Category: Editorial O’ The Day

Will Gov. Newsom ever realize California’s gun laws must follow the Second Amendment?

By The Editorial Board | opinion@scng.com |
How many times will it take for Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and others to realize California’s gun laws must follow the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America?

On Sept. 22, their attempt to limit rifle and pistol magazines to 10 bullets again was shot down by Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of the U.S. District Court, part of the Ninth Circuit. The ban derived from Proposition 63 in 2016.

The case is Miller v. Bonta. On June 5, 2021 Benitez originally ruled the ban unconstitutional. Sixteen days later a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit stayed the ruling, leaving the law in place. Matters changed after the U.S. Supreme Court strongly affirmed Second Amendment protections in its June 23, 2022 decision, NYSRPA v. Bruen. The top court also ordered the Miller case heard again by Benitez.

In his new Miller case decision, Benitez held, “Based on the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, this law is clearly unconstitutional … There is no American tradition of limiting ammunition capacity and the 10-round limit has no historical pedigree and it is arbitrary and capricious. It is extreme.”

He noted there is no federal ban on such magazines. And state bans are not uniform and “arbitrary.”

He cited several cases of self-defense where small magazines were inadequate in fighting off criminals. In Kentucky, an intruder came in blasting at a family. One daughter was killed and the father wounded three times as he returned fire with 11 rounds from one gun and eight from a second, failing to hit the assailant, who later was arrested.

Benitez also noted 81 million Americans own up to 456 million firearms. And that criminals don’t follow gun laws.

Benitez performed a “masterful job at the molecular level” of picking apart “every argument put forth by the state of California” and other states to limit the Second Amendment, Sam Paredes told us; he’s the executive director of Gun Owners of California, which filed an amicus brief in the case.

Bonta, who we endorsed for re-election last year, filed an appeal. He said, “We will continue to fight for our authority to keep Californians safe from weapon enhancements designed to cause mass casualties.” Newsom said, “It’s time to wake up. Unless we enshrine a Right to Safety in the Constitution, we are at the mercy of ideologues like Judge Benitez.”

That was a reference to Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment that, among other things, would ban so-called “assault weapons,” which really are just cosmetically mean-looking rifles.

Ironically, that’s a tacit admission the restrictions he favors currently are unconstitutional.

Earlier this month Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico tried banning open carry of legal guns. She was rebuffed in court and even by such liberal Democrats as Rep. Ted Lieu of Los Angeles, who reminded her, ““No state in the union can suspend the federal Constitution. There is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.”

Gun rights are here to stay. Newsom and Bonta need to end their assaults on Californians’ right to defend themselves.

An Assault on Bill of Rights

The people of New Mexico — and, we fear, the people of the United States — owe Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina a real debt of gratitude.

Medina has stated unequivocally that his department will not enforce an unconstitutional “emergency order” by Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, to suspend the right of her constituents to lawfully carry firearms.

The governor’s order is in response to a spate of shootings in New Mexico’s largest city.

“A child is murdered, the perpetrator is still on the loose, and what does the governor do? She … targets law-abiding citizens with an unconstitutional gun order,” state Sen. Greg Baca, the ranking Republican in New Mexico’s state Senate, told the Associated Press.

“I don’t know what her thought process was that she suddenly thought she could trample the Second Amendment,” state Rep. Stefani Lord told KOAT Channel 7 of Albuquerque at a protest against the governor’s order.

The move by Grisham is excessive. It violates the Bill of Rights and it is exactly the sort of escalation that Americans who defend the Second Amendment fear and warn their friends, neighbors and family about when other measures to curtail gun owners’ rights are debated.

Even proponents of gun control, including activist David Hogg and U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., recognizes that Grisham’s order tramples Constitutional rights.

“I support gun safety laws,” Lieu said on social media, according to a Fox News report. “However, this order from the Governor of New Mexico violates the U.S. Constitution. No state in the union can suspend the federal Constitution.”

We appreciate the congressman speaking out against this violation of the Second Amendment just as we appreciate the police chief’s recognition that his department has no authority to join the governor in violating the Constitution. We hope the rebukes and reprimands are swift and severe enough that this infringement does not spread from the Land of Enchantment to our other 49 states.

Can There be Good News About Public Violence?

Some of us are afraid of bad news. Most of us know someone who is afraid of going to the doctor because they don’t want to make hard decisions about their health. The great news is that most medical conditions can be treated. That emotional reaction is also common when we consider public violence. It is particularly accurate about how we feel about mass-murder.

Many of us feel both compelled to watch the news about public violence, while at the same time we want to turn away and pretend it doesn’t happen. Let me bring you good news. We learned how to stop mass-murder in several ways. We’ve done it, so we are talking about actual practice rather than mere theory. The first thing we have to do is get past the fantasy of Hollywood violence and talk about what really happens.

I’m going to go back to the medical model for a moment. I’ve had friends who oscillated between denial and helplessness. They feel that there can’t be a problem, or that the problem is intractable so why bother. They become hopeless and vulnerable to people who sell quack cures. I won’t do that to you. I’ve studied public violence for a decade, and there is real hope to stop mass-murderers. For a moment, let’s set aside both fantasy and our fears.

Part of us knows that what we see from Hollywood isn’t real. Yes, we might be caught up in the story. At the same time, part of our mind knows that hundreds of people don’t suddenly explode in a flash of flame and get thrown backwards when someone waves a gun around. The truth is that mass-murder is hard, and ordinary citizens stop mass-murderers most of the time. That is fairly obvious if we’re willing to look at it for a minute. Again, I promise it will only be a minute. It turns out that you have lived through the critical experiment many times.

Remember one of the times you walked into a group of your friends and shouted hello. Your friends look at you. One of them points their finger at you and you point back at them and wave. You do that a number of times as more of your friends recognize you.

