Biden's Opportunity

 Joe Biden achieved his life's ambition when he became President.  To lose now in a second-term attempt can only tarnish his accomplishment and, given his debate performance, losing to Trump in November is the highly likely outcome of continuing a run for a second term.

The smart move now for Biden in terms of leaving with a record of many accomplishments would be to resign before it is too late to give a replacement a fighting chance. There is certainly no shortage of candidates with the energy and debate skills to confront Trump's endless stream of transparent lies.

There are, of course, no guarantees that any Democratic candidate could make up the lost ground now.  What seems certain, however, is that turning over the job to a new generation of leadership now is a step in the right direction for Democrats regardless of the 2024 election's outcome.

It is worthwhile to look at the previous resignations for guidance to avoid the many pitfalls.   Johnson's choice to back the candidacy of his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, brought on the disastrous Chicago convention and an electoral loss. And, of course, it is important not to forget the assassinations of the Kennedys and King given the current climate of violence which Trump has encouraged at every opportunity.

• David Remnick says what needs to be said the The New Yorker.
• The Guardian view on Joe Biden: Democrats must seize the wheel, not drift to disaster

Biden's Failure

He mumbled incoherently.

He failed to call out Trump on the ridiculous lies and claims about migrants.

He made no mention of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza or the need to hold Israel accountable for waging a genocidal war.

Ends with a Bang

 We ate a lot of artichokes and gave away about an equal number.

Three or four are left on the two plants at the south side of our house.  The blossoms most clearly reveal the relationship to thistles.  In our Southwest climate the artichokes grow all year and one of the plants nearest to a slightly leaky faucet is now about four feet in height.

Museums

 I have made a lot of pictures over the years in and around museums.  Most in Albuquerque have been with my film cameras at the Albuquerque Art Museum.  Lately, I have been using the unique potential of my phone camera to make panoramic and ultra-wide-angle shots.

The museum does a lot of large wall-mounted photographic images, both inside and outside.  The current big murals in the lobby are part of a collaboration by visiting artists, Sabrina Mathues Manygoats and Chip Thomas in an exhibit about the effects of uranium mining in New Mexico.

Dementia and the Presidency

 There has been a lot of speculation about the mental competency of the two current Presidential candidates. The discussion has been muddied by deliberate distortions to the point where nothing of value can be extracted. It turns out, however, that progression toward Alzheimer's Disease can be measured and analyzed through rigorous statistical methodology based on an examination of verbal performance in press conferences.

Such an analysis, performed in 2019, compared the records of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Bush remained free of dementia throughout his presidency.  Reagan revealed his Alzheimer's diagnosis only six years after he left office. The study was entitled, Tracking Discourse Complexity Preceding Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis: A Case Study Comparing the Press Conferences of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush. The authors were Visar Berisha,* Shuai Wang, Amy LaCross, and Julie Liss.

The abstract describes the study's methodology:

Changes in some lexical features of language have been associated with the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Here we describe a method to extract key features from discourse transcripts, which we evaluated on non-scripted news conferences from President Ronald Reagan, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994, and President George Herbert Walker Bush, who has no known diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Key word counts previously associated with cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease were extracted and regression analyses were conducted. President Reagan showed a significant reduction in the number of unique words over time and a significant increase in conversational fillers and non-specific nouns over time. There was no significant trend in these features for President Bush.
Keywords: Early diagnosis, language, medical informatics, natural language processing

The Discussion:

President Reagan was not diagnosed with AD until August of 1994, but the results of our analyses suggest that changes in speaking patterns were becoming detectable years prior to clinical diagnosis. Analysis of his transcripts revealed significant differences in variables known to be associated with the onset of dementia. We found that the use of unique words in the discourse of RR declined over time, and the use of non-specific nouns and fillers increased over time. To address the potential confound associated with changes resulting from healthy aging, we compare RR’s transcripts to those of GHWB. At the start of their presidencies, RR was 69 years old, and GHWB was 64 (the years 1981 and 1989 respectively). Although the two age spans differ slightly, GHWB provides the most comparable case among modern American presidents. Furthermore, when we analyze the press conferences from GHWB’s last two years in office (starting at age 66), there is still no statistically significant change in these linguistic variables...

Records similar to that of their predecessors are available for Biden and Trump, so there appears to be no good reason why an analysis of their lexical performances could not be conducted.  Perhaps such an effort has been undertaken, but it would be a little surprising to see such a thing come to light at this point.  Either political party, if in possession of such a study of the opposition, would likely be reluctant to publicize it for fear that it would stimulate a demand for a counter-study.  Any independent study, however objective, would come under attack as promoting a biased, politically motivated attack.  

Perhaps, in five years, we will have a chance to see a fact-based account of the issue.

Deja Vu

 Nearly five years ago I posted some thoughts about Arundhati Roy's fiction and political writing that have often brought her threats for her courageous stance against despotism in her country.  Now, as reported in The Guardian, she is again under siege:

Indian authorities have granted permission for the prosecution of the Booker prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy over comments she made about Kashmir at an event in 2010.

After watching that online presentation by Roy and Naomi Klein on  the web site of "The Nation" I wrote that:

Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril.  It is a country of over a billion people ruled by an authoritarian regime which operates comfortably in the neo-liberal global economy.  One result of that is that India is far along the path to the environmental disaster brought to us by a combination of global warming and continuing bad economic and political choices.

The comparison of political trends in India and the U.S. seems to me even more apt now given Trump's plan to harness the Justice Department to go after his critics should he win the election in 2024.

GMC Morning

 

Yerba Mansa

 I enjoyed a morning walk through the riverside forest this morning.  I ate some wolfberries and some mulberries and snapped this picture of the blooming yerba mansa with a borrowed clip-on fisheye lens for my phone. 

Questionnaire

 When you suddenly find yourself falling from a great height, the best thing you can do is:

(Select the best option or, if more than one choice seems appropriate, list in order of importance)

  Call 911

  Flap your arms vigorously

  Hold your breath

  Close your eyes

  Based on estimated height and a terminal velocity of 53 meters per second, calculate how much time you have left

  Call your mom

  Count backwards from 100

  pray

  scream

  hum

What Now?

 The judge is faced with a sentencing decision that is likely to please no one.  The pundits are pointing out that a first time conviction for a non-violent crime of the type Trump has committed would not normally send the miscreant to a prison.  Still, some kind of penalty seems called for.

Depending on the election outcome,  how about barred and locked doors and windows for the White House?  Calls should be monitored and limited (no long distance).  Twenty minutes daily exercise in the Rose Garden.

House arrest is perhaps not a perfect solution, but it would offer something for everyone.