Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes - Whatever They're Telling You About Biden Is Disinformation

Biden campaign spokesman Adrienne Elrod tries to spin the viral video of Biden wandering aimlessly across Italy as "disinformation" — and demands "social media platforms" censor it. pic.twitter.com/hfMuZpMkwU

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 14, 2024

thesun.co.uk  |  "He was wandering around, he sort of wandered off and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian premier had to sort of guide him back to the crowd. It was quite painful viewing.

"Everyone's putting a slight brave face on it this morning. We've got some more for that for the paper tomorrow. But you can see from that footage yourself, can't you?

"This is getting embarrassing now. It makes you really wonder how President Biden is going to be able to run an election campaign in October and November for re election and if that is a man who really thinks he's going to get through the next four years?"

It comes as earlier this week, Biden appeared to freeze again for a moment during a Juneteenth celebration at the White House.

He looked static at the event - sparking further concern just months before the presidential election.

The Democrat's term has been plagued with gaffes and blunders.

He has fallen up the stairs of Air Force One and has stumbled on countless occasions.

Last year, Biden took a tumble at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

In February, Biden confused the leaders of Mexico and Egypt while delivering a rambling address to the nation after it emerged he wouldn't face criminal charges over storing secret docs.

Last week, Biden seemed to fumble for his seat while on stage with the Macrons and his wife, Jill, at a D-Day event - but there was no chair behind him.

Questions continue to swirl over Biden's health and competency for office - just months before Americans go to the polls.

And polling suggests Biden's re-election bid could be tricky.

This week's G7 meeting was also shrouded in controversy after Putin vowed an "extremely painful" reaction to a deal made at the event to raise $50billion for Ukraine.

The Kremlin dubbed the deal "cynical and criminal" after hearing the money will be raised using frozen Russian central bank assets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with the leaders before the viral clip asking for the "historic" loan to keep Putin's soldiers from breaking through the frontlines.

 

The MSM Is Accidentally On-Purpose Throwing In The Towel On Biden

kunstler  |   “Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” the report states.

      Gearing up? I’m sure. If gearing up means calling a lid on your life an hour after breakfast. And what do you suppose they mean by “a more traditional form of leadership.” Arranging serial overseas military humiliations? Selling favors to all comers from foreign lands? Inviting transsexuals to cavort on the White House lawn? Abolishing control of US borders? Running a $2-trillion annual deficit? Mandating unsafe and ineffective so-called “vaccine” shots on millions? Cancelling the First Amendment? Stealing elections? Conspiring to jail his political adversaries?

     We’re also informed in recent days by the Department of Justice that “Joe Biden” is not mentally competent to answer for anything in a court of law, should someone inquire into the signal irregularities emerging from the fugitive annals of his long career. Of course, “Joe Biden” running for reelection is one of the greatest gags ever put over on the American public. But more astounding yet is that half the country persists in pretending to believe it. They are egged on in every possible way by persons in high places of government fearful of going to prison if the Democratic Party loses its grip on the levers of power.

      Since “Joe Biden” is not actually calling the shots, one naturally wonders who is responsible for all the dubious achievements of the past three years. I guess we’ll find out when Mr. Trump wins that election in November, an outcome increasingly guaranteed unless “Joe Biden” (or, let’s face it, our Intel Community) takes the final decisive step of bumping off the Golden Golem of Greatness. What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?

      In New York City, the Woke lunatics did a victory dance after Judge Arthur Engoron, beaming his Joker smile, laid a $350-million fine on Mr. Trump for conducting a set of normal real estate transactions with a bank that profited from doing business with him. Many are still trying to figure out how that amounts to a crime of any sort. Don’t suppose that the check is in the mail, though. There is an appeals process that leads, you may be sure, to a dismissal of that inane judgment and the puerile hypotheticals that the case derived from. And, by and by, you also might expect a countersuit for malicious prosecution when all that smoke clears. New York Attorney General Letitia James, lacking impulse control, is for the moment enjoying the fulfillment of her campaign promise to “get Trump.” Waiting to see how much she enjoys losing her law license in the days to come.

