THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 11, 2024 AT 8:38 PM
Paul Plante says:
And we are right back with a story from Fox News titled “Top red state official demands answers on Biden executive order ‘attempting to register’ illegals to vote” by Andrew Miller on March 11, 2024, where we see how just how Joe Biden is using his executive orders in his WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT approach to getting more criminals and illegals to be able to vote DEMOCRAT in the upcoming November presidential election to throw the contest Joe’s way in a rigged election rigged by Joe himself, to wit:
Mississippi’s Secretary of State has sent a letter to President Biden’s Department of Justice asking it to stop enforcing a Biden executive order that he warns is being used to attempt to register ineligible convicts and illegal immigrants to vote.
end quote
Actually, those ineligible convicts and illegal immigrants are Joe’s political base, so of course he is going to do anything and everything he can to secure for them the right to vote for Joe come November, which takes us back to Fox, to wit:
“As you are aware, on March 7, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order No. 14019 which sought to turn the Department of Justice agencies from their historical missions of law enforcement to voter registration and get out the vote operations,” Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland this week.
“These efforts are an intrusion into state matters and are a misuse of federal revenue and resources.”
end quotes
And of course Joe is intruding into state matters, misusing federal revenue and resources to do so, because Joe doesn’t believe in state matters, and federal revenue and resources are Joe’s to misuse, because nobody can stop him from doing so, which again takes us back to Fox, to wit:
“In addition, it appears that these efforts have led to agencies under your charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
The executive order in question was signed by Biden in 2021 and was billed as an attempt to combat racial discrimination and “protect the right to vote” and instructed government agencies “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”
In his letter, Watson outlines concerns that the executive order “forces the U.S. Marshals Service” to “modify agreements with jails” that require them “to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail.”
“According to the Marshals Service, they are modifying 936 contracts or intergovernmental agreements to require state and local government complicity in the potential registration of ineligible prisoners to vote,” the letter states.
“It further requires the Department of Justice to facilitate voter registration and mail voting for individuals in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.”
“This program creates numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi.”
end quotes
And my goodness, people, of course it does, because Joe wants every vote he can get, and that is how he is getting them, which again takes us back for more, to wit:
Watson told Fox News Digital that he is not confident the Biden administration is paying close attention to the voting status of the individuals involved.
“Forgive me for not necessarily trusting the Biden administration but in Mississippi we’ve got rules and regulations dealing with who can vote when it comes to felons, there are disenfranchising crimes in our state and I don’t specifically think that the Biden administration cares crossing those T’s and dotting those I’s when it comes to making sure these folks can or can’t vote, they’re going to register them, including illegal aliens in custody so we’ve got major issues and that’s what led to writing this letter to Attorney General Garland,” Watson told Fox News Digital.
end quotes
Dude, you need no forgiveness since you are among the majority, not the minority, who don’t trust the untrustworthy Biden administration to do anything right, or follow the laws as written, which takes us back to the story, to wit:
Watson’s letter explains that the program “provides prisoners with misleading information concerning their right to both register and vote in Mississippi – a right which they may not have.”
“For example, many of the people in the custody of the Marshals are convicted felons whom Mississippi law deems ineligible to vote.”
“Additionally, many of those in custody only have fleeting ties to Mississippi and do not meet the residency requirements necessary to be a Mississippi voter,” the letter says.
Watson wrote that Mississippi jails are being prompted to “work with other reliable sources of voter information to assist federal prisoners with voter registration, voting by mail, and notification of upcoming elections.”
“We are unaware of any contact with our Office, which begs the question, which organizations are the Marshals using to accomplish this demand?” The letter asks.
“Many outside groups performing voter registration and vote harvesting services are partisan entities with a history of being unreliable.”
“There have been documented instances of these groups providing incorrect directions to voters.”
“It is not proper for the Federal government to push partisan groups into the voting process in Mississippi or any other state.”
The letter specifically addresses concerns that illegal immigrants in the Mississippi prison system could potentially be registered to vote through this executive order if the program is not closely monitored.
“Our understanding is that everyone in the Marshals’ custody is given a form advising them of their right to register and vote,” the letter says.
“Providing ineligible non-citizens with information on how to register to vote undoubtedly encourages them to illegally register to vote, exposing them to legal jeopardy beyond their immigration status.”
Watson’s letter says that it is “quite shocking” that the Biden administration would “expend tax dollars and vital law enforcement resources” on a program “that risks bloating state voter rolls with ineligible and non-citizen voters” during a time when millions of illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border.
Watson told Fox News Digital that this is an “urgent” matter with a presidential election just 8 months away.
“If you look at what’s going on at the border when you’ve got so many illegal aliens pouring into our country, imagine the efforts used to get them to register to vote and that’s what this is all about,” Watson told Fox News Digital.
“It’s about control, it’s about continuing their power, and unfortunately that puts our country in a terrible position, so it’s immediate and it’s something where we hope they will respect our request to stop the program.”
“The information we want to see is which prisons they’re working in in Mississippi, we’ve asked them to prove to us the documentation, what exactly are you doing in our prisons?”
“We want to make sure we understand which prisoners you’ve been talking to, so we can understand whether or not they’re eligible to vote and I think it’s incumbent upon all of the states to take this notice up and to push back as hard as we can because with this election coming up in November it is incredibly important to the future of our country.”
“What we have left of it.”
Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told Fox News Digital he applauds Watson’s letter warning about a program that “puts election integrity and voter confidence at risk” for “political gain.”
“The Biden Administration is aggressively pursuing a partisan get-out-the-vote scheme using taxpayer dollars,” Snead said.
“Nothing is off the table, from using law enforcement resources to potentially register ineligible voters and even non-citizens, to the recent announcement that the administration will use taxpayer dollars to pay students to coordinate with left-wing organizations and mobilize youth voters.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Department of Justice for comment but did not receive a response.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-906737
Just musings, is all
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 12, 2024 AT 6:31 PM
Paul Plante says:
As I have stated elsewhere, I wasted several hours over the weekend going through, word for word for word, the transcript of what was called Joe Biden’s supposed state of the union address, which transcript in reality was nothing more than the script for a cheap, ignorant, poorly-written melodramatic production like a religious revivalist meeting, with singers in the background singing out an angry Joe Biden’s praises as Joe spouted out his vitriol and indignation, which production in reality was pure cornpone political tripe and theater that cast Joe not in the role of an American president but more like a carnival barker trying to whip up enthusiasm for Little Egypt’s last show of the evening, or a patent medicine grifter peddling snake oil to the unwitting and unwary, with his shills in the crowd, just as Joe had his shills there during his performance the other night, with Joe’s shills in the audience, according to the AP version of the transcript, yelling BOOO on cue at various moments in the speech, or “four more years,” reminiscent of a Trump political rally, which analysis takes us to another analysis in the Newsweek article titled “Biden Did Himself No Favors With Angry, Partisan State of the Union | Opinion” by Paul du Quenoy, President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, on March 12, 2024, where we had as follows on Joe’s so-called state of the union address, to wit:
State of the Union addresses have long been dull, pro forma affairs.
Loud cheers resound, offering the pretense of unity over division.
Policy disagreements are buried under unifying values.
The leader soberly rattles off platitudes about achievements and aspirations, often illusory.
The union’s “state” is always “strong,” and the nation’s “best days” invariably “lie ahead.”
No longer.
President Joe Biden’s third and very possibly last State of the Union address descended from this act of staid but dignified statesmanship to what Democrats think they need to shore up his increasingly doubtful reelection bid.
In his 67-minute address, reportedly the result of months of intense preparation, Biden was bitter and angry, delivering many of his lines in the loud and cranky tone of a frustrated family patriarch who commands no respect, marshals no enthusiasm, and fears his legacy will spill down a drain of derision.
It was not “presidential” by any stretch.
It was hysterical and vulgar, desperate and cheap.
end quotes
And consider that all along, Newsweek has been very PRO-JOE BIDEN, so this story is indeed interesting to see come forth, which takes us back for more, to wit:
Long gone was the “unifier” of those few halcyon days in early 2021, when the newly inaugurated Biden peered out from the armed camp that Washington, D.C., had become to promise he would pursue a moderate course to settle divisions and curb the vitriolic partisanship of former president Donald J. Trump’s term.
end quotes
In actuality, however, Joe Biden has NEVER been a “unifier,” nor has he ever tried to be, which takes us back to September 17, 2018 and a story in The Daily Wire titled “Joe Biden Calls Trump Supporters ‘Virulent People,’ The ‘Dregs Of Society'” by Joseph Curl, where we had the DIVIDER Joe Biden in action, doing what he does best, which is dividing people, not unifying them, to wit:
Joe Biden just had his “deplorables” moment.
Biden, who says he’ll decided in January whether to run for president in 2020 but who is making all the moves of a presidential candidate, used a pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign annual dinner on Saturday to rip President Trump.
And in so doing, Biden had a moment reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, when she called Trump supporters “deplorables.”
Biden did his old act, starting off soft and avuncular before booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about.
“Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made,” he said.
“This time they — not you — have an ally in the White House.”
“This time they have an ally.”
“They’re a small percentage of the American people — virulent people, some of them the dregs of society.”
end quotes
Yes, people, if you are not for Joe Biden, then you are a DREG OF SOCIETY, which takes us back to Newsweek for more, to wit:
Now Biden is a hyperpartisan, blaming the Republicans — who control neither the presidency nor the Senate nor the Washington bureaucracy — for all of his many problems, from Ukraine to border control to tax policy.
He broke firm and laudable precedent to take a swipe at the Supreme Court, the Justices of which attended the speech but by tradition registered no reaction to it, for overturning Roe v. Wade, even though the result has been a pro-choice surge in state abortion referendums and the election of Democrats in several important races.
Biden claimed Republicans would cut entitlements to fund a tax cut for the rich despite the Republican House majority’s failure to act on entitlements at any time during his presidency.
He countered with his own plan to introduce yet more punitive taxation on “wealthy” Americans.
We heard surprisingly little about Biden’s supposed “achievements,” which his loyalists — and those who benefit from his increasingly obvious cognitive decline — tout with nauseating regularity despite all evidence to the contrary and in the face of massive popular disappointment.
Instead, the president lashed out, once again broad brushing half the country as authoritarian fascist enemies of democracy on par with the Nazis, the Confederacy, and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Biden has largely avoided mentioning Trump throughout his presidency — perhaps a wise move.
Trump currently outclasses him in opinion polls on virtually every issue, as well as in general competence, physical and mental ability, and, according to almost all recent surveys, the popular vote in the all-but-certain rematch that awaits us in November.
But as Biden gets cagier and undoubtedly more worried about his dubious reelection prospects, he simply cannot ignore Trump.
Although Biden never said his name (unlike Laken — or, as Biden mispronounced it, “Lincoln” — Riley, a nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant on Biden’s watch) in the speech, he referred to his “predecessor,” “the former Republican president,” 13 times.
There can be no doubt that as November approaches, the race will become increasingly brutal, personal, and negative — characteristics that, Democratic strategists may wish to note, heavily favored Trump in 2016.
Comparing himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a trope to which his flatterers never tire of resorting, struck another point about Biden.
With a coterie of Washington politicos and a congressional Democratic Party either convinced of, or willing to play along with, the illusion of the incumbent’s soundness and importance, there is now less chance than ever that he will be replaced as the Democratic candidate, as some have speculated.
Given his grumpy demeanor, that is probably good news for the Trump camp.
Either way, Thursday’s State of the Union did nothing to convince the 82 percent of Americans who believe Biden is simply too old for the presidency to change their minds.
end quotes
And yes, color me on of them!
Old Joe is way past his “sell by” date!
Time for Joe to go!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907020
Paul Plante says:
As I have stated elsewhere, I wasted several hours over the weekend going through, word for word for word, the transcript of what was called Joe Biden’s supposed state of the union address, which transcript in reality was nothing more than the script for a cheap, ignorant, poorly-written melodramatic production like a religious revivalist meeting, with singers in the background singing out an angry Joe Biden’s praises as Joe spouted out his vitriol and indignation, which production in reality was pure cornpone political tripe and theater that cast Joe not in the role of an American president but more like a carnival barker trying to whip up enthusiasm for Little Egypt’s last show of the evening, or a patent medicine grifter peddling snake oil to the unwitting and unwary, with his shills in the crowd, just as Joe had his shills there during his performance the other night, with Joe’s shills in the audience, according to the AP version of the transcript, yelling BOOO on cue at various moments in the speech, or “four more years,” reminiscent of a Trump political rally, which analysis takes us to another analysis in the Newsweek article titled “Biden Did Himself No Favors With Angry, Partisan State of the Union | Opinion” by Paul du Quenoy, President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, on March 12, 2024, where we had as follows on Joe’s so-called state of the union address, to wit:
State of the Union addresses have long been dull, pro forma affairs.
Loud cheers resound, offering the pretense of unity over division.
Policy disagreements are buried under unifying values.
The leader soberly rattles off platitudes about achievements and aspirations, often illusory.
