Saturday Miscellany

First, yesterday morning, at 6:00 a.m, CNN anchor Kasie Hunt opened her show by offering an unnamed Democrat’s reaction to the Trump-Biden debate: 

We’re fucked.

Of course, Hunt did not pronounce the word, but we are not quite as squeamish around here.

Anyway, the debate has produced an avalanche of calls from liberal Democrats, for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. New York Times columnists, from Tommy Friedman to Paul Krugman have joined the chorus.

Better yet, the editorial board of the New York Times called on Joe Biden to drop out of the race.

What took them so long?

As of now, Biden insists that he will do no such thing.

Second, for those who doubted the Wall Street Journal report that Biden was becoming less coherent and less capable, it was a wake-up call.

As I noted in these pages, it is highly unlikely that the Journal would have printed the report without serious evidence. By the evidence of your eyes and ears, the Journal story was correct.

Third, and then there is the great reckoning for those who have been assuring us that Biden is perfectly capable and coherent. Apparently, those people, from Democratic party operatives to the media intelligentsia, are about to feast on some serious humble pie.

With any luck they will be admitting to their lies. More likely, they will continue calling Donald Trump a liar.

Consider the commentary by hedge fund impresario Bill Ackman, on Twitter:

As much as last night was an indictment of the Democratic Party for misleading party members and the country about the mental acuity and health of the president, the media deserve far more derision and scorn. I and others were repeatedly criticized by the media for questioning the competency of the president. Among other false accusations, I was accused of spreading misleading videos which clearly showed Biden’s deterioration. Do you remember the heavily excerpted and edited @POTUS Biden @60Minutes interview where the interviewer covered for the president by saying he was ‘very tired?’

It is amazing to see how quickly they have changed their minds.

Fourth, the same thought, via Bari Weiss of The Free Press:

Rarely are so many lies dispelled in a single moment. Rarely are so many people exposed as liars and sycophants. Last night’s debate was a watershed on both counts.

The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.

But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.

Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president were accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheap fakes.”

Fifth, also over at The Free Press, Nellie Bowles asks a salient question:

If this is Biden, who’s been running our country? Like, practically, who’s been doing the job job of it? Jill Biden? The White House handyman? The interns? Karl Rove? A random Houthi? I’m not mad, I just want to know. Because the people who have been pushing to keep him in office certainly know he’s this bad, and they must like it that way. Weak and confused, he can be used, kept as a pet moderate. Interns, release the old man, just tell us your demands, and we can figure something out.

Sixth, the irony of ironies was simply that media figures who had been lying about Joe Biden for years now, who had made up stories to explain away his mental defects, were reduced to calling Donald Trump a liar. One recalls that it’s a constant on the left-- remember when certain liberals kept calling George W. Bush a lying liar?

The normally sane and sensible Peter Baker, from the New York Times, could not resist the defamation:

Over the course of 90 minutes, a raspy-voiced Mr. Biden struggled to deliver his lines and counter a sharp though deeply dishonest former President Donald J. Trump, raising doubts about the incumbent president’s ability to wage a vigorous and competitive campaign four months before the election.

Seventh, meanwhile in Gaza, the widely reported famine was not a famine.

Did you imagine that United Nations organizations were lying to us?

From the Free Beacon:

New evidence indicates that, contrary to claims by top U.S. officials and international media, the Gaza Strip is not on the precipice of a widespread famine that Western experts claimed would endanger millions of innocent Palestinians.

"Famine is imminent" in northern Gaza, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a network of Western governments, the United Nations, and nonprofit groups, warned in March, prompting unfounded accusations that Israel is using starvation as a war tactic. The IPC’s report was quickly amplified by outlets like the Washington Post, which foretold "imminent famine" in Gaza. Politico, the New York Times, and CNN alleged Israel is guilty of war crimes.

But on Tuesday, the IPC revised its initial assessment, saying that the projected famine in Gaza did not come to fruition in May. "The available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring," the organization said in its latest report, which notes that Israel has significantly increased aid and that conditions as a whole in Gaza have drastically improved.

Who knew?

Eighth, it seems perfectly obvious, but more than a few people dispute it. Transmania is nothing but a belief. In the bad old days psychiatrists used to consider transsexuals to be suffering from delusional beliefs. 

For some strange reason, transmaniacs have decided that the only reason they do not feel very good in their bodies is that someone, somewhere has misgendered or dead named them. That is, that someone does not accept their belief as truth.

Prof. Gary Francione explains it on Twitter:

A male asking to be recognized as a woman is not a claim for equality; it is a belief claim. That is, the male is not asking to be treated the same as other males. He is asking others to participate in his metaphysical belief that he is a woman. 

Ninth, Inez Feltscher Stepman of the Independent Women’s Forum offers this comment about transmania on Twitter:

Unbelievably, in the age of micro-aggressions and firing over mild jokes or offhand remarks, a man waiting to watch his female colleagues shower is now actually encouraged, not prohibited by the EEOC.

Isn’t this a violation of female space?

Ninth, in the time that it is taking me to write this miscellany, the great minds of the American left seem to have discovered that Joe Biden, senile and demented as he is, will refuse to withdraw. And they have also discovered that taking his name off of certain state ballots is not an easy or self-evident proposition.

So, the screw is turning and we will be hearing more and more about the big, bad Trump.

As Glenn Greenwald explains on Twitter:

Once media starts to realize that they're not going to get Biden out of the race, they're all going to quickly retreat from the past 24 hours and get back on board. Obama is directing them to do that and giving them the script to use:

Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.

For all the calls to Biden to withdraw, the word of Obama prevails. After all, the best chance of making Kamala Harris president is for Biden to win and then to retire.

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