Yes, it applies in this case -- although its usually 48 hours.

First note: The White House lied straight up about the speech being delivered "live"; it was clearly not.  How do we know this with absolute certainty?  Biden had a watch on and it is visible in some of the shot -- and was not at the time of the speech.  You'd think the production crew would have enough marbles rolling around to catch this but... nope.  It thus was quite-clearly taped and therefore the obvious question is "how many takes were done and was it continuous?"  One lie means the rest is presumed a lie.

Others have commented on the obvious use of a teleprompter; I don't care about that as there are few people who speak extemporaneously in such a setting (I might be one of them) so I don't find that troublesome in any way -- and incidentally the teleprompter is visible as a reflection in the "window" but again, I don't care and frankly neither should you.

The real question isn't so much about the optics (e.g. a "sound stage" for the speech as opposed to where it is supposed to actually be in the White House, etc.) as it is the substance.

The party of "democracy", so the Democrats claim (while smearing the GOP as having no respect for those principles) just committed an act of deposing someone they determined had outlived his usefulness despite the will of the people and coronated his successor.  I remind you that Harris received exactly zero votes for President in the Democrat primaries this time around and in fact polled around 1% in the 2020 election season, forcing her out of contention before anything really going.  Now she's presumptively on the top of the ticket despite having not received a single vote in a single primary and no, being someone's VP is not the same thing as the head of the ticket -- and we all know that.

Indeed it is exceedingly rare that a VP selection has any bearing on the outcome of a Presidential race.

The real question is how it is that President Biden went from "I'm in the race and I'm going to serve the next term" to "its time to pass the torch and by the way I'm unilaterally choosing who it gets passed to" in the space of less than 24 hours.  What Joe Biden (at the urging of his party, of course) just did may well be the most undemocratic means of selecting a Presidential Candidate in the history of the United States.  Literally no President in history has hand-picked his successor on the ticket unless I've missed something in our nearly 250-year history -- but I don't think so.  Indeed the closest analog I can find -- which did have an actual primary season and such -- was Humphrey, who lost (along with Wallace, a third party candidate) in 1968 to Nixon.

What happened is not "illegal" in that as I've repeatedly noted over the years you're not owed a choice at all on a Presidential party ticket -- that's the nature of the game for this office.  However, it remains true that to claim you're the "Party of Democracy" when your succession system looks an awful lot like Khrushchev being deposed out of the USSR in October of 1964 is far beyond the realm of "bad joke" and into the realm of actual communist control, at least within the party itself.  Indeed the parallels are striking in that the Khrushchev event was a true "palace coup" at that time orchestrated by Leonid Brezhnev with the cooperation of the party -- and of Brezhnev who succeeded him.

We just saw that identical dynamic play out in the Biden White House.

Not even European parliamentary systems play the political game this way in the modern era; if its "time" for someone to go they call snap elections to settle the question with and by consent of the people.

It is of course up to the American people as to whether they accept this sort of Soviet-era style "coronation"; I certainly will not vote for any ticket that is constructed this way under any set of circumstances.  In America we are supposed to select our leadership via fair and open elections and those who put together a ticket by other means should, in a Representative Republic, be repudiated at the ballot box and lose.  Indeed there certainly is both foreign and domestic improper influence in our elections and has been for quite some time, particularly when it comes to funding, and despite FEC regulations those rules are wildly flaunted and nobody is ever arrested at the time (and rarely prosecuted after the fact), even though detecting such games is quite-trivial in the modern era of computer databases and thus detecting that someone who is on a fixed income, has no real assets and lives in a modest home -- or is even in a nursing home -- has "somehow" managed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns is known within days or weeks.

But there is a profound difference in character between candidates vying for a nomination and ultimately the general election while funding for the various political jousts, including outright smear campaigns, is less-than proper and some group within a political party, after the primaries are complete, deciding that the people's choice for the ticket must be replaced and orchestrating that without again having that choice of successor made by voters.

