So President Biden, in a display of his eminent human decency, tried to call the widow of the man who was killed . . .

. . . but she refused to take the call, and said, "My husband was a devout Republican, and wouldn't want me talking to him."

Really???

Your partisan identity is so extreme that you cannot receive the condolences offered to you by the President of the United States? Seriously? Meanwhile, there have been no reports of Trump trying to reach out to her at all!

I wouldn't normally criticize a grieving person, but this is just so incredibly small!

My response to Republicans who are upset about the Trump shooting . . .

MSNBC is becoming unwatchable except for Rachel and Lawrence

Tonight, after Biden's rock solid press conference, one snor-nosed commentator said something to the effect of; "Well, it was certainly much better than the debate. But it was still a shaky performance."

iN WHAT UNIVERSE WAS THAT A "SHAKY" PERFORMANCE?

Republicans unite in lockstep behind a 34-times convicted (and 91 times indicted) felon . . .

. . . sexual assaulter and serial adulterer, while Democrats can't stay united behind a thoroughly decent man who has had the most consequential presidency since LBJ!

And we wonder why we lose elections!

Sorry to say this, but . . .

The problem with the "Ditch Biden" movement is not primarily Republicans; it should be fully expected that Republicans would seize upon a bad debate performance to make their case. The real problem is the media, of course, which keeps harping on the issue, and also -- and this is important -- with a certain faction of elected Democrats. It is they who are inflicting the real damage here.

Some here have mentioned the torpedoing of Howard Dean's campaign in 2004. But even then, it wasn't just the media and Republicans; then, as now, there was a faction of Democrats -- those "Third Way" types from the Clinton administration -- who saw Dean as too progressive, and a threat to themselves, who were quick to jump on the bandwagon!

Here's the thing about President Biden's stutter . . .

I have been disgusted over the past week at the way many pundits and politicians – including Democrats – have been speaking about Biden as if they have some kind of expertise in the area of cognitive decline.

There is nothing about Biden’s debate performance that cannot be explained by the combination of his having a cold and his lifelong stutter. Now, people may think that it didn’t look or sound like what they think a stutter typically sounds like. But stuttering can manifest in a number of ways, including:

-- Repeating sounds or syllables. This usually happens on the first syllable of a word. You’ll repeat the sound or syllable until you can say the whole word and then resume speaking.

-- Holding and drawing out certain syllables or sounds. This is when you get stuck on a sound or syllable and draw out the sound longer than intended.

-- Mid-word pauses. This is when you pause for a noticeably long time at a point in a word where it’s unnecessary.

-- Blocking. This is frequent pausing — either silently or with a sound (like “um” or “ah”) — while you’re talking. Its name refers to feeling like something’s blocking your flow of words.

-- Word switching. This is when you stutter on a word or phrase and switch to a different word or phrase to get around it.

-- Overstressing. This means you put too much stress or tension on part or all of a word.

-- Repeating single-syllable words. This is repeating a word that consists of a single sound, such as “I” or “the.”

[Source: The Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14162-stuttering]

Stuttering can be aggravated by physical stress, such as that caused by a cold or being overly tired. But the end result is that, to someone hearing the stutterer, it can sound as if he or she is having difficulty putting thoughts together, when in reality, it’s just that the speaker’s neurological signals are out of whack, making it physically difficult or impossible to produce smooth, fluent speech.

I have some personal familiarity with this. No, I don’t have a stutter, and never have. I do have another neurological vocal disorder that can manifest in similar ways – the same condition RFK, Jr. has – known as spasmodic dysphonia (although, thankfully, my case seems to be significantly less severe than RFK, Jr.’s). Again, the Cleveland Clinic lists some of the typical manifestations of spasmodic dysphonia, noting that people with this condition often describe their voices as:

-- Breathy, soft or like they’re whispering.—
-- Strained and tight.
-- Hoarse.
-- Broken because certain sounds cut off while they’re speaking.
-- Shaky or trembling.

[Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21838-spasmodic-dysphonia]

I have experienced all of the above. Spasmodic dysphonia, which causes the muscles of the larynx to go into spasm, is aggravated by stress (physical or emotional), illness, being overly tired. It can sometimes make a person’s voice sound as if it is being strangled, making it difficult to make oneself understood by others. For some strange reason, talking on the phone can be particularly aggravating to the condition, and public speaking becomes absolutely terrifying, because you never know when the condition will pop up. It generally doesn’t happen all the time, and the degree to which it manifests can vary throughout the course of a day.

For me, I was first diagnosed with the condition when I was around 30, and it grew worse over the ensuing decade. I have to say, it was quite an unpleasant thing to deal with, particularly since I had always enjoyed a certain verbal fluency. To suddenly have difficulty expressing my thoughts and making myself understood came as a real blow to my own image of myself. Fortunately by the time I was in my mid-50s, I had largely figured out some workarounds of my own, such that most of the time, it is no longer particularly noticeable (unless, that is, I am particularly tired or stressed).

My point is this: both stuttering and spasmodic dysphonia are neurological disruptions to fluent speech, that in and of themselves say absolutely NOTHING about a speaker’s cognitive or decision-making abilities. When looking at someone like Biden, one should take into account much more than a single debate performance. The fact remains that when Biden speaks on matters of policy, or domestic or foreign affairs, his answers, even if one may disagree with some of them, are nonetheless cogent and coherent.

Neurological vocal disorders can be pretty weird at times. But they are in no way indicative of impaired cognitive ability!

In response to "I want Biden to go after the Supreme Court" and similar comments

Since the Supreme Court ruling on Trump's immunity claim came out last Monday, I've seen and heard numerous comments by people, both here and elsewhere, suggesting that Biden should exploit that ruling and take some kind of pre-emptive action against the conservative Supreme Court justices. I fully understand the anger and frustration that gives rise to comments like this, but i have to disagree. I have two responses:

First, on a purely practical level, given the current court's shameless partisanship, there is absolutely no reason to believe that they would accord to Biden the same kinds of allowances they have made for Trump. The suggestion is based on the assumption -- one that is thoroughly unfounded at this point -- that the conservative majority would apply the same standards to conduct by Biden that it applied to Trump. But in case you hadn't noticed, the current court doesn't apply standards of any sort whatsoever; rather, it applies rationalizations that it comes up with, on the fly if necessary, to support whatever ruling they want to make. I can promise you that if Biden were to take such an action, the current majority would find that it falls outside the scope of "official actions," and would therefore be subject to prosecution.

My second response is of more of a theoretical nature, but is arguably just as important, or even more so, than the first. That is, that once both sides decide to abandon the rule of law as a guiding principle, we will have set up something that ix very, very difficult, and quite possibly impossible, to come back from. At that point, the very idea of the rule of law will have collapsed, and all that will be left is the power game.

The only real solution available to us is to re-elect Biden, and to put Democrats in the majority of both houses of Congress. Because in order to meet the threat we face, it will take much more than simply re-electing Trump. There will remain serious work to be done, possibly involving one or more constitutional amendments, i order to address both the corruption of the Supreme Court as well as the lawless future Republican presidents this court has enabled!

If you believe in the rule of law, great -- get out there and fight for it! But what you really cannot do is to defend the rule of law by deciding to abandon it, even if you only intend to do so temporarily.

A comment I posted about Biden's "fitness" for office in today's NY Times:

If today's Supreme Court ruling happened in any European country . . .

. . . the citizenry, en masse, would already be in the streets.

So why aren't we?

The Atlantic: "If Trump Is Guilty, Does It Matter If the Prosecution Was Political?"

Superb essay by David A. Graham in response to Republican complaints that the New York prosecution of Trump was "politically motivated." Graham writes: