Regarding Biden cover up there is no need of laws. Whoever participated in the cover up, starting from the WH speakers, should be accused of perjury. Then up to the jury to decide but this is a betrayal of the US Constitution.
You write: "We are learning now that President Biden’s incapacity was apparent early in his Administration and was clear to many people close to the President."
The questions are:
1. How long before then was it apparent to the president and his wife that this was a starting?
2. Did this knowledge influence the selection of Kamala Harris as VP running mate. Was there a. quid pro quo that in return for selection she would never move to invoke the 25th?
I agree wholly about Biden. The only way you could claim to have played a straight bat is if you maintained that, despite any outward signs to the contrary, he was sharp as a tack right up to the debates, then suddenly seemed not sufficiently switched-on to continue; and that’s simply not credible.
“Laws should be written so that henceforth this sort of behavior is criminalized.” No, the voters should see to it that these people are never again entrusted with political power. But the voters will not do that! They regard lying in politics as at most a venial sin.
Regarding Biden's Cabinet, apparently they didn't meet together very often. Like the last 2 meetings were one in Sept 2024 and one in Oct 2023. I wonder if that was by design, preventing the people who could insist on the 25th amendment from gathering in-person and comparing notes.
The blogger (yes, "blogger") Grey Enlightenment touches on this theme alot, on just how possible - not impossible - it is to keep a secret today, even in large organizations.
I've been reached out to by press in the past (like the site The Information) to talk about Google moderation policies but I just ignored it. More people do stuff like that than most probably assume.
Another shoe yet to drop... the Biden Crime Family. And this one should catch a lot of senior Dems, up to and including Obama and Hillary! Even if Joe skates due to decrepitude, he can be put on the stand, and the whole sordid story made public while he takes the 5th.
I don’t think you have any evidence to link Obama, let alone Hillary to it. But on the rest, I agree 100% this is another example in the EXACT same category.
The evidence came out in congressional hearings.
The fact that the evidence that has come out MAY not be enough to convict Joe Biden in a court of law (the MSM’s fig leaf rationale for not reporting on the story) is irrelevant to why it wasn’t reported on and pursued.
I think that 'undetected' is the wrong word here. They are detected just fine, but when they are reported, to the appropriate authorities, nothing gets done. It is as if we are all villagers who will no longer respond to the latest cry of 'Wolf! Wolf'.
When I first heard the story that some rich guy was inviting celebrities to his private island to have sex with underage girls, I thought the chance of this being true was vanishingly small. There was just no way, I thought, that this could be kept quiet. It had supposedly been going on for years. Some of the celebrities would notice, and when they got home they would be on the phone to the police, or the newspapers, or their publicist, or their elected officials. There is no way that the evil ones could keep a lid on this. So I didn't believe it.
But Jeffrey Epstein really did do this. And in looking into the matter, I found that many people did indeed do as I suggested. It wasn't that 'they didn't notice' but instead 'they noticed but it didn't matter'. So the lesson to be learned is that you can cover up _anything_, perhaps not forever, but for a very long time. So it is less surprising that people thought they could cover up Biden's mental state -- because coverups work. And who knows how many other ones are going on at this time?
I think that we need some serious investigation into the mechanisms involved in running a successful coverup. Asking about _how_, exactly, it gets done. Then we are likely to need a few more laws, or clarifications of laws we already have, to make sure that the people involved are prosecuted. And that whistleblowers are protected. I also think we need to strengthen the protection for whistleblowers from within law enforcement, so we can find out how much of a problem 'declined to prosecute because of political pressure' is.
I don't disagree but I'd argue that the most successful coverups aren't really coverups. If the people around Biden never talked about Biden's fitness for continuing and never much thought about it beyond maybe occasional jokes about something they witnessed Biden do, there isn't really anything to keep secret. Nobody is perpetrating a coverup when simply ignoring whatever they might see or be inclined to believe.
I don't know what to say about Epstein Island.
As for the tunnels, my memory is they were a known problem, just not the extent of the tunnels. And how would the world have reacted if Israel had addressed the tunnel problem before Oct 7?
