Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, Old Joe is the name of an asteroid, not just an agist slam on Joe Biden, whose 81st birthday occurs Monday, 20 November 2023. With vast numbers of Americans, even Democratic supporters, leery about Biden’s ability to continue four more years in the notoriously high-pressure job due to his age, the point seems an increasingly apt celestial moniker to represent the 46th President of the United States.
On Sunday, 3 September 2023, Republican presidential nomination contender Vivek Ramaswamy was muffled by the collapse of a huge banner reading “TRUTH” as he stumped in Lancaster, New Hampshire. Footage of the event shows the massive backdrop slowly folding forward onto the unexpecting Ramaswamy, in a moment of cosmic irony worthy of a Wes Anderson film. Unhurt, except perhaps in his pride, the incident has led to a plethora of Tweets and internet memes calling attention to the aptness of the visuals, for a candidate who can’t seem to keep his stories straight about his opinion of the prior president.
Here we go again. If you’re counting, this makes three criminal indictments in four months, in three separate jurisdictions. I’m going to step out on a limb here and opine that this has got to be a record. On August 1st, 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the other shoe he was holding, indicting Donald J. Trump on four charges in relation to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Well, they did what they could. They tried to produce a unique, groundbreaking announcement of a presidential run by scheduling Florida Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis to make his big announcement with Elon Musk on Twitter’s audio platform. The wisdom of that decision aside (I mean, who wants to share the spotlight with a notoriously maverick, highly polarizing eccentric billionaire who won’t even endorse you, in a format where nobody can actually see you?), the DeSantis team had the timing right, in theory. They successfully avoided the Mercury retrograde, eclipse season, Pluto station energy that clouded Joe Biden’s re-lection bid, but the production went seriously sideways regardless.
Joe Biden officially threw his hat into the ring for the 2024 US presidential election, announcing his candidacy in an online video that crossed just after 6 AM EDT on 25 April 2023. Hardly shocking news, Biden had been signaling his intention to run for reelection for months. The moment chosen seems to be an auspicious one at the micro astro-level, but its placement in the midst of eclipse season, with a stationary Pluto and a retrograde Mercury, makes it an ill-timed choice over all.
March 2023 was hopping with activity, from US bank closures and mass protests in Israeli streets, to yet another record-setting development in the Donald Trump saga. Pluto dipped its tootsies into Aquarius for the first time in a quarter millennium, and whenever an outer planet makes a major ingress the energy flux is palpable. Aquarius is the Sign of the marketplace, and modern commerce wouldn’t get very far without a healthy banking system; it’s also related to rebellion and protest, as well as the concept of fairness and equal treatment, where not even a former President is above the law.
