The Frankish Reich

Wow. There you have it. Loudmouth Bannon unsurprisingly saying the quiet part out loud. For Trump it was always “win the electoral vote count or claim fraud.” He started setting it up months in advance - “rigged election.” I was stupid enough to believe that it was just typical Trump face-saving crap, the little boy who can’t admit he lost. But then the people I thought were way out on a limb like Bill Maher (who was harping on his theory that Trump will refuse to leave the White House) were shown to be right.

Just when politics was about to get boring…hey, there’s always religion left to argue about!😀 Maybe we need to start a separate Religion, Philosophy, and Morality forum.

OK then. Ancient Egypt collapsed when the people stopped believing their kings were gods on earth? Ancient Greece collapsed when the people stopped believing Zeus could cast them out with a thunderbolt? Ancient Rome collapsed when parents stopped reading Virgil to their kids as a bedtime story? The USA, born in the Enlightenment and predicated on ideas from men like Jefferson (who systematically cut out the parts of the gospels that suggested that Jesus was anything other than a man), has been in decline ever since? So … even though there’s really only one true God, the Greeks and Romans were allowed to thrive and create empires through the systematic worship of a bunch of false gods?

I really like this take. Wishful thinking maybe, but … I hope it works. Now, as for Joe’s replacement, that’s a different story. I’m going with the “only a more centrist candidate can avoid another Trump/DeSantis presidency”

If that is meant to be some kind of joke, let me just say: Too Soon. You think a quarter century gives you a free pass? RIP Bob, 1949-1995.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/us/politics/jan-6-trump-meeting-screaming.html OK, Trump officially passed Biden in the He's Completely Lost It derby. Diminished judgement is a clear sign. If Deranged Rhino Greggy or whatever his name is had been delivering Five Guys burgers to the White House he too probably would have been called in to provide "advice." The Oval Office, December 18, the New Trump Braintrust has assembled: Mr. Herschmann [a deputy WH counsel] said he was flabbergasted by what he was hearing. “And I was asking, like, are you claiming the Democrats were working with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans and whomever else? And at one point, General Flynn took out a diagram that supposedly showed IP addresses all over the world and who was communicating with whom via the machines. And some comment about, like, Nest thermostats being hooked up to the internet.” *** Finally, the group ended up in the White House residence. Ms. Powell believed that she had been appointed special counsel, something that Mr. Trump declared he wanted, including that she should have a security clearance, which other aides opposed. She testified that others said that even if that happened, they would ignore her. She said she would have “fired” them on the spot for such insubordination. Mr. Trump, she said, told her something to the effect of: “You see what I deal with? I deal with this all the time.”

Right. So if somehow Rudy had become President in 2016, and started behaving like this in 2018 or so, I’d probably agree with those invoking the 25th Amendment. His is a special kind of senility. The drunken kind.

My Senility Ratio—Mental Sharpness in Today over Mental Sharpness In One’s Prime. First Rough Draft: 100% Mitch McConnell. The old toad is exactly the same Machiavellian schemer at 80 as he’s always been 100% Chuck Schumer. Same. But he’s only 70. 85% Nancy Pelosi. Remember, it’s a ratio, and she didn’t start out at the genius level. 65%. Trump and Biden. See the Pelosi Rule, above. Watch Trump interviews from the 1980s or early 1990s. It’s a pretty striking change. We used to have complete thoughts and sentences. Now it’s just a barrage of self-interruptions and catch phrases and rambling old man grudges. Biden: a blowhard then and a blowhard now, but it’s harder to mask the absence of deep thoughts when you start slurring words. 1%. Rudy Giuliani. This man was once a fantastic prosecutor and then an effective mayor. He is certifiably loony now, contradicts himself within the same sentence, and if he’s ever prosecuted he’ll probably skate if he wages a senility defense.

