Monday: Hili dialogue

July 1, 2024 • 6:45 am

It’s July already: welcome in the month, for it’s July 1, 2024, and National Gingersnap Day. celebrating the most popular biscuit in New Zealand, where they’re called “ginger nuts.” And so they are in Europe, where they make a thinner variety like these:

Jonik, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And it’s a banner day for evolutionary biology! (h/t Matthew).  In reality, neither Darwin nor Wallace was at the Linnean Society to give their papers: the articles were presented by others and later published back to back in the Journal of the Linnean Society. 

It’s also American Zoo Day, International Chicken Wing Day (the thighs are better), International Joke Day, International Reggae Day, Bobby Bonilla Day (look up July 1 in the article about Bonilla), Canada Day, formerly Dominion Day, Moving Day in Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador Memorial Day.

I suppose I have to tell a joke since it’s International Joke Day. Here’s a nerd joke, which may in fact be true:

France’s greatest lexicographer, Emile Littré, was once found by his wife in flagrante delicto, and in the conjugal bedroom at that, with their housemaid.  “Emile,” cried Mrs Littré, “I am surprised!” “No, my dear,” replied the adulterous lexicographer calmly. “You are astonished. It is WE who are surprised.”

Add your own joke in the comments.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Arab League (the Arab analogue of the EU) has decided to rescind its decision that Hezbollah is a terrorist group.

The Arab League no longer defines Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist group, an official said on Saturday.

Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militia and a proxy of the Islamic regime in Iran, boasts the world’s largest rocket arsenal of any non-state actor. It is animated by the antisemitic ideology of jihad and is committed to the destruction of Israel.

“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions,” Hossam Zaki, the assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, was quoted in Arab media as saying.

“The League’s member states concurred that the labeling of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed,” Zaki said, adding that the regional body “does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.”

Hezbollah has unleashed numerous rockets, mortars and drones on northern Israel in the past eight months starting on October 8, a day after the Jewish state suffered the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust at the hands of the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas.

Hezbollah and its subgroups have been designated as a terrorist country by the following organizations (from Wikipedia):

“Hezbollah (Military Wing)” is an invention: there is one Hezbollah, and it has a political and military side. The idea that there’s a separate political wing is a fiction invented by those who don’t want to describe the whole group as terrorists. The same false distinction holds for Hamas. Believe me, the head of Hamas’s “political wing,” Ismail Haniyeh, who is conveniently living high on the hog in Qatar, has plenty to say about Hamas’s military activities.

I’m curious about why the Arab League has done this, but I’m guessing it’s in preparation to support Hezbollah if it should get into a war with Israel.

*It looks like Marine Le Pen’s Rally Party in France is going to take control of the French parliament, and that means taking control of the French government. As you know, that party is considered “far right” in Europe, and it would be considered “conservative” in the U.S.  If Rally wins, though, there will be considerable change in France.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally was leading in the first round of parliamentary elections across France on Sunday, according to early projections that showed her far-right party one step closer to its goal of winning control of the National Assembly and taking the reins of government.

A projection by polling firm Harris Interactive said National Rally and its allies won 34% of first-round votes while the New Popular Front, a coalition of leftist parties, garnered 30% of ballots. President Emmanuel Macron’s pro-business party and its allies were heading for a third-place finish with 22% of the vote, Harris Interactive said.

National Rally is now on track to score an unprecedented haul of parliamentary seats when voters return to the ballot box for the July 7 runoff, marking a stunning reversal of fortune for Macron. If National Rally wins a majority in the National Assembly, Macron would face the possibility of sharing power with the first far-right government since Vichy France. Macron’s presidential term ends in 2027, and he said he won’t resign.

Macron placed a massive bet when he called the snap elections, expecting to edge out leftist parties in the first round and force their voters to rally around his party for the runoff as they had in previous national elections. The opportunity to defeat Le Pen’s National Rally in races across the country, Macron said, would provide France with a moment of “clarification” after her forces trounced his in European elections at the start of June.

Now Macron’s calculation risks backfiring. His party’s third-place finish on Sunday means many of his candidates might miss runoff races around the country. Candidates need to win support from 12.5% of registered voters on Sunday to qualify for the final round. Those who qualify will face pressure to drop out of the runoff, so that votes against National Rally aren’t divided between two parties.

Le Pen and her allies, meanwhile, are within striking distance of a 289-seat majority in the National Assembly that would compel Macron to select a prime minister from her ranks.