     Every reaction provokes an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s Third Law states. It manifested shortly after Judge Engoron’s end zone dance when a call went out over the Internet for America’s truckers to refuse loads inbound to New York City. We’ll have to stand by to see how that develops. No more bok choy, Texas beef, or Meyer Lemons for you, “progressive” denizens of the Five Boroughs! Embrace the suck! The genius part is that, unlike the 2022 Canadian truckers’ action in Ottawa, the American truckers will not be cluttering up New York’s streets with their rigs, license plates on view, leaving them vulnerable to such pranks as the shutdown of their bank accounts. All they’ll do is sit innocently at home back in Kentucky and Missouri, enjoying a break from the rigors of the highway. Is that a crime? Arguably no more than doing a normal real estate deal in good faith with a willing lender was a crime.

     The truckers have promised to include Washington DC next in their delivery boycott. The K-Street lobbying gang won’t be buying any influence for a while over platters of grilled branzino and Mariscos Molcajete. Maybe there will be a few Cliff Bars left in the Farragut Square 7-Eleven and they can do business in their cars. As for “Joe Biden,” his minders have probably laid in enough Ensure for a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory to get by for a few weeks — until the magic moment when, alas, he must needs be thrown under the bus of expediency to keep their game going.

Dementia Among U.S. Officials Poses National Security Threat

theintercept  |   As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.

The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets. 

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.” 

Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.” 

Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.

While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.

“The president called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.

70-80 Year Olds In Cognitive Decline Are Unemployable Yet They're Exclusively Running The Country

counterpunch  |  Our government is run by second-raters. Mediocrities in the state department and national security apparatus have seized the political steering wheel, because president Joe Biden, like senator Dianne “No Show” Feinstein and many others in our extensive gerontocracy do not inspire confidence. And the results are disastrous for Americans. De-dollarization across much of the planet and the possibility of a two-front, conceivably radioactive war against China and/or Russia. You think these two developments sound far-fetched? Well, the former is already underway, and as for the latter, rabid neo-cons and jingoistic four-star generals have stepped into the vacuum at the top and on your TV screen, and these dimwits can’t imagine losing, so now we move closer than ever before, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to igniting nuclear Armageddon.

Just picture the Ukrainian drone that struck the Kremlin May 3 and ask yourself what would have happened had a Russian drone collided with the roof of the white house? The U.S. might well have launched nuclear missiles – amirite? We denizens of planet earth are all very lucky, and especially those of us who reside in American cities, that Russian leaders were rational enough not to target western metropolises with nuclear warheads. They have made clear that they won’t be further provoked, even by preposterous U.S. media claims that the Kremlin droned itself, claims that reveal yet again two sorry facts: first, our press outlets think we are morons and second, they parrot CIA talking points.

That’s the hot war. Then there’s the economic one. Dollar boosters like Treasury secretary Janet Yellen like to note that it would be very difficult for any other country’s money to replace the greenback as the world’s reserve currency. True enough. But who says the world has to HAVE a reserve currency? What China, Russia and the Global South show, as they stop trading in dollars and dump U.S. Treasuries, is that they can conduct business in their own currencies and will do so, having witnessed Washington’s idiotic sanctions on numerous nations and thus having been terrorized by the imbecilic weaponization of the dollar. So most of the world, aside from the west, now takes steps to abandon the U.S. financially. The dollar’s reign is ending, and soon we Americans will face a radically altered and indisputably grimmer future. All thanks to the stupidity of the very pedestrian people at the top in Washington, starting back in the Clinton administration.

As for the China-Russia alliance, anyone with a brain could see that coming. But not our congressmembers. And those forewarned had not a care in the world. As long ago as 1997, senator Joe Biden proclaimed: “And then the Russians say to me ‘You keep expanding NATO, we’re going to make friends with China.’ I almost burst out laughing. I could barely contain myself, I said ‘Good luck to you guys. If China doesn’t work out, try Iran.’” Well, who’s laughing now? Not the U.S. president, who can’t even get China’s leader to answer his phone calls. Not the American people, who, according to some polls (58 percent, said a Reuters-Ipsos poll in October), worry that this administration of very unexceptional people will enrage the Russia-China colossus and thus stumble into a nuclear holocaust.

