Biden’s Age – The Wrongologist

Osnos Finds Biden’s Sharp Despite His Age

The Daily Escape:

West Quoddy Head Light, Lubec, ME – February 2024 drone photo by Rick Berk Photography

Wrongo has lots of time for Evan Osnos, a writer for the New Yorker. Osnos wrote a great book “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury”, a detailed look at America’s reactions to 9/11 and to the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol. He follows the lives of a few people that reveal how we lost the ability to see ourselves as part of a cohesive society. Highly recommended.

Apparently, Osnos is one member of the media that Biden is willing to spend time with. In a New Yorker article, Osnos offers a look into Biden’s state of mind as the 2024 election silly season begins. Osnos writes:

“If you spend time with Biden these days, the biggest surprise is that he betrays no doubts. The world is riven by the question of whether he is up to a second term, but he projects a defiant belief in himself and his ability to persuade Americans to join him….”

“Now, having reached the apex of power, he gives off a conviction that borders on serenity—a bit too much serenity for Democrats who wonder if he can still beat the man with whom his legacy will be forever entwined. Given the doubts, I asked, wasn’t it a risk to say, “I’m the one to do it”? He shook his head and said, “No. I’m the only one who has ever beat him. And I’ll beat him again….”

Osnos thinks that for Biden, going against Trump is personal. After all, Trump tried to steal the presidency from him. Biden knows that Republicans have sold imaginary voter fraud to its voters to undermine the democratic process. Biden’s certain that he’s the best person to hold them at bay.

Biden knows that what Trump and the GOP are planning this fall is exactly what they did on Jan. 6, but with better planning.

The balance of the Osnos report is about Biden’s view of the upcoming election, about his view of Trump’s weaknesses, and about the negative polling on Biden’s policy stances and economic measures. Osnos asked Biden if it was possible for him to convert Trump supporters and others, given that he’s behind in the polls:

“Well, first of all, remember, in 2020, you guys told me how I wasn’t going to win? And then you told me in 2022 how it was going to be this red wave?….And I told you there wasn’t going to be any red wave. And in 2023 you told me we’re going to get our ass kicked again? And we won every contested race out there….In 2024, I think you’re going to see the same thing.”

Biden wants to make certain that we’re not going to buy into the 2022 red wave again. The NYT helped to push that narrative back then too just as it is today. Osnos, who wrote a book about Biden’s 2020 win, reflected on the changes brought about by age:

“For better and worse, he is a more solemn figure now. His voice is thin and clotted, and his gestures have slowed, but, in our conversation, his mind seemed unchanged. He never bungled a name or a date.”

Please. Will the American media just give Biden’s age a rest? John Harwood tweeted that the Osnos interview, like Harwood’s own last fall, “shows talk of his alleged mental decline as utter bullshit.”

No one should be a Pollyanna about Biden’s reelection chances – 2024’s gonna be a fight. Osnos reminds us:

“Biden should be cruising to reelection. Violent crime has dropped to nearly a fifty-year low, unemployment is below four per cent, and in January the S&P 500 and the Dow hit record highs. More Americans than ever have health insurance, and the country is producing more energy than at any previous moment in its history.”

But today, the two Parties have wildly different intentions for the country and have very similar levels of support. In 2020, seven states hinged on a difference of less than three percentage points. Everything will come down to improving turnout on the margins.

Osnos also talked to a Biden campaign staffer, Mike Donilon, about a “freedom agenda”:

“It’s easy to miss how unusual a “freedom agenda” is for a Democratic Presidential campaign. Since the nineteen-sixties, Republicans have held fast to the language of freedom—from the backlash against civil rights to the Tea Party to the Freedom Caucus. But….he sees an opportunity for Democrats to…lay claim to the freedom to “choose your own health-care decisions, the freedom to vote, the freedom for your kids to be free of gun violence in school, the freedom for seniors to live in dignity.”

He also interviewed Bruce Reed, a close Biden aide who talks about how to bridge the ideological divide:

“We live in abnormal political times, but the American people are still normal people. Given a choice between normal and crazy, they’re going to choose normal.”

This is a distilled message that Biden can use in the election: Trump and his anti-Constitution, anti-rule-of-law, anti-democracy cult will sure as hell try to steal your vote this fall to install Trump. Remind voters that it’s not just an abstract: Democracy is certainly on the line this fall, and if Trump returns to power, he intends to gut your freedoms.

We could all help Biden by asking our friends what are they prepared to do?

