One of the longstanding arguments in fantasy tabletop roleplaying is the actual worth of chainmail bikinis. Are they actually useful in combat, or just there to provide eye candy? Perhaps the most famous example is the armor of Robert E. Howard’s sword-swinging heroine Red Sonja, which adorns hundreds of comic book and paperback covers. On the other hand, we have more “realistic” armor, here depicted on Barghest from Fate/Grand Order (yes, her boobs are actually that big under the armor) and some home-made scale armor from that_girl_with_the_hearse on Instagram. Here we have a young lady checking her gear before heading out for a day in the woods terrorizing the goblins and kobolds. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
A tough week for my Senators, who lost two of three to Pete’s Brewers and then did the same against the Giants. Yeah, some of them were close losses, but an L is an L, and nobody cares about the point spread except the bookies. We’re still in fourth place at 41-49, just two games ahead of the cellar-dwelling A’s and five behind the Twins. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Democrats are caught in a trap. They can’t walk out. As much as they may want to dump Joe Biden, there are a few problems — perhaps insurmountable problems — with any scenario to replace him:
“We are monitoring the calls from across the country for President Biden to step aside, either now or before the election, and have concluded that the process for substitution and withdrawal is very complicated. We will remain vigilant that appropriate election integrity procedures are followed,” said Mike Howell, Executive Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.
The Heritage Oversight Project has identified three swing states — Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — where they believe removing Biden from the Democratic ticket would prevent anyone else from replacing him.
Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death, while in Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year unless ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’ In Georgia, if Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election, his name would remain on the ballot but no votes would be counted.
So, even if the Powers That Be in the Democratic Party were able to persuade Joe (and Dr. Jill) that it’s best for him to step aside, and even if an “open convention” in Chicago were able to agree on some replacement candidate, the attempt to put the replacement candidate’s name on the ballot would be contested in court in multiple states. Not to mention the dreadful optics of such a move:
Kinda funny to watch the "Trump is a threat to Democracy" crowd openly strategize how to thwart the will of every Democrat who voted in the primaries by engineering a coup at the convention and placing a candidate on the ticket without a single person casting a vote.
All those votes for Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries would be negated — treated as null and void, “the will of the people” rendered moot — by a move to replace him as the nominee, and how could Democrats then argue that it is Trump who is the “threat to democracy”?
So the mortification Democrats experienced on Thursday night, watching Biden stumble and mumble his way through the debate — a debate that Team Biden had arranged, according to their own rules, at an early date with their choice of network — cannot be cured. They’re stuck with Joe now, and will have to suffer the consequences. It’s beautiful, really.
If Biden drops out, it's Kamala or bust for Democrats. Anybody suggesting otherwise is engaging in pure fantasy https://t.co/1Lgz69NyD7
A sense of concern is growing inside the top ranks of the Democratic Party that leaders of Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee are not taking seriously enough the impact of the president’s troubling debate performance earlier in the week.
DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a Saturday afternoon call with dozens of committee members across the country, a group of some of the most influential members of the party. They largely ignored Biden’s weak showing Thursday night or the avalanche of criticism that followed.
Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted — that they were being asked to ignore the dire nature of the party’s predicament. The call, they said, may have worsened a widespread sense of panic among elected officials, donors and other stakeholders.
Instead, the people said, Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward. The chat function was disabled and there were no questions allowed.
“I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,” said Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado, who was on the call. “There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.”
Four females ages 17 to 21 were kidnapped in Pennsylvania, held captive in a shipping container in Monroe County, where two of them were raped in a crime that shocked residents of the Poconos region in the hill country near the New York state line. The victims were rescued by police in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Mount Pocono, after having been kidnapped in Wilkes-Barre (about 40 miles away) where the victims reportedly were witnesses to a shooting. During their ordeal, the victims were first transported to a building (which had once housed a Salvation Army center) that one of the accused kidnappers owns in Pen Argyl. From there, the victims were reportedly taken to a “remote property” that one of the kidnappers owns in Smithfield Township, about 15 miles from Pen Argyl. It was at the Smithfield Township property that the victims were held in a shipping container and two of them were raped.