Then you see a friend of to the side that you missed. You wave and smile to see someone you didn’t notice at first. There is a feeling of an unexpected, pleasant surprise. We didn’t see them at first because we were concentrating on someone else in the group. We thought we saw everyone, but we really didn’t. A friend we didn’t see slaps us on the shoulder and asks how we’ve been. We were looking at the group so we never noticed our friend come up behind us.

Hold that experience in mind for a minute. I could ask you all kinds of questions about your friends and we’d find out that you didn’t really see them at all. How were they sitting? Who was talking to whom? How were they dressed, and what were they doing with their hands when you said hello? We are not a camera, and we imagine that we see more than we really do.

We don’t see everything. As soon as we look at one thing,
we become blind to the rest of the world around us.

(The hard part starts now, but it won’t be long.)

That common experience explains why we kill mass murderers time after time. To put it in simple terms, they don’t see us and we shoot them. Maybe they die right there, and maybe they are only wounded. Being shot at makes the attacker feel deeply vulnerable. Usually, they run away. This wasn’t the violence they had imagined and they usually take their own life.

(The gruesome part is over so you can breathe again.)

There are other perceptual and tactical factors at work, but I’m not trying to make better murderers. The fact is that mass-murderers are vulnerable.

Where ordinary citizens were allowed to be armed, we stopped attempted mass-murderers almost two-thirds of the time. That also had a drastic effect on the number of people who were injured or killed. Ordinary citizens like you saved over a thousand lives. Again, the reasons might not be obvious to everyone.

It is clear that stopping the murderer means that more innocent people aren’t getting shot. It also means we can move the people who were injured to safety and we can quickly start life-saving treatment by stopping the bleeding. EMTs get to the injured victims faster because the scene is safe. There are fewer victims to treat, so each victim gets more attention, and the victims are in better condition when EMTs first reach them.

That is what happens time after time. On average, we’ve done that about every 18 days for the last 8 years. None of that happens while we wait another 15 minutes for the police to arrive.

It turns out that the murderer wasn’t so deadly because he had some Hollywood super weapon. Mass-murderers hunt us in “gun-free” zones. The murderer was deadly because he could kill at will without someone to stop him.

Millions of us go armed every day, but we obeyed the rules and left our guns outside.
The mass-murderer didn’t.

I’m sure that some of you can see the answers already.
  • The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
  • The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
  • The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
  • The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
  • All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.

I told you there was good news.

Your God-Given Rights vs. Their Power-Driven Rules

The Tool Who Governs New Mexico Has Handed Patriots a Potent New Tool

I want to thank the versatile governor of New Mexico, whose name I don’t care about, for being a communist and a fascist all at once. Now that may seem strange, coming from somebody who actually believes in freedom and actually defended it for 27 years, but I want you to hear me out. She may be an aspiring dictator and a mid-wit Karen brimming over with Xanax wishes and Chardonnay dreams, but she’s providing us with a valuable opportunity that we should take full advantage of. She has decreed that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms must yield to what she unilaterally decided is a “public health emergency.” Cool. Now, I’ve got some decrees of our own.

I’ve long said that there are three ways things can go. Option One is a free society where there are norms and rules that we all abide by and our Constitutional rights are protected and everybody has a right to participate in their own governance. This is my favorite option. It’s the one that I grew up in back when America was a free country and not a pronoun-fixated banana republic. Option Two is an authoritarian dictatorship where guys like me are in charge. Not my first choice, but I can live with it. Finally, Option Three is a communist dictatorship, and then it’s basically break out the rifles, boys. I was never good at kneeling, and at my age, my knees just won’t tolerate it any better than my attitude will.

Well, Governor Paula Pot has made it clear that Option One is now off the table, so I guess we have to go with Option Two – ironically, during the week of the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet overthrowing the communist dictator of Chile. Now, I think it’s a bad idea and I’m still pushing for Option One, but it’s pretty clear that freedom no longer an option. So Option Two it is.

Let’s start decreeing stuff, Republicans!

The first thing red states need to decree is a ban on the teaching, advocacy, or practice of socialism in any of its putrid forms. Those who care nothing about the children will immediately pipe up about the alleged right to speak freely, but they refuse to acknowledge the harm this poisonous ideology does. Harm trumps rights, as colleges and the regime media have taught us. And boy, is socialism harmful. It’s violence – literally. Marxism is responsible for over 100 million deaths in the last century. That’s more deaths than net neutrality, Republican Medicare cuts, and dead-naming combined!

From the killing fields of Russia and Ukraine, to those of Red China and Cambodia, Marxism is murder. We must prioritize safety, for the children, and there is no safe space when an ideology of death like socialism is able to be articulated and advocated in public. Free speech is nice, I guess, but it is officially known that no right is absolute. Socialism is clearly hate speech, which is totally a thing in our Constitution, according to sources and experts who you can watch on MSNBC anytime you want – well, not after we ban socialism! Because socialism is hate speech, not only can we ban it, but we must ban it as the public health menace that it is.

And when we retake the White House, it won’t just be red governors doing it. As a nation, we will be able to scratch “Destroying Socialism” off our to-do list. It will be totally illegal and we can get right on enforcing the ban with the reconstituted FBI, the reformed Department of Justice, and the United States Army helicopter corps.

The next public health decree? No trans insanity! We’ve got a public health crisis where children are being mutilated with chemicals and scalpels to conform their God-given bodies to the delusions of their Chardonnay-sodden Munchhausen mommies. This must stop. I know it’s weird that I have to say it, but castrating a boy so he can more effectively pretend to be a girl causes harm. And it is unsafe. And therefore it should be subject to being banned by a decree issued by a caring chief executive. And if you disagree, you clearly don’t care about the children – wait, that’s actually not sarcasm.