Here’s Matthew’s comment on what’s going to happen:

If Rally (RN for Rassemblement National) has a majority after the second round (next Sunday), the Prime Minister will be the parliamentary leader of the Rally Party (Bardella, not Le Pen). Leading Jewish intellectuals have called for a vote for the RN because they think that the RN supports Israel and the left is anti-semitic. I have no idea what will happen but it is crap.

*The WaPo describes the extensive labor that Biden’s aides went through to prepare him for the debate.  Apparently, even in the prep sessions he was halting and not that eloquent. But then things fell apart a lot more when he got on stage:

In the sessions, the president still spoke haltingly. He sometimes confused facts and figures. He tripped over words and meandered. Debate prep would not fix his stutter or make him appear any younger, aides knew.

But as Biden boarded Marine One to leave the rustic Camp David presidential retreat for Atlanta, they sought to reassure anxious allies. The president, they said, was prepared and would perform well. Some said the debate might even be boring.

This story is based on conversations with eight individuals involved in or briefed on the president’s debate preparation, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private meetings. The Biden campaign declined to comment.

For a full week, the president sequestered himself at Camp David with more than a dozen aides to prepare for Thursday’s presidential debate with former president Donald Trump. He rehearsed answers, met with policy aides and participated in mock debates, with his personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, playing the part of Trump.

Every topic he was asked about Thursday, he had practiced answers for — including the final one about his age.

So aides were bewildered by his performance. Many felt they had never seen him collapse so dramatically. After all, Biden was a veteran of numerous debates — as a senator, vice-presidential nominee and presidential candidate. And they did not understand why he gave an entirely different answer on the age question than the one they spent more than a week perfecting.

The president did not just stumble over words. He appeared to lose his focus and often was unable to finish sentences. His voice was raspy and thin, and when the debate concluded, first lady Jill Biden appeared to help her husband down the stairs.

His performance sent shock waves through the Democratic Party, resulting in calls from some Democrats for him to step aside. In the 48 hours after the debate, Biden campaign officials sought to reassure supporters and donors, blaming the debate on “just a bad night” and vowing that the president would remain in the race. The president should be judged by his 3½ years in office, they argued, not 90 minutes onstage.

But with another debate scheduled for September — a Biden campaign spokesman said the president would not withdraw from it — aides and allies are scrutinizing the president’s preparation for last week’s debate to figure out if they missed signs of what would unfold in CNN’s Atlanta studio.

Indeed, there was a ton of preparation, and the article describes it in detail, but their only explanation of why Biden blew it is “overpreparation”: too many opinions from too many aides confused him.  I don’t quite buy that.

*Lydia Polgreen, a progressive and absolutely predictable columnist for the NYT, has an op-ed called, “Kamala Harris could win this election. Let her.”  The answer to the first sentence is “No, she couldn’t.” As for the second, if Biden steps down, he doesn’t get to name a successor. It would be free-for-all.  But he won’t step down, as he doesn’t want to give up that second term.  I’ll quote Polgreen only briefly:

I know, I know. You think I just fell out of a coconut tree. Didn’t Harris flame out in the last Democratic presidential primary, leaving just in time to avoid an embarrassing loss in her home state, California? Yes. But to win a primary you must thread the needle of introducing yourself to the base of the party while burnishing the case for your ideas and dissing the talents of your rivals, all while keeping your options open, because your opponents are also your future surrogates and allies. For women — and for Black women in particular — the gender and racial dynamics of a presidential primary race seem especially difficult to navigate.

Those dynamics would play out very differently on a national stage shared with Donald Trump. There, Harris would not be hectoring a fellow Democrat over relatively small differences in policy or attempting to polish her own record in comparison with that of a governor or fellow lawmaker. She can use her true superpower: She will be a relentless prosecutor of the very clear political case against Donald John Trump, a felon, a man found liable for sexual abuse, an inveterate liar, a demagogue, a threat to our democracy and to our Constitution.

I think I speak for a lot of women, probably the most decisive voting bloc in this election, when I say that I would love to see Harris cut Trump down to size. And unlike the blow she landed on Biden during the 2020 primary debate — “That little girl was me,” in response to Biden’s terrible answer about school busing policy — she would be in a ring with an actual bully who will be unable to help himself and will treat her with menacing disrespect. Unlike Trump’s previous female debate rival, Hillary Clinton, nary a whiff of scandal has besmirched Harris. All Trump would have is personal attacks, which would only further reinforce his image as a bully. That could play especially poorly with moderate voters when directed at a mature Black woman.

