Objectivity is dead. Everything is whatever we say it is. Rachel Levine is “Woman of the Year,” and Lia Thomas is the best “Woman Swimmer.” And most importantly, Joe Biden shows no indication of failing mental faculties. As TV host and sycophant Joe Scarborough said prior to the debate, Biden is “beyond cogent. In fact, he’s better than he’s ever been.”


And now we have a statement of questionable objectivity by Biden to ponder, “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president.” I thought the Hair Sniffer in Chief was a man, a white male, biologically equipped to inappropriately take showers with his daughter (her words, not mine). But now from his own mouth Joe Biden has declared himself to be a black woman. Objectivity is dead.


All right, I know it was just another Biden gaffe, but the Gaffe Master still never fails to surprise me. Could he just avoid speaking off the cuff to save his followers the need for cleanups? It’s bad enough when he reads instructions for prepared text on the teleprompter, as he did when he said “pause.”


Everyone Misspeaks, but


If I look back on my own verbal slips and falls, I see that in every instance I was trying to speak rapidly or was engaged in a complex thought. Or, alternatively, I muffed a word in the midst of making a point in a discussion with someone adamant in supporting an opposing view; basically, I allowed adrenaline to control my speech. I spoke from the limbic system rather than from the frontal cortex. Of course, I’m also guilty of an occasional parapraxis, but the subconscious mind has or is a mind of its own. As in the speech of most people the verbal slips are noticeable by their rarity and are often followed by a correction. With Biden, they are noticeable by their frequency and go uncorrected.


Scarborough’s political blindness (deafness) aside, the rest of the world has noticed or heard. Still, why The Times of India cares about Biden’s gaffes puzzles me, but it ran an article under the headline “Biden made 148 gaffes in public comments.”* The paper reports that the gaffes occurred between January 1 and April 24 this year with Biden also tripping over his words 118 times in speeches and comments during the same period. His numerous gaffes and speech errors have also inspired a book by KeWe Workshop Publishing (Author) entitled LET'S GET READY TO MUMBLLLLE!!!: Joe Biden Gaffes & Bidenisms. Activity Book for Adults. 50 hilarious pages of Biden’s best blunders, gaffes, and mishaps. **


I’m not sure what to call Joe Biden’s many gaffes and word fails. Is it mental ankyloglossia? Speech errors start in the brain obviously, and they manifest themselves in many forms. Joe seems to have mastered all of them. It’s as though he lacks the ability to monitor some pre-articulatory representation of the target word or phrase before he says it. Somewhere between brain and tongue there’s a detour or very long traffic jam, if not a “Road Closed” sign. When he recovers, it’s typically with “Look” or “Here’s the deal” though neither of those ensures a return to intelligibility as exemplified by his statement in the debate that “We beat Medicare.”


According to Kevin Trewartha and Natalie A Phillips, there are at least eight types of speech error that can interrupt articulation: 1) Omission, 2) Addition, 3) Sequential substitution, 4) Non-sequential substitution, 5) Non-substitution, 6) Non-identification, 7) Fluency, 8) Combinations of errors, and 8) Error correction. *** When he said, “America can be defined by one word, Iwuzindfutmhmafut,” he was probably mouthing a Non-sequential substitution (#4), but he’s probably committed each type of speech errors.


I won’t bore you by listing many examples, but I realize you now crave examples of the eight error types. To satisfy that craving, see the article by Trewartha and Phillips. As for Biden’s speech errors, they have been preserved online and in print.



*TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Apr 30, 2024, 21:56 IST Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/109735507.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst


**June 28, 2021


***Trewartha KM, Phillips NA. Detecting self-produced speech errors before and after articulation: an ERP investigation. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013 Nov 11;7:763. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00763. PMID: 24273506; PMCID: PMC3822290. Online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3822290/

















  

Members of the General Assembly,


Here I stand before you, standing today, as a representative of a free world that is free because America has always supported freedom, and it will always do so to keep free people free.. Because freedom means that everyone who is free is free to live a free life.


But today that freedom of the past is threatened by those who would pour gasoline which is a fossil fuel on the fires of war. And this is why climate change is a threat. Heat waves and drought have affected millions where it has been hotter than it was, and still some would throw gasoline—and not just gasoline but gas and coal— on the fires of war.


And that is why America has rejoined the Paris Accord—to protect the lives of women and their right to choose in a world without heat waves [she laughs for no apparent reason] and without floods and droughts and weather of any kind except the weather of peace and mild temperatures. America is ready to commit trillions of dollars to this effort because to save the world from climate change is to save it from war.


And that is why I stand before you today and will continue to stand before you, as America has stood with you, and will stand with you well into the future as time progresses. As I have said repeatedly many times before today [she points in one direction and then in the opposite direction as though using a timeline], “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”


So as we look to a future that has yet to come and as we leave a past behind, we will strive for what can be unburdened by what has been. [She laughs]


Thank you.

