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President Biden had his annual medical last week. A few physical ailments aside — reflux, a stiff gait etc. — he passed with flying colours apparently. According to his White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, he didn’t need to take a cognitive test as part of his medical because he effectively passes one each day at work. Some commentators on Fox News have in the past queried Ms Jean-Pierre’s own cognitive ability. That’s unfair. You can’t spin, dissemble and lie with a straight face time after time, without respite, without having your wits about you. I mean you have to recall how you lied about something last time, and the time before, to do it again faultlessly. No mean feat.
Okay, Jean-Pierre is a young, black, Haitian-heritage lesbian which rather favours her in the DEI rankings. But just because a gal of the politically correct identity gets waved through to the top of the queue doesn’t mean she’s not the best candidate. It just means she doesn’t have to take a test, cognitive or otherwise.
I’m one to talk. I took the standard cognitive test a few years back. It’s the same one that Donald Trump took. Can’t remember why I took it, which is a worry. Keep this to yourselves, it’s hush-hush as it were. I wouldn’t want it to get about. But while Trump scored 25 out of 25, I scored just 23.
What tripped me up is when the doctor names five things, say, church, biscuit, train, rose and cow. You have to say them back immediately in order for one point but then after a few more puzzles and such, you’re asked again what they are. I could only remember four and also got the order wrong. Alas, two points lost. I think it was because I took my test late in the afternoon whereas Trump took his test in the morning when brains are smarter. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, at least while I remember it.
Of course, Trump trumpeted his results. Let’s face it, fellow Trump fans, he’s a blowhard. Self-effacement is simply not in his kit bag. True, self-deprecation sometimes creeps into his speeches but only for effect. Prissy conservatives in politics and in the media don’t like this personality trait of Trump. They despise him for it. Call him insulting names; e.g., “despicable human being.” He’s simply not the right kind of chap. Incidentally, if you do ever get into an argumentative tussle with lefties don’t depend upon prissy conservatives to come to your aid. They’ll abscond or backstab you, before you can say Jack Robinson.
Now those on the left couldn’t give tinker’s cuss about insensitive or even foul language. It’s their lingua franca. They hate Trump because he is effective. He doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks the walk.
He seals up the southern border, he boldly deregulates, he makes America energy independent, he reduces black unemployment to its lowest-ever level, he gets NATO countries to increase their defence spending, he moves the US Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, he establishes the Abraham (peace) Accords in the Middle East, he appoints genuine judges rather than partisan hacks to the courts, and so on and so on. Achievement after achievement. All daggers in the heart of the Left. All pooh-poohed by the prissies because of Trump’s mean tweets.
Notice, too, that Trump gets under the skin of those of those on the left because he dismisses their destructive, delusional plans as infantile. “A high-school term paper which got a low mark” is the way he described AOC’s and the Dem’s Green New Deal. Have a look at this one-minute video clip and weep for what we’ve missed this last three years and a bit. To be regrettably sexist, it’s been like having divorced Greta Garbo for Phyllis Diller.
Most journalists are on the political left. They are either sinister, invested in the collapse of Western values, or they are useful idiots wedded to an ideology that has long since been taken over by Marxism, green zealotry and wokeism. Nothing can be expected from them. Those remaining journalists of the centre-right, an endangered species, need to start appreciating that we need Trump’s policies; that is, if we are to rescue fraying Western values. Best not to be too prissy about Trump’s personality. Just a thought.
Finally, 23 out of 25 might not have equalled Trump’s impeccable performance in the cognitive stakes but I’m fairly confident that it has the beating of the current president of the United States. How Ms Jean-Pierre would spin a score of 5 out of 25 I’m not sure, but I’m in no doubt that no-one could do it with a straighter face.
“it’s been like having divorced Greta Garbo for Phyllis Diller”. A suggestion, Pete. An explanatory note would help Quadrant’s younger readers to get your point.
Yes Doug, take your point, shows my vintage. Maybe, Kate Winslet versus Lidia Thorpe?
Don’t go for Paul Harrison’s suggestion. Quite fond of Margaret Thatcher. Though I admit she doesn’t quite match Marlene Dietrich.
My choice/s would have been Marlene Dietrich or Margaret Thatcher.
I hope that Trump wins the election. He did much good as President and anybody would be better than Biden.