Harris is more Indian than she is African-American, and, really, it’s time to stop emphasizing race when we pick candidates. Let’s go for one who’s the best choice to run America. And that isn’t Harris.

*I wrote a quick and short eulogy for Frederick Crews the other day, a friend, a scholar of English, adebunker of Freud, a hilarious mocker of literary theory, a wonderful writer and critic, and a wickedly smart polymath.  But my piece was written quickly, and Michael Shermer has done a much better job at Skeptic with his eulogy: “‘But I thought I had tenure!’ RIP Frederick Crews, 1933-2024.” 

At Skeptic we were saddened to learn this week of the death of our long-time friend, contributor, and skeptical icon Frederick Crews, an admired professor of literature and the author of 14 books, many of which were widely read, discussed, and criticized for their satirical or argumentative import, and for their debunking of pretentious nonsense—from Freud, postmodernism, and repressed memories to creationism, theosophy, and UFOs. Fred died peacefully in the hospital at age 91 after a brief illness. His daughter, Gretchen Detre, provided details of Crews’s life and career to us, along with these photographs, for which we are grateful. In addition to being a professor and public intellectual, Crews was a lifelong outdoorsman who ran in road races until age 72, remained a skier, swimmer, bodysurfer, and mountain hiker into his mid-80s, and rode his motorcycle until age 87, a true bon viviant.

Photo by Gretchen Detre (see para above)

In 2017 Crews published a lengthy biographical study Freud: The Making of an Illusion, the aim of which was to trace the steps by which the founder of psychoanalysis gradually abandoned the empirical ethos. Writing in The New Yorker, Louis Menand characterized the book as having driven a stake “into its subject’s cold, cold heart.”

Hisorian of science and Freud scholar Frank Sulloway (Freud: Biologist of the Mind), a colleague of Crews at UC Berkeley, sent us this assessment of his work and influence:

What most impressed me about Fred Crews was the degree to which he systematically retooled himself by reading and carefully studying the modern scientific literature in neurology and psychology that had increasingly upended Freud’s most fundamental psychoanalytic assumptions. The same level of dedication was also true of Crews’s immersion in the history of science, which, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, provided a critical reassessment not only of the intellectual sources of Freud’s thinking, but, more importantly, a far deeper understanding of the many fundamentally flawed biological theories that Freud carried over into his psychoanalytic model of human development.

Crews not only drew very effectively on this prior literature, but he also did the whole field of scholarship a considerable service by reprinting some of the most important publications from this literature in his 1998 edited volume Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend (Viking).

Fred Crews was a national treasure who will be dearly missed in the skeptical community and the wider society. He is survived by Elizabeth (Betty) Crews, his wife of almost 65 years; his children Gretchen Detre and Ingrid Crews; his grandchildren, Alejandro and Rebeca Márquez and Isabel and Aaron Detre; his great-granddaughter Yael Medrano Márquez; his sister, Frances James; and his nieces, Sigrid Bonner, Helen James, and Avis James.

Long ago, Fred Crews chose the sardonic text for his tombstone: “But I thought I had tenure!” We chose that for the title of this tribute. RIP Fred Crews.

I didn’t know about that epitaph, but it’s absolutely in character.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili is being silly:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m considering starting a vegan diet.
In Polish:
Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Rozważam, czy przejść na wegańską dietę.

And a photo of the loving Szaron (isn’t he handsome?)

*******************

From Annie:

From Science Humor:

From Cat Memes:

From Barry, a meme for lagniappe:

From Masih, who applauds the Iranian people for boycotting the Presidential election (read the whole tweet):

From Rosemary, a look at Al-Jazeera (and the WP):

From my feed. Capybaras, besides being the world’s largest rodent, are also the world’s chillest mammal:

I may have posted this before, but I’ve heard that she’s on leave at Vanderbilt until this issue is resolved:

From Malcolm. His caption, “Quiz or statement?” should give it away:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The first is a real color photo (touched up) of a woman who had a sad life:

Matthew says of this one, “Someone left the handbrake off.”

58 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  2. “The regime claims 60% of the population did not vote . . .” Wonder if that would work here?

  3. There’s a joke doing the rounds that references both the British General Election and the European Nations Football Tournament:

    The England team won’t be voting in Thursday’s election. They can’t even find the box, let alone put a cross into it.

    1. Ouch! That’s unkind 🙂 . In the end, they found the goal twice. I’m looking forward to England versus Switzerland and I hope the fans behave themselves.

  4. Did you know there is a capybara cafe? It’s in Tokyo, of course. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-13117175/Tokyo-capybara-cafe-cat-cafe.html

    Two jokes:

    The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting at a café table working. A waiter approached him and asked, “Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?”

    The philosopher replied, “Yes, I’d like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream.”

    A few minutes later, the water returned and said, “I’m sorry, Monsieur Sartre, but we are all out of cream. Would it be okay if I serve your coffee with no milk instead?”

    And a groaner:

    The older I get, the more I regret all the people I’ve lost over the years. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a trail guide after all.

  5. “The Arab League no longer defines Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist group, an official said on Saturday.”

    Fine. I can only conclude that the Arab League now supports terrorism.

  6. I suppose it could be over preparation, if you consider he’s been at this for fifty years.

    It doesn’t say much about Democrat policies, if there is no one who could step in as candidate.

    1. The gravestone of the Irish comedian Spike Milligan has, in Gaelic, “I told you I was ill”. Another great epitaph.

      2. It had to be in Gaelic because the Church of England wouldn’t let it be engraved in English.

        Spike’s grave is in St Thomas’s churchyard in Winchelsea in East Sussex. The village is well worth a visit.

  8. “Far right” seems to mean anyone a journalist disagrees with these days. There was even a recent article in the Glob ( https://www.theglobeandmail.com/standards-editor/article-what-do-journalists-mean-when-they-use-the-term-far-right/ ) in which it is admitted that there is no definition in the Glob’s style book for the term, which has become the standard descriptor for any group opposed to Trudeau, with the suggestion that it implies the legitimization of violence for political ends and a lack of respect for democracy and the rule of law. So that’s a rather damning description, and no doubt it is a great relief to the fine minds in the newsroom at the G&M that there is no such thing as the “far left”!

  9. An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
    A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
    A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
    An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
    Two quotation marks walk into a “bar”.
    A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
    Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
    A question mark walks into a bar?
    A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
    Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out”, we don’t serve your type.
    A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
    A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
    Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
    A synonym strolls into a tavern.
    At the end of the day, a cliche walks into a bar as”fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
    A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
    Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
    A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
    An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
    The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
    A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
    The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
    A dyslexic walks into a bra.
    A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
    A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
    A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
    A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

    1. A math problem:
      If a centipede one hundred feet, how far could a precipice?
      Show all your work

    5. I recently had an MRI of my brain, my doctors seeking to establish that a thing elsewhere had not metastasized.

      Them: “Do you have any metal in your head?”
      Me: “Just a lot of irony.”

  10. Here’s the reality, our president is failing and the public sees it. Politico: Post debate, a CBS News poll found 72 percent of registered voters do not think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president.

  11. A priest, a minister, and a Rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says “What is this, a joke?”

  12. Apropos of the host’s initial joke is this one:

    An Englishman, an American and a Frenchman were discussing a good example of savoir-faire.
    “Ok,” said the Englishman, “if you came home and found your wife in bed with another man and you didn’t kill him, that to me, is savoir-faire.”
    “Not quite, fellas,” said the American. “If you came home and found your wife in bed with another man and you said, ‘Please carry on’, that’s savoir-faire.”
    “Mais non,” said the Frenchman. “If you came home and found your wife in bed with another man and you said, ‘Please carry on’, and he could, that’s savoir-faire.”

  13. My 88-year-old mother and I talked on FaceTime yesterday about the Biden disaster. She does think that Biden overprepared, and I agree that there is something to that. I watched him sort across all of the paragraphs he had memorized during preparation, only to fail to find the paragraph he needed or, if he found it, not be able to restate it from beginning to end. And when he couldn’t find the right paragraph, he tried to substitute a different one rather than craft an answer on his own, leading to some of his worst moments. The President tried to call to the surface the paragraphs he worked on during preparation, and failed.

    Being “overprepared” is not a sufficient explanation, however. A sharper Biden—a Biden of old—would have been able to parse the question and answer it reasonably cogently *without* having to search his memory banks for the right paragraph. He would have been able to craft an answer on the spot. His improved performances since the debate have all been with teleprompters, where those elusive paragraphs and quips are right in front of him for him to repeat for the hundredth time: “When you get knocked down, you get back up!”

