you must have some kind of super-comprehension powers that I lack. "End inflation." As in zero inflation? Would that be good for the economy as a whole? "End" as in "go beyond Powell's 2 percent target?" "Bring inflation back to historical standards" would make sense. But that would assume that your voters are, well, intelligent rather than poorly educated. "Put Medicare on a more secure track" without changing it in any way. Yeah, that'll work. "Unleash American Energy," ignoring the fact that it is pretty much unleashed already. "Stop outsourcing." Oh, o.k. What outsourcing? Components for U.S. manufacturing? How about a 10-60% tariff? That'll drive up consumer costs for everything, making it completely inconsistent with the "end inflation." A platform for the poorly educated. Nonsense on stilts.

What is this supposed to mean? https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6#:~:text=Crude oil exports of about,million b%2Fd in 2023. The U.S. is a net energy exporter. But that's apparently not "true" as defined by ... what? This is what happens when a Republican talking point is overtaken by events. Drill, baby, drill! We drilled. We became energy self-sufficient by anyone's standard definition. But now it's not "true" because that would mean admitting that continuing with our talking point is now stupid.

Here's an answer: grow up. Where are those "liberal Rockefeller Republicans" I used to hear about? Where are those "conservative Scoop Jackson Democrats?" They don't exist. We essentially have a parliamentary system now. 99% of Republicans vote for whatever Trump says. 100% of Democrats vote for Biden-approved legislation. No Democrat will vote for a Republican Supreme Court nominee. No Republican will vote for a Democratic Supreme Court nominee. I had some involvement with Indian nationals who voted in India's elections. In a country with a huge illiterate component, they just tick a box with the symbol of the party they support. That's what we do today. Biden has proven himself to be a wobbly old man who's aged out of the public part of the job. Trump proved himself to be a mercurial fool who couldn't concentrate for 15 minutes much less 4 years. That's the choice. Check the donkey or the elephant.

Breaking: Politicians are BS Artists.

AUTISM SPECTRUM Old sperm.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/barron-trump-debuts-fathers-florida-campaign-rally-sustained-applause Barron emerges! I've heard this makes him fair game.

When Biden withdraws from the race all that Hunter stuff goes away with him. Just one more reason ...

Yes, I should go back on vacation. You got me there! Seriously: it's a constant theme here that Biden has never been "in charge" and that someone else (usually Obama, I'll go with my own idea of the Deep (Democratic) State) is actually running the White House. So ... someone else will be running the White House a little bit more, particularly between 4:00 pm and 9:00 am? I'll grant you that that's not ideal. But some maniac watching Jimmy Kimmel and posting stupidity about him at 3:00 am is preferable?