A Democrat has coffee with an Independent.


Dem: Okay, yes, the President was a little off on the night of the debate.
Ind: Off! You couldn’t get a light no matter how many times you flipped the switch or checked the circuit breaker. He was as off as those unbuilt charging stations that we taxpayers spent billions to build and as yet have to be built.
Dem: But he had a cold…
Ind: When is the last time a cold made you incoherent and gave you a frozen brain? I can see future labeling on the cold medicine package for Democrats: “Restores coherence caused by common cold and prevents brain freeze.”
Dem: But he was also tired from traveling the world. You know, England, Italy, return trips.
Ind: You mean the trips that ended a fortnight before the debate? Are you saying his jet lag lasted two weeks? Doesn’t he have a bed on Air Force 1? I understand he works only between ten and four, but a trip across the Atlantic provides plenty of time for a nap. Heck! I’ve closed my eyes while sitting upright  on a flight from Pittsburgh to Florida. Arrived refreshed. I’ve done the same on cross country flights.
Dem: He was worn out for the preparation that 16 advisors put him through after he awoke at 11 a.m. at Camp David. He kept that busy schedule up for a week.
Ind: With naps.
Dem: He’ll do better next time.
Ind: I’m sure his adrenaline will be up even if they don’t ply him with uppers. What amuses me is the initial response by his media sycophants. Jaws dropped. Where were they when he said, “America is defined by one word: “asufutimaehaehfutbw”? * Where were they when he walked aimlessly off stage? Where were they when he walked away from rather than toward questions shouted by the press that wasn’t in the pocket of the DNC. Where were they when he said, “I shouldn’t say this or I’ll get in trouble”? Or looked down at the podium unable to pull thoughts together, or mumbled, or said, “You know the deal…”?
Dem: I’ve heard other people slip up occasionally. Everyone does it. It’s better than being a liar…
Ind: Whoa, you mean like “When I came into office, inflation was 9%”? “We have the safest border”? “No terrorists have crossed the border”? “I’ve created 15 million new jobs”? Honestly, listening to you and your media surrogates talk is like listening to La Folie—not the one by the Stranglers (though that might be relevant) but the one by Vivaldi: A simple musical phrase played repeatedly with changes only in volume and pace. It’s a musical piece without complicated development, kind of a predecessor to Ravel’s Bolero, Crescendo being the main device, the different instruments being the media’s Left-leaning spokespeople, shouting louder the same refrain: “He’s as sharp as a tack.”
Hmnn. Maybe the song by The Stranglers has some relevance here, especially the last lines: “Yes, it's madness; yes, it’s madness; yes, it’s madness; yes, it’s madness.”




*Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/biden-describes-america-in-single-word-asufutimaehaehfutbw-1121067.html

Today’s politics stand at the ends of branches on an ancient tree whose roots run deeper than Plato's Republic, written 2,400 years ago. It’s a safe bet that the philosopher did not write in a political vacuum since this mentor suffered a politically driven suicide. Politics undoubtedly predates even the ancient Greeks. It’s also a safe bet that much of what was true about politics, political parties, and politicians in pre-Socratic and Socratic times is true today. The characteristics of politics have been passed along to our own times like a genome carrying both functional and non-functional (“junk”) DNA. *


The Descendant


Speaking of the Greeks makes me wonder whether or not the genome of politics emerged like Athena, fully formed from the get-go, and not formed slowly through the expanse of human civilization. I speculate thus in light of the tribulations of Socrates who was condemned in a sham trial over trivial matters—really because he did not fall in lockstep with the culture of the dominant political party (supported by the Athenian “deep state”).


With regard to the genetic inheritance of politics and its tie to modern politics, I see a connection to the tribulations of Donald Trump, the victim of obvious political persecution through a hoax called Russia-gate, unfounded accusations of colluding with Ukraine because he wanted the truth about Biden’s quid-pro-quo demands in favor of his son, and similarly unfounded accusations about putting kids in cages (based on a photo from the Obama-Biden era), and finally on “trumped up charges” by New York’s AG and New York City’s DA. Is Trump the modern Socrates? Giving Socrates a death sentence on political grounds was definitely more extreme than convicting Trump over…I’m still puzzled…Was the conviction a mirror image of trying Socrates’ over his free thinking? Was it based on a perceived political threat to Democrat and Deep State control? Was it petty retribution for the offense of winning an election?


Trump will probably not be put to death in spite of the rabid hatred for him in the minds of Democrats (the so-called Trump derangement syndrome). However, as has been revealed, in the raid on his home, the heavily armed agents did have permission to kill.  Kill whom? Trump? Secret Service agents? His wife? His son? The maid or gardener? Whoa! Maybe today’s politics aren’t much different from the politics that killed Socrates! What’s that you say? Killing reputations, political careers, and livelihoods is the modern analog of condemning Socrates to death. If you say so.


