Disasters and Responses

The Storm

We’re in Houston, recovering from Hurricane Beryl, which hit on Monday, July 8, close to sunrise. We are among the lucky ones who only lost power for about 12 hours—plus a bonus half hour on Tuesday. As of Wednesday night, about half of those without power had gotten it restored. The other half are still waiting. Estimates are there will still be about 500,000 without power going into next week. Today (Friday) is slightly cooler (upper 80s) with some rain, but Monday through Wednesday it had been in the 90s with a real feel into the 100s. Add in the humidity, and those are life-threatening conditions.

We have a portable generator, and used a fan, and dealt with temperatures in the 80s in the house. We were just about to set up a window air conditioner to get us through the night when the power came back.

We feel a bit targeted here. There was the derecho in May—our power was out from 6:00 PM Thursday until around 8:00 PM Tuesday. We’re thinking maybe some of the repairs—or the trees that had already fallen back then—made us better off this time. Both times we, at our house, were essentially undamaged, which has been a real blessing. But the targeting looks very real. That’s the path of the derecho in red and the path of Beryl in blue (I used weather maps to get the lines approximately right). And that’s us, targeted right in the middle of where they cross. Hmm. What is God trying to tell us? We’re believing that He’s telling us to trust Him; He will keep us safe through anything.

The May 16 derecho (red) and Hurricane Beryl (blue) 
crossed paths right over us.

I don’t want to underplay the suffering others are going through as a result of these two storms. Even in our own neighborhood, we were exceptionally spared while others were not, and there's a cul-de-sac right in our neighborhood still without power. I’m praying for those who have much worse to deal with than we have had. But I am also grateful for being protected.

 

The Other Disaster

I’m also recording today more about the disaster of our current national presidency. Long post warning—it's for the sake of recording history. I wrote about the June 27 debate already. Since then there was an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Friday, July 5, which did not dispel concerns as it was intended to do. And yesterday, July 11, there was a press conference—dubbed by his own press secretary as a “big boy press conference,” meaning he’d have to speak without a teleprompter and take questions. He did, however, have a list of who was being allowed to ask questions, and I believe he had their questions submitted ahead of time.

There is a lot of talk about whether/how to replace a presidential candidate at this stage of an election. All of it looks bad for Biden. But, more importantly, it looks dangerously bad for our nation.

Dan Bongino lists the three insurmountable challenges facing Biden.
screenshot from here

Dan Bongino, in his show Monday, July 8, laid out three insurmountable challenges concerning the Biden situation:

1.     Biden’s cognitive condition, whatever it is, will only get worse.

2.     Biden isn’t good at anything necessary in a campaign to persuade people to choose him.

3.    The media has turned on Biden.

We’ll cover mainly the first of those things, but the others will fit in there. Then we need to look at—if they abandon Biden, then who? And how to get there?

 

The Insurmountable Challenges of Biden’s Condition

Biden is only getting worse. You can find comparisons between this Stephanopoulos interview and an interview of Biden in 2020—when people already questioned his ability to function, hence his campaign strategy that year of hiding in his basement and avoiding campaign events—conveniently aided by a pandemic. A comparison of his speech then and the interview a week ago illustrates the decline.

Biden, immediately after an impassioned moment asserting
that he will keep running and win. This is Biden energized.
screenshot from Dan Bongino's show

We don’t know what the condition is. But we can see there’s a decline in cognitive function. We see the way he walks, the way he moves his arms. We see the vacant lost look in his eyes so much of the time. And we hear the lost train of thought, the inability to find words, the forgetfulness, the use of the wrong name or inability to come up with a name.

All of us have little lapses, especially when under pressure, in front of a group, or if we’re not totally focused on a conversation. But he has decades of experience to get over the pressure. Other politicians, at just about every level, learn to handle that part, and he has done so in the past.

In the press conference he referred to his VP as Trump, instead of Harris, and didn’t correct himself. Earlier he referred to Ukraine’s president as Putin instead of Zelinsky—but did correct himself. A few days ago he was, I think, trying to say how remarkable it was that he was VP for the first black president and now has the first female vice president. But what he actually said was that he was the first black female vice president—and seemed unaware of his gaffe.

The Behavior Panel, four experts in body language—at least one of whom has the very expertise to diagnose neurological disorders—all recognize he is suffering from some form of decline. They call attention to some symptoms they have observed. He has some things he still does well: repeating lists, for example. He can string together a list that he has repeated often enough to have it flow. He preparation team has coached him to use that to his advantage.