Maybe the possibility of Oct 7 was also known but again, if you don't know when it will happen, it gets harder to address it. And I argue no matter how unprepared Israel was for this, Hamas executed it with a level of perfection very atypical for them. That is also hard to prepare for.
I don’t think that Hamas _capabilities_ were ever secret. The tunnels certainly weren’t.
Hamas _intentions_ were secret. Few people really needed to know about the October 7 raid in advance. It was nothing like a military operation. It was a large scale classic barbarian raid, with all the traditional atrocities. They merely needed small teams to let large numbers of hastily armed young men loose in southern Israel.
"We are learning now that President Biden’s incapacity was apparent early in his Administration and was clear to many people close to the President."
Really? I don't always follow the news closely but I have not heard anything. When I do a Google search, I find nothing. What do we know about Biden's condition other than conjecture based on his debate and speaking abilities? (Which are not a particularly good measure of dementia, especially for someone with his lifelong speech issues.)
I think the common thread here is people not wanting something to be true, and so information about the world is consciously ignored. The Biden case is obviously this as people were calling out his mental decline for a long time publicly but it was just verboten to acknowledge it on the left, at least until the cultural leadership said it was ok. Likewise, the Oct 7 attack apparently (I don't know a ton about it) had numerous evidence of its coming, and more importantly there was a lack of preparedness on the part of the IDF such as bunkers without weapons. That their defenses on a known hostile border were so easily overcome by not unimaginable tactics suggests that decision makers didn't want to believe that fighting was a possibility. I very well could be wrong, but the whole thing has the feel of decision makers not wanting to believe that there are people on the other side of the wall that actively want to harm them.
The pager case is the least obvious case of the disbelieving theory. On the one hand, most of the actual scheming can take place at a distance, not within the same society as the target, so hiding the conspiracy from the targets or those who might warn them is easier. On the other hand, apparently no one in Hamas thought "Maybe we should take these things we all use apart to make sure our more technologically savvy opponents are messing with them." That strikes me as a refusal to conceive that one isn't terribly popular with more than one's prime enemy. Admittedly, that sounds a lot like saying "They are insufficiently paranoid" but, well, Hamas is kind of officially at war with most of the western world, so yea, they probably are insufficiently paranoid.
In general, most people do seem to be too unwilling to believe that others mean to do them harm. In the US cases, that is especially true of those in positions of power and authority. The official belief is that our government works for us, so people hate wrapping their head around the idea that officials are out for themselves and are often at best indifferent to our well being.
This holiday some relatives went to see movie “Wicked” which brought forward Arianna Grande’s name, which prompted Millennial relative to mutter “I think she’s the one whose concert in the UK was bombed and people were totally aware it was in the works but didn’t mention it”.
I said, well, there can surely be a lag after people report something …
“I’m pretty sure it was not reported in a timely fashion because [correctness]; however, some people were actively turning around and leaving after they saw a Muslim guy fiddling with a package”.
I can’t say whether this is truly accurate or mostly a reflection of the weight of tedious lesser examples of routine self-censorship working on the minds of a generation grown up in that atmosphere.
I kind of remember hearing of that now that you mention it. Especially in the UK I wouldn’t be inclined to push the report hard if the police didn’t seem to care, for fear I would be charged with insulting language or something. Just turning and leaving would be the rational choice. What a world our attempts to coerce kindness and tolerance has created. What a world, what a world, what a world.
I think the thought at the time (2020) was - look at the Dem’s coalition of the identities - so fragile they had to default to Old White Guy to have an electoral chance.
And yet, even given what transpired, he was still the country’s best option out of that lot, and the best choice to govern - ironically because of his age and his having one foot in a past so different from the present.
I agree with you 100% re getting elected. And remember he was the only one in the group besides Klobuchar (who was too far down in the polls to elevate) who had *any* whiff of “moderate” to him.
But your claim that he was the best choice to govern is simply preposterous. Especially with hindsight.