But why stop at kids? The decree should include outlawing mutilation as a treatment for mental illness in adults as well. I know that there are some well-meaning libertarianish folks out there who buy the idea that after age 18, we as a society have no interest in what you do to yourself. Well, we don’t let people walk into a hospital and say “Chop off my arm” because they feel like it, and what’s good for the arm is good for the penis.

If you want to cut up your body because you think you’re the other gender, you have a mental problem and not a physical one that can be cured by some quack surgeon slicing you into pieces. Some people will say this isn’t tolerant, and that’s fine with me. We tried tolerance, and we ended up with men dressed like Charo twerking their be-thonged butts in the faces of our kindergartners.

The next decree should address a massive public health crisis among children, because it’s always about the children, who are failing to learn and be educated in unionized schools. That’s public healthish, right? Clearly, teachers unions must be outlawed, and those running them prosecuted and punished for the lasting harm they have inflicted on a generation of kids. Now, some might argue that this is the kind of policy that should go through the normal legislative process, but I beg to differ. It’s a public health emergency when children are failing to learn to read and write because I said so, and if you disagree that’s violence, and if you oppose this common sense measure, you clearly hate the children. There’s blood on your hands. You should be deplatformed. You’re also racist and probably a transphobe or something.

Remember, we must protect Our Democracy, which is why those in power – us – must be able to rule by decree. Now these decrees may represent an expansive reading of “public health emergency,” but that’s OK. As currently understood, laws should be read expansively if that’s what’s required to, say, get the result a politicized prosecutor wants. Once again, it’s not the paradigm that I support – I think this is all a terrible idea – but it is the operative New Rule, and I know that because I see a governor of a miserable desert state issuing decrees that the Second Amendment is no longer in effect, and I watch a senile, corrupt, desiccated old pervert’s Department of Justice (sic) being sicced on a man who will very likely be his opponent in the next presidential election.

Again, I don’t like any of this, but you know what I like even less? Taking this crap without hitting back. Leftist jerks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I told you so.

Someone, I fail to recall who, said today that he could see Biden pardoning Hunter, then resign as POTUS. I think it only possible after Harris has been replaced as VPOTUS, which, to be frank, has been talked about quite a lot lately anyway.

Just my opinion, but be prepared to see Cali goobernor Newsom in the news more and more.

All the other ‘smith degrees offered by schools are 2 year associates

Oklahoma school to offer nation’s first bachelor’s in gunsmithing

State officials could have a new weapon in their arsenal as they try to lure gun and ammunition manufacturers to Oklahoma.

Murray State College leaders say the school’s gunsmithing program could become a huge economic development driver thanks to a $10 million legislative investment that will allow the college to offer the nation’s first bachelor’s degree in gunsmithing.

With backing from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, campus officials approached lawmakers in the spring with a pitch that expanding the school’s gunsmithing program to offer four-year degrees could turn Oklahoma into a hub for gun businesses and manufacturing.

“The idea was this is an investment in an industry that can locate in our state, and regionally, we have the ability distribution-wise to become a powerhouse in this,” Murray State College President Tim Faltyn said in an interview.

Although the funding measure passed overwhelmingly, some lawmakers questioned the new investment in a college that’s located in the district of House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka.

‘Major shift toward embracing modern technology’

Murray State College has offered a gunsmithing program since 1979. Annually, the school admits 30 students to its two-year degree program at its Tishomingo campus.

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I respect your second amendment.    
[leaves out the ‘but’ like they always do]

I also respect understanding ways our society works. We need to reform background checks, we need better ID scanning systems to ensure the guns don’t go into the wrong hands.

I’ll protect the American people at all cost, that starts with-
Preventing mass shootings, you don’t need an AK-47 to hunt, defend yourself or your home. You could simply defend yourself with a simple firearm.

I as your president of the United States of America, have no rights to interfere with your private life but I will protect Americans.

Respecting the Second Amendment should stand without further contradicted commentary.

Our society possesses a level of violence, and neither existing nor new gun laws will lead us to a utopian state where laws alone rectify criminal or violent actions.

Background checks have demonstrated limited effectiveness, given the rise in gun-related crimes since their introduction. Numerous mass shooters acquired firearms by providing false information on their 4473 forms (background check applications) and passing due to insufficient government scrutiny of buyers’ backgrounds.

Additionally, some potential mass shooters who harbor intentions of carrying out mass violence might lack a criminal record or documented mental health issues to identify during background checks.

Everyday criminals affiliated with gangs have no concerns about passing a background check to acquire firearms, which they then use for activities such as targeting rival gangs or engaging in various criminal acts.

Criminals frequently steal firearms or obtain them through straw purchases. The access to firearms for individuals should be a straightforward and uncomplicated procedure, without unnecessary restrictions on where they can carry those arms.

Imposing gun restrictions inadvertently empowers criminals while penalizing law-abiding citizens.

To the Knife

Not exactly sure of where I read this distillation of Walter Russell Meade’s definition of the Jacksonian attitude to conflict – possibly at Ace of Spates HQ, or maybe Bayou Renaissance Man, but the phrase stuck with me as soon as I read it. Basically, the average middle-to-working class Jacksonian American who just wants seriously to be left alone has only two settings when it comes to threatened conflict: “Can’t we just work out a way to settle this?” and “War to the knife and no quarter.”

