Biden should gracefully resign from office. His final act of public service would be passing the torch to America's first female president. Kamala Harris would have the power of incumbency, if even briefly.

Continuing with empty office buildings downtown on top of the sweetest transportation infrastructure in the city (Amtrak! Light rail! Buses! Monorail!) should be a crime, hard disagree with the poo-pooing of creating housing downtown. And data is trickling in showing MHA as a big ol’ wet blanket for development, why the sudden love for it. I don’t get why urbanists don’t want…urban housing.

I'm still with Joe. He's such a decent and honorable man.

Phoebe @3 on Joe Biden: "He's such a decent and honorable man."

The same could be said of Jimmy Carter.

@3 "decent and honorable"

the high road is littered with the bodies of Democrats

@1 yeah. we all know he's going to end up dropping out anyway. so stop bullshitting people. stop wasting time. have the awesome legacy of passing the torch to a new generation, and make history while doing it.

I can't believe the hubris of this geezer, honestly. When he gets another "cold" during the next debate, or has a physical or verbal misstep in late october, he, and all of us, are fucked.

he already announced he has stopped scheduling events past 8pm. first of all, why would you announce that. secondly, the president of the united states is basically admitting he can't function at certain times of the day.

that's a bit problematic

@6 We all know what now? How precisely do you know he's going to drop out?

I agree with @7. We don't know if he'll drop out or not. The only thing we know for certain is that he's a fucking asshole.

Sorry Phoebe. As recently as a few months ago I'd agreed with your statement there wholeheartedly. But a decent and honorable man wouldn't have us in this predicament. This situation was entirely and easily avoidable and it's on him for not avoiding it. He sucks.

Joe had all the information he needed to know he should drop out last year when it would have actually made sense to do so. No doubt he knew as much when he promised to be a one-term president in 2020. I wish someone could have reasoned with him when they had the chance and for all I know people tried, but if he’s still in the race right now he’s not going anywhere and endlessly carrying on about it isn't helping.

JFC 82 degrees is not "still too hot". that's about a perfect Seattle summer temp.

@10 Biden never promised to be a one-term president in 2020. He said he would be a transition president, but didn't say whether that transition was in one term or two.

But I agree with your conclusion. Biden wasn't my first choice in 2020, or even my fifth choice. But he was the only option to stop another Trump term, so there we were. We're in exactly the same spot now.

@2: Yeah, the Stranger is all “housing crisis!!!” until someone actually wants to do something about it, at which point the Stranger’s myriad rigid ideological litmus tests kick in. Here, the Stranger understands their use of “housing crisis!!!” to force higher densities upon their hated, hated SFH neighborhoods will be threatened if actual housing really gets built where there’s already mass transportation to support it. So the Stranger, which always loudly supports MUCH higher density in places where residents don’t want it, here sniffs at slightly higher density in the very place it makes the most sense.

The Stranger’s willingness to leave actual human beings with fewer housing options just shows how fake the Stranger’s loud advocacies for housing, livability, density, and sustainability really are.

@13 Correct. the point is to punish the bad people, not solve anything. Otherwise, they would also be pressing for building on the huge surface lots, and bigger incentives/penalties for abandoned properties in these developed zones. It's easier and cheaper to build out areas already set with transit corridors than play chicken and egg in SFH zones.

Also, the Hannah art collective is on fire conflating correlation and causation regarding crime stats. You could look at those numbers and also conclude that the "vice crimes" on drugs, etc... took the folks who would have committed the other crimes off the streets before they could commit them. Stats are hilarious when handled by those who don't understand them.

Is it 2016 yet?

Is ir 1968 yet?

Sure feels like it.

Biden has totally destroyed his legacy – what he'll be known for now is digging in his heels, clinging to power, gaslighting the entire country with insane denials, and handing tje country to Donald Trump.

"crime rates fell last year in Washington"

That is good but It has never stopped conservatives from scaring foggies by claiming there is rampant insecurity and turning every single crime into a campaign talking point

I see the Pomeranians are out. At least no one is talking about the Israel/Hamas war.

@18 Who wants to talk or even think about that misery being done in our name anymore? We'd be better off if Honest and Honorable Joe had been permanently out when he dropped out of the 1988 Presidential race after being exposed as a serial liar and plagiarist who's fabricated stories about himself his whole life – instead he's been able to continue warmongering & supporting and financing the massive slaughter of civilians in Gaza.

@3
Decent and honorable?
The last truly decent and honorable person we’ve had as president was Jimmy Carter. He was also the most intelligent.

