Almost forget the open thread. But here it is.
“The City of New Orleans”
Most of you probably are familiar with the rousing and elegiac Americana classic “City of New Orleans.” It was a big hit for Arlo Guthrie in 1972, and has been covered by a great many people. It’s one of those songs that sound like they’ve always been around (or should have been) even though they haven’t.
Here’s a clip of Arlo Guthrie telling the story of how he came to know the song, and then singing a great version. I’d heard it before and liked it. Hard not to sing along (the story is good, but the music begins at 1:05):
Willie Nelson had a wonderful version of it, too. He’s got that authentic-sounding voice, and the music has a bit more of the train rhythm than Guthrie’s version.
So there we have it, right? Great song, and especially poignant to hear in 2021.
But no, we’re not quite finished with it yet, because – due to the magic of YouTube – there’s also a clip of Steve Goodman (the man who wrote the song) performing it live in 1976. I only heard of Goodman recently, through a commenter on this blog, and had no idea he wrote the song and certainly had never heard his version at all.
Goodman was ill with leukemia for his entire adult life and died at the age of 36, but he put out some glorious music while he was here. By all accounts, he was a great and unique guy, and I think you can see that in his performances. He looks a bit like a cross between a young Paul Simon and a young Cat Stevens, with a slow curving smile as though secretly mildly amused at the vagaries of life.
In contrast to the multi-instrument and personnel arrangements of “City of New Orleans” in those clips of Guthrie and Nelson, Goodman stands alone and just plays an acoustic guitar when he sings it. He was a diminutive guy – I read that he stood about five feet tall – but he’s a giant on that instrument. I think he gets more sound – more dynamics, more feeling – out of that single guitar than the more lushly-instrumented versions do, and he gets it while singing. And how he sings! His voice has a bit of Pete Seeger, a smidgeon of Phil Ochs, some John Denver, and a whole huge bunch of Steve Goodman, otherwise known as “Chicago Shorty”.
For all those reasons and more, I find Goodman’s version the most mesmerizing as well as the most exuberant. His liveliness, his head-shaking when he’s intent on doing something especially forceful on his guitar, his bouncing with the rhythm of the guitar-simulated train, and his transcendent delight in the whole enterprise is something to behold. When Goodman gets to the line “Mothers with their babes asleep/Are rockin’ with the gentle beat…” it’s sung with such tenderness and love, along with the guitar simulating the chugging of the train and Goodman’s body doing the same – that for me the song enters the territory of the transcendent and never leaves that realm.
Have you ever ridden a long-distance train? I have, many times, though not in many years. I once made a train trip from Boston to Pittsburgh, then to Chicago, then Denver, and then LA, briefly visiting friends with each stop. And that wasn’t the only long train ride I took, all by myself when in my college years and early twenties.
Even back then the rails were a dying throwback, but very evocative. In my childhood my family had taken a train from New York to Chicago (which is Goodman’s native city) – the Twentieth Century Limited – and I slept in a berth way up with my face just inches from the ceiling. I still remember the lulling, rocking feeling, and the mystery – as well as a little fold-out toilet that came with the room.
RIP Steve Goodman, man of music.
[NOTE: I found the following online in some YouTube comments to one of the renditions of the song. It’s a poem supposedly written by singer/songwriter Tom Paxton soon after Steve Goodman’s 1984 death:
Chicago Shorty would write you a song,
Then he’d play the damned thing all night long,
Make you coffee, fry you an egg,
Tickle your funnybone, pull your leg,
Talk your head off, laugh at your jokes,
Kiss your sister and charm your folks,
Lend you his house, lend you his car,
Give you the strings from his last guitar.
Stevie’d let you name the place,
Meet your plane and carry your case.
Chicago Shorty loved his life,
Loved his children, loved his wife.
He was a joy for me to know,
And I miss the little bastard so.]
A look at New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 2021
When I first learned about Sullivan back in law school aeons ago, I remember being disturbed by the case. It’s not that I had a better solution. But it was easy to see the problem: how best to balance the need to have a free press with the need to protect people, even people in public life who are written about a great deal, from libel?
Sullivan‘s solution – to raise the bar for libel exceptionally high and to make actual malice (“meaning that the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether or not it was true”) necessary for a defamation finding against the press when a public person is the one maligned – presents the dangers of lies going unchecked and running rampant. But muzzling the press unduly isn’t good either.
Back in 1964, when the case was decided, the situation was exceedingly different than it is today. Now we have a press that has no regard for truth, is almost wholly partisan and firmly on the left, and willing to do almost anything to help its side win.