Functional Political DNA 


In every living organism DNA transfers the past to the present, “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny” as biologists like to say in relating individuals to phylum history. Individuals are different, yes, but they are all related through genetic transfers. We might conclude that political parties and politics of the past have evolved little since Plato’s time. Why is this so?


In part, because it’s a male thing. Patriarchy has kept the political genome much the same. There’s actually some truth in the stereotype of backroom meetings of cigar-smoking men choosing candidates. Matriarchy would enhance the speed of political evolution. Again, why?


Slower evolutionary change occurs in males than in females.. The genome inertia in American political parties maintains the phenotypes and mimics the differences in evolutionary change that derives from the genetic geography of males and females. Marauding males like the Vikings who captured women in the British isles and carried them off to Iceland—where many in today’s population carry Irish genes—plus the widespread practice of women like biblical Ruth going “whither thou shalt go” in following husbands and leaving their ancestral villages ensured the rapid alteration of the matriarchal DNA. Thus, my hypothesis that if women dominated politics, parties might evolve faster.  Patriarchal parties slowly fade as weakened telomeres fail with aging male politicians who refuse to retire lest they lose their power.


Look, for example, at the ends of Biden’s chromosomes for the inevitable telomere shortening that comes with age—exemplified in his debate performance and numerous public appearances framed by muttering, stumbling, and incoherence.

Functional Genes

Within any national history, political DNA carries the essence of major views with regard to governance and civil order. Much of today’s Democratic Party recapitulates the Wilsonian gene pool that evolved in a time of unrest and anarchy between the pre-Wilson 1880s and the end of Wilson’s era. Those decades of turmoil were punctuated by Chicago’s Haymarket Square riot led by August Spies, editor of the Anarchist daily Die Arbeiter-Zeitung, and by 1919 race riots in Chicago and D.C. A sign of similar times lies in recent riots and takeovers, such as 2020’s Seattle’s CHOP and incidents of harm, looting, and destruction led by the oxymoronically named Antifa in other cities and culminating in 2024’s takeovers on Ivy League campuses by antisemitic Leftists for whom Democrats seemed to be apologists. The characteristic Democratic response appears to be encapsulated in Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkin’s calling CHOP a “block party,” in Congressman Jerry Nadler’s saying to a street reporter that turmoil in Seattle and Portland was a myth, and in the Biden Administration’s denying the chaos at the border.   


Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations of party members. The heritable essence defines the major characteristics of a political species. The operating, or functional DNA, more importantly, prevents interbreeding, thus keeping the parties separate (identifiable) even as they mutate. In contemporary America, that essential DNA allows us to distinguish Right from Left easily. However, subtle variations are more difficult to distinguish: Neo-conservative, Neo-liberal, small-government idealist from large-government idealist, and capitalist from socialist—all recognizable in general terms, but fuzzy in specifics. Analog? We know dogs in general though we might have difficulty distinguishing between a Cumberland Spaniel and a Cocker Spaniel or between a savanna elephant (L. a. africana) and the forest elephant (L. a. cyclotis).


Functional political DNA carries the gross features, the stereotypes, while absorbing  subtle mutations, such as Bernie Sanders’s “Democratic Socialism” or, on the other side of the species divide, “Rhino Republicanism.” Functional DNA carries political principles and passes general characteristics along to ensuing generations.

Yet, each party is a hybrid suffused with new genetic material. According to Pew Research Center, “The share of voters who are Hispanic has roughly tripled since the mid-1990s; the share who are Asian has increased sixfold over the same period. Today, 44% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, compared with 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners.” **


My late father would not identify with today’s leftist Democratic Party but he would still vote exclusively for Democrats. He might admit that today’s Democrats differ from members of his Roosevelt Democratic Party, but he would still see a heritage and unity in his own political species and a similar unity in the Republican Party. With regard to the latter he might say, “Those Republicans look out only for business people and the rich.”


Non-functional DNA


Junk DNA, in contrast, carries along remnants of once important issues that no longer figure meaningfully or figure less meaningfully in the politics of the present. The issue of Vietnam’s turning communist does not sit in the platforms of the Democratic Party once run by Kennedy and then Johnson.The Nixon-Kennedy debate over defending isolated Quemoy and Matsu has now morphed into a larger issue regarding Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific centered on artificial, not natural, islands and on the freedom of Taiwan. I would hazard a guess that few people today would know about those islands of contention in 1958-60. The old issue is now junk. Yet, they it remains in the genome that now centers on the question of defending a free Taiwan, S. Korea, the Philippines, and Japan. And with regard to the southern border there was at one time the free flow of seasonal crop-harvesting Mexican migrants who worked the fields and then returned to their homes in Mexico that has now morphed into open borders and giveaways to illegal aliens, with socialist Democrats spending tax dollars to support the invasion.


Like every organism, humans carry a vast array of junk DNA. And so do political parties. The origin of much of the junk is lost to phylogenetic history, but we can assume it served some past purpose.


