“We reached out to Trump’s representatives to see if they had any supplemental evidence to help substantiate their denial, as well as for a response to renewed attention on the comments in 2023”
How can you ‘substatiate’ something didn’t happen when there is no evidence that it did happen?

The Week in Pictures: The Most Schadenfreudey Edition Evah!

Greetings from Dubrovnik! Hot as Hades and full as a goog.

We were ripped off for cool drinks and jostled and elbowed from one end of town to the other. Despairing of ever getting a seat on a shuttle, we were ripped of again for a taxi ride back to the wharf. Never again.

On a positive note, I had fun at lunch yesterday. A table mixture of Aussies and Americans, conversation inevitably turned to the candidates.

In for a penny, in for a pound and going where angels fear to tread…”I quite like Trump.”

The horror! Gazing around the concerned faces like a naughty child, I caught a twinkle and a grin. She was a Texan. 😀

‘Native French’ Pose ‘Serious Problem’ for Social Cohesion, Says Far-Left Leader Mélenchon

“When I was born, one in ten French people had a foreign grandparent, now it’s one in four. Consequently, those who call themselves native French pose a serious problem to the cohesion of society,” he said in comments reported by Le Journal du Dimanche.

“In the Paris region, there are thirteen million of us, including at least eight million immigrants: Corsicans, Bretons, Malians, Algerians, Moroccans… Everyone was torn from the environment from which their parents or grandparents came and put against the wall to build a society.”

I’m guessing those mean old “native French” didn’t tear anyone from anywhere to import them to Paris. They did probably expect you to assimilate when you got there though.

But hey, “diversity is our strength”, so party on.

As the major political parties have abandoned the ideologies – conservatism, social democracy, liberalism – that once gave them meaning, ‘saving the planet’ and posing as the guardians of minorities have provided a semblance of mission to their otherwise deathly technocracy.

The revenge of the centrist dads – spiked (spiked-online.com)

Tucker Reacts to Trump vs. Biden Debate During Sydney, Australia Speech

So the Dems are stuck with Biden, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
I don’t know what the concern is.
He answered all the questions.

Paul Embery: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class…

Triggernometry

Oops forgot to include the pic.

This is something I don’t understand. Michelle Obama has a zero public service and/or business record. She is a lawyer who lost her licence under mysterious circumstances (similar to Hillary). How on earth can anyone think she is suitable to be president of the U.S.?

Shirley a redundant question.

So I watched the CNN debate again. Despite all of CNN’s purported ‘strict rules’ of no notes, pen and paper only etc, it seems pretty clear to me that Biden had an earpiece and he was being told what to say.

Much of the time when Trump was speaking, Biden was not reacting at all to what Trump was saying, even when Trump was landing blows on him and, if he were listening, we should have seen head shakes or facial reactions. And it wasn’t that he was incapable of understanding Trump, as there were times when he was listening and following along and making the appropriate gesticulations, facial gestures and so forth.

Now I know people might say he was zoning out when he fairly obviously wasn’t listening to Trump’s responses, and that was no doubt true some of the time, but I watched him closely and there were several spells when he appeared to be listening to something else rather than staring vacantly into the void, his mouth agape. After these particular occasions, when it was his turn to speak next, he tended to jump straight out of the gate with relatively detailed information, as if he had literally just been told it. Which I suspect was the case. There was one time after one of these moments of paying no attention to Trump when he got the first question of a new topic; he started answering the question way too quickly relative to his previous responses. It seemed fairly clear to me that he’d just been told the question was coming up and to be ready with his answer.

At least twice he touched his right ear in an unnatural way. The first time could maybe be described as a one-off but the second was a fairly clear signal – he appeared to be staring at someone with a panicked look on his face when he did it, and it was much more of an indicative gesture rather than a tweak – it looked to me to be a ‘tell me wtf to say, man!’ kind of gesture.

When I first watched the debate, I noticed there were times when CNN unexpectedly cut away from the side-by-side headshots whilst Trump was speaking to show only Trump, and this looked suspicious. I reckon these were times when old Joe was too clearly taking instructions from his handlers and CNN didn’t want to show that. After all, it was clear they were making an effort to depict themselves as being super impartial, so they wouldn’t want to broadcast any evidence that they’d fed Biden’s team the questions in advance, the order in which they’d be asked, and the fact he was permitted to use an earpiece…and their ‘strict rules’ about what each candidate could bring to the podium were an illusion (for Biden, anyway).

To be fair to CNN – not that they deserve it – they kind of had to let him cheat. I mean, if they allowed him to go up there entirely unaided, he would have been unable to answer the questions beyond superficialities.

Actually, on second thoughts, CNN doesn’t deserve it. The American public should know exactly how incapable their CinC is. By permitting Biden to use an earpiece, CNN obscured this from them. Suspicions that otherwise might have arisen did not due to moderators’ appearance of being super duper fair and balanced in their questioning, the time given for each candidates to respond and the unusual lack of editorialising from Tapper and Bash, who are clearly in the tank for whomever isn’t Trump. CNN’s ostensible discovery of journalistic ethics during the debate was itself an unscrupulous pretense, erected to deceive viewers into thinking old Joe was on his own up there. No, he had someone in his ear the whole time, and CNN facilitated this.

Despite all of CNN’s purported ‘strict rules’ of no notes, pen and paper only etc, it seems pretty clear to me that Biden had an earpiece and he was being told what to say.

This was the genius strategy of Trump. He realised that all that would be necessary was to get Biden in front of a camera.

So what he did was agree to every term for the CNN debate, then kept to the rules meekly no matter what indignity and unfairness they meted out. For tactical effect Trump certainly would not mention Biden’s earpiece, since his whole aim was to make it about Joe and not let the MSM make it about him.

And it worked. In spades. Probably too well, since despite Obama and his team of puppetmeisters it looks pretty likely the panicking Democrats are going to dig up another candidate from somewhere.

NY Times:

• “Voters cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.”

Actually Biden is pretty much the man he was four years ago. I’m old enough to remember how he was hidden away to avoid his then obvious infirmity being ‘plain to see’.

Anyone who has, or had, someone with dementia in their lives would have recognised the dreadful lost look in his eyes.