The Edge of Doom

It's over for Joe Biden.

Never mind the indicted co-conspirators of the Trump election conspiracy in Georgia pleading guilty and cooperating with Fani Willis.  Never mind also that House Republicans have been in total disarray and may still be even after Mike Johnson's elevation to the speakership.  In the end, the rank-and-file voters decide who gets to be President for four years, and polls show Trump beating President Biden nationally and in numerous swing states.  The election will likely be held long before Willis can rest in court (and the defense's rest will probably be slow-walked to drag the trial out even longer to keep it going past the election). And so none of the disadvantages the Republicans have been shouldering will matter because Biden is going down in flames.

The reasons are the same as they have been for the past two years.  Americans are indifferent to Biden's foreign policy except when he screws up, as the withdrawal from Afghanistan proved.  Inflation remains persistent, and people still feel it despite the fact that it's been easing slightly.  Also, he's still seen as too old for the job, while Trump - successfully putting on an act on feistiness and youthful energy - hasn't had to deal with age as an issue despite being only four years younger than Biden.  And while Trump has a loyal base ready to walk over hot coals to vote for him, Biden leads a party with a progressive wing that's embarrassed just to be in the same party with him.  Biden commands no loyalty and inspires no loyalty or fear like Lyndon Johnson did.  People who voted for him in 2020 weren't really voting for him; they were voting against Trump. That might have been enough to get Biden elected President in 2020, the year of COVID and George Floyd, but it won't work twice.  Democrats have to give the people someone to vote for rather than an opportunity to vote against a Republican nominee - i.e., Trump.  More people in one poll think a second Biden presidential term would be a calamity for the nation than there are people than think a second Trump presidential term would be a calamity.

And now he has a new challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination - U.S. Representative Dean Phillips.

The 2024 presidential election is looking more and more like 2016 all over again.  Many Democrats want someone else in place of Biden to oppose Trump but the party establishment  - and Biden - pay no heed.  Biden is ready to go forward even as the party is becoming less and less enthusiastic to follow by the day.  Eight years ago this time, I tried to warn people that Hillary Clinton was a poor choice for a nominee because of all the baggage she had, but no one would listen to me or like-minded people with far more influence than I have.    

As for the idea that the polls showing Trump winning back the White House can change, especially if the government shuts down again (like the 2013 shutdown instigated by Republicans really helped the Democrats in the 2014 midterms), I'd like to take you back eight years again, when I supported Martin O'Malley for President and confidently predicted that the former Maryland governor, mired in the single digits in the polls, would eventually move up above 10 percent and be competitive against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and ultimately win coming from behind.  He didn't even get 1 percent in Iowa, when he dropped out.  If nothing has moved the polls in Biden's favor by now, nothing is going to move them.  

Oh yeah, all the reasons Trump lost in 2020 - COVID being the main reason - have been forgotten, which is why he's able to wipe the slate clean and pull ahead of Biden in the 2024 polls. I re-iterate - if nothing has changed by now, nothing is going to change.  And the broadcast media are happy to promote Trump for the same reason they did in 2016 - ratings.   

Scared yet?  It is Halloween, after all.

My advice?  Make arrangements to move out of the country before January 20, 2025 if you can.  If you can't, keep your mouth closed and your eyes open.  You don't want to arouse der liebe Anführer's secret police.

Currently known as the Oath Keepers.

I Ain't Goin' Nowhere

The recent weather in Europe resembles the recent weather in the American Southwest - it's hot as hell.  This is the most devastating heat wave in the Old Country since last year.

The pandemic may be over, but my decision not to make any plans, dating back to the end of March of last year (2022), is still in force.  Circumstances having nothing to do with the pandemic have pretty much kept me home for the most part.   I had once thought I could go to Europe this year, 2023, figuring that the pandemic would end by then; as fate would have it, there's too much else going on to allow me to go anywhere - not the least of which is climate change, which is ravaging the planet so quickly that it's not worth making plans to travel even for a day.

I chose to travel abroad this year because I figured I couldn't wait any longer.  If I wasn't going anywhere this year I concluded I'd never go.  And thanks to climate change, I'm not going this year or likely any other year.  Several people I know have been lucky to travel abroad already, of course.  I know plenty of people who have already been to Paris for example, and some of them have already been to Paris as many times as I've been to Newark.  Why, looking at the Facebook timeline of a former college classmate, I found pictures of Paris that my classmate took while on vacation there last July.

I even have one of them right here to show you! (I love how I can download just about anything on social media!)

And my former college classmate and I aren't even Facebook friends! 

Forget about going out of the country; with rare exceptions, I can't even go out of my state.  I was hoping to meet a woman in Connecticut I'm friends with through social media; we've never met in person.  But, because things are dicey here at home, I can't make any plans.  It's just as well; if I had made plans to see her this past Sunday, July 16, I would have had to cancel them - seems there was a tornado watch covering the entire state of Connecticut, and flooding closed a lot of rads in the state.  See what I mean about climate change ruining travel?

Well, I won't be going to Paris any time soon.  The nature of my employment - which I won't get into, because it's private information aht 's no business of yours - only allows me to travel in July and August, so I can't go to any European capital when it's less likely to be scorching hot.  As for Paris, next year is the Olympics, so even next summer isn't bad meteorologically, I have to rule that out.  And the summer of 2025?  Even if that summer isn't too hot, I likely won't be able to leave the United States then anyway.  No one will.  See, Trump is likely to be in the White House again, and of course a dictator doesn't allow his subjects to leave the country because it looks bad for him.

Do not assume that a second Trump administration will not forbid anyone from leaving the country.  After all, Republican legislators in various states are already figuring out ways to keep pregnant women from traveling out of state to get abortions.

And by 2025, climate change will have wrecked the earth so badly that no one will want to go anywhere anyway.  In some cases, they may have to go somewhere because their homeland is no longer habitable.