The Democrats have given themselves an impossible problem.
If Biden runs and loses to Trump, it will be their fault for letting him run when he was clearly too old, but if they force him to step aside and then lose, it will be their fault for replacing Biden with an untested candidate.
This problem will be solved by Trump losing. And if he wins it's a problem that will have to jostle for attention amidst a dozen rather more serious ones.
That explains the denialism. Trump must lose, but he looks likely to win...
The scale of Democrat denial is quite something
An actual tweet by a Dem activist
"This press conference showed that Biden is a forceful and competent leader.
As a journalist, if your takeaway is that he misspoke by saying “Mexico” instead of “Egypt” while lucidly describing the complexities of securing the release of hostages— you’re part of the problem."
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
It must be one of the worst ways to spend your final years, arguably worse than actually having dementia?
Liike @Flatlander's MIL, my Mum will occasionally have apparently lucid moments when she says things like "I wish I was dead", or "just put me in a home so I can die"
WTF are you meant to do with that? She does have other lucid moments when she seems reasonably happy. I cling on to those
A bitter irony is that many years ago she said to me (about some batty old relative) "if I ever get like that, please smother me with a cushion"
My father has been pointing out how many dementia care homes have been going up in his local area. This is something that could be a real drag on the economy in the coming years. The cost of providing care is enormous.
► The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said.
► He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile.
► He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots.
It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.
Of those I think only the first is news / unexpected. The idea that Haley was actually going to give him a run for his money was a joke, and the idea that SCOTUS was going to allow him to not be on the ballot was also highly unlikely.
But the released details on Biden will certainly sting. And we've still got 9 months to go until polling day - I cannot seem Biden improving in that time (whereas Trump does sometimes put on a good performance, even if he is still clearly a clown).
Yes, a lot of people are forgetting that there is now an actual official report, saying Biden is basically senile. This is not gossip or snide commentary or attack lines from GOP pundits, this is a legal dude who interviewed Biden and says he is not fit for trial, as he can plead senility and would be acquitted. Yet he's fit to be POTUS for another term?
Incredibly damning, and there is no way round it. The details in the report are excruciating
Also, dementia worsens. It is "progressive". Biden is not going to improve, or even stay where he is, he will get even worse, week after week
Untenable, surely
It's a political hit job. But an undeniably effective one.
Trump has classified documents at Mar a Lago: "It's a disgrace. He's unfit to be President." Biden has classified documents in his garage: "It's a political hit job."
Trump refused to hand them back, and lied about them.
Had he behaved as Biden did, there would never have been an indictment, as you well know.
The political hit job is the extended disquisition on the state of Biden's health. That goes way beyond Hur's remit.
If you want to draw more daft comparisons, tell me that a President Trump would allow his Attorney General to appoint a Democrat as a special investigator to investigate him (or indeed his son).
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
► The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said.
► He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile.
► He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots.
It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.
Of those I think only the first is news / unexpected. The idea that Haley was actually going to give him a run for his money was a joke, and the idea that SCOTUS was going to allow him to not be on the ballot was also highly unlikely.
But the released details on Biden will certainly sting. And we've still got 9 months to go until polling day - I cannot seem Biden improving in that time (whereas Trump does sometimes put on a good performance, even if he is still clearly a clown).
Minor though the Virgin Islands primary is, AIUI, Haley had put a lot of effort into it while Trump hadn’t. There was talk of a win there for Haley… and she was nowhere.
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
► The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said.
► He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile.
► He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots.
It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.
Of those I think only the first is news / unexpected. The idea that Haley was actually going to give him a run for his money was a joke, and the idea that SCOTUS was going to allow him to not be on the ballot was also highly unlikely.
But the released details on Biden will certainly sting. And we've still got 9 months to go until polling day - I cannot seem Biden improving in that time (whereas Trump does sometimes put on a good performance, even if he is still clearly a clown).
Yes, a lot of people are forgetting that there is now an actual official report, saying Biden is basically senile. This is not gossip or snide commentary or attack lines from GOP pundits, this is a legal dude who interviewed Biden and says he is not fit for trial, as he can plead senility and would be acquitted. Yet he's fit to be POTUS for another term?
Incredibly damning, and there is no way round it. The details in the report are excruciating
Also, dementia worsens. It is "progressive". Biden is not going to improve, or even stay where he is, he will get even worse, week after week
Untenable, surely
It's a political hit job. But an undeniably effective one.
Trump has classified documents at Mar a Lago: "It's a disgrace. He's unfit to be President." Biden has classified documents in his garage: "It's a political hit job."
Trump refused to hand them back, and lied about them.
Had he behaved as Biden did, there would never have been an indictment, as you well know.
The political hit job is the extended disquisition on the state of Biden's health. That goes way beyond Hur's remit.
If you want to draw more daft comparisons, tell me that a President Trump would allow his Attorney General to appoint a Democrat as a special investigator to investigate him (or indeed his son).
But the ONLY reason Biden is not being prosecuted, for illegally storing classified documents, is because he is too senile to stand trial
That's not a political hit job, that's a legal judgement
It's really not 'the only reason', and nowhere in the report does it say that.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
He's been saying this for a while. As far as I can make out based on some excellent podcasts (War on the Rocks and Geopolitics Decanted) what actually happened was that there was a negotiation, but it was stuck on what the Russians euphemistically called "neutrality". Their demand was that there be no more foreign military support for Ukraine, and western-supplied weapons be removed. Since the only place Ukraine was going to get weapons to defend themselves was from the west, this was effectively a demand that Ukraine demilitarize.
This was happening in April, 2022, after Putin had attempted a full invasion of Ukraine and been partially repelled. They'd managed to get the Russians away from Kiev, and discovered the horrific war crimes at Bucha. Previously there had been multiple deals with Russia that Russia had broken, and after they invaded Crimea they'd said they had no intention of invading the rest of Ukraine. Initially (before the Ukrainians inflicted a partial defeat on them) they'd been making much more extensive demands, for example that the elected leaders of Ukraine be handed over and put on trial. So obviously if Ukraine disarmed it wouldn't be long before Putin came back for the rest of the country and tried again to do what he'd just failed to do.
It seems to be true that when Boris Johnson visited Kiev he told them that they'd be absolutely barking mad to do a deal with Russia on those terms. But not having cornflakes for brains, the Ukrainians already knew this.
It’s also the issue of agency. Putin & Co. deny that Ukraine exists.
To them it’s West Russian, with False Consciousness among the Right People. The Wrong People will be deleted when normality is restored with the return of Ukraine to Mother Russia. And the Right People de-brainwashed.
So Ukraine must be a puppet of other, Real Countries.
Historically Ukraine had been known as Little Russia cf. Tchaikovsky symphony no. 2
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
"“We listened to them, and we realized that these are not people sent for talks but for our capitulation,” a senior Ukrainian negotiator recalled, the Wall Street Journal reported."
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
Can't claim to have watched every minute of Putin's two hour session with Carlson but a couple of mini takes. Putin starts the session with "If I may I'll spend 30 seconds covering the history. Half an hour later he had got to the 19th Century having started in the 8th Century. Tucker finally gets in a weak "That's very interesting". Which in a way it is because Putin seems genuinely motivated by historical grievance.