It’s All about the Chromosomes, Really


In an era obsessed with X and Y chromosomes in a 21st-century Democratic Party fearful of making comments about men competing on women’s teams and biological males sharing locker rooms, shower rooms, and restrooms with women, the old chromosomes show fatigue. Democrats, worried about being cancelled, have turned to an “inclusiveness” that operates by excluding, censoring, and threatening those who refuse to promulgate DEI, the magical solution to perception of inequality. It is in this and similar matters that the DNA of the party of Jackson has gone the way of shortened telomeres that Joe Biden seems to exemplify.


A party that cannot renew itself because of incestuous homology is a party destined for extinction even before some extinction level event like the Biden presidency occurs.



*My point of departure for this blog was an article I read on a fern . Ferns have been around for a long time, going back deep into the Paleozoic. The particular fern covered by the article has the largest genome.  T. oblanceolata, with its enormous genome, made me wonder about the "genome" of political parties. And thus an analogy was born! See https://www.sciencenews.org/article/largest-genome-tiny-fern

**Online at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/changing-partisan-coalitions-in-a-politically-divided-nation/


   


   

If you watched the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on CNN on June 27, you will recognize an analog that ties one of the debaters to a tunicate called a sea squirt. I’ll leave you to your judgment on which debater fits the following descriptive narrative:

     According to Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman, “A small mollusk known as the sea squirt …swims around early in its life, eventually finds a place to attach like a barnacle, and then absorbs its own brain for nutrition. Why? Because it no longer needs its brain…The brain is what allowed it to identify and decide on its place to anchor, and now that the mission is accomplished, the creature rebuilds the nutrients of its brain into other organs. The lesson from the sea squirt is that brains are used for seeking and decision-making. As soon as an animal is settled in one place, it no longer needs its brain.” *

I think I’ve made my point though I doubt many on the Left will get it.


*Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman.Where Do New Ideas Come From? Innovation online at  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/where-do-new-ideas-come-from-180965202/

T. S. Eliot coined the phrase “dissociation of sensibility.” That phrase is especially applicable today in light of Columbia University's three deans who were suspended because of their insensitive and dismissive exchanges during a meeting concerning antisemitism on campus. *


Roots of Insensibility and Insensitivity


Is our species as much wired for indifference as it is wired for empathy and compassion? Wired more so for insensitivity? Is sensitivity innate or learned?


As I have repeatedly argued, that which is not personal is meaningless. If we are wired for sensibility and sensitivity, are we from our births not connected to the source the way a new home has wiring but no electricity until the homeowner joins the public utility? Is it the public connection that infuses the wires with feeling and compassion? Or, similarly, are our wires sometimes connected to public source of insensitivity and insensibility?


Apparently, the three deans feel they have no "skin in the game.” That is, they seem not to have been personally affected by the heartache and anxiety of Jewish students persecuted on campus by rabid antisemites. There was little empathy in their wires, indicating that they had decided to “go off grid” rather than connect to the public history running to the power plant at Auschwitz and an historical Holocaust.


Such is the protected, unconnected class of Ivy League elites who fancy they dwell in a dimension void of nitty-gritty ordinary human concerns. They are like EV owners who think electricity starts at the electric wall outlet.


Is their indifference mired in pretension and hubris because they are shielded from accountability and reality by lucrative tenured jobs? Is it because inflated Ivy League endowments swollen in part by wealthy Jewish alumni have driven the deans to the apex of narcissism?


Intellectual vs Emotional Understanding


T. S. Eliot’s phrase centers on the separation that he saw between intellect and emotion in English poetry, particularly in the pre-Romantics of the Enlightenment. Think of cold, rational thought as opposed to passion. Make sense? Well, if not, here’s a non-poetic example that makes the point:


    Two nuns were in a rowboat on a lake when the boat began to leak. One nun, seeing a growing puddle engulf her feet, said dispassionately, “Oh! Our shoes.” The other nun screamed for help.


That dissociation of sensibility expressed by “Oh! Our shoes” is a rather neutral attitude in comparison with the smugness of Columbia’s three suspended deans. They exhibited the same indifference to the lives of Jewish students that Germans showed to Jews during WWII. So, how did we get to this dissociation in academia?


It’s Aways Been like This


I hazard this hypothesis: In a time trip to Bologna shortly after the founding of the first university there, we would encounter the same hubris and self-importance in those first academicians that we encounter at Columbia today. Academia is for professors a source of apotheosis, the ivy-covered towers serving as Olympian realms of esoteric communication buried in a special vocabulary spoken only by the elite denizens.


Simple: Academia is given to a sense of power and elitism born in isolation from everyday concerns. Professors wield absolute authority over their immature, malleable and mostly ignorant charges. They can speak with uncontested authority in classrooms and coffee shops. Like popular entertainers they garner fans who idolize them, and the idolizing just goes to their heads.


