Non Compos Abroad

By now you've all seen the embarrassing videos from the G-7. The first features an obviously mentally lost Zhou having to be, um, fetched by his keeper Jill. The other shows a slow Zhou bringing up the rear of the fatuous G-7 participants, shuffling along. (By the way, did anyone else notice the pixie looking outfit Justin has on?) Monica Showalter discusses them in a brief post and captures most of it:

The first video shows him wandering into a cafeteria for the public instead of the special accommodations reserved for the G-7 leaders. Notice that the crowd guffaws as someone throws out a flip question, which he has to ask her to repeat. When he gives a dullard's answer, the laughter roars harder. It's an obvious mockery of a lost old fool looking for the buffet table at the senior citizens' home, or maybe the right bingo hall on a Thursday. Nobody applauds Biden's entry as if he were there to see him, nor do they indicate terror and awe or basic respect for the leader of the free world. Nope, for them, he was "just trying to get some ranch." Or perhaps they were when he obviously wandered in, not knowing what day it was or where he was at. After futzing about looking as lost as he probably is, caretaker Jill Biden strides in and leads doddering forgetful old grandpa, who couldn't read his brief about where the lunchroom was, away, taking him by the hand.

I'd been wondering how Zhou got to be where he wound up. The explanation that he went to the wrong cafeteria makes perfect sense in context. Anyone who has experience with people who are slipping into dementia knows that they tend to fixate, especially, on their meal times. Most likely while the other participants briefly milled about before lunch, chatting, Zhou was totally focused on getting to the trough--all he could think of was that it was feeding time. Keeper Jill probably momentarily lost track of Zhou while chatting up Justin in his bizarre, adolescent looking outfit, then had to rush off in search of her charge.

One thing to notice. Showalter states that the people in the cafeteria guffaw the second time at his "dullard's answer" to the "flip question" directed to Zhou by a diner who pretty obviously realized that Zhou was lost. Actually, that second guffaw--and it was a real guffaw--came when Keeper Jill rushed in with both hands outstretched to retrieve Zhou. The guffaw began when she addressed Zhou with a brisk "C'mon!"--as if she were speaking to a child--grasped his hand in both of hers, and led him away.

With regard to the second video, the photo op with the Queen, Zhou's shuffling gait was on display--he seems little more mobile than the much older Elizabeth. What struck me about Zhou as he trailed away at the rear of the group--one of the others appearing to stay with him lest he be lost again--was the way his arms hung limply at his side, rather than swinging a bit. Taken together with the shuffling gait, the impression can only be described as doddering.

And so on to confront Putin. Not gonna back down. Always providing that he remembers where he is and with whom he's speaking. Pathetic.

Don't Forget About Baiden Corruption

I'll be interested to see whether Putin will raise any issues of the Baiden Crime Family corruption--given that so much of what is known about that corruption stems from Baiden dealings in connection with Ukraine. As it happens, there are two article today that look at two aspects of Hunter's legal problems. The details are too complex to sort out here, but I recommend both articles. The fact that the Ukraine story hasn't just disappeared should be concerning for Dems as we approach 2022 because, as one of the authors points out, it wasn't just Hunter--Zhou was involved as well.

John Solomon sets the stage, in a way, for the second article:

Feds subpoenaed Hunter Biden during 2016 election, raising worry over unpaid taxes on Ukraine work

Lawyers and accountants prepared "proffer" to federal authorities, scrambled to devise narrative on unpaid taxes in emails that undercut president's longtime claim his son did nothing wrong.

What this means is that Hunter, on the advice of accountants and lawyers, was considering admitting some degree of wrongdoing in his tax matters in return for turning against his partner, Devon Archer. Here are the basics:

Not Gonna Hold Back!

That's what we're being told about Zhou when he meets with Vlad--he's not gonna hold back. 

Meanwhile he's warming up at something called the G-7, where democratic leaders gather at the bottom of history's slippery slope and bloviate about becoming more "gender neutral" and "feminine":

.@BorisJohnson: G7 nations must build back in a “greener,” “more gender neutral and perhaps a more feminine way” pic.twitter.com/nLbYzGDk7d

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 11, 2021

Who thinks Putin--or Xi--would've been impressed had they been present?

Homerun McIntyre!