The Behavior Panel analyzes the Biden interview with Stephanopoulos.
screenshot from here

But he has difficulty finishing a sentence. I heard them say this before I watched his Thursday press conference and found it very noticeable. He starts a sentence, cuts himself off, starts it another way, changes course without finishing. To transcribe it, it becomes a series or short phrases followed by a dash, indicating an unfinished thought. And then comes another phrase and dash. And so on. And when he totally loses where he was going with that series of partial sentences, he says, “Well, anyway,” or some other verbal placeholder in an attempt at reaching a graceful stopping point.

I learned a new word from Chase Hughes, on the panel: anosognosia. Here’s how the Cleveland Clinic describes it: 

Anosognosia is a condition where your brain can’t recognize one or more other health conditions you have. It’s extremely common with mental health conditions like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. This condition isn’t dangerous on its own, but people with it are much more likely to avoid or resist treatment for their other health conditions.

Biden doesn’t know he’s showing any symptoms of decline. He’s in full denial. That’s why he so boldly suggests, “Just watch me.” He thinks we will see a vigorous, clear thinking, top-of-his-game world leader—which would have been delusional even during his best years, but you get the point. He challenges us to show him any evidence that he isn’t what he sees himself to be, and then he dismisses whatever you show him. He doesn’t know he has a cognitive disorder.

He, as well as his press team, have given mixed messages about his getting a full neurological exam. Did he get that during his annual physical? Well, not a thorough one including a mental status exam, like the public is asking for, but he says yes. Did he get checked out after the disastrous debate? Karine Jean-Pierre says no; he just had a cold. He says yes, his doctor says he was just exhausted—from a trip he’d returned from 11 days before the debate, and after 6 days at Camp David. And they checked him for COVID and other infections or viruses, and they were negative; it was just a cold. But a cold is a virus, so did they say he had a cold virus or nothing but failure to recover from a trip almost two weeks earlier? Unclear.

White House records show that a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s Disease has visited the White House nine times in a year. The KJP version is that this doctor was there to give treatment and help to other staff and/or veterans, and she’s protecting their privacy by not revealing his name—which was already known, because the White House logs are public (it is Kevin Kennard). But, it’s clear she’s lying, because anyone else being visited by a doctor would go to the clinic nearby for those purposes, not to the White House. The clinic in the White House is for the exclusive care of the president. This was described by Dan Bongino, who used to work the Secret Service detail there. Why lie, unless there was something they intended to cover up?

Neurologist Kevin Kennard walks with the president,
screenshot from video here

I feel like I need to do more study of Parkinson’s. I haven’t understood it to be dementia-like. It is certainly a neurological disorder. But I understood it to affect motor skills. My grandmother died of it when I was two; I have just brief memories of her, in a wheelchair. But she could talk to me. I have a long-time friend who is suffering from it now. Her mobility is degenerating, and her emotions are affected; I don’t know if that’s because of the limitations on her life or as a symptom of the disease. But it’s painful and challenging for her and her loved ones. There’s also Michael J. Fox, who has been public about his affliction by the disease for a couple of decades. His mobility and movement control are affected, and there’s pain. But his ability to think and communicate have made him a good advocate for Parkinson’s awareness. It doesn’t appear as a form of dementia.

So why would we assume what Biden has is Parkinson’s? I don’t know. And if it is, why is that affecting his ability to think and communicate and find his way on and off a stage platform? There’s something there I don’t know.

Maybe the simplest answer (other than I just don’t know enough, which is also likely) is that the neurologist who specializes in Parkinson’s also has plenty of experience with other neurological cognitive conditions.

Megyn Kelly talked with Dave Marcus on her show earlier this week (episode 831). Marcus mentioned that he had said this in a post right after the debate: 

The question going into the debate was whether Joe Biden was fit to be president for four more years. The question after the debate was whether he was fit to be president for four more days.

He was already behind in the polls—more behind than any incumbent president has ever been, I believe. Biden told Stephanopoulos that he had closed any gap with his debate performance, when polling went from -3 to -9 points. So they’re in panic mode in Democrat world. But it is of their own making.

Megyn Kelly also quoted from an article by a Biden supporter, but who has been observing his decline for a while; she wrote a piece in 2020 that Kelly describes as “brutal,” and it caused some ostracization for a while. This recent piece by Olivia Nuzzi is for New York Magazine, “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden.” I couldn’t get to the original without a subscription, but Megyn Kelly quotes from it. (I’m transcribing from her reading, so punctuation and paragraphing are my best guess.) Nuzzi tells of a couple of examples of mega-donors, longtime Biden friends, who report to her—off the record, or course—that they were shocked to find he doesn’t recognize them or remember their names. Then she tells of her encounter with him at the recent White House Correspondents Dinner, in late April:

“In the basement, when I smiled and said hello, she [Jill Biden] looked back at me with a confused, panicked expression. It was as if she had just received horrible news and was about to run out of the room and into some kind of a family emergency. ‘Uh, hi,’ she said. And she glanced over to her right. Oh!

