Or you can contribute the amount of your choice via:
• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)
• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
* Buying me a cocktail (at Bethesda prices….), tax and server tip included, by clicking here.
* Buying me a cup of coffee (or a week’s worth) by clicking here.
If you want to kick in ANY lower amount than the formal subscription rates by check, send a simple email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask how you can do that.
Thank you for your generosity.
Mark
****
What would President Biden’s physician do if his Thursday examination suggested meaningful cognitive decline?
Does anyone think he would write a memo laying that out and release it to the public after the exam?
There has been over the last seven years or so some clear changes in Joe Biden. The level of diminishment is not as great as the RNC and Sean Hannity would have you believe, but it is also far greater than zero (which is what the White House spin machine contends).
This is not some incidental topic.
It speaks generally to the question of government accountability, the role of the press as a guardian of the public interest, medical ethics, and a lot more.
In this case, it also involves the reality that the person who as of now is the most likely to be president of the United States from 2025 to 2029 is 80, has lost more than a step (his honest friends will admit that privately), and is scheduled for a physical on Thursday that, let’s be honest, will almost certainly not yield an honest account in the memo released by his doctor.
Candidate Donald Trump’s physician did some version of the same thing. Remember this guy:
Mr. Trump’s White House doctor reports were similarly replete with elements of fiction and spin.
And of course past presidents and White Houses (Wilson, JFK, Reagan) did similar things in less transparent ages (which doesn’t make it proper now).
As this week close, the political and medical reporters will pore over the Biden memo when it comes out. There are apparently no plans to make the presidential physician available for questioning, so the complete waste of time will occur at the first post-memo White House briefing, in which reporters will ask the press secretary for various clarifications – and there will be none.
All this would matter and be a worst-practice not in the public interest if the president were not 80, in decline, and poised to run for another term. But under these circumstances, with an apparent conspiracy between the doctor, the Bidens, and the White House staff (including timing the release of the memo for right before a long holiday weekend in an attempt to bury it), this is nothing short of a national crisis, about which there seems to be no outcry or clear recourse.
For four years most of the media wrote stuff about Trump’s problems, foibles, and weaknesses every single day. But now we have a man who is obviously declined, and there is near silence. Enough pretending that we don't see it. This is not “The Emperor's New Clothes” – or, at least, it shouldn’t be.
Why does the Dominant Media think it’s OK to either lie or conceal on the pretense of being good soldiers? They are not supposed to be soldiers for the Democrats. They are reporters. The press’ role is not to prop up Biden to stop Trump from becoming president. The media is putting our country in a perilous position.
Let the voters decide if Joe Biden in his current state is the right person to be the Democratic nominee and president for four more years. But let them decide based on a knowledge of the full facts.
The White House will portray the doctor’s memo as an absolute and complete account of the state of the president’s physical and cognitive health.
Again, doesn’t anyone think that will be true??
Being president is hard under any circumstances. The United States now and in the coming six years will surely face a great deal of peril.
Let’s get the doctor in the briefing room with medical reporters and have at the facts.
****
ESSENTIAL READING
Reuters, on an event timed (it would seem) to further distract from the medical report:
President Joe Biden plans on Thursday to make his most extensive remarks yet about a high-altitude Chinese balloon and three other objects that were shot down by U.S. fighter jets, two sources familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the speech was expected to be on Thursday. The timing was unclear, but Biden, 80, is scheduled in the morning to get a physical examination at Walter Reed hospital.
* Politico on why Democratic elected officials are publicly all in for Joe Biden ’24 (even when many of their constituents are not…).
Senior American officials increasingly believe the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in early February was originally supposed to conduct surveillance over U.S. military bases in Guam and Hawaii, but winds carried it off course to Alaska, Canada and finally the United States mainland.
The evolution of Washington’s understanding of the Chinese military’s original goals and new details that reveal misreadings of the U.S. reaction by Chinese officials in private meetings reflect how difficult it is for the United States and China to discern each other’s intentions — a gap that American officials fear could lead to greater mistrust in an already fraught relationship or even to armed conflict.
In another example of the fog created by superpower rivalry and political imperatives, U.S. officials said in interviews on Wednesday that they now increasingly believe three unidentified flying objects shot down over North America were unlikely to be surveillance devices.
U.S. officials said they are still trying to make a definitive conclusion on what the objects were, and do not think they will reach one until more debris is collected. Some senior officials said that based on preliminary work, they believe the three objects were likely designed for scientific or weather research and had ceased to function, becoming akin to airborne trash.
The public on Thursday will see portions of a report by a special grand jury that investigated whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
The report’s introduction and conclusion, along with a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath are to be released. But any recommendations on potential criminal charges will remain under wraps for now.
* James Bacon, who has worked for Donald Trump, has some intriguing ideas about how he can win.
****
ESSENTIAL VIEWING
OMG Dick Van Dyck! Unmasked!