How in the Hell Do the Democrats Recover from Joe Biden's Debate?

What an absolutely embarrassing moment for the White House after President Joe Biden's historic debate with former President Donald Trump on CNN last night. You have to be kidding me. This is what we got after more than a week's worth of preparation with the president at Camp David? 

He stumbled, fumbled and bumbled all the way through it, barely uttering a single coherent sentence. "Where's Joe Biden?" could have been the theme of the evening. We can't even be sure that he knew where he was.

And of course, the commentary afterward by none other than CNN itself, was rather shocking. Well, that's because the commentators were being honest. At the same time, how on Earth could they have spun the performance as anything other than it was?

An utter disaster.

When you've got CNN struggling to understand what they just witnessed, that has to be something that causes great alarm for anyone. These are people who would otherwise be in the bag for Joe Biden no matter what. They are just now finally figuring it out that Joe Biden's somewhere in Lala Land? 

And they weren't pulling any punches either. "The campaign is over," and "Joe's got to go," were said several times by panel members. "He can't be the president," and "he is incapable of finishing out a second term," were other utterances. 

Beyond that, did anyone see Jill Biden interacting with Joe Biden after the debate in the post-debate rally they held? It was like she was speaking to a toddler who just successfully poopied in the toilet for the first time.

"Good job, Joe. You answered all the questions and knew all the answers!" Jill Biden cheered, mic in hand, smiling from ear to ear. Granted, that may be cringeworthy in any setting. But when you are saying this to the supposed leader of the free world?

That's terrifying.

What do you think the conversations are that Putin is having right now? Or the Ayatollah? Kim Jong-Un? Xi Ping?

It's anyone's guess where the Democrats go from here. It's clear they can't win the election. We're in Nixon territory, folks, when all support is gone. Even his staunchest supporters are scratching their heads in an "Oh shit" moment where they are caught between a rock and a hard place.

"We can't have Donald Trump in the White House, but...Jesus Christ!"

Even Kamala Harris when she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper, who had surprisingly stinging questions for her about the performance, seemed visibly shaken by the whole thing. If Kamala Harris were a man, her Adam's apple would have been bobbing like a sideways pendulum on a clock measuring time in milliseconds.

Everyone was expecting a stellar performance. Donald Trump was supposed to be scared out of his wits. Some suggested we'd see a Joe Biden similar to the amped up one we saw during his final State of the Union address. We were supposed to get a beautifully constructed omelet and what we got was a splatter of burnt scrambled eggs.

It leaves the Democrats in a very serious dilemma here. Who do they pick in his stead? Can they even expect that helps? Can they pull the 25th Amendment and install Kamala Harris and put her out there in September on the debate stage with Trump? Will that even do any good?

It seems to be me it's too little too late. And frankly, with all that's happened not just last night, but over the past going on four years, how much trust can anyone, including the Democrats themselves, have in the party to get it right no matter what they decide?

Haven't they lied over and over and over again to the American people about the president's condition? Haven't they tried to gloss it over? To what end? To win an election? What about the damn country? What about the American people? What about the importance of democracy? How in the world can any of those things be protected if the sitting president isn't even capable of finding his way off a stage?

Beyond that, when it is determined that enemy missiles are headed our way—who the hell is told about that and who the hell decides what to do about it? 

Because if anything is clear as a bell now, it's not Joe Biden on the other end of that call. And if that's not on the mind of anyone right now, especially after last night's debate performance? It sure in hell ought to be.

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© 2024 Jim Bauer

Do You Think Grandpa's In There?

It has been something that's bothered me since the day of my grandfather's funeral. Did they actually bury him?

While it is purely conspiratorial and I have zero proof, my strong suspicion is that they simply conducted the funeral, took the body back to the funeral home and put him in the cooker. Or maybe he wasn't even at the funeral. Maybe they cooked him beforehand. 

We can't know. It was a closed casket.

But it was the way we were hurried away that made me quite suspicious of the whole thing. Is that normal? Do mourners usually get rushed away from the burial site like that? Did they even put the coffin in the vault or is that just as empty as I think the coffin might have been?

You see, we never even saw the casket lowered. The entire funeral was done on site at the Veteran's cemetery in Milwaukee.

I mean, are there sometimes back room deals made between funeral homes and certain coordinators of the VA? "Just make it look good, and we'll slip you a few bucks so we can resell the coffin a few times." Here we had a 93-year-old man who died of natural causes, who was in a closed casket. Who's ever going to try to dig him up?

I remember my grandfather always joked about what we did with him after he passed on. "Bury me in a burlap sack for all I care," he would say and laugh heartily. 

We at least got him in a slight step up. It wasn't a bad coffin, but it also wasn't a particularly pretty one. I think it cost somewhere around $1500, but I may be off on that. But it was essentially a "universal" casket that could be used to buried in or cremated in.

I tried to direct my aunts to go for something nicer. "It's grandpa after all," I told them. But they picked the one that could be used for both. At first everything looked beautiful. The casket was there before the services started with the American flag draped over it. 

The color guard came to fold it and that's when the reality hit. My uncle leaned over to his sisters and quipped, "I think we screwed up on the coffin." 

Granted. Our family isn't all that serious a bunch. We had a good laugh about it, probably thinking back to grandpa's old joke. "You wished. We delivered, old man." At least it was a respectable and honorable sendoff with the gun salute and the pastor's words.

Grandpa was a World War II veteran.

But it was when it was done when the alarm bells were initiated for me. I didn't think of it right away. But over time it has become something I have thought often about. What did they actually do with grandpa?

There were groups paying their final respects before heading off. Again, there was no casket lowering. Finally, one of the directors or whoever he was began waving people off. "Not to be rude and rush anyone off, but we have another funeral right behind this one and we need to clear this space for the next one rather soon."

The Hearse grandpa came to the site in sat waiting. Presumably to transport the casket to the burial vault. 

Or back to the funeral home.

It's not like something like this is unheard of. Sometimes there are bad players in this world who simply see the money and don't care about the loved one. Sometimes business is just that. Business. "Who's going to know?" they might say. "Does it really matter where the body goes?"

At the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter. Unless you happen to be very religious. And even though I'm not that guy, even I think it does matter a little bit. It's my grandpa, after all. I loved him and respected him, and he was a powerful and influential force on my life and who I became.

At the same time, knowing the man that grandpa was, even if they did toss him into the cooker and run off to take the casket back and sell it to another mourning family, I think my grandpa would have appreciated the comedy of that—if any comedy can exist for something like that.

He viewed death as just a part of life. He saw the body as just a shell of the person. The person is what's alive, not dead.

I have no idea if grandpa's in that grave. Maybe they at least put his ashes in there? But what I do know is that wherever grandpa is in the great beyond, he still lives on in my heart. And no one can take that away from me. 

Now, where my heart winds up when I leave this world may be another question. And I guess whatever anyone decides to do with it when I'm gone won't really matter in the end either.

© 2024 Jim Bauer