The look on Tucker's face when Putin says "You are" in response to who cut Nordstream. ("You will leave for the Siberian work camp following this interview. Ha! Only joking")
A coup for Carlson to get Putin but I have a feeling it didn't turn out exactly as he hoped. Putin isn't one of them. He's a highly focused spy chief and dictator while MAGA is self indulgence.
Yeah, I spent only a few minutes skipping through it, so maybe I missed some of the better bits - but from what I saw it was deathly dull with Putin doing his hard-faced bulldozer routine, and Carlson mostly looking lost.
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
The two most recent polls have her 8 and 13 pts behind Trump.
Kamala "blowjob" Harris as candidate. Interesting.
Is that, er, supposed to be an insult? I'd imagine that most of the other potential candidates will have had oral sex at some point in their lives, too.
It's misogyny. Which is what drives much of the antipathy towards Harris. Ditto with HRC.
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and their current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
The two most recent polls have her 8 and 13 pts behind Trump.
Kamala "blowjob" Harris as candidate. Interesting.
Is that, er, supposed to be an insult? I'd imagine that most of the other potential candidates will have had oral sex at some point in their lives, too.
It's misogyny. Which is what drives much of the antipathy towards Harris. Ditto with HRC.
What drives the antipathy towards Harris is that shes useless.
The Democrats have given themselves an impossible problem.
If Biden runs and loses to Trump, it will be their fault for letting him run when he was clearly too old, but if they force him to step aside and then lose, it will be their fault for replacing Biden with an untested candidate.
This problem will be solved by Trump losing. And if he wins it's a problem that will have to jostle for attention amidst a dozen rather more serious ones.
That explains the denialism. Trump must lose, but he looks likely to win...
Well none from me - but there's not much wrong with the sentiment. My only quibble with it is I don't think he's likely to win.
Can't claim to have watched every minute of Putin's two hour session with Carlson but a couple of mini takes. Putin starts the session with "If I may I'll spend 30 seconds covering the history. Half an hour later he had got to the 19th Century having started in the 8th Century. Tucker finally gets in a weak "That's very interesting". Which in a way it is because Putin seems genuinely motivated by historical grievance.
The look on Tucker's face when Putin says "You are" in response to who cut Nordstream. ("You will leave for the Siberian work camp following this interview. Ha! Only joking")
A coup for Carlson to get Putin but I have a feeling it didn't turn out exactly as he hoped. Putin isn't one of them. He's a highly focused spy chief and dictator while MAGA is self indulgence.
Yeah, I spent only a few minutes skipping through it, so maybe I missed some of the better bits - but from what I saw it was deathly dull with Putin doing his hard-faced bulldozer routine, and Carlson mostly looking lost.
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
Pointing out the obvious. If Biden is not capable of doing the job, that will presumably become apparent during the campaign, and consequently he will not be elected. Given that, shouldn't we be piling into Trump? Somebody has to win the election, and fantasies about Harris or Obama M should be put aside.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
It must be one of the worst ways to spend your final years, arguably worse than actually having dementia?
Liike @Flatlander's MIL, my Mum will occasionally have apparently lucid moments when she says things like "I wish I was dead", or "just put me in a home so I can die"
WTF are you meant to do with that? She does have other lucid moments when she seems reasonably happy. I cling on to those
A bitter irony is that many years ago she said to me (about some batty old relative) "if I ever get like that, please smother me with a cushion"
The main thing about geriatric decline is that pretty much everyone instinctively knows it’s a downward curve. In a year’s time Biden may only be a bit more forgetful, or he might be incapable of speech and being spoonfed mashed banana. Either way he won’t be as good as he is now, at this moment (which is not very good tbh), and a US election is traditionally the time when voters consider the next four years. Four years is an awfully long time in the life of an elderly person on the downward slope.
Biden’s angry news conference is an indication of diminution of political judgment. The smart move would have been to issue a bland statement while giving a massive sigh of relief that there was no prosecution. I have a terrible feeling that Joe blew his top and told his advisors fuck it, he was going to show these pesky assholes that he’s TOTALLY IN CONTROL.
Can't claim to have watched every minute of Putin's two hour session with Carlson but a couple of mini takes. Putin starts the session with "If I may I'll spend 30 seconds covering the history. Half an hour later he had got to the 19th Century having started in the 8th Century. Tucker finally gets in a weak "That's very interesting". Which in a way it is because Putin seems genuinely motivated by historical grievance.
The look on Tucker's face when Putin says "You are" in response to who cut Nordstream. ("You will leave for the Siberian work camp following this interview. Ha! Only joking")
A coup for Carlson to get Putin but I have a feeling it didn't turn out exactly as he hoped. Putin isn't one of them. He's a highly focused spy chief and dictator while MAGA is self indulgence.
Yeah, I spent only a few minutes skipping through it, so maybe I missed some of the better bits - but from what I saw it was deathly dull with Putin doing his hard-faced bulldozer routine, and Carlson mostly looking lost.
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
I cant imagine more than a couple of million sat through the whole 2 hours. Then maybe another 5 to 10 million watched lengthy segments but not the whole thing.
The Democrats have given themselves an impossible problem.
If Biden runs and loses to Trump, it will be their fault for letting him run when he was clearly too old, but if they force him to step aside and then lose, it will be their fault for replacing Biden with an untested candidate.
This problem will be solved by Trump losing. And if he wins it's a problem that will have to jostle for attention amidst a dozen rather more serious ones.
That explains the denialism. Trump must lose, but he looks likely to win...
Well none from me - but there's not much wrong with the sentiment. My only quibble with it is I don't think he's likely to win.
Before yesterday's stuff, I'd have been inclined to agree. But if the democrats turn the election into a referendum on Trump, I fear it won't go well for them.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
Yes. The stress, the responsibility, the guilt, the diminished life. At least it shouldn't be that sort of timeframe in our case with her being 88. But even a half of that isn't a great thing to contemplate. There's no bright side really.
Pointing out the obvious. If Biden is not capable of doing the job, that will presumably become apparent during the campaign, and consequently he will not be elected. Given that, shouldn't we be piling into Trump? Somebody has to win the election, and fantasies about Harris or Obama M should be put aside.
The flaw in that even if you accept the premise that Biden can't do the job is that Trump is obviously also not capable of doing the job. It's a stoppable force meeting a movable object.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
You have a classic case of Boris Derangement Syndrome.
When has Johnson ever sucked up to Putin? He previously compared letting Russia host the World Cup to the Hitler Olympics.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
It must be one of the worst ways to spend your final years, arguably worse than actually having dementia?
Liike @Flatlander's MIL, my Mum will occasionally have apparently lucid moments when she says things like "I wish I was dead", or "just put me in a home so I can die"
WTF are you meant to do with that? She does have other lucid moments when she seems reasonably happy. I cling on to those
A bitter irony is that many years ago she said to me (about some batty old relative) "if I ever get like that, please smother me with a cushion"
Yes. Same. My MIL had quite strong views on this and was very anti-religion and the idea that it should be 'God's choice' when you die. She would 100% have sent herself to Switzerland. I think deep down she's annoyed about being kept going.
But because she is deemed not to have the mental capacity to make her own choice, we are where we are. You do your best but it really is soul destroying.
Like your mum, she was treated for a different disease (breast cancer) about 10-15 years ago and we also wonder what for at times.
Given the statistics, it won't be long before pretty much half the nation is dealing with this in one way or another. There needs to be a better plan.