For Whom the Campus Carillon Tolls


Has the recent campus turmoil rung the bell of accountability? Has it sounded the alarm that not only are the insensitive elites coming, but that they have already arrived—nay, been living among our young since Bologna’s founding in 1088, and maybe even since the founding of  Morocco’s al-Qarawiyyin in the ninth century. Has society made the mistake of designating faculties “in loco parentis” without actual parental oversight? **


The potential for all organizations is to burgeon bureaucratically. Universities are protected from economic downturns by ever-renewing freshmen classes that bring an influx of new money that, in turn, builds a treasure provided by outgoing devoted alumni. Flush with funds, these institutions have invented jobs that have little or nothing to do with educating the young: Thus, the plethora of deans and other managers we see on campuses today, with people paid lucratively in managerial jobs like DEI Director, Dean of This, and Dean of That.


Is the suspension of the three Columbia deans a knell of change? I doubt it. Look at the titles of the three deans who mocked the plight of the Jews on their campus:

    Matthew Pataschnick, Columbia’s associate dean for student and family support
    Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life
    Susan Chang-Kim, Columbia College’s vice dean and chief administrative officer
  (“Vice Dean”? Is that a dean’s dean? Do both dean and vice dean have staffs of secretaries and student workers at their command?)
   

  
*Chris Nesi. NY Post. “Three Columbia deans placed on leave over disparaging text exchange during antisemitism panel.”  Online at https://nypost.com/2024/06/21/us-news/three-columbia-deans-placed-on-leave-over-disparaging-text-exchange-during-antisemitism-panel/

**”In place of the parent”

Remember Dylan Thomas’ line *
That elegies are never fine
And speaking wistful banal truth
About a girl now lost in youth
Cannot undo what has transpired?
Like all before, she has expired.
His lines about a young girl’s death
Did caution us: No wasted breath
Expressing sorrow clothed in black!
Such words will never bring her back.


An unintended fire the cause
That took her life, made London pause
To mourn her passing by the Thames
With prayer and subsequent “Amens.”
She joined all those who died before
Through human history on every shore.


Dylan writes all death’s the same,
But I would argue when there’s blame.
An accidental fire’s misfortune;
Intended death's a conscious option.
And while it’s true what Dylan said
“We’re all related to the dead”
Going back to Abel and his brother,
Beyond that death, there is no other,
We cannot keep the tears at bay
When life is taken in that way.


And so in modern times we mourn
The tragic death of Rachel Morin, **
Killed by a heartless evil alien
Let in the country by Joe Biden.
Ascribe to him complicit blame,
His policies, a nation’s shame.
No elegy for that young woman,
Just anger toward the POTUS and his yeoman
Mayorkas who allowed him in
To maim and kill with mal intent
Acts a wall could prevent.






*”A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” Online at https://poets.org/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london : Thomas’ famous line is that “After the first death, there is no other,” but his argument against mourning precedes that line.

**https://www.foxnews.com › illegal-immigrant-suspected-rachel-morin-murder-entered-us-gotaway-after-being-released-3-times-ice

The Press has never been objective, but its subjectivity today is astounds me.  The change in degree begs a question: How much does the change reflect society vs. how much the change molds society? And by society, I mean the Democratic Party.


In My Naive Youth
Had I been old enough to vote in 1960, I would have cast my ballot without reservations for JFK. My naive mind had been shaped directly and indirectly to favor him: Directly by an unwavering Democrat household of my youth and indirectly by a subjective Press that protected JFK from scandal and kept me from knowing anything negative about the man. In one of those “If I knew then what I know now,” moments I reflect that I might not have—again had I been old enough—cast that ballot without questions about him.


Let me admit within his first year I thought Democrat John Kennedy was an ineffective President after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, but then I thought he showed resolve and leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—after scaring the beekeepers out of me over the threat of nuclear war.  I believed he inspired the country with his call to put a man on the moon, but even in that I realized the estimated cost of $30 billion to do so would be a tax burden. However, that was exhilarating stuff in my young mind. Also, because for one dollar I joined the NAACP in sympathy for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, I favored his sending troops to Alabama.
But I did not understand his motive for sending 16,000 advisors to Vietnam, especially since he once said insightfully, “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance … can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere.” Nevertheless, until I learned more about his personal life after his assassination, I held him and his party in high esteem. To me Kennedy was as an articulate man who had served in the military and who did not press, except for the formation of NASA, for a larger government with its inevitable wasteful spending.


Overall, as a representative Democrat and in spite of his missteps, Kennedy had convinced me that his party supported the best American traditions and values that I saw growing up in that Democrat household with a father who had served as a marine in Okinawa. Had I known more about his character, I might understood that his sending those troops to Vietnam was a matter of political expediency, probably an attempt to look even “tougher”on Communists after the missile crisis.


