Welcome back. Hope you all had a nice vacation. I learned that our daughter loves chewing the ice from a gin and tonic, which I’m sure is not indicative of anything about her mother.
→ You choose between old or crooked: You’ll be shocked to know that a lot of Americans associate Biden with the words old, outdated, aging, and Trump with corrupt, criminal, crooked. And they associate Nellie Bowles with smart, talented, and prettier in person. Weird!
About three-quarters of voters in fact think Biden is too old to run, according to the WSJ, and his support among minority voters continues to erode. How do Republicans do against Biden in a matchup? Biden and Trump are tied neck and neck. But Nikki Haley is beating Biden handily! Haley hive rise up! Now, this poll also says Mike Pence would win, and I know for a fact that only seven people would vote for Mike Pence, so make of it what you will.
Anyway, we all know how the Republican primary will work: all these men and Nikki Haley will fight for months in elaborate televised debates, each dutifully reported on and parsed for meaning, and it won’t matter because Trump’s getting the nom. But just for fun, just to live the lie for a little longer:
→ Is the congressional elder abuse hotline disconnected? Someone help Mitch McConnell. He has experienced a couple of freezing episodes on camera, with the most recent lasting about 30 seconds. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what these are. But I know that America’s elders are being abused right before our eyes. I know that Dianne Feinstein, whose daughter has power of attorney over her legal affairs, should not be a sitting senator. Joe Biden’s speech in Maui, when he finally showed up, was bizarre. There are 115 confirmed dead with more than 100 still missing, a tragedy compounded by disastrous local politicians, and Biden compared it all to his small kitchen fire: “I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it was like to lose a home. Years ago—now 15 years—I was in Washington doing Meet the Press. . . . [L]ightning struck at home on a little lake that’s outside of our home—not a lake, a big pond—and hit a wire and came up underneath our home into the. . . air conditioning ducts. To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat.”
“Not the ’Vette!” shouted the people who lost homes and loved ones.
If our parents or grandparents acted this way, we would take away the car. Let alone the country.
Even The Guardian is concerned with that speech and Mitch’s freezes, coming out this week with: “Too old to govern? The age problem neither US party wants to talk about.” Oh, I’ll talk about it. Let me into Congress and I will free these elders. I will lead a very slow march straight to bingo and fruit salad. (Which honestly sounds so relaxing.)
→ Tucker’s credulous interview: Tucker Carlson this week brought to his show a man who claims he smoked crack and had gay sex with former president Barack Obama. First of all: I’m pro both legal drugs and gay sex. But more to the point: if you’re going to try to smear Obama with lies, at least find a better liar. Or a liar with teeth.
As the writer Tim Miller put it: “Larry Sinclair had fraud charges in two states, went to jail in three, filed an affidavit 20 years ago saying he couldn’t stand trial because he was terminally ill (seems to be alive now), Colorado records list him with 13 aliases, and he failed a polygraph test over these claims.” Or as Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy said: “I met Larry Sinclair when I was doing my Tucker thing a couple weeks ago. I would trust Anna Delvey before I trusted anything Larry Sinclair said. Top to bottom maybe the least trustworthy human I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
The right beclowns itself with this stuff. And while I always took Tuck with a grain of salt, now I’m not even sure of that. How much had Fox News been holding him back from all this? Last: I’m sorry, but whatever your politics are, we all know that Obama is an attractive man, and if he ever had a boyfriend, the guy would be a 10.