Meanwhile congress throws gasoline on this political dumpster fire with its Ukrainian Victory Resolution. In the House, Tennessee Dem Steve Cohen and South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson sponsored this bill. A companion resolution, introduced by senators – Connecticut Dem Richard Blumenthal, liberal darling and Rhode Island Dem Sheldon Whitehouse, and South Carolina Republican Lindsay “Bombs Away” Graham – now percolates through that chamber of the capitol. This very unfortunate and wildly provocative legislation mandates “the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders and to bring Ukraine into NATO after the war is over,” according to Daniel Larison in Responsible Statecraft April 28.

This is called asking for trouble. Because these are precisely the points that led to Russia’s invasion in the first place. Moscow tried to negotiate over Kiev joining NATO, but Washington turned up its nose. And as far as the Russians who populate the Donbas are concerned, well, it looked like Ukraine had ethnic cleansing for them on the schedule, and the west didn’t object. So Russia invaded. In short, congress now actively touts its own recipe for nuclear World War III, since that is what the Ukrainian Victory Resolution will bring.

80 Year Old Pretending To Run NASA Says "China Will Take Over The Moon!"

thesun.co.uk  |  NASA'S boss has warned that China could try to seize control of the Moon as the space race heats up.

The secretive nation is going to build a research station on the lunar surface as part of huge space plans in the next few years.

And the US appears to be getting nervous about it.

Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson has said we should be cautious about China's ambitions.

Speaking to German paper Bild, he said: "We must be very concerned that China is landing on the Moon and saying: 'It’s ours now and you stay out.'"

China hit back, accusing the Nasa boss of lying "through his teeth".

Escalating tensions come after China has already managed the difficult feat of landing on the far side of the Moon.

The country has also sped up work on a lunar research base by eight years - in collaboration with Russia.

But experts have warned that there's no reason to panic about China's intentions.

Professors Svetla Ben-Itzhak and R. Lincoln Hines say it's unlikely that any country would be able to simply takeover the Moon in the near future.

 

CNN Called Brandon Rudderless, Aimless, And Hopeless....,

CNN  |  Debra Messing was fed up. The former "Will & Grace" star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together. 

 

Messing said she'd gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn't even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.

That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.

 

The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President's party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House.

 

Top Democrats complain the President isn't acting with -- or perhaps is even capable of -- the urgency the moment demands.

 

"Rudderless, aimless and hopeless" is how one member of Congress described the White House.

Two dozen leading Democratic politicians and operatives, as well as several within the West Wing, tell CNN they feel this goes deeper than questions of ideology and posture. Instead, they say, it gets to questions of basic management.

 

More than a week after the abortion decision, top Biden aides are still wrangling over releasing new actions in response, despite the draft decision leaking six weeks earlier.

 

White House counsel Dana Remus had assured senior aides the Supreme Court wouldn't rule on abortion that day. A White House press aide assigned to the issue was walking to get coffee when the alert hit. Several Democratic leaders privately mocked how the President stood in the foyer of the White House, squinting through his remarks from a teleprompter as demonstrators poured into the streets, making only vague promises of action because he and aides hadn't decided on more.

 

Then, Biden's July 1 meeting with governors to talk about their efforts to protect abortion rights was planned so last minute that none of those who attended came in person, and several of those invited declined to rearrange their schedules to appear virtually.

 

Multiple Democratic politicians who have reached out to work with Biden -- whether it's on specific bills, brainstorming or outreach -- often don't hear anything back at all. Potential appointees have languished for months waiting to hear if they'll get jobs, or when they'll be done with vetting. Invitations to events are scarce, thank you calls barely happen. Even some aides within the White House wonder why Biden didn't fire anyone, from the West Wing or at the Food and Drug Administration, to demonstrate some accountability or at least anger over the baby formula debacle. 

 

Inside the White House, aides are exhausted from feeling forever on red alert, batting at a swarm of crises that keeps growing -- enough for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to make an offhand joke about the constant "eleventh hour" decision-making in the building when under fire at a recent daily briefing.

 

NYTimes Would Have You Believe That Biden Is An Unusually Fit "Super-Ager"

NYTimes |  “I do feel it’s inappropriate to seek that office after you’re 80 or in your 80s,” said David Gergen, a top adviser to four presidents. “I have just turned 80 and I have found over the last two or three years I think it would have been unwise for me to try to run any organization. You’re not quite as sharp as you once were.”