    Nothing that has happened since the debate has changed my view that Biden should get out of the race. If he can’t finish a sentence, can he finish his current term? If he wins the election in November, can he finish a second term? I don’t think that the answers are in doubt.

    Which reminds me of a joke that applies, a joke from The Three Stooges, delivered brilliantly by Curly: “I’m trying to think but nothing’s happening.” (https://youtu.be/43QHhEfzz-Q?si=8SXbUFATKG2F-Nu8)

    The joke is not all that funny in the case of President Biden.

  15. Concerning Biden, I’m still suspecting Parkinsons. Losing one’s voice can also be a symptom of Parkinsons. My husband’s first signs were a voice that was monotone and hard to understand a bit. He had a swallowing issue which can be a problem with people who have Parkinsons. One day he just woke up with that similar kind of voice as Biden. He also had that same unblinking stare as Biden did at the debate. And the freezing like when Obama had to grab his hand to get him off the stage the week before the debate. I know it is hard to diagnose Parkinsons and it took us quite a few doctors and lots of time to get the correct diagnosis. We got more misdiagnoses until we had a Parkinsons specialist. He was finally diagnosed by a Parkinsons doctor who saw his slack facial muscles when he walked in the room. That is what Biden had at the debate. His mouth was slack and a look of no emotion.

    I am not a doctor but Biden’s symptoms look very familiar to me.
    Right now Biden looks very much like what my husband got 12 years ago.
    People who have it degenerate at different rates. Some do better than others in the same amount of time. So it’s hard to know how he will progress.

    I do not know who could beat Trump on the Democratic ticket but do wish they’d find a younger Democratic candidate. If it Biden does have Parkinsons, which I suspect, Biden will have good and bad days and the next debate could be another bad day.

    1. Apparently he’s also switched from dress shoes to dark sneakers, presumably for better grip.

  16. Dear Jerry,

    You asked if there are two Joe Bidens. There is one Biden, and we saw it Thursday night.

    Without a teleprompter he couldn’t focus. He could not answer easy questions. He was confused, disorganized and at moments incoherent. He displayed his significant cognitive impairments as well as the sad persistent illusion that son Beau died in Iraq.

    The narcissists endangering our Republic now include Jill and Joe, who continue to think Biden is the best and only candidate who can defeat Trump.

    The people around Biden have been lying to us. The constant reassurance that he is capable is a massive lie to add to Trump’s non-stop lying Thursday night.

    At Camp David this past weekend the family reportedly encouraged him to remain in the race, and they want to fire people involved in the debate preparation. Let’s blame others.

    There are credible reports that folks in the White House have known how impaired he is.

    People forget Biden’s age, the life of cumulative stresses that hit his brain, and two separate craniotomies for a burst berry aneurysm and another about to burst. He appears to have early Parkinsons – the shuffle, the mask like face, etc. Parkinsons can include cognitive impairment and a risk of Lewy body dementia.

    Someone with his impairments has no margin and no reserves. Away from familiar structure and handlers, standing alone, no teleprompter, a cold, and an exhausting week at Camp David (where they probably tried to change his sleep cycle so he could perform late at night), and in a high stress situation, Biden’s current functional state was starkly visible for all of us to see. The curtain hiding the Wizard of Oz fell, and we saw the current Joe Biden. This was far more than being nervous, and far more than a “bad performance.”

    History repeats itself. This is Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan redux: Wilson – severely impaired by a stroke, FDR – terminal hypertension/congestive heart failure, Ronald Reagan – Alzheimer’s that was present while in the White House and symptomatic long before they acknowledged it. The people around those former presidents hid their cognitive impairments from the American people. Jill Biden is this century’s Edith Wilson.

    If Joe Biden was our older brother and appeared at a family function like he was Thursday, we’d remove the car keys and insist he see a neurologist ASAP.

    He would be worked up for Alzheimer’s, the most common dementia; vascular dementia; Parkinson’s with Lewy body dementia; a frontotemporal dementia; a mixed dementia; an infection; metabolic disturbances; a tumor; etc.

    So far, the Democratic leaders are cowering cowards. They text CNN anchors in private what they will not say for attribution. Fortunately, the New York Times, David Remnick, Thomas Friedman, and others wrote the obvious. For the good of the country Biden must step aside now.

    Thanks as always for your posts.

