Yves here. Biden, whether he and his party are willing to face it or not, is in the blood-in-the-water stage of fighting for survival. There is no way out of this alive, in the political sense. The media and scholars keep drumming up demands that Biden should not run in 2024.
A major aspect of the campaign’s backstabbing and twisting makes it undeniable that Biden has not only had a bad night, but has been deteriorating for a long time. Tom Neuburger offers some examples from the Biden-friendly CNN and the influential Politico
To that we can add specific warnings, from spooks, who have been in a position to keep close tabs on Biden. CIA whistleblower Sy Hersh wrote earlier this week (my emphasis):
The real shame is not only Biden’s, but the men and women around him who kept him under wraps. He is a hostage, too as he has declined rapidly in the past six months. I’ve been hearing for months about the growing isolation of the president, and his former friends in the Senate, who are finding that he can’t return their calls. Another old family friend, whose help Biden has sought on important issues since his days as vice president, told me about a terrible phone call from the president many months ago. Biden said the White House is in chaos and he needs his friend’s help. A friend said he persuaded me and then told me, laughing: “I’d rather have a root canal every day than go to work there.” His retired Senate colleague was invited by Biden to join him on a foreign trip, and the two played cards and shared a drink or two on Air Force One’s departure. The senator was barred by Biden’s staff from joining the flight home.
And another data point. Tucker’s craziness in discussing Biden’s meltdown is unwarranted. But don’t let the noise drown out his brand. Readers in comments and e-mails said the media in Europe and China were oblivious to Biden’s status, so his debate performance was not as surprising abroad as it was at home:
MUST SEE: Tucker Carlson discusses how surprised Democrats were after the debate, despite widespread talk in 2019 that Joe Biden was suffering from dementia, yet no action was taken. #tuckercarlson #biden pic.twitter.com/aWKmSjix3p
– Prince Carlton 🇺🇸 (@_PrinceCarlton_) June 30, 2024
And while the headlines in the foreign media have been largely ignored, even allowing Sky News to be part of Murdoch’s empire, this new piece is spot on:
Now for the main event.
Written by Thomas Neuburger. It was first published in the book God’s Spies
This will be very short for the holiday weekend. I’m staying with one of the two big stories of the week, the media explosion of concern about Biden’s status after years of denial.
Another big story of the week – what’s going on in the Court and how that relates to Project 2025 – we’ll save it for more detail. We touched on it briefly here, but the topic is huge.
Hint: I’m going to deviate from most people’s analysis – so I’m going to be more specific. This country is not a republic yet. But what are we?
Coupling Project 2025 with decisions from Dobbs by using Trump it gives a surprisingly clear picture of where we are headed, even with no change to Mhlali.
After years of close study, I think I finally see how all the pieces of the Right Wing fit together. It’s different, though just as bad, as what you’ve been hearing. And we’ve been this way longer than most of you have been alive.
But that’s the latest. Stay tuned.
Links
These links are all partial. They come in this previous piece.
• Carl Bernstein: Sources say concerns about Biden have been around for a year(CNN)
This is important as it relates to the White House cover-up. He doesn’t specify who knew and who didn’t, but knowledge of Biden’s diminished status is limited to a few in the know.
However, these are people, a few of them, who are very close to President Biden, who love him, who support him and who are among…
And they stand by the fact that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw, is not one thing, that there have been 15, 20 times in the last year and a half where the president has appeared in some way like he did in that. fear shows that we witnessed.
And what is so important is the people from whom this comes, and how many people close to the president know about such incidents, including journalists, who have seen some of them.
But here we see tonight [when the president gave prepared remarks]as these people say, President Biden is at his best.
However, these people who supported him, loved him, campaigned for him, and saw him regularly, said that in the past six months there have been significant cases of mental decline and physical disability.
There is more to an interview than this. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it yet. Note “including certain reporters.” This proves false.
Filed under “Gods, what a mess.”
• ‘We all empowered the state’: Dems open debate on internal Biden post (Politico)
For those wondering who is acting as the gatekeepers — collectively, “who’s running the show” — when Biden is impeached, this Politico piece calls out several key words. It’s walking on eggshells to get there, but it’s a good read.
During his presidency, a group of Joe Biden’s advisers built a protective circle around him, limiting his exposure to the media and outside counsel – an attempt to manage the public opinion of the oldest person ever to hold office and control tightly. his political work.
But inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were evident long before his collapse in last week’s debate, with the president’s top team officials growing more tightly controlled as his tenure wore on. During meetings with aides putting together official briefings to bring to Biden, some senior officials have sometimes gone to great lengths to adjust the details presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t put that in, that’ll get him fired,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,'” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not information. Because he is not a person who likes to be there when he is told. It’s very difficult, and people are afraid of him.”
That’s what opens it up. Notice the shift in the second paragraph, from the focus on “the president’s top brass” to, inexplicably, the president’s anger: “people are afraid of him.”
Apparently, Politico wanted to throw in this second opinion in the early stages, and did it without saying why. They are not the first, by the way, to comment on Biden’s anger.
As for who might be disruptive and, perhaps, serve as Biden’s regents from time to time, Politico distributes the answer in the second part of the piece (emphasis mine):
No one has done more to keep the president isolated — and protected from difficult conversations — than his wife, the first lady. Jill Bidenand sister, Valerie Biden Owens.
[…]A Democratic operative in regular contact with the White House and the campaign said the proposals could be quickly dismissed. “When I talk to him Anita [Dunn], and I say, ‘what about X?’ He is quick to say, ‘The president will not do that. No chance.’ It closes the options, yes, but also [lets] he goes quickly because they know him well.”
[…]From the first months of his tenure, Biden was carefully managed by the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernaldeputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, [Ron] Klein and others. After a largely spent campaign at his home in Delaware, the president remained in protective custody at the behest of senior staff and family, who believed it was the best way to manage the president’s health given the continued risk of Covid-19 and his chances of re-election, according to five people familiar with but not authorized to publicly discuss internal decisions.
Bernal and Tomasini, in particular, have become very close to the president and first lady. […]
In my research, the names that come up the most as a stalking group are Jill Biden, Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini. But as Politico and Bernstein point out, many others knew what was going on.
Filed under “The public must also be informed. OK? Is that right?”
The Fall of Athens and Rome
Two points before we conclude:
• When the Roman Republic fell, it was not the work of a day. It happened over time, over several generations, starting with the reforms and assassination of the Gracchi in the late second century BC, by Marius, Sulla and Caesar. Over time, the institutions themselves were changed, both by people and leaders in deadly conflicts.
We have walked more than half that way ourselves. We were a republic. We are now in transition from that. Bush v. Gore it is not Original Sin, but it is one of them, and it is accepted. Bush, you remember, was the author of our Modern Surveillance State, which has not been reversed.
We are not a republic, although many deny that fact. What are we today? Stay tuned.
Those who have access to the Great Courses “History of Ancient Rome” by the excellent Garrett Fagan should listen to the conversion story. Start with Lesson 20. You’ll see what I mean about changing institutions with no way back.
• A lesson learned by the Athenian Empire in its (literally) ill-advised war with Sparta was simple: You cannot have a regime abroad and democracy at home. It just can’t be done. Plato was desperate for democracy, having seen its downfall, another reason he wrote The Republic.
Music
Another cool one is Dave Brubeck. This piece grows out of a beautiful song he wrote called “The Brandenburg Gate.” (YouTube can provide several live versions of that.)
This version is “Brandenburg Gate Revisited”, played by a quartet with full orchestration. Did you know that Brubeck was trained by age? He studied under Darius Milhaud. It appears in this clip.
Click the image to play, or use the link above. Enjoy.