The union’s “state” is always “strong,” and the nation’s “best days” invariably “lie ahead.”
No longer.
President Joe Biden’s third and very possibly last State of the Union address descended from this act of staid but dignified statesmanship to what Democrats think they need to shore up his increasingly doubtful reelection bid.
In his 67-minute address, reportedly the result of months of intense preparation, Biden was bitter and angry, delivering many of his lines in the loud and cranky tone of a frustrated family patriarch who commands no respect, marshals no enthusiasm, and fears his legacy will spill down a drain of derision.
It was not “presidential” by any stretch.
It was hysterical and vulgar, desperate and cheap.
end quotes
And consider that all along, Newsweek has been very PRO-JOE BIDEN, so this story is indeed interesting to see come forth, which takes us back for more, to wit:
Long gone was the “unifier” of those few halcyon days in early 2021, when the newly inaugurated Biden peered out from the armed camp that Washington, D.C., had become to promise he would pursue a moderate course to settle divisions and curb the vitriolic partisanship of former president Donald J. Trump’s term.
end quotes
In actuality, however, Joe Biden has NEVER been a “unifier,” nor has he ever tried to be, which takes us back to September 17, 2018 and a story in The Daily Wire titled “Joe Biden Calls Trump Supporters ‘Virulent People,’ The ‘Dregs Of Society'” by Joseph Curl, where we had the DIVIDER Joe Biden in action, doing what he does best, which is dividing people, not unifying them, to wit:
Joe Biden just had his “deplorables” moment.
Biden, who says he’ll decided in January whether to run for president in 2020 but who is making all the moves of a presidential candidate, used a pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign annual dinner on Saturday to rip President Trump.
And in so doing, Biden had a moment reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, when she called Trump supporters “deplorables.”
Biden did his old act, starting off soft and avuncular before booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about.
“Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made,” he said.
“This time they — not you — have an ally in the White House.”
“This time they have an ally.”
“They’re a small percentage of the American people — virulent people, some of them the dregs of society.”
end quotes
Yes, people, if you are not for Joe Biden, then you are a DREG OF SOCIETY, which takes us back to Newsweek for more, to wit:
Now Biden is a hyperpartisan, blaming the Republicans — who control neither the presidency nor the Senate nor the Washington bureaucracy — for all of his many problems, from Ukraine to border control to tax policy.
He broke firm and laudable precedent to take a swipe at the Supreme Court, the Justices of which attended the speech but by tradition registered no reaction to it, for overturning Roe v. Wade, even though the result has been a pro-choice surge in state abortion referendums and the election of Democrats in several important races.
Biden claimed Republicans would cut entitlements to fund a tax cut for the rich despite the Republican House majority’s failure to act on entitlements at any time during his presidency.
He countered with his own plan to introduce yet more punitive taxation on “wealthy” Americans.
We heard surprisingly little about Biden’s supposed “achievements,” which his loyalists — and those who benefit from his increasingly obvious cognitive decline — tout with nauseating regularity despite all evidence to the contrary and in the face of massive popular disappointment.
Instead, the president lashed out, once again broad brushing half the country as authoritarian fascist enemies of democracy on par with the Nazis, the Confederacy, and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Biden has largely avoided mentioning Trump throughout his presidency — perhaps a wise move.
Trump currently outclasses him in opinion polls on virtually every issue, as well as in general competence, physical and mental ability, and, according to almost all recent surveys, the popular vote in the all-but-certain rematch that awaits us in November.
But as Biden gets cagier and undoubtedly more worried about his dubious reelection prospects, he simply cannot ignore Trump.
Although Biden never said his name (unlike Laken — or, as Biden mispronounced it, “Lincoln” — Riley, a nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant on Biden’s watch) in the speech, he referred to his “predecessor,” “the former Republican president,” 13 times.
There can be no doubt that as November approaches, the race will become increasingly brutal, personal, and negative — characteristics that, Democratic strategists may wish to note, heavily favored Trump in 2016.
Comparing himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a trope to which his flatterers never tire of resorting, struck another point about Biden.
With a coterie of Washington politicos and a congressional Democratic Party either convinced of, or willing to play along with, the illusion of the incumbent’s soundness and importance, there is now less chance than ever that he will be replaced as the Democratic candidate, as some have speculated.
Given his grumpy demeanor, that is probably good news for the Trump camp.
Either way, Thursday’s State of the Union did nothing to convince the 82 percent of Americans who believe Biden is simply too old for the presidency to change their minds.
end quotes
And yes, color me on of them!
Old Joe is way past his “sell by” date!
Time for Joe to go!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907020
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 13, 2024 AT 6:11 PM
Paul Plante says:
And yesterday brought us two interesting pieces of news, one being a March 12, 2024 Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index where Joe, a notorious serial liar and purveyor of myths and tall tales says his top economic priority is lowering costs, with the second being a Reuters article titled “US February budget deficit climbs on interest costs, tax refunds” on March 12, 2024, where we are informed by Joe’s own treasury department under BIDE-O-NOMICS architect Janet “TOODLES” Yellen of the harm BIDE-O-NOMICS and BIDE-O-NISM are doing to our nation, and our national security, as well as to the lives of common American citizens, while a third is a Reuters article titled “Gasoline, shelter costs boost US prices; inflation still slowing” by Lucia Mutikani on March 12, 2024, where we learned as follows about where Joe Biden’s BIDE-O-NOMICS has taken us as a nation and as a people, with this being the report Joe Biden is commenting on above as favoring BIDE-O-NOMICS, to wit:
WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices increased solidly in February amid higher costs for gasoline and shelter, suggesting some stickiness in inflation that further diminishes the chances of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut before June.
end quote
What Joe then said in his Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index, was as follows:
My top economic priority is lowering costs and today’s report shows we continue to make progress on that front.
Inflation is down two-thirds from its peak and annual core inflation is the lowest since May 2021.
end quotes
Except inflation is hardly down and in fact is continuing to rise, bringing prices up with it, which takes us back to Reuters on inflation, to wit:
The consumer price index rose 0.4% last month after climbing 0.3% in January, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said.
Gasoline prices rebounded 3.8% after declining 3.3% in January.
Shelter, which includes rents, rose 0.4% after advancing 0.6% in the prior month.
But prices for cereals and bakery products rose while meat, fish and eggs were slightly more expensive.
In the 12 months through February, the CPI increased 3.2%, after advancing 3.1% in January.
The annual increase in consumer prices has slowed from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, but progress has stalled in recent months.
President Joe Biden used the report to drum up support for a $7.3 trillion budget unveiled on Monday.
“We have more to do to lower costs and give the middle class a fair shot,” Biden said in a statement.
“The budget I put forward yesterday would take on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug costs.”
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI increased 0.4% in February after rising by the same margin in January.
Shelter was also the main driver of the so-called core CPI.
Rents increased 0.5% after gaining 0.4% in January.
The cost of healthcare was unchanged after rising 0.5% in the prior month.
Airline fares accelerated 3.6% while motor vehicle insurance cost 0.9% more.
Services excluding energy increased 0.5% after shooting up 0.7% in January.
The rise in the so-called super core services excluding shelter slowed to 0.5% from 0.8% in the prior month.
Goods prices rebounded by 0.4% after falling 0.3% in January.
They were boosted by increases in the prices of apparel.
Used cars and trucks prices jumped 0.5%.
Core goods prices rose 0.1%, the first increase since last May, after falling 0.3% in January.
A separate report from the Atlanta Fed showed its sticky-price CPI, a weighted basket of items that change price relatively slowly, increased 4.0% on an annualized basis in February after rising 6.7% in January.
end quotes
Which takes us to March 12, 2024 and the Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index, where we have this empty political blather from Joe, as follows:
Congressional Republicans have no plan to lower costs — their only plan is more tax giveaways for big corporations and the wealthy while cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I won’t let them.
end quotes
Which takes us to the Reuters article titled “US February budget deficit climbs on interest costs, tax refunds” on March 12, 2024, where the reality of what continuing harm BIDE-O-NOMICS is doing to America thanks to Joe Biden’s OUT-OF-CONTROL PROFLIGATE SPENDING OF BORROWED MONEY, including Joe’s tax give-aways for big corporations, is made incandescently clear, to wit:
March 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. federal budget deficit grew in February with outlays surging as annual tax-filing season kicked into gear and interest costs on the national debt kept rising, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday.
The deficit last month was $296 billion, 13% larger than the $262 billion shortfall in February 2023.
Outlays for the month grew 8% to $567 billion – a record for the month – while receipts rose 3% to $271 billion.
For the first five months of the fiscal year, the deficit rose by $106 billion, or 15%, to $828 billion as interest costs on the national debt rose.
The Treasury said both receipts and outlays were records on a year-to-date basis, with receipts up 7% to $1.856 trillion, and outlays up 9% to $2.684 trillion.
Individual tax refunds, which are deducted from receipts, were $58 billion, up 11% from 12 months earlier.
Interest expenses on the $26 trillion national debt continue to grow rapidly, with debt-servicing costs up 67% from February 2023 to $76 billion, a record for the month.
On a year-to-date basis, interest on the public debt rose 41% to $433 billion and for the first five months of the fiscal year was exceeded only by Social Security in individual line item expenses.
The weighted-average interest rate on Treasury securities rose to 3.2% in February from 2.52% a year ago and 3.15% in January.
end quotes
And the rise in the weighted-average interest rate on Treasury securities which is taking debt servicing costs ever higher is directly related to the adverse impacts of BORROW-AND-SPEND BIDE-O-NOMICS.
Which brings us to time for a break for station identification, but don’t go away and don’t touch that dial, because we shall we right back with more of the story of how one man named Jospeh Robinette Biden, Junior is doing the seemingly impossible by single-handedly destroying America in just one presidential term.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907382
Paul Plante says:
And yesterday brought us two interesting pieces of news, one being a March 12, 2024 Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index where Joe, a notorious serial liar and purveyor of myths and tall tales says his top economic priority is lowering costs, with the second being a Reuters article titled “US February budget deficit climbs on interest costs, tax refunds” on March 12, 2024, where we are informed by Joe’s own treasury department under BIDE-O-NOMICS architect Janet “TOODLES” Yellen of the harm BIDE-O-NOMICS and BIDE-O-NISM are doing to our nation, and our national security, as well as to the lives of common American citizens, while a third is a Reuters article titled “Gasoline, shelter costs boost US prices; inflation still slowing” by Lucia Mutikani on March 12, 2024, where we learned as follows about where Joe Biden’s BIDE-O-NOMICS has taken us as a nation and as a people, with this being the report Joe Biden is commenting on above as favoring BIDE-O-NOMICS, to wit:
WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices increased solidly in February amid higher costs for gasoline and shelter, suggesting some stickiness in inflation that further diminishes the chances of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut before June.
end quote
What Joe then said in his Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index, was as follows:
My top economic priority is lowering costs and today’s report shows we continue to make progress on that front.
Inflation is down two-thirds from its peak and annual core inflation is the lowest since May 2021.
end quotes
Except inflation is hardly down and in fact is continuing to rise, bringing prices up with it, which takes us back to Reuters on inflation, to wit:
The consumer price index rose 0.4% last month after climbing 0.3% in January, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said.
Gasoline prices rebounded 3.8% after declining 3.3% in January.
Shelter, which includes rents, rose 0.4% after advancing 0.6% in the prior month.
But prices for cereals and bakery products rose while meat, fish and eggs were slightly more expensive.
In the 12 months through February, the CPI increased 3.2%, after advancing 3.1% in January.
The annual increase in consumer prices has slowed from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022, but progress has stalled in recent months.
President Joe Biden used the report to drum up support for a $7.3 trillion budget unveiled on Monday.
“We have more to do to lower costs and give the middle class a fair shot,” Biden said in a statement.
“The budget I put forward yesterday would take on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug costs.”
Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the CPI increased 0.4% in February after rising by the same margin in January.
Shelter was also the main driver of the so-called core CPI.
Rents increased 0.5% after gaining 0.4% in January.
The cost of healthcare was unchanged after rising 0.5% in the prior month.
Airline fares accelerated 3.6% while motor vehicle insurance cost 0.9% more.
Services excluding energy increased 0.5% after shooting up 0.7% in January.
The rise in the so-called super core services excluding shelter slowed to 0.5% from 0.8% in the prior month.
Goods prices rebounded by 0.4% after falling 0.3% in January.
They were boosted by increases in the prices of apparel.
Used cars and trucks prices jumped 0.5%.
Core goods prices rose 0.1%, the first increase since last May, after falling 0.3% in January.
