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Sunday, June 30, 2024

I was wrong. I did not watch Biden-Trump. It was awful. Biden is failing. Trump is an asshole and will always be one. Biden's choice of people would continue and he's got a good administration. Trump in his time picked other assholes and ran through staff like Sherman through Georgia.

Two videos convince me. Jon Stewart, live after the Biden-Trump ended. Spot on.

CNN "highlights" showing Biden failure, and Trump being a super cosmic asshole, as he always is, to where it is hard to watch the chosen segments through to the end.

I am serious, Al Franken would make the best President of ones I have seen. Bernie would be excellent, but has no chance at it and would be frustrated by not being able to get his agenda through. Franken is younger, just as well oriented as Bernie, as AOC, and was as good a Senator as he could have been. Better than his peers.

Franken got done-in for patting one to many females on the butt. "Gillibranded." Not good judgment by Al, but compare Trump. Franken has a stable marriage, wife with him not in another city, and they are a good couple. Jill Biden is loyal to her marriage , but Joe has lost major cogency, and it showed to where many are in panic mode.

Joe will gather with family, and we hope, truly, for the best to come of it.

Joe staying in against Trump has my vote locked, if he stays. I trust the administration to handle four more years competently; where I may differ in thought over a thing or two, but I have no fear, as I would have of Trump and the creeps he's had before and would find and use and churn again. He is, after all, an asshole. He's been one his entire life, with Roy Cohn his role model.

Look what he did to Pence. That tells us much. Enough, certainly.

If you have doubts about Franken, that's your problem, not mine. However, there is Dean Phillips who ran as a lifeboat primary option to Biden. The machine was Biden's and Phillips was sidelined. However, you put Phillips against other names being dredged up, e.g., Gavin California, or VP Harris, and Phillips looks to be the better business success and thinker than either of those two. He believed he was doing a helpful thing, saying pass the torch, and with action speaking louder than words he passed the torch in the Congressional District he held.

Both Franken and Phillips are Minnesotans, both Jewish. Both capable. Franken is more the progressive, but Phillips appears decently motivated and trustworthy.

Either, at this stage, would be acceptable, should Biden listen to those saying he's lost it and should recognize that reality and step aside. I did not watch Biden-Trump, but, again, the two originally cited video items each speaks truth - Biden slipping, Trump, incurable self-satisfied asshole of a seldom equaled scale.

So, two names in the hopper, should Biden, meeting soon with family, choose to surrender his candidacy and endorse. Biden has the war chest, his, not the Party's, and he could direct it in a way favorable to one he'd want to be his successor. [UPDATE: The electors gained so far are pledged to Joe, not the Party. His to direct.] I trust he and family and administration would choose wisely, and it could be smoothly done if the host of wannabes would merely respect Biden passing the torch.

It is time for Joe Biden and family and administration to search their collective souls.

And, Crabgrass has come to believe, time to pass the torch. To do it by a rational endorsement, rather than to cut the worse within his Party to battle from this late point onward rather than to honor one whose first administration surpassed Crabgrass expectations, and is still a functional administration should Biden refuse to pass the torch.

Defeating Trump remains essential. Beyond that, there are some egregious Dems who should be left as is, the Clintons coming immediately to mind, but Crabgrass has no voice in the Party and it can royally fuck up, again. The Democratic party and its donors are fully capable of losing a second time to Trump; and the better and brightest among them owe the nation  their preventing it, despite what's in the party and donating to it.

Defeat Trump, however it needs to be done, and do it with class instead of crap. That's not too tall an order, but one easily fucked up. And the Dems have folks fully capable of fucking things up royally. Beyond where things are now. Including donors and including some Blue Dogs, New Dems, and other idiotic, misdirected, selfish and/or greedy inner party types. New Jersey comes to mind.

There are good people, and we hope they prevail.

(At least Jamaal Bowman ousted Eliot Engel before Bowman got done in by tons of evil money. One step forward, two steps back. Republicans have no locked ownership on thugish types, only a larger percentage. And louder ones.)

Saturday, June 29, 2024

People you've never heard of say Joe Biden should take a hike.

 First, people you've never heard of.

Second, advice to Biden he'd never asked for.

Big time invasion.

Newsweek posts a lame list. Vomit worthy? Several tried, and found wanting. You decide. Gavin Newsome over Biden? Newsome faced a formal removal effort; this current shooting at Biden as nominee is informal press ginning a theme for a day.