New Era, Different Party Different Press, if not in Kind, Certainly in Degree


Regardless of Kennedy’s imperfections, I can’t imagine his being a member of today’s mainstream Democratic Party or his supporting the socialism embedded in recent Obama-Biden era legislation with hundreds of pages of special interest giveaways amounting to trillions of dollars and stifling economic regulations. Nor can I imagine his acquiescing to today’s Far Left or allowing Antifa to run Seattle and Portland into their current decline. Surely, he would have restored order In short order as his action in Alabama indicates. So, how would today’s Press accept him?


Support in Complicit Media


I knew little to nothing about Kennedy’s true character because of a protective silence in the Press. I had no sense of his real character. It was an era of few news outlets, no James O’Keefe, no pundit shows, but rather Walter Cronkite and press conferences given to letting Kennedy’s wit shine. There was no coverage by today’s ubiquitous cameras, only cameras with cumbersome flash bulbs and movie cameras with the limitations shown in the famous Zapruder film. (Had the assassination occurred in the twenty-first century, there would be no controversy about the “grassy knoll”)


The Press generally seemed to love Kennedy, its first TV star politician whose off-the-cuff remarks in press conferences showed an ease of communication that was refreshingly new during the infancy of TV coverage. As Dr. Marco Soddu writes in Foreign Policy Journal online, “John F. Kennedy was the first American president who understood the power and the political relevance of television.” * And he would garner even more favorable reporting today, especially because he was articulate and “presidential” (as the leader of the American Camelot).


Speaking of Missteps (or Missed Steps)


Kennedy appeared to know that the substance of one’s remarks “is irrelevant if one cannot say it effortlessly,” as Soddu says. He was the antithesis of muttering, digressing Joe Biden whose diehard followers do all they can to tell us he has a “presidential”  demeanor. And unlike the Press that favored Kennedy and protected him, today’s Press appears to feign its favor for Biden because of its innate support for the Party and its ostensible hate for all things Republican. Surely, reporters see what the rest of us see: The muttering, the brain freezes, the anger, the inability to speak off the cuff, the refusal to take questions, the dependence on note cards and vetted questions, the “I probably shouldn’t say this, or I’ll get into trouble,” and the aimless wandering. And now the Press wants us to believe we don’t see what we see, like Obama or Jill or a rabbit leading Biden, and those note cards telling him to sit down. Surely they see the illogic of a saying Biden is competent while the DOJ won’t prosecute because of his mental capacity—as Special Prosecutor Robert Hur notes in his report:


    “as discussed to some extent above, Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well­ meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”**


Blatant Hostility, Blatant Protection: What Flavor Ice Cream Did You Get, Mr. Biden?


Ever notice the differences between interviews conducted by Left-leaning and Right-leaning reporters when they address politicians they favor or disdain? The differences lie in the intensity of antagonism and in the depth of questioning. Left-leaning reporters ask few followup questions in interviews with Democrats, but aggressively argue with and attempt to trap Republicans.


Example: Katy Couric’s interview of VP candidate Sarah Palin.* Couric’s demeanor appeared to center on her need for some gotcha moment. It was a humorless frowny-faced attempt to show Palin as an inexperienced dolt. In contrast, look at the treatment of Obama who was a “community organizer”—Palin was a governor. I say “humorless” because the Press made much of Palin’s saying tongue in cheek she could see Russia from her house and nothing about Obama’s saying he visited “all 57 states.” (What are those other seven, Mr. Obama? Were you in the country of Heinz?)


Call me a generalizer if you want, but I see anger in the eyes of Leftist reporters when they approach conservatives and rational inquisitiveness in the eyes of Rightist reporters when they approach progressives. And I see in Left-leaners an inability to ask followup questions after getting an unspecific or meaningless answers from a liberal politician.


I think of the heady days of the early Obama White House, when the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs entered the Press Room to a crowd of jovial reporters in contrast to the press secretaries of the Trump Administration, who had to deal with an unabashedly truculent crowd.   


Tolerating Unending Epexegesis by the Current VP


No indictment of the Press’s subjectivity is more telling than its treatment of VP Harris. Pretending an unwarranted profundity in all her appearances, VP Harris, word salad chef par excellence, has yet to make an intelligible coherent argument about any policy, such as border, education, or energy policy. Here are examples that received no followups:


“Our young people are always our most important stakeholders in education. Today's youth policy summit is an important reminder that youth are also leaders of both today and tomorrow— and key partners in the policy discussions that effect their lives.”


“So, you know, many of us study history.  And as you study our nation’s history, it is always quite clear, when you track nearly every movement in our country that has been about progress, we have had young leaders at the head.  Every one of them.”


“When we look at extreme climate, we see that we are experiencing drought around the world. If people don’t have water where they live, they will leave where they live. If they cannot grow food where they live, they will leave where they live, and they will go to other places. And if we think about this in the global perspective, and they will invariably go to places that speak a different language and pray to a different god. And what do you think might happen then? You’re probably looking at the beginning of conflict.”


“We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to passage of time. There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children.”