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and their current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
Pointing out the obvious. If Biden is not capable of doing the job, that will presumably become apparent during the campaign, and consequently he will not be elected. Given that, shouldn't we be piling into Trump? Somebody has to win the election, and fantasies about Harris or Obama M should be put aside.
I saw an interview of his yesterday and thought I’d lay him, assuming he was at 6/4 or whatever, but he was 3/1
29% chance it won’t be either of the old boys according to Betfair
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
It must be one of the worst ways to spend your final years, arguably worse than actually having dementia?
Liike @Flatlander's MIL, my Mum will occasionally have apparently lucid moments when she says things like "I wish I was dead", or "just put me in a home so I can die"
WTF are you meant to do with that? She does have other lucid moments when she seems reasonably happy. I cling on to those
A bitter irony is that many years ago she said to me (about some batty old relative) "if I ever get like that, please smother me with a cushion"
The main thing about geriatric decline is that pretty much everyone instinctively knows it’s a downward curve. In a year’s time Biden may only be a bit more forgetful, or he might be incapable of speech and being spoonfed mashed banana. Either way he won’t be as good as he is now, at this moment (which is not very good tbh), and a US election is traditionally the time when voters consider the next four years. Four years is an awfully long time in the life of an elderly person on the downward slope.
Biden’s angry news conference is an indication of diminution of political judgment. The smart move would have been to issue a bland statement while giving a massive sigh of relief that there was no prosecution. I have a terrible feeling that Joe blew his top and told his advisors fuck it, he was going to show these pesky assholes that he’s TOTALLY IN CONTROL.
It feels to me like Biden's deterioration is actually accelerating
He's been doddery for a long time, and made strange remarks and forgotten stuff, throughout his first term
But some of the most recent Biden statements- like the one I linked below - are excruciating to watch, it feels voyeuristic, like watching the lunatics acting out in Bedlam
That's new, and not good. Who is going to vote for four more years of absolutely agonising TV, hoping your president doesn't fall over and start dribbling onto Justin Trudeau's loafers?
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and there current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
Because the conservative electoral contract was specifically with the boomers at the expense of every single other generational cohort. You vote us in and we will: block the construction of houses so the real estate you bought in 1983 for the value of a packet of crisps will explode in value and provide you unlimited speculative income. At the same time we won't tax you of that income but will impoverish everybody else so you can afford a second home with your winnings to rent out. It has been the party and government for the biggest minority of voters. This has created HUGE imbalances not seen elsewhere. As the boomers have aged the tory party has lost interest in business and economy as the majority of their voters are pensioners outside the job market. It has also shifted the party towards toxic nostalgia and culture wars with younger generations. That gerontocracy could have gone on forever, except humans don't live forever. The millenials became biggest voting segment in 2018 and the boomers are now in terminal decline. The tories will have to find a way to appeal to millenials before they can get back in power. Labour will win this time, and in 5 and 10 years there will be much much fewer boomers around.... that whole political agenda is finished... and the numbers are locked in with newtonian certainty.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
It's pretty horrible for the partner. My mother had about a decade of it with my father.
Yes. The stress, the responsibility, the guilt, the diminished life. At least it shouldn't be that sort of timeframe in our case with her being 88. But even a half of that isn't a great thing to contemplate. There's no bright side really.
All the best to you. It was a pretty tough decade for the whole family.
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
Watching that again, I'm struck by Biden using the phrase "over the top" to describe some proposals from Hamas, in a way that doesn't make much sense, because that's exactly the phrase he used yesterday to describe Israel's response in Gaza. I think he must have fumbled the talking point the first time.
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
Watching that again, I'm struck by Biden using the phrase "over the top" to describe some proposals from Hamas, in a way that doesn't make much sense, because that's exactly the phrase he used yesterday to describe Israel's response in Gaza. I think he must have fumbled the talking point the first time.
Again, my Mum does this. She has comforting phrases that she repeats
The problem for the Dems is if they come out more widely for Biden to stand down and he refuses. You essentially have gifted Trump loads of attack lines and are even more likely to lose the election .
So many are just stuck hoping he’ll eventually do the right thing .
Well, he does lead a party whose pet philosopher talked openly of creating a Russian Fascism.
Poland’s *existence* was offensive to German ultra-nationalists (not just Hitler, incidentally) since it contained large chunks of land that they believed were part of Sacred Germany.
The problem for the Dems is if they come out more widely for Biden to stand down and he refuses. You essentially have gifted Trump loads of attack lines and are even more likely to lose the election .
So many are just stuck hoping he’ll eventually do the right thing .
But they don't have to do it all publicly, do they?
They need some cloak and dagger assassin, but in a nice way
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
Sympathies right back at you. It is a pretty horrific illness. It is terrible to say, but it might have been better if my poor Mum had keeled over with a heart attack a few years back (she's had a pacemaker for a decade). But we are where we are
The only saving grace for my Mum is that her partner also has dementia and is losing the plot at about the same pace, and they are in nice sheltered housing. So they are kind of sinking together, half aware of things
To be sane and lucid, like your father, and forced to care for a demented spouse, God that's tough
One reason I am sure Biden has dementia is his way of interweaving real stories (eg about his dead son Beau) with clear confabulations (Beau did not die in Fallujah), constructing a new reality impromptu, for no obvious reason. My mum does this constantly
I think it is the brain replacing missing memories, in a kind of panic, to create any old narrative, even if obviously bogus. Very sad
No that's not a terrible thing to think or say. I'm not wishing a long drawn out decline on my Mum. However calling people with AD "demented" - this, whilst no lie, isn't a great innovation imo. Still, you're the writer.
Joe and "the journey"? Is he on it? If so where? I truly don't know. There's not enough in the public domain for me to say. Certainly not enough to be issuing a firm diagnosis. But ok, you clearly feel you can.
Wes Streeting needs to be front and centre of Lab's election campaign.
He's a top class communicator with last night's QT as just one example.
I only saw the first part of QT and thought he was a bit ranty to be honest.
He might well have had something to rant about but I'd prefer to hear positive ideas than complaints about how sh*t things are.
I think that having him show a bit of anger works quite well, especially when tempered by having SKS as an older, wiser, calmer head as leader. His answer to the green plan question was a proper masterclass in handling a QT-like situation.
SKS, Rayner, Streeting, Reeves. Labour are very lucky in how well the personalities of their current top performers complement each other.
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
Watching that again, I'm struck by Biden using the phrase "over the top" to describe some proposals from Hamas, in a way that doesn't make much sense, because that's exactly the phrase he used yesterday to describe Israel's response in Gaza. I think he must have fumbled the talking point the first time.
Again, my Mum does this. She has comforting phrases that she repeats
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and there current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
Because the conservative electoral contract was specifically with the boomers at the expense of every single other generational cohort. You vote us in and we will: block the construction of houses so the real estate you bought in 1983 for the value of a packet of crisps will explode in value and provide you unlimited speculative income. At the same time we won't tax you of that income but will impoverish everybody else so you can afford a second home with your winnings to rent out. It has been the party and government for the biggest minority of voters. This has created HUGE imbalances not seen elsewhere. As the boomers have aged the tory party has lost interest in business and economy as the majority of their voters are pensioners outside the job market. It has also shifted the party towards toxic nostalgia and culture wars with younger generations. That gerontocracy could have gone on forever, except humans don't live forever. The millenials became biggest voting segment in 2018 and the boomers are now in terminal decline. The tories will have to find a way to appeal to millenials before they can get back in power. Labour will win this time, and in 5 and 10 years there will be much much fewer boomers around.... that whole political agenda is finished... and the numbers are locked in with newtonian certainty.