A separate report from the Atlanta Fed showed its sticky-price CPI, a weighted basket of items that change price relatively slowly, increased 4.0% on an annualized basis in February after rising 6.7% in January.
end quotes
Which takes us to March 12, 2024 and the Statement from President Joe Biden on the February Consumer Price Index, where we have this empty political blather from Joe, as follows:
Congressional Republicans have no plan to lower costs — their only plan is more tax giveaways for big corporations and the wealthy while cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
I won’t let them.
end quotes
Which takes us to the Reuters article titled “US February budget deficit climbs on interest costs, tax refunds” on March 12, 2024, where the reality of what continuing harm BIDE-O-NOMICS is doing to America thanks to Joe Biden’s OUT-OF-CONTROL PROFLIGATE SPENDING OF BORROWED MONEY, including Joe’s tax give-aways for big corporations, is made incandescently clear, to wit:
March 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. federal budget deficit grew in February with outlays surging as annual tax-filing season kicked into gear and interest costs on the national debt kept rising, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday.
The deficit last month was $296 billion, 13% larger than the $262 billion shortfall in February 2023.
Outlays for the month grew 8% to $567 billion – a record for the month – while receipts rose 3% to $271 billion.
For the first five months of the fiscal year, the deficit rose by $106 billion, or 15%, to $828 billion as interest costs on the national debt rose.
The Treasury said both receipts and outlays were records on a year-to-date basis, with receipts up 7% to $1.856 trillion, and outlays up 9% to $2.684 trillion.
Individual tax refunds, which are deducted from receipts, were $58 billion, up 11% from 12 months earlier.
Interest expenses on the $26 trillion national debt continue to grow rapidly, with debt-servicing costs up 67% from February 2023 to $76 billion, a record for the month.
On a year-to-date basis, interest on the public debt rose 41% to $433 billion and for the first five months of the fiscal year was exceeded only by Social Security in individual line item expenses.
The weighted-average interest rate on Treasury securities rose to 3.2% in February from 2.52% a year ago and 3.15% in January.
end quotes
And the rise in the weighted-average interest rate on Treasury securities which is taking debt servicing costs ever higher is directly related to the adverse impacts of BORROW-AND-SPEND BIDE-O-NOMICS.
Which brings us to time for a break for station identification, but don’t go away and don’t touch that dial, because we shall we right back with more of the story of how one man named Jospeh Robinette Biden, Junior is doing the seemingly impossible by single-handedly destroying America in just one presidential term.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907382
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 15, 2024 AT 9:49 AM
Paul Plante says:
And yes, people, disjointed, and indeed, demented, as in the demented Biden administration policies are not well connected or well ordered, and therefore are often confusing as we see in a Reuters article titled “Yellen says US moving to ensure domestic EV maker success despite China’s exports” by David Lawder on March 13, 2024, where we have this drivel from Biden treasury secretary Janet “TOODLES” Yellen to consider, to wit:
ELIZABETHTOWN, Kentucky, March 13 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday said President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to ensure the success of its domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry in the face of China’s growing exports in the sector and heavy government subsidies.
Asked whether the United States needs new tariffs on Chinese EVs, Yellen told reporters at a new battery materials plant in Kentucky: “I don’t want to get ahead of where we are, but it is a commitment that President Biden has made … that we’re going to want our domestic industry to be successful.”
end quotes
And with those statements from “TOODLES,” here we are, back to BIDE-O-NISM, Joe’s COMMAND ECONOMY, out of which comes BIDE-O-NOMICS, and its related BIDENFLATION, and by way of review, a “Command economy” or “Communist economy,” also known as a “Central Planned Economy” is an economy where decisions on what to produce, how to produce and for whom are taken by the government in a centrally managed bureaucracy.
For those of us with memories that extend farther back in time than just a few minutes ago, we recall that the Soviet Union often announced ‘5-year plans’ where targets for steel production would be created, and as we learned in 7th grade social studies, in the period 1928-40 and after the Second World War, these Five-year plans were very successful in terms of expanding the Soviet Union’s industrial production, so that for a period, the Soviet Union achieved very rapid rates of economic growth.
However, by the 1960s, the system was struggling with corruption, inefficiency and a lack of incentives, and the rapid economic growth of the Stalin years also occurred against a backdrop of political repression.
As to the problems we can expect from BIDE-O-NISM, Joe Biden’s Americanized version of STALINISM in the Soviet Union, they are as follows:
* Governments are poor at predicting future trends.
* Inflexible. Difficult to respond to shortages and surpluses
* Greater scope for corruption
* Planned economies often associated with greater political repression
end quotes
As to Joe taking steps to ensure the success of his government-subsidized domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry, consider the Reuters article titled “EV start-up Fisker prepares for possible bankruptcy filing, WSJ reports” on March 13, 2024, where we have a hurdle for Joe to overcome if he wants his government-subsidized domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry to be successful, to wit:
March 13 (Reuters) – Electric-vehicle start-up Fisker has hired restructuring advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Earlier this month, Fisker flagged going-concern risks, job cuts and a pause in investments into future projects until it secures a partnership with a manufacturer.
end quotes
As those with memories will recall, this is the second time Fisker is going bankrupt, with Joe Biden having been its chief cheerleader the last time around.
But Joe’s problems don’t stop there, and as proof that Joe’s government is as poor at predicting future trends as any other fourth-rate banana republic, all we need do is go to a Reuters article titled “Lucid forecasts annual vehicle production below estimates” on February 21, 2024, where we have as follows:
Feb 21 (Reuters) – Lucid Group forecast annual vehicle production far below analysts’ estimates on Wednesday, on signs that demand for its luxury electric vehicles will slow down as high interest rates pinch consumer budgets.
Shares of the company fell around 5% in extended trading.
end quotes
And those high interest rates killing Joe’s INSANE GREEN DREAM are caused by BIDE-O-NOMICS, which takes us back to that story, to wit:
The company expects to make 9,000 units for the full-year 2024 compared with estimates of 22,594 according to five analysts polled by Visible Alpha.
The company made 8,428 vehicles in 2023.
The Saudi Arabia-backed company took to slashing prices once more for its Air sedans last week to counter sagging demand at a time when the EV industry is seeing a slowdown.
The company also missed estimates for fourth-quarter revenue hit by a slowdown in deliveries as consumers grapple with high costs.
end quotes
And they are not the only ones getting hurt by BIDE-O-NOMICS, as we see from another Reuters article titled “Rivian cuts jobs, sees annual production below estimates” on February 21, 2024, to wit:
Feb 21 (Reuters) – Rivian said on Wednesday it would cut its workforce by 10% and forecast EV production this year that widely missed estimates, hurt by downtime for factory upgrades and slowing demand for electric vehicles due to high interest rates.
Shares of the company tumbled about 17% in extended trading after Rivian said it expects to produce 57,000 vehicles in 2024, well below estimates of 81,700 units, according to eight analysts polled by Visible Alpha.
It produced 57,232 vehicles last year.
“We firmly believe in the full electrification of the automotive industry, but recognize in the short-term, the challenging macro-economic conditions,” CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement on Wednesday.
Amazon.com-backed Rivian has been burning through cash to ramp up production of its R1S SUV and R1T pickup trucks as it spends on building a new factory in Georgia and loses thousands of dollars on every vehicle it builds.
The company’s cash burn comes at a time when demand for EVs has slowed, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk warning that high interest rates are making cars unaffordable.
After shying away from reducing the price of its vehicles last year despite a price war sparked by Tesla, Rivian this month cut the price of its R1T pickup trucks and R1S SUVs by $3,100.
end quotes
And then Bloomberg puts the icing on the cake in a story titled “Investors Flee Tumbling EV Upstarts Once Hailed as ‘Next Tesla’” by Esha Dey on February 25, 2024, where we have as follows with respect to Joe Biden’s COMMAND ECONOMY, to wit:
(Bloomberg) — There was a time when the backing of some of the world’s deepest pockets and the mere ambition to sell electric cars was enough to inspire confidence in the stocks of upstarts Rivian Automotive Inc. and Lucid Group Inc.
Now investors have all but thrown in the towel on the shares.
All it took was a fresh dose of reality from the two companies this week around cooling demand for EVs.
Rivian, which makes electric pickups, SUVs and delivery vans and counts Amazon.com Inc. as its top shareholder, said its production will stay flat at last year’s levels.
It also announced plans to shrink its workforce again.
Lucid, majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, projected only a slight increase in output over 2023.
Both forecasts fell far short of analysts’ expectations.
For investors, the sense of gloom has been building since October, when Tesla Inc. warned of sagging interest in EVs.
Though shares of the EV giant have fared poorly since then, losing around 20% and massively underperforming the broader market, the impact on smaller rivals like Rivian and Lucid has been nothing short of disastrous.
Shares of Irvine, California-based Rivian are down by about 44% since Tesla’s October warning — the first in a series of grim outlooks from global EV-makers and suppliers — and closed Friday at a record low.
Newark, California-based Lucid has dropped some 33% in the same period, and isn’t far above its own nadir.
Still, had it not been for their wealthy backers — Amazon has a 17% stake in Rivian, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund holds roughly 60% of Lucid, data compiled by Bloomberg show — the stocks could be looking far uglier.
“The presence of these names is a comfort to investors and a cushion to the price,” Mazza said.
“If these stocks were just relying on the EV hype, then they will be down much worse.”
Overall, the biggest concern is that these cash-burning, unprofitable companies will struggle to sell cars at a time when even industry-leader Tesla — by far the biggest seller in the US market — is cutting prices to boost demand.
And while Tesla’s profits and large-scale production allow it to compete by lowering prices, Rivian and Lucid have neither of those advantages.
“For these car manufacturers, investors want to see demand,” said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors.
Rivian’s latest results suggest it will take several quarters to emerge from its production stoppage with a leaner cost structure and a redesigned platform, he said.
“In the meantime, I think skeptics will be scrutinizing the cash balance and ringing alarm bells,” Wagner said.
“So if there is no multiple expansion and no growth — what else is the stock supposed to do?”
Both Rivian and Lucid are now worth a fraction of the prices they fetched at their public-market debuts in 2021.
Rivian’s market value is around $9.6 billion, and Lucid’s is about $6.9 billion.
That’s a long way down from their $153 billion and $91 billion valuation peaks, respectively, in 2021.
Wall Street analysts are losing confidence as well.
Analysts’ average 12-month price targets for Rivian and Lucid fell nearly 20% just this week.
Meanwhile, the outlook for EVs broadly just keeps getting worse.
Global sales of EVs are estimated to grow 20% this year, to about 16.7 million units, according to BloombergNEF’s most recent analysis.
That’s a marked cooling from the 33% jump seen in 2023.
“Trying to be the ‘next Tesla’ is turning out to be an expensive strategy,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note Friday.
“As EV startups turn into restructuring stories, whoever finds a sponsor has the best chance.”
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907969
Paul Plante says:
And yes, people, disjointed, and indeed, demented, as in the demented Biden administration policies are not well connected or well ordered, and therefore are often confusing as we see in a Reuters article titled “Yellen says US moving to ensure domestic EV maker success despite China’s exports” by David Lawder on March 13, 2024, where we have this drivel from Biden treasury secretary Janet “TOODLES” Yellen to consider, to wit:
ELIZABETHTOWN, Kentucky, March 13 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday said President Joe Biden’s administration is taking steps to ensure the success of its domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry in the face of China’s growing exports in the sector and heavy government subsidies.
Asked whether the United States needs new tariffs on Chinese EVs, Yellen told reporters at a new battery materials plant in Kentucky: “I don’t want to get ahead of where we are, but it is a commitment that President Biden has made … that we’re going to want our domestic industry to be successful.”
end quotes
And with those statements from “TOODLES,” here we are, back to BIDE-O-NISM, Joe’s COMMAND ECONOMY, out of which comes BIDE-O-NOMICS, and its related BIDENFLATION, and by way of review, a “Command economy” or “Communist economy,” also known as a “Central Planned Economy” is an economy where decisions on what to produce, how to produce and for whom are taken by the government in a centrally managed bureaucracy.
For those of us with memories that extend farther back in time than just a few minutes ago, we recall that the Soviet Union often announced ‘5-year plans’ where targets for steel production would be created, and as we learned in 7th grade social studies, in the period 1928-40 and after the Second World War, these Five-year plans were very successful in terms of expanding the Soviet Union’s industrial production, so that for a period, the Soviet Union achieved very rapid rates of economic growth.
However, by the 1960s, the system was struggling with corruption, inefficiency and a lack of incentives, and the rapid economic growth of the Stalin years also occurred against a backdrop of political repression.
As to the problems we can expect from BIDE-O-NISM, Joe Biden’s Americanized version of STALINISM in the Soviet Union, they are as follows:
* Governments are poor at predicting future trends.
* Inflexible. Difficult to respond to shortages and surpluses
* Greater scope for corruption
* Planned economies often associated with greater political repression
end quotes
As to Joe taking steps to ensure the success of his government-subsidized domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry, consider the Reuters article titled “EV start-up Fisker prepares for possible bankruptcy filing, WSJ reports” on March 13, 2024, where we have a hurdle for Joe to overcome if he wants his government-subsidized domestic electric vehicle (EV) industry to be successful, to wit:
March 13 (Reuters) – Electric-vehicle start-up Fisker has hired restructuring advisers to assist with a possible bankruptcy filing, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Earlier this month, Fisker flagged going-concern risks, job cuts and a pause in investments into future projects until it secures a partnership with a manufacturer.
end quotes
As those with memories will recall, this is the second time Fisker is going bankrupt, with Joe Biden having been its chief cheerleader the last time around.
