Getting rid of Joe: let’s look at the 25th Amendment

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democrats face a quandary of their own making. They nominated a man in 2020 who was clearly on the wane, mentally and physically. They did it not because he’d be good at the presidency but because they thought he could win or could be made to win. And win he did, whether by hook or by crook.

They also thought – or some of them thought – that his continuing decline could be covered up for enough time to figure out an alternative for 2024. The debate on June 27 changed that calculus, but the perception of Joe’s fitness had already been faltering. No number of better – not good, but better – “press conferences” or teleprompter speeches will undo what was seen at the debate.

It seems pretty clear that the majority of Democrats would like to remove Biden from contention, but he has stubbornly and egotistically refused to go voluntarily. That was part of the Democrats’ 2020 bargain, too: “stubborn” and “egotistical” are Joe’s two middle names.

And it’s not as though Joe is utterly senile. I’ve been saying for a long long time that although Joe is significantly cognitively compromised, he still has some agency and some say in things. As commenter Niketas Choniates writes:

To me it seems clear that Biden is VERY old and has good and bad days. However, he is not a vegetable, he knows he’s supposed to be President and is officially at the head of the Executive. He also knows it’s the capstone of a long career in office.

He will not resign and he will not be removed by Amendment 25, because he’s competent enough to successfully challenge using the Amendment 25 process (which folks should get really get around to reading for themselves, because media is not truthfully representing it).

I think the only way he leaves the Presidency is feet first–he won’t be voted out because Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are fortified for democracy. A successful Amendment 25 removal would only happen if he really were a vegetable, or so senile that he actually doesn’t remember he’s President even on good days.

(If they tried to remove him in the “vegetable” scenario, I’m assuming that his staff and or his wife would produce a letter under his name challenging his inability, and Congress would insist on seeing and interacting with Joe Biden in person before voting whether to restore his powers, which would mean something like a month of no one knowing who has the powers of the Presidency.)

So let’s look at the relevant portion of the 25th Amendment:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

That’s a mouthful. The article goes on to add that the drafters of the amendment deliberately left the definition of “inability” vague:

… [There is] no specific threshold – medical or otherwise – for the “inability” contemplated in Section 4. The framers specifically rejected any definition of the term, prioritizing flexibility. Those implementing Section 4 should focus on whether – in an objective sense taking all of the circumstances into account – the President is “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office. The amendment does not require that any particular type or amount of evidence be submitted to determine that the President is unable to perform his duties. While the framers did imagine that medical evidence would be helpful to the determination of whether the President is unable, neither medical expertise nor diagnosis is required for a determination of inability … To be sure, foremost in [the minds of the framers] was a physical or mental impairment. But the text of Section 4 sets forth a flexible standard intentionally designed to apply to a wide variety of unforeseen emergencies …

It seems to me that, if enough Democrats were to come along, the 25th could be invoked to remove Joe despite his protests and/or challenges. But it would be a very bitter and divisive experience for the Democrats.

The Democrats in the Senate defeat the SAVE Act

The New Neo Posted on by

Voting for everyone! It’s “xenophobic” to worry about limiting votes to citizens:

Senate Democrats blocked the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act Thursday, a bill mandating proof of citizenship for federal voters, which passed the House late Wednesday.

Here’s the “xenophobic” charge:

Rep. Summer Lee: “Let me be clear: They don’t want you to vote. They don’t want to hear Black voices, Brown voices, LGBTQIA voices, young voices. Our fundamental access to our democracy is being politicized. And this xenophobic attack that we’re debating today will make it harder for Americans to vote. My Republican colleagues will claim that requiring IDs is a small ask, but nearly 30 million people lack a valid driver’s license, and about 15 to 18 million adults don’t have access to documents proving their birth or citizenship. Americans don’t need more obstacles. It’s already hard enough.”

Oh, so hard to vote! So hard to prove something a person has to prove in order to do things that are a lot more common than voting. But this is the rhetoric, and it works with a lot of people.

Meanwhile, faith in the integrity of our elections is gone, and that’s a dangerous thing.

Remember HR1. If the Democrats get into power again, they will pass a federal law banning things like proof of citizenship for voting, even in red states. The idea is permanent power for the left.

Joe’s “I Will Survive!” press conference

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems Joe lives to fight another day. He limbo-ed right down under that low low bar and then skedaddled on out of there.

I didn’t watch it, but I read about it. It seems he faded towards the end, but he was otherwise coherent in his lies and braggadocio, and did a halfway decent job of reading off a teleprompter. Bravo, Joe!

Why are so many Democrats opposed to the SAVE Act?