@17
Crime stats look good when you have prosecutors who don’t prosecute.
There was an incident where I lived two years ago where 4 teens were involved in a shooting. 2 were arrested. Only one was charged despite 2 people having been shot, a vehicle being stolen and wrecked. As an added touch,
there was also several thousand in property damages.
The letter I received from the KC Prosecutor explained how they prefer to take a “rehabilitative and educational approach to youth offenders.”
From what we regularly see here in The Stranger, it isn’t working

@18: Playing Imaginary Kingmaker on Slog is ‘way more fun than pretending one has both actual useful knowledge of how to solve an intractable conflict half a world away, and the moral standing to demand imposition of said solution. Also, in the latter case, the pretense gets revealed as silly fiction a whole lot faster.

@21 Indeed, one can scarce imagine the hubris required for someone to say "I think it is bad we support this" (without a perfect moral standing, if you can imagine!) looking at God knows how many tens of thousands of dead with our country's sole response being unlimited money and weapons for Israel.

@22: Then I suggest the persons who want to change the situation you describe should stop with their constant moral posturing, and start organizing, so as to elect to Congress persons who agree with them.

If, on the other hand, they’re fine with being what another commenter here wonderfully calls “dreary moral scolds,” then they can just carry on as they have been. (And they will continue obtaining the same result, the one they call intolerable.)

@18 you just had to poke the bear (that’s okay, I still love ya).

20 crime stats are counted completely independently of prosecution rates

@18 "At least no one is talking about the Israel/Hamas war."

Well, it is not because media stopped covering the massacre of Palestinian civilians that it has stopped:

Schools ‘bombed-out’ in latest Gaza escalation, says UNRWA chief

On Tuesday, at least 25 people were killed after an Israeli strike near a school building sheltering displaced Gazans in eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authorities.
Tweet URL

On Saturday, another strike left at least 16 dead at an UNRWA school in Nuseirat, central Gaza, followed a day later by a hit on a school in Gaza City that was reportedly sheltering hundreds of people.

Further Israeli strikes on Monday were reported on or near an UNRWA school in Nuseirat, UNRWA Director of Communications Juliette Touma told UN News.
“This is becoming commonplace; only in the past four days we've seen four schools come under attack,” she said. Every time a school is hit “dozens of people pay the price.”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1151921

@21 "an intractable conflict"

Well, if you ignore the fundamental colonization/land theft/genocide nature of the conflict, you are bound to find it in"intractable"

@20 crime rates depends on many factors separate from the approach to youth crimes

@23 I don't think this other commenter had in mind your enthusiastic support for the murder of 10,000's of civilians including many children when mentioning “dreary moral scolds,”

Biden has a poor debate showing and everyone and their dog is suddenly screaming for him to bow out of the election, but I don't hear so much as a peep from anyone suggesting his opponent, a convicted felon and sexual predator, not to mention a verifiable cheat who was caught uttering so many lies during the same debate that the fact-checkers could barely keep up, should do the same.

@26 I guess the Arabs errr Palestinians shouldn't have stolen/colonized Judea (e.g. the Jewish homeland).

“Is our children learning?” George Dubya. Oh for the good old days when a mangled sentence by a sitting President was only mild amusement with the evening news.
Is we panicking? Bow wow, yes.

"And now I want to hand it over to the President of Ukraine... ladies and gentlemen, President Putin." –Biden just now at the NATO summit during his "crucial week". It's over.

It's about time the Dems put to rest the dopey "end of Democracy" scare tactic they don't even believe, and start thinking, as difficult as it's going to be, about how to work with President Trump for the good of the country. I'd point to things like the USMCA – flatter Trump's ego and it's possible to get good, bipartisan legislation done. And that's just how it's going to have to be.

'67% of Americans
Say Biden*
Should
Drop
Out'
-tS

meanwhile 34%
of Americans
Didn’t recog-
nize the
name

silly old Joe

gotta Beat eltrumpfster

NO Matter WHAT

& If he fucking
DOESN’T?

Well
he Tried
Like Hell!!!

“well, we
Too gave it
'our best shot!'”

--‘our’ “D”NC LLC lol

Perhaps there Might
be future Employment
for a former ‘d’nc employee
in eltrumpfster’s maladministration

&, $omehow,
the ‘center’
continues
to Hold

meanwhile
the Abyss
Nears

did
those
fucking
“Republicans”
Drug poor ol’ Joe?
did a fucking MAGAt
slip ole Joe* a Mickey?