Twitter at its best. He's a Canadian, but he goes yard with this one. This is the question:

I presume that partisan US late night talk shows never call out this sort of bizarre nonsense from Biden. How on earth did he get permission from his handlers to schedule a meeting with a sentient world leader? https://t.co/8IFANm4XWw

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) June 1, 2021

I can only presume that they're so desperate that they think cheap Russian bashing will somehow boost his credibility.

 

Whew! At Least He Wasn't Implicated In Criminal Charges

Second h/t of the day to a reader--first was re Kilimnik. 

Not implicated in the criminal charges--that's the point, isn't it? What isn't forbidden by the law is allowed, and honi soit qui mal y pense. It seems pretty pointless to even comment on this. It simply illustrates where we've arrived as an empire. The Daily Mail has all the news that's not fit to print in our own MSM. Wikipedia has the bio:

Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.

What can I say? My career trajectory was different. OTOH, Freeh's career isn't much different than that of subsequent FBI Directors. Public service, private sector--in the big picture it all tends to meld into self service. There's a particularly shameless quality to both sides of this equation, but it's The Way We Live Now. Tom Wolfe is dead, so who will be the Trollope for our era?

MAJOR UPDATES (Not A Pun): Does Zhou Baiden Face 'Major' Liability?

Yesterday I briefly wondered whether Zhou's dog 'Major' should be 'put down,' having bitten a second person. Have you been wondering about this issue, but were too lazy to research it? You'll still have to wonder, but Jonathan Turley clarifies some of the issues regarding dog biting--i.e., dogs biting people, not vice versa--in an article that was picked up by Zerohedge:

Major Liability? Biden's Dog Bites Another Employee After Returning From Delaware Seclusion

The traditional rule in tort law is that a dog is allowed "one free bite" before being classified as a "vicious animal." That's why I wondered whether 'Major'--having had his one free bite and gone on to become a serial biter--should now be put down. Of course, that's not the only remedy. There's also the question of civil--or even criminal--liability on the part of the dog's owner. Turley goes into the, um, ins and outs of all this, with particular reference to DC law.

The Baiden version of the most recent incident is that some was "nipped" by 'Major.' Turley observes that a nip is in the eye of the beholder, or owner, and goes on to clarify the "one free bite" rule:

The difference between “nipped” and “bitten” is that you are bitten by other people’s dogs. Your dog however only nips, which is somewhere on the spectrum between a lick and a complete devouring.

Two Recommended Reads: Election Aftermath And Insurrection--NOT!

Two good articles I wanted to point out. Nothing you won't have thought of yourself, but well expressed and worth a look.

First, Conrad Black--there's a lot of good stuff in this article, but here's a sample paragraph:

The Trump-Hate Coalition Is Crumbling

The wheels are coming off the rickety anti-Trump coalition in all four directions.

...

The FBI and senior echelons of the intelligence services were politically compromised, a massively illegal and fraudulent investigation of the elected president was conducted, two utterly spurious impeachment attempts were thrown at him and the coronavirus pandemic was invoked to produce the most seriously tainted presidential election result in the country’s history. The Supreme Court may have made the correct political decision when it declined to adjudicate the case, given how tempestuous the response would have been if it had overturned the result of the election, but it was still an abdication. They presumably acted as they did to assure that there would be no move to pack the court with Democrats, and they may now be in a position to reassert the Constitution as the controversies generated by the new administration percolate up to it.

It's optimistic, and maybe we need some of that.

Increasingly Hard To Hide: Zhou Baiden Regime Stumbling

By now most will have seen the painful video of Zhou Baiden stumbling three times while trying to board Air Force One--and, admittedly, he did eventually succeed in getting up the stairs under his own, um, power? Still, it was touch and go for a while. In future the Secret Service--or whoever, ask Dan Bongino--had better not leave Zhou on his own. This could easily have wound up with Zhou tumbling all the way back down, with conceivably fatal consequences. Imagine that--first "president" to perish in futile attempt to board an airplane?

After Mocking Trump’s Walk, Joe Biden Just Got Completely Owned By A Set Of Stairs

Joe Biden just fell 3 times in a row trying to go up the stairs to Air Force One pic.twitter.com/gTUTckUH32

— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 19, 2021

But that seems increasingly like a metaphor for the entire Zhou Baiden regime's attempts at projecting that they're in charge of things. I use the plural advisedly, since it's terribly clear that Zhou is in charge of next to nothing in his life at this point--definitely not his dogs and likely not even the Oval Office fireplace.