You have hit the nail on the head here.
I consider myself right-leaning, economically dry, pro-business, but extremely socially liberal. The modern Conservative party has nothing to offer me. In fact, I struggle to think what it offers to anyone under the age of 65. Surely, at this point, even most boomers can see the economic harm wrought on their children and in some cases their grandchildren, and realise that the current rentier model is unsustainable and has created such a divide in society that opportunity essentially no longer exists for younger generations.
So a moderate, pro-business, New Labour style party is something I can vote for. Whether or not Starmer and Labour 2024 can deliver that, I don't know. But I do know that the Conservatives aren't delivering it, and haven't for some time.
Since 2010, we have seen stagnant incomes, low productivity, an over-reliance on immigration without either a cost-benefit analysis of the economic effects, or an adequate infrastructure building programme to accommodate the massive increase in population, or even any consideration of how that affects the fabric of society and the social contract. The New Labour era looks like halcyon days in comparison.
You could argue that many of these factors are down to the global economy, but the paucity of answers for how to deal with them and the continued subservience to vested interests such as rich homeowners and the economically inactive elderly are entirely down to the Conservatives.
Looking at that Biden press conference, it seems pretty clear to me that he can't possibly be the candidate in November. The question is whether he drops out now or before the convention.
It will be interesting to see how Democrat voters react. The next primary is Michigan on Feb 27th. The options will be Biden, Dean Phillips or uncommitted (I guess similar to "none of these candidates" that Haley lost to in Nevada).
Several Muslim activists have already been campaigning for 'uncommitted' due to the war in Gaza, and Michigan has a relatively large Arab-American population.
Wes Streeting needs to be front and centre of Lab's election campaign.
He's a top class communicator with last night's QT as just one example.
I only saw the first part of QT and thought he was a bit ranty to be honest.
He might well have had something to rant about but I'd prefer to hear positive ideas than complaints about how sh*t things are.
I think that having him show a bit of anger works quite well, especially when tempered by having SKS as an older, wiser, calmer head as leader. His answer to the green plan question was a proper masterclass in handling a QT-like situation.
SKS, Rayner, Streeting, Reeves. Labour are very lucky in how well the personalities of their current top performers complement each other.
You must be kidding, Sir Keir’s temper is never far from the surface when he’s being asked difficult questions
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
Sympathies right back at you. It is a pretty horrific illness. It is terrible to say, but it might have been better if my poor Mum had keeled over with a heart attack a few years back (she's had a pacemaker for a decade). But we are where we are
The only saving grace for my Mum is that her partner also has dementia and is losing the plot at about the same pace, and they are in nice sheltered housing. So they are kind of sinking together, half aware of things
To be sane and lucid, like your father, and forced to care for a demented spouse, God that's tough
One reason I am sure Biden has dementia is his way of interweaving real stories (eg about his dead son Beau) with clear confabulations (Beau did not die in Fallujah), constructing a new reality impromptu, for no obvious reason. My mum does this constantly
I think it is the brain replacing missing memories, in a kind of panic, to create any old narrative, even if obviously bogus. Very sad
No that's not a terrible thing to think or say. I'm not wishing a long drawn out decline on my Mum. However calling people with AD "demented" - this, whilst no lie, isn't a great innovation imo. Still, you're the writer.
Joe and "the journey"? Is he on it? If so where? I truly don't know. There's not enough in the public domain for me to say. Certainly not enough to be issuing a firm diagnosis. But ok, you clearly feel you can.
Part of the reason is that I am engaged on a project which analyses psychopathologies - including dementia (but also many others). And I have met a few experts in the field. This isn't JUST me basing it on my poor old mum or granny in law
I wouldn't speculate in this slightly unseemly way about a random citizen, however this guy is POTUS, and it is quite important to know what is wrong with him. Because if it IS dementia then we know that it is progressive, incurable and could get much worse very quickly, to the extent he will have to leave office (even if he won't quit now). That is a pretty vital thing to know when you are considering electing the dude for another four years as the most powerful man in the world. It's like knowing if he has terminal brain cancer, the voting public has a right to this information - isn't that written into the US Constitution?
I am not really sure how someone can argue Biden hasn’t suffered some form of cognitive decline. The signs have been there to see for a while.
There does seem to be a tendency from some quarters not to see it, or explain it away, or attempt to sweep it under the carpet. This weird emperors new clothes ritual is getting harder and harder to sustain.
Now that is a separate issue from the election and Donald Trump. I believe Biden beats Trump in a matchup, and I actually think his administration has been pretty decent. But I understand why American voters feel uneasy, and why they would be wary of giving Biden another term. We all know the alternative is Trump, which is bad news, but they are poorly served by both candidates, if we are honest.
So I think he should go, because I think America needs a chance to renew itself with a new generation of leadership.
The problem for the Dems is if they come out more widely for Biden to stand down and he refuses. You essentially have gifted Trump loads of attack lines and are even more likely to lose the election .
So many are just stuck hoping he’ll eventually do the right thing .
Of course, they (the upper echelons of the Democrat machine) know better than anyone how fucked Biden is but the action of attempting to remove him is so awful they preferred the deferred awfulness of doing nothing about it.
Here is Biden talking "lucidly" about the hostage situation in Gaza
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going. It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
Watching that again, I'm struck by Biden using the phrase "over the top" to describe some proposals from Hamas, in a way that doesn't make much sense, because that's exactly the phrase he used yesterday to describe Israel's response in Gaza. I think he must have fumbled the talking point the first time.
Again, my Mum does this. She has comforting phrases that she repeats
"Furthermore, fears that generous aid during the pandemic would undermine America’s work ethic — that adults would leave the labor force and never come back — proved totally wrong. A new paper from the San Francisco Fed is titled “Why Is Prime-Age Labor Force Participation So High?” It notes that Americans between 25 and 54 are more likely to be in the work force now than they were at any time since the early 2000s."
Not really interested in the Mirror phone-hacking saga, but please wake me up if it gets to the point of Piers Morgan being sent to jail, so I can crack open the champagne.
The Democrats have given themselves an impossible problem.
If Biden runs and loses to Trump, it will be their fault for letting him run when he was clearly too old, but if they force him to step aside and then lose, it will be their fault for replacing Biden with an untested candidate.
This problem will be solved by Trump losing. And if he wins it's a problem that will have to jostle for attention amidst a dozen rather more serious ones.
That explains the denialism. Trump must lose, but he looks likely to win...
Well none from me - but there's not much wrong with the sentiment. My only quibble with it is I don't think he's likely to win.
Before yesterday's stuff, I'd have been inclined to agree. But if the democrats turn the election into a referendum on Trump, I fear it won't go well for them.
Yes they need to sell Biden's record as well as pointing up the risk and horror of the alternative. They probably can't get much mileage from age and frailty (for obvious reasons) but there's plenty else to expose about Trump.
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
► The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said.
► He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile.
► He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots.
It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.