    Andy Thomson

    J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D.
    https://jandersonthomson.com/

    1. Thank you and Debra Coplan (above) for bringing this up. Lewy-body dementia was my first thought. In LBD, gait problems and cognitive decline happen together (as we’ve seen with Biden), and the “two Bidens” are quite consistent with LBD, where level of cognition varies day to day. Parkinson’s disease and LBD are closely related, as they both involve deposition of the same defective alpha-synuclein protein. My late father died of LBD, which can only be diagnosed definitively at autopsy. Parkinson’s dementia and LBD only get worse over time.

      1. Either way, it’s sad for the country and for him. People had to have known this for a long time, both in the White House as well as in the media. I hate that we were gaslit into thinking he was healthy and sharp. The White House, I can forgive. It’s their job to run cover for the president. The media, I cannot. It’s their job to point this out to the American people. At least this has exposed the sham that is our standard media – I was cynical before, I have zero trust in their honesty now. If it wasn’t for the blatant exposure of the debate, no one would be editorializing today about replacing Biden and we’d still be hearing that the rumor of his decline is an evil RNC lie to discredit his presidency.

  17. Kamala Harris isn’t African-(US)American at all, being the child of Jamaican and Indian professorial immigrant parents. But what makes her the perfect identitarian box-ticker is that she would be the first non-white American President. (And female, which today gets her points only because she isn’t white.). Remember, identity is about what you aren’t, not who you are. Ms. Harris is immaculate, unstained by whiteness. They could forgive her for not being capital-B Black, as they did Barack Obama.*

    Of course I agree with our host that no country should be picking candidates for office on the basis of race. It seems it will be hard, though, for the Democratic Party to get religion and put its foot down on this principle just as Ms. Harris’s ambitions suddenly become a threat. Not when the ideal intersectional candidate rose in the Party for that reason alone, and who almost certainly will become an unelected President if the current ticket wins. For the Party to pass her over would be to rub its race-baiter base’s nose in something unpleasant. Therefore Joe Biden must not be forced to step down. Better to lose the White House once than to destroy the Party As We Know It.
    ————————
    * Speaking of whom, there is an idea going around that Joe Biden should name Barack Obama as his running mate. The former President is of course ineligible to be elected again but the 22d Amendment says nothing about serving. Whether his ineligibility to run makes him ineligible to run as VP and step in when Mr. Biden steps down after Inauguration Day is not clear.

    1. Yes, again, Leslie. 100%

      If Kamala is our nominee… I just won’t vote.
      I live in NYC so it doesn’t matter much anyway. Except for my own personal horror at the thought.

      D.A.
      NYC

  18. Two guys walked into a bar. The third one ducked.
    A horse walks into the bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?”

  19. I watched ‘the debate’ from a far continent, so my comment is perhaps not relevant?

    Trump was vile, he was horrendous, he was …..

    I would vote for Biden or virtually anyone else because Trump would bring civilisation to an end. He is monstrous.

    I felt for Biden – he seems an honest, decent, caring man.

  20. Dear Jerry,

    You asked if there are two Joe Bidens. There is one Biden, and we saw it Thursday night.

    Without a teleprompter he couldn’t focus. He could not answer easy questions. He was confused, disorganized and at moments incoherent. He displayed his significant cognitive impairments as well as the sad persistent illusion that son Beau died in Iraq.

    The narcissists endangering our Republic now include Jill and Joe, who continue to think Biden is the best and only candidate to defeat Trump.

    The people around Biden have been lying to us. The constant reassurance that he is capable is a massive lie to add to Trump’s non-stop lying Thursday night.

    At Camp David this past weekend the family reportedly encouraged him to remain in the race, and they want to fire people involved in the debate preparation. Let’s blame others.

    There are credible reports that staff in the White House have known how impaired he is.

    People forget Biden’s age, the life of cumulative stresses that hit his brain, and two separate craniotomies for a burst berry aneurysm and another about to burst. He appears to have early Parkinsons – the shuffle, the mask like face, etc. Parkinsons can include cognitive impairment and a risk of Lewy body dementia.

    Someone with his impairments has no margin and no reserves. Away from familiar structure and handlers, standing alone, no teleprompter, a cold, and an exhausting week at Camp David (where they probably tried to change his sleep cycle so he could perform late at night), and in a high stress situation, Biden’s current functional state was starkly visible for all of us to see. The curtain hiding the Wizard of Oz fell, and we saw the current Joe Biden. This was far more than being nervous, and far more than a “bad performance.”