The rest of the world has not been slow to pick up on this. Zhou's personal attempts at bluster--to mask the personal ineffectuality of this "chief executive"--have fallen utterly flat, and the supposedly competent handlers are being treated with contempt by other nations that actually do have competent regimes. For example ...

Red State writes today:

Briefly Noted: Stimulate This!

If the Zhou Baiden regime doesn't want you to own guns, why are they giving you the money to buy guns? You'd need to be a liberal government bureaucrat to figure that one out--in other words, someone who doesn't have a clue about real people. We're from the government and we're hear to help you--Ha ha! Anyway, that seems to be what's going on, according to Forbes--and lots of anecdotal evidence: 

Americans Are Spending Their Stimulus Checks On Guns

Americans are looking forward to another round of stimulus checks and gun shops are looking forward to another round of stimulus stockpiling. 

As the House takes its final vote Wednesday on the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, many Americans are looking forward to spending their $1,400 stimulus checks at the gun store. 

“Stimulus check equals gun money,” said Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks in Delray Beach, Florida. ... 

... 

Al Tawil, owner of Towers Armory, a gun store and range in Oregon, Ohio, said that his weekly sales jumped by about 20% right after mid-April 2020, when many Americans received the first $1,200 stimulus payments from the federal government. He has every reason to believe it will happen again. 

“We’re expecting another big sale when the stimulus comes out,” he said. “They’ve got the extra money and people go indulge themselves with something they can’t normally afford. Some people want a car. Some people want a gun.”

Or both? Have gun, will travel? 

Instead of Covid relief, call it 2A Relief. If we can't have a fully employed citizenry, well ...

There are downsides to this generally excellent program, of course--it wouldn't be a government program if there weren't downsides. For some people it's drug money. (H/T Don Surber)

ADDENDUM: For everyone who's interested in that really weird video of Zhou supposedly talking to reporters, I recommend Andrea Widburg's account: It’s not possible that the White House is faking Biden press moments, is it? The answer seems to be, ... but, no, I won't toy with your intelligence. These are the people--politicians and press--who specialize in hoaxes.

UPDATED: Zhou On TV Last Night--Why?

I won't spend much time on Zhou Baiden's appearance on TV last night, not in the sense of parsing what he read. It's the type of thing that, if you waste much time thinking about it, will probably just make you stupid. If you roll in that kinda stuff, well, you start to smell like it. That's what my father used to say when I was young, and it's still true. Moreover, there are plenty of others to do that--Andrea Widburg, for example, does a terrific job: Biden’s scary, boring, and bizarre address to the nation.

However, I will take a stab at the Why? question. What was the real point of this exercise, if it wasn't to communicate information in the normal sense of: facts?

Until I learn otherwise, my assumption is that this was the best substitute for a Zhou SOTU that his handlers could dream up--something they thought they could pull off and maybe get away with. They must not have believed at this point that they could pull off a full blown SOTU in front of the nation. Nor a full blown press conference--the two traditional things that legit, mentally there, presidents do very early on in their administration. I assume that the Zhou Baiden regime feels that it's between a rock and a hard place. They knew all along that they'd need to pull a switcheroo and foist Kama Sutra on the nation, but they also knew--despite the brazenness of Election 2020 in all its aspects--that that move would take some finessing. That means they felt they would need some time to prepare the nation because, let's face, nobody actually voted for Kama Sutra. But here they are, they need time, yet Zhou's mental state may force action sooner than they'd like. The only dodge is to try to put off the demands for the constitutionally mandated SOTU or the traditional presser by feeding the public--and even the press--this pablum.

In the meantime, I'll second a point that Widburg made:

UPDATED: Must Read: Afghanistan Money Pit

That's a post by Don Surber. Do yourself a favor and read it: Afghanistan Money Pit. For four years Donald Trump tried to get us out of there--the resistance was ferocious. He did finally come up with a plan. But the resistance continues. As always, follow the money.

UPDATE: Totally unrelated, except that it's a Must Read:

Amazon Changes Its Brand New Logo, The Reason Why Reveals How Crazy Social Media Has Gotten

Here's the comment I REALLY liked:

When all you have is a hammer ... everything is literally Hitler.

No Kidding!

