Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

President Joe Biden looked old and disoriented during Thursday’s CNN debate with Donald Trump. He spoke in a quiet and hoarse voice, made some incoherent answers, and often stumbled over his own words.

It was a lackluster performance that played directly into Republican depictions of the 81-year-old president – the oldest president in American history — as too old and frail to serve another four years in office. Trump said as much during the debate.

“He’s not equipped to be president,” Trump said. “You know it and I know it.”

The debate was a highly personal affair between two men who made little effort during their nearly two hours on stage to contain their disdain for one another.

Biden called Donald Trump a “loser,” and a “whiner” with the “morals of an alley cat.” Trump accused Biden of turning the United States into a “third-world nation” and of being the “worst president in history by far, and everybody knows it.”

Trump turned in a spirited performance, hammering Biden on inflation and the immigration crisis under his watch. But Biden’s struggles seemed to be the major takeaway for CNN’s post-debate panel, which reported that senior Democrats are in an “aggressive panic” over their party leader’s apparent frailty.

Speaking about improvements he’s claiming at the border, Biden at one point seemed lost, saying: “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on, the total initiative relative what we’re going to do with more border patrol and more asylum officers.”

“I don’t really know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump replied. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

At another point, Biden got visibly lost when talking about his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to wipe out the debt, saying he wanted to make sure “that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with, with, with the Covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we had to do with, look, we finally beat Medicare.”

“Well, he’s right,” Trump said, “he did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”

Trump just released a brutal 95 second ad of Joe Biden's debate lowlights: pic.twitter.com/enusIKHhwN

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 28, 2024

He stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.

The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.

And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.

“Biden is toast — calling it now,” said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.

In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss the matter, called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”

“Not good,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) wrote.

Sales of previously owned homes are sitting at a 30-year low and didn’t move much in May as prices hit a new record and mortgage rates remain high.

So-called existing home sales in May were essentially flat, down 0.7% from April to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.11 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. Sales fell 2.8% from May of last year …

The median price of an existing home sold in May was $419,300, a record-high price in the Realtors’ recording and up 5.8% year over year. The gain was the strongest since October 2022. Prices gained in all regions.

The Realtors noted in a release that the mortgage payment for a typical home today is more than double what it was five years ago.

It’s almost as though the Biden Recession, constrained supply (a great deal from blue locale regulation that prevent housing from being built), and high interest rates mean that no one wants to buy or sell.

According to a new report, the average renter can’t afford a typical U.S. apartment.

According to Redfin, the typical U.S. renter household earns about $54,712 per year, which is 17.3% less than the $66,120 needed to afford the median-priced apartment at $1,653 per month. This means that 61% of renters can’t afford their housing without significant financial stress.

Snip.

Inflation, which has surged during Biden’s presidency, certainly exacerbates this issue. Rising costs for essentials like food, gas, and utilities leave renters with even less disposable income to cover their housing costs. Despite promises to address affordability and economic inequality, the Biden administration has doubled down with claims that inflation is going down and that wage growth has outpaced it — which isn’t true. Biden has made it more difficult for Americans to achieve financial stability.

(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

• Nike
• Google
• Discord (170)
• CitiGroup (20,000)
• Twitch, owned by Amazon (500)
• BlackRock (600)
• Rent the Runway
• Unity (1,800, 25% of the company)
• eBay (1,000)
• Microsoft (1,900, plus more from Xbox)
• Salesforce (700)
• Flexport (1,400, 15% of the company)
• iRobot (350)
• UPS (12,000)
• PayPal (2,500, 9% of the company)
• Okta (400, 7% of the company)
• Snap (19% of the company)
• Estée Lauder (3,100)
• DocuSign (6% of the company)
• Zoom (150)
• Paramount (800)
• Morgan Stanley
• Cisco (4,000, 5% of the company)
• Expedia Group (1,500, 8% of the company)
• Sony (900)
• Bumble (350, 30% of the company)
• Electronic Arts (670 workers, 5% of the company)
• IBM
• Stellantis (400)
• Amazon
• Apple (600)
• Tesla (10% of the company)
• Take Two Interactive (5% of the company)
• Peloton (400, 15% of the company)
• Indeed (1,000)
• Walmart
• Under Armor
• Pixar (part of Disney) (175 people, 14% of the company, who must have been thrilled to get a pink slip and then see unwoke Inside Out 2 go on to be Disney’s biggest movie of the year)
• Lucid Motors (400)
• Walgreens

Some of these have been previously announced.

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling overturning the 1984 Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council case, striking down a previous decision that granted federal agencies immensely broad power to draw up regulations without congressional approval.

The Court ruled in both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce — two nearly identical cases — that regulatory agencies will no longer be able to fill in the blanks of vague legislation in 6-2 and 6-3 decisions, respectively. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the first case because she sat on the federal appeals court that had previously heard the case.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it is not the place of agencies to clarify ambiguous legislation.

“Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities,” he wrote. “Courts do. The Framers, as noted, anticipated that courts would often confront statutory ambiguities and expected that courts would resolve them by exercising independent legal judgment.”

Writing a concurrence, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that the concept of Chevron deference “undermines” many of the principles on which the United States was founded.

“It precludes courts from exercising the judicial power vested in them by Article III to say what the law is,” he wrote. “It forces judges to abandon the best reading of the law in favor of views of those presently holding the reins of the Executive Branch. It requires judges to change, and change again, their interpretations of the law as and when the government demands.”

This is a huge blow to the unchecked administrative state and a key decision in helping reign in untrammeled executive regulatory power.

Federal judges in Missouri and Kansas issued separate rulings on June 24 blocking key sections of the Biden administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which is designed to lower student loan payments and forgive debts.

A new version of the program that would reduce payments and shorten maximum repayment periods was set to take effect in July.

U.S. District Judge Michael Crabtree for the District of Kansas ruled that the Republican states were likely to succeed in their claim that the department lacked explicit congressional authority to enact this portion of the program.

“Defendants have offered colorable, plausible interpretations of the Higher Education Act that could authorize the SAVE Plan, but those interpretations fall short of clear congressional authorization,” Judge Crabtree, who was appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote on Monday.

However, he declined to block the program entirely, expressing concerns about the practicality of reversing parts of the plan that had already been implemented. He also said that Republicans’ delay in filing their lawsuits undermined their arguments that there was an immediate need to halt the entire program.

In a separate decision on the same day, U.S. District Judge Judge John Ross for the Eastern District of Missouri, also a President Obama appointee, blocked the department from forgiving “any further loan[s]” under SAVE until he decides the full case. His order said that such actions would likely strip state loan operators of revenue.

Judge Ross also suggested that the SAVE program might have exceeded the authority of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and that Missouri would likely be harmed by the program.

Just imagine if a Republican judge got a chance to rule on it…

Not only are the massive crowds a problem, but this year the Saudi city is under an excessive heat warning, with highs at times having reached between 110 and 115°F during the day, and 100°F even at night. This has resulted in what could be a record amount of heat injuries and deaths by the pilgrimage season’s end. On Monday the Saudi weather service recorded a temperature of 125 degrees Fahrenheit at Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

Many of the dead were “unauthorized pilgrims” who hadn’t paid their Hajj fee. “This group was more vulnerable to the heat because, without official permits, they could not access air-conditioned spaces provided by Saudi authorities for the 1.8 million authorized pilgrims to cool down after hours of walking and praying outside.”

Dog got skills..🐕🐾🛹🤯 pic.twitter.com/4r7vGzeQkh

— 𝕐o̴g̴ (@Yoda4ever) June 26, 2024

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)