VOTE BLUE AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT, BECAUSE IT DOES!

From Mock Paper Scissors:

(The transcript is here, if you would rather read it.)

I missed the interview last night, I thought it was going to be on Sunday.

I want to say right at the top that I am pretty much ride-or-die for President Handsome Joe Biden. I had low expectations for him, and he's turned out to be a president for the ages (no pun intended). He was handed a bag of merde and made a garden: fighting climate change, building the economy from the ground-up, doing all sorts of things that the Left has wanted for decades. He's been wildly successful. He's taken that merde and made gold. He's an alchemist.

We need to talk about ageism. America has a youth culture, almost a fetish for it. Once you get to be a certain age, you start becoming invisible (ask me how I know!), and our pop-culture, youth-centric world demands it. To wring out that last dollar from the Olds to buy unguents and book spa treatments/surgeries to stave off the ravages of time, our capitalists have made a fortune out of our age-related insecurities. They also manufacture those insecurities, but that's for another day.

President Handsome Joe Biden has the temerity to be old and in public.

No where in this "interview" does George Stephanopoulos cite or establish any old-age related failures of President Biden. If you are going to take the car keys away from Paw-Paw, you better establish that he's a threat to himself and others. Stephanopoulos failed; or more accurately never tried to make that case. It was a fact not in evidence.

If Biden is too old, if he is so compromised, then how do we explain everything he's accomplished? If you think he's showing signs of dementia, then you must reconcile that with the fact that no one can point to a single age-related failure he's made during his time in the Oval. I might disagree with some of his foreign policy, but that does not mean he's decrepit.

How can anyone accept his many achievements (just look at the jobs report just out!) and in the same breath say he's too old to do the job he's already doing magnificently?

President Handsome Joe Biden might be the first president who could lose his job over the vibes of being old, and looking old. And that is ageism.

UPDATE 1: As a sort of counterpoint about how the media is creating a narrative that President Handsome Joe Biden is old, look at what they are ignoring or have normalized without any protest:

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VOTE BLUE!

Don't listen to them. A lot of the chatter you see scrolling across your screens advocating for Biden to bow out of the race is pure Russian-bot-generated propaganda. Russia is afraid of Biden and you can rest assured they will do everything in their power to ensure that their useful puppet Trump is put back into office.

VOTE BLUE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. BECAUSE IT DOES!

"Citizens should not obey in advance. Much of fascism is a bluff — look at our loyal cult, listen to our outrageous language, heed our threats of violence, we are inevitable! Hitler was good at that sort of propaganda. Yet to gain power, he needed luck and the errors of others. American fascism, likewise, is far from inevitable. It, too, is largely bluff, most of it digital.

The internet is much more fascist than real life, which is discouraging. But we vote in the real world. The crucial thing is the individual decision to act, along with others, for four months, a little something each day, regardless of the atmospherics and the polls and the media and the moods."

– Timothy Snyder

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From Palmer Report:

As I touched on yesterday, the 2024 presidential election is starting to have echoes of 2016. We've got the entire media (on both sides) dishonestly whacking away at the Democratic candidate in the name of trying to manufacture ratings, even while going soft on a scandal-plagued Republican candidate because everyone already knows he's scandalous. But I think it's really important to focus on what's different this time.

The media spent every single day of the 2016 election cycle pushing false and misleading headlines about Hillary Clinton's emails. Yet none of that had any deciding impact. How can I say that? According to every expert statistical analysis that's been performed in the years since, Hillary would have won if not for the last minute Comey letter. The media's year and a half of lies about Hillary didn't hand Trump the win. That all happened solely in that final fateful week. Everything that happened prior to that week ended up being meaningless.

So here we are in 2024, and the entire media is once again intent on pushing false and misleading narratives about President Biden's fitness. Nevermind that Biden, jetlagged, short on sleep, ill, and on cold medicine, was roughly as coherent as Trump on an unusually good night. Biden is fine, Trump is the one who's deep into dementia, and so of course the media is pushing the opposite narrative for effect.

But none of this is going to matter. Why? Look at the polling averages. The 2024 election was tied within the margin of error before the debate, and it's still tied within the margin of error. Nothing changed. This means that no one out in the real world thinks that this debate mattered or that there's anything wrong with Biden. All this wall to wall fictional media hype about Biden's fitness isn't impacting the people out there who are going to do the actual voting.

This is simply going to be yet another one of those elections where the entire media lies about the Democratic candidate the entire time, and we simply have to overcome it. Remember, we did overcome it in 2016, if not for a last minute fluke. And while another fluke can happen, there's no reason to expect that it'll happen in the way it did in 2016, or that the shift will even go in the same direction this time. That's the thing about flukes: they're not predictable, and anyone who claims to be able to predict flukes is full of it.