Americans answer the burning question about Zhou Baiden with a collective, Duh!

Agree or Disagree: "Joe Biden's not the moderate nice guy that they made him out to be. He's a puppet of the radical left"?

1000 Nat LV's - Agree % / Disagree %
Democrats - 27% / 68%
Unaffiliated - 54% / 37%
Republicans - 82% / 12%
All Voters - 54% / 40%

Weighted D38,R36,IND26 https://t.co/lOgDgVbwL1

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 19, 2021

The next obvious question, which unfortunately is not so susceptible to polling is: If he's a puppet of the radical left, then who's pulling Zhou's strings?

Media Attempts To Portray Zhou Baiden As, Uh, Somewhat Involved

We're starting to learn more about the daily schedule of the Zhou Baiden regime, and specifically about Zhou himself--his daily schedule. Turns out, according to the fawning MSM, that Zhou likes a very orderly life--you might almost say, really laid back. CNN tells us that Zhou is an early-to-bed guy. Which makes sense, since apparently people suffering from dementia tend to get agitated in the evening. Elsewhere I've read that he doesn't drag his ass into the Oval Office till, oh, around 9AM. That kind of schedule used to be known as bankers' hours. Who knew POTUS was such an easy gig? 

It helps, of course, that Kama Sutra is apparently handling some of the head of state calls, and who knows what other things. Those would come under the rubric of what we in federal "service" used to winkingly refer to as "other duties as assigned." Whatever helps Zhou make it through the day. Flexible. Hand him the pen, push an executive order in front of him, turn his note cards right side up, take phone calls from foreign people. That kinda stuff.

So what's Zhou actually doing in the Oval Office? Well, again according to CNN, he likes to have a fire in the fireplace and to be joined by his dogs. He even adds a log to the fire all by himself, sometimes. They say he also likes to read "letters from Americans." When he's not signing executive orders.

Regarding head of state meetings, something a regime head traditionally does, we were preemptively advised--so we wouldn't pester Jen by asking--that Zhou won't be meetings those heads of state for, let's see, maybe the next couple of months? 

Oh, I should specify, I was talking about heads of foreign states. But, then, it seems Zhou hasn't been speaking to the heads of US states, either. Those are the people we call "governors". Some of them govern states that have been struggling with some really brutal winter weather. Zhou has been "kept abreast" of all that and has been provided "regular updates", but his quality time--snoozy time?--with his dogs in front of the fireplace has not been interrupted by actual phones calls with those "governors." Not as such. 

I guess this POTUS thing is just part of the gig economy now. And Zhou has never been one to look a gift gig in the mouth. So to speak.

More American Exceptionalism

Only in America, where anyone can be "president"--even Zhou Baiden. You can't make this stuff up, but Zhou gives it the old, er, college and law school try:

#JoeBiden is a pathological liar. This is Sam Donaldson, ABC News White House Press Correspondent, putting Biden’s lies in 1988. I watched this live and in real time in TV when I lived in the Washington, DC metro area (Rockville, MD). https://t.co/kfpu7Nrwmv

— Joyce Bruns (@JoyceBruns) February 6, 2021

What's equally remarkable is that our "elite" think he's good enough. Well, in fairness, they know he's not running anything, but they don't think we deserve to know who is. It's all pretty exceptional

UPDATED: McCarthy Heading To Mar A Lago?

Sundance is citing a report in The Hill:

McCarthy to meet with Trump in Florida

Former President Trump is expected to meet this week with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in Florida, a source familiar with the meeting confirmed to The Hill.

The rendezvous, which was first reported by Punchbowl News, comes as McCarthy attempts to manage simmering tensions within the House GOP caucus amid the fallout from the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol and Trump's ensuing impeachment for his role in the mayhem.

McCarthy's office did not respond to a request for comment.

There's a bit more at the link, but not too much of substance--except, of course, that Trump has bruited the idea of supporting primary challenges of his GOP opponents.

It's anyone's idea how the GOPe thought helping to install Zhou Baiden would somehow magically eliminate Trump from the national--or, indeed, the world--stage. I have to agree with sundance that there's been a rude awakening for GOPe leaders like McConnell, and would be fence straddlers like McCarthy. After a short lived period of euphoria and boldness, they find themselves, as sundance says, essentially without leverage. Trump holds all the cards for now, and for the foreseeable future: