Joe Biden should not have control of the Gold Codes and the Football

My thesis here is that Biden is mentally unfit to be Commander in Chief.

The 120 million dead from COVID-19 statement that he made is SO bad, SO bad.  IMO that means that he has no critical reasoning ability left at all.  None.  A truly sentient being would have known instinctively in the moment that it could not be true that 120 million Americans have died of the effects of the virus.  What happened?  Was the teleprompter text that wrong?  In any event a person in touch with reality would have known that was not true and would not have said it.  Joe also said on 25 February in South Carolina that 150 million Americans have been killed in gun violence since 2007.  (See link below)  So, pilgrims, in Joeworld 120 million have been killed by COVID-19 and 150 million by guns.  In Joeworld there are only 80 million of us folks left.

The CinC of the US armed forces (POTUS) has immediate control of the country's nuclear forces.  He/she can launch an attack with those forces without seeking congressional agreement.  We built this crazy system during the Cold War and made sure the Soviets understood it.  We did that to make MAD credible.  So far as I know, we have never taken the system down.

A military person follows the president around with a satchel full of attack options (the football) which the president would use to order an attack by the operating forces. In his wallet the president has a card generated daily with which to positively identify himself/herself on the phone.  The code would be transmitted to SECDEF for verification of identity.  SECDEF also has the daily Gold Code.  After verification the order goes to CJCS and then to the forces.  SECDEF does not have the authority with which to countermand the attack order.  The satchel and the the Gold Code card together are the keys to a door beyond which is Armageddon.  

The argument will be made that Trump as well should not be trusted with these abominable toys.  I am open to that argument.  BUT, Trumpy HAS NOT unleashed Armageddon in the last 3 1/2 years.  IMO that is an argument in his favor.

The MAD launch system controls require both sanity and mental competence.  Joe is not mentally competent.

One can only wonder at the evidence now presented by polling that the American people prefer this demented wreck of a man over Trump.  They dislike Trump that much?  Remarkable.  pl 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Codes

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-150-million-gun-deaths/

Comments

[james]

pat - i agree with you.... it seems americans are regularly given really bad choices to choose from politically...

[Eric Newhill]

From what I can see from reading methodology sections, the polls are suffering from the same flaws they did in 2016, only worse this year. Sampling errors are atrocious and skewed against Trump. Also, a significant proportion of Trump supporters are deliberately giving goofy answers to the pollsters, if they answer the call at all. It's more having fun sticking it to the elites. It's a thing that is discussed among Trump supporters across the country.

If Biden can't avoid debates with Trump, he's toast. If he does avoid debate, he's perceived as what he is; a debilitated old man that can't think and he's toast.

One of the Democrats strategies is to offer a calm four years after the chaos of the Trump years (chaos that the democrats themselves created). However, they are vulnerable to the likelihood of a senile President Biden dying or being removed under the 25A and then a transition of power to his VP. So Biden does not offer a promise of normalcy - and that is obvious to many and will increasingly be so.

[Barbara Ann]

Even if poor Joe was in a vegetative state, I truly believe that the TDS-afflicted masses would enthusiastically vote for him, if it means the ouster of the Orange Devil in the WH. To borrow a line used by Cpl. Musgrave in Ken Burns' VN series; their hatred is pure.

[ace]

It should be obvious now that you're not electing Joe, you're electing whomever ends up as his VP. It's even possible that the DNC will end the farce after the convention and before the election. Otherwise, nature will have to take its' course.

[CK]

Speaking only for myself, I get 3 to 5 calls a week from polling firms wanting "a few moments of my valuable time to answer some important questions about something." I am always polite, I ask how much they are paying me per minute for my valuable time. The answer is always a number identical to zero. Now it becomes a matter of what is nothing worth. The truth is always worth something so I see no reason to tell them whatever my truth might be. But my time is indeed worth something so in answering I am tithing my valuable time to them for nothing in return but upon which they will generate value to themselves.
It is indeed a quandary: tell them the my truth, sting them some bs for my own amusement, hang up?
I am merely human and am not consistent in my actions regarding these vermin. I am satisfied that the results of their polls are at least as accurate as the covid simulations.

[BillWade]

From The Villages in Florida (this place also has the highest STD rate in the state):

https://twitter.com/i/status/1276965068048158720

Bad language alert!!!!

[turcopolier]

james

Yes. It is so unlike Canada in that way. that was irony.

[jerseycityjoan]

This is a tough one. I think anybody in public life today goes around with a head full of figures and it's incredibly easy to say millions when you should have said thousands. His history of stammering doesn't help. But when does being "gaffe prone" slip into something else? I do not know. I have my reservations about him and am still shocked about he went from losing to winning all because of South Carolina.