Cartoons Of The Week

Lots of interest in McConnell’s career move this weekend. On to cartoons.

Biden says goodbye to Mitch:

Mitch was a good soldier for the 1%:

Mitch leaves a legacy:

Trump’s delaying tactics are working:

Mike Johnson has no heart or courage:

Embryos get religion:

Michigan voters send a message:

Nikki and Thelma the elephant take a joy ride:

US Media Should Learn The Difference Between Age And Ageism

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Manhattan, NYC, from The Summit One Vanderbilt – February 2024 photo by Alec Halstead

Judd Legum’s Popular Information notes that the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal ran 81 articles about Special Counsel Hur’s assessment of Biden’s memory in the four days following his report’s release. (NYT ran 30 and the WaPo ran 33, leaving a mere 18 in the WSJ). But Trump’s mental lapses and incoherence barely merited a mention in the same publications.

Here is an actual paragraph that ran on the front page of the NYT:

“Mr. Trump, by contrast, does not appear to be suffering the effects of time in such visible ways. Mr. Trump often dyes his hair and appears unnaturally tan. He is heavyset and tall, and he uses his physicality to project strength in front of crowds. When he takes the stage at rallies, he basks in adulation for several minutes, dancing to an opening song, and then holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.”

Wow! According to the NYT, Democrats should just give up now.

Wrongo could beat up on the NYT and the others. He noted that the commenters in many newsletters said that because of this, they were terminating their subscriptions to the Times. Wrongo won’t be doing that although he agrees with Jamison Foser, who writes at his substack Finding Gravity that the NYT is now, politically, a Republican newspaper:

“The Times is a newspaper that falsely portrayed Al Gore as a serial liar and George W. Bush as a straight-talker; treated Hillary Clinton’s email hygiene practices as the most important issue in 2016; and routinely portrays Donald Trump as a law-and-order candidate despite his repeated, flagrant law-breaking.”

OK, we know that Biden is older. But as JVL says:

“We don’t choose our leaders based on recall and processing speed.”

Wrongo is 80. Every human knows that when you get to your 70s and beyond, you’re not as quick on your feet as you used to be. In general, geriatrics shy away from real-time debates with 45-year-olds. More from JVL:

“You very rarely look at an old guy and think, that dude is slick.”

But is slick what we want in our leaders? No, we want experience because the first requirement for problem solving is experience. If you know little to nothing about a given problem, you will almost certainly come up with terrible solutions. Trump demonstrates this every day. Back to JVL:

“There is a reason that we have a minimum age for voting in this country and not a maximum age—it’s because we don’t trust young people, with all of their rapid recall memory and synaptic lightning, to be wise enough to vote….By the same token, we don’t have a maximum voting age, because we recognize that the losses elderly people experience in the ability to rapidly process are over-balanced by the accumulated wisdom of years and experience.”

Especially in a president, we’re smart to value wisdom over glibness.

Experience gave Biden the ability to instantly understand the stakes in Ukraine and wisdom helped him navigate the strengthening of the NATO alliance vs. Putin. It is wisdom that allowed Biden to see the benefits America receives from leading the global order. It was also wisdom that made Biden cooperate with the special counsel and respect the rule of law, the right decision even though it’s biting him in the ass right now.

Contrast this with Trump. Last weekend, Trump threatened the abandonment of our NATO allies and to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want.” We all know that he’s 77, but its clear that Trump didn’t spend all those years accumulating wisdom. His experience is more like one year of experience repeated 76 more times.

Trump’s reckless comments were condemned by most major media. The NYT led with three front-page stories about the Trump’s statement.

Favoring Foes Over Friends, Trump Threatens to Upend International Order
An Outburst by Trump on NATO May Push Europe to Go It Alone
Trump draws fire for his comments on NATO and Russia

The WaPo had a top-of-page headline, “Trump’s NATO-bashing comments rile allies, rekindle European fears.”

The WSJ included a below-the-fold front page headline, NATO Leader Blasts Trump’s Suggestion He Would Encourage Russian Invasion of U.S. Allies.

And leading Republicans excused Trump’s reckless statement. Senator Marco Rubio said:

“He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician, and we’ve already been through this. You would think people would’ve figured it out by now.”

Excusing Trump because “he doesn’t talk like a politician” doesn’t change how our NATO allies feel about Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade NATO countries. Article Five of the NATO charter doesn’t bind America only if America decides that a European country is fully paid up.

