Biden's Best Moment

 

Joseph Biden gave his finest speech on July 24, 2024, as he commented on his decision to not run for re election.

Had Ronald Reagan said the same words, or any of a number of other speakers, it would have been moving and effective, but sadly, with his mask like face, his hoarse voice, the only nuance in it a shift to whisper, he simply cannot be moving.

He garbles some of his most important words and phrases and it is because he simply cannot communicate past his obvious Parkinson's Disease, his age and infirmity, the power of his words is dissipated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgHT9dYJCTU

The truth is, a large role of the President is playing a role. Ronald Reagan, when asked if an actor could serve as President replied, "How can a President not be an actor?" and he was on to something. If the President cannot do theater, cannot project from the stage, he cannot lead.

Nobody today knows what Lincoln actually looked and sounded like as he delivered a speech, what his voice did, how his facial features shaped his meanings. Perhaps in the age of television and internet and images Lincoln would never have come to power or been re-elected. All that mattered was his words, as people read them in newspapers. But today, the delivery is critical and the media is the message.

The Democratic Party showed surprising resolve, boldness and capacity to act by sending it's leaders to insist to Biden he step down. 

And the fresh face and voice of Kamala Harris may, just may be what can stop der Fuehrer, Trump, from seizing power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p2YdGrYZ1Y&t=8s

Time will tell, but one thing is clear even now:

Biden, in the end, did the right thing.

He gave democracy and the republic a fighting chance.

Gotta Love Her: Kamala Comes Out Swinging

Okay, I know just one opinion from an eccentric New Hampshire Democrat is of no importance whatsoever.

I know, I know: Nobody cares what I think. 

I am that tree in the woods which falls and there is no ear to hear it--so my noise doesn't count, it's not even a noise.

But I hear this ad on the radio driving to work this morning, and all I could do was shout: "Finally!"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kamala-harris-viral-campaign-ad-213404378.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

Finally, we have somebody who is saying what I want to say, what I want to hear, in a way we can get up and cheer about. 

 

The Democrats may not win. 

And you know Donald Trump will never have the balls to set foot on a debate stage with her.

But at least we will bloody the noses of those Goddamn Trumplings.

P.S.

Thanks, Joe. We owe you one.

And Now The Fun Begins

 

President Biden did the right thing, of course.

For a career politician one of the hardest things.

Now, the Democratic Party has to take a deep breath and think. Mad Dog hopes the party does not do the easy thing, at least before having exhausted all the other choices.

The easiest thing to do would be to nominate Kamala Harris, but it may not be the smartest thing to do.

Personally, I always liked Ms. Harris, but we need to think this through and not simply take the simple, easy out.

The first thing to realize is there will be an outpouring of sympathy and admiration for President Biden and he should be out there on the campaign trail milking that for all he's worth. He could be good at that, and he could help his country a lot.

The next thing is to simply think of the attributes of a candidate who can beat Mr. Trump, who spent decades building his brand name.

Is there anyone who is as famous, who is widely beloved?

When I posed this question to a twenty something just now and asked her if she would vote for Tom Hanks, she said she didn't know who that was. When I said, "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Saving Private Ryan" a vague flicker of recognition passed across her eyes. I explained he was a movie actor and I asked if she'd have reservations voting for someone without political or elective experience, she shrugged and said, "No problem."

 "In fact," she said, "I'd vote for Kim Kardashian. I'd definitely vote for her."

"For President? we're talking about President here," I said.

 "She's a lawyer and she's made herself a billionaire,"

this twenty something voter informed me.

From the mouths of babes. 

When I asked her what the big issue in her mind for this election would be she said, "My uterus."

But when I asked her which party would be more likely to protect her reproductive rights, she got a blank look and shrugged. And when I pressed her on the Supreme Court which had overturned Roe, she said, "And, yeah--they were all men."  Well, actually, not Amy Barrett I said.  But, I asked did she know the six who voted out Roe were all appointed by Republicans, she remained blank faced and said, simply. "Oh. Yeah." So which party would be likely to protect her uterus? She still did not know.

