Biden's Dementia: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It? -Updated

 “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

This famous question was asked 50 years ago by Sen. Howard Baker about the Watergate scandal.

This eventually brought down President Richard Nixon, leading to the installation of President Gerald R. Ford and his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller.

Neither were elected by the people, they were instead selected by the ruling class.

Nixon’s elected vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned from office over alleged tax and financial crimes. House Speaker Carl Albert selected Ford as Nixon’s new vice president, saying, "We gave Nixon no choice but Ford." Nixon then resigned, elevating Ford to the presidency.

Ford then nominated Rockefeller to be his VP and despite some controversy, he was confirmed by Congress. Note that neither were elected by the American people, at least to the White House.

Will the ruling class soon pick the next president and vice president, history repeating itself 50 years later with a new set of characters?

Should Sen. Baker’s question be asked today, not of the president but of his family, handlers, media enablers, and fellow Democrats?

A quote attributed to Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” may be playing out this summer, rhyming with Nixon’s resignation and an installed president.

Except to President Biden’s family, loyal Democrats, much of the corporate media, and paid Twitter fanboys and fangirls, Biden appears to be suffering from dementia.

There is the caveat and peril of diagnosing someone from afar. This is called the Goldwater Rule over a group of psychiatrists opining on Goldwater’s mental state as the Republican presidential candidate running against Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

The rule states:

The American Psychiatric Association adopted the Goldwater Rule in 1973 prohibiting members from offering psychological opinions about individuals whom they had not personally examined.

The same people denying the obvious about Biden had no problem calling Trump crazy and mentally unfit, without examining him. This cabal was led by Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee:

In 2017, she put together a conference and consulted other medical professionals, then published a book containing 27 essays from psychologists and psychiatrists calling Trump a “clear and present danger.” The book outlined all of the ways a Trump presidency could threaten the country, with writers touching upon his perceived sociopathy, narcissism, paranoid delusions, impulse control problems, antsocial personality disorder and a range of other concerning traits.

Sociopathic Donald Trump secured the national border (as much as he could), gave America energy independence, a strong economy with low inflation and unemployment, a Constitution-following U.S. Supreme Court, and no foreign wars.

If only every president were so “paranoid and impulsive.” So what if he’s a narcissist? Which elected official in Washington, D.C. is not?

President Joe Biden’s mental status was on recent display during the live presidential debate against Donald Trump. Biden robotically walked to the podium, and at the end required the assistance of his wife to navigate a short step off the stage.

Biden stuttered and sputtered, and only a few minutes into the debate, lost his train of thought. After a few seconds of awkward silence, he muttered something out of left field, “We finally beat Medicare.”

Normally sycophantic CNN knew it was a disaster for Biden, saying “It took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency.” They went on, “Biden produced the weakest performance since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon started the tradition of televised debates in 1960.” They concluded, “The president’s showing was devastating.”

Before the Thursday evening debate, Biden was just fine. Morning Joe Scarborough, three months earlier said, “this version of Biden,” meaning in March 2024, is the best version of Biden.

Biden had his annual physical four months before the debate, in February 2024, and his White House physician assured America that Biden is “fit for duty” and that Biden “doesn’t need” a cognitive exam.

They could settle the issue by testing Biden’s cognition. Instead, they followed the medical intern’s axiom: “If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever.” Similarly, a third of American cities no longer report crime statistics to the FBI. If crime isn’t reported, it isn’t happening. Willful ignorance.

What changed in a few months, from Biden being “mentally sharp” to “he needs to drop out of the race”? Was the media and Biden’s handlers gaslighting America for the past four years? What did they know and when did they know it?

Alex Berenson’s wrote in his Substack, “Dr. Kevin R. Cannard, a Parkinson’s disease specialist, has visited the White House at least nine times in the last year, official White House visitor logs show.”

Is this not newsworthy? How many are complicit in this cone of silence around the mental infirmity of the American president?

Dr. Bandy Lee, quite certain about Trump’s mental infirmity, knew in 2019 that Biden’s mental health, “seems like it’s not so perfect.” Did she make the rounds of cable news shouting about this presidential candidate’s mental status? Did she write a book as she did about Trump? She knew and kept quiet.