Of those I think only the first is news / unexpected. The idea that Haley was actually going to give him a run for his money was a joke, and the idea that SCOTUS was going to allow him to not be on the ballot was also highly unlikely.
But the released details on Biden will certainly sting. And we've still got 9 months to go until polling day - I cannot seem Biden improving in that time (whereas Trump does sometimes put on a good performance, even if he is still clearly a clown).
Yes, a lot of people are forgetting that there is now an actual official report, saying Biden is basically senile. This is not gossip or snide commentary or attack lines from GOP pundits, this is a legal dude who interviewed Biden and says he is not fit for trial, as he can plead senility and would be acquitted. Yet he's fit to be POTUS for another term?
Incredibly damning, and there is no way round it. The details in the report are excruciating
Also, dementia worsens. It is "progressive". Biden is not going to improve, or even stay where he is, he will get even worse, week after week
Untenable, surely
It's a political hit job. But an undeniably effective one.
Trump has classified documents at Mar a Lago: "It's a disgrace. He's unfit to be President." Biden has classified documents in his garage: "It's a political hit job."
Trump refused to hand them back, and lied about them.
Had he behaved as Biden did, there would never have been an indictment, as you well know.
The political hit job is the extended disquisition on the state of Biden's health. That goes way beyond Hur's remit.
If you want to draw more daft comparisons, tell me that a President Trump would allow his Attorney General to appoint a Democrat as a special investigator to investigate him (or indeed his son).
It's great for Biden that he can't ever be accused of lying ever again, because he can just claim senility and apparently that's somehow better for the country.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
You have a classic case of Boris Derangement Syndrome.
When has Johnson ever sucked up to Putin? He previously compared letting Russia host the World Cup to the Hitler Olympics.
There’s a longstanding commentary from the American right, that there was a chance of “peace” early on in the war, but Johnson went to Kiev to tell Zelensky to fight on.
The reality was that any “peace” at that point, was capitulation to the Russians on current territory, not long after Russia had conceded a whole load of territory itself, and with the potential for the war to be over in Ukraine’s favour within weeks.
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
Nah - the outcome was that couldn't be decided by a court, but what could be decided is that his wife who was giving him prescriptions would have to lose her license and stop practicing medicine.
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
MS. I don't remember there being a thing about his mental faculties.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
The fact that he was so compromised and potentially tainted by his top level russian contacts (remember the visit to Italy when he shook loose his security?) is of course why Johnson had to pull his finger out when the Ukraine issue broke.
Given how dirty the GOP/MAGA team play - eg this Hur 'report' - do people think there's value @ 10 in Biden being impeached?
Max giggles for them would be to find a spurious reason to bar him in a red state from standing due to dementia and take it through the courts. Obviously with the intention of eventually losing but keeping Bidens mental state front and centre and creating another false equivalance.
Wes Streeting needs to be front and centre of Lab's election campaign.
He's a top class communicator with last night's QT as just one example.
The man who can never stop talking about how pleased he is to have the opportunity to sell off bits of the NHS? Sure fire way to make SKS's incoming government even more unpopular.
I admire your persistence. Will you keep this up for the entire life of the Starmer premiership (I'm guessing circa 10 years)?
A pop or two every day?
I have no doubt the material will be there for you to do it but it does require dedication. And to what end? It'll make not a blind bit of difference.
Remember Carlotta's obsession with Scottish trans shit? That was 10x a day for two and half years. Still the gold standard in single subject off topic shitposting and unlikely ever to be surpassed.
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
MS. I don't remember there being a thing about his mental faculties.
It was a long time ago. A more innocent era...
I am sure I recall one character saying the Prez has to tell voters of relevant medical problems (relevant to his capability to do the job)
Can't claim to have watched every minute of Putin's two hour session with Carlson but a couple of mini takes. Putin starts the session with "If I may I'll spend 30 seconds covering the history. Half an hour later he had got to the 19th Century having started in the 8th Century. Tucker finally gets in a weak "That's very interesting". Which in a way it is because Putin seems genuinely motivated by historical grievance.
The look on Tucker's face when Putin says "You are" in response to who cut Nordstream. ("You will leave for the Siberian work camp following this interview. Ha! Only joking")
A coup for Carlson to get Putin but I have a feeling it didn't turn out exactly as he hoped. Putin isn't one of them. He's a highly focused spy chief and dictator while MAGA is self indulgence.
Yeah, I spent only a few minutes skipping through it, so maybe I missed some of the better bits - but from what I saw it was deathly dull with Putin doing his hard-faced bulldozer routine, and Carlson mostly looking lost.
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
I cant imagine more than a couple of million sat through the whole 2 hours. Then maybe another 5 to 10 million watched lengthy segments but not the whole thing.
There's no way that anything like that many will have sat through the whole thing. It wouldn't even have made good background watching whilst doing something else.
As for watching lengthy segments... really? Which lengthy segments are worth watching? Were there any? And even if there were, you can't even give me a link to them since Twitter's basic video player is so poor.
Sure, plenty of people will see clips once others have done the work of finding the best bits and uploading them to youtube or wherever. But, right now, absolutely no-one is excitedly posting "hey, seek to around 84m37s, and watch the 15 minute segment that follows - it's really interesting!"
Lol, Prince Regent Harry would be hilarious - and again, could add a lot of otherwise pro monarchy people onto the republican side. Also, who else is there? Andrew? lol once more
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
The fact that he was so compromised and potentially tainted by his top level russian contacts (remember the visit to Italy when he shook loose his security?) is of course why Johnson had to pull his finger out when the Ukraine issue broke.
Russia's long-term strategy is to break up Western unity any which way. Brexit was one (thanks, Johnson); mass migration is another (thanks, Assad); US isolation is another (thanks, Trump). Every useful idiot has a role to play.
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
MS. I don't remember there being a thing about his mental faculties.
It was a long time ago. A more innocent era...
I am sure I recall one character saying the Prez has to tell voters of relevant medical problems (relevant to his capability to do the job)
But
1. It was a drama
and
2. I might have senility now, like my Mum. Hey ho
Some people argued it was a moral duty, but not a legal one.
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
The fact that he was so compromised and potentially tainted by his top level russian contacts (remember the visit to Italy when he shook loose his security?) is of course why Johnson had to pull his finger out when the Ukraine issue broke.
You'll post nonsence like that and then in the next breath say that the problem is that people believe too many conspiracy theories.
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and their current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
SNP's lead? Given all the posts we see from Scotch experts on here on SNP troubles, I assumed they were at (England) Tory levels of support!
ETA: And Starner is some senior SNP bod who reacted to the falling poll lead news with 'God!' ?
ETA2: Oh, and first like, um, the SNP?
Agree, this is a good poll for the SNP not Labour. Their leadership chaos not been in the news so much recently possibly having an impact along with them benefitting from Labours position on the Israel-Palestinian war. Would expect it to be closer by the GE.
On the other hand, there's more to worry about for Slab in terms of London HQ and their overlord SKS. Labour in Scotland have been pretending to be a leftie party - the Rutherglen by election was a prize example of adopting SNP policies for expedience. The more attention SKS gets and the more he trims his sails to the much larger market in England the more the discrepancy will become clear. Interesting.
I think Labour are a lefty party, though Starmer is something of an unknown himself. As equally likely to be unexpectedly left-wing as the opposite - he has, for example, been exposed to the more extreme symptoms of poverty throughout his career.
