Monthly Archives: July 2024

Cognitive Fitness Tests for Presidents

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The Wall Street Journal spent a lot of electrons on the utility of cognitive tests for Presidents and other government officials. The TL;DR version is that cognitive tests are only initial screens for cognitive ability; they cannot diagnose, only point at areas for more in depth examination.

That’s fine. Then don’t stop there for government officials as critical to our nation’s safety as Presidents and Vice Presidents, and House and Senate leadership and Supreme Court Justices.

Do the cognitive testing as a matter of course, and then do the follow-up, in depth, examinations also as a matter of course.

The importance of such in depth examinations is clearly illustrated by the obvious mental decline in our current President. Has his decline progressed to the point that he’s no longer capable in that office? We the People need to know, and sooner is better. And we need to know for future elections to high office.

A Major Defense Contractor…

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…and powerful defense lobbyist…skates?

Boeing, whose pair of 737 MAX software-related crashes and a range of aircraft manufacture/assembly failures have cost or endangered lives, is being allowed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the US.

In truth, many of the assembly failures being laid off on Boeing in the rush of negative publicity are maintenance failures by the airline companies that own the aircraft involved. And, the manufacture/assembly failures are not factors (at least officially) in the plea agreement in progress—that’s limited to the MAX software-related crashes.

It’s also the case that the second MAX crash was more pilot error than it was a Boeing failure, though Boeing’s handling of the software failure involved in both MAX failures figured in the pilot screwup.

Those notwithstanding though, the plea—offered by the government, not by Boeing—seems a wrist slap.

[P]rosecutors have asked the company to pay a second $244 million criminal fine and spend $455 million over the next three years to improve its compliance and safety programs. Boeing also must hire an independent monitor for three years to oversee those improvements.

On the other hand,

The deal also does not cover any current or former Boeing officials, only the corporation.

The wrist slap in the present case compares to a 2021 “settlement” between Boeing and the government over the same MAX software question in which Boeing was fined a similar $243.6 million and paid an additional $2.5 billion to settle the case.

This, too:

Pleading guilty creates business challenges for Boeing. Companies with felony convictions can be suspended or barred as defense contractors. Boeing is expected to seek a waiver from that consequence. The company was awarded Defense Department contracts last year valued at $22.8 billion, according to federal data.

Getting the whole case boiled down to a single felony count, combined with the small fine and the pro forma business about compliance and being monitored, make it much easier for Boeing to get the waiver. The magnitude of the just signed defense contracts—who would the government get to replace Boeing on the tasks contracted?—also give Boeing leverage in getting the waiver.

A Question for Us Voters

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Stipulate for the moment that, at the DNC convention next month, enough delegates vote their consciences, as Party rules require, to nominate a Presidential candidate other than Joe Biden.

Will Biden then go into court and sue the Party’s/convention’s decision? If the convention’s alternative candidate is not Kamala Harris, will Party’s Farther Left go into court and sue over discrimination?

Suing in court is, after all, what Progressive-Democrats and the Left generally do when they don’t get their way.

My Renewed Suggestion

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Former President and current Republican putative nominee for President Donald Trump has challenged Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden to a rematch debate. Trump’s challenge flips the boxing world’s rematch challenge protocol on its head: usually it’s the match loser who challenges the winner to a rematch; this time it’s the debate winner who’s challenging the debate loser to a rematch. This time, too, a cage match: no holds barred.

Biden should take him up on the offer, and sooner would be better. It would be Biden’s chance to prove that his prior debate performance was a fluke. That sort of thing happens in boxing, too: see the Ingemar Johansson-Floyd Patterson series of matches, where Patterson sleepwalked into a Johansson right hand, and then won both rematches, almost in walkovers. So it could be with Biden, with an already scheduled (re)match in September.

The parallels are plain, too. Johanssen was a bit of a hedonist and trained accordingly. Trump doesn’t explicitly prepare for his debates; he relies on his experience as he trots around the countryside in his private jet, moving along to this or that campaign rally. Patterson, on the other hand, trained in monk-like ascetism and isolation. Biden trained in similar isolation, including a week in retreat preparing for his June debate.

Thus my renewed suggestion for Trump. If Biden declines the challenge for a nearby, wide open debate, then Trump should debate an empty chair, or maybe an empty barstool. This time, though, instead of the round arena of a cage match, do it in the round arena of a townhall. Two barstools in the center, one occupied by Trump—or not, as he gets up and strolls around the stage addressing all of the crowd—and one occupied by Biden, who won’t get off his stool, if he shows up at all.

Fact is, it wouldn’t be much different than the CNN debate last month, where Trump debated a nearly empty podium. And one more suggestion: don’t interrupt. Let Biden’s rambling answers speak for themselves, while Trump then demonstrates his own memory and acumen by picking apart Biden’s rambles point by point with facts and specific achievements in his rebuttals. The no interruptions bit would be the hard part, and the challenge, for Trump.

It’s a win-win proffer: Trump wins the rematch, or not, and us American voters win by observing empirically the quality of Biden’s performance.

Joe Biden vs Lyndon Johnson

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There are some comparisons being made between Biden’s desired-by-many decision to quit his campaign for reelection and Lyndon Johnson’s actual decision to not run for reelection.

It’s a silly comparison. Here are a couple of reasons for that:

Johnson made his decision public in February of that year’s Presidential campaign, while even were Biden to so decide tomorrow, it’s July and only a few weeks before his Party’s convention.

Johnson, aside from his role in the by then generally unpopular Vietnam War, had a record on which the replacement Democratic candidate could run. Biden does not. His record is one of border erasure; international kowtowing and retreat; and domestic economic inflation, overregulation, and destruction.

The 1968 convention was pretty chaotic inside the building, but that was because there were a number of actually viable candidates in the contest.

The 2024 convention also would be chaotic, were the delegates on their own consciences to vote down Biden. That, though, would be because Party, as Leo Terrell has said on more than one occasion, practices identity politics and so would be stuck with Progressive-Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris, who is not viable as a Presidential candidate. Were Party to try to nominate someone other than her, the racist and sexist hue and cry would be deafening. The contest between those factions—viable candidate(s) vs Harris—would be bloody, and the damage done to Party would last for years.

The only serious comparison between the two is a potentially dangerous environment for a convention being held in Chicago. The Democratic Party’s 1968 convention was marred by widespread violent riots. And in response to the rioters, who among us recalls Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Richard J Daley’s “shoot to kill” order?

Pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel terrorist supporters have already promised violent “demonstrations” for the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Chicago-hosted convention, now in a city with a reduced police capability and a reduced zeal for prosecution.

The two decisions would have a couple of contrasts but not many similarities. In the main, there isn’t any comparison.