Hunter Biden knew in 2019 that his father had dementia. Yet he encouraged his father to run for president in 2020, and for reelection now. Dr. Jill knew it as well, as did his advisors, handlers, and Democrat colleagues. What did the White House staff know and when did they know it? Is their silence anything short of fraud on America?

Hunter Biden’s psychiatrist Keith Ablow believed Joe Biden may have had dementia as far back as 2012 based on his performance in the vice presidential debate.

In 2020, Biden bumbled the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing.” This was not a one-off event, and people noticed.

Ted Rall, in a Japan Times op-ed in March 2020 thought Biden was “a man clearly suffering from dementia.” Commentator Howie Carr in October 2020 observed, “Media continue to cover up Joe Biden’s mental decline.”

The issue could have been settled with a cognitive test, but in 2020 Biden refused, saying, “No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test?”

Biden’s defenders circled the wagons after one of his own government officials called him out. Special Counsel Robert Hur in his report, “Described the 81-year-old Democrat’s memory as ‘hazy,’ ‘fuzzy,’ ‘faulty,’ ‘poor’ and having ‘significant limitations.’”

Carl Bernstein, co-slayer of President Nixon, knew something over a year ago, but only chooses to speak about it now:

Multiple sources tell him that there have been at least 15 occasions in the last year and a half “where the president has appeared like he did at that horror show (his debate performance).”

Bernstein reports that in the last six months sources have told him that there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline.

Biden was not sharp as a whip the day before the debate and then as the New York Times describes, “fumbling,” “shaky,” and “halting” a day later. It wasn’t a cold, cold medicine, jet lag, or any of the myriad excuses for Biden’s normal behavior on display to the world.

They knew it for years and covered it up, gaslighting America that despite being naked, Emperor Biden was indeed wearing beautiful robes. Who was making presidential decisions and running the country for the past four years?

The administrative state and ruling class lied about it all – Hunter Biden’s laptop, Trump-Russia collusion, COVID, Biden family corruption, and Biden’s worsening dementia. They perpetrated a hoax on America and the world.

All to subvert an election and keep themselves in power, preventing any attempt by Donald Trump to “drain the swamp.”

And Biden’s dementia is worsening, as is the normal course. Like societal decline, collapse happens slowly, then very suddenly. Who in their right mind believes Biden can function for four more years? Or even four more months?

Who’s really in charge? Clearly not Joe Biden. Dr, Jill let the mask drop in a recent Vogue interview where she admitted, “Really, in so many different areas, I tell him what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing—and he gets it. And this is where the magic happens.”

Some magic. Joe is “elected” and then hocus pocus, Jill is the actual president. Santana would call it, “Black Magic Woman.”

What about Joe’s corrupt and formerly crack-addicted son Hunter?

NBC News reports, “Hunter Biden has joined White House meetings as he stays close to the president post-debate.”

That should inspire confidence.

Does Hunter have security clearance? Is he sitting in on the presidential daily brief? Is Dr. Jill there?

President Biden is reportedly functional for only a six-hour window from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Who takes the proverbial 3:00 a.m. phone call? Hunter? Dr. Jill? The confabulating White House press secretary? Has this been the case for Biden’s entire presidency?

Last week in Copenhagen, I was asked by a tour guide, “What’s the matter with your president?”

The world knows Biden is a PINO – president in name only. Who is in charge? Who is making potentially world-altering decisions? And why and for how long has this been covered up?

This is not your crazy uncle kept in his room when you have company. This is the leader of the free world. His policies and decisions can make or break countries and civilizations.

What did they know and when did they know it? Will the media ask? Will Congress? Or will it take a special counsel appointed by Trump’s attorney general to ask the question framed around election interference and insurrection? There needs to be a reckoning, with punishment for those running a shadow government in contradiction to the U.S. Constitution.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/biden_s_dementia_what_did_they_know_and_when_did_they_know_it.html

Joe Biden Has Alzheimer’s

 A recent New York Post article forced this physician-author to face facts. Our president meets all the medical criteria for a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. Not being a psychiatrist, I reviewed recent information on this dreaded disease. I also had personal experience as my British mother (I had two, biologic was American) demonstrated Alzheimer’s for her final three years before she died at age 95.

While signs have been present for years, when presidential aides described their fear of Joe Biden’s “hair-trigger temper” because any little thing could “set him off,” the diagnosis is no longer in doubt. One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s is sudden, inappropriate anger with any change in normal routine (#7 below).

