Books, Reviews, Short Stories, Authors, Publicity, a little poetry, music to complement...and other stuff including politics, about life... "Books, Cats: Life is Sweet..."
I wanted to include this... What he says about oligarchy is true and could never have happened without a coalition of those who sponsored the Project 25 document... They are who is in control--Money and Power Controllers! No, the President cannot do everything they want!
She makes an interesting statement when she certainly lacks access to complete information...
But...isn't it important to know the reputation of America?
I worked in higher education... I worked my entire career and NEVER GOT SUPPORT FOR MY MAJOR ASSIGNMENT
NEED FOR AN INTEGRATED FACILITIES COMPUTER SYSTEM
THE MONEY DEPARTMENTS CONTROLLED PRIORITIZATION...
The CFO (money controller) reported directly to the President...
When additional leaders were added at the top, it just became worse since more programs were added in that priority list
Do you ever consider that the government is nothing more than
a lot of "corporations" each vying for support...
I learned it is impossible to do everything needed, but that doesn't mean somebody did something wrong as this woman's sarcasm implies.
The fact is that there will always be a shortage of funds if the world wishes to improve the lives of we who live on this planet...
Give the good guys a break!
Get rid of those who do nothing but complain or lie
There are too many people out there who are and have worked throughout their lives to do a good job
Some of us never achieve the end products of those lives...
That is Fact... We Must Work Together to Create Ways to Change FACTS of Failure to FACTS of Accomplishments...
Biden has done more in the only term as president than any of the recent former presidents has accomplished... Period!
My Guess?
The Amount of Money Spent on the last election (or any?)
could answer the world-wide hunger crisis for a year...or more???
The costs are unbelievable and ridiculous!
Especially when we see how and what was done...
How bad can it get NOW???
Remember all of these past events?
Not even past presidents are willing to support his second term...
This may not be true, just listened to The View and they were only talking about Michele... BUT, if it isn't true...it's a perfect example how communication attempts are ruined...
Once upon a time when the outside world was sane and I had about 10 years of peace and quite after going through Job Burnout, I felt I might be able to write a book, which I had already titled Emotionally Damaged: Living With Job Burnout... I thought it could be helpful and provide a real-life story by which one individual reached Job Burnout based upon Mismanagement...or Should I say, A Change of Administration...
I had even begun writing what I would be calling an Open Memoir, which would be produced sporadically within my blog...
And then 2015 came and I, for the first time in my life (no kidding) heard the name Donald Trump... It was the infamous "Grab her by the Pxxxx that changed my entire life... Seriously, think about it... I, one individual, had been abused in various ways on my job at West Virginia University. No, it wasn't physical abuse! It was mental abuse! I'm sure I'll be talking about that again...
Mental Abuse - The type of abuse that Trump immediately placed on the entire nation from Day 1... You know what, I soon realized that I could not possibly deal with my own personal situation, while at the same time, one man was wreaking havoc on millions of people... I knew this man was dangerous... I had been overwhelmed by individuals in power over a few... Trump was overwhelming the entire country with lies, threats, misinformation, nonstop repetitive chaotic rhetoric, not to mention that he had no credentials to actually be in the presidency!
And it never stopped, even though he was no longer president...he just kept doing the same thing...The ravings of a narcissist, soon became an awareness that he was a sociopathic narcissist who cared about nothing but what affected HIM... Yes, I am not qualified to claim his limitations. limitations... OK, fine, but I have read his niece's books as well as his nephew's book, which their uncle in their lives and about his early life... Mary, his niece, is now a psychologist... she's my source...
In any event, I became almost a fanatic watching what he was doing. Or mostly Not Doing... I had worked over 35 years (much like Biden) and started at the lower level, moving upward based upon study, expertise gained, and longevity in administrative positions on campus, first in Personnel and then in part of the President's Office, finally, moving into higher levels, beginning in the technical ranks... Nearly every single day, I was having flashbacks of similar on-the-job activities thatI'd gone through. listening to the news, ... Soon I realized that there was no way I was not going to work to get this man out of office. I changed from an Independent to a Democrat and have voted straight democrat from then on... Because I had seen just how corrupt the republican party had become and knew that Trump was picked on purpose, for a bigger plan...
Do you remember how often Trump was called to the carpet, for what he said, what he did or didn't do? He was impeached twice... I want to stop there because, we who watched knew what was coming...
Donald Trump was impeached because of his desire to make a deal with Ukraine's president. He wanted him to do research on Joe Biden and his son to get what dirt he could find, more or less. He even sent his lawyer there to push buttons behind the scenes. Now, here's the thing, Trump was holding up an allotment already approved through Congress--they would get the money when he got the "dirt." That was illegal!
The Impeachment passed the House, but not the Senate, due to republicans... However, the investigation was televised and we all had the opportunity to evaluate Truth... Documentation was provided that the command was indeed made to hold up providing funds that Congress had already approved... for this specific allocation. The Executive Branch (President) is responsible for the implementation of APPROVED actions only...
