May 13, 2025
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HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.
—Time Magazine, October 28th, 2020.
How it’s going: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says.
The discussions reflected the extent of the president’s declining health — particularly the significant degeneration of his spine — and his aides’ alarm over it as Biden sought a second term at age 81.
The conversations also reveal the White House’s determination to conceal the reality of Biden’s condition, at the risk of his own health, while he faced a tough re-election bid against Donald Trump.
- The book is based on interviews with more than 200 people, mostly Democratic insiders, with knowledge of the events that unfolded during the final two years of Biden’s presidency. Almost all of the interviews took place after the 2024 election.
Driving the news: “Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” the authors write.
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Biden aides believed it was politically untenable to have Biden use a wheelchair during his re-election campaign.
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“Given Biden’s age, [his physician Kevin O’Connor] also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,” the authors report.
—Alex Thompson, Axios, today.
Now it can be told.
MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Two Texas Election Integrity Bills Pass. “Texas hasn’t suffered from the massive 3 AM ballot drops that plagued large Democratic-run cities in 2020, but there have been election irregularities, most notably in Democrat-controlled Harris County. To help remedy the situation, the Texas legislature has passed two separate bills giving the Texas Attorney General power to reign in election shenanigans.”
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CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Sometimes We Have to Take the Good When the Perfect Isn’t an Option.
Over the weekend, our friends at Ammoland published a story about what’s happening with the Hearing Protection Act in the House Ways and Means Committee. As John Crump writes . . .
The Hearing Protection Act (HPA) might be in trouble in the House Ways and Means Committee, and anti-gun lobbyists are NOT the ones holding it up.
David Kustoff (R-TN) has been actively pushing to lower the tax stamp to $5 from $200, which would be a welcome change, but the better alternative is to remove suppressors completely from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). That would eliminate the tax stamp fee and remove all other NFA requirements.
Yes, delisting cans would certainly be better. If that’s doable.
Heavy lobbying is being done by the former head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), Chris Cox, a paid lobbyist. Cox is working to lower the tax stamp fee to $5 and keep suppressors on the NFA!
The current NRA-ILA has pushed for the removal of suppressors from the NFA, and Cox’s actions are contrary to that stance. Mr. Cox no longer has any connections to the NRA. Mr. Cox has also lobbied for a gun company that produces suppressors, which has strongly advocated removing silencers from the NFA, and could make millions of dollars if the hearing protection item is delisted from the NFA.
Yes, this sucks. There’s no reason why metal tubes that save shooters’ hearing should be regulated like machineguns (not that machineguns should be regulated more than semi-autos either). But while I’ve had no contact with anyone involved in the HPA process at all, none of this sounds nefarious.
Politics has accurately been called the art of the possible.
Indeed. Although I’d possibly feel better about politics if the GOP Congress would at least put on a show of fighting for the Constitution and fiscal sanity.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: When Media Hacks Stumble Upon the Truth, They Bury It. “These aren’t just cases of burying the lede for effect. They know that no one reads the whole article anymore, so they’re using headlines to create and perpetuate false narratives, and then sneaking in a kernel of truth to provide themselves a little cover. It’s akin to a trial attorney saying something inflammatory even though he knows the judge will order the jury to ignore it. The damage can’t be undone.”
ABOUT-FACE: That Wasn’t Us! Germany Suddenly Drops AfD Surveillance. “AfD head Alice Weidel knows exactly who to thank, with the AfD lawyer noting that the ‘complete surrender’ of the German domestic intelligence agency was due to one reason.”
MORE WINNING: So Much for the Recession Democrats Were Rooting For.
“JOURNALISM”: WaPo’s ICE Hysteria: All Panic, No Nannies.
LIGHTNING DEAL: PANCKY Metal Detectors for Adults Waterproof. #CommissionEarned
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Journalism Needs a Pugnacious Asshole Like Norman Mailer.
Mailer drew a correlation between physical toughness and great journalism. In his new book Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, David Denby traces Mailer’s transformation from a needy Jewish kid in Brooklyn to a street-tough writer who thrived on combat and iconoclasm. Mailer was transformed during his service in World War II. As Denby puts it, “This American-style prophet brawled and head-butted at parties; at one time or another, he was decked, hammered, billy clubbed, his eye gouged, his ear bitten. He believed that physical courage was necessary equipment for a great writer (Hemingway was the model) and that Jewish men in particular had to overcome all sorts of weakness.”
For Mailer, “everything he could put his body and spirit through was a test. He was sure he needed to escape the traps not only of his soft middle-class Jewish background but also the traps of postwar America—the desire for ‘security,’ the endless consumerism, and what he took to be the country’s humiliating spiritual mediocrity. He had made himself into a novelist in the Pacific, and now he brought the war home. For the author of The Naked and the Dead, the truce never arrived.” Mailer “was fascinated by boxers, murderers, and spies.”
The physical pain Mailer went through gave him a mesmerizing voice on the page. It’s why he could write about politics, boxing, war, women and sports and be perceptive about all of them. Who’s replaced him? Peter Baker? Ezra Klein? Matthew Continetti? It’s not a problem of left and right. They’re all boring.
This is Mark Judge so read the whole thing.
HOW UNSPORTING OF HER TO CLAIM BIOLOGICAL SEX IS IMMUTABLE! Football club’s vindictive red card for a gender critic.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Islam Exposed: The Ugly History They Tried to Hide. “I recently met with Winston Marshall and had my longest and most comprehensive conversation to date on Islam and the West.”
THEY HAVE TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT: Germany’s perilous slide into repression.
ASIDE FROM DAVID HOGG? There’s a Serious Problem With David Hogg’s Young People Outreach Strategy.
SO, THERE’S BEEN STUFF GOING ON: If you subscribe to the Schrodinger Path Substack.
And if you subscribe to The Chapter House.
WORST FASCIST EVER! Big Trump Action Goes Mostly Unnoticed.
IT DOES SEEM REASONABLE TO QUESTION: This Lawmaker Is Demanding Answers About the ATF’s Secret Surveillance on Lawful Gun Owners.
SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED: Count me in this camp.
TURNS OUT THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH ARE OUTRIGHT RACISTS: Episcopal Church refuses to resettle white Afrikaners, ends partnership with US government.
Or perhaps just deluded oikophobic communists.
Ah, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Amiright?