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently they want illegal aliens to be able to vote. Only five Democrats joined the Republicans to vote for the Act:

In total, 216 Republicans and five Democrats voted to pass the bill, while 198 Democrats voted against the measure.

In May, Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, introduced the SAVE Act, which would require those registering to vote to provide documentary proof of United States citizenship. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or to vote in federal elections.

The bill had 104 Republican co-sponsors, including top House Republicans such as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York, and Republican Policy Committee Chair Gary Palmer of Alabama.

The bill should have passed unanimously, of course. The five who voted for it were Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Caroina, Jared Golden of Maine, Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.

Here’s the reason Democrats give for opposing the bill:

“A REAL ID drivers’ license, a Tribal ID, or a military ID would be unacceptable unless coupled with additional documentation, such as a birth certificate or an extract from a birth record that proves the applicant was born in the United States,” Clark wrote. “This would be an extreme burden for countless Americans, including military voters, Native voters, people who have changed their names (including tens of millions of American women), the elderly, the young, the poor, and naturalized citizens.”

An “extreme burden”? Give me a break. Naturalized citizens can’t prove they’re citizens? Married women can’t prove it’s their birth certificate? Absurd. How do all these people get passports? This “extreme burden” is okay for a passport? It’s the same old Democrat argument that millions of Americans are somehow incapable of getting proper ID, at least when it comes to voting.

And note how many supposedly moderate Democrats go along with this.

More “now it can be told”: Chuck Todd says everybody knew about Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

From NBC News’ Chuck Todd:

NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd on Wednesday claimed a senior cabinet secretary told him in 2022 that President Biden couldn’t run again.

The former “Meet the Press” host discussed dwindling confidence in Biden’s campaign on his podcast “The Chuck Toddcast” with Politico columnist Jonathan Martin. While floating potential exit paths for Biden to step down, both criticized Democratic Party members for refusing to publicly voice their concerns.

“The politicians of the Democratic Party in the last few days have shown that a lot of them don’t have the courage of their convictions. They simply aren’t going to stand up and say in public what they’ve been telling folks like us in private for years. This is not a new story,” Martin said.

It’s not a new story on the right. But you said the right was lying and distorting the truth, and that Biden was basically fine. Now you say you knew differently and were covering up the truth and lying yourselves – to preserve “democracy” (that is, Democrats). We’ve known you were liars for a long long time. But now that you admit that you always knew the truth and hid it, why would anyone who previously trusted you trust you now?

Why would anyone ever trust you again? They answer is that no one on earth should, and you’re admitting it.

More:

Todd recounted, “I had a cabinet secretary two years ago — two years ago — out of the blue asked me, ‘Do you really think he’s gonna? He can’t run again like this.’ And I said, ‘Well, you have more interaction with him than I do.’ And they said, ‘I don’t have a lot of interaction with him.’ This is a pretty senior cabinet secretary. This was two years ago.”

He added, “It’s the classic open secret, the nonversation. It’s the story everybody knows, and that everybody was afraid to talk about.”

Does that “everybody” include you Chuck? Well, I guess you’ve now overcome your fear. And why might that be? Might it be because the truth is now impossible to hide? I’m sure you can give it the old college try, though.

Then again, maybe the truth is out because Obama has decreed it must come out.

And Biden still does better than his possible replacements do in polls against Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t say I’d rely overmuch on polls right now – or perhaps ever. But still, I find these results very curious:

The latest Emerson College Polling survey found Trump with 49 percent and Harris with 43 percent among registered voters in a potential match-up, a 6-point lead for the former president. Another 8 percent were undecided.

Harris notched the same share of support as Biden, who also scored 43 percent against Trump — but Biden trailed the presumptive Republican nominee by 3 points, with 43 percent to Trump’s 46 percent, and 11 percent undecided.

So Biden does better than Harris, but it seems to be because he cuts slightly more into support for Trump, not because he gets more votes himself. Therefore the gap is smaller.

And it’s not just the unpopular Harris – it’s also the other Democrats who are mentioned as possible Biden replacements:

Trump was also up in hypothetical head-to-heads against eight other prominent Democratic and independent names floated as potential Biden replacements. He led by 6 points over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 7 points over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 8 points over California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Al Gore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer all came in behind Trump in additional tests.

But a new poll from the Democratic pollster Bendixen & Amandi Inc. found more promising results for Harris — putting the vice president ahead of Trump by 1 point. Harris scored 42 percent to Trump’s 41 percent, while 5 percent of voters picked a third-party candidate and 12 percent were undecided.

I suppose you could just say the polls are worthless at this point, and call it a day. Twelve percent undecided? Does that mean they’ll stay home? Or are those the mail-in ballots waiting for opportune Democratic harvesting?