Strange to say, this crime has apparently gotten zero attention from feminists, who have made violence against women a subject of their activism for more than three decades. Likewise, we have heard nothing from the White House about this horrific crime, despite the fact that President Joe Biden frequently touts his credentials on the issue, as in this March 2022 press release:
This week, President Biden signed into law the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022, bipartisan legislation passed by Congress as part of the Omnibus appropriations package.
One of the driving forces of President Biden’s career has been fighting back against abuses of power. That force led him to write and champion the groundbreaking Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) as a U.S. Senator, landmark legislation that first passed in 1994. In the nearly three decades since, he has worked with Members of Congress from both parties to pass legislation to renew and strengthen VAWA three times: in 2000, 2005, and 2013. Each time, he worked to expand access to safety and support for all survivors and increase prevention efforts. Preventing and responding to gender-based violence wherever it occurs, and in all of its forms, has remained a cornerstone of the President’s career in public service . . .
Yes, we must “increase prevention efforts” to stop “gender-based violence wherever it occurs,” as the president says! We can therefore expect him to demand that the Department of Justice assist with the investigation and prosecution of the suspects in this crime. That presidential call for action should be forthcoming any minute now, right?
From ABC News: “Authorities have charged Davaun Carlon Jackson, 29, with a slew of charges, including kidnapping, rape, and other offenses. The second suspect, Isaiah Rogers-Keeney, 19, is also being charged as an accomplice.” Having read several news stories about this case, many details are confusing or mysterious, with different stories reporting the case differently. It seemed obvious to me that this probably wasn’t Jackson’s first crime, and research turned up a listing in a local weekly paper from November 2016: “Davaun Carlon Jackson, 21, of Tobyhanna – charged with retail theft, receiving stolen property and criminal attempt of theft by deception.” When I mentioned this to my brother Kirby, who is familiar with the area from his years as a long-haul trucker, he told me there was an Army facility in the area. This is Tobyhanna Army Depot which, with more than 3,000 employees, is “the largest employer in northeastern Pennsylvania.” It is logical to surmise that Davaun Jackson had some connection to this facility, either having been stationed there in the military, or working as a civilian employee, or possibly having family members working there.
“They’d be in there working late at night. We’ve called the police several times because of the noise,” said the man. “In the morning, the kids sit on that steps over there to get the school bus, and there’s a lot of kids. So we were concerned because this guy seemed a little shady.”
He said there was even an incident with a young woman in distress running away from the property last winter.
“She was barefoot, knocking on doors, and nobody would let her in, but they did call the cops, and I guess by the time the cops got here, she was gone,” said the man.
The borough sent us a statement, saying police have investigated the complaints about the building.
Is this “incident” last winter with a barefoot woman fleeing the building owned by Jackson somehow related to what happened recently with the kidnapped women? We don’t know, although again I think it is logical to surmise some kind of connection between these two incidents.
This crime spans three counties in Pennsylvania — Pen Argyl is in Northampton County, while Smithfield Township is in Monroe County and Wilkes-Barre is in Luzerne County — and one would hope that state officials are coordinating the investigation involving so many jurisdictions. Monroe County District Attorney Michael Mancuso offers even more interesting information about this case:
Mancuso said his office has actually been following Jackson for some time. “There has been an investigation that has involved him over the course of the last several months,” said Mancuso.
Jackson is facing 14 charges, and Rogers-Keeney is facing 23 charges. Both include kidnapping, sexual assault, and false imprisonment, but Mancuso said they could face more charges in the future.
“We needed to make the charges that we thought were most appropriate now, but everything’s on the table,” said Mancuso.
Feminists must be following the case closely, right?
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Anime Girl Propaganda is having a sale this weekend before the proprietor goes off to Basic Training. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
My pre-debate prediction was that CNN had this “debate” pre-arranged to be a Biden victory, but if so, it certainly didn’t work as planned. Not only is CNN itself now admitting that Biden crashed like the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, but there is a universal consensus among Democrats and all their media mouthpieces that (a) Biden cannot win in November and (b) he therefore must be replaced as the party’s nominee.
