edit: Update from the live feed- https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c88800k2njkt

There's a circling of the wagons among some top Biden allies this morning, who blame the campaign team for over-prepping and over-working the president during his debate rehearsal sessions at Camp David.

Those supporters of Biden say the team should have let him rest a lot more - and if they had, his performance would have been much better.

From conversations I’ve had with senior White House officials this morning, I understand that nothing is off the table. Meetings are taking place to discuss the options.

As one official pointed out - the silver lining is that it's June not September and there is still time, just, to make a change.

cognitive decline of 20 percentage points

After Biden finally showed the nation this evening that all the popular talk about his "senility" was not just baseless insults, I think back to the moment in the 2020 Democratic Debate when candidate Julian Castro asked Biden "Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?" and was dogpiled immediately by the liberal mediasphere, accusing him of rudeness and ageism.

I think this kind of "how dare you?" outrage to snuff out earnest and founded criticisms can be a dependable political tool, and of course you don't want to encourage the masses to delight in cruelty on a regular basis, but I think behind closed doors every political faction needs a space to soberly and mercilessly assess incoming criticisms/insults that are gaining popular traction, however harsh, unfounded or even bigoted they are.

If the attacks are based on lies, you workshop resonant ways to get the populace to believe something else. If they are based on some truth, you work around it or hide the shit out of it. But the Biden team has clearly been operating in that purgatory where they aren't all on the same page about the premise of Biden's infirmity, and therefore cannot develop a unified strategy to mitigate this liability. His staffers make a show of attacking journalists who insinuate Biden is not all there, but yet let Biden do a long debate where his impairment couldn't be more obvious.

I think brutal self-honesty that sometimes even borders on cruel has a place in every movement. It steels you against far more ruthless attacks from your outgroup. The Dems were able to shame Julian Castro out of mocking Biden's age by going "how dare you!" and able to shame us on the left telling Biden to "draw a clock" by dismissing us as ungrateful youth, but these strategies simply don't work in any general election, they have no purchase the eyes of the voter who has no affiliation, and impart no shame upon the merciless outgroup hoping for another guy to win.

Without the core Biden team daring to even broach the "old man" criticisms amongst themselves, spewing the same line that he's "sharp as a tack" to both the press and each other, and putting out "ironic" jokes mocking how ridiculous the idea of Joe being on uppers is, but also treating that accusation as ridiculous off-screen, well, that kind of toxic positivity will have you sleepwalking into historic loss and humiliation.

https://archive.is/qoiL1

Thirty minutes into the presidential debate, I’ve heard from three veteran Democratic presidential campaign officials, and all of them had the same reaction to President Biden’s performance: This is a disaster. It wasn’t just that Biden wasn’t landing a glove on Donald Trump on the economy, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Covid, taxes, temperament or anything else that was coming up in the questioning. It was Biden’s voice (low and weak) and facial expression (frozen, mouth open, few smirks) with answers that were rambling or vague or ended in confusion. He gave remarks about health care and abortion that didn’t make a strong point, giving Trump a chance to say lines like, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” One of the Democrats said Biden looked scared. Another said it was an “emperor has no clothes” performance so far. The third said of the performance overall, “Don’t ask.” Trump lied repeatedly during the debate about the pandemic, immigration and Roe v. Wade, but Biden didn’t hold him accountable for those lies in a memorable way. At times, Trump attacked Biden, but the president didn’t fight back. Frank Luntz, a veteran focus group moderator who was holding a live focus group during the debate, wrote of their reactions so far: “The group is so bothered by Biden’s voice and appearance. But they’re getting madder and madder with Trump’s personal attacks.” “If Trump talks less,” Luntz said, “he wins. If Biden doesn’t stop talking, he loses.”

https://nitter.poast.org/RobertKennedyJr/status/1806468649974452293#

don't know if morozov truly thinks biden can do any of this or just guardian tax on him

White Paper Released by Institute for American Studies of DPRK Foreign Ministry

Pyongyang, June 25 (KCNA) -- More than 70 years have passed since the ceasefire of the Korean War.

Now is hard to find in this land such traces of shuddering massacres and destruction committed by the U.S. imperialists in the war.

The Institute for American Studies of the DPRK Foreign Ministry released a white paper on Tuesday to disclose the historical facts on the atrocities committed by the U.S. against the DPRK, which were utterly heinous in terms of scale, persistence and viciousness, and clarify the DPRK people's unshakable will to inflict a retaliatory punishment on the U.S. imperialist aggressors, their sworn enemies.