Everyone ages differently, of course, and some experts put Mr. Biden in a category of “super-agers” who remain unusually fit as they advance in years.

“Right now, there’s no evidence that the age of Biden should matter one ounce,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago who studied the candidates’ ages in 2020. “If people don’t like his policies, they don’t like what he says, that’s fine, they can vote for someone else. But it’s got nothing to do with how old he is.”

Still, Professor Olshansky said it was legitimate to wonder if that would remain so at 86. “That’s the right question to be asking,” he said. “You can’t sugarcoat aging. Things go wrong as we get older and the risks rise the older we get.”

The White House rejected the idea that Mr. Biden was anything other than a seven-day commander in chief. “President Biden works every day and because chief executives can perform their duties from anywhere in the world, it has long been common for them to spend weekends away from the White House,” Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary, said after this article was published online.

The president’s medical report in November indicated he had atrial fibrillation but that it was stable and asymptomatic. Mr. Biden’s “ambulatory gait is perceptibly stiffer and less fluid than it was a year or so ago,” the report said, and gastroesophageal reflux causes him to cough and clear his throat, symptoms that “certainly seem to be more frequent and more pronounced.”

But overall, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the president’s physician, pronounced him “a healthy, vigorous 78-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.”

Questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness have nonetheless taken a toll on his public standing. In a June survey by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters believed he was showing that he is too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents 65 or older.

Mr. Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and listless. He sometimes loses his train of thought, has trouble summoning names or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Mr. Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy.” He has said Iranian when he meant Ukrainian and several times called Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, “John,” confusing him with the late Republican senator of that name from Virginia.

Republicans and conservative media gleefully highlight such moments, posting viral videos, sometimes exaggerated or distorted to make Mr. Biden look even worse. But the White House has had to walk back some of his ad-libbed comments, such as when he vowed a military response if China attacks Taiwan or declared that President Vladimir V. Putin “cannot remain in power” in Russia.

Mr. Biden was famously prone to gaffes even as a younger man, and aides point to his marathon meetings with families of mass shooting victims or his working the rope line during a trip to Cleveland this past week as evidence of stamina.

A Little Spring Housekeeping Underway In The Kremlin

dailymail |  A top FSB intelligence official has been moved to a high security jail in Moscow as Vladimir Putin purges his secret services over the botched Ukraine invasion, say reports.

Col-General Sergei Beseda, 68, head of the 5th Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB), was previously under house arrest.

He has now been placed in pre-trial detention in notorious Lefortovo Prison, suggesting he will face major charges for intelligence failings, it is claimed.

Beseda’s case is being investigated by the Military Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee, said Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov, who revealed the Lefortovo move.

Beseda, in charge of FSB intelligence and political subversion in the ex-USSR, had been on a trip to Ukraine shortly before he was detained.

Putin is said to fear that moles leaked invasion plans to the West, and Beseda was detained along with his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh, but had been held under house arrest until now. The current status of Bolyukh is unclear.

The Russian leader had been convinced by secret services briefings that his troops would be welcomed by many Ukrainians, and achieve a speedy victory. In reality they have faced implacable opposition.

Lefortovo jail notoriously held political prisoners in the Soviet era and is routinely used to incarcerate suspected traitors.

Last month Putin also fired the deputy head of the Russian national guard.

Beseda had been a longtime trusted Putin secret services official, and was in his role as head of the 5th service of the FSB since 2009.

Russia has not confirmed his arrest or detention in Lefortovo.

 

Political Management Of The Oligarchic Gerontocracy Is Fed Up With Disobediant/Non-Compliant Pissants...,

taibbi  |  On This Week With George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday, a gathering of Washington poo-bahs including Chris Christie, Rahm Emmanuel, Margaret Hoover, and Donna Brazile — Stephanopoulos calls the segment his “Powerhouse Roundtable,” which to my ear sounds like a Denny’s breakfast sampler, but I guess he couldn’t name it Four Hated Windbags — discussed vaccine holdouts. The former George W. Bush and Giuliani aide Hoover said it was time to stop playing nice:

If you’re going to get government-provided health care, if you’re getting VA treatment, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, anything — and Social Security obviously isn’t health care — you should be getting the vaccine. Okay? Because we are going to have to take care of you on the back end.