*how could he Possibly
not have been more
Ready for that thing

@32 If Trump is elected, it's the end of democracy. It's not a scare tactic, it's Trump's plan. He's the one who argued before the Supreme Court that he should have immunity to have Seal Team Six assassinate his opponents. And they agreed with him.

and ole Joe
sits on his
fucking
Hands

@29
ask & ye
shall Receive:

OPINION:

Donald Trump
Is Unfit To
Lead

--nyt Editorial Board

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html?searchResultPosition=2

one reader’s comment

“Is Trump really the problem, or is it the American people, who seem poised to reelect him despite all he's said and done?

A large segment of our country, having marinated in the offerings of the conservative media ecosystem for decades, seem perfectly fine with abandoning democracy or any sense of fair play and switching to a right wing authoritarian system.

Their deep hatred of all the boogeymen conservative media have conjured overrides all else with them. They are what I term "the spite vote."

Their desire to inflict harm on all the groups they've been conditioned to hate surpasses every other consideration.

The American people are the real problem.”
--@Joe Bastrimovich; National Park, NJ

82 Replies 2403 Recommended

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html

we don’t Teach
Civics, Home Economics
Et cetera to Our Own Detriment

couple Reversing that with
Two Years of MANDATORY
Service to the USofA and
no, NOT as ‘Christian’
Soldiers

and you just
Might HAVE a
Decent non-shit-
hole fucking Country

@33 Case in point. Despite it being obviously a cynical Dem tactic, people really, seriously believe this hysterical garbage!

@36

I'm a bit of
a Believer
myself:

'It'll be
a Bloodless
Coup, if only
the Left'll lay
down their Arms'

--@MAGAt Central
aka eltrumpfster's
Special, Militia

kristofarian dear, I know this goes against the hysteria, but it's entirely possible to wish that President Biden drop out of the race, but still vote for him because the alternative is so stupid.

But I suppose that's just my "privilege" talking, being a condescending boomer and all.....

@36, This is approaching raindrop levels of desperation for engagement. All bait, no substance.

but you
Ain't a Boomer*
Mrs. Vel-DuRay & Hell
Yes! -- for those in Swing
States, and just like Hillary
says, where Else ya gonna Go?

but good ole sleepy
Joe's Turning Off
the Electorate

coupled with
BILLION$ $pent
by the rich and corps
keeping Home the Vote

(and eliminating
vote-by-mail
Wherever
Possible).

*pretty sure
you're an
Xer?

please Forgive
me if I'm
Wrong

@36 People believe that Trump will do it because Trump said he would do it. Yes, it’s garbage, but it’s the garbage that fell out of Trump’s mouth.

If you don’t like Trump being accurately quoted, maybe you need to rethink your support of him?

@38

the higher the hair
the Closer to God
& you'll Always
Remain atop
My Pedestal
Catalina

there's more Truth in
one of your Farts than
in 99/100ths of this com-
mentariat probably mine included

and so it goes . . .

@41 Trump of course never "said he would do it", and your interpretation of a lawyer's court argument hair-splitting about how far presidential immunity from prosecution extends to "and now this means Trump said he can End Democracy" is about as good of a reading as you thinking I support Trump.

After this disastrous press conference, CNN reports, based on discussions with "more than a dozen members of Congress, operatives and multiple people in touch with both Obama and Pelosi", that many say the "end for Biden’s candidacy feels clear and at this point it’s just a matter of how it plays out" – so people who claim to believe Trump is going to somehow End Democracy would probably start walking to Canada now – but I have a funny feeling they're going to stick it out.

@43 So Trump did or did not say he’d be a dictator? Regardless of for how long, did he say that?

Did or did not Trump say that Article 2 gives him the right to do whatever he wants?

nyt:
one reader’s comment on
Mara Gay’s July 9th opinion piece

The Talented Democrats Who
Aren’t Running for President

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/opinion/democrats-not-running-president.html

the comment:

As a fierce supporter of President Biden for years, I am saddened by the level of denial by those who say he’s fine. He is not, as the debate, public events and recent statements have shown.

His virulent defiance and unwillingness to even discuss concerns about his health, as the most powerful person in the world, or provide any meaningful explanation for his change in behavior, makes his assertions unsustainable.

I don’t know what happened to Uncle Joe, but we know that leading this country, especially with all of the obstructionism from Republicans and the Supreme Court, ages people by decades.

Up until the last weekend I would have followed Joe into a fire, I believe in his core goals so strongly.

But he is now coming off like an old man shaking his fists and yelling, “Get off my lawn.”

I don’t think it’s volitional, I think that something is effecting his judgement.

It’s not about rallying Democrats, it’s about energizing disaffected younger voters, independents and undecideds. If they don’t vote, those lower on the ticket may not get elected either.

With the disastrous decisions by the Supreme Court, we must control the Congress and the White House.

