TO BE HONEST, CHIEF, YOU NEVER WERE ALL THAT GREAT: ‘I Don’t Debate as Well as I Used To’: Biden Leans Into His Own Decline as Colleagues Plot His Replacement.
UPDATE:
Politics is about images… pic.twitter.com/8y4kB7D5dp
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) June 28, 2024
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Callaway Golf 300 Pro Laser Rangefinder. #CommissionEarned
YES: The Hapless Von der Leyen Shows the Wisdom of Brexit.
Whenever I’m asked if I regret backing Brexit, I like to point to what’s going on in the institution we left.
Just look at how the useless Ursula von der Leyen has been foisted on a reluctant European public – again. Late last night, at a summit of European Union leaders, it was confirmed that she will continue as president of the European Commission. Meanwhile, former Portuguese prime minister António Costa will lead the European Council and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas will step down as her nation’s PM to become the EU’s foreign-policy chief.
The confirmation of these appointments is a stark reminder of the EU’s contempt for democracy. Its leaders, its policies and its laws are decided not by public consent, but by backroom talks and horsetrading, through processes that are deliberately labyrinthine and opaque, and impossible for the lay citizen to get his or her head around.
Well, yes.
DOESN’T EVERYTHING? The NBA has an audience problem: The league’s historic TV deal masks poor fundamentals.
Roughly 50% of households have dropped their cable provider and opted for streaming services (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) or virtual pay-TV providers (Sling TV). Now, for the tens of millions of streaming households, it takes more of an effort to seek out professional basketball through an existing streaming service. Obsessive fans use League Pass to ensure that they can catch every game, and the highly-engaged fan will regularly tune in for basketball on the national networks or watch their local team on a Regional Sports Network.1
But the casual fan, who in the era of cable would’ve been more likely to flip on a nationally televised basketball game, can now choose from more content than ever, which means the NBA competes with everything from endless streaming options to short-form video content. It’s silly to think that Anthony Edwards, a player who’s been hyped as the next Michael Jordan, is competing with this giant Flemish Rabbit for viewership. But that’s sort of what’s happening.
We’re all competing with giant Flemish rabbits these days.
REGULATORY EARTHQUAKES SHOULD HAPPEN MORE OFTEN: Understanding What the Loper Bright and Jarkesy Regulatory Earthquake Means for Gun Owners.
BIDEN THEN AND NOW:
This side by side of Biden’s decline over the last 5 years is devastating.
Shame on everyone who covered this up and left our country in such a terrible position. pic.twitter.com/qacTgorqfx
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) June 30, 2024
As Greg Gutfeld said today:
remember: the media democrat complex is reacting in horror over joe's condition not because they saw it – it's because you saw it.
— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) June 29, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Be here now.
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: Damned Un-English (An Underhand Invention Book 1). Submarine warfare.
NBC: ‘It’s a mess:’ Biden turns to family on his path forward after his disastrous debate.
President Joe Biden is expected to discuss the future of his re-election campaign with family at Camp David on Sunday, following a nationally televised debate Thursday that left many fellow Democrats worried about his ability to beat former President Donald Trump in November, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Biden’s trip was planned before Thursday’s debate. He and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to join their children and grandchildren there late Saturday.
Stay tuned, but this is quite a change from NBC, which just ten days ago was running this headline: The deceptive Biden G7 video was quickly debunked, but it kept going viral anyway.
And note the White House-approved “cheap fakes” talking point in the article — sans quotation marks, or a reference to who put the phrase into circulation:
But conservative media outlets and the Republican National Committee posted videos shot from angles that cut out the parachutists. Some of their posts said incorrectly that Biden “wandered off.” Without the skydivers Biden was addressing included in those videos, viewers could be left with the impression that he was walking absentmindedly.
The misleading videos were an example of so-called cheap fakes, in which low-tech editing or other minor changes to videos, along with incorrect context, can amplify false but convincing messages.
But then, as Jonathan Turley writes, “No one would think of the Beltway as being a place of the naive innocents of our society. Washington is the only ecosystem composed entirely of apex predators. Yet, this week everyone seems to be eternally shocked by what has been obvious for years...Washington is now full of surprises. It is a city of people who display that practiced faux shock that you adopt when you learn in advance that your friends are throwing a surprise party. The key is to look stunned and then mingle. It is a city of Claude Rains:”
TOTALLY NATURAL:
I thought this had to be fake, but people are saying they saw it this way last night.
SPACE: SpaceX launches second batch of satellites for NRO’s proliferated constellation.
It was smart of Elon to make SpaceX indispensable to the most powerful part of the Deep State.
HMM: The World’s Most Common Pain Relief Drug May Induce Risky Behavior.
Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and sold widely under the brand names Tylenol and Panadol, may also increase risk-taking, according to a study from 2020 that measured changes in people’s behavior when under the influence of the common over-the-counter medication.
“Acetaminophen seems to make people feel less negative emotion when they consider risky activities – they just don’t feel as scared,” explained neuroscientist Baldwin Way from The Ohio State University when the findings were published.
“With nearly 25 percent of the population in the US taking acetaminophen each week, reduced risk perceptions and increased risk-taking could have important effects on society.”
Looking around, I’m not seeing historically high levels of risk tolerance out there.
WHEN SATIRE BECOMES REAL. SHOT:
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
— Alex Blechman (@AlexBlechman) November 8, 2021
CHASER:
"Hey, honey, I'll be home a little late today. We just made a real breakthrough at the Nightmare Factory." https://t.co/FABOapx5Ax
— DrewMcWeeny (@DrewMcWeeny) June 26, 2024
OF COURSE NOT, IT’S BAD FOR DEMOCRATS: Aren’t Gun Rights a Valid Presidential Debate Topic?
READER FAVORITE: 15×52 HD Binoculars for Adults High Powered with Upgraded Phone Adapter. #CommissionEarned
CARRY A GUN, PROBLEM SOLVED: Fears of attack and no phone signal deter women trail runners, finds study.
WE MAY BE DOWN WITH POOP BALLS, BUT SOME OF US ARE LOOKING AT THE STARS: When steering balls of poop, dung beetles use the stars to navigate.
WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: NASA orders more tests on Starliner, but says crew isn’t stranded in space.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Champion Men’s Sport Shorts, Moisture Wicking. #CommissionEarned
READER FAVORITE: 5-Minute Core Exercises for Seniors: Daily Routines to Build Balance and Boost Confidence. #CommissionEarned
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Bob Woodward brands Biden debate performance a ‘political h-bomb.’
Watergate reporter and long-time Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward said President Biden’s debate performance was a “political hydrogen bomb” and the public deserves to know what really happened.
Woodward joined MSNBC’s Air Melber on Friday following the debate, where he said the performance was “so bad, so awful” that reporters must be looking for some explanation from his staff.
“I think the answer here is in reporting, in seeking very aggressively, an explanation — what happened here?” Woodward said. “We don’t want it to come out in some book or some memoir in a couple of years or a decade. We’d need to know now.”
That’s nice, Bob. But why didn’t we get aggressive reporting on Biden’s condition in the run-up to the debate?
More Woodward:
“I sat there and watched it and I could not believe it. I said, not only is this a political hydrogen bomb for him and the Democratic Party, it, you know — what happened? What happened?” he said.
Calls for the president to drop out are not hasty, Woodward said, but more energy should go toward seeking an explanation behind the debate performance.
“Look, let’s step back. If a building blows up in downtown of some city, the story will be what happened and then the story will be how did this happen, why did this happen? And that’s where I’m very, very curious because this was a mega disaster,” Woodward said.
Any thoughts on why so many DNC-MSM stenographers ran with the White House’s “cheap fakes” talking points about Biden’s lack of mental acuity the week before the debate, Bob? As Ed Morrissey wrote yesterday: Debate Disaster: Dems And Media Defrauded America on Biden. Make Them Pay.
None of the people on that panel understood the scope of the disaster last night. Biden just exposed a vast cover-up, nearly universal among elected Democrats and almost as much within the US national media, designed to keep people in the dark about the president’s mental capacity.
They spent the last four years foisting a near-senile old fool onto a nation at a moment of dire crisis. That includes Axelrod. It includes Bedingfield. It includes Van Jones. It includes the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and practically every other establishment media outlet. It also includes Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, every Democrat governor and member of Congress (except Dean Phillips), and most especially Jill Biden, who had to rush the stage to pull Joe off of it:
No one who watched this debate could possibly believe that Biden was "relying on minutiae" and "over-prepared." Biden could barely babble out platitudes in between his verbal tics ("the idea!", "here's the deal", etc). He wasn't over-prepared; Biden is incompetent for the task. https://t.co/0jGuqYZD0a
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) June 28, 2024
Democrats now want to pull a switcheroo and hope everyone forgets all about this breathtaking cover-up and corruption. That includes all of those Democrats who voted for Biden in primaries this year on their word that Biden was up to the task — and whose votes will count for nothing in any scenario that changes the ticket. Talk about betrayal!
We’ll game that out separately, but that won’t solve the appalling credibility destruction that took place and which applies to all of the above. Elected Democrat officials from Kamala Harris on down participated in a scheme to defraud American voters, not once but twice, and the media aided and abetted it both times.
How and why the media spent years protecting Biden is the real story, not just what happened at the White House, but the guild will do its best to protect its own.
Beyond covering for Biden, as Mike LaChance writes at Legal Insurrection: Democrats and the Media Have Spent Years Pushing Real ‘Cheap Fakes.’
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