There is no dial setting, which can be moved up or down; there is only “off” and “on.” And it takes a hell of a lot of provocation to flip that switch from ‘off’ to ‘on’. I cannot help wondering of late how close that flip is, with regard to racial aggression – what with feral black hoodlums making certain cities and neighborhoods basically unlivable for all – black, white, Asian, whatever. Making public transportation a thing to avoid unless totally desperate – you know, like the New York City subway system. With teachers of color feeling free to display their vicious racism on social media. With the crushing hand of DEI in the corporate and academic worlds, with the blatant twisting of American history by the never-to-be-sufficiently-condemned 1619 Project, the national establishment media (and local affiliates) turning themselves into triple-pretzel knots trying to paper over the stats of which race is actually committing the out-of-proportion to their representation in the overall population numbers of robbery, rape and murder… even just all-hands brawls in fast-food restaurants and amusement venues. Read in the media headlines of a senseless shooting, a mass looting of a neighborhood corner store or a punch-out in a Waffle House or McDonalds? Yeah, we know with a high degree of accuracy the color of those involved, once we scroll past the headline, and say to ourselves, “Yep – about what I thought.”

I should add, for the benefit of progressives snorkeling through the pool of conservative bloggers and commentors in this corner of the internet searching for risible tidbits which can be construed as ‘the-most-raaaaacist-evah!’ to tantalize the woke mob with fresh meat; this soon-to-be-end-of-patience does most definitely not apply to those friends, co-workers, fellow parishioners, and neighbors who happen to be of that year-round dark tan color, but are alike in devotion to the principles of fair play, good manners, rewards based on ability, and the guiding precepts of our Constitution. Such fellow good citizens are not the problem. Trust me – we know the difference. It is that unholy and dysfunctional unity that we are close to being out of all toleration for; black urban criminality, the community leaders who give them cover and space, and the intellectuals who spin all kinds of airy justification for it in the media, in college lecture halls and in mandatory corporate and government DIE classes.

I don’t know where or when the precipitating incident will come, or even if there will be just one single event that galvanizes a response. In my opinion, it will be a cluster of independently-occurring events or small incidents: the pair of Sikh employee/owners beating the snot out of a serial robber in Stockton, California, the dentist who got internet-mobbed for allegedly hosting a back yard party mocking Juneteenth and has since filed a defamation lawsuit … small feathers in the wind.

Meet the Company Trying to Control Your Mind

There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see — the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with.

You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine, through methods both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices and fundamentally shift cultural norms. Who are these people and how do they do this?

Well, at the top level you have a network of global elites who have created a universal framework full of guidelines and ratings designed to enforce “approved” narratives and punish disapproved ones. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it isn’t a secret and we’re not guessing.

First, you have the World Economic Forum, the WEF, and their platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. Second, you have the World Federation of Advertisers, the WFA, who represent mega-corporations that control 90% of global advertising dollars. WFA members are a who’s who of global business and include some of our recent wokeified favorites like Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Hershey, Procter & Gamble, Lego and Disney.

There is barely a billionaire Fortune 500 CEO, heavyweight philanthropist, government or woke nonprofit that isn’t associated with the WEF or the WFA.

In 2019, the WFA established the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Within months, the WEF adopted GARM as part of its platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. GARM is a cross-industry alliance that brings these mega-corporations — the advertisers — together with Big Tech companies like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram; Google-owned YouTube; the CCP’s TikTok; and even Snapchat and Pinterest.

This unholy alliance created something they call the Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. Think of Brand Safety as a dog whistle for censorship. They say it themselves: The Brand Safety Floor means, “Content not appropriate for any advertising support.” In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.

So, what have these global elites decided to put in their censorship framework? They started with things we can all universally agree on, like preventing the distribution of child pornography or the advocacy of graphic terrorist activity. But they don’t draw the line at what is objectively criminal, abusive or dangerous. They continue expanding the guidelines to include far more subjective parameters.

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Comment O’ The Day

I don’t trust information about studies unless a link is given to read the study or a title of the study is given so that it can be found. Behind this study is Cynthia Miller-Idriss. She’s the same person who claims “Physical fitness has always been central to the far right.”

Everytown

Our new study with @splcenter found that young people with easier access to guns tended to hold stronger beliefs that the government is restricting our freedoms and that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to overthrow the government.

Moros Kostas

You guys are really telling on yourselves with this one. Gun rights bother you at least in part because they promote small government views.

Government, almost by definition, DOES restrict our freedoms. Those polled aren’t wrong in the least for seeing it that way. The constant struggle is keeping this necessary evil contained to the minimum required for a functioning society.

Orgs like Everytown are part of a broad spectrum of authoritarian social engineers. They want people to be docile, preferably stuffed into cities, owning nothing, and restricted to a narrow overton window of acceptable opinions and lifestyles. The Chinese social credit system is their model.

Guns are a threat to this (as is free speech, which is why that is also a target for them). Not even really guns themselves, but the individualist ideas they can awaken simply by accepting the natural right to bear arms. Because once you accept the natural rights framework, the Bloombergian government dystopia they want is unacceptable.

Notice how the very same people who want to ban guns also tend to want social media to censor more speech, want the government to tax everything they declare undesirable, want to punish thought crimes with a widening net of “hate speech” restrictions that shutter the overton window, and constantly find new things they want banned.

This is also why they insist on federal gun laws. They know Boise or Manchester are doing just fine with minimal gun control laws, which drives them insane. It proves the problem in their violent cities is their own fault, and not due to gun rights. The authoritarians can’t allow such counterexamples to exist.

Control, control, control. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Also, if people polled really said the 2A grants the right to overthrow govt, that’s nonsense. But I wonder if what they meant (these are young laypeople, after all) was that the 2A exists in part as a failsafe against a govt that has gone tyrannical. Because that is absolutely correct.

 

Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result

“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.

There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.

It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.

It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.

It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”

Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.

It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).

All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society. But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy. Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.

It’s important to have an intellectual class.
Exactly how important is open to question — in his recent book “How Innovation Works,” Matt Ridley argues that most 19th- and 20th-century innovations actually came from tradespeople and industry, not academics doing abstract research — but important enough.
The COVID lockdown scolds killed people — but they still have no shame

There are dangers to an intelligentsia, though.
Communism and Nazism started as intellectual movements; so did such fads as eugenics and lobotomies.
The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t the product of racist Klansmen but of the curiosity of credentialed public-health experts.