Brazile nodded sagely, but Emmanuel all but gushed cartoon hearts.

“You know, I’m having an out of body experience, because I agree with you,” said Obama’s former hatchet man, before adding, over the chyron, FRUSTRATION MOUNTS WITH UNVACCINATED AMERICANS:

I would close the space in. Meaning if you want to participate in X or Y activity, you gotta show you’re vaccinated. So it becomes a reward-punishment type system, and you make your own calculation.

This bipartisan love-in took place a few days after David Frum, famed Bush speechwriter and creator of the “Axis of Evil” slogan, wrote a column in The Atlantic entitled “Vaccinated America Has Had Enough.” In it, Frum wondered:

Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth — and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another… [But] the reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld…

Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself. Have you?

I’m vaccinated. I think people should be vaccinated. But this latest moral mania — and make no mistake about it, the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” PR campaign is the latest in a ceaseless series of such manias, dating back to late 2016 — lays bare everything that’s abhorrent and nonsensical in modern American politics, beginning with the no-longer-disguised aristocratic mien of the Washington consensus. If you want to convince people to get a vaccine, pretty much the worst way to go about it is a massive blame campaign, delivered by sneering bluenoses who have a richly deserved credibility problem with large chunks of the population, and now insist they’re owed financially besides.

There’s always been a contingent in American society that believes people who pay more taxes should get more say, or “more votes,” as Joseph Heller’s hilarious Texan put it. It’s a conceit that cut across party. You hear it from the bank CEO who thinks America should thank him for the pleasure of kissing his ass with a bailout, but just as quickly from the suburban wine Mom who can’t believe the ingratitude of the nanny who asks for a day off. Doesn’t she know who’s paying the bills? The delusion can run so deep that people like Margaret Hoover can talk themselves into the idea that Social Security — money taxpayers lend the government, not the other way around — is actually a gift from the check-writing class.

In the last decade or so I had the misfortune of watching this phenomenon rise within both parties. After 2008, the “We’re pulling the oars, so we should steer the boat” argument dominated the GOP. Offshoots of Ayn Rand-ian thinking about ubermenschen producers and their dubious obligation to society’s masses of parasitic looters provided talking points both for TARP recipients (who insisted America needed to be invested not just in their survival but their prosperity) and the Tea Party. Remember Rick Santelli on CNBC, calling for a referendum on whether or not we should “subsidize the losers’ mortgages” or whether we should “reward the people who carry the water, instead of drink the water”?

The Constitution Was Engineered To Prevent Political Corruption And Has Utterly Failed...,

nakedcapitalism |  A final example from everybody’s favorite obstructionist Democrat, Joe Lieberman Joe Manchin. From Ryan Grim:

On Monday, Joe Manchin met with a group of wealthy donors to coordinate a strategy to defend the filibuster. The biggest threat to it, he argued, was Republicans’ refusal to support a January 6th commission, because it made anybody who claimed bipartisanship is still possible look like a buffoon, with people saying to him, “How’s that bipartisan working for you now, Joe?”

The obvious solution, then, he argued, is to find a handful of Republicans who will switch their votes and support a commission. A key target, he said, is Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. His suggestion was extraordinary for how explicit it made the link between legislative behavior and the pursuit of post-career riches.

“Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said in audio The Intercept obtained. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”

Forget it, Jake. It’s K Street.

Looking back at Article I, Section 8, there’s a loophole you could drive a trump: It really ought to read “accept any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” (I thought it was simpler to generalize it, rather than attempt to parse out all the kinds of private entities that might seek to curry favor with the government.) I doubt that would stamp out gift-giving entirely, but it would sure put a crimp in the culture. The same should be written into the bylaws of professional associations (which I assume would cover institutions like CalPERS, a fine example of the culture of gift-giving; see NC here at “junket“).

If the Framers had access to a Time Machine, and could fast-forward to the present day, they would see a culture, and a political culture, that had become — at least with respect to corruption — everything they sought to avoid, and tried to engineer the Constitution to prevent.