Following are common signs of Alzheimer’s. 

1. Memory loss, especially short-term

How many times has Biden asked someone to repeat a question, even when the questions are pre-scripted, and he has a teleprompter? Losing his train of thought when speaking is a common occurrence, as recent as this year’s Fourth of July speech.

In nearly four years, how many times has Biden held an impromptu, unscripted press conference where the questions were not pre-screened and without a teleprompter to assist him? Answer: Zero. The contrast with Trump is stark.

2. Challenges in problem-solving

Virtually every Biden policy decision — foreign and domestic — has been publicly reversed or clearly wrong at the outset. The disastrous pullout from Afghanistan is an obvious example. The U.S. is supplying arms to Israel, but maybe not, then, of course we will, but possibly later. Biden’s executive orders turned the U.S. from a net exporter of oil into his raiding the strategic oil reserve to drive down the price of gas. His profligate spending fueled inflation.

3. Difficulty completing familiar tasks

Biden prepared for the first presidential debate, or more accurately was prepared, for a week isolated at Camp David. Fifty million Americans watched him unable to answer questions or successfully debate despite all that preparation.

Jill Biden gushed, “You did such a great job, Joe,” after a televised debate that was nothing short of a devastating performance. The First Lady sounded like a mother reassuring her five-year-old that he spoke the Pledge of Allegiance correctly (even though he did not).

4. Confusion with time and place

At the June 15, 2024 fundraiser in Los Angeles, Biden appeared to freeze up and had to be led off the stage by Barack Obama. During the June 2024 G7 Summit, he appeared to wander off. We all have seen Jill Biden lead Joe away from a podium because he wasn’t sure where to go, or possibly where he was.

5. Trouble with visual images or spatial relationships

How many times has Biden tripped on stairs, fallen while walking on his red carpet, or had to be propped up by Secret Service agents? How many times has he read his instructions off the teleprompter like, “Pause,” “Speak softly,” or “End of Quote.”

At the G7 Summit, he said goodbye to the Italian PM by saluting, presumably thinking Giorgia Meloni was in the military.

6. New problems with words in speaking or writing

Truthfully, this is not a “new” problem although, “We beat Medicare” at the first presidential debate may be a new low for him. There are innumerable video recordings of the president mumbling, speaking incoherently, or saying nonsensical phrases.

Possibly the most damning and frankly terrifying demonstration of Biden’s Alzheimer’s occurred on the Fourth of July (!) four years ago when he couldn’t recite the opening of the Declaration of Independence. He said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women [italics mine] are created by the, you know, you know the thing.”

7. Anger or extreme irritability with change in usual routine

As suggested above, the “president’s aides feel they have to walk through a minefield before briefings to avoid him getting angry with them.”

Someone has to say it. We all whisper it. Complicit media deny it while defending or excusing our sick Chief Executive — “over-prepared, a cold, jet lag” — at the cost of their reputations for honesty and truthfulness. However, the diagnosis is now beyond doubt.

Our president has Alzheimer’s. In retrospect, it has been apparent since July 4, 2020.

Deane Waldman, M.D., MBA is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at Texas Public Policy Foundation; former Director, New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange; and author of the multi-award winning book Curing the Cancer in U.S. Healthcare: StatesCare and Market-Based Medicine.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/joe_biden_has_alzheimer_s.html

Just one year after its creation, FEMA migrant program nearly doubles in cost

 Beginning in 2023, cities around the U.S. began to receive funds from FEMA to alleviate the orchestrated, growing, and unaffordable financial burden on taxpayers in regards to the invasion of third world migrants coming for welfare—it’s called the “Shelter and Services Program” and it’s costing us an arm and a leg.

For FY 2023, the program cost $363.8 million; just one year later, the invoice had nearly doubled, shooting up to $650 million. Now, government officials, from the local levels to Washington D.C.’s are asking for as much as three billion dollars for FY 2025. Here’s the story, from a report by Tom Gantert at The Center Square:

FEMA program for migrants grows along with border crisis

FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program is another indicator of the growing impact of the arrival of millions of foreign nationals in the U.S. since President Joe Biden took office.

The program provides grants to communities for the expenses they will incur for handling migrants. There were 14 states, including Washington D.C., that received the first tranche of money in fiscal year 2023.