    History repeats itself. This is Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan redux: Wilson – severely impaired by a stroke, FDR – terminal hypertension/congestive heart failure, Ronald Reagan – Alzheimer’s that was present while in the White House and symptomatic long before they acknowledged it. The people around those former presidents hid their cognitive impairments from the American people. Jill Biden is this century’s Edith Wilson.

    If Joe Biden was our older brother and appeared at a family function like he was Thursday, we’d remove the car keys and insist he see a neurologist ASAP.

    He would be worked up for Alzheimer’s, the most common dementia; vascular dementia; Parkinson’s with Lewy body dementia; a frontotemporal dementia; a mixed dementia; an infection; metabolic disturbances; a tumor; etc.

    So far, the Democratic leaders are cowering cowards. They text CNN anchors in private what they will not say for attribution. Fortunately, the New York Times, David Remnick, Thomas Friedman, and others wrote the obvious. For the good of the country Biden must step aside now.

    Thanks, as always for your posts.

    Andy Thomson

    J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D.
    https://jandersonthomson.com/

    1. Thank you Dr. Thompson, I thought of a few of the things you write about above.
      Plus sundowner syndrome which is what I thought when I watched the debate. I believe that is a symptom of the disorders you list.

      It is next to impossible I imagine to ascertain at a distance WHICH impairment is leading our president’s sad charge downhill… but it doesn’t matter. If he’s not up to the job after 6pm, he’s not up to the job, sadly.

      President of the United States isn’t a 9-5 occupation. And perceptions matter.
      thank you for your comment above,

      D.A.
      NYC
      https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

  21. In the spirit of the upcoming olympics:

    A gymnast walked into a bar. She scored a 0.0 for the event

  22. Re: Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Trump if Biden gives up his candidacy: Biden should take the more drastic step of resigning the presidency itself, which would immediately elevate her to being President Harris. The bully pulpit and all the advantages of being the incumbent president would probably tilt the odds towards her prevailing in November. She will have a couple of months to prove her mettle. As Robert Caro said of LBJ: power reveals.
    Other savvy political writers like Jeet Heer of The Nation have considered this. See https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ron-klain-open-letter-biden/

    2. The Cabinet doesn’t have to wait for President Biden to come to his senses and resign. It can, if VP Harris agrees, vote by majority to depose him and install her as President. If the Cabinet Secretaries don’t do this, it means they think she has less chance of winning than Mr. Biden does.

  23. Answer to puzzle on sidewalk sign: White Hart

    Joke ? : what do they call the entrance to a poultry processing plant ? :
    chicken checkin.

  24. A horse walks into a bar and the bartender asks, “Would you like a beer?” The horse says, “I don’t think…” and immediately vanishes into thin air.

    See, the humour of the joke is based on the philosophical statement “I think, therefore I am”, but I didn’t want to ruin it by putting Descartes before the horse.

    2. Full marks for the manipulation of the standard form of a joke and it’s explication as part of the joke. Very meta, a joke about jokes.
      I would love to tell this joke orally, hearing it fall flat with the vanishing horse. And then by way of feigned apology tell the punchline.

  25. Several months ago, I created the following joke:

    Q: What doe the richest man in England have in common with my girlfriend ???

    A: Billions of Pounds !!!

    Believe it or not, this joke gets over with men much more than it does with women. Go figure .

  26. For International Joke Day:

    A Jewish-Mexican man wanted to open a restaurant. His wife, who did not like the idea, exclaimed, “¡Oy, caramba!”

    This is a variation of a modest little joke I made up long ago, but the internet now informs me that there’s a book from 2016 with that exclamation in the title. The subtitle is “An anthology of Jewish stories from Latin America.”
    https://www.unmpress.com/9780826354952/oy-caramba/

  27. Lynda Polgren (who loves Kamala Harris) at the NYTimes.
    I can’t recall if it was her rancid idiocy…. or Ezra Woke Klein who pushed me to finally, after 25 years, cancel my subscription to my hometown newspaper.
    It might have been Friedman’s descent into madness or Kristof. Most of what Kristof writes.

    So many idiots.

    I read the Financial Times now like I used to when I was on Wall St. because…and keep this central fact in mind: you can’t lie to the investor class and keep a business.
    I decided not to pay for the Times’ fairy tales and woke trash anymore.
    The Times wasn’t bad – it was good – until about 10 years ago.
    Institutions change, they decay.