I asked her if she was for abortion. Yes.

I asked her if she was for infanticide. 

"What's that?" she asked. 

I explained it was killing babies.

She said she was against killing babies but when I asked about a baby who would be born within a few days or weeks she said, "Well, if their family didn't want him, then that would not be a good life."

So this is who elects Presidents.

This lady said she was encouraging all her friends to vote.

And I thought, "If her friends are anything like her, do I really want them voting?
But she may be persuadable.

Almighty God on Trump's Side: Gott Mit Uns

 

Donald Trump said what many people--both his fans and his detractors--said after that bullet missed his skull by inches.

Whether you are a believer or an atheist, the miss seemed Providential.  You may think there is no guiding hand in history, no God intervening as the Greek gods were thought to do, but the whole episode is fantastical.

Many have observed the only way to really stop Trump and Trumpism, as is true of Putin and Putinism, and before that Hitler and Nazism, is and always had been with a bullet.

When you are talking about a king, a charismatic leader, a person in whom the whole of the state is contained, the only way to stop that man is to stop that man.

Not only was that bullet astonishing, but the very fact that a 20 year old boy could get off that shot, and several others with an attack rifle, not a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight, and come so close is amazing.  For any aficionado of youtube gun channels, it is patently clear that even crack shots have trouble hitting targets much larger than Trump's head from 150 yards.

Hitler's trousers shredded by the blast

So, in a way, this failed attempt is redolent of that Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler, which left der Fuehrer unscathed. 

The room where the bomb exploded

Wehrmacht soldiers swore allegiance not to Germany, but to Adolph Hitler, der Fuehrer. 

And so it is with Mr. Trump: watch his adoring fans being interviewed at his rallies and it's clear what they are drawn to are not his "policies" if he can be said to have any real policies or beliefs--beyond a belief in that vile infestation sweeping across our Southern border as insane asylum inmates invade.

They love him so!

No, what Trumplings love is Trump. They always grin, talking about him. They find him hilarious.

It's that great line from "Roger Rabbit" when the detective, Eddie, incredulous at discovering Jessica Rabbit is married to the flop eared Roger Rabbit asks what she can possibly see in him and she drawls in her best vampy Kathleen Turner alto, "He makes me laugh."

He makes me laugh...

And many believe Jesus sent him to rescue America.

When an officer placed an briefcase bomb at the feet of Adolph Hitler and it exploded killing most of the staff at the meeting and wounding others, Hitler was unharmed, although his trousers were shredded, and der Volk all across Germany took this as proof that Almighty God was smiling upon and protecting Hitler. German soldiers wore belt buckles that said, "Gott Mit Uns"--God is with us.

Latter day historians have noted that following his escape, Hitler took complete control of Germany's armies and made one horrendous decision after another, from July, 1944 until everything collapsed in May, 1945.  Had he been killed, the Germans might have made peace with the Western Allies and even with Russia, and nobody would have ever known about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany might have survived in some form, rather than being completely annihilated and crushed. 

So it may be the hand of Almighty God spared Mr. Trump for a reason.

Lincoln confronted this question of what God intended by allowing the Civil War to rage on for 4 years with such great cost in lives and property. That catastrophe cost more American lives than all of America's other wars combined. And Lincoln asked why would God want to visit this catastrophe upon a righteous land? His answer: every drop of blood drawn by the [slavedrivers'] lash had to be paid for by a drop of blood drawn by the sword. In other words, less elegantly, it was pay back for hundreds of years of slavery. America had to answer for that. 

But if you follow the historical lesson, one might conclude the path we are following will be toward incineration, destruction and we can hope only that America will be a new Phoenix arising, as Germany did, from the ashes.