In a 1999 essay, Neal Stephenson wrote that “during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”

It’s gotten worse.

Ideas can be dangerous; playing with them can be like gain-of-function research with viruses — if they escape into the general environment, disaster can ensue.

Guardrails like custom, religion and moral traditions made such disasters less likely, but we have spent basically my entire lifetime weakening those guardrails.
At the same time, our ruling class has become less diverse and more prone to groupthink.

A century ago, the people running our government, our economy, our academy and our media were varied.
Now they’re all members of the same class, educated usually at the same elite institutions, incestuously intermarried and driven by class solidarity.

As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote regarding the press’ supine attitude toward government censorship, today’s journalists “love Big Brother”: “Prominent reporters and powerful officials know each other, share attitudes, and trust each other.”

Agriculturalists know that in a monoculture, diseases spread rapidly because the entire crop is identical.
In a social and intellectual monoculture, groupthink ensures that bad ideas spread the same way.
This is especially so because our ruling class has substituted reputation for achievement.

One can be a successful CEO if the company does badly, so long as it pursues the right political goals.
Journalists, bureaucrats and political operatives routinely fail upward because they play to their peers.
The result is that any crazy idea can flourish if it’s stylish. And it’s gotten more dangerous, probably because social media allow so much self-herding behavior by elites.

Dissent is instantly ostracized before it even has a chance to be considered.

A decade ago, the crazy ideas I listed earlier would have been seen as beyond the pale of civilized political discussion. Now they’re all endorsed by leading American institutions.
That’s the hallmark of dysfunctional politics, and dysfunctional politics is what we have.

Issums gonna cry somoa?

Under Emotional Stress (someone hand me a tissue) - Imgflip

Oreste D’Arconte: All is lost on the gun fight

I don’t like to think like this, or write about it. I believe I am far from being a pessimist, and I can see the humor and humanness in everything. But deep down I am a realist, and thus I must accept a sad and heartbreaking truth: We will not end gun violence in our lifetimes. And by that I mean the lifetimes of everyone alive today.

Yes, we could stop manufacturing guns, except for military and police firearms but, again, what will that change? There are already millions of guns stashed away in American homes. And you can’t confiscate all of them.

Plus the smuggling of guns and ammo into our country is unstoppable. Period. Guns, unfortunately, are here to stay.

Maybe we could vet potential gun owners better, but that’s a hopeless tactic. Anyone who wants to can get their hands on a gun and bullets.

Abolish the Second Amendment? That would make no difference. And the answer surely is not for everyone to go out and buy themselves a gun.

Sure, I can wear my new orange shirt, the official color to protest gun violence, as often as I want, but it’s a symbolism that will change nothing.

You can shed a tear now or later for all the poor American souls who will be murdered by guns in the years and decades ahead. The greed, malfeasance, maliciousness and just pure wrongheadedness that got us to this point is not going to change anytime soon.

Instead, you may need to resign yourself to the idea that someone you know, someone you love, or even yourself, may be shot by a stranger. Even if you rarely leave your home — except, maybe, to pick up your newspaper on the lawn in the morning — you can become a victim. Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in.

The Supreme Court will soon hear a case brought by a violent gun owner that will challenge federal law that bars Americans subject to restraining orders from owning guns. Guess which way that will go.

Maybe it’s better if we all just try not to think about it. I hate it, but I can’t …

The thing is, it’s not really a joke. The criminals are in fact tools of the Democrats — that’s why they promote crime when they’re in power — in a war to demoralize the normies. And “racism” is a tool the lefties use to try to keep their opponents from organizing against them. It’s true here, and it was true with the Yellow Jacket protests in France:

Talking about the yellow-vest movement, French geographer Christophe Guilluy observes: “Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist, but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.”

Any person or group in opposition to the Democrats is smeared as racist or bigoted because that’s their excuse for suppressing them. And there’s a whole infrastructure — see, e.g., the Southern Poverty Law Center — to promote the smears and launder them as coming from “nonpartisan” sources. – Glenn Reynolds

 

Foreigners frequently voice their dissatisfaction with America due to the value placed on the Second Amendment by Americans. While foreign opinions on the rights held by Americans are irrelevant, I still wish to address this matter.

Foreign perceptions of the Second Amendment and American gun culture are largely influenced by both American national media and their respective country’s media. These individuals are fed a narrative-driven propaganda that shapes their perspective. The notion that gun owners prioritize the right to bear arms over the safety of children is an absurd viewpoint.

Both gun owners and non-gun owners share a common goal of prioritizing the safety of our children. However, our approaches to securing schools differ. I support the implementation of armed security measures, secured buildings with metal detectors, automatic timed locked doors, and one-way exit and entrance systems. The measures I propose do not have to resemble a prison, despite being a common objection raised by supporters of gun control and many individuals from foreign countries. It is worth noting that various locations, including certain schools, have already implemented similar security measures.

Everyday gun violence often stems from gang-related activities involving career criminals. The failure of our justice system to effectively keep these individuals incarcerated is often attributed to a lack of community cooperation, driven by fear of retaliation from the gangs in question. This perpetuates a harmful cycle of violence that gun laws cannot address. Shootings will simply be substituted by another manifestation of violence.

In conclusion, our right to bear arms is a fundamental cornerstone that has shaped the foundation of America. I understand that individuals from foreign countries who are not acquainted with the concept of gun ownership as a fundamental right may find it difficult to comprehend. However, it’s challenging for those who hold irrational perspectives to comprehend to see beyond their emotions.