But Joe’s problems don’t stop there, and as proof that Joe’s government is as poor at predicting future trends as any other fourth-rate banana republic, all we need do is go to a Reuters article titled “Lucid forecasts annual vehicle production below estimates” on February 21, 2024, where we have as follows:
Feb 21 (Reuters) – Lucid Group forecast annual vehicle production far below analysts’ estimates on Wednesday, on signs that demand for its luxury electric vehicles will slow down as high interest rates pinch consumer budgets.
Shares of the company fell around 5% in extended trading.
end quotes
And those high interest rates killing Joe’s INSANE GREEN DREAM are caused by BIDE-O-NOMICS, which takes us back to that story, to wit:
The company expects to make 9,000 units for the full-year 2024 compared with estimates of 22,594 according to five analysts polled by Visible Alpha.
The company made 8,428 vehicles in 2023.
The Saudi Arabia-backed company took to slashing prices once more for its Air sedans last week to counter sagging demand at a time when the EV industry is seeing a slowdown.
The company also missed estimates for fourth-quarter revenue hit by a slowdown in deliveries as consumers grapple with high costs.
end quotes
And they are not the only ones getting hurt by BIDE-O-NOMICS, as we see from another Reuters article titled “Rivian cuts jobs, sees annual production below estimates” on February 21, 2024, to wit:
Feb 21 (Reuters) – Rivian said on Wednesday it would cut its workforce by 10% and forecast EV production this year that widely missed estimates, hurt by downtime for factory upgrades and slowing demand for electric vehicles due to high interest rates.
Shares of the company tumbled about 17% in extended trading after Rivian said it expects to produce 57,000 vehicles in 2024, well below estimates of 81,700 units, according to eight analysts polled by Visible Alpha.
It produced 57,232 vehicles last year.
“We firmly believe in the full electrification of the automotive industry, but recognize in the short-term, the challenging macro-economic conditions,” CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement on Wednesday.
Amazon.com-backed Rivian has been burning through cash to ramp up production of its R1S SUV and R1T pickup trucks as it spends on building a new factory in Georgia and loses thousands of dollars on every vehicle it builds.
The company’s cash burn comes at a time when demand for EVs has slowed, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk warning that high interest rates are making cars unaffordable.
After shying away from reducing the price of its vehicles last year despite a price war sparked by Tesla, Rivian this month cut the price of its R1T pickup trucks and R1S SUVs by $3,100.
end quotes
And then Bloomberg puts the icing on the cake in a story titled “Investors Flee Tumbling EV Upstarts Once Hailed as ‘Next Tesla’” by Esha Dey on February 25, 2024, where we have as follows with respect to Joe Biden’s COMMAND ECONOMY, to wit:
(Bloomberg) — There was a time when the backing of some of the world’s deepest pockets and the mere ambition to sell electric cars was enough to inspire confidence in the stocks of upstarts Rivian Automotive Inc. and Lucid Group Inc.
Now investors have all but thrown in the towel on the shares.
All it took was a fresh dose of reality from the two companies this week around cooling demand for EVs.
Rivian, which makes electric pickups, SUVs and delivery vans and counts Amazon.com Inc. as its top shareholder, said its production will stay flat at last year’s levels.
It also announced plans to shrink its workforce again.
Lucid, majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, projected only a slight increase in output over 2023.
Both forecasts fell far short of analysts’ expectations.
For investors, the sense of gloom has been building since October, when Tesla Inc. warned of sagging interest in EVs.
Though shares of the EV giant have fared poorly since then, losing around 20% and massively underperforming the broader market, the impact on smaller rivals like Rivian and Lucid has been nothing short of disastrous.
Shares of Irvine, California-based Rivian are down by about 44% since Tesla’s October warning — the first in a series of grim outlooks from global EV-makers and suppliers — and closed Friday at a record low.
Newark, California-based Lucid has dropped some 33% in the same period, and isn’t far above its own nadir.
Still, had it not been for their wealthy backers — Amazon has a 17% stake in Rivian, and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund holds roughly 60% of Lucid, data compiled by Bloomberg show — the stocks could be looking far uglier.
“The presence of these names is a comfort to investors and a cushion to the price,” Mazza said.
“If these stocks were just relying on the EV hype, then they will be down much worse.”
Overall, the biggest concern is that these cash-burning, unprofitable companies will struggle to sell cars at a time when even industry-leader Tesla — by far the biggest seller in the US market — is cutting prices to boost demand.
And while Tesla’s profits and large-scale production allow it to compete by lowering prices, Rivian and Lucid have neither of those advantages.
“For these car manufacturers, investors want to see demand,” said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors.
Rivian’s latest results suggest it will take several quarters to emerge from its production stoppage with a leaner cost structure and a redesigned platform, he said.
“In the meantime, I think skeptics will be scrutinizing the cash balance and ringing alarm bells,” Wagner said.
“So if there is no multiple expansion and no growth — what else is the stock supposed to do?”
Both Rivian and Lucid are now worth a fraction of the prices they fetched at their public-market debuts in 2021.
Rivian’s market value is around $9.6 billion, and Lucid’s is about $6.9 billion.
That’s a long way down from their $153 billion and $91 billion valuation peaks, respectively, in 2021.
Wall Street analysts are losing confidence as well.
Analysts’ average 12-month price targets for Rivian and Lucid fell nearly 20% just this week.
Meanwhile, the outlook for EVs broadly just keeps getting worse.
Global sales of EVs are estimated to grow 20% this year, to about 16.7 million units, according to BloombergNEF’s most recent analysis.
That’s a marked cooling from the 33% jump seen in 2023.
“Trying to be the ‘next Tesla’ is turning out to be an expensive strategy,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note Friday.
“As EV startups turn into restructuring stories, whoever finds a sponsor has the best chance.”
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-907969
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 16, 2024 AT 5:40 PM
Paul Plante says:
To put where we are today in America with respect to what passes for national politics in some kind of rational and logical perspective, notwithstanding these are hardly logical and/or rational times we find ourselves immersed in, with an angry and ranting Joe Biden in the white house, an autocrat cut from the same cloth as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Joe Stalin of the old Soviet Union, or Idi Amin of Uganda, who reportedly boasted that he kept the decapitated heads of political enemies in his freezer, although he said that human flesh was generally “too salty” for his taste, I would like to cut to an on-line publication called Reason and Meaning and an article titled “H. L. Mencken: On Politics (Bayard vs. Lionheart),” a political essay written on July 26, 1920 by Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956), who was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English who commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements in his time, in that case, nine years before the Wall Street Crash that led to the GREAT DEPRESSION, where we start with the famous quote of his one hundred four years ago which describes to a TEE where we are with Joe Biden adorning the white house today, to wit:
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.”
“We move toward a lofty ideal.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
~ H. L. Mencken
And that takes us to the article, which begins as follows:
Henry Louis Mencken (1880 – 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English.
Known as the “Sage of Baltimore,” he was one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.
end quotes
I have to confess here that Mencken is high up on my list of political commentators, and I am unaware of any today who have his insight into politics, politicians themselves, and how the game of politics is played, which takes us back to the article, to wit:
On July 26, 1920, Mencken published an op-ed in the Baltimore Evening Sun titled “Bayard vs. Lionheart,” which was later included in a volume of his essays: On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe.
Mencken’s essay ponders how it is that political candidates are so often the worst of people—without honor or conviction.
As Mencken puts it:
“It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there.”
end quote
And keep in mind that he was writing those words in 1920, and one hundred four years later, with Joe Biden in the white house, they are as true now as they were back then, which again takes us back to the article for more, to wit:
One of the main reasons that the voters often choose the worst people to lead them is that the masses fear thoughtful people, people with deep and sophisticated ideas:
“In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life.”
end quote
Today, one hundred four years later, we don’t find that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life.
To the contrary, we find that they don’t even get in, which again takes us back to the article, to wit:
And the voters have themselves to blame for the incompetent and immoral people they choose for public office.
Voters are:
“… unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions.”
“… when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. …”
“The larger the mob, the harder the test.”
“In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality.”
“But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.”
end quotes
Today, in our times, that man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum is named Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, and because of that, not only have we been stuck with him and his fiscal profligacy in the white house, but we are seriously threatened with four more years, which takes us to the rest of the Mencken quote above, to wit:
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men.”
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.”
“We move toward a lofty ideal.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
end quotes
Which takes us back to the author’s conclusion on November 29, 2016, to wit:
To be honest, I think that it is every bit as much moral vice as intellectual vice that will doom the American empire in our present moment.
I truly fear that we are moving to an even more more fascist, plutocratic state than the one we are already in.
I hope I’m wrong.
But it is hard just so hard to see how the situation will change without radical intellectual and moral enhancement of human beings.
end quotes
Keeping in mind that that was written eight years ago in 2016, with our gift of hindsight, we can truthfully say that the even more fascist, plutocratic state than the one we were in then came to Washington, D.C. in January of 2021 when Joe Biden was installed as president, and lo and behold, here we are today!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908462
Paul Plante says:
To put where we are today in America with respect to what passes for national politics in some kind of rational and logical perspective, notwithstanding these are hardly logical and/or rational times we find ourselves immersed in, with an angry and ranting Joe Biden in the white house, an autocrat cut from the same cloth as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Joe Stalin of the old Soviet Union, or Idi Amin of Uganda, who reportedly boasted that he kept the decapitated heads of political enemies in his freezer, although he said that human flesh was generally “too salty” for his taste, I would like to cut to an on-line publication called Reason and Meaning and an article titled “H. L. Mencken: On Politics (Bayard vs. Lionheart),” a political essay written on July 26, 1920 by Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956), who was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English who commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements in his time, in that case, nine years before the Wall Street Crash that led to the GREAT DEPRESSION, where we start with the famous quote of his one hundred four years ago which describes to a TEE where we are with Joe Biden adorning the white house today, to wit:
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.”
“We move toward a lofty ideal.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
~ H. L. Mencken
And that takes us to the article, which begins as follows:
Henry Louis Mencken (1880 – 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English.
Known as the “Sage of Baltimore,” he was one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.
end quotes
I have to confess here that Mencken is high up on my list of political commentators, and I am unaware of any today who have his insight into politics, politicians themselves, and how the game of politics is played, which takes us back to the article, to wit:
On July 26, 1920, Mencken published an op-ed in the Baltimore Evening Sun titled “Bayard vs. Lionheart,” which was later included in a volume of his essays: On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe.
Mencken’s essay ponders how it is that political candidates are so often the worst of people—without honor or conviction.
As Mencken puts it:
“It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there.”
end quote
And keep in mind that he was writing those words in 1920, and one hundred four years later, with Joe Biden in the white house, they are as true now as they were back then, which again takes us back to the article for more, to wit:
One of the main reasons that the voters often choose the worst people to lead them is that the masses fear thoughtful people, people with deep and sophisticated ideas:
“In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life.”
end quote
Today, one hundred four years later, we don’t find that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life.
To the contrary, we find that they don’t even get in, which again takes us back to the article, to wit:
And the voters have themselves to blame for the incompetent and immoral people they choose for public office.
Voters are:
“… unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions.”
“… when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. …”
“The larger the mob, the harder the test.”
“In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality.”
“But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.”
end quotes
Today, in our times, that man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum is named Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, and because of that, not only have we been stuck with him and his fiscal profligacy in the white house, but we are seriously threatened with four more years, which takes us to the rest of the Mencken quote above, to wit:
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men.”
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.”
“We move toward a lofty ideal.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
end quotes
Which takes us back to the author’s conclusion on November 29, 2016, to wit:
To be honest, I think that it is every bit as much moral vice as intellectual vice that will doom the American empire in our present moment.
I truly fear that we are moving to an even more more fascist, plutocratic state than the one we are already in.
I hope I’m wrong.
But it is hard just so hard to see how the situation will change without radical intellectual and moral enhancement of human beings.
end quotes
Keeping in mind that that was written eight years ago in 2016, with our gift of hindsight, we can truthfully say that the even more fascist, plutocratic state than the one we were in then came to Washington, D.C. in January of 2021 when Joe Biden was installed as president, and lo and behold, here we are today!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908462
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 17, 2024 AT 6:14 PM
Paul Plante says:
And now that the momentous occasion of what hopefully will be Joe Biden’s final State of the Union address has come and gone, and I have had ample time to go through the transcript word for word for word, let’s go back to February 20, 2024, and a Fox News article titled “Biden campaign aims to use State of the Union address as reset after damning Special Counsel claims: Report” by Nikolas Lanum, where we have this insight into Joe’s political thinking going into the BIG EVENT, much like having been able to interview Travis Kelce before the Superbowl to find out if having Taylor Swift in the audience would make him a nervous fumblefingers, or like Joe, could he “man up” and deal with it, or a chat with Muhammad Ali before the “RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE” on October 30, 1974 when boxer Muhammad Ali, nicknamed “The Greatest,” reclaimed the word heavyweight title by winning the “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where we have as follows on that subject, to wit:.