And national polls are especially worthless; it’s the state polls that matter – or at least, that matter more.

But the whole thing could help explain why the Democrats seem to be resigned to running Biden – for now.

Thinking about it

The New Neo Posted on by

In school we are mostly taught to take in information and then give it back in an exam. And that’s important to learn to do in order to have a backlog of knowledge and the ability to negotiate the world. But we get so used to passively taking it in and then spitting it back out that we sometimes forget to question what we learn.

Or, we question everything reflexively, sometimes from a paranoid stance that sees malignant conspiracies everywhere. But to actually look at each situation objectively and try to come to the best conclusion, minus confirmation bias? That’s hard and it’s rare. And though I believe it’s more rare on the left, I actually think it’s relatively rare on both sides of the political divide, because I think it’s rare in human beings.

I like to think I fall into that category of exceptions. Changers have some evidence about that, because at least once we shook off confirmation bias in the face of what we considered overwhelming evidence and changed our minds. But that doesn’t mean we always do it or even mostly do it.

What made me think about the question was this comment by “physicsguy” a while ago:

Just broke contact with a friend of over 50 years. Generally a good person, but since last week it’s been non-stop Trump is a felon. And all his circle of friends were piling on. I couldn’t take it anymore.

A familiar story. I responded this way:

You might try this with your erstwhile friend.

Gandhi was a felon.

Mandela was a felon.

Etc.

I think it would be a good effort, but I doubt it would work. The friend would have lots of available comebacks. One would be that they were arrested by the opposition for doing noble things, not making business entries about hush money payments to porn stars. Another would be to be outraged at comparing these admired people to someone as obviously awful (to their way of thinking) as Donald Trump. Another would be to change the subject. Another would be to refuse to answer. And so forth.

If a person wants to evade actually thinking about what’s been said, there are many avenues for that. And those avenues are usually taken.

A Palestinian Adenauer?

The New Neo Posted on by

I read many stupid things every day, some of them even from smart people who are saying intelligent things as well. An example of a stupid thing I often see is some sort of kneejerk statement about Trump being a dictator, something many people seem to feel the need to throw in there to prove themselves members of the intellectual class. Or, sometimes it’s something about how Israel is motivated by revenge, or it’s about the cycle of violence tit-for-tatism. Or something about WWII itself that shows ignorance – either poor analogies or outright misstatements.

Here’s a good example. It’s an interview with a journalist on the left named Susan Winfield. She is critical of the left’s response to Hamas and Israel, and as I read the back-and-forth I alternate between nodding in assent and shaking my head in disagreement, over and over. I’m not going to do an analysis of the whole thing; I’ll just take this one part of what Winfield says as an example of what I mean:

There’s an excellent essay on the concept of “decolonization” in the most recent issue of Liberties by Kian Tajbakhsh. He’s an Iranian-American academic who was formerly a political prisoner of the Ayatollah. He has a very clear view of Middle Eastern politics; I urge everyone to read the essay, which I think is brilliant. Tajbakhsh writes that what the Palestinians need is not a Mandela but “an Adenauer, who can accept an imperfect and unsatisfactory reality in the present to achieve a better future.” That is, someone who can lead them from conspiratorial thinking and revanchist fantasies into the reality principle, which can be the only basis of a true national revival.

Well, that would certainly be nice. But I don’t see a chance of it happening without something else Winfield deplores: a postwar occupation. Did Adenauer spring forth out of nowhere to lead the German people from Nazism by the sheer force of his argument and courage? Of course not. First there was a very brutal and long-lasting war which destroyed much of Germany. Then after the war, Germany was occupied for eleven years in the Western part (and much longer in the Eastern part, for different reasons). Adenauer had been an anti-Nazi during the war but had managed to survive. The occupation involved the victorious Allies reshaping the utterly defeated Germany and included denazification and re-education (Adenauer was against the former but much of it had already occurred by the time he came to power in 1949).

I cannot think of a single possible Palestinian candidate for a future Adenauer, nor do I see how such a person could ever be elected in a future Palestine without years of occupation and re-education either by Israel or preferably by a less Jew-hating Arab government such as the UAE.

And then there’s German society prior to the Nazis, which although somewhat dysfunctional was nothing like as sick as Palestinian society. There was more to build on in the first place with Germany compared to Palestine – although the building was far from easy. However, it required utter defeat and occupation to begin to take place at all.

And yet Winfield also says the following:

Israel is unusual in that it is the only country in the world that does not have settled borders: It has neither annexed the Palestinian territories nor freed them. The Occupation is a political and moral failure of phenomenal proportions. I have no problem calling it a crime. Israel is also the only country in the world that faces existential threats from an array of states and terrorist groups that are fanatically devoted to its destruction. Does this justify the Occupation? Not at all. Can the Occupation be separated from this? Not at all.