So, let's consider right now more of what has happened... January 6th, election violations across the nation and so much more had occurred or been discovered. Trump was being tried by 4 state courts as well as federally. We watched as one case was delayed by a Trump appointed judge over and over. We watched as the personal life activities of an AG was so skewed that that case was destroyed. The two NY court case were both won... But in each such case, Trump had different lawyers dealing with each and appeals were going on all the time...and, of course, the news followed the televised court cases, and could only listen to Trump when he came out where he lied, obfuscated, blamed the democrats, etc. Little was actually publicized of what Biden's administration was doing, routinely... Media choices have been questioned often...
(By the way, if you think this is all new, check out the history of court cases in which Trump/family were involved through the years)... Even his book was ghostwritten... because he obviously didn't do well with any deals that we've seen that he personally actually did...) So, for the majority of the 4 years that Joe Biden was in office doing wonderful things for America, the media covered the hottest news, Trump's court cases where excitement was sure to exist, rather than the boring reporting that a bridge had been built, or a city got a new water system...or whatever Infrastructure projects did occur... They were rarely covered and Trump kept lying, lying, lying... So much so that soon the republican majority Supreme Court (created by preventing Obama candidates to be even submitted for consideration) began acting as if Trump was already president and all those court cases of actual criminal activities for which he was indicted were dismissed not because they weren't real but because of Trump's constant falsification of everything... delay tactics... as well as the amazing decision by the Supreme Court that claimed that anything the President did during his term was immune from any type of action... Common Sense tells us that is categorically crazy!
Get the Idea - Lies or False Conclusions said over and over and over
and people begin to actually believe...That's why, up until the Trump presidency, very few actually created the chaos of lies/rhetoric initiated and incited by Trump...Inciting fear through Lies is...Just...Wrong!
And that leads to all that has happened even before Trump is inaugurated!
Let's look at just one 10 pm News review this week
Candidate for Secretary of Defense in for congressional review
Note that the mother of this candidate wrote a letter to him about his treatment of women...!!! She later also changed her statement
During the Discussion on Senator Ernst is the key point
I want to spot... that is, she was originally opposed to the candidate
After harassment by MAGA, she, I believe, voted not her real evaluation of the candidate, but what she was forced to do...
Can You Imagine that an individual for the Attorney General
said at her full hearing that "they" targeted Trump right from the beginning... Now, like I said, I've been watching closely for the same time period... and the only THEY that was acting properly were those individuals charged with upholding the Constitution of the United States, which was being totally ignored by the President who could care less about what he should or should not be doing... Witch Hunt became a household term heard across the land...
Now, I ask you to think about multiple issues discussed on the videos!
The MAJOR
Loss of homes and lives in California!
Now those who lost their entire lives are expected to be affected by the President and the Republic Party trying to make a deal for less coverage if the government of California doesn't do something for Trump...
It's being said that some type of deal must occur before disaster money would be provided!!!
Ready for another impeachment trial for the president and speaker of the house???
The President of Ukraine did NOT give in to political pressure by the Trump call to him and onsite pressure by Rudy Giuliani and those helping him, one of which testified at the investigation on what they were doing...
Senator Ernst has received so much pressure, that she changed her voting as originally planned... Senator Ernst served in the Military
The candidate has stated that women should not be permitted there!
Duh...
WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!
Folks, Do you realize that the guy is not yet even the President?
Money and Power, though, is evidenced in everything he does or says...
I wish to thank my new connections at BlueSky for sharing all the pics...
I had never been so brazen to say some of these things that are being said Now I realize that if I had talked more maybe more people, especially my family, would have started to believe me, Truth, and the Democratic Party, MSNBC
rather than the lies, disinformation and so much more being spewed out for the last 8 years... God, help us through the next 4
Gabby
A final Point... If we allow criminally charged, indicted, and convicted individuals in the government, we might as well start looking to move out of the country like many are already talking about...
Trump is a convicted felon, recently charged after being found guilty
The Secretary of Defense demanded by Trump--Powerful position--
was fired for mismanagement of funds for Vets Org!
And this guy is going to be in charge of the highest single budget in our government...
The thing about this: Yes, they are going to be "Yes" men for Trump--all of them...The thing is, those two alone don't have the capability of even understanding when something that is being discussed is wrong, or right...
Don't be surprised if you see Marines walking down the street of a US city one day at the command of Donald Trump, with the "Yes Sir!" from the Secretary of Defense...
And, oh yeah, let's get some planes up over my Golf Course... Can't have another sniper try to shoot me while I spend my normal times on the green...
Can't be too careful... I'm in Charge NOW
And let me know by lunch how many immigrants have been thrown out of our country and how much it costs us...figure we'll charge the country who allowed them to invade us...
Did you get the names of the Chinese immigrants working on the Panama Canal ... We need to move quickly to get that going...