Officials close to President Biden believe the upcoming State of the Union address could be an opportunity to reset or “neutralize” public perceptions about his age and memory before the November election.
end quotes
And good luck with that, say I, because in an article in the Intelligencer titled “Trump vs. Biden Polls: No State of the Union Bounce for Joe” by Ed Kilgore on 16 March 2024, all that prep work to try and make Joe Biden out as something he isn’t with a blustery and windy speech devoid of any actual intellectual content failed to move the needle, one bit, to wit:
It is hard to exaggerate the psychological boost Democrats derived from Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Address.
Fears that Biden would show his advanced age on the reelection campaign trail — or worse yet, hide from voters — were dissipated by his fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness.
end quotes
And believe me, people are wondering where SLEEPY JOE Biden who is rumored to fall asleep face first in his mashed potatoes and peas after six o’clock at night, got that fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness from!
Is Old Joe doing like Sweet Jane, living on Reds, Vitamin C and Cocaine, and some steroids thrown in to induce some “ROID RAGE” in Joe, along with massive hits of Viagra to make Joe look virile and studly?
Going back to that POST-GAME ANALYSIS, it goes on as follows:
His team’s strategy for winning in November was on full display as the president chipped away at public skepticism about his record and identified Republicans with deeply unpopular policy positions and their deeply unpopular nominee.
But while the State of the Union did wonders for Democratic optimism, there’s simply not much evidence that it changed many minds about Joe Biden’s job performance or flipped many votes from Republican to Democrat.
The president’s job-approval ratings remain subpar.
end quotes
And with that POST-GAME analysis before us, and the reality it represents, let’s go back to the locker room pre-game for more on what TEAM BIDEN was thinking before having Joe, their CHAMPION, go into the arena, to wit:
According to a Monday report from Axios, Biden’s allies plan to spend hours on the text of his speech as well as the president’s physical preparation to turn the prime-time address into a campaign victory.
“Everyone around him is well aware — well aware — of the need to jack this campaign up,” a source close to Biden said.
“The only way to deal with the negative aftershocks of the special counsel’s report [criticizing Biden’s memory] is for the president to be out there, to be visible — to be strong of presence and strong of voice.”
Biden officials are hoping that the public response to the address will be similar to last year, when the president claimed that Republicans aimed to cut Social Security and Medicare programs.
Plans to re-energize Biden’s 2024 campaign follow the recent Hur report, which investigated the president’s handling of classified documents, after the prosecutor, in his final report, noted that Biden struggled to remember details such as when his son died.
While Hur’s report decided not to prosecute Biden for criminal wrongdoing, it characterized the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and led to a flurry of questions from reporters and commentary from left-leaning pundits.
end quotes
Which takes us to an analysis of the Hur Report in the Wall Street Journal titled “Opinion | ‘My Memory Is Fine’: Another Unforgettable Denial of Reality” by Gerard Baker on February 13, 2024, to wit:
“I am not a crook.”
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
A president denying reality is nothing new.
Sometimes it’s a self-protective lie.
Sometimes it’s a mangled emanation from the brain of a tired leader.
Sometimes it’s a contorted verbal formula to convince the rest of us that our perception of obvious truths is somehow false.
It rarely works.
On each of these occasions, the incumbent president failed to convince anyone, and in each case the political plight that prompted the denial in the first place helped ensure that his party lost the next presidential election.
“My memory is fine” looks set to join these presidential protestations as verbal monuments to futility.
The intensity of the denials by the White House and its allies of last week’s devastatingly succinct description of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory “ by special counsel Robert Hur is proof that they know it’s true.
The surest testimony to the accuracy of Mr. Hur’s assessment is that they reserved their greatest ire not for the description itself, but for his temerity in writing it.
Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, told CBS on Sunday that the special counsel’s 388-page report was a “really shabby work product and completely out of bounds for a prosecutor.”
But for political purposes, whether Mr. Hur took liberties with his brief by waxing about Mr. Biden’s mental faculties is immaterial.
The president’s handlers make clear by their behavior that they know it to be true as well as the public does.
Mr. Biden has held fewer press conferences and given fewer interviews than any president since Reagan.
For the second year in a row he skipped the traditional Super Bowl interview, usually a soft pass tossed this way so he can spike the ball in the end zone in front of more than 100 million Americans.
The leader of the free world is a fragile ornament, wrapped in cotton wool, protected by aides from falls and gaffes, sheltered by staff (and in Mr. Biden’s case by much of the media) from accountability, gently cocooned from the risk of doing or saying anything he can’t control.
This amounts to a fraud on the American public.
But it’s an inescapable feature of reality denial that once you’ve started, you can’t stop.
Mr. Biden may not be able to remember names of foreign leaders dead or alive or place important countries on the right continent, but, like everyone who has ever run for the office, he still thinks he’s the right man for the job.
It would be a high-wire act to drop a presidential nominee on the voting public 11 weeks before Election Day.
Democrats would be asking many Americans to choose someone nominated two months before they vote.
No, the reality denial will have to continue for another nine months.
And then, four more years.
end quotes
Which brings us up to where we are today, which is on a downhill run with Joe Biden in power, but stay tuned, because the saga of Joe Biden is far from over, so don’t touch that dial!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908875
Paul Plante says:
And now that the momentous occasion of what hopefully will be Joe Biden’s final State of the Union address has come and gone, and I have had ample time to go through the transcript word for word for word, let’s go back to February 20, 2024, and a Fox News article titled “Biden campaign aims to use State of the Union address as reset after damning Special Counsel claims: Report” by Nikolas Lanum, where we have this insight into Joe’s political thinking going into the BIG EVENT, much like having been able to interview Travis Kelce before the Superbowl to find out if having Taylor Swift in the audience would make him a nervous fumblefingers, or like Joe, could he “man up” and deal with it, or a chat with Muhammad Ali before the “RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE” on October 30, 1974 when boxer Muhammad Ali, nicknamed “The Greatest,” reclaimed the word heavyweight title by winning the “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where we have as follows on that subject, to wit:.
Officials close to President Biden believe the upcoming State of the Union address could be an opportunity to reset or “neutralize” public perceptions about his age and memory before the November election.
end quotes
And good luck with that, say I, because in an article in the Intelligencer titled “Trump vs. Biden Polls: No State of the Union Bounce for Joe” by Ed Kilgore on 16 March 2024, all that prep work to try and make Joe Biden out as something he isn’t with a blustery and windy speech devoid of any actual intellectual content failed to move the needle, one bit, to wit:
It is hard to exaggerate the psychological boost Democrats derived from Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union Address.
Fears that Biden would show his advanced age on the reelection campaign trail — or worse yet, hide from voters — were dissipated by his fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness.
end quotes
And believe me, people are wondering where SLEEPY JOE Biden who is rumored to fall asleep face first in his mashed potatoes and peas after six o’clock at night, got that fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness from!
Is Old Joe doing like Sweet Jane, living on Reds, Vitamin C and Cocaine, and some steroids thrown in to induce some “ROID RAGE” in Joe, along with massive hits of Viagra to make Joe look virile and studly?
Going back to that POST-GAME ANALYSIS, it goes on as follows:
His team’s strategy for winning in November was on full display as the president chipped away at public skepticism about his record and identified Republicans with deeply unpopular policy positions and their deeply unpopular nominee.
But while the State of the Union did wonders for Democratic optimism, there’s simply not much evidence that it changed many minds about Joe Biden’s job performance or flipped many votes from Republican to Democrat.
The president’s job-approval ratings remain subpar.
end quotes
And with that POST-GAME analysis before us, and the reality it represents, let’s go back to the locker room pre-game for more on what TEAM BIDEN was thinking before having Joe, their CHAMPION, go into the arena, to wit:
According to a Monday report from Axios, Biden’s allies plan to spend hours on the text of his speech as well as the president’s physical preparation to turn the prime-time address into a campaign victory.
“Everyone around him is well aware — well aware — of the need to jack this campaign up,” a source close to Biden said.
“The only way to deal with the negative aftershocks of the special counsel’s report [criticizing Biden’s memory] is for the president to be out there, to be visible — to be strong of presence and strong of voice.”
Biden officials are hoping that the public response to the address will be similar to last year, when the president claimed that Republicans aimed to cut Social Security and Medicare programs.
Plans to re-energize Biden’s 2024 campaign follow the recent Hur report, which investigated the president’s handling of classified documents, after the prosecutor, in his final report, noted that Biden struggled to remember details such as when his son died.
While Hur’s report decided not to prosecute Biden for criminal wrongdoing, it characterized the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and led to a flurry of questions from reporters and commentary from left-leaning pundits.
end quotes
Which takes us to an analysis of the Hur Report in the Wall Street Journal titled “Opinion | ‘My Memory Is Fine’: Another Unforgettable Denial of Reality” by Gerard Baker on February 13, 2024, to wit:
“I am not a crook.”
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
A president denying reality is nothing new.
Sometimes it’s a self-protective lie.
Sometimes it’s a mangled emanation from the brain of a tired leader.
Sometimes it’s a contorted verbal formula to convince the rest of us that our perception of obvious truths is somehow false.
It rarely works.
On each of these occasions, the incumbent president failed to convince anyone, and in each case the political plight that prompted the denial in the first place helped ensure that his party lost the next presidential election.
“My memory is fine” looks set to join these presidential protestations as verbal monuments to futility.
The intensity of the denials by the White House and its allies of last week’s devastatingly succinct description of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory “ by special counsel Robert Hur is proof that they know it’s true.
The surest testimony to the accuracy of Mr. Hur’s assessment is that they reserved their greatest ire not for the description itself, but for his temerity in writing it.
Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, told CBS on Sunday that the special counsel’s 388-page report was a “really shabby work product and completely out of bounds for a prosecutor.”
But for political purposes, whether Mr. Hur took liberties with his brief by waxing about Mr. Biden’s mental faculties is immaterial.
The president’s handlers make clear by their behavior that they know it to be true as well as the public does.
Mr. Biden has held fewer press conferences and given fewer interviews than any president since Reagan.
For the second year in a row he skipped the traditional Super Bowl interview, usually a soft pass tossed this way so he can spike the ball in the end zone in front of more than 100 million Americans.
The leader of the free world is a fragile ornament, wrapped in cotton wool, protected by aides from falls and gaffes, sheltered by staff (and in Mr. Biden’s case by much of the media) from accountability, gently cocooned from the risk of doing or saying anything he can’t control.
This amounts to a fraud on the American public.
But it’s an inescapable feature of reality denial that once you’ve started, you can’t stop.
Mr. Biden may not be able to remember names of foreign leaders dead or alive or place important countries on the right continent, but, like everyone who has ever run for the office, he still thinks he’s the right man for the job.
It would be a high-wire act to drop a presidential nominee on the voting public 11 weeks before Election Day.
Democrats would be asking many Americans to choose someone nominated two months before they vote.
No, the reality denial will have to continue for another nine months.
And then, four more years.
end quotes
Which brings us up to where we are today, which is on a downhill run with Joe Biden in power, but stay tuned, because the saga of Joe Biden is far from over, so don’t touch that dial!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908875
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 17, 2024 AT 10:42 PM
Paul Plante says:
Having studied the supposed political reasoning behind it, and having actually read through the transcript of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, in actuality, a poorly written political stump speech that had nothing to do with the actual state of the union, on March 7, 2024, I was reminded of a political essay by H.L. Mencken titled “Gamalielese” from the Baltimore Sun on March 7, 1921, where the “Sage of Baltimore” laid down the “rules” that govern the preparation and content of political speeches not only in his time, but in our times today, since those rules for what should be or should not be included in a political speech are inflexible and unchanging, as we shall see by examining the evidence, starting with the Mencken essay, to wit:
On the question of the logical content of Dr. Harding’s harangue of last Friday I do not presume to have views.
The matter has been debated at great length by the editorial writers of the Republic, all of them experts in logic; moreover, I confess to being prejudiced.
But when it comes to the style of a great man’s discourse, I can speak with a great deal less prejudice, and maybe with somewhat more competence, for I have earned most of my livelihood for twenty years past by translating the bad English of a multitude of authors into measurably better English.
Thus qualified professionally, I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. Harding.
Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati.
That is to say, he writes the worst English I have even encountered.
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.
end quotes
And it is the same today with Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU which indeed reminded me not only of stale bean-soup, but especially, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.
As Mencken said on March 7, 1921, it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it, and these words written then, in 1921, about a speech by Warren Gamaliel Harding, the Ohio Republican who was the 29th President of the United States (1921-1923) and whose term in office was fraught with scandal, including Teapot Dome, apply equally well today about Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU. and well they should, since Joe’s SOTU followed this same formula laid down some one hundred years or more ago, to wit:
It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.
It is rumble and bumble.
It is flap and doodle.