The "claim" is that Democrats generally have overwhelmingly ratified Biden's action via donations, endorsements and accolades.  Whether that's true or not its immaterial in that in America we're supposed to select candidates who have a primary structure for their office at the ballot box and a person's candidacy does not confer the right to assign a "win" in said primary to another person no matter who that other person might be -- and I remind you that money is not supposed to vote; that authority is properly delegated to the people.

I've argued that for quite some time we're a post-Constitutional society and that the Republic, in fact, is nearly extinct.  Certainly in the economic realm we have become divorced at the federal level from the basic requirement to fund government programs with current taxation in that deficit spending is at its core assessing those not yet old enough to vote and in fact those not yet even conceived, say much less born, for the spending voters and politicians wish to do today.  That is a profoundly undemocratic act and that future generation or generations has no obligation to quietly consent to that down the road.  Indeed such an undemocratic levy has, historically-speaking, been a major factor in the collapse of nations over the course of human history.

But this is much more "in your face" and begs the question as to whether the premise of America, as established by the Founders as a Republic and at great personal cost, still exists in meaningful form within the political sphere at all.

Americans will decide in November and that decision is likely to have extraordinarily profound implications not only in the political sphere but in the economy and asset markets as well.

Note: "Coup" doesn't mean violence.  It simply means coercion; an "offer you can't refuse."  Remember that Joe Biden won the primaries (by a huge margin) so unless his stepping down was entirely voluntary its obviously void.  For the cabinet and VP Harris to sit on incapacity, assuming they did, rather than invoke the 25th Amendment many months ago and thus force actual primaries, if that's what happened, is outrageous.  Indeed, if Harris did that (since she has to be on board for a 25th Amendment filing) for political purposes, placing the nation at severe risk, that's arguably an impeachable offense.

There is a fundamental problem with Presidential primaries however: They're actually "preference" primaries.  There's a clean argument you're not owed a fair contest, or any contest at all.  As such its unlikely anyone could successfully bring suit over what the DNC has done -- except for Biden himself, which of course would expose him to an immediate 25th Amendment filing.

There is a fair question as to whether he actually dictated and signed the document bowing out.  Confidence that this was a voluntary act on Biden's part certainly wasn't confirmed when a reporter asked him why he had bowed out last afternoon, he smiled and didn't answer.

Now perhaps this all comes out in a press conference sometime this week.  We shall see.  But there are core Democrat constituencies, including BLM, that have come out demanding some sort of democratic process rather than a coronation.  Considering that Kamala got literally zero votes in the Democrat primaries for President that seems to be "fair", but again, you have no right to that in the Presidential nominating contest.

I'm not sure what to think of this; its quite-clear that Biden has certainly not been "sharp as a tack" for a long time, but is that a 25th Amendment thing?  Well, do recall that it was the assassination of President Kennedy that led to its passage.  Woodrow Wilson infamously had a stoke in office in 1919 while intending to seek a third term; his wife and physician essentially controlled him after that, hid the fact that he was for all intents and purposes incapacitated and maintained the office, albeit with essentially no major decisions, until he left office in 1921.  It was not his first; he had suffered a series of strokes during his life and in fact was plagued by them.

Did Wilson have good days?  You bet -- including one really important one when a couple of Senators refused to believe he was ok.  Isn't it interesting how history rhymes?

But today we have a 25th Amendment, and in addition we have what is claimed to have been a voluntary withdrawal.

America deserves confirmation from Joe Biden's own mouth that indeed it was, and further, those who are Democrats deserve to be able to make a decision as to who they wish to have face Trump in November.

We're not supposed to coronate people in the United States, if you recall.

JD Vance is, as everyone knows at this point, the VP nominee on the GOP side.

This story showed up recently:

Usha Chilukuri Vance, the wife of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has left her job as a corporate litigator at Munger, Tolles & Olson, a prestigious law firm in San Francisco.