And don't tell me I have to get approval from Congress... to get a new jet to replace Biden's...
It's out of Date so see if you can get Musk to give it to me as a gift
How many times do I have to say--I'm immune to anything that happens while I'm in office... A Jet is needed when I meet with Putin... and go visit my friend in North Korea...Maybe I can talk him into more soldiers being sent to Putin to fight against the Ukrainians...
Hey, did you hear that the guy wanted for Secretary of State refused the job...Get somebody putting pressure on, maybe threaten to "ensure" his wife doesn't get back in office next election...
Cancel all the prayer breakfasts!
I'm so sick and tired of having them people put their hands on me!
For Biden the process and the substance were intertwined. Although he liked to brag about being a constitutional scholar—on the basis of seventeen years Biden had spent as an adjunct professor at Widener University Delaware Law School—he really had one primary profession in his career: he was a politician. His expertise was nose counting, horse trading, and spreading a thick layer of flattery over his audiences.
~~~
Some call Joe Biden boring... Me, after spending nearly 40 years on a university campus, where nobody was concerned with you as a person unless you made a mistake or a complaint had been received, I'll take Joe's exceptional experience and expertise and never hearing much communication from him because we learned from the news that he was doing his job, even if some were not totally happy with the "how" it had been done, over any individual who had NO governmental expertise. Me, I can guarantee from my professional career on a university campus, I had better credentials to handle a political job than the former president did... especially in the mechanics of getting various tasks done via a simple plan of action.
One major thing this book reveals is that President Biden seeks out, uses and depends upon the input from a group of experts in a specific field. Only then will he begin to formulate a proposal for accomplishing an important mission...
!!!
Just before the New Year, when Biden called his friend Jon Meacham, he plastered on a resolute face. By any objective measure, he was in a terrible place. For months, he had invested his precious presidential time into the pursuit of Build Back Better, only to look like a fool when Joe Manchin sideswiped him on Fox News. Despite the attention he devoted to Vladimir Putin, Russian troops were rolling toward the Ukrainian border. Not so many months earlier, Biden had told aides that his presidency would be defined by his response to COVID, yet omicron was surging through households and schools and workplaces, a triggering reminder of the early days of the pandemic. The primary agenda item for the call with Meacham was hardly more uplifting. The president was looking ahead to a grim milestone. He wanted to discuss a speech commemorating the first anniversary of January 6 that Meacham was helping write. Part of why Biden felt simpatico with Meacham was the sentiment in the subtitle of the historian’s most recent book, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. Biden was among the truest believers in the power of the better angels. They might advance only a few yards at a time, but they kept on advancing. That faith, however, had begun to wobble. The past year had chastened him. He began it hopeful that the nation would embrace the blessing of the vaccine. But moral suasion and logic failed to move red America to protect itself. The power of right-wing propaganda inoculated a large portion of the country against reason. By the end of September, the nation had exhausted Biden’s faith in the better angels. Because so many Americans resisted the collective efforts to smash the virus, he tried to force their compliance by mandating the vaccination of the military, the federal bureaucracy, health care workers, and employees of large companies. And he was done politely asking. When he announced the mandates, he bellowed, “We are patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
Working through drafts of the January 6 speech with Meacham and Mike Donilon, Biden kept pushing them to toughen the language, to harden the speech’s critique of Donald Trump. That, too, represented a shift in his thinking. When he came into office, he felt as if he could destroy Donald Trump by ignoring him. He worried that by going near the fire, he would feed it. So he rarely mentioned him by name. When the former president held a rally or issued a menacing statement, Biden resisted the impulse to respond. As he edited the speech, it was as if he were permitting himself to fully process the horror of January 6. The more he paused to think hard about it, the angrier he became. Even after rioters went in search of Mike Pence’s neck, even after congressional leaders feared for their own lives, the Republican Party remained staunchly loyal to Trump. The party was enthusiastically complicit in Trump’s plot to short-circuit the next election. He said he was done dancing around the subject of Trump. This was the occasion to deliver the indictment of Trump that history demanded and the man deserved. In the final draft, Biden stuck to the literary conceit of omitting Trump’s name. But he now did so derisively. “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president” was a statement intended to wound what he described as Trump’s “bruised ego.” Even before his writers began working on the speech, Biden knew that he wanted to deliver it in Statuary Hall, where insurrectionists had literally defecated on Congress. Standing on the site of the riot, he wanted to recount history without euphemism, to provide a rejoinder to the right-wing revisionists who sought to soften memories of the day. The threats against democracy were ominous, and he believed that they needed to be described with graphic imagery: “I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.” Meacham had worked on Biden’s inaugural, a speech that celebrated the resilience of institutions. As he watched the evolution of this speech, he thought to himself that his friend had journeyed from Locke to Hobbes, to a darker, more realistic view of human nature. At the age of seventy-nine, Biden was confronting his teetering faith in better angels. — As Meacham and Donilon finished the January 6 speech, he wanted them to draft a companion address. A week later, on January 11, he intended to fly to Atlanta, to the cradle of the civil rights movement, to lay out his prescription for the crisis of American democracy.