I thought Buttigieg had a pleasant inoffensiveness about him, seemed earnest and perhaps competent and like maybe he didn’t hate what was nice* - and his lack of national experience did not strike me as disqualifying given the status quo; but I recall someone persuaded me he was the most radical of the bunch.
I’m not sure who you liked there. Klobuchar is the kind of woman who’s nightmare fuel for me. Ambitious women usually are though.
I’ve forgotten the others.
*I think I was influenced by pictorial of a beautiful fundraiser he held in Napa.
I agree about Buttigieg. But I was solely using the scale of moderate-ness, meaning not hard left. I’ll grant you Mayor Pete seemed only at the edge of that very progressive left.
I won’t speak to your personal issues on Klobuchar.
Thank you for raising the Biden Parkinson's disgrace. I remember a cartoon flagging this issue after a Biden-Trump debate in 2020, so I agree with konshtok (below) that it was already visible. Biden was always a figurehead, willing to be controlled, possibly so he could satisfy his vanity and shield his and his family's illegal activities (e.g., Hunter pardon). The diffusion of the "social fact" would make for an interesting sociology journal article (e.g., on legacy media's collusion).
More interesting is who has actually been calling the shots (e.g., open borders, endless wars, softness on crime, etc.)? In all welfare states, the bureaucracy keeps the trains running late, while the political class has "baptists" and "bootleggers" (Yandle, 1983) setting direction on their agenda. My leading hypothesis is Obama, the first President to stay in DC and still young, but maybe it's coordinated by a Obama/Pelosi/Schumer politburo. Or some forum that lets true believer donors have a voice in the direction of the private organization that is the Democratic (and Republican) party, the members of the duopoly competing and collaborating (i.e., co-opetition) in the market for governmental control.
I usually favor incompetence over conspiracy as an explanation, but the Biden disgrace fuels the conspiracy theories and, more importantly, further undermines trust in our institutions.
They should be tried for treason.
Regarding Biden cover up there is no need of laws. Whoever participated in the cover up, starting from the WH speakers, should be accused of perjury. Then up to the jury to decide but this is a betrayal of the US Constitution.
This is a bit like "the adults in the room" during Trump 1. It's probably like a lot of the Reagan administration. Presidents as puppets.
You write: "We are learning now that President Biden’s incapacity was apparent early in his Administration and was clear to many people close to the President."
The questions are:
1. How long before then was it apparent to the president and his wife that this was a starting?
2. Did this knowledge influence the selection of Kamala Harris as VP running mate. Was there a. quid pro quo that in return for selection she would never move to invoke the 25th?
I agree wholly about Biden. The only way you could claim to have played a straight bat is if you maintained that, despite any outward signs to the contrary, he was sharp as a tack right up to the debates, then suddenly seemed not sufficiently switched-on to continue; and that’s simply not credible.
“Laws should be written so that henceforth this sort of behavior is criminalized.” No, the voters should see to it that these people are never again entrusted with political power. But the voters will not do that! They regard lying in politics as at most a venial sin.
Regarding Biden's Cabinet, apparently they didn't meet together very often. Like the last 2 meetings were one in Sept 2024 and one in Oct 2023. I wonder if that was by design, preventing the people who could insist on the 25th amendment from gathering in-person and comparing notes.
We used to believe that keeping secrets was impossible in the Information Age. It's astonishing how wrong that was.
The blogger (yes, "blogger") Grey Enlightenment touches on this theme alot, on just how possible - not impossible - it is to keep a secret today, even in large organizations.
I've been reached out to by press in the past (like the site The Information) to talk about Google moderation policies but I just ignored it. More people do stuff like that than most probably assume.
The effort to hide Biden’s decline is not readily comparable. It was obvious to many willing to consider the obvious signs.
Another shoe yet to drop... the Biden Crime Family. And this one should catch a lot of senior Dems, up to and including Obama and Hillary! Even if Joe skates due to decrepitude, he can be put on the stand, and the whole sordid story made public while he takes the 5th.
I don’t think you have any evidence to link Obama, let alone Hillary to it. But on the rest, I agree 100% this is another example in the EXACT same category.