Shortly after former President Donald Trump revealed on Monday his decision to add J.D. to his ticket for the upcoming presidential election in November, Usha’s online biography vanished from the company’s website.

The couple has three children.  Vance is a Senator from Ohio which means he has to live in the State.  They met and married in San Francisco which wouldn't be unusual considering they were college classmates.

But this is unusual:

During her time at the firm, Usha practiced complex litigation and appeals in many sectors, including higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology, including semiconductors, in its San Francisco and Washington, D.C. offices.

So his wife was employed by a California firm that focused on litigation and appeals in San Francisco and DC yet Vance lives in Ohio.  That's a rather interesting arrangement you two have, don't you think, particularly with three young children in the game.

Oh by the way she clerked for Roberts and, when he was in the Court of Appeals in DC, Kavanaugh and that's a job where you have to be there, never mind that most litigating lawyers need to show up in actual court on a basically-constant sort of basis for various things, whether it be actual trials or the motion docket and similar.

This is an interesting situation because Vance has quite a history of issuing various position statements that are rather traditional-family focused, which many people find very appealing.  I can understand this, by the way, in that destruction of the nuclear family, whether you believe its been intentionally fomented or is a "natural outcome" of our economic system, is certainly a major factor not only in a clear demographic problem that nobody wants to take on but also with many of the social issues we have in the United States which have a very strong association and correlation with the breakdown of the family unit.  That we have someone on one of the tickets who has a good and long history of promoting fixing that, including a book he published quite some time ago (in other words it wasn't in anticipation of being the VP) speaks to the authenticity of his positions.

Nonetheless my first check on anyone's political positions is whether their statements reasonably correlate with their actual life in the here and now.  I pretty-much ignore the 20 years in the past because over time we all change our minds on various things -- and our mistakes (we all make 'em) if they lead to a change of heart and thus a change of actions, are exactly what you want in a politician.

I'm not sure what to think of this -- but my eyebrows definitely went up when I read it, because here's a guy who goes to college, meets a woman and they get married, they have a couple of kids and all this sounds straight up the middle of family values and very American right up until he winds up as a Senator and the correlations with who works for whom and their employment and living situation history seem rather at-odds with the "down home American family" visage being projected.

Perhaps this is simply "reality" today for a couple where both are highly-ambitious, highly capable and love one another.  If it is then what we've become is broken because no matter how you slice it there is no way you have two fully-involved parents when they're separated by 1,500+ miles.

After last night we know who isn't: Joe Biden

Trump was horrible.  He had multiple opportunities, with the most-striking being on both illegal immigration and "climate change/energy" to run Biden through with a verbal sword and leave the pieces all over the lectern. He demonstrated last night that he simply doesn't have the chops to think on his feet and while that might not be fatal for a President it isn't want you want in the office.

If you want a politician -- that is, someone who lies while staring into your eyes -- as President you certainly can pick either of these guys.  That was on full display.

But Biden, when you get down to it, wasn't there.  Despite basically disappearing for multiple days to prepare, and then throwing gasoline all over a raging fire of speculation that he'd be drugged for the debate by refusing Trump's challenge to roll up their sleeves for a blood draw and tox screen to detect any "chemical enhancement" the clear "deer in the headlights" thing was worse than I've ever seen it over the last three years.

Biden got away with this in 2020 due to the pandemic and basically campaigning from his bedroom.  That won't work this time around.

If last night showed us anything at all its that allowing anyone to set terms on who can be on the stage and the process we use today to nominate people for this office has been corrupted and broken beyond repair.

You have to give Andrew Yang credit for being willing to put forward "UBI" -- a $1,000 a month "stipend" that he foolishly calls a "Freedom Dividend" -- with of course a boat-load of fraudulent claims of how he's going to pay for it.

Chief among these is a 10% VAT -- which sounds good, but it's problematic for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that it won't raise enough money.

Remember that a VAT exempts government spending, since that's just taxing yourself.  Yang recognizes this and pegs the revenue from a VAT at $800 billion as he also removes groceries, clothing and apparently some other things from it.