The consistent underestimation of Joe Biden was his diesel. It propelled him to keep chasing the image, over the course of three presidential runs. He pursued it into his late seventies, even though diminishingly few of his peers considered it plausible—and even though his inability to surrender his ambitions occasionally verged on the undignified. He believed that fate—a word strewn across his monologues—sometimes required him to travel the ugly path to success. At every station in his adult life, joy marched in lockstep with trauma. And when the image in his head transposed itself into reality on January 20, 2021, it seemed entirely fitting that the inauguration, which he had so long desired, deviated so wildly from his expectations, and was stalked by death...
In the dream version of the day, he solemnly strides onto the stage erected on the west front of the Capitol, through doors held open by marines. But when that day arrived, the glass in those doors was shattered. Two weeks earlier, right-wing paramilitaries battered them with flagpoles and purloined police shields in a violent quest to prevent him from ever taking office. The inaugural dais looked down onto steps, where police officers trying to fight off the surging mob had slipped in pools of blood. Instead of a democratic extravaganza, his inauguration was surrounded by wire fences and Jersey barriers, guarded by armored vehicles and twenty-six thousand members of the National Guard who descended on Washington for the event, determined to prevent a reprise of the violence of the sixth of January. Even if the public had been permitted to pass through the checkpoints surrounding the city center, it wouldn’t have come. Through the winter, it sheltered at home, worried that it might die by inhaling particles of disease wafting in the air. A global pandemic was at its lethal peak. On January 19, the eve of his inaugural, COVID’s death toll surpassed four hundred thousand. Despite the development of effective vaccines, the government had scant doses—and no effective plan for distributing them. To fill the expanse of the unoccupied Mall, inaugural planners planted two hundred thousand flags across the lawn, representing the absentees. Biden couldn’t address an adoring crowd, just sheets fluttering in the wind. This was not the image in his head. It was a postapocalyptic tableau—and the nation that he inherited. — The electorate turned to Joe Biden as a balm. Postmortems of his victory ascribed his success to the fact that voters hoped the kindly grandfather might impose calm and decency, a bit of boredom, and a dose of competence, after four erratic, enervating years of Trump. But voters’ expectations for Biden didn’t line up with his own.
“I’ve never done anything like this, where everything you write gets mined and turned into clickbait,” Frank Foer told me about his new book The Last Politician, a detailed study of the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency. “Fox News and the New York Post pull something out and act like it’s a critique of Biden. And their audience buys the book and writes Amazon reviews that trash it, saying it’s a puff piece.”
I wouldn’t call The Last Politician a puff piece or critique. It’s an attempt to understand a White House that has conducted much of its business outside the spotlight, perhaps to its detriment. It’s a chronicle of a presidency at a time of transformation, while it drives some of that transformation itself. It offers the opposite of lazy narratives about an old president, disconnected from events shaping the nation. But it also shows how the White House reinforces that narrative through its theory of politics. Continue on with another review...
While pulling things together to begin my review of Franklin Foer's latest book, this time, moving into the first two years of Biden's presidency, I took the time to check Amazon reviews. Over 46% were "1s," a clear sign to me that MAGA members had moved quickly to place their negatives, whether or not they even read the book. Things like "if you like Biden" you'll like this book??? What exactly does that even mean? The book was written by Franklin Foer--Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor of The New Republic, commenting on contemporary issues from a liberal perspective.
As you can see, Foer is already identifying himself as a liberalist, or, at least, it is his assignment to write on those issues that are defined as liberal. But does that mean he is a Biden supporter? Not necessarily.
I am a Biden supporter... That does not mean that I have the prerogative to trash a book in comparison with those I might read written by conservatives. In fact, in my opinion, it is clear that Foer freely shares any secrets he might have found out about during his time with this administration's staff.
First, of course, when reading a book, you begin to get a feel about whether the book is well-written. This one is. Indeed, his extensive index and footnotes provides readers a chance to confirm or even speak against those ideas that were shared by others. He also does a neat trick with the footnotes, he links back to where it is placed in the book, so that, if we want to compare, we can. As a footnote "professional" you might say from when I was working on university master or doctorate submissions, (I was editing), I loved this up-to-date methodology for how to handle research references.
So, please consider my titled statement as being related to the issues as they happened, versus either what the book says or what I had already learned via news reports. What I mean is that, given what has happened within the republican party and the spread of lies and misinformation, it seems that Joe Biden or any democrat's activities, will be damned if he does--or doesn't... What a waste of time for the central governing body of our Nation!
It is sad to me. I would hate to think that, in my own life, that my value would be based upon how any one individual might feel about me. You see, I have both sympathy and empathy for Joe Biden. We are clearly close in age. Therefore it rankles me, just as it probably does him, when others empathize his age as opposed to his very real acts of performance! And, you know, folks, I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about the political world of the United States. And, in my opinion, if we had more people like Joe Biden, as well as many who are acting on behalf of democracy, the running of the government would NOT be a major daily source of News... Boring, but informative. We Need That Now!