It’s not a high bar, but Biden is the picture of cognitive clarity compared to Trump. Let’s give the last word to JVL, who thinks Biden ought to embrace his age:

“Am I elderly? You betcha. Don’t move like I used to. And I have the occasional senior moment. I’ll probably have one during this speech, just so folks from the New York Times have something to write about.

But I know what the hell I’m doing.

Let me tell you about getting older. You aren’t as fast on your feet. You have to think a moment before you remember stuff.

But…as you get older, you’re able to see what really matters. You’re able to let go of your ego and focus on what’s important. That’s why I was able to work with the Republicans in Congress even while they said nasty things about me in public: Because I didn’t care what they said—I’m too old for that.”

Biden would be smart to embrace his age. As would other Democrats. There’s a difference between substantive grounds for breaking up the Democratic coalition, and a flimsy one, that only plays into the hands of the hard right.

There’s a big difference between age and ageism.

Time to wake up America! Biden’s advanced age is far from ideal for a president seeking a second term, even given how effective he’s been as president. He’s old. And he was never a gifted public speaker. Sometimes he makes cringe-inducing mistakes. It would be great if he were 20 years younger. But for the media to make this the overarching issue of the campaign is nothing short of journalistic malpractice.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Little Feat perform “Old Folks Boogie” which first appeared as the fifth track on Little Feat’s sixth album, Time Loves a Hero. (Here it’s performed live at the Rainbow Theatre in London, in August of 1977). This is taken from the album “Waiting For Columbus”, perhaps the best live album of all time:

Chorus:

And You Know That You’re Over the Hill
When Your Mind Makes a Promise That Your Body Can’t Fill

We’ve all experienced the discomfort of having our mind make a promise that our body couldn’t fulfill.

Cartoons Of The Week – February 11, 2024

(The Monday Wake Up Call will be published on Tuesday.)

Plenty of Super Bowl-adjacent cartoons this week but let’s start by looking at two overlooked stories. First, the Nevada primary. It’s another case where the media decided there wasn’t anything worthwhile to cover. Except for Nevada’s own journalist, John Ralston:

Seems as if no one’s reporting that Biden got twice as many votes as Trump in the Nevada primary. Maybe they’re still covering Robert Hur’s feelings about Biden?

Second, you probably missed the Trump administration’s IG Report about the medical unit in Trump’s White House:

“The drugs dispensed included Fentanyl. Morphine, Ketamine, Hydrocodone, Provigil, Ambien, Diazepam, Versed, and Tramadol.”

Neither the pharmacy nor the WH’s clinical operations were credentialed by an outside agency. However, they saw an average of 6 to 20 of the patients seen each week who were not eligible to receive care from the pharmacy. There was little mainstream media coverage of this story. On to cartoons.

Everybody likes the commercials:

It’s hard to escape politics even at America’s biggest show:

Even the Super Bowl’s real narratives will get twisted:

The DOJ gave Biden a beating last week:

Everybody’s got memory problems:

Tucker Carlson interviews Putin:

Saturday’s Hot Links

The Daily Escape:

Grand Canyon, South Kabab Trail, AZ – February 2024 photo by Lynsey Schroeder

We’ve made it to Super Bowl weekend, but not without bumps and a few bruises caused by this week’s edition of America’s dysfunctional politics. Today, let’s do a lightning round of mostly bad and a few good stories from the past week.

First up, Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report declining charges against Biden in his classified documents case but finding he did willfully retain information. In the report, Hur goes out of his way to paint a damning portrait of the President. He cites several examples of memory lapses and describes Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur’s message boils down to this: a well-intentioned, forgetful old man took the wrong stuff home from work. He “willfully retained” it, but we’re gonna let him go. Not because he’s president, but because we’re nice guys. Sotto voce: (because we probably couldn’t prove criminal intent). Maybe the DOJ felt Trump needed a win after 91 felonies.

There’s a pattern to the DOJ’s appointments of special counsels:

What’s amazing is that Biden now faces more heat from the media for being found innocent than Trump will if he’s found guilty. The multiple questions by reporters at Thursday night’s Biden press conference showed just how difficult it is for America’s media to focus on what’s important. The White House Press Corps should collectively be ashamed of its behavior during the press conference. They behaved like a pack of rabid hyenas.

Why the horrible behavior toward Biden, and the deference to Trump? Mainstream media outlets have long been obsessed with Biden’s age. They have not, however, given the same attention to Trump’s age or to his gaffes and incoherent comments. It’s sad that we’re in a situation where Trump’s multiple indictments seemingly are politically advantageous to him, and Biden’s exoneration is politically terrible for him.