That said, people – including voters – do not like loudmouths.
All of the good things that Trump did as President could have been done without behaving like a spoilt child.
His personality means that he would lose the election to almost anybody except Joe Biden and he may lose to Biden. Any other Republican candidate would beat Biden conclusively.
Peter Smith should not assume that conservatives who are wary of Trump are fair weather friends.
Some of us consider that good politics involves bringing people with you, not alienating everybody who may express mild disagreement with your stated positions. The conservative British commentator Daniel Hannan and our own John Howard, to pick two among many, seem to share this view.
If Trump had the demeanour of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher he would win every state in the USA.
As it is, the election will almost certainly be close and, despite all the good that Trump achieved as president, he is the one Republican candidate with a chance of losing and leaving us with another four years of Biden.
That would not be a great legacy.
We don’t have to admire everything about a person to be able to admire the person. Donald Trump’s term as President showed great achievement in the things that mattered – economics, domestic policy and international affairs. The dislocation caused by the Covid emergency probably cost him re-election in 2020 but that was hardly the President’s fault – most of the response decisions were taken at a state level. The question I ask is whether the demonisation of Donald Trump has real substance when fairly judged against his conduct? I have not seen that it does. He has courageously stood up to subtle deceptions that the radical left, by targeting university tenures, has viciously perpetrated on this generation and that has set him well above other conservative leaders. That leaves Donald Trump with an impressive record of achievement as President and a person of incredible moral courage. A certain brashness characteristic of New York entrepreneurs is not a disentitling character trait and whilst Donald Trump might not qualify for canonisation, that is not the position he is applying for. I can well understand why so many Americans are enamored of this man.
I heartily endorse your comments. However, try defending Trump in the white middle class parochial world in which I as a woman of 80 live. Outrage is the standard reply and it is a wonder I am tolerated at all in this polite society. I finally got one of these people to accept a copy of the work by Victor Davis Hanson “The Case For Trump” written before his first term. I hope she reads it and gets a clue.
Some of Joe Biden’s medical problems appear to be forms of disability.
His frequent stumbles could be sheeted home to peripheral neuropathy, where he loses control and feeling in his legs.
Hence Airforce One now has lower steps and he is receiving physical training to get up them.
Men over 70 years commonly fall.
His problem with teleprompts and constant wearing of aviator glasses to control glare and uv and the inability to pick faces from a crowd point to some form of blindness.
At his age macular degeneration would be a good bet.
Where he is engaged and not tired he seems to cope well, as with his impromptu speech in Kiev at the start of the major war.
Trump gets focused on a name, which may be wrong, and keeps repeating it.
Not sure what that is. One would think his minders would call this out and correct him, like happens with actors on the stage who forget their lines.
Unless the minders have given up.
The more Trump is attacked and humiliated, especially over the failure to report real assets saga, the more he validly claims to be the victim of the swamp.
In bank loans its hardly unusual to value business, particularly intangible assets which then factor onto position, position, position, higher than a bank.
But both sides know the game and the intention is not to mislead, as the bank cannot be mislead where it does due diligence.
The valuation of core assets is the start.
The question for the bank is simply;
If we have a fire sale will we get our interest, capital and legals back.
If the answer is yes then the loan goes through.
Recently I had a cognitive test and was told by the doctor that I was the first person to get 100%.
Like IQ tests, they test what they test but that’s all.
So somebody thinks I should be able to find my car when its been parked.
Every time.
So what.
The deeper problem for us and the US is the polarisation of the US and lawfare.
As commented by Roger Franklin through his interviewee, ‘Its not right’.
Hopefully when this election is over there will be some good outcomes.
The Republican presidential movement in Australia will go into hibernation and shame.
Europe will finally see the light and rearm and get more base load power independent of Russia.
The US will decide that its continent is worth saving and defend Japan the Philippines and Taiwan, as part of forward defense.
It will realise that keeping the Russians busy in Europe, they won’t be a threat from their warm water ports in the Pacific and will run out of funds and arms to create even more proxy wars.
As an aside it would be an act of justice for the Labor Government to set up an independent division to identify surplus defense kit, put some money into it, and ask the Ukrainians if they want it.
Get it off the front page.