The white paper refers to the hideous crimes the U.S. committed by inflicting on the DPRK huge human losses unprecedented in the human history.

The most serious damage is that the U.S. brutally killed many peaceful civilians.

According to official data alone, the number of victims to the U.S. massacres in the DPRK is 5 060 770 in total, including 1 247 870 deaths, 911 790 abductees and 391 740 missing persons.

According to their calculated damages based on the international practice, in case of the consideration of period when the victims could work, if they survived, and their income and the interest in the period when they did not get compensated, the damages of those persons killed, abducted and missing are estimated to be more than 16 533.396 billion U.S. dollars and the damages of the wounded and disabled are 9 635.427 billion U.S. dollars, totaling to 26 168.823 billion U.S. dollars.

The U.S. can never evade the duty of fulfilling its responsibility as a war criminal state, before the DPRK government and people, for its hideous crimes that can not be pardoned in view of international law or human morality.

The white paper discloses that the U.S. inflicted on the DPRK disastrous material and economic damage that can never be compared with the aftermath of the World War.

The property damage, brought to the DPRK by the U.S. during the war, is estimated at more than 16 661.622 billion U.S. dollars.

Even after the war, the U.S. had systematically infiltrated terrorists and saboteurs into the DPRK's territory to destroy peaceful facilities, thus causing the property damage amounting to 21 266 million U.S. dollars.

According to rudimentary estimation, the economic damage the DPRK people had suffered for 70-odd years from 1945 to 2017 due to the U.S. sanctions and blockade amounts to more than 29.354 trillion U.S. dollars and the amount is increasing tremendously with each passing day.

Such heinous crime, that has brought untold material and economic damage to the DPRK, is tantamount to another mass destruction and massacre aimed to encroach upon and stamp out the sovereignty and rights to existence and development of the DPRK.

The white paper notes that the U.S. has added to its crimes by leaving indelible wounds on the Korean people through its outrageous nuclear threat and blackmail and doing serious harm to the security environment of the DPRK.

The U.S. declared that it would use A-bombs in the Korean War five years after it dropped them in Japan to kill hundreds of thousands of its innocent people.

It spawned a nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula and has gradually escalated its nuclear threat and blackmail against the DPRK to drive the security environment of the peninsula to tension.

In anti-DPRK joint military exercises of various forms and missions, staged for the past seven decades, from Focus Lens in 1954 to Ulji Freedom Shield at present, the U.S. has steadily acquired the capability to conduct a DPRK-targeted nuclear war. This year, it is staging frantic drills for preemptive strike at the DPRK's nuclear facilities and major military bases, under the new "operational plan 2022", revealing its scheme for a nuclear war against the DPRK under the eyes of the world.

Nothing can compensate the mental damage suffered by the Korean people due to the U.S. ever-escalating nuclear threat.

The Korean people are strictly keeping tabs on all the criminal acts made by the U.S. against the DPRK that have lasted for decades, and looking forward to the moment when the U.S. will be made to pay dearly for all its crimes, the white paper says, stating:

"Blood for blood!" -- this is the DPRK's norm related to irreconcilable compensation for the losses and its unshakable will to make a retaliatory punishment. -0-
www.kcna.kp (Juche113.6.25.)

source http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/4b01a4229f06d4b8b2a359cb61973093.kcmsf
mirror https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1719322807-259276837/white-paper-released-by-institute-for-american-studies-of-dprk-foreign-ministry

The law governing the exemption for seminary students expired last year, but the government continued to allow them not to serve. The Supreme Court ruled that in the absence of a new legal basis for the exemption, the state must draft them. The ruling also barred seminaries from receiving state subsidies if scholars avoid service without deferrals or exemptions.

The waivers also have wider economic impact. The ultra-Orthodox make up 13% of Israel's 10 million population, a figure expected to reach 19% by 2035 due to their high birth rates.

The conscription waiver keeps some of the community in seminaries and out of the workforce, hindering economic growth and placing a welfare burden on middle-class taxpayers.

Israel's 21% Arab minority are also mostly exempted from the draft.

I've been feeling a little antsy lately; both socially and just feeling like I need to do more. I live in a pretty major city but I also feel like people have been leaving DSA in droves and a lot of the work they do seems to be just canvassing for local candidates. Interested to just hear the thoughts of others who are still active in their local orgs to see if I'd be wasting my time joining.