As with so many other things, none other than Donald Trump recognized the problem, since he has been the target of it. Even back during his 2016 campaign he was critical of the ruling, for obvious reasons:
One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected,” Trump said.
I’m not sure how he thought he might do that, but at any rate it didn’t happen, and things have only gotten worse with the shameless and naked partisanship of the press plus the power of social media.
Even as early as 1985, one of the justices who voted for Sullivan expressed regret:
[I]n a 1985 case that helped refine how the Sullivan ruling applied in when a plaintiff was neither a public official nor a public figure, Justice Byron White expressed regret for the “actual malice” test that he had agreed with in Sullivan. “I have,” he wrote, “ … become convinced that the Court struck an improvident balance in the New York Times case between the public’s interest in being fully informed about public officials and public affairs and the competing interest of those who have been defamed in vindicating their reputation.” Chief Justice Warren Burger, who joined the court four years after Sullivan was decided but presided over the several of the cases that refined the Sullivan standard, agreed with White in his own concurring opinion.
Justice White’s description of the competing interests as he saw them is quite interesting. He sees on one side “the public’s interest in being fully informed about public officials and public affairs” and the other side as “the competing interest of those who have been defamed in vindicating their reputation.” Public versus individual interest – I believe that’s the traditional view. But what of the public’s interest in being informed of the truth rather than falsehoods? Do we not all have an interest in that? However, who determines what’s true and what’s false? After all, the MSM and social media gatekeepers and the left (redundant, I know) keep saying it’s they who tell the truth and those on the right who lie.
Justice Clarence Thomas also critiqued Sullivan back in 2019, saying that it and subsequent allied rulings “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”
And yesterday Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan-appointed judge on the DC Circuit Court, issued a scathing dissent in a defamation case that’s gotten some attention:
The New York Times and The Washington Post are “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” while the news section of the Wall Street Journal “leans in the same direction,” U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman said. He said the major television outlets and Silicon Valley giants were similarly biased.
“One-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” Silberman wrote. He exempted from his criticism of “Democratic ideological control” Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. But he lamented that these outlets are “controlled by a single man and his son,” a reference to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and questioned how long they could hold out.
Here’s a sample of the actual wording of the dissent:
After observing my colleagues’ efforts to stretch the actual malice rule like a rubber band, I am prompted to urge the overruling of New York Times v. Sullivan. Justice Thomas has already persuasively demonstrated that New York Times was a policy-driven decision masquerading as constitutional law. See McKee v. Cosby, 139 S. Ct. 675 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring in denial of certiorari). The holding has no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution, and it baldly constitutionalized an area of law refined over centuries of common law adjudication. See also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 380–88 (1974) (White, J., dissenting). As with the rest of the opinion, the actual malice requirement was simply cut from whole cloth. New York Times should be overruled on these grounds alone. …
One can understand, if not approve, the Supreme Court’s policy-driven decision. There can be no doubt that the New York Times case has increased the power of the media. Although the institutional press, it could be argued, needed that protection to cover the civil rights movement, that power is now abused. In light of today’s very different challenges, I doubt the Court would invent the same rule.
As the case has subsequently been interpreted, it allows the press to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity. It would be one thing if this were a two-sided phenomenon. Cf. New York Times, 376 U.S. at 305 (Goldberg, J., concurring) (reasoning that the press will publish the responses of public officials to reports or accusations). But see Suzanne Garment, The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics 74–75, 81–82 (1992) (noting that the press more often manufactures scandals involving political conservatives). The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions. Our court was once concerned about the institutional consolidation of the press leading to a “bland and homogenous” marketplace of ideas. See Hale v. FCC, 425 F.2d 556, 562 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (Tamm, J., concurring). It turns out that ideological consolidation of the press (helped along by economic consolidation) is the far greater threat.
Much much more at the link. At the end of the article there, you can find links to a whole bunch of pieces reacting to Silberman, many of them – of course – from the leftist press.
I’m with Silberman, and have been from even before my political change. However, the problem of the proper standards remains – and of course, it’s not just the press that is biased to the left at this point. A great deal of the judiciary is as well. So I’m not sure the remedy lies in the judicial system at all.
In closing I’m going to include a quote offered this morning by commenter John Tyler, something William Shirer wrote as part of his reporting from Nazi Germany in the 30s:
I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for the truth, said they were.