The evidence came out in congressional hearings.
The fact that the evidence that has come out MAY not be enough to convict Joe Biden in a court of law (the MSM’s fig leaf rationale for not reporting on the story) is irrelevant to why it wasn’t reported on and pursued.
I think that 'undetected' is the wrong word here. They are detected just fine, but when they are reported, to the appropriate authorities, nothing gets done. It is as if we are all villagers who will no longer respond to the latest cry of 'Wolf! Wolf'.
When I first heard the story that some rich guy was inviting celebrities to his private island to have sex with underage girls, I thought the chance of this being true was vanishingly small. There was just no way, I thought, that this could be kept quiet. It had supposedly been going on for years. Some of the celebrities would notice, and when they got home they would be on the phone to the police, or the newspapers, or their publicist, or their elected officials. There is no way that the evil ones could keep a lid on this. So I didn't believe it.
But Jeffrey Epstein really did do this. And in looking into the matter, I found that many people did indeed do as I suggested. It wasn't that 'they didn't notice' but instead 'they noticed but it didn't matter'. So the lesson to be learned is that you can cover up _anything_, perhaps not forever, but for a very long time. So it is less surprising that people thought they could cover up Biden's mental state -- because coverups work. And who knows how many other ones are going on at this time?
I think that we need some serious investigation into the mechanisms involved in running a successful coverup. Asking about _how_, exactly, it gets done. Then we are likely to need a few more laws, or clarifications of laws we already have, to make sure that the people involved are prosecuted. And that whistleblowers are protected. I also think we need to strengthen the protection for whistleblowers from within law enforcement, so we can find out how much of a problem 'declined to prosecute because of political pressure' is.
I don't disagree but I'd argue that the most successful coverups aren't really coverups. If the people around Biden never talked about Biden's fitness for continuing and never much thought about it beyond maybe occasional jokes about something they witnessed Biden do, there isn't really anything to keep secret. Nobody is perpetrating a coverup when simply ignoring whatever they might see or be inclined to believe.
I don't know what to say about Epstein Island.
As for the tunnels, my memory is they were a known problem, just not the extent of the tunnels. And how would the world have reacted if Israel had addressed the tunnel problem before Oct 7?
Maybe the possibility of Oct 7 was also known but again, if you don't know when it will happen, it gets harder to address it. And I argue no matter how unprepared Israel was for this, Hamas executed it with a level of perfection very atypical for them. That is also hard to prepare for.
I don’t think that Hamas _capabilities_ were ever secret. The tunnels certainly weren’t.
Hamas _intentions_ were secret. Few people really needed to know about the October 7 raid in advance. It was nothing like a military operation. It was a large scale classic barbarian raid, with all the traditional atrocities. They merely needed small teams to let large numbers of hastily armed young men loose in southern Israel.
"We are learning now that President Biden’s incapacity was apparent early in his Administration and was clear to many people close to the President."
Really? I don't always follow the news closely but I have not heard anything. When I do a Google search, I find nothing. What do we know about Biden's condition other than conjecture based on his debate and speaking abilities? (Which are not a particularly good measure of dementia, especially for someone with his lifelong speech issues.)
Also, who exactly is "they"?
I think the common thread here is people not wanting something to be true, and so information about the world is consciously ignored. The Biden case is obviously this as people were calling out his mental decline for a long time publicly but it was just verboten to acknowledge it on the left, at least until the cultural leadership said it was ok. Likewise, the Oct 7 attack apparently (I don't know a ton about it) had numerous evidence of its coming, and more importantly there was a lack of preparedness on the part of the IDF such as bunkers without weapons. That their defenses on a known hostile border were so easily overcome by not unimaginable tactics suggests that decision makers didn't want to believe that fighting was a possibility. I very well could be wrong, but the whole thing has the feel of decision makers not wanting to believe that there are people on the other side of the wall that actively want to harm them.