Thankfully, I am aware that the world itself has changed dramatically over the last decade. Perhaps more than in any other period of time. The volume of acts to affect our basic freedoms, performed by the republican party, has not only increased, but has changed to be based upon hate, prejudice and violence. I ask you: Could you be bombarded with so much crap without getting angry once in a while? Then I say, let the President speak his mind and if he makes just one statement that could be taken wrong, then let it pass away... Goodness knows anything that Biden says will at least make sense, which is new over the last administration's one statement said one day, changed the next day, and then moved back and forth just for good measure... LOL And, yes, anything that is being denied these days are surely the truth...and there is documentation to prove it!
~~~
First, it should be noted that Foer spent no time with President Biden in writing this book, other than being able to sit in on some group sessions. In fact, readers will see so many new and different names used, you may not follow the "characters." I was impressed with this. But, at a minimum, a list of characters in front would have allowed readers to learn who these people were as they read.
Foer's book somewhat follows a chronological view of major issues during the two-year time period starting post election. Remember that we were all dealing with the Covid Pandemic that had already begun in the previous administration. We know from Woodward's book, Rage, that Trump had worked to keep the true facts of the severity of the virus from Americans. In this book, at the point where the transition of administrations should have started to occur, those individuals who came in routinely to pick up on the status and reins for this monumental task, after being held off by outgoing staff for as long as possible, finally had to realize and accept that no plans had been made to actually distribute and administer the shots! Thus it was the Biden administration who had to "move the mountains" to get millions vaccinated. And succeeded!
An interesting tidbit was the fact that Trump's "Warp Speed" designation for ordering the necessary vaccines, actually put many on alert since they weren't sure that the vaccines had received full testing. But, then, of course, we all knew that it was Trump himself who refused to wear masks and his rhetoric led to the unwillingness of many republicans to not accept the tested and approved vaccine(s). It was actually fascinating reading the details of what happened to deal with the monumental task facing the new administration. However, as we read, it was clear that the competency of these incoming people could not have been better prepared to brainstorm and move forward...
One of the fascinating pieces of new information I learned is that this president and administration had many aides that were either just out of university(s) or in early years of working. (These aides were those I mentioned above as new characters.) To me, this awareness allowed me to realize and approve of the fact that Biden is quite aware that he needed people with more up-to-date methods and information, while at the same time, he was then able to merge his own significant wealth of experience and knowledge, to bring about the best possible decisions or plans of action. To me, this totally takes away any concern about Biden's age, since he, in effect, is providing the perspectives of both the old and the new in all issues affecting the United States.
“I’m now the fourth United States President to preside over American troop presence in Afghanistan: two Republicans, two Democrats.” Pushing his finger into the podium, he intoned, “I will not pass this responsibility on to a fifth.”
One of the early decisions of the new administration was to make a decisive act that had been "talked" about for over 20 years, but never acted upon. Here is where I began to think about that old saying: You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Specifically, it was a goal of President Biden to bring back our American soldiers... And he had the guts to follow through and do it...
Now here's the key point of the situation. Trump had met with the Taliban and given a date by which America would withdraw. Did action begin at that time to actually plan for and implement? No. We begin to see a pattern, do we not? Trump talked and claimed of actions... But then never really followed through on dealing with the entire picture and its potential ramifications... So, really, few actual accomplishments were made.
Consider two specific points. There had been no early preparation for an easy withdrawal. Indeed, there had been no review and judgment analysis with the country's president and Afghani military leaders. Could we, Biden's administration, not expect to have the Afghani military, after 20 years of training with Americans forces be fully ready for this occurrence, no matter how seemingly last-minute it was announced? Could we not have expected that the past administration would have been working with his people toward that day? Or, as with Covid, had anything been done...at all?
Indeed, No... The president soon left the country and the Afghani military were not prepared to act on their own plan, without the involvement of the U.S. Whether or not, during those 20 years, "anybody" had guided the people of the country as to the future, without "protection," it is and perhaps will never be clear.
BUT, there were at least three previous presidents who were involved with this issue...and, undoubtedly did nothing significant, except one thing. Trump met with the Taliban as opposed to the Afghani government, military and people. Indeed, he set a date for withdrawal. Why? What I personally believe is that, once again, Trump met with who he considered "his" autocratic peers, scheduled a date pulled out of his or the Taliban's hat... And didn't give a damn about the country or its people. He was going to bring the soldiers back to repurpose the money he wanted to spend for his own uses...just my personal opinion, of course...
What I also believe, is that nobody in America felt the pain of what actually occurred more than Joe Biden and his staff. He had done what Americans had wanted him to do. Yet, because of the non-activity planning that should have accompanied the set of a date of withdrawal by Trump, Biden was caught holding the crisis created by Trump and having to deal with it. How many times has the country been left in the lurch due to lack of follow through by that president?
