THE COVER-UP INEVITABLY MAKES MATTERS WORSE.

I'm continuing yesterday's post that observed, "In the presence of continued Official Obfuscation, or perhaps simple incompetence, the conspiracy buffs have a free field."  Our President's recent decision not to seek a second term, followed by a lid lasting a day, and into that information vacuum came the tinfoil hat brigade.  "Into the void left by the amazing disappearing president appeared all manner of theories about what is going on. Some wilder than others. Was the president faking his Covid? Did Biden even sign his own announcement? Is he much sicker than his aides and doctors are letting on? Is he even. . . alive?"

That post raises several serious points.

[T]o me, at least, the surge in conspiracy theories isn’t as worrying as the fact we hadn’t seen the president in five whole days.

After all, if Biden isn’t well enough to face the American people, is he really well enough to “continue to perform all his presidential duties,” as his doctor claims? And with Biden isolating and Kamala booting up her own presidential campaign, who is actually running this country?

You would think a Democratic Party facing accusations of an elite subversion of the primary process would want maximum transparency right now. Instead, Biden has passed the torch in a way that seems seedier and more suspicious than it needed to.

Maybe Joe Biden knows all this. Maybe he is sulking. Maybe he is fully aware that his absence only makes his party look worse, and he’s reveling in the schadenfreude. But even after Biden pops up again, the case of the missing president will be another example of those in power complaining about a lack of public trust while finding new ways to make the problem worse.

I disagree with the notion that the president "runs the country."  There is nothing in Article II about running the country, and I don't have to ask permission to run out to White Hen when I stop for pop on a road trip.

What the Democrats have done is step on any arguments they could have made about recognizing the grim reality of the actuarial tables whilst not forcing the sitting president out.  I'm not surprised to see Republican politicians offering a 25th Amendment argument, alluded to by reporter Miranda Devine:  "The US president is too cognitively impaired to run for re-election in November, but he’s staying on as commander-in-chief until January."

In the absence of any clarity from the White House, America's Newspaper of Record could get away with "America Just Kinda Curious If President Alive."  Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green sees dark comedy that isn't funny.

Set in the days just before and after the debilitating stroke that would quickly kill Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the movie revels in the antics of his would-be successors who don't know how to live in a world without him. But they sure do want to rule it.

Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Gretchen Whitmer would all fit right in.

I can't praise the movie highly enough or count how many times I've watched it. But it's impossible to so much as mention "The Death of Stalin" without praising the comic performances of Steve Buscemi (as Khrushchev), Simon Russell Beale (Beria), Jason Isaacs (Zhukov), Michael Palin (Molotov), and most especially Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov — all vanity, ambition, and cluelessness.

Last night, the world learned that in 2024, America might be closer to the USSR in 1953 than we should be comfortable admitting, as a new leak revealed that Presidentish Joe Biden might potentially have something much more serious than COVID.

That story, in turn, builds on a Dossier report that relies in part on Las Vegas police calls.  "President Biden suffered an undisclosed medical emergency during his time in Las Vegas, police sources say."  That report suggests a quick change in plans, getting the president back to Delaware.

[T]he president’s team decided not to bring him to the hospital. The plans changed in rapid succession once more. It was then relayed over to on duty officers on the president’s detail that they would need to clear an express route to Harry Reid International Airport. The police assigned to the president’s detail and the emergency “in the box” squads then redeployed their resources to getting the president out of town as fast and as safe as humanly possible.

Emily Goodin, the senior white house correspondent for The Daily Mail, reported that on the journey back east, Air Force One “flew so fast the plane shook,” arriving in Dover in just 3 hours and 48 minutes.

Several of the officers we spoke to said this was indeed being reported and acted upon as a full-blown medical emergency, insisting that a simple positive Covid-19 test would not have warranted such a drastic, massive response.

Only President Biden and his inner circle seem to know the truth about what exactly happened last week in Las Vegas. Hopefully, the public will be made aware of the events that necessitated his emergency departure from Sin City.

Perhaps Our President will elaborate in the Oval Office chat he promises us for 8 pm Eastern on Wednesday.

“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted on X. “I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision.”

The simplest explanation might be a condition manifesting itself that called attention to the logic of the actuarial tables, without rendering him any less capable than he currently is, let alone being in a condition covered by any of the passages in the Constitution governing succession.

We shall see what tomorrow brings.

I repeat, though, that the most effective way to turf the Democrats out is to concentrate on the effects of the open borders, the money printing, the vacillating foreign policy, the incompetent personnel chosen for ascriptive characteristics, and the con that their president would govern as a centrist.