This will defuse the ‘War with itself’ problem for Government and Defense and actually help the Ukrainians control and defuse the massive attack on their people.
“Men over 70 years commonly fall.”
Oh no we don’t. Not even over 80 …
If you had said: ” Some men over 70 years commonly fall”, I’d agree.
For those who find Trump’s personality too loud for office, my view is that the various bureaucracies (including those from huge enterprises said to be too big to fail) greatly need to be shoved, and shoved really hard, back into their boxes. That needs a rude, rough, uncouth but determined personality such as Trump’s. If you disagree, the age old question fronts up: “Then HOW?”
Good on you, Peter. It astounds me how few commentators are prepared to endorse Trump (of those that do) without holding their nose. It’s more arse covering or virtue signalling than conviction..
The rest of the world does not need the USA. Since WWII It has become the most venomous nuisance on the planet. They cheat at anything. They push and promote their satanic values. They start wars to prolong war. The prosperity of Humanity is not their goal. They assassinate their own Presidents!!
And Australia strikes up the most incompetent AUKUS deals with them ???
The cognitive and comprehension tests need to be mastered by Australia before we worry about the absolute moronic behavioral issues of the USA.
It is a shame that such beautiful resource rich landscape like North America is managed by such a backward mentality.
Biden (Biggest Idiot Democrats Ever Nominated) has a major disability. His wife and his son and his administration. These three disabilities control him 6 days a week, on the seventh they release him with pocket money to buy an icecream.
Only Trump and a carefully selected Trump administration can save western society and traditional values.
“Phillip” has form at QoL. His clunky English, his breathless deployment of multiple question and exclamation marks, and the inevitable, tell-tale misuse or (here) awkward omission of an article — “It is a shame that such beautiful resource rich landscape like North America” — are typical indicators of a comment left by a Russian troll.
Sindri, you might be onto something.
Possibly.
However, sentence construction, an idea in every sentence, a litany of disparaging comments, which are unrelated and the use of terms like ‘traditional values ‘ as a final hook, look more like AI generated gobbledygook.
That leaves open what is guiding this.
Thanks, Sindri for pointing that out.
These ad hominem attacks are definitely becoming more common, unworthy and tedious on this forum. And I guess that I would also qualify as a Russian troll.
BTW
My name is Feiko Bouman, not “Feiko Bouman”, check Wikipedia if it is important.
Early in January I had e-mail correspondence with Roger Franklin, which was generated by my observation that the current magazine gave me the impression of becoming an advocacy journal.
Critical commentators on the Russia/Ukraine/US proxy war and the Israel/Gaza conflict appear to be experienced as “trigger-inducing people”.
I cited, for example, Prof. JJ Mearsheimer/ Prof.Jeffrey Sachs.
They are not anti-Semitic, nor anti-Jewish…and neither am I. Roger in his reply, did not seriously respond to my criticism on either issue, but did find time to resort to an uncharacteristic unbecoming throw-away line…(Israel), ” a nation that doesn’t pitch gays off tall buildings,…”. The substance of my letter was a call for Quadrant to showcase more balance vis-a-vis these major issues of consequence.
To cut a long story short-as the saying goes-I am disappointed by the current Quadrant “inflection point”. Especially on-line it seems to be a closed-club of friends/commenters congratulating each other and reveling in a comfortable atmosphere of like-mindedness.
And my creeping (conspiratorial?) concern, that it appears to be morphing into a sub-branch of Spectator. Naturally, it is to be hoped that the journal remains one of intellectual rigour, enquiry of ideas/artistic broad-brush agendas, showcasing the values of Western Civilisation and the inherent beauty of our inherited Enlightenment fundamentals.
Good piece Peter & I agree with the comments of Peter OBrien and ianl.
Also on the cognitive test ( which I refer to as the GaGa Test ) Anyone over 75 in Qld has to do it every year to verify their licence. The remembering of the words can trick anyone, depending on the manner they’re introduced and I regularly get 23 and 24 with the odd 25 thrown in.
I regard it as an insult ( my doctor agrees but says it’s the Government not him ), particularly when I observe the people giving it and know for sure that if our position were reversed, and it was me administering the test to them, I could pretty well keep them to no more than 22 every time….. and they aren’t called on to have it for their licence.
Suffice to say it should be at the discretion of ones Doctor….not the Government.