Geriatric Old Birds Dipping Their Felonious Bills On Capitol Hill...,

oldest |  Congress is made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both houses of Congress have an age requirement: it is at least 25 years of age for the House and at least 30 years old for the Senate. While these age requirements are generally low, most members of Congress are nearly senior citizens.

This list contains current members of Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. We have previously covered the Oldest Senators Ever as well as the Oldest U.S. Congressmen (House of Representatives) ever. Some of the people on this list are also on those lists as well.

As of May 2020, this list is as accurate as possible and will be updated as needed.

Nancy Pelosi Is A Ridiculous Clown Inside, Outside, Upside Down....,

thehill  |  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says in a new interview that she would have put up a fight had she encountered rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"Well, I'm pretty tough. I'm a street fighter," Pelosi told USA Today while acknowledging that some rioters intended to harm her. "They would have had a battle on their hands."

Pelosi joked that she had a weapon on her in the form of her stilettos.

"I would have had these," she said while lifting up her foot, according to USA Today.

Pelosi, along with former Vice President Mike Pence, was one of the main targets of rioters who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify the election results.

During the incident, rioters broke into the Speaker's office, destroying and stealing various items in the process.

Pelosi told USA Today that rioters were "setting out" to hurt her if security had not quickly evacuated her from the House chamber.

A Missouri man pictured holding a broken piece of her nameplate is among those who have been charged over their roles in the breach.

 

Pelosi Kicks Katie Porter Off The House Financial Services Committee

Rep. Katie Porter challenged big bank CEO Jamie Dimon to pay his workers a living wage by literally showing him the math pic.twitter.com/FpzxrIc8Co

— ᴿealfarmacist (@real_farmacist) April 13, 2019

nakedcapitalism |  Katie Porter has been a star since being elected to Congress in 2018. Two years after narrowly ousting GOP incumbent Mimi Walters– 158,906 (52.1%) to 146,383 (47.9%)– the Republican Party was on the war-path in Orange County but not serious about taking on Porter. They defeated corporate conservative Democrats Harley Rouda and Gil Cisneros but never really got behind former Mission Viejo mayor Greg Raths, their candidate against Porter. The NRCC spent no money on Raths’ behalf and Porter beat him 221,843 (53.5%) to 193,096 (46.5%).

Several weeks ago, Porter was elected Deputy Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Having won two terms in Congress as a supporter of Medicare for All in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats, she is best known for holding corporate special interests accountable and advocating for stronger worker protections. Her star shined brightly as a fierce questioner of banksters and government bureaucrats who came before the House Financial Services Committee.

On Thursday evening, I read that Pelosi has pushed her off the committee at the urging on the banksters, the Fed and Wall Street special interests. In a conversation with another member of the committee, an admirer of Porter’s, I was told that it was a combination of the Fed and Wall Street that demanded her removal. The member told me that “It is, in fact, a tragedy for that committee to lose someone like her. It’s a staff-run committee, with revolving-door staff… Also taking someone off a committee means they’re losing their committee seniority, which is very, very bad karma, since the whole system is built on that.”

Chris Rock: The Effects Of The Pandemic Were Totally Up To Pelosi And The Democrats

NYTimes | You performed at one of Chappelle’s live shows in July. What was that like for you?

When you’re in the clubs, you learn the rain crowd is the best crowd. Any time it’s raining, they really want to be there. The pandemic crowd is really good. “Dude, not only do we want to be here, there is nothing else to do. There’s nothing else to watch. Thank you.”

 What did you talk about?

I talked about our political whatever. America. Part of the reason we’re in the predicament we’re in is, the president’s a landlord. No one has less compassion for humans than a landlord. [Laughs.] And we’re shocked he’s not engaged.

Did you ever see that movie “The Last Emperor,” where like a 5-year-old is the emperor of China? There’s a kid and he’s the king. So I’m like, it’s all the Democrats’ fault. Because you knew that the emperor was 5 years old. And when the emperor’s 5 years old, they only lead in theory. There’s usually an adult who’s like, “OK, this is what we’re really going to do.” And it was totally up to Pelosi and the Democrats. Their thing was, “We’re going to get him impeached,” which was never going to happen. You let the pandemic come in. Yes, we can blame Trump, but he’s really the 5-year-old.