The funding for the program has increased from $363.8 million in fiscal year 2023 to $650 million in fiscal year 2024. Now, city officials and politicians are asking it be funded by as much as $3 billion.

Another way of looking at the one-year increase? A 725% surge. If that kept up for 2026, we’re looking at $21.7 billion. 2027? $157.1 billion. Obviously, this is not only unsustainable, it’s disgusting.

FEMA is marketed as the federal government’s “disaster relief” agency, but taxpayers from across the nation are gouged, and further indebted, to cover the living expenses of millions of people who have absolutely no right to be in our nation. The real disaster relief we need is a closed border, and a mass deportation of every last illegal alien living, working, or occupying space in this nation. Mass migration from the third world to the first world never benefits the host nation, it destroys it.

Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines “treason” as this: 

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Seems like FEMA officials are giving “aid” and “comfort” to enemies of the United States—how else do you describe violent Latin gangs, Mexican cartels, Islamist jihadis, and Chinese communists?

Looks like we’ve got yet another federal agency that needs to be completely dismantled and parceled out, back to the states of course.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/07/just_one_year_after_its_creation_fema_migrant_program_nearly_doubles_in_cost.html

It Didn't Begin With LBJ: How The US Became A Transfer Society

 by Eduard Bucher via The Mises Institute,

Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill’s fascinating account traces the decline of the American constitutional framework from its origins in laissez-faire individualism to its current state of redistributive collectivism. Viewing the evolution as a series of legal developments motivated by ever greater financial incentives to involve the federal government, they highlight the following pivotal cases: (1) Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the Supreme Court’s right to perform judicial review, striking down laws it considered unconstitutional; (2) McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which sanctioned Congress’s founding of the Bank of the United States, deemed that states could not tax instruments of the federal government and further solidified the basis for judicial review; (3) Ogden v. Saunders (1827), which ended the old, laissez-faire interpretation of the Contract Clause; (4) Munn v. Illinois (1877), which for the first time granted the state the power to control private property via the “public interest” argument; and (5) US v. Grimaud (1911), which gave administrative rulings the force of law, beginning the transfer of the lawmaking function from Congress to the president.

Emphasizing the role played by the courts, the authors show how from “1877 to 1917 the Constitution was altered in numerous ways that made transfers much easier to obtain. Except for the income tax amendment, all of these changes came through interpretation.” Furthermore, the “substitution of an equivocal concept like public interest for firm constitutional limitations meant that the subjective judgment of justices was supreme.” This set the stage for private interests to learn to benefit from governmental transfers: “There is no field in which industry expects, or gets more from its associations than that of relations with governmental bodies. This becomes true year by year, as government, and particularly the Federal government, plays an ever-increasing part in our business and industrial life.”

Unlike mainstream economists, the authors identify governmentally enforced transfers as negative-sum instead of as zero-sum games. Their reasoning, while cogent, can, however, be enhanced in its rigor by including insights from the Austrian School. Consider the following:

When [property] rights are transferred without some quid pro quo, a non-voluntary transfer takes place. The most obvious example of such transfer activity is theft. At first glance such activity might appear to be zero sum since one person’s gain is another’s loss. But this ignores the process through which the transfer is effected. The result of this transfer activity is negative sum since nothing is produced and resources are expended in the process. (The reader is reminded of our unwillingness to allow interpersonal utility comparisons.) A thief invests in physical and human capital to effect a transfer only if it nets a normal rate of return. Moreover, an owner invests in additional measures to increase the probability of capturing the return [of] his assets. Traditional analysis has viewed transfers of this sort as altering the distribution of income without affecting output since the total amount of goods in society remains unchanged. Thus, if A steals B’s car, traditional analysis says that no social loss has occurred, assuming the value to both individuals is equal. But this ignores the consumption of resources in A’s attempts to carry out the theft and B’s attempts to prevent it. The transfer itself may be costless, but the prospect of the transfer leads individuals and groups to invest resources in either attempting to obtain a transfer or to resist a transfer away from themselves. These resources represent net social waste.

In short, expenditures on predatory and protective activities constitute the “waste” that makes the total less than the sum of its parts. However, as Austrians have argued from several viewpoints (Ludwig von Mises’s book Human Action, Peter Klein’s essays, the research of Nicolai Foss et al.), the structure of ownership is itself an integral component of a society’s wealth; if assets are owned by individuals who put them to poor use, wealth is relatively diminished. Unlike nonvoluntary transfers, exchanges that arise voluntarily in the market are the mechanism by which ownership passes to those most qualified to use it ex ante. Thus, the new distribution itself constitutes a loss of value compared to that which existed previously irrespective of the resources expended on predatory and protective activities.

