Pat: We're talking about two different kinds of demented, right?: !) demented, as in dementia (severe decay of cognitive functioning) --Biden supposedly) and 2) demented as in significantly/dangerously awry emotional behavior (Trump supposedly, even if that behavior my does not involve any cognitive problems). We may see Trump differently, but I take note of just a few key things: 1) his seemingly immense capacity for grievance and need to take revenge for injuries minor as well as major, even when the practical political reasons fur such attacks would seem to have evaporated (see Jeff Sessions) 2) the seemingly driven and also often seemingly purposeless lying, beginning with the insistence on the size of the inauguration crowd ; 3) fabulations that might as well be outright lies and can be outright dangerous: e.g. kids don't get Covid-19, bleach as a cure for Covid-19 -- in the area of his many off-the-cuff remarks on the virus I begin to lose track 4) his patent inability, over close to a full term, to choose cabinet officers, advisors, and other high officials with whom he can get along, and his need to vengefully attack them when they leave, this pointing it would seem to a failure on his part to grasp what such cabinet officers, officials, and advisors ought to do/how they should behave toward him 5) his apparent failure in foreign affairs to grasp the otherness of other peoples, and, as you said, operate there in a mode other than that of a crude balance-sheet businessman. I could go on and on, but in sum, at age 78 (that's me, not Trump), I've never seen anything like this in a U.S. President.

Yes, I have been taking note of your first-person accounts of Biden, and they certainly are worrisome or worse than that. But dare I say compared to what?

Sorry -- my computer somehow transformed "eminently reliable" up top into "eminently repair."

Ah, yes, the eminently repair Ronny Jackson. Wikipedia: "On March 28, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he planned to replace David Shulkin with Ronny Jackson as secretary of Veterans Affairs.[4][29][30] Some senators expressed skepticism of the nomination due to Jackson's lack of management experience.[4][12] "On April 23, 2018, the [majority GOP] U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs postponed a hearing on his nomination after current and former employees on the White House medical staff accused Jackson of creating a hostile work environment, excessively drinking on the job, and improperly dispensing medication.[31][32] Senator Jon Tester told CNN on April 24 that Jackson was known as "the candy man" inside the White House, according to around 20 people who brought these concerns to the Veterans' Affairs Senate Committee. He would allegedly hand out Ambien, Provigil, and other prescription drugs "like they were candy".[33] CNN also reported that during an overseas trip in 2015, an intoxicated Jackson loudly knocked on the hotel room door of a female employee, so noisily that the United States Secret Service reportedly stopped him to prevent him potentially waking up then-President Barack Obama.[34] Trump responded during a news conference the next day, defending Jackson as "one of the finest people that I have met", but also hinting that his nominee might drop out, while blaming Democrats for mounting an unfair attack on the admiral's record.[32] On April 27, 2018, the Secret Service reported that it had no records of any incidents involving Jackson having caused any commotions in hotels in 2015 when Secret Service personnel were guarding President Obama.[35] "Jackson was widely criticized for giving an uncharacteristically glowing and untruthful assessment of president Trump's health, saying that "if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old" [!!!],and that he had "incredibly good genes, and it's just the way God made him".[36] He was accused of misstating the height and weight of the president in order to minimize his obesity. [37]" Biden may indeed be screw loose, but why would one take Ronny Jackson's word on that? Larry Kart

Doesn't (or shouldn't) divisive here simply mean remarks specifically designed to attack a particular other group and its actual or supposed policies/goals and decisively draw the line between one's own group (to that group's satisfaction) and the other group -- this aside from the social-political rightness or wrongness of such acts of decisive/devisive separation, both in terms of "Who struck John?" and of the likely outcome of each group's policies should they come to pass. My point, or one of them, is that there's nothing innocent about such rhetoric on either or any side; it's would-be power politics of the mouth and deed.

Sorry -- I can't find a link to Trump's actual "brand new military" remarks. Can anyone help or just type out what he said? Thanks.

Talked this morning to a veteran M.D. He says that while the so to speak conservative position of Fauci and others like him on Chloroquine is understandable (because it fits the conservative medical model that Fauci and others have followed over the years), it is under these circumstances wrong. This is, he said, war, and in wartime you grasp whatever weapons that lie to hand. He added that they've been using the Chloroquine anti-viral drug combo in South Korea and China for some time now. So what results, he said, are they reporting from what amounts to an extended series of trials? He added that access to/sufficient production of enough of the Chloroquine anti-viral drug combo would be a problem, albeit a solvable one.

Like all of us, I would be delighted if the anti viral drug and Chloroquine mixture works.

"“You know, I’m not dismissing [Chloroquine] at all, and I hope that that interpretation wasn’t widespread,” Fauci said later on Fox News. “What I said is that we don’t have definitive proof that it works.”

FWIW, Dr. Fauci pretty much threw cold water on the Chloroquine option at today's Trump press conference, saying that no clinical trials have been conducted and leaving the impression that he was highly dubious. Again, FWIW. P.S. I wonder how long Fauci will be welcomed onto that podium.

Judge Sullivan today: "To evaluate Mr. Flynn’s requests, the Court divides them into six categories, acknowledging that there is some overlap within certain categories: (1) information that does not exist; (2) information that is not within the government’s possession; (3) information that Mr. Flynn concedes he is not entitled to; (4) information that the government has already provided to Mr. Flynn; (5) information that is unrelated to the charges against Mr. Flynn in this case or to his sentencing; and (6) remaining requests." Ouch.

"This administration doesn't need a national security advisor, it needs a psychiatrist." i think TTG speaks the truth.

All those "virtual facts" line up except for the last one. Isn't it Trump who insists that Saudi Arabia is our friend?

There are times -- many times -- when my gratitude to Col. Lang know no bounds. This is one of them. And thinking of the thread right below this one, among others, I want to add TTG to the list.

Thirdeye's account is accurate ASFAIK.

P.S. The gap between Leo Strauss and the key figures of the Frankfurt School (e.g. Horkheimer, Adrono, and such latter offshoots as Habermas ) could not be wider. Nor AFAIK do any of the more (would-be) intellectual neo-con types regard the Frankfurt School with any favor. Indeed, the most devastating takedown of Strauss that I know is an essay by the late Frankfurt-associated thinker George Lichtheim. It can be found in his "Collected Essays."

I was talking about the founding father of the neo-cons, Leo Strauss, who to my knowledge had no Trotskyite connections or sympathies but was, as I said, a figure neither of the right nor the left but an anti-democratic authoritarian who believed that the mass of humanity is incapable of making "correct" decisions and must be ruled from above by would-be noble tyrants who have been educated and are advised by an elite of the Straussian ilk. If this description sounds like a more or less armchair philosophy/world view that has little or no connection with modern political movements of any sort, you might be right. The eternal "verities" that Strauss and his hardcore followers are rooted in have their origins in their often abstruse reading of chosen thinkers of ancient Greece. (Strauss, BTW, not only was an anti-democratic authoritarian; he also believed that Western civilization turned onto the road to ruin the advent of the Enlightenment, a development that he was eager to undo.) However, as you and Harper have stated, a later generation of Strauss-influenced types, the in many cases former Trotskyite neo-cons, took Strauss' anti-democratic authoritarian ball and ran with it, often (at least in their own minds and/or when they felt it was necessary), backing up and in effect dignifying their calls for contemporary war-mongering and global hegemony with discreet doses of Strauss' fancy-dan intellectual B.S.

Strauss and Co. are not particularly of the left or of the eight but are more or less a third force.. They are anti-democratic authoritarians who believe that the mass of humanity is incapable of making "correct" decisions and must be ruled from above by would-be noble tyrants who have been educated and are advised by an elite of the Straussian ilk.

I cannot meet your challenge, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post. Again, I await Judge Sullivan's response to Powell's brief and his further eventual rulings in the Flynn case. It seems to me that neither Powell, nor you, nor I, nor Marcy but Judge Sullivan is the ultimate legal authority/expert here -- barring possible appeals to a higher court of course. P.S. regarding Marcy's bona fides or lack of same, I judge them in much the same way I have responded to those of Col. Lang over the years. In the latter case, I myself lack military expertise and an insider's knowledge of the workings of the D.C. bureaucracy, nor do I have more than a cursory background in the civilizations and politics of the Middle East. However, the Colonel over the years, drawing upon his knowledge of all those things and more, consistently analyzes what has happened, what is happening right now, and above all predicts what is likely to happen down the road. His track record in the final category is, if not the only test, one of the best tests imaginable, and it is one that he consistently passes with flying colors. I have applied the same standard to Marcy over many years now and have seldom been disappointed.

Sorry -- I meant to say "with egg on OUR faces."

A preceding post from Wheeler that goes into much more detail about what she sees as the flaws in Sidney Powell's brief. https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/09/02/admitted-former-foreign-agent-mike-flynn-demands-more-classified-information/ Have I read Powell's brief? I haven't pored over it -- after a certain point I decided that my ability to do so would be compromised because I'm not a lawyer at all, nor one who is versed in constitutional law, nor have I been following Flynn's case in detail, though I believe that Wheeler has. But even though my ability to critique the substance of Powell's brief is admittedly quite limited, based on Wheeler's long track record, going back to the days of the Scooter Libby trial, I believe that Wheeler has that ability. In any event, again, I await Judge Sullivan's response to Powell's brief and his eventual rulings in the Flynn case. If Wheeler (and by implication I) then end up with egg on your faces, so be it.

Before we characterize Ms. Wheeler as a "moron," perhaps we should wait and see how Judge Sullivan responds to Sidney Powell's brief and how he rules in the Flynn case in general.

May have mentioned this before, but some six years ago my wife, my stepson, and I were on a tour of Israel. When our bus approached the site where Armageddon was supposed to take place, and I asked our guide, fprmerly an Israel Air Force colonel, how he dealt with this topic when he was serving as a guide to a bus-load of Evangelicals, as was often the case. "I tell them,' he said, "that if the Messiah comes and he's been here before, you win. If he hasn't been here before, we win." "How do they react?" I asked. "The same way you did," he said. "They laugh."

A contrary view of the situation: https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/09/06/flynn-steps-in-it-2-0-emmet-sullivan-will-make-sidney-powell-show-the-relevance-of-utterly-irrelevant-secrets/

Who doesn't benefit?