For what it is worth his doctor gave him a clean bill of health in December. Did that exam include a mental status screening? I wish I knew.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/17/789039741/joe-biden-is-healthy-and-vigorous-according-to-doctor-s-report

It is clear to me that Trump has some kind of diagnosable mental condition. Will that stop me from voting for him due to immigration again? No.

We had several elderly candidates this time and we've had Trump with his compulsions. Should we require presidential candidates to undergo health exams that include mental health screenings? Should we have started doing that after Reagan got his dementia diagnosis? It's certainly something to think about. The fate of the world is in the president's hands every day. We should not be afraid of making sure the president is up to the job.

[jerseycityjoan]

This is a tough one. I think anybody in public life today goes around with a head full of figures and it's incredibly easy to say millions when you should have said thousands. His history of stammering doesn't help. But when does being "gaffe prone" slip into something else? I do not know. I have my reservations about him and am still shocked about he went from losing to winning all because of South Carolina.

For what it is worth his doctor gave him a clean bill of health in December. Did that exam include a mental status screening? I wish I knew.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/17/789039741/joe-biden-is-healthy-and-vigorous-according-to-doctor-s-report

It is clear to me that Trump has some kind of diagnosable mental condition. Will that stop me from voting for him due to immigration again? No.

We had several elderly candidates this time and we've had Trump with his compulsions. Should we require presidential candidates to undergo health exams that include mental health screenings? Should we have started doing that after Reagan got his dementia diagnosis? It's certainly something to think about. The fate of the world is in the president's hands every day. We should not be afraid of making sure the president is up to the job.

[turcopolier]

jerseycityjoan

Biden has done this kind of thing repeatedly. I just picked out two of the best. Trump? An egomaniac? Is that a mental illness?

[David Solomon]

Colonel, My only concern about this posting is that I do not think Trump is anymore competent than Biden. What a world.

[BillWade]

The numbers are getting bigger:

https://youtu.be/_GYyt3ChLDI

[Horace]

"They dislike Trump that much?"

I think it is visceral fear. He is a catalyst for noticing, accelerating a process that was already underway. The foundations of their rule are being delegitimized before their eyes. We have a fake democracy where the same people own both parties which are two corporations in a cartel.

Huge numbers of Republican voters (weighted towards the politically active) are no longer buying what Republican-flavored globalists are selling. The Democratic Party was transformed from being the protector of the American working class into a coalition of anti-white communists and foreign invaders funded and managed by corrupt and degenerate totalitarian oligarchs. The majority of the Democrat coalition of the fringes are keenly aware of who both funds their party and makes all the civilizational decisions and BITTERLY resents it. Nancy Pelosi barely turned back their latest challenge and had to burn an enormous amount of political capital to do so. They will try again because they know the clock of the old white people is running out and eventually they WILL succeed. Demography is destiny. The coalition members hate each other almost as much as they hate us. Who will replace Pelosi when she is gone?

These processes were well underway generations before Pres. Trump came onto the scene, but frightened and angry people rarely show good judgement so they demonize him like some totem that if they could just destroy, then everything will go back to the way they want.

The root of the problem is the cultural mutation of our ruling class thinking that they have a right to planetary cheap labor over ALL else. That is how we got plantations filled with African slaves, who then were replaced with Mexicans. Now replacing all of us with anyone from anywhere other than Europe is considered a virtue endlessly repeated by the marxists who now have almost a monopoly on the production of cultural products. Our ruling elites, who are neither elite nor ours anymore, had the best working class in human history, the most respectful of property rights, the most resistant to communist indoctrination and they have replaced us with those who will destroy them at the same time that they have severed any meaningful bonds with those who used to be their people.

Yes, they are afraid. They should be. Imperial elites who fail at the faction-balancing game necessary to govern subject nations vanish from the pages of time.

[jerseycityjoan]

Colonel,

Yes, I know Biden has a long history of saying the wrong thing. I never wanted to vote for him and unless Trump does something truly beyond the pale I will vote for him again. But I don't feel sure he has dementia.

As for Trump I am not sure what his problem is but I think it would rise to the level of an official diagnosis. That would be true of tens of millions of Americans. I myself cannot imagine having to deal with a mind like his every day but thank God I don't have to. He should not have the nuclear football either.

To echo other comments, I also have to wonder how we got stuck with these two choices. With opinions so divided on many issues and so much discontent and desire for change and disgust with politicians, I think we will continue to have a mixed bag selection of candidates. We should think more about who will have the football when we pick people.

[JamesT]

I look forward to Biden becoming president so that I don't have to listen to my college educated white friends blame everything on Trump.

