President Joe Biden is expected to discuss the future of his re-election campaign with family at Camp David on Sunday, following a nationally televised debate Thursday that left many fellow Democrats worried about his ability to beat former President Donald Trump in November, according to five people familiar with the matter.
So far, the party’s top leaders have offered public support for Biden, including in tweets posted by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Senior congressional Democrats, including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Nancy Pelosi of California, have privately expressed concerns about his viability, said two sources apprised of those discussions, even as they all publicly back the president.
One Democratic House member who believes Biden should drop out of the race — but has yet to call for that publicly — told NBC News that three colleagues expressed the same sentiment to him during votes on the House floor Friday.
At the same time, there is an understanding among top Democrats that Biden should be given space to determine next steps. They believe only the president, in consultation with his family, can decide whether to move forward or to end his campaign early — and that he won’t respond well to being pushed.
“The decision-makers are two people — it’s the president and his wife,” one of the sources familiar with the discussions said, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t understand how deeply personal and familial this decision will be isn’t knowledgeable about the situation.”
“It’s a mess,” this person said.
Another person familiar with the dynamics said Biden will ultimately listen to only one adviser.
“The only person who has ultimate influence with him is the first lady,” this person said. “If she decides there should be a change of course, there will be a change of course.”
After publication of this report, a source familiar reached out to stress that the Camp David gathering was not a formal family meeting.
When you see ‘Biden Is Toast’ in a Politico headline, you know things are really, really bad for Joe Biden. That line was part of a title of a story in that periodical about Biden’s disastrous debate performance on Thursday which was originally published fifteen minutes before that event was even completed: “Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast’.”
Lisa Kashinsky, Adam Cancryn, and Eugene Daniels, acting more like coroners providing a Biden campaign autopsy than as Politico reporters, had the sad task of laying out the brutal facts for the bereaved Democrats and their media allies.
…he stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.
The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.
And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.
Reading this you could almost hear Howard Cosell yelling “DOWN GOES FRAZIER! DOWN GOES FRAZIER! DOWN GOES FRAZIER!” except substitute “Biden” for “Frazier.”
And now the Politico serving of toast followed by a heaping pile of sheer Democrat panic:
“Biden is toast — calling it now,” said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.
In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”
It seemed to be so bad for Biden that the Politico coroners/reporters even appeared to pronounce his campaign to be DOA:
Already, some Democrats were openly saying that Biden should end his campaign. One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said simply: “Biden needs to drop out. No question about it.”
…Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chair and “Never Trumper” who is considering voting for Biden, had warned that Democrats would need to reconsider their ticket if the president delivered a poor performance on Thursday.
After the debate, Cullen said: “Anyone who has watched a parent grow old, frail, and foggy recognizes what they are seeing and knows it only gets worse, at an accelerating rate, from here.”
One beneficial side effect of this Politico panic attack over Biden’s presidential campaign future is that perhaps the media will finally drop its absurd “cheapfake” shtick to debunk videos of Biden acting as incoherent as he did during Thursday’s debate.
Here’s a type of person who’s usually toxic, but you will never know why: the kind of person who says yes to everyone, never considering his own needs or rights, and expects you to do the same.
If his subconscious were permitted to honestly speak it would say: “I accommodate everyone else, and always put myself last. So you had better do the same for me.”
This is the self-sacrificer who becomes the other-sacrificer. It’s a particularly nasty kind of person. Why? Because he’s fueled by what some call the Heaven’s Reward fallacy: “We’re all supposed to be good people. Being good means you’re always 100 percent selfless, always giving way to others. I’m doing it for everyone else. So I’m entitled to have you do it for me.” In other words: “I let everyone else walk all over me, and I’m their slave; so now you are obliged to reward my good deeds and be MY slave.” Beyond ridiculous.
It’s twisted and wrong, and if ever exposed to the rational light of day, this subconscious reasoning would not survive two seconds. But we’re talking SUBconscious here; we’re talking psychology, not conscious viewpoints.