The pager case is the least obvious case of the disbelieving theory. On the one hand, most of the actual scheming can take place at a distance, not within the same society as the target, so hiding the conspiracy from the targets or those who might warn them is easier. On the other hand, apparently no one in Hamas thought "Maybe we should take these things we all use apart to make sure our more technologically savvy opponents are messing with them." That strikes me as a refusal to conceive that one isn't terribly popular with more than one's prime enemy. Admittedly, that sounds a lot like saying "They are insufficiently paranoid" but, well, Hamas is kind of officially at war with most of the western world, so yea, they probably are insufficiently paranoid.
In general, most people do seem to be too unwilling to believe that others mean to do them harm. In the US cases, that is especially true of those in positions of power and authority. The official belief is that our government works for us, so people hate wrapping their head around the idea that officials are out for themselves and are often at best indifferent to our well being.
This holiday some relatives went to see movie “Wicked” which brought forward Arianna Grande’s name, which prompted Millennial relative to mutter “I think she’s the one whose concert in the UK was bombed and people were totally aware it was in the works but didn’t mention it”.
I said, well, there can surely be a lag after people report something …
“I’m pretty sure it was not reported in a timely fashion because [correctness]; however, some people were actively turning around and leaving after they saw a Muslim guy fiddling with a package”.
I can’t say whether this is truly accurate or mostly a reflection of the weight of tedious lesser examples of routine self-censorship working on the minds of a generation grown up in that atmosphere.
I kind of remember hearing of that now that you mention it. Especially in the UK I wouldn’t be inclined to push the report hard if the police didn’t seem to care, for fear I would be charged with insulting language or something. Just turning and leaving would be the rational choice. What a world our attempts to coerce kindness and tolerance has created. What a world, what a world, what a world.
I think the thought at the time (2020) was - look at the Dem’s coalition of the identities - so fragile they had to default to Old White Guy to have an electoral chance.
And yet, even given what transpired, he was still the country’s best option out of that lot, and the best choice to govern - ironically because of his age and his having one foot in a past so different from the present.
I agree with you 100% re getting elected. And remember he was the only one in the group besides Klobuchar (who was too far down in the polls to elevate) who had *any* whiff of “moderate” to him.
But your claim that he was the best choice to govern is simply preposterous. Especially with hindsight.
I thought Buttigieg had a pleasant inoffensiveness about him, seemed earnest and perhaps competent and like maybe he didn’t hate what was nice* - and his lack of national experience did not strike me as disqualifying given the status quo; but I recall someone persuaded me he was the most radical of the bunch.
I’m not sure who you liked there. Klobuchar is the kind of woman who’s nightmare fuel for me. Ambitious women usually are though.
I’ve forgotten the others.
*I think I was influenced by pictorial of a beautiful fundraiser he held in Napa.
I agree about Buttigieg. But I was solely using the scale of moderate-ness, meaning not hard left. I’ll grant you Mayor Pete seemed only at the edge of that very progressive left.
I won’t speak to your personal issues on Klobuchar.
Thank you for raising the Biden Parkinson's disgrace. I remember a cartoon flagging this issue after a Biden-Trump debate in 2020, so I agree with konshtok (below) that it was already visible. Biden was always a figurehead, willing to be controlled, possibly so he could satisfy his vanity and shield his and his family's illegal activities (e.g., Hunter pardon). The diffusion of the "social fact" would make for an interesting sociology journal article (e.g., on legacy media's collusion).
More interesting is who has actually been calling the shots (e.g., open borders, endless wars, softness on crime, etc.)? In all welfare states, the bureaucracy keeps the trains running late, while the political class has "baptists" and "bootleggers" (Yandle, 1983) setting direction on their agenda. My leading hypothesis is Obama, the first President to stay in DC and still young, but maybe it's coordinated by a Obama/Pelosi/Schumer politburo. Or some forum that lets true believer donors have a voice in the direction of the private organization that is the Democratic (and Republican) party, the members of the duopoly competing and collaborating (i.e., co-opetition) in the market for governmental control.
I usually favor incompetence over conspiracy as an explanation, but the Biden disgrace fuels the conspiracy theories and, more importantly, further undermines trust in our institutions.