[Tierce]

As an Army veteran (19A) of Iraq and Afghanistan, and current Federal LEO, I loathed Hillary and wrote in Bernie in 2016 (and was sympathetic to some of what Trump talked about, like getting tough on immigration, both legal and illegal). But now, although I agree that Biden is basically senile and I hate woke, identity politics, statues of Lincoln and Washington being torn down, and the institutional Democratic Party, I am prepared to vote for him.

I truly believe Trump has no conception of the national interest, and is solely motivated by personal corruption and narcissism (orders of magnitude more than normal politicians, who I think usually at least start out with some idealism and principles).

I've read and admired your blog for about 10 years, particularly on the Middle East, but I think you're minimizing the importance of the fact that Trump has routinely been talked out of his ideas (or more often his advisors have simply ignored him until he forgets about it). A second term Trump, surrounded by yes-men more corrupt and venal than Washington has seen in modern history, seems much more likely to actually unleash "fire and fury" than just tweet about it, particularly when he realizes how much America is now scorned and pitied around the world. The Pelosi or AOC wings of the Democratic Party, whichever ends up running things while Biden snoozes and stammers, simply does not have the balls to launch a nuclear strike, whether first or retaliatory.

[Flavius]

The last Presidential election cycle has offered too many reasons to regard Biden-Trump polling as anything more than propaganda. At the bottom end, the data collecting cubicle dweller is almost certainly a political partisan; the polling company he or she works for (and is paid by) is also very likely partisan; the MSM outlet and commisioner of the poll is almost certainly partisan; finally, there is no downside to being wrong because all the players recognize they are engaged in a propaganda operation - they are paying for chocolate, we give them chocolate.
Four months out from the election, I sense that the enthusiasm for Biden is anemic. I live in a very liberal town that voted 93-7 for Clinton. There are hundreds of lawn signs all over the town in support of blm and lgbt. To date, I count less than 5 Biden signs. There are more Bernie signs left on people's lawns.
The Biden polling propaganda in places where voting is competetive could very well cost Biden if the voter who is voting is voting only to get Trump out. If Trump appears to be out anyway, who would forego the ability to claim that he did not vote for the weekend at bernie's president when the enormity of who the country has put in the WH becomes clear.

[turcopolier]

tierce

OK I put you down for being willing to risk it.

[Yeah, Right]

I agree 100%. It is one thing to suffer from a slip of the tongue when reciting your lines. It is quite another not to immediately notice - and therefore immediately correct - a slip-up as preposterous as that.

[turcopolier]

teirce

"I think you're minimizing the importance of the fact that Trump has routinely been talked out of his ideas (or more often his advisors have simply ignored him until he forgets about it)." No. I think he is a weak man but to quote Captain Jack Aubrey, he is "the lesser of two weevils."

[JJackson]

I assume Biden misspoke and meant 120,000. Should Trump have the Football? He has also come out with some crazy statements. To stand up in the middle of pandemic and claim some unproven drug is a cure without any basis is highly irresponsible, at the least. He should team up with the President of Mozambique who has a herbal remedy that cures COVID, they can compare notes. It smacks of a dangerous tendency to unfounded self belief. We have to just hope he does not decide he 'knows' China is going to launch a preemptive strike to follow up its Bio-weapon attack.

[turcopolier]

jjackson

Ah, your rice bowl is threatened! You did not mention Biden's statement that 150 million US have died from gun violence since 2007. Want me to provide more examples of his dementia? OK. I will.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

This is reality. I am a year younger than Joe Biden. I agree with anyone who says I am too old to be President. It took a couple of tries before I remembered to turn on the coffee maker today. It is not only age. He was pointman in Ukraine and the restart of the Cold War with Russia. No indication of how he would treat the greater depression and coronavirus pandemic any different than Donald Trump. Any of these three crises, unless addressed, will destroy America. They are the very definition of existential threats (not to mention climate change). No acknowledgement that restoration of constitutional democracy is the only way to avoid the succession of states. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are already quarantining for 14 days travelers from coronavirus hot-spot states.

[Barbara Ann]

Ah, I did enjoy Captain Aubrey's sense of humor. Darn fine movie, one of the best.

Tierce

Out of interest, how far gone would Biden have to be for you not to vote for him? Personally, I do not wish to see a scenario where a President Biden is presented with attack options calibrated in Strangelovian megadeaths and mistakenly comprehends casualty rates in the mere thousands.

Also, while I agree with you re narcissism being a motivational factor for Trump, I do not see evidence that corruption is also one. Are you able to cite examples of Trump's corruption?

[turcopolier]

teirce

"19A in Iraq? Prove it to me.