That headline is from New York magazine, whose Matthew Steib said as soon as the debate was over, “There’s lot of panic in the Democratic party that did not exist a few hours ago. . . . Speculation is rampant about swapping out Biden at the top of the ticket.” Until about 10 p.m. ET Thursday, anyone talking like that was dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist,” but now everybody is saying the same thing.
That’s the headline from the New Republic‘s Alex Shephard:
Thursday’s debate should have been a tap-in. All Biden had to do was appear mildly competent. All he had to do was let Donald Trump be Donald Trump. Then the rest would take care of itself.
It’s hard to see how the bar could have been set any lower. And yet Biden not only failed to meet it, he delivered what may very well be the single worst debate performance in American history. Again and again, with no prompting, he made his opponent’s case for him. He was often incoherent, frequently appeared to forget the question he was responding to . . . This was a disaster, from start to finish. It is impossible to see how Joe Biden can continue as the Democratic nominee for president.
That’s emphatic, and the same basic message was echoing universally across the media landscape as soon as Thursday’s debate ended.
All Joe Biden needed to do was deliver a repeat performance of his State of the Union address.
Instead, he stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump. The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.
And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.
That was something a lot of people mentioned: Didn’t Biden realize he was on a split screen when Trump was talking? Never mind what either candidate said during the debate, the simple visual contrast between the two candidates on split-screen was disastrous for Biden.
Democrats are so panicked over President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance some are actively discussing what was once unspeakable: replacing him on the ticket. . . .
One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said it was time for the president to end his campaign. This person described Biden’s night as “the worst performance in history” and said Biden was so “bad that no one will pay attention to Trump’s lies.” “Biden needs to drop out. No question about it,” the donor said in a text message, proposing an alternate ticket led by the governors of Maryland and Michigan. . . .
One adviser to major Democratic Party donors said they were texting from a meeting of donors in Atlanta on Thursday night, some writing “wtf.” “Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies,” the donor adviser said. “Otherwise we are f–king dead.” . . . “No one expected a master class in debating from Joe Biden, but no one expected this nose dive,” said a senior adviser to top Democratic officials. “He was bad on message, bad on substance, bad on counter punching, bad on presentation, bad on non-verbals. There was no bright spot in this debate for him. The only bright spot is that this happened in June and not October.”
How bad was it? On MSNBC, former Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill was practically in tears saying how bad it was:
“Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight and he didn’t do it. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight. . . . I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. And you know, you have to ask, how did we get here?”
Yes, how did we get here? With the surprising midnight discovery of “extra” mail-in ballots on Election Night 2020? How did we get here, with 51 intelligence operatives signing a letter swearing that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”? How did we get here, with a “cabal” of operatives bragging about how they “fortified” Biden’s alleged victory in 2020? You see, Ms. McCaskill, some of us know damned well how we got here, and we know who is responsible for this. Unlike you, however, we don’t “feel terribly for Joe Biden,” as this was the logical conclusion of his long and dishonest career in politics. His first presidential campaign collapsed because Biden was caught plagiarizing his speeches. In early 2020 — don’t you remember? — Biden was on the verge of losing the Democratic nomination to Bernie Sanders until James Carville swooped in, got James Clyburn to endorse Biden, then locked down the black vote to win the South Carolina primary. We watched it happen, and we have not forgotten how we got here, with Biden now seemingly doomed to leave office — next January, if not sooner — as the Worst President in American History. He’s earned it. Selah.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Grateful as always for visiting readers, perhaps this would be an opportune moment to remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
? Zombie Joe Who do you know? That last brain cell is failing. Your handlers can't Vitality plant Where Charon's boat is sailing. ? #Debates2024https://t.co/ac3DdKv40W
— I Came; I Saw; I Got Over Macho Grande (@smitty_one_each) June 28, 2024