Put it this way: Republicans tell outright lies. Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth that would lead to a more nuanced argument. In a sense, it’s all fake news.

Has Nancy Pelosi Been Gumming Tide Pods?

summit |  GOP Senator John Kennedy used a startling cultural reference to portray his belief that believes Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is crazy, saying that he often thinks she has ‘is one of those people who tried Tide Pods’ laundry detergent.

Appearing with Sean Hannity, Kennedy was addressing Pelosi’s obsession with the $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill.

“Sean, with respect, there are times, particularly recently, when I think Speaker Pelosi is one of those people who tried Tide pods,” Kennedy hilariously stated.

 “I want you to think about what she proposed today, this is what the speaker is threatening to do,” he continued, adding “She is threatening to keep the House Democrats in session and prevent them from going home and running for reelection unless the Senate Republicans agree to the speaker’s $3.4 trillion coronavirus bill.”

“On the one hand we can vote for Pelosi’s $3.4 trillion bill or we can agree to allow her to put the House Democratic majority into jeopardy. That’s just bone deep down to the marrow foolish,” Kennedy urged.

Kennedy further emphasised that Nothing is going to get done while the Democrats refuse to back down over something that is never going to come to fruition.

“Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi aren’t going to agree to anything until we agree to spend a trillion dollars bailing out New York and California and that’s not going to happen in your or my natural life,” Kennedy added.

Kennedy’s assessment of Pelosi’s sanity comes on the heels of Mad Money Host Jim Cramer calling Pelosi “crazy Nanncy” right to her face, before instantly apologising

Uselessly Eating Old Kneegrow Preachers Played Themselves and Got Smacked Down

facebook |  The people of Kansas City deserve better from so-called Black leadership. I’m proud to be a part of emboldening the next generation of Black leaders who will represent their communities far better, and with far more earnest motives, then these weary soldiers who have apparently lost their way. Myself and others of goodwill shall continue fighting to ensure we solve the issues that negatively impact the lives of those we love the most so that future generations don’t have to inherit the insecurity, the violence, and paucity of opportunities we did. 

Before this year is done we may make it to 200 murders in Kansas City. A number that should pierce the hearts of every Kansas Citian. Many of the victims are children who haven’t had the opportunity to grow, to learn, to understand a better way, and that there really does exist a better life for them on the other side of their present suffering. When will our current leadership work together to solve this issue that so many say is unsolvable? When will our best minds come together to end this epidemic of hopelessness and nihilism? 

If Dr. King were alive today it is my unwavering belief that he would be far less concerned with personal accolades and streets named in his honor, but would, as a much older and seasoned General, still be fighting for the least of these. King would still be championing the gospel of Jesus Christ that says in Matthew chapter 18: 

“Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.”

When Yo'Money Right, Quacks Will Fiddle With Your Bowels For You!

riordanclinic |  On one particular day in the early 1970s, Olive was sitting under a hair dryer reading a review about a new book, Nutrition and Your Mind, by George Watson. The review stated that nutrition, or the food you eat, has an effect on your mind. This struck a chord in Olive. She did not believe that wallowing in your childhood and reliving traumas in your life would lead to a healthy mind. She differed with her former classmate, Karl Menninger, who became famous for starting the Menninger Clinic in Topeka. She couldn’t wait to read this book and immediately ordered it.

After reading the book, she began to formulate an idea that would eventually lead to The Center for the Improvement of Human Functioning. She had Clifford Allison, executive director of the Garvey Foundation, get in touch with Bill Schul, a freelance writer who had ties to Menninger Clinic, to study what was being done on the effect of nutrition on the mind. Although Bill thought the book was interesting, he did not think he was qualified to make that kind of study. Allison assured him that he was the correct person for the job since he would not be defending any discipline or philosophy, he would not be bringing any bias to the effort. Bill devoted more than six months to this research effort.(32) Except for one flight to the west coast the rest of the 12,000 miles covered during the course of this study were by car and commercial bus. Bill visited Centers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, and California. After reading many books and research articles and interviewing leaders in the field of nutrition, with the help of the International Academy of Metabology, Inc., Bill was ready to give his preliminary findings. In November 1973 Bill presented Olive with the results of his research in a printed report, Preliminary Study: the effects of nutrition on the mind and related subjects. Bill authored a book, Frontiers of Medicine, from that research. He also recommended to Mrs. Garvey that he do some additional research into holistic medicine, which he thought was going to become the way of the future. Another book, Psychic Frontiers of Medicine, was published as a result of that study.

