While it can be a lot of fun watching the cringe of Democrats trying to spin away the special council declaration in writing that Biden is not mentally competent to be taken to trial I think a lot of people on my side of the aisle who are celebrating are getting ahead of themselves.
The most obvious objection is the real possibility that Biden will not be the Democrat candidate. Any Democrat with sense is very much hoping that this is the case as he is at best the 2nd least popular democrat in the country, of course the fact that his VP is the least popular Democrat doesn’t help matters.
But this dodges a very important point and it’s related to some degree to a fact about Donald Trump.
There are many people, even among those who support or plan on voting for Trump who have an issue with his personality but to those people that’s already factored in to their decision to vote for him. His success as president, particularly in comparison to the state of the country now make him the only possible choice for conservatives who actually want to advance conservative ideas.
And that brings us to Joe Biden. There are plenty of leftists online who are having hissy fits when even the slightest hint is given of Joe Biden’s mental acumen and condition. The calls for firing Katy Tur who like most of the media would pay any price, bear any burden and abase themselves in any way possible to prevent a 2nd Trump term are missing a basic fact.
They are assuming that there are a significant number of voters who aren’t aware of Biden’s mental state, I submit and suggest that simply isn’t so.
I think that for most American’s Biden mental health or lack thereof is baked into their decision making process and I have a horrible feeling that the sight of Biden in his pajamas dribbling from the mouth will have no affect on their vote.
I think they are assuming that somebody else is running the show already and the fact is to the Biden voter that hates Trump that fact doesn’t bother them one bit.
I think that anyone who believes Biden’s lack of mental health will cost him votes among dems is deluding themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, the economy and illegal immigration have a real potential to give Trump a lead beyond the margin of fraud but when it comes down to it anyone who think’s Biden’s age is going to cost him this election is deluding themselves, that factor is already baked in
I listened to the arguments before the Supreme Court concerning Colorado excluding Donald Trump from the ballot in election 2024.
The consensus of those who heard the arguments is as MSNBC of all places put it “a very bad hearing for Colorado” that being not the citizens but those making the case for the state before the court.
The left is relying on the 14th amendment and is claiming that Trump in a “insurrectionist” and if you listen to the folks arguing for Colorado their favorite word in their presentation is “insurrection” or “Insurrectionist”.
The real problem for Colorado doing so is that Donald Trump has never been convicted let alone charged with insurrection. In fact to my knowledge no person who has been charged with crimes concerning the events of January 6th has been charged with insurrection.
It seems to me that if you’re excluding someone from the ballot based on their being an insurrectionist you would actually have to have a declaration that an insurrection took place and that a person is charged by the government with taking part in an insurrection.
This alone should have killed Colorado’s entire argument, and any person on the left should understand that if you can decide to deny a person of their rights without due process, no charge or nor conviction then you can exclude someone based on opinion, political or cultural.
That frankly is the basis for Jim Crow and that the current left is so obsessed with keeping Trump off the ballot that they don’t see the precedent are trying to set….is incredible to me.
I’m hoping that the various opinions are right and SCOTUS shoots this down (from what I heard of the arguments I’m guessing it will be anywhere from 9-0 to 7-2, I’m betting 8-1 with Sotomayor in dissent) but that it even has reached this point frankly is shameful.
But frankly the left’s entire treatment of Donald Trump from the time her won the GOP nomination in 2016 is very shameful and there is no reason to suggest they would change their stripes.
Curley: [stops Moe and Larry] Hey! What’s this stuff [Brighto] for anyway?
Larry: Why, it’s a cleaner, ya chump!
Curley:I know, it’s auto polish.
Moe:You boys really wanna know what it’s for?
Larry & Curly [In unison] Yeah!
Moe:It’s for sale, now get busy selling it.
The Three Stooges, Dizzy Doctors 1937
When you’ve been blogging for as long as I have (15 years here plus 3 or 4 as a tech blogger for Hiwired) you tend to cover a lot of things. Sometimes you forget that while you might remember an argument you made in 2013 that ten years later most people haven’t seen it.
This isn’t about a cause or an argument, it’s about a living. Their sources of income demand such a response because any other type of response risks losing said income.
What happens if it turns out the water is, in fact clean, cleaner that it has been for decades? What happens if the Polar Bear population and deer population are boom? What happens if every 16 year old in the country has the right to declare themselves whatever sex they want on any given day? What happens if the US pulls every single soldier out of Afghanistan? What happens if pipelines are declared illegal or scientists develops a leak proof material able to even stand up to earthquakes?
Or worse, what happens if science proves your fears unfounded, that the world isn’t warming? What happens when January 27th 2016 come along and we’re all still here? What happens if statistics show your “oppressed” group is voting in greater numbers than ever before?