The Biden campaign holds the money raised so far, a worthy fact. It's Joe's haul.

Joe should ignore the noise.

Aside from Joe ignoring the noise, the scenario Crabgrass envisions, if Joe leaves, he should turn the coffers over to Minnesota's second best Senator ever (after Paul Wellstone as first), as his endorsed successor to run, that being Al Franken, who could clearly wipe the floor with Trump in any debate. And who is more a mensch than Trump, and any person Trump's family ever produced or touched by blood or marriage. Not driven by hate or retribution. (Indeed, to show party unity and reconciliation Al could indicate Gillibrand would be his U.N. Ambassador nominee, while saying his back only suffered a superficial flesh wound.) That's the Crabgrass scenario. End of story.

Bonus. Going against one easily seen as brighter and tighter than Trump, Al handled the role of explaining things well. Al, as President, would be welcomed as a move toward unity and progress.

nostalgia redux

 

click image to make tailfins even bigger

 Yes! Of course!  ----  MAKE TAILFINS GREAT AGAIN

Like old man Donald, riding a golf cart now, have nostalgia for other days.

When everything was great. When Fred and Roy were there to mentor.

When casino failure was to be, not to have been.

When Donald was YOUNG. Walking, not riding a golf cart.

Before Atlantic City failure and stiffing the banks.

Truth -- it won't be great again -- never mind truth, nostalgia is the brand to sell.

We'll sell MTGA baseball caps, fifty bucks a pop (as with leather bound Bibles also containing organic original American documents - melding church and state).

We'll set up a web venue - Tailfins Social - and take it public.

There is no end of opportunity. 

After all if tailfins sold, anything can.

Even Heritage Foundation propaganda. Like that chubby guy with the nice hair, selling Contract On America. (Try to find that text online these days.) Today, leave history to history. Today's Heritage, for tomorrow actually, is "Heritage 2025."

However, why tip your hand if you are Heritage Foundation propagandizing? Think.

Call it something different. "CONTRACT 2025." What it is, warmed over Newt, but why tip that off?

Sure, do a Great Name, Again -why not?

PROJECT 2025  Come and see. Come and buy.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

You want a link to bullshit? This link. These folks. Straight from the bull. (the same old bull)


Friday, June 28, 2024

With Trump again seeking the Presidency, and all the powers attaching to it, there is a situation from the past that is worth the attention of voters.

 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-gen-milley-explains-his-calls-with-china-over-concerns-about-president-trump

The General referenced intelligence the nation held, and calls aimed to convince the Chinese to "de-escalate." 

That item begins with video of a brief testimony excerpt, and accompanying text, the text noted as AP authored.

Just saying. It's the same man as put things into question, leading to a Jan. 8 phone call to the Chinese, two days after Jan. 6. 

Same man, older, more deranged, a convicted felon.

Not the best nor brightest in the nation. Ambitious, extraordinarily narcissistic.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

King Abdullah was pissed at the chutzpah and intentions Smotrich showed by a lectern map of "Greater Israel" that included Jordan in its boundaries.


image source: TOI Mar. 2023, "Jordan summons Israeli envoy over ‘racist’ Smotrich speech, ‘Greater Israel’ map"

 Check the lectern. Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Dead Sea, all in the middle of that "Greater Israel." Check a current regional map if you need to. Smotrich has something in mind beyond the boundaries of Israel today, even that plus the occupied Palestinian territory east of Israel to the river's west bank.

The mind and attitude of a big time land thief, in one of Netanyahu's ultranationalist cabinet minister needed to give Bibi his Knesset majority.

The entire world should be troubled by that depiction and accompanying attidude.

The U.N. Security Council should pass a resolution that bounds of Israel in the future shall remain the bounds of Israel now. Cancel any chance of confusion.

Then the U.N. should do more fixing of something that's broken, Israeli thinking.

The opening paragraph of the TOI item:

Jordan summoned the Israeli envoy in protest of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s speech at a conference in Paris over the weekend, during which he claimed the Palestinian people are an “invention” while standing behind a map of “Greater Israel” that includes modern-day Jordan.

The whole report is worth reading. 

EmptyWheel has a recent and interesting longer-than-usual thread about Israel's bullying and killing Gazans.