Given the media’s obsession, it won’t matter how well Biden does in public. If he makes one mental slip it becomes confirmation that the biggest concern about him is true. He can’t be perfect every day for the next nine months. Nobody can.

Next, Reuters reported that the Hawaii Supreme Court has upheld the state’s laws that generally prohibit carrying a firearm in public without a license. In the process, they criticized the US Supreme Court’s rulings that have expanded gun rights:

“The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”

This is a direct attack on the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen” which recognized for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. More:

“The Government’s interest in reducing firearms violence through reasonable weapons regulations has preserved peace and tranquility in Hawai’i. A free-wheeling right to carry guns in public degrades other constitutional rights….The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness encompasses a right to freely and safely move in peace and tranquility. Laws regulating firearms in public preserve…liberty and advance these rights….There is no individual right to keep and bear arms under Article I, Section 17. So there is no constitutional right to carry a firearm in public for possible self-defense.”

Hawaii for the win!

Third, on February 9, 1964, 60 years ago, Ed Sullivan hosted the Beatles on his show. If you’re a member of the baby boomer generation, chances are you were sitting in front of a television that night. Seventy-three million Americans joined in to watch something they had never seen before. You can wake up old memories by watching “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” here.

Fourth, after blocking the border bill on Wednesday, Senate Republicans allowed a clean funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to advance toward a vote. In the meantime, Ukraine is close to losing Avdeevka, a major eastern city to the Russians.

Fifth, disinformation watchdog groups have uncovered a covert, coordinated Russian effort to spread disinformation via Telegram and X/Twitter across the Texas border about a US Civil War:

“The disinformation campaign…expanded after Russian politicians spoke out when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with….Biden’s administration to rule that US Border Patrol officers were allowed to take down razor-wire fencing erected by the Texas National Guard…..There also appear to be a number of Russian accounts on X posing as pro-Texas groups, in another echo of 2016 when an account that claimed to be run by Tennessee Republicans was outed as Russian-run.

One of the suspect accounts is the Texan Independence Supporters, which has already been called out for spelling errors and constantly referencing Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday, the account claimed “we are a Texan organization, not Russian. We can definitely assure ya’ll [sic] that we’re not Russian.”

Another reminder that the internet is a cesspool.

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we stop obsessively scrolling through our news feeds and take a few moments to chillax and gather ourselves for another week hearing all the reasons why it’s necessary to continue bombing Palestinians.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong we’re preparing to host a small Super Bowl viewing party with as many high-calorie, high-fat appetizers as we can eat.

To help you relax, find a spot near a south-facing window and watch and listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. February 12^th is the 100^th anniversary of this work that combines jazz and classical origins into an iconic American work. Here it is performed by Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic while playing solo piano in 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany:

(hat tip to Marguerite S.)

Wrongo was struck by how Bernstein was able to conduct and play. Maybe multi-tasking IS possible.

Cartoons Of The Week

Plenty of false equivalency cartoons this week. Here are the best

Pick your plagiarism:

Can’t you see it? The evidence is right in front of you:

Supreme cleaning service will keep Trump on the ballot:

Changing minds will be difficult:

What could happen in November:

The Elephant has a bad dream:

Cartoons Of The Week – December 3, 2023

Again, it wasn’t a terrific week for cartoons. Here are the best.

Biden tries but isn’t young enough for some people:

Santos is out:

Only 105 out of 217 Republicans voted against Santos:

Kissinger gets a roommate:

Wise men have correct answer:

Sandra Day O’Connor joins the band:

Biden’s Birthday

The Daily Escape:

Eastern Bluebird, Cape Cod, MA – November 2023 photo by Ken Grille Photography

“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” – Yogi Berra

Biden celebrated his 81st birthday on Monday. Although this isn’t breaking news, as if on cue there were plenty of: “Is Biden Too Old?” faux concern expressed by journalists and pundits across the media landscape. As Wrongo has said before, Biden is visibly old. He looks like many older men who have remained physically fit: They seem thinner with voices that become more gravely with time.

From Paul Campos:

“When Biden was born in 1942, the…life expectancy for American males at birth was 62.6 years. 81 years later, it’s possible to estimate within an extremely high degree of accuracy how long American men born in 1942 will end up living, on average. The answer is 71.1 years, i.e., 14% longer than their…life expectancy at birth.”