This is bigger than one man’s desire, this is an election which can destroy democracy in the US.

--@Moderate voter; Washington State

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/opinion/democrats-not-running-president.html#commentsContainer

@30
1) whatever happened long ago is hardly justification for what's happening today to people who have owned the land for many generations
2) the Assyrians and Romans conquered Judea and killed off/deported much of the population. Muslims took control much later (15th century)
3) Many Jews and Palestinian Arabs are closely related. They are issued from the same ancestors who lived in the region since prehistoric time
https://www.science.org/content/article/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry

@32 - yes, we do fucking believe it. Remember the last time he lost an election, and staged a little Proud Boy-Beer Belly Putsch? Something about hanging Mike Pence for not playing along? Yes, the motherfucker would try to end democracy. It's a shame he was not put up against a wall after J6.

@47: Tell us about the date(s)/event(s) which made Palestinian Arabs the One And Only True Owners of this particular strip of land. Was it during the Ottoman Empire? Or maybe after the British Empire took this land from the Ottoman Empire?

After the British Mandate ended, the UN’s plan was violently rejected by some Palestinian Arabs, who elected to decide it by war — and lost. That latter result is where the situation remains today.

You need a history lesson

https://youtu.be/Ui9hAYGi4k8?feature=shared

Garb@50: Nobody watches your YouTube videos.

@49 Given Palestinians owned the land from 100's to 1000's of years, nothing can justify the UN giving land away to recent Jew immigrants. Palestinian Arabs always opposed immigration of Jews to Palestine but the colonial power, the British, favored the establishment of a Jewish state. Armed Arab opposition to settler colonialism started in 1922 and was crushed by the British military and Zionist militias in 1939. After which Zionists waged terrorists attacks on the British to drive them out while Arabs-versus Jews violence became common place.

Arabs refused the terms of the 1948 UN partition because Jews were ~8% of pop. at time of the Balfour declaration, then 35% of population in 1948 thanks to immigration. Yet Jews were given 55% of the land to form a Jewish state by the UN. Palestinian Arabs were violently driven off their land during the 1948 Nakba (ethnic cleansing) during and after a generalized conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jew Settlers..

"During the foundational events of the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine's predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people,[6] were expelled from their homes or made to flee through various violent means, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of the State of Israel, by its military. Dozens of massacres targeted Palestinian Arabs and over 500 Arab-majority towns, villages, and urban neighborhoods were depopulated,[7] with many of these being either completely destroyed or repopulated by Jews and given new Hebrew names. By the end of the war, 78% of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

@51. Projection.

@45 I'm sorry you were so misled by the sensational reporting on the subject. Someone asked if he'd be a dictator, and he said no, except for using some presidential executive orders on day one for the border and drilling. Things any president can do. This is...not an actual confession of becoming a dictator, or have anything at all to do with democracy. Similarly, he talked about Article 2 giving him the right to fire a special counsel, which is legally debatable, but you'll also note he didn't do it. Not quite a Hitler there!

@48 I definitely recall him whining a little about the election results, and a crowd of protestors interrupting a legislative session for an afternoon before he told them to knock it off, but Democracy wasn't really at risk at any point there. You have my permission to relax.

@29 COMTE, @36 kristofarian, @38 Catalina Vel-DuRay, and @48 dvs99 : +4 for the WIN!!!!!
Jesus WEPT if the Orange Turd illegally takes over again! How many of us in the Deeply Divided Neofascist States of MAGA confusion will be seeking asylum in other countries?

@54 necrophiliac: And as usual, the Orange Turd already has you blindly marching in lock step.
What will you do when DJTs's RWNJ neofascist thugs come after you when the rest of us get wiped out?

Based on a discussion from a previous SLOG I know I'm older than Catalina Vel-DuRay.
I was born during the Boomer II cutoff year. If Catalina was born during the following year or later she would be a Gen Xer. Griz is just sayin'.

@53 C Dizzle (Garb Garblar?): Ignore him. Ol' teenieweenie's film reel fell off the spindle years ago.

As one of the last of the Boomer II's I want to make it plain: In 1980 I was only 16 and not yet eligible to vote.
Had I been able to cast a ballot I would have voted for Jimmy Carter's and VP Walter Mondale's re-election to what would have been their second term. In 1984 I voted for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro (who would have made U.S. history as the first woman VP). With Ronald Reagan's and then VP George H.W. Bush's abysmal track records I'm not the least bit sorry I did so (Hannah Brooks Olsen, Access Denied columnist for Real Change, I'm looking at you).