The unspoken reasoning is wrong on its own terms. Even if you accept the idea that we all should sacrifice all the time for others, then — on that very premise — you have no business expecting someone else (your spouse, a family member, a friend or a stranger) to consider your self-interested needs. That would be selfish, and therefore (allegedly) wrong — by your own reasoning! Why? Because the minute that other person sacrifices for you, you’re gaining something — which, as a selfless person, you’re never supposed to do.
The conversation never gets this far, of course.
Whatever you do, please don’t marry or become seriously involved with a “nice,” toxic do-gooder. If someone seems nice and giving and all those things but then turns into a real SOB at the drop of a hat, then you can probably guess this will be the cause.
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It’s the day after the day after, and much of America is still reeling from a shocking debate performance by President Joe Biden. It was humiliating for him and an embarrassment for the nation. Anyone who has ever served as a leader in any capacity knows that at times like these, someone must step up to the plate and take responsibility because it’s vital to learn from our mistakes in order to avoid repeating them. So, who is to blame for placing a man with obvious signs of dementia on the world stage only to make a fool of himself?
Rambling, mumbling, checked out for long periods, and just plain confused, the president of the free world, arguably the most powerful man on Earth – a man with the nuclear football by his side 24 hours a day – was having a great deal of difficulty making sense. Even an objective observer might have thought they were watching a Saturday Night Live skit, expecting the Democratic standard bearer to turn to the camera and shout, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
It would be comical were it not so profoundly sad.
National Nightmare – Suspect Number One
Heading up this list of those responsible for putting an ailing president in this position, one must pivot to the helpmate, the protector, the woman who promised “to love and cherish in sickness and in health” – Dr. Jill Biden. Over the last 48 hours, cable news networks have been shoving microphones into the faces of ordinary Americans, asking for their reaction to Mr. Biden’s performance. Not ones to be easily bamboozled, members of the public have often pointed the finger at Dr. Jill. Mean as it may sound, the president’s wife needs to bear at least some of the responsibility, if not the lion’s share, for what can only be termed as elder abuse.
What on Earth was she thinking?
Dr. Jill Biden (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
As the person closest to the president, Dr. Jill knows her husband of 47 years inside and out. She likely has had conversations with the president’s personal physician and learned to make accommodations for his tragic, chronic condition. Why, then, would she agree to prop him up like Howdy Doody on a stage with no ventriloquist in sight? One could argue that Jill is so used to the medically compromised Joe Biden that she doesn’t even see it any longer. But this beggars belief.
Anyone who has had even one conversation with someone suffering from dementia intuitively understands that a hoarse, whispering voice spewing incomprehensible thoughts is part and parcel of this disease. Liberty Nation News has written extensively about the various symptoms of Mr. Biden’s malady – not to be malicious, but to tell the truth about the condition of the president. Does Dr. Jill love the trappings of the White House so much that it’s worth eviscerating her husband’s dignity before 100 million people?
It’s not like these are uncharted waters: Jill Biden could have taken a page out of Nancy Reagan’s playbook. Knowing her husband was losing it, Mr. and Mrs. Reagan decided the proper thing to do was have the president pen a personal message to the American people. After making the hard decision to say goodbye, the president rode quietly – with dignity – into the sunset. And if that wasn’t enough of an example for Jill, perhaps she could have looked across the pond and found another instance of poise when Queen Elizabeth II gracefully tried to run cover for the ailing Margaret Thatcher.
Yes, examples abound of how not to publicly expose a loved one to the indignities that come with dementia. Dr. Jill may be to blame for putting her husband in such a tight spot, but she is not the only one who should bear the guilt for such a shameful and unloving act.
The Leftist Media
For months – no, actually, for years – those on the right have been watching Mr. Biden struggle through the demands of the presidency while suffering from a chronic and degenerative disease. Complicit in this cover-up are the members of the leftist press. They’ve been running interference for the commander-in-chief since before he took office.
Mid-debate, the Biden campaign floated the urgent message that the president was suffering from a cold. But the progressive media, finally and fully awakened from their slumber, were not buying the spin. An ordinary head cold could not explain Mr. Biden’s uneven performance and they finally saw that the jig was up. This was not a cheap fake; this was a national nightmare.
Thus, watching the medically compromised and cognitively impaired Mr. Biden came as a shock to those who get their news from leftist sources. The progressive news glitterati claimed their phones were blowing up during the debate, replete with phrases like “Freaking out!” and “Panicked.” Their presidential hopes in shambles, it didn’t take long before talk of dumping good old Joe from the Democratic ticket was being seriously considered.
Talking the Amazon Files
It’s difficult to ascertain when the media began running cover for Mr. Biden, but their abject hatred of his opponent opened the door to their duplicity, and once it began, it was hard to stop. Their lies became a runaway freight train – but they ran out of track on Thursday. When the media starts covering up the facts in deference to its preferences, it is complicit in shielding people from the truth. This is precisely why the news has become balkanized, much to the detriment of the public at large.
The consequences of a cover-up are now coming home to roost. As the national nightmare unfolded in real time on Thursday night, the shrill lamentations of the leftist cable TV commentariat were heard from coast to coast. Indeed, they are in a pickle, wondering if there is a way to get their guy to bow out gracefully or decide to ride the horse they brought to the racetrack all the way to the finish line. Either way, both Dr. Jill and the leftist media must take some responsibility for treating Joe Biden as a commodity to use up and throw away. No matter how one feels about his politics, his character, and his public performance, he is a human being who should not have to suffer every indignity of his illness in the public square. The other injured party, it must be said, are the American people who deserve better. Shame on those who allowed this to happen.
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What will matter at the end of the day on Nov. 5 is which candidate’s party turned out voters, whether in person or by mail.
After a full week of isolated “preparation,” President Joe Biden committed political suicide Thursday night in the first presidential debate. He struggled to put together a coherent sentence, with former President Donald Trump at one point telling moderators he was unsure what Biden was trying to say. And while Trump delivered a tempered and strong performance, Republicans cannot assume their polling and debate performances will be enough to win this November. The party must keep its foot on the pedal of ballot operations.
Biden’s performance rocked the left-wing apparatus, with the left fretting that he should not and cannot be the Democratic nominee. Biden spent the night incoherently rambling, muddling words, lying at least 20 times, and, when not speaking, standing with his mouth agape.
“Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast,’” Politico headlined a piece.
CNN’s John King said “there has to be a conversation with the president after tonight” while Van Jones said Biden should “consider taking a different course now.”
Despite the worried reaction, if Republicans rest on their laurels, it’s possible that Democrats’ ballot trafficking operations could carry a candidate as weak as Biden across the finish line.
Democrats have spent years creating sophisticated on-the-ground ballot operations, from get-out-the-vote efforts to mail-in ballot collection. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, the state’s Democrat Party has worked with Biden’s campaign to set up more than a dozen offices focused on hosting “training sessions for volunteers, canvassing kickoffs and volunteer recruitment events,” according to the Pennsylvania Capital Star. It’s a move that deserves “credit,” Erie County GOP Chairman Tom Eddy told The Federalist back in May.
And it’s a move that could still deliver Biden a narrow victory if Republicans become overconfident that Trump’s killer debate performance alone can help him carry swing voters.
A May poll from the New York Times/Siena College found Trump led Biden in five battleground states. In some states, Trump’s lead over Biden narrowed slightly among likely voters compared to registered voters, suggesting Trump could benefit from targeted outreach to voters who are registered but may not plan on turning out to the polls on Nov. 5.
The field is also ripe for Trump to use targeted voter registration efforts to win more votes. A recent survey from Campaign Now found that in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan there are unregistered, likely Republican voters who want to be registered ahead of the election. The survey estimates there are 311,206 “unregistered, likely Republican voters in Wisconsin, and 581,173 unregistered, likely Republican voters in Michigan,” according to Center Square. The survey size was small — the group only received 300 responses after contacting thousands of unregistered voters — but Campaign Now’s John Connors insisted the survey results show “an opportunity” for engagement and that conservative campaigns and organizations need to make assisting those voters a “priority.”
It’s a sentiment I heard while in Pennsylvania recently at an RNC event to train poll watchers. Andy Meehan, founder of the grassroots organization RightForBucks that focuses on turning out voters in Bucks County, told me his organization was “doing a lot of the efforts on our own” but wanted “more direction from the [Trump] campaign.” And just a little more than a month ago, the RNC had little to no on-the-ground operations in key swing states, local grassroots leaders told The Federalist.
After Biden’s disastrous performance, surely there will be an appetite not only among Republican-leaning unregistered and registered likely voters, but also independents. Maybe even disillusioned Democrats. Whether it was Trump’s tempered debate performance or Biden’s abysmal performance that turned voters toward Trump matters not. What will matter at the end of the day on Nov. 5 is which candidate’s party turned out those voters and their peers, whether in person or by mail.
Trump clobbered Biden in the debate? Of course he did. So what? They’re not going to step aside for Trump. They will cheat, declare martial law, a green emergency, a crime emergency. They will do anything but step aside. These people are not in favor of our Constitution. None of the Democrats, none of the RINOs. All of their actions support my point. They are tyrants. Tyrants don’t walk away from power unless forced.
We’re past the point of debate.
A true American’s attitude toward the lawless occupation puppet Biden regime should be: DO NOT COMPLY.
Elect Trump (if you can), arrest all of them, try them for treason — or secede.
Launch the breakup. This government is fiscally and morally bankrupt, on the verge of collapse. Enough is enough.
A reader replies: “I don’t believe in seceding, I believe in taking it all back. Not a single inch of our country belongs to them.
They don’t get to come in and abuse us and lie, cheat, and steal from us, and then keep the children and half of our country.”
My reply: I agree. Secession is a last resort. However, if we don’t have the military and DOJ on our side, the federal government is our enemy, not our friend. We might have to secede first in order to take it back. I don’t see the occupation government in power stepping down for Trump, or for anyone.
They think if they can just eradicate Trump, all will be well. But why is Trump so popular? Millions support him and his message, and his policies. Leftists’ own polls show Trump possibly crushing Biden. If they succeed at eliminating Trump, will all that support evaporate? Or will they have to impose a dictatorship to suppress it all, as they’re presently trying to do? Can you suppress a movement supported by half or more of the American population? By tens of millions? That takes inconceivable hubris.
The smugness, ignorance and arrogance of leftists should not surprise us. If they think we can have Communism for the masses while letting the connected, powerful elites enjoy their billions, they’re failing to consider: Where will all the anger go? They say Trump’s support is all based on irrational anger and hatred. Even if that were true (of course it’s not), the anger has to go somewhere. If they imprison, silence or even murder Trump, the anger won’t just disappear. The leftists’ problems will intensify. Trump’s martyrdom could escalate into an American version of the French Revolution.
Leftists, media, academics and the connected, corporate left-wing totalitarian elites are playing with fire.
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From reading the left-wing media, you know (or think you know) that there is an energy “transition” going on. This is something that must happen as a matter of urgent necessity. Vast government subsidies are being disbursed to assure its rapid success. Fossil fuels are rapidly on the way out, while wind and solar are quickly taking over.
For example, you may well have seen the big piece last August in the New York Times, headline “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think.”
Across the country, a profound shift is taking place . . . . The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.
But if you read that piece, or any one of dozens of others from the Times or other “mainstream” sources, what you won’t find are meaningful statistics on the extent to which fossil fuel use is declining, if at all, or the extent to which renewables like wind and solar are actually replacing them.