Aside from the fact that there isn't going to be a Comey letter this time around, I believe there's a much more important difference in 2024: us. No really. You have to understand what it was like back in 2015 and 2016, when the entire media (including the beloved MSNBC) was spending every single day pushing false narratives about Hillary's emails. I was pretty much the only person trying to push back against it. I was new to this line of work and I didn't have much influence. I did what I could, but it was just me and the handful of people following me back then.

This time it's an entirely different game. There are a night and day number more people reading Palmer Report now than there were back in 2016. And that's because so many more of you are now in a place where you recognize the media's false narratives and you want to be able to push back against them effectively.

It's also not just Palmer Report this time around. In 2024 there are a number of other political analysts and activist groups who are willing to call out the media on its bullshit each day (Meidas Touch, Mueller She Wrote, Aaron Rupar, just to name a few). I don't see any of these folks as competitors. I see them as a welcome relief. This is more of what we need.

As for the Palmer Report audience and community, you're a large army at this point, and you're eager to go out and set the record straight. You're also willing to go out and do the kind of work that needs to be done in order to win any competitive election: small dollar donations, volunteer shifts, knocking on doors, phone banking, sending voter registration postcards, you name it.

So yes it's going to be different this time around, because we're different. We're better at this than we used to be, and we're more powerful than we used to be. We're not going to let the media screw up this election. We're going to fight back, work hard, and be smart, and we're going to win: Donate to Palmer Report

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I just spoke with my sister (a dyed-in-the-wool blue mainstream Democrat who was already planning on voting for Biden) after she sent me a "Happy 4th of July" text. I replied, "There's nothing good about it, Sorry. FUCK TRUMP, FUCK REPUBLICANS, FUCK THE SUPREME COURT, FUCK PROJECT 2025."

She had not heard of Project 2025. I told her to Google it. She came back, aghast. I think if more people knew of the Republican's dystopian plan for America it would cinch a Democratic President, Senate, and Congress.

VOTE BLUE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. BECAUSE IT DOES!

VOTE BLUE!

From Mock Paper Scissors:

I know I have more than a bit of a Pollyanna reputation (I can hear you guys), and I suppose I should be as sardonic as the next blogger and post some cynical nice knowing ya, democracy post given our corrupt and illegitimate Supreme Court essentially torpedo'ing the Rule of Law. (5 of the 6 Republican Justices were put in place by Republican Presidents who did not actually win: all of 'em except for Thomas, and boy-howdy, Eiron really outdid herself there!)

But I'm not going to do that.

We've been in tough times before, we will be in tough times again:

If you're about my age or older… you're familiar with this uncanny sensation of living through a moment when history turns. It's happened every few months or years since Bush v. Gore: First, Bush v. Gore itself. Then 9/11. The Bush torture regime. The collapse of the false case for the war in Iraq. The global financial crisis. The election of Barack Obama. Then of Donald Trump, with control of the Supreme Court again on the line. COVID-19. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Dobbs. And now this: The Supreme Court's whole-cloth fabrication of criminal immunity for presidents, just as the incumbent's path to re-election is closing, and his challenger flaunts dictatorial ambition undisguised.

I don't want to sound like Captain Kirk not believing in the Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario, but I do see the world as an engineer and so set-backs are problems that need to be solved. I look at times to my Civics education and have a basic understanding of how government stuff works, and of course, our American history.

The simple truth is that we legislate laws. Laws change all the time. We amend the Constitution, and we even have repealed a Constitutional Amendment. What I am getting at is that the Supreme Court is not the last word, we the people are the last word. We have the superpower to make any change we want, but we MUST vote and hold our representatives accountable. As I have said elsewhere, it is a heavy lift, but not an impossible one.

Everything we are facing is a problem with a solution, and the solution begins with us; no one is going to rescue us other than ourselves. As we've said here so many times, there is no cavalry coming, there is only us.

We vote the bastards out, up and down the ticket, and then the real work begins. IF we can get the Trifecta (House, Senate, Presidency),then  there is nothing we cannot do, including remaking the Supreme Court. As the corrupt Roberts court has blown up the tradition of stare decisis, we can toss out and over rule their obviously corrupt and un-American rulings. Our history is littered with Supreme Court decisions along the roadside of progress.

So buckle-up, it's a rough 4 months ahead, and we need to be unified and get shit done. As Ben Franklin said,

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Courage.

VOTE BLUE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS UPON IT. BECAUSE IT DOES!

The Germans in the 1930s had no idea what was coming. WE DO! History affords us that knowledge and we can stop this madness in its tracks, yet all the major media outlets are still treating this election like it's some innocuous horse race, not the difference between remaining a free (if imperfect) United States and a full-blown, nuclear-armed fascist dictatorship led by a narcissistic, delusional madmen. The country's smoke detector is going off and it seems everyone is ignoring it!

WTF is wrong with people?!?