Furthermore, the authors claim that the state is justified in pursuing nonvoluntary transfers to rectify illegitimate property distributions and to eliminate the free-rider problem in public goods. The problem, they argue, is that once coercive redistribution is allowed for those reasons, special interests are incentivized to find ways to use it to benefit themselves:

Nonvoluntary transfers for the purpose of providing public goods may become positive-sum transactions. The problem is one of accurately defining a public good. If this cannot be specified then and therefore limited to only those goods from which nonpaying consumers cannot be excluded, legitimate powers specified in the constitution can and will be used for other types of transfer activity. Negative-sum games will result. Transfer mechanisms dealing with illegitimacy and public goods allow the camel’s nose under the tent. The problem is keeping the beast from obtaining full entry.

However, in neither of these cases is government action net value-generating. Regarding the illegitimacy question, the state has no competitors and thus faces no negative consequences for poorly resolving competing property claims. By comparison, private arbiters that become corrupted or have a poor reputation lose customers and are ultimately replaced by competitors, leading to losses for their shareholders. The state’s monopoly on coercion, however, cannot be withdrawn, and so it lacks such a corrective mechanism (which is significant in light of its susceptibility to abuse by special interests). In the case of public goods, on the other hand, even if the state were somehow capable of operating without transaction costs or extracting resources, it could only finance value-destroying ventures because value-generating undertakings are already voluntarily financed by profit-seeking entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the supposed need to combat the free-rider problem is entirely fallacious, for as Murray Rothbard points out, the definition of what constitutes free-riding is entirely subjective and arbitrary; it applies to everyone regarding the civilizational and technological achievements of both ancestors and contemporaries, and there is likely not a single benefit that accrues only to a single person. We can either accept this as a happy fact of life and let it be or tax away everything in pursuit of a confused conception of justice, bringing all economic activity to a standstill.

The authors also see a role for the state in maintaining the democratic nature of politics. They write that between the American Revolution and 1790, the number of land-owning Rhode Islanders decreased drastically, reducing the number of voters to one-third due to a land-ownership requirement for enfranchisement, and they conclude that “expanding the franchise was thus essential to maintaining a government based on the consent of the governed.” However, they then concede that, although appropriate, such changes increased the reliance on majority rule to an extent incompatible with constitutional restrictions on government. But that is precisely the point: The greater the number of individuals who can influence the state, the greater the potential for redistributive cooperation between them. If the state were just a well-meaning public institution, diligently providing police, military, and courts at minimum cost, there would be no connection between the number of voters and constitutional restrictiveness. Only if the state is an alternative marketplace with profit opportunities for political entrepreneurs does an increase in voters (competitors for government handouts) result in greater clamor for the removal of restrictions on government, since every government action is an opportunity for someone to benefit at the public’s expense.

The authors end by proposing a return to the original conception of government, its roles and limitations, along with the removal of the political and legal bases for the statist developments that have occurred since the nineteenth century. As they put it, it is essential “that the concept of a government limited by a set of fundamental, difficult-to-change rules dominate our thinking.” Anarcho-capitalists will counter that the only true guarantee of freedom is through competition in the free market. Regardless of one’s stance on that debate, however, Anderson and Hill’s book provides an illuminating account of the decay of constitutional safeguards and warrants serious study.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/it-didnt-begin-lbj-how-us-became-transfer-society

Illinois Is A Drag On US Economy, Continues To Be A 'Taker' From Federal Govt

 by Mark Glennon via Wirepoints.org,

If you think Illinois’ problems only amount to Illinois voters getting what they deserve, you are mistaken.

A new report says Illinois, with the fifth largest state economy in the nation, is helping pull the country down.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that other new reports continue to show that Illinois is a “net taker” in terms of its balance of payments with the federal government. Five years ago, Illinois gave up its long-held claim that it sends the federal government more than it gets in return, and that “net taker” status continues today.