You may even be correct in saying, not many, because, let's face it, the last president was not a planner who could deal with many multiple issues at the same time, keeping up-to-date on them, and being able to, importantly, direct and give specific details as to who, what, when, and, sometimes, how, to subordinates, peers, et.al., were to be handled.
Foer spends considerable time sharing an overview of the interaction with the Chinese President during this time. Personally, I wondered whether Foer, himself, was finding the exchange fascinating and wanted to talk about it. I was more intrigued by the way Biden moved forward to speak of former meeting times between the two men, while, at the end, Biden then went straight to the points that he wanted to bring forward in the meeting...
And then there were the two Senators who went slightly rogue within the Democratic Party. If this daily display played on news didn't keep you aware of what was happening, Foer presents a, may I say, delightful look as two aides were caught in this seemingly power struggle, with even a little break for a song! LOL
Sullivan was an earnest Minnesotan with carefully parted blond hair who vigorously defended the artistry of Billy Joel to his friends. When he would describe himself as the type of kid everyone hated for having memorized world capitals, he also evinced the sort of self-deprecation that disarmed skeptics. His mother, a guidance counselor at a public high school in Minneapolis, burned with ambition for her children, four of whom went to Yale. Tony Blinken hired one of them, Sullivan’s younger brother, Tom, to be his deputy chief of staff for policy. After starring on the high school debate team, Sullivan embarked on the long march through the Institutions: after Yale, a Rhodes Scholarship, followed by a Supreme Court clerkship for Stephen Breyer and a seat at the State Department. He was a favorite of Hillary Clinton, who kept handing him portfolios of ever greater importance. Richard Holbrooke once hailed him as a future secretary of state...
Of course, every newsman wants to include a little dirt in any political story, so Foer included an entire chapter and called it The Spring of Self-Pity... You know how it goes...
As Klain watched the explosion of joy, he thought, Why aren’t we receiving any credit for making this possible? The whole nation could rush to see Top Gun: Maverick in theaters thanks to the White House,
because of the steps it took to disseminate vaccines, and its guidance for safely reopening the economy. The public wanted a return to normal; well, this was normal. Yet the public seemed to think that Joe Biden had almost nothing to do with this feat. Judging by the polling, the public had little regard for his presidency. Only 38 percent of the nation approved of his performance—roughly the same response that Donald Trump consistently mustered. Klain saw something darkly humorous about the White House’s inability to move that number. Each time the public grew exercised about a problem—the lack of COVID tests, a shortage of baby formula, container ships unable to unload in ports—the administration would drop everything to solve it. These were the practical details of life, where the government touched the quotidian, and Biden obsessed over them, spending hours, say, sorting through the logistics of using the air force to import baby formula from abroad. But each time the Biden administration made progress fixing an issue, it suddenly disappeared from the public’s list of top concerns. The public only lashed the administration, never rewarded it. There was no glory in technocratic troubleshooting...
And, of course, Foer covers overturning Roe vs. Wade. One of the things I learned was that there was a SCOTUS Blog--in fact, several...FYI...
In the chapter Dobbs vs. Biden, we become privy to the actual issues that confronted Biden. As a Catholic, he has had years of being told that abortion was a sin. I'll be talking about this issue more when I finish reading my present book... But I want to finish with what happened when Biden began to be confronted with what happened because of this reversal...in reality.
But Biden seemed entrenched, and kept privately citing statements that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published, excoriating him from the right. It was as if the group understood that it could prey on his guilty conscience. Faced with the messy psychological dynamic at play, aides debated enlisting Biden’s sister, Valerie, to make the case for signing executive orders. Their best ally, in the end, turned out to be the radicalism of the antiabortion zealots in the states, who were quickly availing themselves of Dobbs to institute draconian restrictions. In Ohio, a trigger law imposed a sweeping ban on abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. Reports began circulating about a ten-year-old girl from Columbus, raped and pregnant. Because of Ohio’s ban, she needed to travel to Indiana to find a doctor to perform the abortion. This was the sort of morality tale that roiled Biden’s imagination, the bullying of the defenseless that set him off, allowing him to shift into the role of fatherly protector. Two weeks after Dobbs, he signed an executive order protecting access to medication abortion. As he did, he found himself growing unexpectedly emotional, invoking the case that rattled him so badly. “Ten years old—ten years old!—raped, six weeks pregnant, already traumatized.” He chopped at the air with his hands and seemed to almost vibrate with anger. “Imagine being that little girl!”
Compared with his performance on June 24, he sounded far more convincing; that was because he was far more convinced. This was Biden’s method for working through issues that conflicted him. He needed to vent, brood, and process his own doubts.