But I entirely agree on the England/Scotland tradeoff. It depends where the marginal gains are - in England, most likely, due to the much larger number of seats. It would be smart to give Sarwar a much higher profile on the campaign literature to help dispel the effect though.
While personally deeply disappointed, I think the line of the green stuff is fine from an electoral POV - gives him an opportunity to jump in on Tory mismanagement of the public finances over and over again and closes off an obvious attack.
Fair enough. Labour lefty? Not according to the Electoral Compass analyses - Labour definitely well on the way to joining the LDs. But that's a quibble. And tomorrow is tomorrow.
Look also at SKS doing U-turns on such things as deigning to allow the Scots an indyref for which they voted to have, no doubt to try and avoid the repeat of 'In Salmond's pocket' posters, photoshopped for SKS and Mr Yousaf. So they can't differentiate too much anyway, and oif course the "national" media in London will give SKS lots of attention which will overwhelm the 3 minutes Mr Sarwar gets if he is lucky ... it's not as if the latter is leader of a political party anyway, as the Electoral Commission knows very well.
Lol, Prince Regent Harry would be hilarious - and again, could add a lot of otherwise pro monarchy people onto the republican side. Also, who else is there? Andrew? lol once more
Princess Anne, a regent can be just who Parliament chooses, doesn't need to be next in line of succession
Vladimir Putin has claimed Boris Johnson is to blame for the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian President said he was ready to end the war 18 months ago, but that the former Prime Minister put pressure on Ukraine's leaders to back out of the peace deal. Johnson has dismissed the claims as ‘propaganda’.
Even PB couldn't blame Boris for this one, right? Well maybe @Scott_xP could... 😂
My idle speculation about why Putin is *so furious* with Johnson is that Putin assumed that he was in his pocket (a la Trump), and is incensed to learn that being a suck-up when all things are equal does not translate into being a shill when the bullets start flying. One of the few things which stands to Johnson's credit.
The fact that he was so compromised and potentially tainted by his top level russian contacts (remember the visit to Italy when he shook loose his security?) is of course why Johnson had to pull his finger out when the Ukraine issue broke.
Russia's long-term strategy is to break up Western unity any which way. Brexit was one (thanks, Johnson); mass migration is another (thanks, Assad); US isolation is another (thanks, Trump). Every useful idiot has a role to play.
Just because Russia thinks that something is in its interests, it neither follows that they are right, nor that it is against our interests.
Was France partially withdrawing from NATO a massive Cold War victory for the Soviets?
Given how dirty the GOP/MAGA team play - eg this Hur 'report' - do people think there's value @ 10 in Biden being impeached?
Impeached yes, convicted no.
The Biden cabinet really ought to invoke the 25th amendment at this point, the report yesterday was immensely sad to read on a human level.
Yes I meant impeached. No conviction obviously.
The question for betting now, is if the Dems in his cabinet can get him to stand down before the Republicans in the House can get an impeachment through.
I really don’t like betting on stuff like this though, because it’s horrible on a human level. The guy now can’t remember when his son died, or when he was vice-president. The DNC needs to have a Plan B, and quickly.
Of course the more seats Starmer gains from the SNP, the fewer he needs to gain from the Tories in England and Wales for a majority
If the Tories lose 51 seats they lose their majority. Labour need 123 seats to get one. The area on the graph for NOM is very large, and it is all in play.
I admire your persistence. Will you keep this up for the entire life of the Starmer premiership (I'm guessing circa 10 years)?
A pop or two every day?
I have no doubt the material will be there for you to do it but it does require dedication. And to what end? It'll make not a blind bit of difference.
You seem to think that anything that might not be a positive for Sir Keir is unworthy of consideration or debate, but I don’t see why I have to go along with it
Can't claim to have watched every minute of Putin's two hour session with Carlson but a couple of mini takes. Putin starts the session with "If I may I'll spend 30 seconds covering the history. Half an hour later he had got to the 19th Century having started in the 8th Century. Tucker finally gets in a weak "That's very interesting". Which in a way it is because Putin seems genuinely motivated by historical grievance.
The look on Tucker's face when Putin says "You are" in response to who cut Nordstream. ("You will leave for the Siberian work camp following this interview. Ha! Only joking")
A coup for Carlson to get Putin but I have a feeling it didn't turn out exactly as he hoped. Putin isn't one of them. He's a highly focused spy chief and dictator while MAGA is self indulgence.
Yeah, I spent only a few minutes skipping through it, so maybe I missed some of the better bits - but from what I saw it was deathly dull with Putin doing his hard-faced bulldozer routine, and Carlson mostly looking lost.
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
I cant imagine more than a couple of million sat through the whole 2 hours. Then maybe another 5 to 10 million watched lengthy segments but not the whole thing.
There's no way that anything like that many will have sat through the whole thing. It wouldn't even have made good background watching whilst doing something else.
As for watching lengthy segments... really? Which lengthy segments are worth watching? Were there any? And even if there were, you can't even give me a link to them since Twitter's basic video player is so poor.
Sure, plenty of people will see clips once others have done the work of finding the best bits and uploading them to youtube or wherever. But, right now, absolutely no-one is excitedly posting "hey, seek to around 84m37s, and watch the 15 minute segment that follows - it's really interesting!"
It is headline news all over the world. Biggest story on the Guardian now, for instance, one of the most read on Le Monde, front page of FAZ, front page of China Daily, 3rd story on NYT, etc etc etc
In terms of eyes that watch SOME of that interview, I stand by my assertion it will be the most watched political interview in history
Only a tiny number will watch the entire boring 17 hours of Putin rambling on about Muscovy and Kievan Rus
Lol, Prince Regent Harry would be hilarious - and again, could add a lot of otherwise pro monarchy people onto the republican side. Also, who else is there? Andrew? lol once more
Princess Anne, a regent can be just who Parliament chooses, doesn't need to be next in line of succession
Her late majesty had one almighty row with William a couple of years ago, when his whole family turned up to meet her in a helicopter he’d flown himself. William and his children will never again take the same transport.
This thread from the FT showing why young people aren't conservative these days should be massively worrying for the cons and their current trajectory, I doubt it will make much impact on them though.
Brexit, the need for more affordable housing and the fact after 10 years of Tory rule are all factors.
However as the chart shows, other western conservative parties do not have as big an age gap in their support, so things can change, even if in all nations sampled the old vote more conservative than the young
Of course the more seats Starmer gains from the SNP, the fewer he needs to gain from the Tories in England and Wales for a majority
If the Tories lose 51 seats they lose their majority. Labour need 123 seats to get one. The area on the graph for NOM is very large, and it is all in play.
Though a lot of that bit of the graph is painted tartan. The fewer SNP seats, the less likely NOM is, and the much less likely unstable NOM is.
(I doubt it matters any more, but LabLib basically works in a way that LabNat doesn't.)
Wes Streeting needs to be front and centre of Lab's election campaign.
He's a top class communicator with last night's QT as just one example.
I only saw the first part of QT and thought he was a bit ranty to be honest.
He might well have had something to rant about but I'd prefer to hear positive ideas than complaints about how sh*t things are.
I think that having him show a bit of anger works quite well, especially when tempered by having SKS as an older, wiser, calmer head as leader. His answer to the green plan question was a proper masterclass in handling a QT-like situation.