It is balder and dash.
end quotes
And yes, people, those are the main ingredients needed for a successful political speech by an American president today in our times. as we all witnessed on March 7, 2024 when a visibly angry (“ROID RAGE”?) and clearly agitated Joe Biden delivered his bombastic SOTU, only omitting mention of E PLURIBUS UNUM, and ENDEAVOR TO PERSEVERE, which takes us back to a short history of Warren Gamaliel Harding, who has traditionally been ranked as one of the worst American presidents, a ranking now contested mightily by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior in our times today.
With respect to Harding, in a 1948 poll conducted by Harvard University, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. conducted a survey of scholars’ opinions of the presidents, ranking Harding last among the 29 presidents considered.
As to Harding’s windy speeches, the style of which Joe Biden has adopted as his own today, before his nomination, Warren G. Harding declared, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality….”
A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, called Harding’s speeches “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.”
So too today with Joe Biden’s speeches and especially his SOTU, which was full of empty platitudes but totally devoid of actual intellectual content, to wit:
“Folks, America cannot go back.”
“I am here to- — tonight to show what I believe is the way forward, because I know how far we’ve come.”
Uh, okay, sure, Joe, whatever you say!
“Turning setback into comeback.”
“That’s what America does.”
“That’s what America does.”
Ah, the inspiration pours forth!
“I say to the American people: When America gets knocked down, we get back up.”
“We keep going.”
“That’s America.”
“That’s you, the American people.”
“It’s because of you America is coming back.”
“It’s because of you our future is brighter.”
“It’s because of you that tonight we can proudly say the state of our Union is strong and getting stronger.”
That, people is a pure example of political rhetoric dragging itself out of the dark abysm of pish, as it crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.
That is rumble and bumble combined with flap and doodle with the right amount of balder and dash mixed in to make it all absolute political hogwash.
Going back to Harding, he born near Marion, Ohio, in 1865, and became the publisher of a newspaper.
Harding’s undeviating Republicanism and vibrant speaking voice, plus his willingness to let the machine bosses set policies, led him far in Ohio politics.
He served in the state Senate and as Lieutenant Governor, and unsuccessfully ran for Governor.
He delivered the nominating address for President Taft at the 1912 Republican Convention.
In 1914 he was elected to the Senate, which he found “a very pleasant place.”
An Ohio admirer, Harry Daugherty, began to promote Harding for the 1920 Republican nomination because, he later explained, “He looked like a President.”
Thus a group of Senators, taking control of the 1920 Republican Convention when the principal candidates deadlocked, turned to Harding.
He won the Presidential election by an unprecedented landslide of 60 percent of the popular vote.
Republicans in Congress easily got the President’s signature on their bills.
By 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and newspapers hailed Harding as a wise statesman carrying out his campaign promise – “Less government in business and more business in government.”
Behind the facade, not all of Harding’s Administration was so impressive.
Word began to reach the President that some of his friends were using their official positions for their own enrichment.
Alarmed, he complained, “My…friends…they’re the ones that keep me walking the floors nights!”
Looking wan and depressed, Harding journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with him his upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover.
“If you knew of a great scandal in our administration,” he asked Hoover, “would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?”
Hoover urged publishing it, but Harding feared the political repercussions.
He did not live to find out how the public would react to the scandals of his administration.
In August of 1923, he died in San Francisco of a heart attack.
And with that history stated, let’s cut to a break for station identification and an INFOMERCIAL starring Hillary Clinton pitching THIGH MASTERS and SHAMWOWS, but don’t touch that dial, because when the INFOMERCIAL is over, we will be back with more, so stay tuned!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908963
Paul Plante says:
Having studied the supposed political reasoning behind it, and having actually read through the transcript of Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, in actuality, a poorly written political stump speech that had nothing to do with the actual state of the union, on March 7, 2024, I was reminded of a political essay by H.L. Mencken titled “Gamalielese” from the Baltimore Sun on March 7, 1921, where the “Sage of Baltimore” laid down the “rules” that govern the preparation and content of political speeches not only in his time, but in our times today, since those rules for what should be or should not be included in a political speech are inflexible and unchanging, as we shall see by examining the evidence, starting with the Mencken essay, to wit:
On the question of the logical content of Dr. Harding’s harangue of last Friday I do not presume to have views.
The matter has been debated at great length by the editorial writers of the Republic, all of them experts in logic; moreover, I confess to being prejudiced.
But when it comes to the style of a great man’s discourse, I can speak with a great deal less prejudice, and maybe with somewhat more competence, for I have earned most of my livelihood for twenty years past by translating the bad English of a multitude of authors into measurably better English.
Thus qualified professionally, I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. Harding.
Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati.
That is to say, he writes the worst English I have even encountered.
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.
end quotes
And it is the same today with Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU which indeed reminded me not only of stale bean-soup, but especially, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights.
As Mencken said on March 7, 1921, it is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it, and these words written then, in 1921, about a speech by Warren Gamaliel Harding, the Ohio Republican who was the 29th President of the United States (1921-1923) and whose term in office was fraught with scandal, including Teapot Dome, apply equally well today about Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU. and well they should, since Joe’s SOTU followed this same formula laid down some one hundred years or more ago, to wit:
It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.
It is rumble and bumble.
It is flap and doodle.
It is balder and dash.
end quotes
And yes, people, those are the main ingredients needed for a successful political speech by an American president today in our times. as we all witnessed on March 7, 2024 when a visibly angry (“ROID RAGE”?) and clearly agitated Joe Biden delivered his bombastic SOTU, only omitting mention of E PLURIBUS UNUM, and ENDEAVOR TO PERSEVERE, which takes us back to a short history of Warren Gamaliel Harding, who has traditionally been ranked as one of the worst American presidents, a ranking now contested mightily by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior in our times today.
With respect to Harding, in a 1948 poll conducted by Harvard University, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. conducted a survey of scholars’ opinions of the presidents, ranking Harding last among the 29 presidents considered.
As to Harding’s windy speeches, the style of which Joe Biden has adopted as his own today, before his nomination, Warren G. Harding declared, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality….”
A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, called Harding’s speeches “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.”
So too today with Joe Biden’s speeches and especially his SOTU, which was full of empty platitudes but totally devoid of actual intellectual content, to wit:
“Folks, America cannot go back.”
“I am here to- — tonight to show what I believe is the way forward, because I know how far we’ve come.”
Uh, okay, sure, Joe, whatever you say!
“Turning setback into comeback.”
“That’s what America does.”
“That’s what America does.”
Ah, the inspiration pours forth!
“I say to the American people: When America gets knocked down, we get back up.”
“We keep going.”
“That’s America.”
“That’s you, the American people.”
“It’s because of you America is coming back.”
“It’s because of you our future is brighter.”
“It’s because of you that tonight we can proudly say the state of our Union is strong and getting stronger.”
That, people is a pure example of political rhetoric dragging itself out of the dark abysm of pish, as it crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh.
That is rumble and bumble combined with flap and doodle with the right amount of balder and dash mixed in to make it all absolute political hogwash.
Going back to Harding, he born near Marion, Ohio, in 1865, and became the publisher of a newspaper.
Harding’s undeviating Republicanism and vibrant speaking voice, plus his willingness to let the machine bosses set policies, led him far in Ohio politics.
He served in the state Senate and as Lieutenant Governor, and unsuccessfully ran for Governor.
He delivered the nominating address for President Taft at the 1912 Republican Convention.
In 1914 he was elected to the Senate, which he found “a very pleasant place.”
An Ohio admirer, Harry Daugherty, began to promote Harding for the 1920 Republican nomination because, he later explained, “He looked like a President.”
Thus a group of Senators, taking control of the 1920 Republican Convention when the principal candidates deadlocked, turned to Harding.
He won the Presidential election by an unprecedented landslide of 60 percent of the popular vote.
Republicans in Congress easily got the President’s signature on their bills.
By 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and newspapers hailed Harding as a wise statesman carrying out his campaign promise – “Less government in business and more business in government.”
Behind the facade, not all of Harding’s Administration was so impressive.
Word began to reach the President that some of his friends were using their official positions for their own enrichment.
Alarmed, he complained, “My…friends…they’re the ones that keep me walking the floors nights!”
Looking wan and depressed, Harding journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with him his upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover.
“If you knew of a great scandal in our administration,” he asked Hoover, “would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?”
Hoover urged publishing it, but Harding feared the political repercussions.
He did not live to find out how the public would react to the scandals of his administration.
In August of 1923, he died in San Francisco of a heart attack.
And with that history stated, let’s cut to a break for station identification and an INFOMERCIAL starring Hillary Clinton pitching THIGH MASTERS and SHAMWOWS, but don’t touch that dial, because when the INFOMERCIAL is over, we will be back with more, so stay tuned!
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-908963
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 18, 2024 AT 6:19 PM
Paul Plante says:
It is well known in our times today that reading, as I do on a daily basis, consistently improves concentration and critical thinking skills while strengthening brain network connectivity, so that when I am reading the transcript of Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU, and come across bombastic (forceful and confident in a way that is intended to be very powerful and impressive, but may not have much real meaning or effect) drivel from Joe such as “Above all, I see a future for all Americans; I see a country for all Americans; And I will always be President for all Americans because I believe in America,” it is those critical thinking skills that have me saying, WTF, this man is an idiotic lunatic!
Above all, Joe Biden sees a future for all Americans?
Oh, really!
I wonder what he has in store for me?
And Joe sees a country for all Americans?
I mean, seriously, people, how can you take this **** seriously and consider it to be even remotely “presidential” in nature, or related in any way to the actual state of the union, which was what Joe was supposed to be there to talk about, but ended up way wide of the mark.
And then there is this Biden-esque verbal gem, to wit:
“And I will always be President for all Americans because I believe in America.”
Now, seriously, people, doesn’t that make you feel very good about yourselves and all warm and squishy inside hearing Joe crooning those words in your ear in dulcet, mellifluous and euphonious tones?
And of course it does.
But who is Joe trying to kid there?
Joe Biden is not President for all Americans; he has never been President for all Americans; and he never will be President for all Americans, and that is an indisputable fact.
Think I’m kidding?
Not a joke, people, as we clearly see from a Daily Wire article titled “Joe Biden Calls Trump Supporters ‘Virulent People,’ The ‘Dregs Of Society'” by Joseph Curl on September 17, 2018, where we have the real Joe Biden standing up and being heard as he bellowed and blustered about Trump supporters, to wit:
Joe Biden just had his “deplorables” moment.
Biden, who says he’ll decided in January whether to run for president in 2020 but who is making all the moves of a presidential candidate, used a pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign annual dinner on Saturday to rip President Trump.
And in so doing, Biden had a moment reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, when she called Trump supporters “deplorables.”
Biden did his old act, starting off soft and avuncular before booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about.
“Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made,” he said.
“This time they — not you — have an ally in the White House.”
“This time they have an ally.”
“They’re a small percentage of the American people — virulent people, some of them the dregs of society.”
“And instead of using the full might of the executive branch to secure justice, dignity, safety for all, the president uses the White House as the literal — literal — bully pulpit, callously — callously — exerting his power over those who have little or none.”
Biden got himself lathered up into a full froth as he waxed poetic about his and “Barack’s” thoughts on Trump.
“Barack and I agreed to remain silent for a while to give this administration the chance to get up and running in the first year,” Biden said.
“God forgive me,” he added, making the sign of the cross as the audience applauded.
“Those who try to excuse this kind of prejudice in the name of culture, I say, ‘Prejudice is prejudice and humanity is humanity — it is a crime,'” Biden said, urging those in the room to continue to oppose Trump.
“Our work is not yet done by any stretch of the imagination.”
“The stakes are much too high.”
And then he went even further.
“This is deadly earnest, we are in a fight for America’s soul,” Biden said.
Biden’s wife, Jill, also got in on the act before introducing her husband.
“There is nothing that makes either of us more angry than a bully.”
“There’s nothing that’s more unfair or unjust than people using their power to try to make other people feel small, to tell them who they are or what they are capable of, to say their identity doesn’t belong,” she said.
“There is nothing that makes us want to pick a fight more than that,” she said.
end quotes
And with those words from “CREEPY JILL” Biden before us, it is again time to cut to a break for station identification and when we will get back we will have H. L. Mencken telling us about the inner secrets, the Zen, if you will, or Tao, of good political speech writing, to wit:
But I grow lyrical.
More scientifically, what is the matter with it?
Why does it seem so flabby, so banal, so confused and childish, so stupidly at war with sense?
If you first read the inaugural address and then heard it intoned, as I did (at least in part), then you will perhaps arrive at an answer.
That answer is very simple.
When Dr. Harding (president Warren G. Harding) prepares a speech he does not think of it in terms of an educated reader locked up in jail, but in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand.
That is to say, the thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech.
More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.
Such imbeciles do not want ideas — that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention.