On August 2, Kansans went to the polls to vote on a referendum to amend the state’s constitution to remove the right to abortion from the document. Most prognosticators predicted that Kansas, hardly a bastion of social liberalism, would remain true to its social conservative self. But women, roused by Dobbs, turned out en masse and overwhelmingly rejected the amendment. It lost by a margin of 18 percent. Districts that Trump had won decisively, like the swath of suburbs and farmland north of Wichita, voted pro-choice. The referendum affirmed Biden’s strategic instinct. It would have been counter-productive to embrace the more aggressive response to Dobbs proposed by others. But as he watched the results, he couldn’t quite believe what he saw. Whatever his qualms, he now possessed the issue that provided his party with a fighting chance of surviving November’s midterms. The issue that tormented him was the issue that could save him.
And that, folks, is why, no matter his age, I believe we must support Joe Biden as our continued president. There may be issues that he had promised but had not been able to achieve (but, of course, there have been major achievements that have surpassed any recent president, while they fell short of what we all know is needed, especially for schools, teachers and children.) But, for me, and I hope for millions of you, it is, in the end, the man's concern and, yes, love for our nation and all of our citizens. We must fight against the hate, prejudice and violence now being used by the republican party against our citizens and against the constitution itself...
Full disclosure: I do not have absolute faith in the judgment and wisdom of the American people. We’re all human, and we can all be misled. When leaders don’t level with citizens, we can’t expect them to make good judgments. But I do have absolute faith in the heart of the American people. The greatest resource in this
country is the grit, the resolve, the courage, the basic decency, and the stubborn pride of its citizens. I know thousands of ordinary Americans, faced with burdens that would break many of us, who get up every single day and put one foot in front of the other and make it work. Most do it without demanding special favors or pity, even while the more fortunate among us stand willing to help ease those burdens. I’m convinced of the generosity, determination, and capabilities of our fellow Americans. I’ve seen it over and over, but it came home to me dramatically in the hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
One of the benefits of reading books is that, when there is an historical event, there are ways in which what is being said in the book can be verified. At least when that event creates such an impact on all of our lives! Thus it was with interest that as I read, I discovered that Joe Biden was "involved" on that day! At that time, he was a well-known Senator who got things done... So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was Joe Biden who had first addressed the public after the attack...
The planes hit while I was on the train from Wilmington to Washington, and when I came out of Union Station that morning, I could see a haze of smoke rising from the Pentagon across the Potomac. It was a morning of surreal stillness. There was almost no breeze. It was so quiet, I could hear myself breathe as I walked toward the Capitol dome. I was struck by the warm glow of sun on my face and the sharpness of the cobalt blue sky, which was strangely unmarred by air traffic. But beneath the calm there was a gathering feeling of panic on the ground in Washington. The Capitol building had already been evacuated. Senators, House members, and their staffs were milling around the park between the Capitol and Union Station. Some were talking on cell phones. Some were already arguing about the need for funding Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense system. The Capitol police refused to let anybody back into the building, but they were offering briefings for a select group of elected officials at a command post on the top floor of a four-story building behind the Senate offices. Most members were camping out on the floor below. So I was shuttling back and forth between floors, trying to persuade anyone who would listen that we should get back in session and show the American people we were taking care of business. Nobody would budge; leaders in both parties were being told they should be prepared to leave town. Congressman Bob Brady, who had also been pushing our colleagues to get back in session, finally gave up in disgust. He thought he might be able to do some good back in his home district in Philadelphia, and he offered to drop me in Wilmington on the way. On the way out, Brady and I could sense the panic rising as we walked through scores of reporters outside the building; they were understandably anxious to get some word of what was happening.
“Senator Biden,” a reporter from ABC said to me, “senators I’ve spoken to and members of Congress as well have said we are now at war. Senator Shelby, who is the ranking member on the intelligence committee, has said we are now essentially at war. We have to be on a war footing. And Senator Chuck Hagel says we have to start securing our borders, locking down our airports, revisiting the way we protect our public institutions. What about that?”
“I hope that’s not true,” I told her and her listening audience. I would say it another way. I would say we’ve come face-to-face with a reality. A reality we knew existed and we knew was possible. A reality that has happened to varying degrees in other countries. But if in fact, in order to respond to that reality, we have to alter our civil liberties, change the way we function, then we have truly lost the war…. The way to conduct the war is to demonstrate that your civil liberties, your civil rights, your ability to be free and walk and move around in fact are not fundamentally altered…. There are a lot of things we can do though to diminish significantly the possibility of this happening again without changing our character as a nation…. This nation is too big, too strong, too united, too much a power in terms of our cohesion and our values to let this break us apart. And it won’t happen. It won’t happen.
Many had already left, including the vice-president. President Bush was being flown from safe place to safe place and would not speak to the country until that evening.