In the first study Bill focused on the state of treatment for mental diseases. Then he presented theoretical concepts between the mind and body. Psychosomatic medicine was also touched upon, along with the emerging practice of treating the whole person rather than the symptoms. Nutrition and the mind deserved several pages of the study as well as allergy and human ecology. He had included recommendations as to how a new type of medicine could be delivered, along with the estimated costs.

One Casket-Ready, Useless Old Sac of Pus Down, Four Hundred Thirty Four Left To Go....,

thesoundingline |  The logical next question that sprung to mind was:  “how has the average age of members of Congress changed since its inception?”

The cynic might suspect that, in addition to being increasingly disliked and out of touch, Congress may be getting increasingly old. It should come as little surprise that that is exactly the case. The two charts below show the average age of serving members of the House of Representatives and the Senate every year since 1789 (the few members whose birth dates are unknown were excluded).  Both charts show the unmistakable trend toward an older and older Congress. Remarkably, the average age in the House of Representatives has surged from around 52 in 1995 to its all-time high of nearly 60 today and the average age in the Senate is even higher at nearly 65.

It would be baseless to say that seniority, and the experience that it brings, should be viewed negatively across the board as there have been great leaders much older than 65. Yet, when taken within the context of Congress’s dismal approval rating, the overwhelming feeling of Americans that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and the fact that members of Congress are serving for longer and longer, the aging of Congress does not seem emblematic of a healthy institution. To the contrary, it seems symptomatic of an insular and out of step group that is failing to create a relevant vision for America.

In nearly all ways: technological, social, and economical, we are living in a rapidly changing world. It seems that perhaps the only thing that isn’t changing is the people’s representation in Congress.

Old Triple-Dipper Still Out Hustling Gwalla in These Streets...,

NYTimes  |  Former Senator Bob Dole, acting as a foreign agent for the government of Taiwan, worked behind the scenes over the past six months to establish high-level contact between Taiwanese officials and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s staff, an outreach effort that culminated last week in an unorthodox telephone call between Mr. Trump and Taiwan’s president.

Mr. Dole, a lobbyist with the Washington law firm Alston & Bird, coordinated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and the transition team to set up a series of meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and officials in Taiwan, according to disclosure documents filed last week with the Justice Department. Mr. Dole also assisted in successful efforts by Taiwan to include language favorable to it in the Republican Party platform, according to the documents.

Mr. Dole’s firm received $140,000 from May to October for the work, the forms said.

The disclosures suggest that President-elect Trump’s decision to take a call from the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, was less a ham-handed diplomatic gaffe and more the result of a well-orchestrated plan by Taiwan to use the election of a new president to deepen its relationship with the United States — with an assist from a seasoned lobbyist well versed in the machinery of Washington.

“They’re very optimistic,” Mr. Dole said of the Taiwanese in an interview on Tuesday. “They see a new president, a Republican, and they’d like to develop a closer relationship.”

The United States’ One China policy is nearly four decades old, Mr. Dole said, referring to the policy established in 1979 that denies Taiwan official diplomatic recognition but maintains close contacts, promoting Taiwan’s democracy and selling it advanced military equipment.

the historic reversal of populations...,

ipsnews |  Today the global ratio for the world’s 7.4 billion people has been halved to about three children per elderly person. While Africa’s population continues to have the highest ratio with nearly 12 children per elderly person, the ratios for Asia and Latin America are close to the current world average. In contrast, the population of Europe, which just recently experienced the Historical Reversal, has slightly less than one child per elderly person.

By 2075 the world’s projected population of 10.7 billion is expected to pass through the Historical Reversal with elderly persons becoming increasingly more numerous than children (Figure 1). The only major region that will not experience the Historical Reversal during the 21st century is Africa, which is projected to have 1.5 children per elderly person in 2100 with some countries, such as Niger, Nigeria and Somalia, having more than twice as many children as elderly. At that time, all the other major regions of the world are expected to have about twice as many elderly persons as children.