VOTE BLUE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS UPON IT. BECAUSE IT DOES!

Dear America,

Don't do it. Don't.

You know what I'm talking about, don't give up on Joe Biden because of one bad night, one awful night. He stumbled, he mumbled, his voice was hoarse, so is that the reason to give up on him and just had the presidency to a convicted felon, sexual predator and con artist?

I say No, and you should say it, too.

Think on some things … the 81-year-old Catholic is fighting for women to have the right to make their own health care decisions, while the 78-year-old felon appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who … overturned Roe v Wade—for which The Felon said, out loud, "I did that"—… who decided that bribing government officials is really just a gratuity but being homeless is a crime … who voted to allow judges, not scientists or environmental experts decide about climate change and polluting our air and water … who can decide on drug safety … banking regulations … aviation safety …. and if you're an LGBTQ+ American and think that the right won't come for equality and marriage, think again.

Do you really want Clarence Thomas, well, actually his wife, and Sam Alito making those choices for you?

Do you want to elect a guy who has said, out loud, that he would be a dictator on Day One; who has said all he really wants to do is punish his enemies; who has told big Oil he will give them tax breaks if they support him. Does that sound like a man who cares about We The People?

I'll stand with the old guy who took on a pandemic and saw us through it; who gave America its lowest unemployment rate in fifty years … who lowered inflation more than any other country in the G7 and added more than 16 million jobs. He's working for us, and he may be a bit tired and old, but he isn't doing the job alone; a vote for Joe is a vote for his administration that will see to it that his efforts go on.

I will vote for that man and his team.

I will not vote for the man who promised to build a wall at the southern border and have Mexico pay for it, and then didn't. I will not vote for a man who promised to overturn Obamacare and give us all the greatest healthcare system ever, and then didn't; I will not vote for the man who touted his fabulous infrastructure bill and then did nothing. I will not vote for the man who claimed he won the election in 2020, and filed nearly 70 lawsuits to overturn that election, and lost every single time; I will not vote for the man who claimed that he, and not former President Barack Obama, had passed the Veterans Choice Act; I will not vote for the man who swore and that he and his campaign did not collude or cooperate with Russia, even though Robert Mueller found cooperation and explained that he did not investigate "collusion", only "conspiracy" and "coordination".

I will not vote for a rapist; I will not vote for a racist who called Nazis in Charlottesville "good people." I will not vote for a man who sexually abused and then defamed E. Jean Carroll; I will not vote for a man who p[aid off a porn start for a sexual encounter in order to win an election. I will not vote for a con artist who stole money from people at a university he named after himself.

I will not vote for the man who told us to drink bleach during COVID; who didn't tell us a flashlight could kill the virus; who told us it would be over by Spring, but by Spring we were piling up dead American bodies in refrigerator trucks outside hospitals.

I will vote for Joe Biden, a decent human being who has worked harder than any president, given the mess he inherited from The Felon, to make life better for all of us. I will vote for the man who lowered prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices; who signed gun safety legislation into law ; who oversaw more Americans getting healthcare. I will vote for the man who passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that helped us fund basic necessities like rent and groceries during the pandemic; I will vote for the man who also extended a $300 a week federal unemployment benefit for some 9.7 million people out of work during the pandemic; a man who temporarily expanded the child tax credit program, who allotted $7.25 billion for small business loans and $128 billion in grants for state educational agencies.

I will vote for the man who teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention —with scientists and doctors not GOP political hacks—to administer and track COVID-19 vaccinations across the country. I will vote for the man who passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law to repair the nation's roads, bridges and railways, bring high-speed internet to rural communities and more.

I will vote for the man who passed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and allocated $53 billion in federal funding to manufacture semiconductor chips in the U.S. instead of relying on China to produce them.

I will vote for the man who passed the Build Back Better Act, a massive social spending bill that included major health care reform, universal pre-kindergarten and paid family leave, $550 billion dedicated to combatting climate change and more, paid for in part by increased taxes for corporations and the uber rich; not from the taxes on We The people, but from the wealthiest of Americas and corporations who, under that lest president, received massive tax breaks.

I will vote for the man whose Inflation Reduction Act tackled inflation by reducing the federal deficit, promoting production of certain goods and limiting the cost of some prescription drugs; the package also included $369 billion for a climate initiative to reduce greenhouse emissions and promote lean energy technologies; $300 billion in new revenue through a corporate tax increase; $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire new agents, modernize its technology, audit the wealthy and more.

I will vote for the man who has stood up for Ukraine in its quest to be free from Russian autocracy while the GOP and the former president stand by bloodthirsty Vladimir Putin.

I will vote for the old guy who had a bad night at a debate, but who spoke from the heart and promised to keep fighting for us. And if that old guy decides he wants to step aside, I will still support him and the party that wants to work for us and not for The Felon.

And I hope America will follow suit.

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