Democratic Party Swallows the Suicide Pill

 

Approaching the Democratic National Convention, the Party may already be a dead man walking, but if Democrats nominate Joseph Biden for President, then surely they will be swallowing that cyanide capsule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTiZisXrkw

The Republican Party has really only one aim, and that is to enact the Project 2025 which includes, most prominently, a huge tax give away to millionaires and to return to the salaried masses, the HVAC guys, plumbers and electricians the full burden of paying for government.

Because Republicans have nothing rational to offer re: climate change, energy conservation, environmental protection, education, infrastructure and because they oppose contraception, abortion and efforts to achieve clean air, clean water and public health, including vaccinations against pandemic viruses, they really have nothing to run on except phantoms: the invasion across the Southern border by insane asylum inmates and rapists, criminal gangs. 

So the GOP instead of talking about these losing issues: direct attention to efforts by Democrats who Republicans claim deny there are two distinct genders, and then they slide into the cant that Democrats want to  brain wash/indoctrinate your children into becoming transgender or gay, whichever you might think worse.

This gender discussion has been the Democrats' biggest gift to the Republican Party.

I am in full agreement with Dave Chappelle on this: I support anyone becoming whoever they want to be, whatever they believe they have to be--but to what extent do I have to participate in your self image?

Where this arises is the whole "pronoun" thing. Don't expect me to talk about "they" going to town for a haircut when I'm referring to a single person. Gender fluidity, transgender folks lose 99% of the American public when they open any speech with, "I am so and so, and I use his."

Also, the whole idea of a transgender college athlete, who went through puberty on a tide of testosterone, with all that meant for his skeleton and musculature, and then undergoing transgender manipulations and being allowed to compete as a woman against women, and rewriting all the female swimming records is so transparently wrong it hardly requires explication.

At what point will Democrats start valuing winning over some ideal of intellectual consistency? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDTiZisXrkw

Just look at this video of President Biden in the Rose Garden at the White House. There he is frozen in his Parkinsonian grip, while a male in long dreadlocks and a dress undulates beside him. All the GOP has to do for the next two months is to buy airtime and internet time to replay this scene over and over again and they'll add the Senate, the House and the White House to their Supreme Court.

And the Democrats will have only themselves to blame.

To Boldly Save or Meanly Lose Our Democracy

 Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. .. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. 

--Abraham Lincoln

How can a President not be an actor?

--Ronald Reagan

WE ARE ALL JUST PLAYING SHUFFLEBOARD ABOARD THE TITANIC RIGHT NOW

--Mad Dog

Reading about how Democracy died in the Weimar Republic and how Hitler's rise to power could have been prevented if only he faced bold opposition, I think of today. 

Hitler was a bold leader. He took chances and risks no other leader of his time was willing to take.

In that, Trump is the same. And his Republican Party, which has come to duplicate the National Socialist Party (Nazis) in almost every way, is the same. They nominated a man who had never served in elected office as their candidate for the Presidency of the United States, as his first elected job. 

A bold move.

Voters did not care about his lack of experience. They felt they knew him. He had developed his brand over years, first in the New York press, then on television and people, at least some people, thought they knew him.

And they believed that "experience" really does not matter in the Presidency, because the big decisions a President is called to make do not demand a command of the details. The President is the captain of the ship who merely decides what the destination is, and leaves it to others to plot the course, work out the mechanics.

Ronald Reagan, of course did hold public office, Governor of California, but he was always really just a movie actor who delivered the lines written for him, and who decided what it was he liked and did not like and his big job was to inspire the public. 

When I sought out the opinion of the most highly placed and connected Democrat I know in New Hampshire, he wrote me in an email, "Unfortunately, this late in the process, it is most likely that you will lose votes if you shift away from Biden." Now, this was a private email and not meant for publication, and so I will not identify him, but I use it because it means even the smartest, bravest politician I know simply cannot shift gears away from being a politician. All the pundits say the same thing.