What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures.
end quotes
And gestures Joe Biden has by the bushel basket full as he gets himself lathered up into a full froth, booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about, so stay tuned.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909193
Paul Plante says:
It is well known in our times today that reading, as I do on a daily basis, consistently improves concentration and critical thinking skills while strengthening brain network connectivity, so that when I am reading the transcript of Joe Biden’s March 7, 2024 SOTU, and come across bombastic (forceful and confident in a way that is intended to be very powerful and impressive, but may not have much real meaning or effect) drivel from Joe such as “Above all, I see a future for all Americans; I see a country for all Americans; And I will always be President for all Americans because I believe in America,” it is those critical thinking skills that have me saying, WTF, this man is an idiotic lunatic!
Above all, Joe Biden sees a future for all Americans?
Oh, really!
I wonder what he has in store for me?
And Joe sees a country for all Americans?
I mean, seriously, people, how can you take this **** seriously and consider it to be even remotely “presidential” in nature, or related in any way to the actual state of the union, which was what Joe was supposed to be there to talk about, but ended up way wide of the mark.
And then there is this Biden-esque verbal gem, to wit:
“And I will always be President for all Americans because I believe in America.”
Now, seriously, people, doesn’t that make you feel very good about yourselves and all warm and squishy inside hearing Joe crooning those words in your ear in dulcet, mellifluous and euphonious tones?
And of course it does.
But who is Joe trying to kid there?
Joe Biden is not President for all Americans; he has never been President for all Americans; and he never will be President for all Americans, and that is an indisputable fact.
Think I’m kidding?
Not a joke, people, as we clearly see from a Daily Wire article titled “Joe Biden Calls Trump Supporters ‘Virulent People,’ The ‘Dregs Of Society'” by Joseph Curl on September 17, 2018, where we have the real Joe Biden standing up and being heard as he bellowed and blustered about Trump supporters, to wit:
Joe Biden just had his “deplorables” moment.
Biden, who says he’ll decided in January whether to run for president in 2020 but who is making all the moves of a presidential candidate, used a pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign annual dinner on Saturday to rip President Trump.
And in so doing, Biden had a moment reminiscent of Hillary Clinton, when she called Trump supporters “deplorables.”
Biden did his old act, starting off soft and avuncular before booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about.
“Despite losing in the courts, and in the court of opinion, these forces of intolerance remain determined to undermine and roll back the progress you all have made,” he said.
“This time they — not you — have an ally in the White House.”
“This time they have an ally.”
“They’re a small percentage of the American people — virulent people, some of them the dregs of society.”
“And instead of using the full might of the executive branch to secure justice, dignity, safety for all, the president uses the White House as the literal — literal — bully pulpit, callously — callously — exerting his power over those who have little or none.”
Biden got himself lathered up into a full froth as he waxed poetic about his and “Barack’s” thoughts on Trump.
“Barack and I agreed to remain silent for a while to give this administration the chance to get up and running in the first year,” Biden said.
“God forgive me,” he added, making the sign of the cross as the audience applauded.
“Those who try to excuse this kind of prejudice in the name of culture, I say, ‘Prejudice is prejudice and humanity is humanity — it is a crime,'” Biden said, urging those in the room to continue to oppose Trump.
“Our work is not yet done by any stretch of the imagination.”
“The stakes are much too high.”
And then he went even further.
“This is deadly earnest, we are in a fight for America’s soul,” Biden said.
Biden’s wife, Jill, also got in on the act before introducing her husband.
“There is nothing that makes either of us more angry than a bully.”
“There’s nothing that’s more unfair or unjust than people using their power to try to make other people feel small, to tell them who they are or what they are capable of, to say their identity doesn’t belong,” she said.
“There is nothing that makes us want to pick a fight more than that,” she said.
end quotes
And with those words from “CREEPY JILL” Biden before us, it is again time to cut to a break for station identification and when we will get back we will have H. L. Mencken telling us about the inner secrets, the Zen, if you will, or Tao, of good political speech writing, to wit:
But I grow lyrical.
More scientifically, what is the matter with it?
Why does it seem so flabby, so banal, so confused and childish, so stupidly at war with sense?
If you first read the inaugural address and then heard it intoned, as I did (at least in part), then you will perhaps arrive at an answer.
That answer is very simple.
When Dr. Harding (president Warren G. Harding) prepares a speech he does not think of it in terms of an educated reader locked up in jail, but in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand.
That is to say, the thing is always a stump speech; it is conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech.
More, it is a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that the speaker has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.
Such imbeciles do not want ideas — that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention.
What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures.
end quotes
And gestures Joe Biden has by the bushel basket full as he gets himself lathered up into a full froth, booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about, so stay tuned.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909193
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 19, 2024 AT 9:35 PM
Paul Plante says:
So, going back to the article in the Intelligencer titled “Trump vs. Biden Polls: No State of the Union Bounce for Joe” by Ed Kilgore on 16 March 2024, where we were told that Democrat fears that Joe Biden would show his advanced age on the reelection campaign trail were dissipated by his fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness on March 7, 2024 when Joe delivered his political stump speech misnamed as a State of the Union address, which it clearly was not, not having anything whatsoever to actually do with the actual state of the union, which is hardly strong with Joe Biden in power, we see Joe and his handlers following the successful political formula laid down a little over a hundred years ago by Warren Gamaliel Harding, who has traditionally been ranked as one of the worst American presidents, a ranking now contested mightily by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior in our times today, so that like president Harding, when Joe and his handlers prepare a speech, they too think of it in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand upon which Joe Biden rises high above the assembled crowd and gets himself lathered up into a full froth, booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about, so that in Joe’s style, like that of Gamaliel before him, there is pressure, ardency, effortcy, gasping, a high grunting, Cheyne-Stokes breathing.
Like that of Warren G. Harding, Joe Biden has a style that rolls and groans, struggles and complains, the style of a rhinoceros liberating himself by main strength from a lake of boiling molasses, as Mencken said of Harding in the political essay “A Short View of Gamalielese” in The Nation on April 27, 1921.
As with Harding, a speech by Joe Biden on anything, about anything, or about a lot of nothing, as far as that goes, is always a stump speech conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that Joe Biden has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.
As was the case with Harding and remains the case today with Joe Biden, twin sons of different mothers at least as far as political speeches are concerned, such imbeciles as can sit or stand through a speech delivered by Joe Biden do not want ideas — that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention.
What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures, such as the following concluding words from Joe Biden’s fake SOTU on March 7, 2024, to wit:
I believe in you, the American people.
You’re the reason we’ve never been more optimistic about our future than I am now.
So, let’s build the future together.
Let’s remember who we are.
We are the United States of America.
And there is nothing — nothing beyond our capacity when we act together.
end quotes
And doesn’t that just warm the cockles of your hearts, people, to know that an American president, with all his cares and worries, still has time to believe in YOU, and he wants you to know that you’re the reason Joe and “CREEPY JILL,” whose husband Joe is, have never been more optimistic about our future than Joe and “CREEPY JILL” are now?
And going back to Joe and his handlers following the successful political formula for political speeches laid down a little over a hundred years ago by Warren Gamaliel Harding, Joe and his handlers know that Joe’s followers can’t understand many words of more than two syllables, but that is not saying that they do not esteem such words.
On the contrary, as was the case when Harding was president, they like them and demand them, because the roll of incomprehensible polysyllables, such as “to lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done,” enchants them, and they like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery, such as “overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond.”
Yes, people, let that thunder sound, and Joe’s acolytes and followers will take all the rest on trust.
Quoting Mencken, because he got it right, if a sentence of Joe’s begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, such as “my message to President Putin, who I’ve known for a long time, is simple: We will not walk away; We will not bow down; I will not bow down,” Joe’s listeners are still satisfied, because if a phrase has a punch in it like that one does, they do not ask that it also have a meaning.
If a word slips off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, such as “in a literal sense, history is watching,” they are content and applaud it and wait for the next.
As H.L. Mencken said in his essay “Gamalielese” from the Baltimore Sun on March 7, 1921, and it applies to a career hack politician like Joe Biden today, brought up amid such hinds, trained by long practice to engage and delight them, Dr. Harding carries his stump manner into everything he writes, as does Joe Biden today, and as was the case then, the stump speech, put into cold type such as the transcript of Joe’s SOTU that I read, maketh the judicious to grieve, but roared from an actual stump, or a metaphorical stump in the case of Joe’s SOTU on March 7, 2034, with arms flying and eyes flashing and the old flag overhead, it is certainly and brilliantly effective.
Read Joe’s SOTU and it will gag you, as it did me.
But hear it recited with grand gestures to ram home its periods, and you will begin to understand it, keeping well in mind that a tight fabric of ideas would weary and exasperate Joe’s audience because what it wants, and what Joe delivered with his SOTU on March 7, 2024, is a simple loud burble of words, a procession of phrases that roar, a series of whoops.
And here once again, we will take a break for station identification while we cut to a Youtube video of Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea giving us a preview of what to expect from an upcoming video of Hillary Clinton and Lauren Boebert performing “Booty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtIRArhVD4 , so stay tuned and we will be back with more.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909473
Paul Plante says:
So, going back to the article in the Intelligencer titled “Trump vs. Biden Polls: No State of the Union Bounce for Joe” by Ed Kilgore on 16 March 2024, where we were told that Democrat fears that Joe Biden would show his advanced age on the reelection campaign trail were dissipated by his fiery upbeat demeanor and extemporaneous feistiness on March 7, 2024 when Joe delivered his political stump speech misnamed as a State of the Union address, which it clearly was not, not having anything whatsoever to actually do with the actual state of the union, which is hardly strong with Joe Biden in power, we see Joe and his handlers following the successful political formula laid down a little over a hundred years ago by Warren Gamaliel Harding, who has traditionally been ranked as one of the worst American presidents, a ranking now contested mightily by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior in our times today, so that like president Harding, when Joe and his handlers prepare a speech, they too think of it in terms of a great horde of stoneheads gathered around a stand upon which Joe Biden rises high above the assembled crowd and gets himself lathered up into a full froth, booming through his power points, punching the air and flailing about, so that in Joe’s style, like that of Gamaliel before him, there is pressure, ardency, effortcy, gasping, a high grunting, Cheyne-Stokes breathing.
Like that of Warren G. Harding, Joe Biden has a style that rolls and groans, struggles and complains, the style of a rhinoceros liberating himself by main strength from a lake of boiling molasses, as Mencken said of Harding in the political essay “A Short View of Gamalielese” in The Nation on April 27, 1921.
As with Harding, a speech by Joe Biden on anything, about anything, or about a lot of nothing, as far as that goes, is always a stump speech conceived as a stump speech and written as a stump speech addressed to the sort of audience that Joe Biden has been used to all of his life, to wit, an audience of small town yokels, of low political serfs, or morons scarcely able to understand a word of more than two syllables, and wholly able to pursue a logical idea for more than two centimeters.
As was the case with Harding and remains the case today with Joe Biden, twin sons of different mothers at least as far as political speeches are concerned, such imbeciles as can sit or stand through a speech delivered by Joe Biden do not want ideas — that is, new ideas, ideas that are unfamiliar, ideas that challenge their attention.
What they want is simply a gaudy series of platitudes, of sonorous nonsense driven home with gestures, such as the following concluding words from Joe Biden’s fake SOTU on March 7, 2024, to wit:
I believe in you, the American people.
You’re the reason we’ve never been more optimistic about our future than I am now.
So, let’s build the future together.
Let’s remember who we are.
We are the United States of America.
And there is nothing — nothing beyond our capacity when we act together.
end quotes
And doesn’t that just warm the cockles of your hearts, people, to know that an American president, with all his cares and worries, still has time to believe in YOU, and he wants you to know that you’re the reason Joe and “CREEPY JILL,” whose husband Joe is, have never been more optimistic about our future than Joe and “CREEPY JILL” are now?
And going back to Joe and his handlers following the successful political formula for political speeches laid down a little over a hundred years ago by Warren Gamaliel Harding, Joe and his handlers know that Joe’s followers can’t understand many words of more than two syllables, but that is not saying that they do not esteem such words.
On the contrary, as was the case when Harding was president, they like them and demand them, because the roll of incomprehensible polysyllables, such as “to lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done,” enchants them, and they like phrases which thunder like salvos of artillery, such as “overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond.”
Yes, people, let that thunder sound, and Joe’s acolytes and followers will take all the rest on trust.
Quoting Mencken, because he got it right, if a sentence of Joe’s begins furiously and then peters out into fatuity, such as “my message to President Putin, who I’ve known for a long time, is simple: We will not walk away; We will not bow down; I will not bow down,” Joe’s listeners are still satisfied, because if a phrase has a punch in it like that one does, they do not ask that it also have a meaning.
If a word slips off the tongue like a ship going down the ways, such as “in a literal sense, history is watching,” they are content and applaud it and wait for the next.