Do you bask in the glory of your victory? Do you celebrate that all your hard work has been successful? Do you breathe a sigh of relief that your children and grandchildren are not going to die a horrible death in a parched poisoned earth?
Hell NO!
You’ve achieved status, you’ve achieved power, you’re living comfortably. You’re invited to the right parties, feted over by stars who think your cause is SO important and pols on the local, state and federal level care what you say and act accordingly.
So you find a different crisis, it doesn’t matter if water is clean, it isn’t clean enough, it doesn’t matter if the polar bears have recovered, they haven’t recovered enough, sure 16 year olds can declare themselves whatever sex they want, but what about 7 year olds? Yeah we’re out of Afghanistan but what about Europe? Yeah we stopped the pipelines, but the trucks are dangerous too? Do we really trust those figures that say the world isn’t going to end? We need a 50 year study of our own to be sure.
The really scary thing about that quote from 2013 is that the business about 7 year olds deciding their sex has come true.
So please remember when you see people talking nonsense about the border, or gender or oppression, remember that their goal isn’t to solve an actual problem, their goal is to maintain their wealth, income, social position or status.
Captain Lockyer:I may have been misinformed. I understood Mr. Lafitte was in command in Barataria
Jean Lafitte:If you’re offer is good it will stand up under fire.
The Buccaneer 1958
I usually don’t pay attention to what is trending on twitter but when I saw “Mr. Bean” trending it jumped out at me. I presumed something had happened to comedy legend Rowan Atkinson so I clicked over.
Atkinson’s comedy has been making people laugh for decades. His TV series from the Thin Blue Line and Not the Nine O’clock news are guaranteed to raise a smile and his characters have been iconic from the incredible Edmund Blackadder, to Secret Agent Johnny English. He even did one Doctor Who parody titled “The curse of fatal death” that was a spot on sendup of the series.
But of all the characters he has played the most iconic is Mr. Bean. The simple and to some degree simple minded fellow who tries very hard to get by in this crazy world of ours. It is the role he is most identified with.
Atkinson is also known to be outspoken on free speech and comedy defending both while others run and hide and has never been shy about his opinions. Six months ago he wrote the following op-ed on the subject of Electric Cars:
I love electric vehicles — and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped.
Sadly, keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV. There are sound environmental reasons not to jump just yet.
Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems.
I must admit that I was not aware of his background in engineering as you don’t see a lot of actors with this type of degree but it shows in this piece where he brakes down both the advantages and limits of current electric cars and brings up a subject that those pushing the cars (and getting rich off of subsidies) don’t mention:
In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70 per cent higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.
How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of ten years.
It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis.
He doesn’t bring up the fires and the cost of repair which are rather significant but he does note that better alternates are on the drawing board from solid state batteries to Hydrogen models but that in the meantime we end up with a lot of bad batteries left over. He then pivots to another point, usage:
Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model.
This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in.
When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for £15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years.
It’s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced.
And he closed with this bit of advice:
Friends with an environmental conscience often ask me, as a car person, whether they should buy an electric car. I tend to say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change.
But otherwise, hold fire for now. Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.
Read the whole thing, it’s a good solid argument that is made from the climate change perspective.
Well apparently the folks in Britain who have known and loved Mr. Atkinson for decades have taken his argument to heart and that’s made some folks very mad
Mr Bean is blamed for slump in electric car sales: Rowan Atkinson is accused of 'damaging' public perception of EVs by House of Lords report after describing the vehicles as a 'bit soulless'. Can't criticise NetZero policy?https://t.co/DE0Omqr0vL via https://t.co/yKLuHcxeAT
The Lord’s environment and climate change committee has since been told the actor was partly to blame for ‘damaging’ public opinions on electric vehicles (EVs).
It comes as new petrol and diesel cars are due to be banned from 2035 under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak‘s net zero strategy – a plan designed to encourage drivers to buy EVs.
The Green Alliance pressure group said: ‘One of the most damaging articles was a comment piece written by Rowan Atkinson in the Guardian which has been roundly debunked.’
What seems to be the problem is that Mr. Atkinson made a solid rational argument concerning the actual goal our green friends supposedly have, that is reducing Co2 emissions and our green friends don’t seem to have any counter other than claiming it to be “debunked” which sound a lot like the vaccine companies talking when people were warning about the side effects of the shots.
The New article has this handy dandy graphic that makes Atkinson’s point for him
And again, note that Atkinson didn’t talk about things he could have brought up. High Cost, Limited Range, Lack of Charging stations, performance in cold, repair cost, battery fires or even the human cost of the child slave labor to get the lithium.
Bottom line if they have a better and more rational argument rather than just an agenda to push there are certainly a whole lot of other prominent lefty stars out there that the public would trust who could deliver it for them.
If they had one that is.
If not much easier to blame Mr. Atkinson for raining on their gravy train.
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