Succinct evidence of Illinois’ underperformance is in the June report by COGFA, Illinois’ bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. In that report, COGFA set out to compare Illinois’ economic performance to the rest of the nation since the start of the COVID pandemic. They chose four metrics to do so: 1) Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 2) Total Nonfarm Payroll Employment, 3) Unemployment Rate, and 4) Total Personal Income.

The results are damning for Illinois by all four measures, with the state ranking from 45th to 47th on each among the states:

• Real GDP: Since the fourth quarter of 2019, the United States has grown 8.6% post-COVID-19, but Illinois’ economy has grown only 2.8%, ranking 46th among the states.

• Total nonfarm payroll: The U.S. and Illinois both lost jobs during the first two months of the pandemic. But since then, U.S. payrolls grew by 4.1%. Illinois, however, has barely surpassed its pre-COVID-19 level, with only 0.2% growth. That ranks Illinois 45th in the nation.

• Unemployment rate: From March 2020 through May 2024, the U.S average unemployment rate was 5.1% but Illinois was 6.0%, ranking Illinois 45th in the nation. Illinois has consistently been about 0.8% to 0.9% above the U.S. average for the last decade. Currently, Illinois’ unemployment rate was 4.9% in May, which is 0.9% higher than the U.S. average of 4.0

•  Personal Income: Illinois was one of the slowest-growing states regarding total income growth since the outbreak of COVID-19. Since the fourth quarter of 2019, Illinois’ total income grew by 22.0%, significantly below the U.S. increase of 27.2%, ranking 46th over this period.

Notably, Illinois did much worse than all of its neighboring states by each of those measures for those periods.

The only exception is that Wisconsin was 47th worst on GDP growth while Illinois was 46th. Full state-by-state comparisons are in the charts in the COGFA report.

The conclusion is clear: Illinois is underperforming and is pulling down national averages about economic health.

Two other recently released, national reports show Illinois as a drag on the nation down from a different angle.

Each year, the balance of payments between the federal government and each state is calculated in separate studies by the Rockefeller Institute and the New York Comptroller. They tally up all taxes and other payments made by residents of each state and compare that to the total that comes back to the state through grants, contract payments, military spending, social programs and everything else. 

Once again, both studies show Illinois with a positive balance of payments, meaning the federal government sends more to Illinois than Illinois sends in.

Historically, Illinois complained routinely that they sent Washington more than they got in return. Some Illinois politicians continue to make that claim. It hasn’t been true, however, since 2019 to 2020.

Schadenfreude feels nice when you think about Illinois voters who elected the people responsible for this, but know that Illinois’ problems are also America’s problems.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/illinois-drag-us-economy-continues-be-taker-federal-govt-new-report-shows

Biden's Costliest Publicity Stunt To Be Dismantled Permanently

 The Pentagon's Gaza humanitarian pier project, which has been troubled from day one and spent more time out of commission than it's actually been in operation, will soon be scrapped altogether, the Associated Press reports Tuesday.

The report says this is the 'final blow' for the pier after rough seas left it needing constant pauses for repairs: "The pier built by the U.S. military to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza will be reinstalled Wednesday to be used for several days, but then the plan is to pull it out permanently, several U.S. officials said."

Thus it looks like it will not longer be there by the end of this month. "The officials said the goal is to clear whatever aid has piled up in Cyprus and on the floating dock offshore and get it to the secure area on the beach in Gaza," the report adds, and notes that's when the army will begin the final dismantle.

The pier had allowed for the delivery of nearly 20 million pounds of food to the starving Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, but persistent high and choppy seas caused many lengthy stoppages. At one point last month large pieces of the pier actually broke off and washed up north on an Israel beach, with US vessels also getting stuck attempting to retrieve the pieces.

Part of the Pentagon rationale for dismantling the whole thing is that the weather is only set to get worse, and that the Biden-ordered initiative was to be temporary to begin with. For a brief timeline and partial review of recent problems:

• May 25: pier was damaged by seas and high winds
• Removed for repairs
• June 7: finally reconnected after a couple weeks
• June 14: inclement weather leads to pier removal again
• Days later it is put back
• June 28: heavy seas result in removal again
• Out of commission again for nearly a couple of weeks

First announced as a White House aim in March during President Biden's State of the Union address, the pier required hundreds of millions of dollars and the work of some 1,000 service members to plan, assemble and operate. 