He also says he's going to "consolidate" (get rid of) many other welfare programs.  The problem is that the only ones that matter from a budget perspective are health care related.

At the same time Yang wants to expand Medicare to everyone.  The problem is that these two programs are in direct opposition to each other.  He says he'll be able to bring costs under control but Medicare and Medicaid have utterly failed to do so.

In other words Yang is a pie-in-the-sky Democrat protecting and in fact expanding the medical monopolists.

Look folks -- CMS -- Medicare and Medicaid Services, have spent $1.465 trillion through August which is 35% of the federal spending all-in.  The federal budget deficit during that time was $1.067 trillion.

In other words that spending was 137% of the deficit.

If you killed all the medical monopolists and took the "low hanging fruit" as I described in that post you would erase the entire federal deficit, plus some and not one person would be denied medical care.

Further, you'd take roughly another trillion and a half off private forced spending on this alleged "service" since the "service" is 500% overpriced.

This would instantly resolve both the federal debt and all the state and local pension problems -- at once.  It would also eliminate the destruction of personal purchasing power and that of saved funds.

20% of the people in the country -- those who are involved in and require this scheme to make a living -- would hate you.

EVERYONE ELSE WOULD VOTE FOR YOU.

In short this is one of those nearly-impossible to find 80% issues among the electorate.  That's exactly what Trump exploited (a claimed 80% issue that he never actually addressed) to get elected himself -- illegal immigration and displacement of American workers.

He was lying, as we now all know in that instead of resolving any of these problems he has dripped out half-measures where, as the head of the Executive he could have resolved several of them immediately but that sales job is why he's President today.

Yang seems to think that socialism will somehow "work" in health care.  It never has -- in health care or anywhere else.  NHS in Britain is falling apart.  So are the other socialist health care systems.  They're falling apart even though they exist almost-entirely on the back of the 500% overcharge Americans pay in that we effectively fund the R&D and in many cases the reproduction cost of everything they use.  Even with that sort of outrageous transfer and theft they're still fiscally underwater.

Yang could have -- and perhaps, for a very short period of time forward still can -- become a credible candidate.  He needs an 80% issue -- indeed, anyone who intends to try to take on Warren, Bernie or Biden does, just as I've argued for decades that if you want to try to run as a third-party candidate you need to as well.

Remember Ross Perot?  He took up an 80% issue -- the giant sucking sound of "tariff free" trade with Mexico.  Had he not folded his tent he would have likely won too.

There are so many other crackpot ideas on Yang's plate that frankly, I can't take him seriously.  The "vote at 16" idea is one of them.  Representation comes with responsibility, or at least it's supposed to.  Yang is nothing more than pandering with this bullshit -- if my kid can vote at 16 I can eject him or her at 16 and they can go fend for themselves.

There are acts that should define you as an adult in all respects.  Reproduction and Felonious conduct are two of them.  Voting is a third.  Today we refuse to recognize that exercising the most-profound power a human can have -- to reproduce or not -- does not come with the responsibility commensurate with that power.  This must change and since slavery is immoral (never mind illegal) there's only one direction it can that is consistent: Pregnancy, for both sexes, is an automatic and irrevocably emancipating event.  So is a felony conviction.

Further, Andrew is a pie-in-the-sky economic bullshitter.  "Saving for retirement", which is one of his planks, is impossible in a nation where the federal government runs a 25%+ fiscal deficit and thus destroys the value of all saved capital.  This has to be stopped -- or those who both promote policies that allow and expand that practice must be removed from the public square by any means necessary.

Fortunately for Andrew there is a way to stop the deficit spending and get the 80% issue and greatly improve health care delivery while slashing cost by 80% or more.

But he hasn't taken it -- just like the rest haven't either.

That's because he doesn't really believe in any of it, just as neither do the others -- including our current President.

Sadly they're all bullshitters and con artists.