“I had not seen the president up close in some time. I had skipped this season's holiday parties and, preoccupied with covering Trump's legal political dramas. I followed the first lady's gaze and found the president. Now I understood her panicked expression.

“Up close the president does not look quite plausible. It's not that he's old. We all know what old looks like. Bernie Sanders is old. Mitch McConnell is old. Most of the ruling class is old. The president was something stranger, something not of this earth. My heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on. His face had a waxy quality. He smiled. It was a sweet smile. It made me sad in a way I can't fully convey.

“I always thought, and I wrote, that he was a decent man. If ambition was his only sin, and it seemed to be [Megyn: she's on the left], he had committed no sin at all, by the standards of most politicians I had covered. He took my hand in his, and I was startled by how it felt, not cold but cool. The basement was so warm that people were sweating—and complaining they were sweating. This was a silly black-tie affair. I said hello. [Megyn: She knew him well. She'd covered him for years.] His sweet smile stayed frozen. He spoke very slowly, and in a very soft voice. ‘And what's your name?’ he asked.

“Exiting the room after the photo, the group of reporters, not instigated by me, I should note, made guesses about how dead he appeared to be percentage-wise. ‘40%?’ one of them asked.

And we thought his debate was a bad night.

Megyn Kelly talks with Stu Burguiere and Dave Marcus about Biden's decline.
screenshot from here

If he has good, relatively lucid moments, that is probably due to it being a better time of day for him, and a cocktail of drugs to temporarily make him appear better off than he is.

As Dan Bongino puts it, “His best day is a series of yesterdays.” It’s not going to get better. And it’s pretty bad now. He is not running the country; someone else is.

We have historical precedence for coverups to prevent the American people to know of the serious health condition of the president. JFK had Addison’s Disease, and he was often on pretty potent pain medication. FDR was in a wheelchair, which was hidden from the public for years. But his near end-of-life condition was hidden from the public, pretty much surprising Americans with his death during his fourth term—or he would have run for another term. It was because of his way-too-long presidency that we limited the president to two terms.

But the most analogous is probably Woodrow Wilson, who had a stroke while in office, in 1919 (he was in office until early 1921). His wife, Edith, kept even his close advisors away. She would physically put a pen in his hand and then sign his name for him. She had every intention of keeping his incapacitation from the public indefinitely and have him run for re-election. But legislators and cabinet members got fed up and threatened an inquiry if he didn’t drop out of the race. The 25^th Amendment was created because of the Woodrow Wilson coverup.

Of all the guilty parties in the Biden coverup, Jill Biden is the most guilty.

I’m looking at Woodrow Wilson and Joe Biden, and thinking, they implemented more tyranny in our erstwhile constitutional republic than anyone. (Arguably, there’s Obama, but his was more setup, and Biden’s has been blatant.) So I’m wondering if being struck with incapacity of the brain is God striking them down. Just wondering.

Biden with wife Jill (left) and VP Kamala Harris, the elder abusers.
screenshot from Megyn Kelly's show

But there is plenty of blame to go around. Harris deserves plenty of it. So says Stephen Miller, here. And we need to remember that all the complicit media and all the complicit staff, cabinet members, legislators, and donors—all of them were willing to keep covering up, until that debate made it so they couldn’t. If they claim to be shocked, they’re lying.

Ashe in America (Badlands Media Brief, July 10, 2024) responds to that Stephen Miller piece with this advice:

Outrage is an effective driver of change in a world where everyone is ruled by their emotions. As such, never back off this message. A criminal conspiracy to hide an incapacitated president, to deceive the People and govern without oversight, is not lawful or just.

You might even say it’s a threat to ‘democracy.’ — Ashe in America

 

The Insurmountable Challenges to Replacing Biden

So, what are the options? Well, for removal from office, there’s impeachment; the 25^th Amendment, which is removal because of incapacitation; get voted out; or death. For removal from the Biden/Harris ticket, that requires one of the above and/or his choice to step away. If he doesn’t drop out of the race, that leaves only the removal-from-office options. If he does drop out of the race, that creates an array of other insurmountable problems.

Sunday, June 30, shortly after the debate, when suddenly the media was willing to talk about replacing Biden because of his condition, Robert Barnes went through the legal, financial, and political challenges.