-Carl

Hunter Biden probe shows corruptness in America’s two-tier justice system.

America’s two-tier justice system keeps rolling along.

And Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who snubbed the House’s request for documents pertaining to his probe of Hunter Biden, is the latest to show how far the Department of Justice will go to keep it rolling.

Hunter, President Joseph Robinette Biden’s black-sheep son, is facing tax and weapons charges that would represent deep hot water for most Americans. But Hunter isn’t most Americans.

He’s the president’s son, and, allegedly, bagman as well. And our Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is out to spare him the consequences of his actions.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley has come forward to report that Department of Justice officials took care to ensure that Hunter couldn’t be charged by ordering US attorneys in Washington, DC, and California not to prosecute.

Weiss didn’t charge Hunter because he allegedly said he lacked the authority to charge for things outside his home jurisdiction.

Garland could have granted Weiss the power to do so, but despite claiming that Weiss had unlimited powers, Garland never made the grant.

Hunter’s charges thus fell through a crack.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley has come forward to report that Department of Justice officials took care to ensure that Hunter couldn’t be charged by ordering US attorneys in Washington, DC, and California not to prosecute.

But hey, the tax fraud was only one of Hunter’s legal problems where the Department of Justice was happy to help out.

Hunter did get charged in Delaware, but only with two misdemeanor tax charges and a felony gun charge, for which he’ll get pretrial diversion and no prison time.

The tax charges could carry as much as two years in prison, and the gun charge could produce a 10-year sentence, but Hunter’s plea deal is expected to produce none.

Columnist J.D. Tuccille writes, “If, as expected, Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and firearms charges keeps him out of prison, it would be a remarkable display of leniency. . . . It’s enough to make a suspicious person wonder if the deal was meant to give the appearance that justice was done to divert attention from more serious matters. It’s also a hint of the restraint prosecutors exercise for the powerful, and which the rest of us would appreciate.”

The tax charges could carry up to 2 years in prison along with the gun charge producing a possible 10-year sentence, but Hunter’s plea deal is expected to produce none. Ya think?

As law professor Jonathan Turley notes, the charges also allow Hunter to avoid discussing the (likely unsavory) sources of the money.

How convenient.

“The House Oversight Committee has documented potentially millions in financial transfers from foreign sources to Biden family members. . . . Garland took the most important step in pulling off the controlled demolition by steadfastly refusing to appoint a special counsel. Such an appointment would allow the release of a report that would detail the alleged corrupt practices of the Biden family and the knowledge and involvement of the president,” Turley wrote.

That’s why they didn’t do it.

This seems deeply suspicious, and the House Judiciary Committee is investigating.

But Weiss, ignoring a subpoena, is stonewalling.

People used to say that it’s the coverup that gets you, not the crime, but today’s Democrats obviously don’t believe that.

It’s been obvious for a while that there’s a two-tier justice system in America.

If you’re a Jan. 6 protester who just wandered around the Capitol, you can expect solitary confinement before trial, and prosecutors who’ll throw the book at you.

But if you’re the son of a (Democratic) president, you can expect to be handled with kid gloves.

Our Constitution forbids “titles of nobility,” whereby the elite live by different rules than the rest of us.

It doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?

Circle The Wagons: The Government Is On The Warpath – OpEd

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

The government may NOT take private property for public use without just compensation. Nevertheless, under the guise of the “greater public interest,” the government often hides behind eminent domain laws in order to allow megacorporations to tear down homes occupied by less prosperous citizens in order to build high-priced resorts and shopping malls.

Government agents may NOT force a citizen to testify against himself. Yet what is the government’s extensive surveillance network that spies on all of our communications but a thinly veiled attempt at using our own words against us?

The government is NOT permitted to claim any powers that are not expressly granted to them by the Constitution. This prohibition has become downright laughable as the government continues to claim for itself every authority that serves to swell its coffers, cement its dominion, and expand its reach.

Despite what some special interest groups have suggested to the contrary, the problems we’re experiencing today did not arise because the Constitution has outlived its usefulness or become irrelevant, nor will they be solved by a convention of states or a ratification of the Constitution.

No, the problem goes far deeper.

It can be traced back to the point at which “we the people” were overthrown as the center of the government. As a result, our supremacy has been undone, our authority undermined, and our experiment in democratic self-governance left in ruins.

No longer are we the rulers of this land. We have long since been deposed and dethroned, replaced by corporate figureheads with no regard for our sovereignty, no thought for our happiness, and no respect for our rights.

In other words, without our say-so and lacking any mandate, the point of view of the Constitution has been shifted from “we the people” to “we the government.” Our taxpayer-funded employees—our appointed servants—have stopped looking upon us as their superiors and started viewing as their inferiors.

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten so used to being dictated to by government agents, bureaucrats and militarized police alike that we’ve forgotten that WE are supposed to be the ones calling the shots and determining what is just, reasonable and necessary.

Then again, we’re not the only ones guilty of forgetting that the government was established to serve us as well as obey us. Every branch of government, from the Executive to the Judicial and Legislative, seems to be suffering this same form of amnesia. Certainly, when government programs are interpreted from the government’s point of view (i.e., the courts and legislatures), there is little the government CANNOT do in its quest for power and control.

We’ve been so brainwashed and indoctrinated into believing that the government is actually looking out for our best interests, when in fact the only compelling interesting driving government programs is maintain power and control by taking away our money and control. This vital truth, that the government exists for our benefit and operates at our behest, seems to have been lost in translation over two centuries dominated by government expansion, endless wars and centralized federal power.

Have you ever wondered why the Constitution begins with those three words “we the people”? It was intended to be a powerful reminder that everything flows from the citizenry. We the people are the center of the government and the source of its power. That “we” is crucial because it reminds us that there is power and safety in numbers, provided we stand united. We can accomplish nothing alone.