Now it can be told
Ok ok it makes sense now #Bidenfall pic.twitter.com/LIBpYWw0Dg
— Colo303 (@gril887) March 19, 2021
OCD symptoms post-COVID: easy to start, hard to end
It doesn’t affect everyone, of course, but there are a lot of people who become susceptible to OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) symptoms in a situation in which anxiety is heightened and there’s a set of behaviors to focus on that make them feel safer. As soon as the COVID pandemic began, and the health care directives started coming out – stay distant from others, wash your hands (and even groceries) over and over, wear or don’t wear masks and all the rest – I said to some friends that all of America was going to have OCD before this was through, and that it would be quite the boon for therapists.
I was making a joke – kind of. But I was somewhat serious as well, because once such habits are formed it’s harder than one might think to break them, at least for many people. And there are children who probably can’t even remember another way at this point. I’ve had friends who say their grandchildren have become a lot more anxious. As we know, mental and emotional problems have increased in the year since this all began – although one thing I didn’t foresee from the start was that so many of the restrictions would last a year, but that trend became clear, too, after a few months.
So all of that brings us to this sort of thing. The author’s “us” certainly doesn’t include everyone, but I think it includes a lot of people, particularly among Democrats who have followed every command:
Public transit makes us sweat. The prospect of crowded restaurants and bars is thrilling but unfamiliar. People thirsting for daily interaction now worry they’ve lost the ease with which they once socialized. For so long we’ve been looking toward a world that gathers and touches, a world where smiles are unobscured and conversations unmuffled, but the longer we’ve been denied it, the more stressful its return has become.
“COVID definitely has shifted our experience, our perception of what’s considered normal,” said Lynn Bufka, senior director of practice transformation and quality at the American Psychological Association. “We should expect that there’s going to be some period of time when how we respond to the world around us is going to be different, where we’re going to potentially feel like this is … awkward. But what can be helpful is to recognize that everyone likely feels that way to some extent. Now we’re trying to figure out what normal is again.”
Ah, yeah – that “new normal” thing the left keeps talking about and hoping to shape.
More:
Nearly half of Americans say they feel uneasy thinking about in-person interaction once the pandemic ends, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2021 Stress in America report. Adults who received a COVID-19 vaccine were just as likely as those who haven’t been vaccinated to express unease.
That’s because, for the people more inclined to anxiety, these things tend to be irrational. The way it works is that, if they’ve weathered the storm safely, many people tend to have a gut feeling that it was all those precautions that kept them safe, and as a consequence they feel a sense of vague danger at dropping them. And yet it’s necessary to drop them (I’ve always washed my hands when coming home, and I plan to keep doing that). And our health mentors and blue state governors, as well as the Biden administration, aren’t saying much to guide people in the direction of normalcy. Why would they be eager to give up any of their newfound power?
Open thread 3/20/21
Dramatic neo.
The MSM and the Atlanta massage parlor murders
Andrew Sullivan gets this story mostly right:
We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in [the killer’s] history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.
And yet. Well, you know what’s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine — nine! — separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and/or misogyny. Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran sixteen separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts. For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement’s version of events in the newspaper, because it distracted attention from the “real” motives. Today, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism — because some activists say they are…
This mass murderer in Atlanta actually denied any such motive, and, to repeat myself, there is no evidence for it — and that has been true from the very start. And yet, a friend forwarded me the note swiftly sent to students and faculty at Harvard, which sums up the instant view of our elite:
“Many of us woke up yesterday to the horrific news of the vicious and deadly attack in Atlanta, the latest in a wave of increasing violence targeting the Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander community … This violence has a history. From Chinese Exclusion to the nativist rhetoric amplified during the pandemic, anti-Asian hostility has deep roots in American culture.”
And on and on. It was almost as if they had a pre-existing script to read, whatever the facts of the case!
Almost? I assume Sullivan is being sarcastic here. But actually, they don’t need a script anymore. They know the playbook by heart.
Much more at the link, most of it good. One predictable flaw is that Sullivan thinks that Trump’s “China virus” statements have contributed to anti-Asian bias here (I’ve not seen any evidence for that; Trump was talking about China proper, not Asian-Americans), although Sullivan doesn’t go so far as to link these murders to it, and Sullivan also blames elite academia for its anti-Asian bias.
What can Republicans do to fight Biden’s border policy?
Sometimes I think that people on the right are more fond of bashing the Republicans in Congress than they are of bashing the Democrats. I understand and share some of that impulse – the lack of fight and/or of conservative principles in certain members of the GOPe can be extremely infuriating.
But I think that some of the most fervent criticism of the GOP stems from the right’s frustrated and impotent rage towards the left, redirected at the GOP for not having saved us somehow from the terrible things that have already happened and that threaten to happen in the future.
For example, commenter “John Tyler” writes:
And the republicans in Congress? What is their response to [the Biden-induced border crisis], aside from some weak words?
Does the USA have immigration laws?
Cannot the Republicans in Congress file a lawsuit with the SCOTUS to demand the executive branch follow the law?
Where is the Constitutional authority for a president to literally overturn existing laws based upon an EO?
Why do the republicans do zero??
I could be wrong about my answer, and if someone knowledgeable about the law on this has some relevant information, let me know. But I am pretty sure that Republicans in Congress have no standing in the courts to challenge Biden’s orders on this. They are not considered to have sustained harm and therefore have no cause of action. If that seems ridiculous to you, then I suggest you take note of Dickens’ character Mr. Bumble’s observation that “the law is a ass — a idiot.”
But people keep demanding that the GOP would magically do something and in particular something effective. But aside from this lawsuit I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be allowed to file, what would it be? They control neither legislative body right now. Presidents usually are considered to have plenary power over immigration with just a few exceptions. The GOP Congress members do speak out (and probably tweet too, if they’re not blocked), but the MSM gives their statements short shrift and/or unfairly characterizes them.
Here’s McConnell’s statement on Biden’s immigration policies. I agree with John Tyler that statements don’t accomplish much, but what else can the Congressional GOP members do? That’s a real question from me, not just a rhetorical one.
Their statements:
On the state level, however there are legal challenges being mounted. For example, see this from March 10:
The Attorneys General of Arizona and Montana filed an amended a joint lawsuit Monday alleging that the Biden administration has violated immigration and administrative law. The Attorney General of Florida filed a similar lawsuit on Tuesday. All three complaints allege that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has disregarded its responsibilities and that changes in policy have put people in Arizona, Montana and Florida at risk.
The allegations arise from changes to policies governing the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants…
The DHS policy was announced in a memorandum and affects the DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The policy was part of a department-wide review of policies and practices. Shortly after the release of the memorandum, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought a restraining order to delay implementation. A federal appeals court granted the order, but limited it to 14 days. According to the Arizona/Montana complaint, the court in the Texas case concluded that some of the arguments against the policy could have merit. Some of those arguments are raised again in the Arizona/Montana complaint.
There may have been even more state filings since then.
The reason this is happening on the state level is that the allegations of damage to the citizens of those particular states (two of which are border states, and all of which – except Arizona – are red states) are the bases on which the argument in favor of standing lies. All of these states have Republican governors and Republican attorneys general. So Republicans are filing the lawsuits in the venues in which they have the greatest possibility of success for the cases to be heard.
I criticize the GOP when it’s at fault, and I share John Tyler’s wish that the would do more and do it with more flair and vigor that can be perceived by the public. But for over a decade I’ve been in disagreement with the reflexive bashing of the Party for doing nothing when it has done something, and sometimes when it has done all that is possible with the deck so stacked against it. Turning on all Republicans because of people like Romney (who really has turned into a viper) is short-sighted and destructive, in my opinion.
I’d like to see more fight in the GOP, and effective fight at that. I’d also like to see them praised where credit is due, condemned where opprobrium is due, attention paid to what seems possible and what does not, and awareness of what has actually been attempted by some GOP members.
Discus dumps Frontpage…
…on the say-so of ye olde Southern Poverty Law Center:
As of today, Disqus is de-platforming us. They have refused to respond to inquiries seeking further explanation. Disqus has taken on faith the libelous accusations of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a widely-discredited, partisan group that frequently characterizes mainstream conservative organizations as “hate groups.”
As loyal and dedicated readers of FrontPageMag.com, you know how vital the comments section is to a website…
Rest assured, we will still have comments flowing soon. We are switching to a new service…
That new service is apparently now in place there.
More:
In just the past couple of years, MasterCard temporality shut us down, one of our local banks closed our account due to our “controversial positions on issues,” and a brokerage firm closed our account for “unknown reasons.” Amazon will not allow the Freedom Center, a 501 c3 IRS designated nonprofit, to participate in their Amazon Smiles charity campaign because of the SPLC’s designation of the Center has a “hate group” and now Disqus, the largest networked community platform on the Internet, has canceled our service.
The SPLC has a lot of power, doesn’t it?
I don’t use Disqus. I’ve never liked it, and I prefer to monitor my own comments. That takes time and effort, but so far it’s been worth it. Of course, I don’t have the traffic of Frontpage, so I assume they get more comments than I do and therefore the task of monitoring them would be greater, and so they delegate the chore.
Open thread 3/19/21
Stick with this one a while. You will be rewarded:
Putin challenges Biden to a pushup contest
No, not really.
But pushup contests are apparently one of Biden’s favorite things. Remember this from a little over a year ago?:
And then there was this:
So, here’s a tale Biden told recently in an interview with George Stephanopoulos in which he also called Putin a “killer.” He’s boasting about something he alleges he said to Putin in 2011:
Biden tells Stephanopoulos he once told Putin "I said, I looked in your eyes and I don't think you have a soul. He looked back at me and said, 'we understand each other.'"
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) March 17, 2021
Just reflect on that. Not only is macho man Biden telling Putin that the latter has no soul, but Putin is agreeing? The story is quite simply bizarre. It seems to be Biden’s way of inverting this:
After Biden made his remarks, Putin seems to have gazed back into Biden’s soul, and he issued a challenge for Biden:
[Putin] spoke about Biden agreeing that he was a “killer” in the interview, Putin’s response was Biden was projecting, “He who calls names, is called that himself.”
But Putin then showed he’s pretty aware of Biden’s cognitive issues and responded to the gauntlet that Biden threw down, challenging him to an open and live debate…on one condition, that it be live, online, without any lags, in direct discussion, saying it could be interesting for Russians, Americans, and other people. That of course is his way of saying, yes, I know your issues.
I think the entire world is aware of Biden’s issues.
Biden and the border
I haven’t written much about Biden’s border policy yet because it seems so utterly unsurprising to me, as well as depressing. Did anyone really fail to foresee what he and/or his administration would do, and what the result would be? Those who express a bit of surprise about it seem somewhat disingenuous to me, but perhaps they really did fool themselves about the intentions of Biden and company.
And of course, many people on the left think it’s just great if the borders are open and the world gives us its huddled masses yearning to get benefits. Don’t get me wrong – I assume a lot of these people were suffering in their home countries. Sad, but that’s true all over the world, and a country – we are still a country, aren’t we? – must nevertheless make rules and set limits on letting people in, and is well within its rights to ask that only people who follow those rules come.
What’s more, no one should be surprised that the administration is blocking coverage of the situation. They are used to blocking coverage of anything that reflects poorly on them, and on getting full cooperation from the MSM in its own muzzling. Why should that change now?:
The Biden administration issued a gag-order on the southern border, blocking all press requests to visit detention centers to take pictures or to tour the facilities. Border Patrol agents have been told to deny all media requests for “ride-alongs” with agents, and all stationed on the southern border are being told to forward all press requests to Washington for approval, according to NBC News.
President Biden hasn’t visited the southern border and likely won’t — because he would need to bring a press pool and cameras for the trip, which would reveal a humanitarian crisis is occurring. The reality of the situation would conflict with the narrative the Biden administration is trying to paint — that this is merely a “challenge” — a situation they “certainly” have a handle on, according to Ms. Psaki.
The U.S. is on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than it has in the last 20 years. The federal government plans to use the downtown Dallas convention center to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers, as other holding centers have exceeded their capacity due to the surge. What’s more, four foreign nationals whose names match with individuals on the terror watch list have been stopped trying to enter the U.S. via the southern border since October, according to Fox News.
Those are the facts the Biden administration would like you to ignore, doing their best to kneecap journalists…
Just what we need, more teenagers from Latin America coming in illegally, as well as a sprinkling of terrorists. As for those intrepid “journalists” who are being “kneecapped,” don’t ask me to shed any tears over their plight. They turned in their “journalist” cards long ago and kneecapped themselves.
As Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick says:
“We were able to relax under the Trump Administration because he actually did his job and we were in good shape on the border, before Biden got elected. We were in good shape. The protocols were working, keeping the asylum seekers in Mexico.”
“This is not a crisis, this is a full-blown disaster that they’ve created.”
“What they need to do is close the border. It’s wide open.”
“This is the worst I’ve seen.”
“President Biden is no more than a prop of the left. He has no idea what’s going on down there.”
I’m not at all sure I agree with that last sentence, though. Biden is cognitively and physically challenged, but he’s not that far gone at this point. I believe he knows “what’s going on down there” and he’s fine with it, as long as people don’t learn too much about it.
After all, virtually all the elected representatives of the Democratic Party at the national level are also fine with it as well, because they have long-term goals of bringing in more Democratic voters and turning Texas blue, among other things, thus helping to secure their permanent place at the helm of power. Biden was in full possession of whatever modest faculties he ever possessed while he served for eight years as Obama’s VP, and Biden had no objection to the program.
My reading of Biden is that he never had any principles other than his own advancement, and he has always been more than willing to do what was deemed necessary for that. Diminished he may be, but it’s still the case that he operates that way and to that aim. I would never have expected him to have been a profile in courage, and certainly not now.