The first hurdle is ballot access. Barnes explains,

Ever since Ross Perot in 1996, both parties have conspired to create laws in various states entirely intended to exclude another Ross Perot, to exclude a third-party independent candidate challenger. Right now they're using those same rules and laws to try to exclude Robert Francis Kennedy Jr from being on the ballot. Indeed, the Democratic Party has brought suit against him in pretty much every state in which he has sought to be on the ballot. Several of those suits are still ongoing. The existence of those suits was the pretext for CNN to deny and exclude Robert Kennedy from this past debate.

Because of these rules, there are currently about 15 states where there are legal impediments to substituting Biden’s name on the ballot. They can’t legally do it. In some cases, the date is past for making any change—barring death or legally declared incapacity (meaning the 25^th Amendment has been invoked by the VP). Even in those cases, they could not replace his name with another Democrat candidate; the ballot would either have no Democrat candidate listed, or it would still list Biden but any votes for him would not be counted. So that means, in about 15 states, Democrats could vote for either Trump or an independent or third-party candidate.

At their convention could they end up nominating another candidate? They could. The lateness of their convention is possibly designed to prevent that from happening, because it would leave such a short campaign window. But, also, that could only happen if Biden were to release his delegates. Otherwise all the delegates assigned to him from all the primaries in all the states would be required to vote for him on the first round. And since no other candidate got a challenging number of delegates, there would be no second round. It doesn’t matter how many superdelegates or other delegates they might try to finagle; they can’t overcome that first round unless he releases his delegates. And so far he—and Dr. Jill—seem firmly unwilling to do that.

Then there are the financial difficulties. Campaign funds are not transferrable. Donations to the Biden for President/Harris for Vice President campaign cannot be transferred to any other ticket—whether Harris is on that ticket in either slot or not. And since this is a second-term presidential campaign, the funds can’t be kept for Biden’s next campaign—as they might for a congressional campaign, for example. The funds have to be returned to the donors.

Is it possible they could get all their donors to immediately re-donate to a new campaign? Yes, if they’re all willing to get behind a particular candidate who has a possibility of being on the ballot. It’s possible. Improbable, but possible.

But in the interim, while Biden is still running, donors are much less likely to donate to his campaign, seeing as he could drop out at any moment, or because they want him to. So fundraising for either his campaign or some as-yet-imaginary campaign is likely to be low.

Then there’s the political hurdle. Harris was a DEI hire. She wasn’t liked. She had to drop out of the 2020 presidential race before Iowa. No one wanted her for her abilities. But she was black and female—and had the added bonus for Biden of being insurance against taking him out. That is, indeed, a sticking point for removing Biden from office now, as impaired as he is. What we have now is a disaster; but do we really prefer a Harris disaster to a Biden disaster? It’s a tough question, even if we’re assuming it would be only for a few lame-duck months.

But the fact remains, she’s black and female in a party that prizes intersectionality. And people who think that way would be very put out if their black female—however incompetent—were to be passed over for, say, some white guy. So, whatever we say about other possibilities, Harris is in their way.

Nevertheless, there are others spoken of as possibilities. Gavin Newsom is one. Those of us with eyes and common sense see what a disaster he has been in California, and we don’t want him californicating the rest of the country. But Democrats—and he, himself—see a younger, more attractive smooth talker, who might just be able to schmooze enough people into voting for him. But there isn’t incentive for him, or similar others (i.e., Gretchen Whitmer) to declare against Biden, risking alienation from the party, or to declare after successfully being pulled in by the party but then losing to Trump—when the better option for them would be to wait four years and come in aiming for the next one or two terms.

The exception might be Michelle Obama, who, by all reports, hates politics and has no reason to run. Also, at 60 or so, eight years starting now or starting in four years looks rather late for a first try. She happens to be black and female (we are assuming; I’m not questioning that, but there are some who do), has name recognition and general likability, at least by those who haven’t watched her and perceived her hatred of America. But she would be stuck doing this race she doesn’t want to do with minimal funding, or time, or ballot access.

from a Facebook post a day after the debate

The time to decide on an alternative would have been before primary elections. There was plenty of time. Enough people knew of the problems. If any of them cared about the country, they would have pushed Biden aside a year ago. They could have had the popular—even with independents and possibly some RINOs—Robert Kennedy Jr. But they chose instead to push him out of the party to run as an independent. So he’ll be on the ballot in a number of states—but not on the Democrat ticket, no matter what they do.

They will undoubtedly try something illegal to retain power. I can’t predict what they will attempt.

But what I can say is, we are in a disastrous position right now—with at least half a year before we get the relief of—hopefully—a new and better administration. Pray for our country. We will need God’s sustaining power to survive that long.