This is the underlying lesson of the Constitution, which outlines the duties and responsibilities of government. It was a mutual agreement formed by early Americans in order to ensure that when problems arose, they could address them together.

It’s like the wagon trains of the Old West, comprised of individual groups of pioneers. They rarely ventured out alone but instead traveled as convoys. And when faced with a threat, these early Americans formed their wagons into a tight circle in order to defend against invaders. In doing so, they presented a unified front and provided protection against an outside attack.

In much the same way, the Constitution was intended to work as an institutionalized version of the wagon circle, serving as a communal shield against those who would harm us.

Unfortunately, we have been ousted from that protected circle, left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness that is the American frontier today. Those who did the ousting—the courts, the politicians, and the corporations—have since replaced us with yes-men, shills who dance to the tune of an elite ruling class. In doing so, they have set themselves as the central source of power and the arbiters of what is just and reasonable.

Once again, we’re forced to navigate hostile terrain, unsure of how to protect ourselves and our loved ones from militarized police, weaponized drones, fusion centers, Stingray devices, SWAT team raids, the ongoing military drills on American soil, the government stockpiling of ammunition, the erection of mass detention centers across the country, and all other manner of abuses.

Read the smoke signals, and the warning is clear: the government is on the warpath.

I don’t agree that President Trump’s use of DoD funds to build a wall was wrong. The Constitution makes clear in Article 4 § 4 the requirement to protect the states from invasion, and if hoards of illegal aliens coming into the country doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would.

On CNN of all places…………

Why the Supreme Court got it right on student loans

 Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University, the Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of “Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.” 

In a lawsuit brought by six state governments, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Joe Biden’s massive $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress, and the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the power to determine how federal funds are spent. The court made the right decision: If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress’ constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover, because of the context for this case, it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends.

The administration’s loan forgiveness plan, announced in August 2022, would have canceled up to $20,000 for those with Pell Grants (federal grants for low-income students) or up to $10,000 in other federal student-loan debt for single borrowers with incomes under $125,000 per year and under $250,000 for married couples or heads of households. The legal rationale for the plan is based on a provision of the 2003 HEROES Act, a law that was enacted in large part to help people affected by the War on Terror, particularly members of the armed forces who might have trouble repaying loans while deployed abroad.

But the Biden administration was relying on a provision of the act that gives the secretary of education authority to “waive or modify” federal student loan requirements in order to ensure that recipients of financial assistance who have been affected by a national emergency “are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance” because they were affected by the emergency. The administration claimed beneficiaries of the loan-forgiveness plan qualified because they have been negatively affected financially as a result of the Covid-19 national emergency declared by then-President Donald Trump in March 2020.

The Supreme Court on Friday rightly ruled that the HEROES Act’s language comes nowhere near authorizing such a massive loan forgiveness plan. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in the majority opinion, “The authority to ‘modify’ statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them.” The word “waive” also doesn’t give the government the power to forgive loans on a massive scale, because, as Roberts noted, the government conceded that the term “waiver” as used in the HEROES Act cannot refer to waiving loan repayments.

Continue reading “”

The Toughest Job In D.C. — Transcribing Biden’s Remarks

Watching President Joe Biden try to make his way through a speech is painful enough. Reading a transcript of it is worse. Not just because Biden’s words are even more confusing in print, but because you start to feel a strong sense of pity for the person responsible for figuring out what he is trying to say, how much of it to transcribe verbatim, and which facts to correct.

We looked through Biden’s remarks from just this month and found 15 instances where the transcriber felt compelled to make corrections on things the president said.

Here’s an example from one 11-minute speech he gave over the weekend in Palo Alto.

Forty million — 40 million Americans already drinking water that thousands of farmers rely on for — for integration [irrigation].  And 40 million count on that river and so do the farmers….

Folks, flood mitigation: $3.5 million [billion] to reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings, plus $1 billion in funding mitigation measures to increase community resilience, like supporting adaptations of hazard-resistant building codes

And maybe most important, I’ve committed by 2020 [2030], we will have conserved 30 percent of all the lands and waters the United States has jurisdiction over and simultaneously reduce emissions to blunt climate impacts.

Other examples from this month as they appear in the official White House transcripts:

  • “Mary Robinson [Barra], the Chairman of the Board of General Motors …”
  • “Instead, I signed into law the Bipartisan Safers [sic] Community Act, which you’ve referenced several times today …”
  • “Last summer, I had the honor of bestowing the Presidential Meda- — Medal of Freemon [sic] — Freedom on distinguished Americans …”
  • “The ticket seller, SeatGreek [SeatGeek], is also set to give customers the option of seeing all-in, upfront prices …”
  • “And I’m pleased we’re also joined by x-pay [sic] — xBk, a small venue in Des Moines, Iowa, that’s going be using all upfront pricing for its hundred events at — a year as well …”
  • “Let me tell you, the Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion to comat [sic] — combat climate change …”
  • “We made clear — they made clear that we’d rather th- — they’d rather threaten the default of the U.S. economy than cut or get rid of, for example, $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies who made $200 million [sic] last year — billion.  I said ‘million.’  Billion dollars last year …”
  • “When we were at the G7, we talked about — one of the meetings was — they used to call the Build Back Better World. It’s not that now. It’s the PIII [PGII] — P-triple-I [sic] …”
  • “At the G7, it was originally called Build Back Better World, but we were talking about — there’s a new PPI [PGII] — anyway — an industrial policy that we’re all signed on to …”
  • “As Commander-in-Chief, I was proud to have ended the ban on transgester [sic] Americans — transgender Americans serving in the United States military …”
  • “And finally, this executive order means more resources, especially when it comes to improving military families’ access to quality, defendable [dependable], and affordable — affordable childcare …”
  • “This could have been the week that a catastrophic — catastrophic devault [sic] — default happened …”

But, while the White House appears to be trying to present an accurate record of Biden’s mumbles and stumbles, even this is a cleaned-up version of history.

