In a week in which the DC Appeals Court ruled against former President Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity”, the biggest headline ended up being about Biden: Special Counsel Hur’s report found no crime worth indicting in his retention of classified documents, but threw the Trump campaign a bunch of red meat anyway by gratuitously opining on Biden’s age and memory. That produced a firestorm of speculation about Biden’s mental competence, which he exacerbated in a press conference by saying “Mexico” when he meant “Egypt”.
It’s been weird watching how Biden’s mistakes are covered differently from Trump’s. After all, how can you fault Trump for saying the wrong word (which he does all the time), when the words he intends to say are so evil, like calling immigrants “vermin”, or encouraging Russia to attack our NATO allies.
Anyway, it turns out I know something about people who use the wrong words as they get older. Aside from doing it occasionally myself (as most people of all ages do), I dealt with my Dad in his final years, when he had an extreme case of aphasia. Aphasia (inability to find the right words) can look like dementia (inability to think clearly), but it’s completely different, and anybody who has dealt with aphasic people can easily distinguish between the two. To sum up today’s featured post: Biden’s problems with words do not bother me. I think Democrats should let this wave of pundit hysteria pass and get on with the task of saving democracy from fascism.
That post should appear shortly.
That leaves the weekly summary a lot to cover: the appeals court ruling and what it means for Jack Smith’s DC indictment, Israel pushing its attacks into the last refuge of most Gazans and the Biden administration’s slow separation from the Netanyahu government, Trump outdoing himself with outrageous comments about NATO and Haley’s husband’s military deployment, Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview, the Jesus ads in Super Bowl, and a few other things.
That has to be out by noon, because I’ve got stuff to do today.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
I appreciate your ‘Sifts’, especially when you carefully trace the historical contexts of a situation.
I wrote to Biden twice last year, in February and March, begging him not to run again and outlining the reasons why. I was not thrilled that Biden was the nominee in 2020, but of course he was better than the alternative; so I supported Biden. At that time he signaled that he would be a ‘bridge’ to the next generation. Then his vanity took hold and he decided to stick around for a second term. The situation is awful. It’s not that Biden is better than Trump; we have any number of bright, energetic people wanting to be president with gifts that are key for the role (like being a good orator, keeping anger in check) and Biden squeezed them out.
Beyond his age and mediocre intellect he’s been so slow on allowing Ukraine to fight Russia that he’s all but doomed that country. He ran on issues where basic rights and fairness have been eroded; voting access, the Supreme Court (after the GOP denied Garland and appointed Federalist judges), abortion rights. Biden hasn’t done anything constructive about these issues; and likely he hasn’t had that power (outside of the Supreme Court horror), but the big ugly issue that needed to be addressed was the border crisis…not in 2024, but in 2021-22 as the surge (that Biden claimed was just a common seasonal uptick) got so out of control.
Then there is his son; and that’s not how Biden should be judged, but it sure is a distraction from doing good.
So it is not ‘is he better than Trump’. It’s awful that Biden himself forced us to this ‘choice’.Risky, selfish, pernicious.
There are many others in the Democratic party who would energize us and give us hope (and for 8 years, not 4).
Name one. This is the existential problem of the corporatist national Democratic Party. It doesn’t build a bench at the state level, something John Dean tried to address back in the day. And it doesn’t permit anyone who doesn’t toe the neoliberal, corporatist party line to rise to the kind of national stature that would make capturing the national support, especially financially, that makes a campaign for POTUS realistic.
Contrast this with the circus that is the GOP nomination process. There’s never a shortage of candidates, most of which are in a much better position to run a national campaign than anyone in the Democratic Party. Yes, in one way or another, they’re all, at a minimum, unacceptable. But policies and personal moralities aside, they’re also more viable.
The claim that Biden has been slow on allowing Ukraine to fight Russia is just … false.
Biden has done what he can. Congress has been slow, especially after the GOP took over the House. But there’s just not much Biden can do without authorized funding, and Congress has to authorize funding.