SKS, Rayner, Streeting, Reeves. Labour are very lucky in how well the personalities of their current top performers complement each other.
You must be kidding, Sir Keir’s temper is never far from the surface when he’s being asked difficult questions
Sure, he gets a bit red-faced at times. But he's up against Rishi "well, actually" Sunak, so is a saint by comparison.
► The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said.
► He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile.
► He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots.
It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.
Yes, it has been a good day for Trump. Which means it has been a bad day for the US and democracy.
Wes Streeting needs to be front and centre of Lab's election campaign.
He's a top class communicator with last night's QT as just one example.
I only saw the first part of QT and thought he was a bit ranty to be honest.
He might well have had something to rant about but I'd prefer to hear positive ideas than complaints about how sh*t things are.
I think that having him show a bit of anger works quite well, especially when tempered by having SKS as an older, wiser, calmer head as leader. His answer to the green plan question was a proper masterclass in handling a QT-like situation.
SKS, Rayner, Streeting, Reeves. Labour are very lucky in how well the personalities of their current top performers complement each other.
You must be kidding, Sir Keir’s temper is never far from the surface when he’s being asked difficult questions
Sure, he gets a bit red-faced at times. But he's up against Rishi "well, actually" Sunak, so is a saint by comparison.
Leon and William do have a point. It's not whether Biden is more demented than Trump - I'm not sure he is and in any case he's clearly a better person and actually not a bad president on his track record.
No. For the rest of us Biden's primary task is to stop Trump. He managed that successfully in 2020 when others maybe wouldn't have. Will he manage it again in 2024? If not, we need someone else.
He may or may not be in the early stages of dementia (people being definitive either way are ignorable) but there’s no doubt about the lapses and frailty. He’s been a good president but he really shouldn’t be offering himself for a 2nd term. I hope he has a change of heart and doesn’t. I think this is very possible.
With the shit swirling around both of them I’m of the view that the ‘nailed on’ Trump Biden rematch is no more than a 50/50 shot to happen. I have it laid at 1.4 and I’m happy with that. But if it does happen I’ll be rooting 1000% for Joe. If he wins and then has to stand down at some point due to health reasons, so what. It will be managed. The risks of Trump2 are on a different scale.
So in a nutshell what I say is, “Go Joe please”, but if you don’t “Go Joe!”
Have you not had someone close suffer dementia?
If not, count yourself lucky, it is deeply painful to watch - possibly worse for the witnesses than it is for the demented
My mum was diagnosed with it last year, it distresses me greatly. I've also watched my older daughter's great granmother and now grandmother go down with it. I was quite close to the latter. And I've seen it in aunts, the parents of friends, etc. It is one of the great curses of modern times. we can keep people alive so long, but we can't save their minds
Biden looks exactly like these people, the dodderiness. the vagueness, the wandering, the truly spectacular memory losses, the confusion of identities, the decay of syntax in the speech, the inability to string sentences together; indeed, he looks like quite an advanced case. So bad, as the legal report says, that he cannot be prosecuted. He is too senile to stand trial - that is their judgement. Let that sink in
Biden is right there in front of us, exhibiting all this. It is not some kind of pro-Trump propaganda to point this out
And, if you really want Trump beaten, it is better that this is accepted and Biden is persuaded to retire, and they find someone younger
I still quite like my idea of Kamala, with Barack Obama as veep (if that is legal). I reckon that would beat Trump soundly
Er, I just said I hope Biden doesn't run. So, yes. And it's a piece of cake to distinguish reasonable concerns about his age and health from Trumpist propaganda. You just look at the language, the tone, and who it's coming from.
On the dementia, I'm sorry to hear this about your mum, and snap. Mine got an AD diagnosis a year ago, sadly. And boy is it sad. Worse for my dad, probably, at the moment. He's become a fulltime carer at 90.
Sympathies right back at you. It is a pretty horrific illness. It is terrible to say, but it might have been better if my poor Mum had keeled over with a heart attack a few years back (she's had a pacemaker for a decade). But we are where we are
The only saving grace for my Mum is that her partner also has dementia and is losing the plot at about the same pace, and they are in nice sheltered housing. So they are kind of sinking together, half aware of things
To be sane and lucid, like your father, and forced to care for a demented spouse, God that's tough
One reason I am sure Biden has dementia is his way of interweaving real stories (eg about his dead son Beau) with clear confabulations (Beau did not die in Fallujah), constructing a new reality impromptu, for no obvious reason. My mum does this constantly
I think it is the brain replacing missing memories, in a kind of panic, to create any old narrative, even if obviously bogus. Very sad
No that's not a terrible thing to think or say. I'm not wishing a long drawn out decline on my Mum. However calling people with AD "demented" - this, whilst no lie, isn't a great innovation imo. Still, you're the writer.
Joe and "the journey"? Is he on it? If so where? I truly don't know. There's not enough in the public domain for me to say. Certainly not enough to be issuing a firm diagnosis. But ok, you clearly feel you can.
The problem is - for the Dems as much as the GOP - that the right have been crying wolf on this for so long that everyone discounts it.
Comments
An actual tweet by a Dem activist
"This press conference showed that Biden is a forceful and competent leader.
As a journalist, if your takeaway is that he misspoke by saying “Mexico” instead of “Egypt” while lucidly describing the complexities of securing the release of hostages— you’re part of the problem."
https://x.com/LouieKahn27/status/1755763495239336405?s=20
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13038729/fbi-hidden-room-trump-mar-lago-jack-smith.html
OMFG. This was just a couple of days ago
It is impossible to watch this without feeling
1. Terribly sorry for Biden and his family
2. Terribly sorry for America
The Dems must make a move
"This, from President Biden, tells us something about how the negotiations between Israel & Hamas are going.
It also, frankly, shows why so many in America and beyond are concerned about the age of the American president who is insisting on running again."
https://x.com/Stone_SkyNews/status/1754942128382267674?s=20
He was nowhere near this bad even six months ago? This is a speedy decline
88 million Twitter impressions at the time of writing - so fewer than his interviews with Andrew Tate or Viktor Orban, and a fifth of the one he did with Javier Milei. When you convert it to actual viewership, it'll be around what Laura Kuenssberg gets when she interviews Sunak or Starmer.
So much for the most-watched interview in history!
As an aside, Twitter desperately needs to improve its video player - a youtube-like graph showing the most-watched bits would do wonders for something like this. Hardly anyone's going to sit through the whole 2 hours of droning, but plenty might be willing to watch the good bits if they were easy to find.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1755915215995113526?t=8TUF20XNz3EIa6w_yUSjXg&s=19
There was one other interesting piece of the interview.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1755909657749533159
The Russian president said that the Poles forced Nazi Germany to attack them in 1939, and "Hitler had no other choice."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-68250372
Trott doesn't even have excuse of dementia onset ...
Biden’s angry news conference is an indication of diminution of political judgment. The smart move would have been to issue a bland statement while giving a massive sigh of relief that there was no prosecution. I have a terrible feeling that Joe blew his top and told his advisors fuck it, he was going to show these pesky assholes that he’s TOTALLY IN CONTROL.
When has Johnson ever sucked up to Putin? He previously compared letting Russia host the World Cup to the Hitler Olympics.
But because she is deemed not to have the mental capacity to make her own choice, we are where we are. You do your best but it really is soul destroying.