As H.L. Mencken said in his essay “Gamalielese” from the Baltimore Sun on March 7, 1921, and it applies to a career hack politician like Joe Biden today, brought up amid such hinds, trained by long practice to engage and delight them, Dr. Harding carries his stump manner into everything he writes, as does Joe Biden today, and as was the case then, the stump speech, put into cold type such as the transcript of Joe’s SOTU that I read, maketh the judicious to grieve, but roared from an actual stump, or a metaphorical stump in the case of Joe’s SOTU on March 7, 2034, with arms flying and eyes flashing and the old flag overhead, it is certainly and brilliantly effective.
Read Joe’s SOTU and it will gag you, as it did me.
But hear it recited with grand gestures to ram home its periods, and you will begin to understand it, keeping well in mind that a tight fabric of ideas would weary and exasperate Joe’s audience because what it wants, and what Joe delivered with his SOTU on March 7, 2024, is a simple loud burble of words, a procession of phrases that roar, a series of whoops.
And here once again, we will take a break for station identification while we cut to a Youtube video of Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea giving us a preview of what to expect from an upcoming video of Hillary Clinton and Lauren Boebert performing “Booty” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtIRArhVD4 , so stay tuned and we will be back with more.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909473
Re: Just musings, is all
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR MARCH 20, 2024 AT 9:00 PM
Paul Plante says:
Now, here is a relevant existential question for our exciting times today – is it possible that the text or script of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 7, 2024 was not written by actual humans, but was instead concocted by an ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE engine out of various bits and pieces of other political speeches in the long history of political speeches, not only in America, but everywhere in the world since the beginning of time, given that AI would “know” all that stuff, even if a mere human wouldn’t, plus AI would also have the added advantage of knowing the demographics of all the voters out there and especially their IQs, so that AI could then tailer the SOTU to the widest possible audience that could be depended on to waste its time watching and listening to a speech, any speech, by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior?
Having read the speech, I would have to say that it is a distinct possibility, anyway, not that it would change anything, of course, whether AI prepared the speech, or some humans, or a roomful of monkeys with typewriters, for that matter, because as far as SOTU’s go, it is indeed a lousy one which whether prepared by AI or humans presumes we are all of us too stupid to know the difference about anything, because Joe Biden and his followers all are.
For example, look at this hysterical and delusional horse**** from the beginning of Biden’s SOTU where he intoned in a sonorous voicc as follows:
“In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.”
“And he said, ‘I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.’”
“Hitler was on the march.”
“War was raging in Europe.”
“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.”
“Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.”
“Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation.”
“Now it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.”
“And, yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.”
“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today.”
end quotes
What hype, what blather, what cheap theatrics, because there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING at all “unprecedented” in this particular moment in the history of the Union, other than we are now stuck with Joe Biden in the white house, a serial liar who makes Lyndon Baines Johnson seem truthful by comparison.
And “SLEEPY JOE” Biden is going to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment?
Well, as for me, I’m already awake, and I have been awake for some long time now, and the last person I would listen to or believe about any moment in time would be Joe Biden.
And not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today?
Oh, really, Joe?
Do tell!
How about freedom and democracy are under assault at home because YOU are trying to make sure that you are the only name on the ballot for president come November!
And what makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack at — both at home and overseas at the very same time?
BULL****, Joe!
Ukraine, which Joe is the supporter and enabler of, is a FASCIST DICTATORSHIP, where there is NO FREEDOM OR DEMOCRACY, period!
Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond?
Putin is not “on the march” as senile and hysterical and delusional Joe says.
To the contrary, Putin of Russia isn’t marching anywhere because Putin of Russia is BOGGED DOWN in a quagmire called Ukraine.
And Putin of Russia is sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond?
YEAH, RIGHT, Joe!
Which brings us to this absoluteIy ridiculous statement from Joe, to wit: If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you: He will not.
Uh, okey dokey, Joe, you da man!
If you are saying it, it has to be true!
So, see what I am saying here about Biden thinking we are all stupid?
A person has to be totally brain-dead to believe a word of that Biden horse****, and that is a fact!
And that takes us back in time to April 27, 1921 and a political essay by H.L. Mencken in The Nation titled “A Short View of Gamalielese,” from which essay, if AI prepared Joe’s SOTU, it got its stylistic inspiration as follows, giving us what can now be called NEO-GAMALIELESE, or BIDENESE, to wit:
What else is there is the style.
It is the style of what the text-books of rhetoric call “elevated” discourse.
Its aim is to lend force to a simple hope or plea or asseveration by giving it the dynamic whoop and hoopla of a revival sermon, an auction sale, or a college yell.
The nuclear thought is not smothered in the process, as Democratic aesthetes argue, nor is it true that there is sometimes no nuclear thought at all.
It is always present, and nine times out of ten it is simple, obvious, and highly respectable.
But it lacks punch; it is devoid of any capacity to startle and scorch.
To give it the vigor and dignity that a great occasion demands it is carefully encased in those swathings of sonorous polysyllables, and then, the charge being rammed home, it is discharged point-blank into the ears and cerebrums of Christendom.
Such is the Gamalian manner, the secret of the Gamalian style.
That style had its origin under circumstances that are surely not unknown to experts in politico-agrarian oratory.
It came to birth on the rustic stump, it developed to full growth among the chautauquas, and it got its final polishing in a small-town newspaper office.
In brief, it reflects admirably the tastes and traditions of the sort of audience at which it was first aimed, to wit, the yokelry of the hinterland, naive, agape, thirsty for the prodigious, and eager to yell.
Such an audience has no fancy for a well-knit and succinct argument, packed with ideas.
Of all ideas, indeed, it is suspicious, but it will at least tolerate those that it knows by long hearing, those that have come to the estate of platitudes, those that fall readily into gallant and highfalutin phrases.
Above all, it distrusts perspicuity, for perspicuity is challenging and forces one to think, and hence lays a burden on the mind.
What it likes most of all is the roll of incomprehensible polysyllables — the more incomprehensible the better.
It wants to be bombarded, bawled at, overwhelmed by mad gusts of the parts of speech.
It wants to be entertained by orators who are manifestly superior — fellows whose discourse is so all-fired learned and unintelligible, so brilliant with hard words and trombone phrases, that it leaves them gasping.
Let the thunder sound, and it takes all else on trust.
If a sentence ends with a roar, it does not stop to inquire how it began.
If a phrase has punch, it does not ask that it also have a meaning.
If a word stings, that is enough.
Trained to the service of such connoisseurs. Dr. Harding carries over the style that they admire into his traffic with the Congress, the effete intelligentsia, and the powers and principalities of Europe.
That style is based upon the simplest of principles.
For every idea there is what may be called a maximum investiture — a garb of words beyond which it is a sheer impossibility to go in gaudiness.
For every plain word there is a word four times as big.
The problem is to think the thing out in terms of harmless banality, to arrange a series of obvious and familiar ideas in a logical sequence, and then to translate them, one by one, into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns of the highest conceivable horse-power — to lift the whole discourse to the plane of artillery practice — to dignify the sense by all the arts of sorcery.
end quotes
And so, we have Joe Biden’s SOTU – terms of harmless banality arranged in a series of obvious and familiar ideas in a logical sequence, and then translated one by one into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns of the highest conceivable horse-power to lift the whole discourse to the plane of artillery practice.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909762
Paul Plante says:
Now, here is a relevant existential question for our exciting times today – is it possible that the text or script of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 7, 2024 was not written by actual humans, but was instead concocted by an ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE engine out of various bits and pieces of other political speeches in the long history of political speeches, not only in America, but everywhere in the world since the beginning of time, given that AI would “know” all that stuff, even if a mere human wouldn’t, plus AI would also have the added advantage of knowing the demographics of all the voters out there and especially their IQs, so that AI could then tailer the SOTU to the widest possible audience that could be depended on to waste its time watching and listening to a speech, any speech, by Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior?
Having read the speech, I would have to say that it is a distinct possibility, anyway, not that it would change anything, of course, whether AI prepared the speech, or some humans, or a roomful of monkeys with typewriters, for that matter, because as far as SOTU’s go, it is indeed a lousy one which whether prepared by AI or humans presumes we are all of us too stupid to know the difference about anything, because Joe Biden and his followers all are.
For example, look at this hysterical and delusional horse**** from the beginning of Biden’s SOTU where he intoned in a sonorous voicc as follows:
“In January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation.”
“And he said, ‘I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.’”
“Hitler was on the march.”
“War was raging in Europe.”
“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.”
“Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world.”
“Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation.”
“Now it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union.”
“And, yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.”
“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today.”
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What hype, what blather, what cheap theatrics, because there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING at all “unprecedented” in this particular moment in the history of the Union, other than we are now stuck with Joe Biden in the white house, a serial liar who makes Lyndon Baines Johnson seem truthful by comparison.
And “SLEEPY JOE” Biden is going to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment?
Well, as for me, I’m already awake, and I have been awake for some long time now, and the last person I would listen to or believe about any moment in time would be Joe Biden.
And not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today?
Oh, really, Joe?
Do tell!
How about freedom and democracy are under assault at home because YOU are trying to make sure that you are the only name on the ballot for president come November!
And what makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack at — both at home and overseas at the very same time?
BULL****, Joe!
Ukraine, which Joe is the supporter and enabler of, is a FASCIST DICTATORSHIP, where there is NO FREEDOM OR DEMOCRACY, period!
Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond?
Putin is not “on the march” as senile and hysterical and delusional Joe says.
To the contrary, Putin of Russia isn’t marching anywhere because Putin of Russia is BOGGED DOWN in a quagmire called Ukraine.
And Putin of Russia is sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond?
YEAH, RIGHT, Joe!
Which brings us to this absoluteIy ridiculous statement from Joe, to wit: If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you: He will not.
Uh, okey dokey, Joe, you da man!
If you are saying it, it has to be true!
So, see what I am saying here about Biden thinking we are all stupid?
A person has to be totally brain-dead to believe a word of that Biden horse****, and that is a fact!
And that takes us back in time to April 27, 1921 and a political essay by H.L. Mencken in The Nation titled “A Short View of Gamalielese,” from which essay, if AI prepared Joe’s SOTU, it got its stylistic inspiration as follows, giving us what can now be called NEO-GAMALIELESE, or BIDENESE, to wit:
What else is there is the style.
It is the style of what the text-books of rhetoric call “elevated” discourse.
Its aim is to lend force to a simple hope or plea or asseveration by giving it the dynamic whoop and hoopla of a revival sermon, an auction sale, or a college yell.
The nuclear thought is not smothered in the process, as Democratic aesthetes argue, nor is it true that there is sometimes no nuclear thought at all.
It is always present, and nine times out of ten it is simple, obvious, and highly respectable.
But it lacks punch; it is devoid of any capacity to startle and scorch.
To give it the vigor and dignity that a great occasion demands it is carefully encased in those swathings of sonorous polysyllables, and then, the charge being rammed home, it is discharged point-blank into the ears and cerebrums of Christendom.
Such is the Gamalian manner, the secret of the Gamalian style.
That style had its origin under circumstances that are surely not unknown to experts in politico-agrarian oratory.
It came to birth on the rustic stump, it developed to full growth among the chautauquas, and it got its final polishing in a small-town newspaper office.
In brief, it reflects admirably the tastes and traditions of the sort of audience at which it was first aimed, to wit, the yokelry of the hinterland, naive, agape, thirsty for the prodigious, and eager to yell.
Such an audience has no fancy for a well-knit and succinct argument, packed with ideas.
Of all ideas, indeed, it is suspicious, but it will at least tolerate those that it knows by long hearing, those that have come to the estate of platitudes, those that fall readily into gallant and highfalutin phrases.
Above all, it distrusts perspicuity, for perspicuity is challenging and forces one to think, and hence lays a burden on the mind.
What it likes most of all is the roll of incomprehensible polysyllables — the more incomprehensible the better.
It wants to be bombarded, bawled at, overwhelmed by mad gusts of the parts of speech.
It wants to be entertained by orators who are manifestly superior — fellows whose discourse is so all-fired learned and unintelligible, so brilliant with hard words and trombone phrases, that it leaves them gasping.
Let the thunder sound, and it takes all else on trust.
If a sentence ends with a roar, it does not stop to inquire how it began.
If a phrase has punch, it does not ask that it also have a meaning.
If a word stings, that is enough.
Trained to the service of such connoisseurs. Dr. Harding carries over the style that they admire into his traffic with the Congress, the effete intelligentsia, and the powers and principalities of Europe.
That style is based upon the simplest of principles.
For every idea there is what may be called a maximum investiture — a garb of words beyond which it is a sheer impossibility to go in gaudiness.
For every plain word there is a word four times as big.
The problem is to think the thing out in terms of harmless banality, to arrange a series of obvious and familiar ideas in a logical sequence, and then to translate them, one by one, into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns of the highest conceivable horse-power — to lift the whole discourse to the plane of artillery practice — to dignify the sense by all the arts of sorcery.
end quotes
And so, we have Joe Biden’s SOTU – terms of harmless banality arranged in a series of obvious and familiar ideas in a logical sequence, and then translated one by one into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and pronouns of the highest conceivable horse-power to lift the whole discourse to the plane of artillery practice.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/paul-p ... ent-909762