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

  28. Piano player is auditioning, and the club owner says, “That was great! Who wrote that?” “I wrote it; I call it, “My Mother Has Big Nipples.” Owner says, “That’s disgusting. Play me one more.” The piano player plays a gorgeous, lush, sensitive ballad.” The owner loves it, but says, “Did you write that, too?” Pianist says, “Yes, I call it, ‘My Wife and I Have Hairy Sex.’ ” The owner says, “Your titles are disgusting but you play great, so just don’t announce the titles from on-stage.”

    First night on the job, and a sheet of music falls off the piano and the pianist bends over to pick it up, but his pants split, and unfortunately his underwear rips, and, as luck would have it, his backside is to the audience so they have a complete view of everything.

    Some guy from the audience yells out, “Hey, buddy! Do you know you have the world’s ugliest a**h***?” The piano player says, “Know it?! Hell, I WROTE IT!”

  29. A priest and a rabbi are having a couple of drinks. The priest says, “I don’t know how you can go through life never eating pork. No pulled pork sandwiches, no ham, and worst of all no bacon! Have you ever even tried it?”
    The rabbi says, “Yes, in my younger days, I was curious, and I had some bacon at an out of town restaurant. And I admit, it was delicious. How about you – have you ever succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh?”.
    The priest answers, “Well, in high school, and well before I joined the priesthood, I have to admit that I did have intimate relations with my girlfriend.”
    The rabbi replies, “Better than bacon, isn’t it?”

  30. Can someone explain to me why Marine Le Pen’s party is described as “far” right, as opposed to the party of her father? What specific goals or policies do they advocate that warrant comparison to the ghosts of Europe’s bloody past? If it is that Europe leans predominately left, and the use of “far” is simply a way to distinguish Le Pen from the conventional center right, then how do you distinguish her from people like her father or the Nazis? Are reports of the “far” right always delivered in ominous tones? Along those lines, are any parties in Europe ever called “far” left?

    In the United States, for instance, you can be an avowed Communist or leftist anarchist and you will still be described as “left” by most media outlets. The “far” modifier is generally reserved for the right—as is the ominous tone—and it has been misapplied so frequently as to become meaningless. Is something similar happening in Europe?

    2. No. I’m living in Germany, and here we speak both of the Radical/Extreme Left and of the Radical/Extreme Right.

    3. If the Far Right is subdivided into the Extreme Right (full-blown fascism & national socialism) and the (less extreme) Radical Right, then Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National belongs to the latter, being a manifestation of national populism or, as I prefer to call it, national reactionism. It’s definitely not a centre-right party, i.e. a moderate, liberal conservative party like the Christian Democratic Union in Germany.

      “The populist radical right shares a core ideology that combines (at least) three features: nativism [a combination of nationalism and xenophobia], authoritarianism, and populism. Individual actors might have additional core ideological features, such as anti-Semitism or welfare chauvinism, but all members of the populist radical right (party) family share at least these three features. Obviously, different groups express their ideology differently, defining their ‘own people’ in various ways and targeting different ‘enemies’ on the basis of a broad variety of motivations and prejudices. But all populist radical right actors share at least these three features as (part of) their ideological core.
      …
      Importantly, it is the combination of all three features that makes an ideology (and party) populist radical right. Unlike the extreme right of the 1930s, the populist radical right is democratic, in that it accepts popular sovereignty and majority rule. It also tends to accept the rules of parliamentary democracy; in most cases it prefers a stronger executive and a few parties even support a toothless legislature. Tensions exist between the populist radical right and liberal democracy, in particular arising from the constitutional protection of minorities (ethnic, political, religious). The populist radical right is in essence monist, seeing the people as ethnically and morally homogeneous, and considering pluralism as undermining the (homogeneous) ‘will of the people’ and protecting ‘special interests’ (i.e. minority rights).

      Finally, the populist radical right is not ‘right’ in the classic socio-economic understanding of the state versus the market. In theory, economics is at best a secondary issue for the populist radical right. In practice, most populist radical right parties support a hybrid socio-economic agenda, which combines calls for fewer rules and lower taxes with economic nationalism and welfare chauvinism, i.e. protection of the national economy and support for welfare provisions for ‘natives’ (only). It is, however, ‘right’ in its acceptance of inequality, as a ‘natural’ phenomenon, which should not be ‘legislated away’ by the state.”

      (Mudde, Cas. “Introduction to the Populist Radical Right.” In The Populist Radical Right: A Reader, edited by Cas Mudde, 1-10. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. pp. 4-5)

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