No whataboutism here. I just said Biden is not as sharp at 79 as he was at 70. I don’t like the idea of trying to remove a President under the 25th Amendment just because he’s slipped a bit. Didn’t like it with Trump, don’t like it with Biden. That amendment was ratified to fill a constitutional gap when the President is rendered truly incompetent - think “in a coma.” We don’t want to open that can of worms and have palace coups all over the place. Biden is pretty much the same at 79 as he was at almost 78, when he was elected. Trump was pretty much the same at 74 as when he was elected at 70. We don’t go around overturning elections - what we saw is what we got in both cases. The point is this: age limits are overall a good thing. They reflect the reality of old age decline. Again, that decline usually isn’t Alzheimer’s or something dramatic. It’s just a fact of life. Supreme Court justices have a cushy job, and one that doesn’t require long, sustained efforts. Experience and wisdom of age count for more. Breyer seemed much the same boring intellectual at 83 as he was at 63. Ginsburg? There’s kind of a conspiracy of silence about her, but to me she showed clear decline in her 80s. So … maybe 80 for them, understanding that you will occasionally disqualify men and women still operating at a high level. That’s the price you pay for avoiding the opposite. But President? I’d still say no one ought to be President after about 75, so maybe make anyone over 70 ineligible to run.

Sorry to hear that. I'd say I have experience with the opposite situation - watching relatives grow older, and gradually slip a bit in their 70s, and then slip quite a bit faster in their 80s. It is technically senile dementia, but usually not Alzheimer's (which can only be conclusively diagnosed after death), and it's a normal, natural, and almost inevitable part of surviving that long. Which is why an age limit is good idea.

Yes, I am o.k. with that. As I mentioned, Ronald Reagan said he was o.k. with that, and then completely ignored his promise. (Or maybe he forgot it, hehe) Though Reagan promised in 1980 that he would undergo testing for senility if elected, so far he has not. Earlier this year he told an interviewer that he would take the tests "only if there was some indication that I was drifting ... Nothing like that has happened." http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,951325-2,00.html The article cited is from 1984, after Reagan's famously awful debate performance. (He did much better in the next debate, and blew away Mondale in the election.) Obviously what we need is some kind of baseline test pre-inauguration, with periodic testing thereafter to see if (or more likely, in what way) any officeholder in his/her 70s is in decline. Trump tells us he was able to remember a series of 5 words, backwards and forwards, and that the docs just about fainted at this incredible demonstration of mental agility. Fine. Let's have video of the tests. Every candidate. Good luck making politicians keep a promise.

Well, thanks for bringing the crazy back just as a rational discussion was about to emerge. There is absolutely nothing supporting a theory that Biden is some kind of empty suit and that some other advisors/entities are really running the government. My opinion: he is too old to run again, and he’s showing the typical slippage of a nearly 80 year old. But that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent in any medical sense. It just means there are younger possible candidates who are better suited to be President in 2025. And yes, the same thing applies to Trump, and clearly in retrospect to 2nd term Reagan. I’d like to see a constitutional amendment making anyone over a certain age — I’d say 70, but you could convince me to go a couple years more—from assuming the office. We have a rather arbitrary minimum age of 35, so why not a maximum age? Many have forgotten (hah! That’s dementia for ya) or are too young to know that Reagan: (1) agreed, in the campaign, to take periodic mental acuity tests, and that promise was quickly ignored once he was sworn in; (2) left office in Jan 1989 bemoaning the fact that the 22nd Amendment barred a third term. What a disaster for the country if that Amendment had never passed and Reagan had been elected again, clearly showing signs of dementia by the early 1990s. We ought to think ahead on this one.

I don’t often agree with you, but, umm, yeah, choosing Kamala as VP was kind of the best insurance policy against impeachment (or that 25th Amendment thing) that any 78 year old nominee could buy.