Wow! Biden is old! Campos describes the two alternative definitions of life expectancy. First, period life expectancy, which is “life expectancy at birth,” a statistical construct. Period life expectancy isn’t a prediction: it’s a statement of a statistical fact. That fact is, if age adjusted mortality rates were to remain constant over the course of a cohort’s lifetime, it would indicate the average age at which people in that cohort died.

The second is called cohort life expectancy. This is a look back at how long people actually lived. When Biden was born in 1942, the period life expectancy for American males at birth was 62.6 years. This alternative definition of life expectancy how long people actually live, is called cohort life expectancy. That is 71.4 years in Biden’s case.

The gap between period life expectancy and cohort life expectancy was at one point nearly 20%. It turns out that people born in the US in 1900 lived to be on average 56 rather than the expected 47 years. With the massive improvements in medicine and public health over the last 120 years, the difference between period and cohort life expectancy are diminishing.

Period life expectancy isn’t a prediction, and it’s very inaccurate. Nevertheless it is almost always interpreted by the media as a prediction.

If Wrongo had one request for Biden’s handlers it would be to teach him to add more color, more inflection, to his voice. Everyone knows that he will occasionally trip over a word or two when speaking. That problem is as old as the man himself. From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo)

“While Mr. Biden shuffles when he walks, talks in a low tone that can be hard to hear and sometimes confuses names and details in public…[his staff]…note that he maintains a crushing schedule that would tire a younger president.”

And while it is easy to see that Biden remains in command of situations that would cause younger men to freeze, better projection of his words and ideas would go a long way to blunting the finger-wagging ageists who jump on his every appearance on the world stage.

That said, Wrongo thinks that Americans can hold two competing thoughts at the same time: Biden is older than Trump but is competent and accomplished. While Trump is younger and a menace to America. To Wrongo, it seems that the press is more concerned about Biden having a birthday than about Trump becoming Hitler.

The media who are pushing Biden’s age choose to ignore Trump’s age. He’s 77 and will be 78 if elected, and 82 at the end of his term. He’s not aging well. In his recent campaign appearances, he’s mistaken Biden for Obama 7 times, claimed that Biden will start World War II and said that Jeb Bush started the Iraq War.

These are just the highlights, and there are many more alarming gaffes. Think about what a second Trump term would bring: a dictator-adjacent felon who wants to weaponize the DOJ to take revenge on his former political appointments.

Despite Biden’s many achievements, during one of the toughest periods in our recent history, the media has planted and nurtured the idea that Biden is unfit to be president. Why? Well, because of nothing beyond how Biden seems in videos. After thousands of articles saying Biden’s too old, many in America are willing to dump the president that ended Trump’s reign of error.

Let’s get real: Biden has rung up a fine record as president. CLEARLY, his age and experience have given him the ability to make decisions that less experienced politicians probably would not make. Biden has ably handled foreign crises and had the most productive first three years of any president since LBJ.

All the while, his opponent is rapidly decompensating. This from a man who has proven his inability to put the country first in his thinking. The contrast is stunning, and more obvious than the media seems capable of being honest about.

The sad truth is that neither Party is willing to take the risk of nominating a younger candidate who might underperform what Biden and Trump did in the 2020 presidential election.

In the meantime, happy birthday Joe Biden, who statisticians predict will be approximately one year older than he is today on election day 2024!

It probably won’t be long before we see a headline saying, “If Biden really cared about the environment he wouldn’t put so many candles on his birthday cake.”

Cartoons of the Week – November 19, 2023

Since we couldn’t have a Saturday Soother, Wrongo wants to complain a bit today. But first, it was a bad week for cartoons. Here are the best:

It’s clear that many Americans can’t hold two thoughts simultaneously:

Biden sees through the turkey:

Complaint #1: We’re faced with a choice between our aging president and his aging contender for the job. Biden did quite well in his meeting with China’s president Xi. He seemingly met all of the American objectives for the meeting. In the press conference afterwards, he looked in command, walking across a minefield of questions, even with the gotcha question about whether Xi was a dictator, without any missteps.

But the press still talks about how old Biden looks. From Kevin Drum: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…having now listened to a number of Biden’s recent speaking gigs, there’s really no question that this [his age] is solely about his physical appearance. Cognitively, Biden is perfectly normal. The worst he ever does is the occasional verbal flub, a longtime Biden habit. Agree with him or not, he says what he means to say….He thinks Xi Jinping is a dictator and has repeated this [even] through the grimaces of his Secretary of State.”