If you can make head or tail of that, or reconcile it with her approval of the idea of a Palestinian Adenauer, be my guest.

Did the author care back when these so-called “occupied territories” were occupied by Egypt and Jordan? I doubt it (was she even alive? I don’t know how old she is, but from her photo she doesn’t look like she was an adult in 1967). Also, Gaza essentially became autonomous in 2005, in case she hadn’t noticed. And these areas were only occupied by Israel after Israel won a war against them and their Arab brethren in 1967. The story:

Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. It previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, occupation of the Palestinian territories was split between Egypt and Jordan, with the former having occupied the Gaza Strip and the latter having annexed the West Bank; the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights were under the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The first conjoined usage of the terms “occupied” and “territories” with regard to Israel was in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was drafted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and called for: “the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East” to be achieved by “the application of both the following principles: … Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict … Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

If the Palestinians would recognize the Israelis’ right to live in peace, there would be no occupation. Period.

You can read more on the subject here.

And yet Susie Linfield is a journalism professor at NYU and wrote this Quillette article that’s discussed in that interview. The article is a critique of the anti-Israel anti-Semitic left, and although I can only read portions of it (it’s behind a paywall), the part I can see is excellent. Some excerpts:

The history of the modern Left’s romance with terrorism—not the “old-fashioned” version aimed at czars or imperial officials, but the kind directed against unarmed civilians … started with the Algerian War and gained momentum throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and beyond with the emergence of the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhof Gang, the Irish Republican Army, the Japanese Red Army, the Weathermen, and the panoply of organizations included in the Palestine Liberation Organization and, especially, its Rejectionist Front. The latter held pride of place …

Indeed.

More:

In the age of the “progressive atrocity,” PLO terrorist attacks on Israelis, Jews, and civilians throughout the world were hailed as instruments of liberation. A very partial list of such incidents would include the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics (the games continued, nonetheless) and the Lod Airport massacre the same year (death toll: 26, along with at least 80 injured); the Ma’alot massacre of 1974, in which 115 Israelis, mainly schoolchildren, were taken hostage (resulting deaths: 31); the Entebbe hijacking of 1976, in which Israeli and other Jewish passengers were separated from others and threatened with death (most were rescued by Israeli commandos); the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which a civilian bus was highjacked (death toll: 38, including 13 children; 71 wounded); the 1982 attack on the Chez Jo Goldenberg kosher restaurant in Paris, considered at the time to be the worst incidence of antisemitism in France since the Holocaust (death toll: six, with 22 injured); and numerous other instances of air piracy. Various international groups, especially Baader Meinhof of Germany and the Japanese Red Army, sometimes assisted their Palestinian brothers “in solidarity.” Not all leftists or leftwing organizations supported these actions, but to criticize them was a sign of “bourgeois moralism” as Ghassan Kanafani, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, put it. …

In recent years, the Left’s embrace of terror seemed to have ebbed; you won’t find many defenders of al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or Boko Haram. The notable exception has been groups devoted to the destruction of Israel: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, all of which still garner enthusiasm and deluded admiration. One might have thought that an orgy of sadistic murder, of the kind that Hamas committed on October 7th, would have inspired serious moral and political self-interrogation. As the past four weeks have illustrated, however, the exact opposite is the case.

She’s of the left but doesn’t really understand the depth of its anti-Semitism and of its romance with and sympathy for the devil.

There the free part of her essay ends, but I found more of it here. The following excerpt from her essay is similar to points I made years ago in my series of posts about the 1979 Iranian revolution and the participation of the left:

In 1979, leftists who supported the Iranian Revolution had a rude awakening when the mullahs came to power and promptly executed them, along with secularists, union organizers, intellectuals, feminists, and everyone else who fit into the enormously capacious category of a counterrevolutionary. There was a lesson here: Activists have the responsibility to know who and what they support, and to separate themselves—openly and decisively—from programs and regimes that are predicated on violence and repression. Similarly, those who imagine that Hamas’s slaughters may have promoted “liberation,” “justice,” and “freedom” for Palestinians, as the banners demand, have a big surprise in store.

Unlike Iran in 1979, though, there’s no mystery as to what kind of state Hamas (an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement) aims to create; we need only look at what it already has created. This time, no one can plead ignorance. …

… History has proved, again and again, that terrorists and freedom fighters aren’t the same, which is why the former never achieve anything approaching either liberation or justice.

For many leftists and many students these days, it’s just a game they’re playing from their safe Western countries and the liberty those countries afford them. If they are successful in their goals, they may indeed be very surprised at what awaits them.