But has anyone commissioned a poll to test what the voting public would do if someone not currently under discussion were to be nominated?

So, here is my fantasy, being called to give a nomination speech at the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

I would appear on stage wearing my LL Bean blue and black plaid shirt  and my favorite hat. A nobody. Just a guy from New Hampshire. 

And it would go like this:

None of you has ever heard of me. In fact, I am not qualified to be speaking before this Convention, except by the one qualification that I cherish Democracy. I am but a humble, anonymous citizen, one of millions anonymous Americans and nobody here knows my name.

But you have heard of the man whose name I rise to put into nomination. 

You all know him, and he is the solution hiding in plain sight.

You will not believe I am serious, even though he clearly is the one person who everyone knows could beat Der Fuhrer decisively.

But you will say nominating him would be too risky; it's never been done. And I have to reply as Lincoln said in the midst of his turbulent times: "As our case is new, so we must think anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

We are told that bringing forth a new name now only three months before the voting begins is too risky, that nominating anyone other than those we are expected to nominate is too great a risk.

And I agree: It is too late to bring forth into the election someone who we have to introduce to the American people. But that means that although we have a very deep bench of elected Democrats, none of them has the national fame of Der Fuhrer. We have wonderful Democratic governors from Minnesota to California to this very state of Illinois. We have stars in the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island to New York. We have great Congressmen from Maryland to California to the state of Washington. 

But none of them can match the fame of Der Fuhrer. We'd have to introduce each and every one to the nation, but we do not have that kind of time.

Which leaves one man who we all know, and who is widely loved. Sleepless suburban housewives from New York to Seattle love him. Children dreaming of a train ride to the North Pole for Christmas love him. We have seen him washed up on a deserted island, and we have seen him celebrate and extol the ordinary Americans who became heroes, who became a Band of Brothers, fighting across Europe from Normandy to Der Fuhrer's Eagle's Nest. 

And yet you will say: No, it's too unheard of! It's an impossible dream! But just blocks from where we assemble today, a man whose middle name was "Hussein" walked out on to a stage in a wet Chicago night, at Hyde Park, on the night of his victory, and said, "For any of you who doubt that in America anything is possible--Tonight must be your answer!"

The impossible has happened, right here and it can again.

And we saw the man we all know now, recently at the 80th anniversary of D-Day, at the graves of American soldiers in Normandy. Those graves Der Fuhrer refused to visit because it was raining and Der Fuhrer did not want to get his hair wet, did not want to show his bald spot.

You know him because he searched for one American soldier among an entire Army, to save Private Ryan. 

You know who I'm talking about. Every American does, from Biloxi to Bangor, from Peoria to Portland. He literally needs no introduction, because he has visited all of us. 

And yes, you know I cannot resist saying it: Gump Dumps Trump!

And so I'm privileged, I'm honored, to put into nomination before this Convention, for President of the United States: 

 Thomas "Tom" Hanks.

Drummer Boy

 

On June 6, 2024, as Tom Hanks, Christine Amanpour, Joseph Biden and the surviving veterans who stormed the beaches at Normandy gathered to commemorate the 80th anniversary of that momentous day, someone noted that there were fewer years between the end of the Civil war (1865) and that beach landing (1944) = 79 years and the time between D-Day and it's 80th anniversary.

I can recall, as a boy in 1953, there were still Civil War veterans alive who held reunions, and attended commenorations at battlefields and got trucked out for July 4th parades, 88 years later. If you were 12 years old, and drummer boy, you were a Civil War Vet. If you were 103, and there were vets who lived to that age, you might have been a soldier.

So the newly discovered story by E.L. Doctorow published in this week's New Yorker held special fascination for me.

I do not know all of E.L. Doctorow's work--I read "Ragtime" and liked it well enough. 

But this, for my money, is a masterpiece.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/08/the-drummer-boy-on-independence-day-fiction-e-l-doctorow