Contrast that with Trump who doesn’t appear to be as old, but can barely remember who the president is, or how many world wars we’ve had. America will either elect a charade of an active former president with a deteriorating mind, or we can keep an active president with a strong mind but obvious physical limitations.

Which would you rather have?

Complaint #2: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, he told Americans on Tuesday that our time-honored concept of separation of church and state, a founding principle of the country is a “misunderstanding”, that what the founders really wanted was to stop government interfering with religion, not the other way around:

“The separation of church and state is a misnomer….People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution.”

Johnson was referring to Jefferson’s 1802 letters to the Danbury Baptists Association of Connecticut. In the letters, Jefferson makes clear that the founding fathers subscribed to a powerful separation of church and state, which they enshrined in the establishment clause of the First Amendment (even Johnson knows while the Amendments are technically “not” part of the Constitution, they really are).

It’s no surprise that the same people that believe the Constitution should be strictly interpreted are also trying to force an interpretation of it that allows them to make the bible integral to it. Integration of religion into politics has historically been something that fascists and authoritarians have used to get what they wanted.

Rolling Stone says that Johnson has:

“…a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism…”

“The flag is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top….this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts.”

The quote “An Appeal to Heaven” was taken from John Locke. In the past decade, this flag has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America. Still more:

“…if you look closely at the…videos and pictures of the Capitol insurrection, Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them…[in]…the crowd…”

An example from Jan. 6:

Rolling Stone has spent months researching this corner of Christianity known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). They use the same flag hanging outside Johnson’s office, and it’s a key part of their symbology.

The NAR was formed in the 1990s around an evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. This is a nondenominational network that believes they are the vanguard of a Christian revolution. In the mid-2000s, these NAR networks embraced a theological paradigm called the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a prophecy that divides society into seven arenas — religion, family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and business.

The “Mandate,” as they understand it, is for Christians to “take dominion” and “conquer” all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society.

Follow along for another minute: One of Wagner’s key disciples is Dutch Sheets. In 2013, Sheets was given an Appeal to Heaven flag. A friend told him that, because it predated the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets saw the flag as a symbol of the spiritual warfare-driven Christian nationalist revolution he hoped to bring about in American politics.

Sheets endorsed Trump’s candidacy and over the course of the 2016 campaign, the Appeal to Heaven flag and the NAR’s vision of a Christianity-dominated America became entwined with Trump.

Why does Johnson fly this symbol of Christian warfare at the House Speaker’s office when it is clear that the spiritual-warfare appropriation of it connotes an aggressive form of Christian nationalism. The Rolling Stone closes by saying:

“It is simply untenable to think that Johnson is unaware of what the Appeal to Heaven flag signals today. It represents an aggressive, spiritual-warfare style of Christian nationalism, and Johnson is a legal insurrectionist who has deeply tied himself into networks of Christian extremists whose rhetoric, leadership, and warfare theology fueled a literal insurrection.”

We The People cannot let the Mike Johnsons of the world take over our country.

When theocrats and fascists tell us who they are, believe them.

Is Biden Too Old?

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Coquille River Lighthouse, Bandon, OR – September 2023 photo by Mitch Schrieber Photography

At lunch this week with three people all who are around 80 years old, one whispered that “Biden is too old”. The rest of us agreed. In a perfect world, Biden would be considering winding up his political life and shipping his boxes to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. Biden will run for president again, and the polls show it’s likely to be a tight race against Trump. Many in the press see Biden as too frail to carry out even basic duties, leaving his aides to secretly run the country in his stead.

But as Semafor points out, in the first book that now documents the early years of his presidency, the picture is the reverse:

“The Last Politician,” the Biden-in-power book that Franklin Foer published last week….presents an aging president who’s nonetheless fully engaged in the job, stumbling more when he loses his temper…than when he loses his train of thought.”

Foer’s book portrays Biden as a leader who sounds shaky in public but is the dominant force in his White House. Foer tells Semafor that Biden: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…buries himself in details…[and] takes technocratic charge of issues”.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Tag: Biden’s Age

Cartoons Of The Week

US Media Should Learn The Difference Between Age And Ageism

Cartoons Of The Week – February 11, 2024

Saturday’s Hot Links

Cartoons Of The Week

Cartoons Of The Week – December 3, 2023

Biden’s Birthday

Cartoons of the Week – November 19, 2023