At that same Palo Alto event, what the audience heard Biden say was: “Here in California, the goverer — you and I stood together.” But the official transcript has Biden correctly pronouncing the word “governor.”

Then there are all the times the transcriber just has to give up and put “(inaudible)” in places where Biden so garbles his words that nobody can make them out. That happened at a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, when Biden said “I’m going to ask Natalie, quickly, to explain, while you’re all here, how it works.  We don’t have the ability — it’s not — we don’t have a laptop to type over (inaudible).  We’re just going to show you.” (See whether you can decipher the missing words at the 3:34 mark on the video.)

And all this is to say nothing of the bizarre and befuddling things that routinely come out of Biden’s mouth these days. Such as when he ended a speech saying “God save the Queen, man.” Or when he declared that “We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”

Last week, Biden attended an event about the rebuilding of I-95 after a section collapsed outside Philadelphia, which also featured the city’s mayor, the state’s governor and its even more remarkably incoherent junior senator. After the mayor praised Biden’s response to the event, Biden went back up the podium to say “I might add that if I didn’t, I’d be sleeping alone.” Which he apparently meant as a joke, but which nobody understood. So, he came back to the mic to say: “I have to explain … I better explain that sumdonnowhatmtal. My wife’s a Philly girl.” Then, looking confused, he says, “alright, where we goin’?”

That part of the event, captured by C-SPAN, didn’t make it into the White House transcript.

SloJoe’s relationship with the truth was always nonexistent but now his lies don’t even make sense.

Joe Biden Is Not OK.

There is nothing unique about being a scatterbrained 80-year-old. But a scatterbrained 80-year-old should not be president.

The other day, Joe Biden ended a big gun-control speech in Connecticut with the words, “God save the queen, man.” Why did the president express adoration for the departed Brit monarch? Was he confused about royal succession? Is he a Sex Pistols fan? Who knows.

When asked about the incident, White House aides offered nonsensical and conflicting answers — because they have absolutely no idea, and neither does the president. It’s likely that the octogenarian spontaneously used a cool-sounding phrase, much like when your elderly neighbor tells you to “keep on truckin,’” for no apparent reason. It happens.

Yet, Axios writer Alex Thompson points out that Biden “has an arsenal of wacky phrases.” And the president’s “quirky aphorisms,” he contends, “are sometimes weaponized by Republicans to insinuate the 80-year-old president is in mental decline.”

There is no need for insinuation. Biden’s mental acuity, never impressive, has considerably deteriorated. Sure, he also tends to botch “old-timey” sayings like, “lots of luck in your senior year,” which he says is a gibe from his Corn Pop days. But most reporters who pretend perceptions of Biden’s decline are due to his propensity for homespun maxims or previously unknown stuttering problems almost surely wouldn’t find him fit enough to babysit their kids.

Every week, the president of the United States says something completely bonkers, and everyone goes on with their day. We’re not talking about his propensity to lie about politics or his blustery lifelong fabulism (his “folksiness,” The New York Times recently explained, “can veer into a personal folklore” with “the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences.”) We’re talking about his inability to articulate simple ideas without notes — and often with notes. There are rarely any fact-checks of these statements. How can there be? They don’t even make sense as lies. There is no handwringing about the role of competency in our democracy. There is no discussion about the 25th Amendment.

Just listen to any one of his speeches. “Put a pistol on a brace, it turns into a gun — makes it more — you can have a higher-caliber weapon, higher-caliber bullet coming out of that gun,” the president explained before wishing Her Majesty his best. This was also complete gibberish. There is so much gibberish.

Only a couple of days before his “God save the queen” comment, Biden informed a crowd gathered for a League of Conservation Voters endorsement that “we” have “plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” which must have really impressed everyone in attendance. “We have plans to build in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world,” Biden went on. “I can go on, but I’m not. I’m going off-script. I’m going to get in trouble.”

A few days before the railroad comment, Biden couldn’t remember Winston Churchill’s name when speaking to the prime minister of Britain. Listen, I’m not great with names myself, and I’m sure as an 80-year-old I’d have trouble recalling world leaders … but I’m confident I wouldn’t think myself competent enough to be the most powerful man in the world. Nor should Biden.

That same week, when asked why a Ukrainian FBI informant referred to Biden as the “Big Guy,” the president lashed out for being posed “dumb questions.” He does this often in frustration. When the president isn’t flubbing canned lines to the rare tough question, he yells things like “c’mon, man!” A few years ago, this kind of rhetoric was considered democracy-shattering. Now, it’s quirky and folksy.

The week before he couldn’t remember Churchill’s name, the president also tripped and fell on stage after a commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. Biden’s surrogates pointed out that there had been a sandbag right there, as if no one, whether young or old, could possibly be expected to walk over a small bag without falling to the floor.

You might recall that after the former president gingerly navigated a ramp after giving a speech at West Point in 2020, The New York Times’ headline the next day was: “Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions.” The president, the Times went on, “also appeared to have trouble raising a glass of water to his mouth during a speech at West Point a day before he turned 74, the oldest a president has been in his first term.”
The sitting president is now six years older than Trump was at the time — he would be a decade older should he finish a second term.

Of course, everyone ages differently — John Fetterman, only 53, can barely put together a thought while some septuagenarian is out there writing his literary opus right now. Nor is there anything wrong with or especially unique about being a scatterbrained and tired 80-year-old. In this case, maybe Americans who elected a scatterbrained and tired 80-year-old deserve to be governed by him — good and hard, as Menken might say. But please stop pretending Biden is OK. He’s not.