Yeah, get the damn government off our marginal farmland backs! But please wait until I cash that EU subsidy check. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20211118STO17609/eu-agriculture-statistics-subsidies-jobs-production-infographic

All true. I have no problem with Jordan Palmer saying “the most talented I’ve ever seen in my time watching football.” But his time may only cover the tail end of Steve Young’s career, and he may only know of Bert Jones and Roman Gabriel as names on some old guy’s list of something or other. Watch some YouTubes of those guys! My dad always did the same thing to me as I do to Palmer today, saying “if you’d seen Mickey Mantle when he first came up you wouldn’t be talking like that about Barry Bonds…”

Yeah, let’s read the damn transcript before accusing Trump of telling a Sec of State to “find” him some extra votes!! Oops, on second thought: ”All I want to do is this. I just want to FIND 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have (sic; he seems to mean “one more than the count shows we lost by”) because we won the state.” Damn liberal media, making up stuff like saying that Trump asked the Sec of State to go out and “find” 11,780 more Trump votes!

We should try to bring back all US citizens who are being held in custody based on anything other than open/transparent criminal process. The Griner case started that way, but it certainly isn’t going that way. And if you trust the Russian judicial system, well, that says a lot more about you than it does about Griner.

Astoundingly juvenile take. I don’t care about her politics. She is an American. To the extent she violated Russian law, we’ll, fine, Russia has every right to treat her the same way they treat Russian citizens trying to take a small quantity of cannabis oil out of Russia. But is that what’s going on here? Denied release on bail? Seems like she’s getting “special” treatment to use her as leverage. And that’s something we should care about.

I was waiting for the most asinine hot take on this latest shooting. I am pleased to announce that I need wait no more. https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1849141086 Indeed.

I know that’s a popular talking point. But I don’t see it. Look at these creeps. Was there any “masculinity” there to wring out of them? If anything, society is more accepting of the offbeat, non-traditionally male kid than its ever been. I’ve not been a big fan of the social critics who go in the opposite direction, blaming everything on a “hypermasculinized” society, but their argument seems to fit the data points a lot better. These are troubled, misfit kids who don’t fit the typical boy stereotype, who go out of their way to prove their “masculinity” by emulating first-person shooter video game male role models.

Interesting. I assume the person posting as a former friend of the killer is legit. And sadly, it makes sense. We are in the middle of some kind of crisis of older boys/young men. The trend is now unmistakable. These boys/men come from different backgrounds. Buffalo shooter and this Highland Park killer: intact families, middle to upper middle class. Uvalde shooter: broken family, looked to be teetering on the edge of middle class. Some non-Hispanic white, Uvalde Hispanic/white. But … All young men. Or at least what we used to call young men. They relate to the world more like 12 year old boys. And let’s be honest: losers. All of them. Despite access to good schools and in most cases solid middle class upbringings, they are emotionally stunted little boys who exhibit little or no talent or drive, beyond the drive to have their names all over media as the next mass shooter. Where are the girl mass murderers? Answer: probably in college, getting on with their lives, leaving their childish middle school grudges behind them (the sex ratio of college grads is astonishing to someone of my generation). The arrested development “young men” are playing video games all day, getting stoned, posting embarrassing rap videos on social media, never talking to a girl in their entire lives, much less dating one. It’s creepy, it’s troubling, it’s the new reality. And I really don’t have any answers anymore.

Agreed. Unfortunately, we are in an era of overreach. "Safe, legal, and rare" used to express the position of the majority center of American politics, and it was embraced by political leaders. Not anymore.

It's the old political consultant's mantra: Candidates Matter. Why Georgia Republicans saw fit to nominate such a crackpot is beyond me. At least they didn't fall for the Trump ego move in the Gov primary.

You are free to criticize some of her testimony as hearsay, or double hearsay, or whatever. But "lies under oath" is simply unfair. She is a young Republican supporter/loyalist, and she is reported what she heard and saw. Some of it direct observation, some of it second or third hand. The direct observation material is pretty compelling.

Q. How can you tell, just by reading a football fan forum, that Trump had a very, very bad day? A. His supporters will have started multiple threads filled with nothing but attempts at "humor" by his sycophantic tweeters.