The pier will go down as one of history's costliest publicity stunts. The impetus for the pier was mounting political pressure on Biden -- particularly from his own party -- as Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion killed tens of thousands, displaced more than a million, and caused a territory-wide food and medical-supply crisis. But critics also pointed out there are land routes which can be used to get aid into Gaza.

Biden's pier announcement came a week after the Michigan primary, in which 13% of Democrats -- more than 100,000 people -- voted "uncommitted" as a means of condemning Biden's performance on Gaza, among other issues. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/gaza-pier-latest-one-bidens-costliest-publicity-stunts-be-dismantled-permanently

Biden’s cowardly Cabinet is a national disgrace, shirking its duty to remove him

 President Biden is incapable of governing: Americans can see it, and perilously our adversaries can too.

The US Constitution spells out a remedy for just such a situation in the 25th Amendment.

But a constitution is just a piece of paper, only as good as those who have taken an oath to defend it — and Biden is surrounded by rogues like Vice President Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who both swore to support the Constitution but are instead defying it.

Their deliberate coverup of the president’s condition is a national disgrace, putting our national security at risk and making a mockery of democracy — the very thing they claim to be protecting.

Under the terms of the 25th Amendment, a president who is unable to serve can either voluntarily transfer authority to the vice president, or can be involuntarily removed at the vice president’s instigation.

Despite growing numbers of top Democratic Party bigwigs calling on the bumbling Biden to drop out of the race to prevent a wipeout in the general election, the president insists he will remain the Dems’ nominee.

But the party’s fate in November is only a secondary issue: Biden is unfit to run the country now.  

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is designed to swiftly rescue the nation from the dangerous scenario of an incapable president clinging to power.

The process begins when the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet issues a written statement declaring the president “unable to fulfill the powers and duties of his office.” At that point, the vice president becomes the “Acting President.”

If the president disagrees and reclaims authority within four days via a written declaration, the decision shifts to Congress, which can remove the president with a two-thirds vote of both chambers.

That’s how it’s meant to work, at least. But seeing it through requires patriots, not partisan hacks, to be serving in the executive branch.

In January, Garland’s special counsel Robert Hur reported that although Biden had broken the law by mishandling classified documents, the president was too much of a doddering old fool to stand trial — or in Hur’s words, an “elderly man with a poor memory.”  

That’s when Garland had a constitutional responsibility to take action.

If he accepted Hur’s conclusion that his boss was too addled to stand trial, Garland had to know that Biden was equally unfit to serve as president.

Instead, the attorney general chose to help conceal the president’s incapacity, defying a congressional subpoena to keep tapes of Biden’s stammering, confused interviews with Hur hidden.

Fast-forward half a year: After Biden’s alarming debate performance, Reps. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) and Clay Higgins (R-La.) called on Harris to use her powers under the 25th Amendment to convene the Cabinet and “respond to this moment of crisis by gently removing President Biden” from office.

Instead, Harris too is covering up, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Biden is “extraordinarily strong.”    

The 25th Amendment was drafted in 1965, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

When Congress debated the measure, some worried that Cabinet members wouldn’t dare to defy a sitting president, no matter how incapacitated.

But as Sen. Everett Dirksen argued, during “a monumental national crisis . . . those charged with responsibility will do what is in the public interest.”

The Biden administration is failing that test — much like corrupt administrations throughout American history.

Before the amendment’s passage, it was common for insiders to conceal a presidential disability: Those closest to the president rarely want to lose power.

When James Garfield was struck by an assassin’s bullet in 1881, his Cabinet allowed the government to operate on autopilot — with the president performing no official duties — for the two months it took for him to die of his wounds.

After Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, his wife Edith, his physician and his private secretary kept mum and ran the country for 17 months.

Jill Biden is doing the same, the Constitution be damned.   

Since the debate debacle, Biden’s circle has apparently shrunk to his wife, her close adviser and “work husband” Anthony Bernal, speechwriter Mike Donilon and son Hunter Biden, who is acting as his father’s gatekeeper.

The addled president is in a bunker, and the nation is in danger. 

“We will decide our future,” the first lady declared on the cover of Vogue last week.

Outrageous. An impaired president and his wife should not be able to hold onto power, endangering the national interest.

Americans adopted the 25th Amendment for a crisis just like this one.   

We must demand that Harris, Garland and other senior officials do their constitutional duty.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/09/opinion/bidens-cowardly-cabinet-is-shirking-its-duty-to-remove-him/