For the record, I am a Gen X person. I only said that about being a boomer because one of our fellow Sloggers accused me of being a condescending boomer who needed to check my privilege because their feelings were hurt by my opinion of this whole Biden "controversy" (which some commenters and writers have apparently taken as catechism)

@57 Catalina Vel-DuRay: I think you're among the most consistently spot on Gen Xers among us.
Don't ever stop.

For the record, I am a Boomer II (born between 1955 and 1964). The point I was trying to make was that a lot of Republican presidential terms prior to 1984 were beyond my doing or ability to control. Some SLOG commenters ( I don't mean you, though, Catalina) have made blanket statements unfairly blaming Boomers exclusively for the mess we're in now. That's not only generalization but inaccurate misinformation.
Although I couldn't legally vote until 1982, even at the tender age of 8 I knew to distrust Richard M. Nixon, then up for re-election in 1972. To my dismay, Nixon won by a landslide over Democratic candidate George McGovern. My only payback came two years later in fall of 1974 at the start of my fifth grade year.
Shellshocked classmates whose parents were staunch Nixon fans were wide-eyed on the first day of school. They wanted to know what I knew after Nixon's formal resignation from being the 37th President of the United States was publicly broadcast on August 9, 1974.
By 1984 I knew damned well not to cast a vote to re-elect Reagan and Poppy Bush.

@52: Jews have lived in what we here call Palestine since, well, Biblical times. At the time of the British Empire's armed seizure of the territory from the Ottoman Empire, why did the region have such a small population of Jews? From https://ismi.emory.edu/documents/Readings/Mandel,%20Neville%20J.%20Ottoman%20Policy.pdf :

'...April 28, 1882:
'The Ottoman Government informs all [Jews] wishing to immigrate into Turkey that they are not permitted to settle in Palestine. They may immigrate into the other provinces of [the Empire] and settle as they wish, provided only that they become Ottoman subjects and accept the obligation to fulfill the laws of the Empire.'

This foreign imperial policy, imposed to maintain the foreign imperial power's control over the territory, did not rely merely upon restriction of immigration, but upon the forced expulsion of persons already resident there:

'When the Mutasarrif sought clarification from Constantinople, he was ordered to expel all Jews who had settled in the Mutasarriflik within the last four months; only to permit Jewish pilgrims and businessmen to remain for a brief period; and to prevent other Jews (i.e. prospective settlers) from landing. Similar instructions were soon
received and enforced in the Vilayet of Sam (embracing the northern part of Palestine).'

The territory's foreign imperial masters then decided their anti-Jewish policy simply wasn't restrictive enough:

'After a further exchange with [local authority in] Jerusalem, it was decided to close Palestine to all Jewish business men, on the grounds that the Capitulations, which permitted Europeans to trade freely within the Ottoman Empire, applied exclusively to areas 'appropriate for trade'- the Council of State did not consider that Palestine was such an area. Henceforth, only Jewish pilgrims could enter Palestine. Their passports were to be properly visaed by Ottoman Consuls abroad; on arrival they were to hand over a deposit guaranteeing their departure, and they were to leave after thirty days.'

And, a few years later, the foreign imperial power decided even further restrictions upon Jews were necessary:

'... on October 19, Said Pasha went further and-presumably with Abdiilhamid's knowledge-closed the Empire to foreign Jews of all nationalities, on the grounds that they endangered public health.'

Restrictions upon entry of foreign Jews also proved insufficient, so the Ottoman Empire started openly discriminating against all Jews, both foreign-born and natives of the Empire, from buying land in the territory:

'In November 1892 the Mutasarrif of Jerusalem received orders from Constantinople, prohibiting the sale of miri land (state land requiring official permission for transfer) to all Jews. As most of the land in Palestine was miri, there were loud protests from Ottoman Jews and also from foreigners-both Jewish and Gentile-who had invested in land.'

Please pay careful attention to exactly who owned most of the land in the territory: the state. Not individual Arabs, not an Arab government, not any local government at all, and certainly not individual Arabs or Arab families, but a foreign imperial power (Ottoman).

So, by the time the British Empire forcefully seized this imperial territory from the Ottoman Empire, decades of ever-growing explicitly anti-Jewish legal discrimination, fully intended to preserve foreign imperial control over imperial territory, had severely restricted Jewish ownership of the land in Palestine.

It is this decades-long history of explicitly anti-Jewish restrictions, imposed by a foreign imperial power, with the intent to maintain foreign imperial control over the land, which you have cited as a local organic situation -- one which should persist more than a century later.

Your acceptance of explicitly religious bigotry, fully in support of foreign imperialism, has been noted.