That’s why the Manhattan Contrarian turns instead to dry statistical data to try to get the real story. Several years ago I discovered an annual book of energy data called the Statistical Review of World Energy. At the time, the Statistical Review was produced by the international oil company BP. I first covered one of these Reviews in this post from July 2019. A couple of years ago BP apparently decided to get out of this business, and turned the product over to something called the Energy Institute. EI then produced a Statistical Review in June 2023 (covering 2022), and now is just out on June 20, 2024 with a Statistical Review covering 2023.
Most of the Statistical Review consists of just spreadsheets of numbers. There are some charts, but relatively few. But the takeaways are too obvious to hide. The big one is this: there is no energy “transition” going on, at least not in the sense that “renewables” are actually supplanting fossil fuels. Yes there is some considerable amount of “renewable” wind and solar electricity generation getting built (with huge government subsidies). But it is not replacing fossil fuel generation. Rather, fossil fuel generation continues to increase, and its share of overall energy production has barely budged.
Here is EI’s June 20 Press Release, which summarizes the five “key stories” that it says emerge from the statistics. The first one is the big one — increasing energy consumption led by increased production and consumption of fossil fuels:
Record global energy consumption, with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and their emissions to record levels. Global primary energy consumption overall was at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ). Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.
And of course, “emissions” continue to rise:
Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.
No matter how much the federal government or any state threatens to punish you for your sin of fossil fuel use, aggregate global emissions from such use are not going to go down within our lifetimes.
The second “key story” relates to the contribution, or lack thereof, of solar and wind. Here EI engages in some modest spinning to make things look less bad than they are for the solar and wind promoters; but there’s not much they can do:
Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level. Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh. This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.
4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?
And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.
I mentioned that there were relatively few charts in the Review, but some of them are striking. Here is one of my favorites, showing global coal consumption from 1965 to 2023:
Over that period, North America and Europe have cut their consumption almost by half, from almost 40 EJ per year to around 20. But over the same period the consumption in the rest of the world has gone from about 20 EJ to around 140, multiplying by a factor of 7. And don’t be fooled by the apparent leveling off of increases in total consumption in the last several years. That reflects continuing decreases in North America and Europe, which are more than offset by larger increases in the Asia Pacific region.
Robert Bryce at his Substack has many more details from the EI Statistical Review, plus several charts that he has created from the EI data. He is much better at creating charts than I am. The title of Bryce’s article is “Numbers Don’t Lie.” Bryce also has a figure for the amount of government subsidies that have gone to wind and solar generation since 2004: $4.7 trillion. That much money to fund a supposed “transition” that isn’t occurring at all.
The story is going to be effectively the same every year until finally the promoters give up on the wind/solar scam.
I don’t plan to watch the rigged debate between Trump and Biden this week. I am confident Trump will handle himself extremely well — this amazing man, and what he’s enduring, truly make him one for the ages; but I can’t participate in a shared delusional psychosis that this charade is anything remotely like an objective conversation among (aside from Trump) even marginally serious people. Seeing Biden spit, sputter and slur his toxic fascist tantrums while media sycophants gaze with vacant, adoring pretense is too much to ask myself to endure when there are good books to be read and still so much else of worth to do. I can always reread “The Emperor Has No Clothes,” for a more accurate, honest representation of what’s happening. This, however, is unadulterated theater — not in a good way.
Yes, I will probably watch some interesting excerpts of the whole fiasco later, but I reserve the right to censor Biden and his media when viewing them. Squandering precious time watching the propaganda maneuvers of these pretentious glorified brats — a stupidly undeserving crime family, an almost entirely unchallenged gang of legalized mobsters calling themselves “Democrats”, and their own personal, fawning media — have nothing to offer: Nothing, except more painful reminders that a once great country based on the smartest, wisest, soundest principles EVER has degenerated into the miserable aftermath of a grisly accident — a genuine catastrophe, incredibly, still applauded by millions of ignorant morons.
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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 