Like your mum, she was treated for a different disease (breast cancer) about 10-15 years ago and we also wonder what for at times.
Given the statistics, it won't be long before pretty much half the nation is dealing with this in one way or another. There needs to be a better plan.
29% chance it won’t be either of the old boys according to Betfair
He's been doddery for a long time, and made strange remarks and forgotten stuff, throughout his first term
But some of the most recent Biden statements- like the one I linked below - are excruciating to watch, it feels voyeuristic, like watching the lunatics acting out in Bedlam
That's new, and not good. Who is going to vote for four more years of absolutely agonising TV, hoping your president doesn't fall over and start dribbling onto Justin Trudeau's loafers?
It was a pretty tough decade for the whole family.
So many are just stuck hoping he’ll eventually do the right thing .
Poland’s *existence* was offensive to German ultra-nationalists (not just Hitler, incidentally) since it contained large chunks of land that they believed were part of Sacred Germany.
They need some cloak and dagger assassin, but in a nice way
Joe and "the journey"? Is he on it? If so where? I truly don't know. There's not enough in the public domain for me to say. Certainly not enough to be issuing a firm diagnosis. But ok, you clearly feel you can.
SKS, Rayner, Streeting, Reeves. Labour are very lucky in how well the personalities of their current top performers complement each other.
I consider myself right-leaning, economically dry, pro-business, but extremely socially liberal. The modern Conservative party has nothing to offer me. In fact, I struggle to think what it offers to anyone under the age of 65. Surely, at this point, even most boomers can see the economic harm wrought on their children and in some cases their grandchildren, and realise that the current rentier model is unsustainable and has created such a divide in society that opportunity essentially no longer exists for younger generations.
So a moderate, pro-business, New Labour style party is something I can vote for. Whether or not Starmer and Labour 2024 can deliver that, I don't know. But I do know that the Conservatives aren't delivering it, and haven't for some time.
Since 2010, we have seen stagnant incomes, low productivity, an over-reliance on immigration without either a cost-benefit analysis of the economic effects, or an adequate infrastructure building programme to accommodate the massive increase in population, or even any consideration of how that affects the fabric of society and the social contract. The New Labour era looks like halcyon days in comparison.
You could argue that many of these factors are down to the global economy, but the paucity of answers for how to deal with them and the continued subservience to vested interests such as rich homeowners and the economically inactive elderly are entirely down to the Conservatives.
While he’s standing down at the next GE surely he should be held accountable for his actions whilst he’s still an MP?
Starmer promised a swift investigation.
What happened?
https://x.com/agrippaspqr/status/1755931528750670036?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
It will be interesting to see how Democrat voters react. The next primary is Michigan on Feb 27th. The options will be Biden, Dean Phillips or uncommitted (I guess similar to "none of these candidates" that Haley lost to in Nevada).
Several Muslim activists have already been campaigning for 'uncommitted' due to the war in Gaza, and Michigan has a relatively large Arab-American population.
I wouldn't speculate in this slightly unseemly way about a random citizen, however this guy is POTUS, and it is quite important to know what is wrong with him. Because if it IS dementia then we know that it is progressive, incurable and could get much worse very quickly, to the extent he will have to leave office (even if he won't quit now). That is a pretty vital thing to know when you are considering electing the dude for another four years as the most powerful man in the world. It's like knowing if he has terminal brain cancer, the voting public has a right to this information - isn't that written into the US Constitution?
I understand you are more hesitant. Fair enough
There does seem to be a tendency from some quarters not to see it, or explain it away, or attempt to sweep it under the carpet. This weird emperors new clothes ritual is getting harder and harder to sustain.
Now that is a separate issue from the election and Donald Trump. I believe Biden beats Trump in a matchup, and I actually think his administration has been pretty decent. But I understand why American voters feel uneasy, and why they would be wary of giving Biden another term. We all know the alternative is Trump, which is bad news, but they are poorly served by both candidates, if we are honest.
So I think he should go, because I think America needs a chance to renew itself with a new generation of leadership.
Probably we all do
"Furthermore, fears that generous aid during the pandemic would undermine America’s work ethic — that adults would leave the labor force and never come back — proved totally wrong. A new paper from the San Francisco Fed is titled “Why Is Prime-Age Labor Force Participation So High?” It notes that Americans between 25 and 54 are more likely to be in the work force now than they were at any time since the early 2000s."
NY Times
Jed Bartlet has some long term medical condition which he illegally hides from the voters? He plays chess with aides so they can tell him when he's going gaga
IIRC the drama says that the public must legally be informed of relevant medical issues pertaining to POTUS
The reality was that any “peace” at that point, was capitulation to the Russians on current territory, not long after Russia had conceded a whole load of territory itself, and with the potential for the war to be over in Ukraine’s favour within weeks.
A pop or two every day?
I have no doubt the material will be there for you to do it but it does require dedication. And to what end? It'll make not a blind bit of difference.
The Biden cabinet really ought to invoke the 25th amendment at this point, the report yesterday was immensely sad to read on a human level.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/09/house-of-windsor-soft-regency-king-charles-prince-william
Feels like a typically dastardly plan to me.
I am sure I recall one character saying the Prez has to tell voters of relevant medical problems (relevant to his capability to do the job)
But
1. It was a drama
and
2. I might have senility now, like my Mum. Hey ho
As for watching lengthy segments... really? Which lengthy segments are worth watching? Were there any? And even if there were, you can't even give me a link to them since Twitter's basic video player is so poor.
Sure, plenty of people will see clips once others have done the work of finding the best bits and uploading them to youtube or wherever. But, right now, absolutely no-one is excitedly posting "hey, seek to around 84m37s, and watch the 15 minute segment that follows - it's really interesting!"
"The expectation that they will one day be among the haves, rather than have-nots, has long propelled many young people to vote Conservative."
Look also at SKS doing U-turns on such things as deigning to allow the Scots an indyref for which they voted to have, no doubt to try and avoid the repeat of 'In Salmond's pocket' posters, photoshopped for SKS and Mr Yousaf. So they can't differentiate too much anyway, and oif course the "national" media in London will give SKS lots of attention which will overwhelm the 3 minutes Mr Sarwar gets if he is lucky ... it's not as if the latter is leader of a political party anyway, as the Electoral Commission knows very well.
Was France partially withdrawing from NATO a massive Cold War victory for the Soviets?
I really don’t like betting on stuff like this though, because it’s horrible on a human level. The guy now can’t remember when his son died, or when he was vice-president. The DNC needs to have a Plan B, and quickly.
In terms of eyes that watch SOME of that interview, I stand by my assertion it will be the most watched political interview in history
Only a tiny number will watch the entire boring 17 hours of Putin rambling on about Muscovy and Kievan Rus
However as the chart shows, other western conservative parties do not have as big an age gap in their support, so things can change, even if in all nations sampled the old vote more conservative than the young
(I doubt it matters any more, but LabLib basically works in a way that LabNat doesn't.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-13065007/Tucker-Carlson-Vladimir-Putin-stunt-Hitler-concentration-camps-Russian-President-mad-bad-dangerous-fool-ANDREW-NEIL.html
Watch your mouth round here boy
On the other hand Putin knows his obsessive shit and he doesn’t mistake Mexico for Egypt
But the odds are no longer in Biden's favour.