So, the Press Hasn’t Changed, but…


Still as protective of Democrats as it was of Kennedy, the Press has put itself into the position of defending the indefensible and set itself up as unquestioning Democratic sycophants. It hasn’t changed character, but it has intensified its lockstep affinity to protect all things Democrat.





*https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/08/jfk-and-the-media-during-his-electoral-campaigns/ PDF available here: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/121208-Soddu-JFK-Media.pdf


**https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/robert-hur-report-biden-classified-documents-read/index.html

Are you satisfied with society and current culture? No? Maybe you occasionally think about moving to some idyllic spot to start life over free from turmoil. Well, stop wishing and take action. Utah has that place, more specifically a commune called Riverbed Ranch is that place. Pack your things.


New York City resident (NYC) meets Amish Mormon (AM).*


NYC: Where did you say you were going?


AM: Utah, a bit southwest of Salt Lake City.


NYC: Why? Why are you leaving your quaint community in the lush, fertile Great Valley for a semiarid wasteland? I thought you people lived an ideal life in harmony and abundance, what with the community barn-raising, common values, and freedom from cell phone calls and tractors. Thought you were happy in that Norman Rockwell-like life behind plow horses and in little black buggies.


AM: Life is changing for us. Some of us have even been featured on television, and tourists have invaded obtrusively. I’m taking my family farther away from encroaching local culture. Going to help start a commune in Utah, going to the OCR co-op in Riverbed Ranch in Juab County, plan to live off-grid there like here, just to maintain a life of Self-Reliance based on faith and family and away from the deafening sounds of I-81 and burgeoning Lancaster.


NYC: Hmmnnn. I just read about that. It’s a commune established by Philip Gleason, 74. Everyone is supposed to be self-reliant, Emerson-style. But how will the commune avoid the pitfalls that destroyed Brooke Farm or Janesville or Heaven’s Gate. From what I remember Brooke Farm failed as people relied on the few to do the work for the many. Some just didn’t do their share of the work. Others, doing more than their share, became disgruntled. And don’t you have a pretty secure commune in good old PA? A commune of shared values and work?


AM: We do and we don’t. We’re losing more of our young to modern society.


NYC: But what will the effect be on your youth in a commune not held together by the bonds of a common faith? Heck!—Excuse my foul NY language—the new residents of Riverbed Ranch, though currently mostly Mormon, have secular motives. What drives then together is a negative motivation: The desire to ‘get away’ from the 'craziness' of the modern world and the current political climate under the Biden administration.” At least that’s what I understand from an article in the Daily Mail. **


Plus, it’s estimated that each family will need to invest $35,000 for a buy-in and spend a couple hundred thousand to build a home there. The commune will have its own government, as the report reads, “OCR residents vote and assume roles on its own Board of Directors, and have a court-like system to solve arguments through the Committee of Disputes.” What could go wrong, right? Get the key word there? It’s disputes. In other words, people take the foibles of humanity with them wherever they go. That’s what has happened to every Utopia ever established, even the Franciscans, a group that has fractured into orders and suborders because of disputes about what St, Francis had in mind when he founded his first commune in the 13th century. “Even before the death of Francis in 1226, conflicts developed within the order.” ***  What makes you think that Riverbed Ranch will not succumb to a similar fate? Besides, most of the commune’s residents are Mormons, a sect whose faith differs from yours. I see conflict in your future.


AM: But modern society is becoming far too intrusive. The government keeps imposing more regulations on our farms.


NYC: I think you ought to read the Benefits, Features, Costs, Obligations and Bylaws of Riverbed Ranch before you load up the buggy to head west. If you can find a computer in your local library, go to OCR's website. Look at my laptop. See if you still want to move there after reading about this utopia. Here it is: ****


A share in the Utah OSR Land Cooperative gives you these benefits:


A cooperative’s equivalent of a title to 2 acres at the Riverbed Ranch modern homesteading community
Two acre-feet of water rights (that’s 651,702 gallons a year)
One vote for electing members of the co-op board of directors.
Opportunity to participate in group purchases of products and services needed to build your homestead
Opportunity to sell your products and services through the co-op, and
The opportunity to spearhead the creation of sub-cooperatives to provide jobs and goods and services to the co-op and/or outside customers.
Features


The Utah OSR Land Co-op’s Riverbed Ranch homesteading community will feature:


An RV and camping park. This way, shareholders who choose to do so can live in the RV park while building out their homestead
A greenbelt area running up the middle of the community, including a hiking trail, honeybee-friendly trees and bushes, a road, and future plans of a creek
High-speed fiber optic Internet provided by Elon Musk’s Starlink system.
Co-op store for importing and exporting goods
A future BMX bicycle course for kids to enjoy


Additional Community Features


Similar to an industrial park, the Utah OSR Land Co-operative has set aside 45 acres for the following privately owned and operated services:
Academy of Self-Reliance higher-learning campus
OSR K-12 campus
Assisted Living / Retirement Home
Whole Health / Life Coach clinic
Child Rescue Home
Young Mothers Home
Equine / Canine Therapy Barn
Ropes course


Obligations


Each shareholder agrees to build the following:
A passive solar home, of at least 600 square feet, that requires little or no energy to heat or cool. But, we recommend at least 800 square feet of living space.
Barn for animals and/or storage (no minimum size)
Greenhouse, minimum of 600 square feet, 1,200 recommended.
Garden/orchard
6” well with 2-horse power pump with 400′ of lift.
Approved sanitation system (ie. septic).
Each prospective shareholder is asked to submit a one-page “Transition Plan” with timelines and budgets for funding the above build-out before the shareholder agreement is approved.
The Utah OSR Land Cooperative is an agricultural co-op organized under Title 3 of the Utah Code. That means that your 2 acre slice of heaven has to be agriculturally productive every year. There are two ways to accomplish that:
Owner/operator makes the land productive, or
You own, but someone else operates.
You don’t have to live on your land, it just needs to be agriculturally productive.


Costs


Initial – A share in the Utah OSR Land Co-operative costs $35,000, more if you want a lot larger than 2.0 to 2.4 acres.
Anticipated – The costs vary widely depending on how large of a home, barn/shop, and greenhouse you plan on building.  The COVID insanity has driven the cost of building materials up significantly. Since none of our shareholders have completely finished building their homes, we don’t have hard figures yet on estimated costs for various sized homes.  Our best guestimate for the bare minimum amount of money you need to finish out your farmstead (small house, small barn/shop, small greenhouse, and a well) is $235,000.
A safe figure for planning your home is $120 to $150 per square foot for material and labor.  Currently, the wells are costing around  $30,000, which included the pressure tank and spigot setups.
For those with limited resources, if you can do your current job online, and have at least $100,000 in available funds, you could put in a well, water tank, solar, septic and a greenhouse. Then you could live utility-free in an RV inside the greenhouse during the Winter, and work your online job to earn the rest of the funds to build out your home.


NYC: Still want to go?






* Disclaimer: Whereas it is possible there is an Amish Mormon out there somewhere, his or her existence is less than probable, maybe something on the order of an anarchist parliamentarian.


**WILL POTTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 02:00 EDT, 16 June 2024 | UPDATED: 04:53 EDT, 16 June 2024.  Americans sick of the 'cultural revolution' under Joe Biden are setting up incredible off-grid city in the DESERT hundreds of miles away from civilization with their own government and courts... and offer chilling prediction for the future of the country


***Britannica online.


**** Link in Potter’s article

\The U.S Department of Energy, which did little since its inception under Jimmy Carter to make the country energy independent, claims to be driven by Americans’ and foreign allies’ best interests. That, I hope, is true, but intentions pave many roads to nowhere, and the government is notorious for such paving with Solyndra standing out as the main example: half a billion bucks down the drain in just two years, and today no one rides on that road to nowhere (bankruptcy). Good intentions have built such highways.


So, when the DOE announces an alteration in liquid natural gas production and shipment, shouldn’t we be concerned? LNG is a handy way to get natural gas to European allies cut from Russia’s supply lines. Not to worry, DOE tells us. It’s all good.


And maybe it is. LNG production and shipments have increased in recent years. DOE writes, “We need to know what these expanded exports mean for available domestic consumption, for American industries, and household energy prices. By updating the analyses now, we’ll be better positioned to avoid export authorizations that diminish energy availability here at home, undermine our economy, and worsen the consequences of climate change." Sounds good. But note how that statement ends with “the consequences of climate change.”


It seems undeniable that DOE’s demands for changes in home appliances, driven by its commitment to climate change initiatives, will further strain the financial resources of middle and lower class Americans. Yes, appliances will be more energy efficient, but their initial costs will be higher, and coupled with the increases in energy costs suffered by American families over the past three years—increases caused by Biden’s policies that will continue—the effect on families will likely be more negative than positive.


And that goal of independence and low energy costs that motivated Jimmy Carter and not fulfilled until the brief four years of the Trump Administration is once again just a goal. The emphasis on green energy and climate change will ensure that the goal will remain as distant and unreachable as it was from the Carter years  to the Trump years.


As you drive your expensive EV to the next charging station, you might want to consider the consequences of an administration obsessed with climate change. Energy costs have risen by as much as 25% under the current administration and your ability to buy gasoline powered cars and less expensive appliances is fading under increasing numbers of mandates and regulations. Certainly, the increases in energy costs have affected many. According to a CNN report by Tami Luhby, “nearly 20 million households are behind on their utility bills.”*


Maybe you’re all in on the “existential threat” Biden says climate change poses, so increases in energy costs do not concern you. But 20 million families feel an existential threat from a government that makes an enemy of modern life that rose from an abundance of cheap energy.


*https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/business/utility-bills-arrears-summer/index.html