Joe biden

Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota has thrown his hat into the 2024 presidential election ring, challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.   Phillips’s candidacy is being heralded by many outlets — and acknowledged by Phillips himself — as a “long shot,” with the New York Times noting Biden’s “significant financial advantages.”   Still, Biden isn’t exactly the obvious choice to represent his party in 2024: Axios reported last month that a CNN poll showed “two-thirds of Democrat-leaning voters say the party should not nominate President Biden for a second term.

You can lead an electorate to the electronic vehicle charging station, but you can’t make them plug in.   That’s the lesson President Biden is learning as American consumers reject the “green” future the administration has been trying to mandate through the EPA’s proposed emissions standards and billions in EV subsidies and tax credits.   The American people, however, just aren’t buying the climate change is “even more frightening than a nuclear war” line Biden is selling.

A primetime address in the Oval Office is the pinnace of presidential speechifying. Ronald Reagan used the room in 1986 to console the nation after the Challenger blew up on live television. George W. Bush declared the global war on terrorism there. Donald Trump leveraged the weight of the Resolute Desk as he talked to Americans about a deadly but mysterious virus called Covid-19 for the first time.   Tonight, it was Joe Biden’s turn. The topics, the wars in Ukraine and Israel, couldn’t be more different with respect to the players, the stakes or the circumstances leading up to them. Even so, Biden tried to convince the American people on the idea that the two wars were one and the same.

There’s something about mirrors and cameras that the Biden men just can’t seem to resist — they are compelled to photograph their appendages. First it was Hunter’s heroin selfies. Now thirst traps from the president’s brother have been uncovered. If the trend continues, a leaked pic of Joe should be coming soon, but Cockburn prays we never see that dark day.   A nude selfie of Frank Biden, the president’s youngest brother, was discovered on a gay porn site, GuysWithiPhones.com, over the weekend. The picture, originally posted in 2018 when Frank was sixty-four, shows the tan, buff Biden posing in nothing but his glasses and a hat. Frank has some serious explaining to do to his partner of more than a decade, Mindy Ward.

The Democratic Party is in a state of rhetorical paralysis. This weekend, as Palestinian terrorists streamed across the Israeli border, the White House maintained hours of thunderous silence. On Saturday, the Biden administration released a few limp paragraphs to the effect that “terrorism is never justified” and “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.” This, after an uninterrupted outpouring of financial and oratorical support for Ukraine, is weak tea. But as the head of a party that is being overrun in not-so-slow motion by a vigorous young coterie of anti-Israel extremists, what more could Joe Biden say?

Welcome to Thunderdome, where for once the number one story in the political world barely involves Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Instead, the only story anyone’s talking about revolves around Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz, and an act of political assassination that saw eight Republicans cross party lines to join with unanimous Democrats to lop off the head of the party’s speaker and greatest fundraiser. McCarthy as Ned Stark and Gaetz as Joffrey doesn’t track, exactly, since the boy from Bakersfield wanted that job and gave up enormous leverage to get it — but from the moment Gaetz brought the motion, people in Washington assumed that McCarthy would cut a deal with Democrats to survive. But that proved a bridge too far.

A stopgap government funding bill was signed into law by President Biden late Saturday, keeping the government open for another forty-five days, through November 17. The proposed bill, which passed the House of Representatives earlier Saturday afternoon, does not include the $6 million that the Senate’s own funding measure would have. It will, however, increase federal disaster assistance by $16 million, meeting President Biden’s full request.  The bill passed the House of Representatives 335-91, despite resistance from MAGA Republicans that led to a standoff over spending for weeks. Ninety House Republicans led by Representative Matt Gaetz, voted against the bill.

She’s not even cold... Does anyone have Gavin Newsom’s number? The California governor’s phone must be blowing up today after the sad passing of his state’s senior senator Dianne Feinstein at the age of ninety. Feinstein was already set to retire this cycle, with three members of Congress in the running to replace her, who my comrade Cockburn characterizes as “fresh-faced seventy-seven-year-old Barbara Lee, boss-of-the-year Katie Porter and grown-up Caillou Adam Schiff.” Another option from the House comes in the form of Lee’s Senate campaign co-chair. Newsom had previously pledged to select a black woman to fill any future vacancies — which could indicate a preference for Lee.