The Twin Towers had collapsed by the time we got on the road toward Wilmington, and the death estimates in New York were five, six, seven thousand—maybe more. But when I got home and put on the television, I saw that the American heart was still beating strong. Doctors and nurses were standing by at hospitals in New York City, ready to treat the wounded. Snaking through the streets and up the avenues were long lines of New Yorkers waiting to give their blood, even though word was being passed that no more blood was needed. I could see it in their faces: They were hungry to do something, anything. Nobody was talking about war footings or payback. They just wanted to do their part. That was the day that reminded me that even in a moment of almost total silence from their leaders in Washington, Americans would rise to the occasion. Watching those people on the blood lines, I was convinced the country would get up off the mat, face the new challenge head-on, and emerge stronger for having done it. To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can’t learn at the feet of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you’ve been knocked down...
As we look toward another anniversary of 9-11 coming next month, so many different thoughts bombarded me:
The realization that it was Senator Biden, not then republican President Bush who spoke to the nation. Surely there was some way for Bush to get a message out sooner?
The confirmation of my opinion of Joe Biden, who, instead of moving quickly from danger, took the time to address the nation--He cares so much about Americans!
The comparison of the 9-11 terrorist attack to the 1-6 insurrection attack on our Capitol by domestic terrorists.
The recognition that not only did the president not address the nation immediately, but we have learned that he not only initiated it, but wanted to actually go there and participate (lead) his followers in overthrowing the election!
The knowledge that, during the 2016 election, Joe Biden did not immediately move to run for president. However, as he watched what was happening--how hate was being incited, along with fear and so much lying that people didn't know who or what to believe.
It must have been a difficult decision for Biden to consider running again. His long career had been full of many accomplishments and he would be seen as possibly too old to run for the presidency. Yet, with Covid and Trump's failure to even begin to plan for dissemination, and, at the same time, giving so many mixed signals about just how bad it was--in fact, admitting to a writer that he just didn't want to tell the people the truth, Joe Biden decided to step in and do what needed to be done.
And, even with so many different issues occurring after the devastation and death of Covid, he was not only able to get the distribution process started quickly, but also had a total plan of action of what needed to be done in every area.
You know, folks, those who claim he was and is not now able to run again, are being lied to as well. His opposition is doing all they can to continue to lie about Biden and his administration, but also to imply that he has not handled everything. When, in fact, he has done more, even with almost no republican support in getting things passed and moving forward.
Using pictures of when he was distraught over something, and claiming it reflects he is not able to handle the job is especially cruel, given just how much knowledge and experience he has provided and shared to get all of the things accomplished that were never achieved before.
Yet, even having to deal with Trump's continued control of republicans is unbelievable and surely could not have been predicted... I say, put the blame where it belongs. With the republican party that continues to use lies, tricks, and false conspiracy theories to try to continue the fear of losing our democracy... our freedoms... It will not happen!
Major issues have arisen because of Trump and his "loaded" Supreme Court. Women and men all over the world are questioning America going backward, taking away what was made into law! And threatening even more...
The republicans again refuse to deal with the use of military weapons for the murder of children, and adults...claiming it is not a problem...yet we have seen an increase of violence, many times from those who participated in the insurrection...to go against even the FBI and their actions... This has GOT to Stop...
And, by the way, one final opinion. I have NO desire to see the affidavit that brought about the FBI's need to restore records taken by Trump... We need to ensure that there is nothing to prevent him from being found guilty of espionage and more... Wait...the law may be slow...but more and more guilty designations are being made for Trump and his cult followers.
In the meantime, be careful of those running for congress... Even Mitch McConnell has hinted at the quality of republican candidates... One we know was part of the insurrection is now running for governor in my state! We've never heard of him before... Then Dr. Oz was brought in as a "ringer" to try to garner Trump follower support...and everybody knows he doesn't live in PA! Be careful and do your research. Right now, people are working from a plan of action that includes lies, fear, and removal of rights for many of us...Do remember that the republican party has changed! It is no longer party to party...it is Trump's cult against the Democratic party...and they used guns to garner fear! Stop the Madness!
These final thoughts are, of course, my personal opinions, of course... But I have made sure I keep up to date on what is happening... That's all I ask of you. Do your own research and discover the reality... Check out for instance the democratic nominee running against DeSantis... He WAS a republican and when he saw what had happened to the party, he first became an independent, and then a democrat, probably for the same reason I did, so that we could vote in the primaries... He is a former republican party governor...and easily won... Personally, I think that should tell republicans something about who is controlling the party now...
And a final thought...Joe Biden was called, later, by President Bush, to thank him for speaking on behalf of the government... noting that it was exactly what needed to be said... Doesn't it make you wonder why neither the vice-president or president could manage to speak to Americans on 9-11 until it was already over... ?
I've been reading Promises to Keep off and on for weeks and have just a few pages to finish this weekend. As I read, I felt more and more aware of just how much knowledge and experience Joe Biden has! And how lucky we are to have this man as our president at this time in America...
First, again, I want to establish myself as a political animal. I am
"It was more about doing good than being good."
now a confirmed democrat--for Biden, but for many years of my life, in fact, probably the first six decades, I was a cat...Yes, a cat! You know, one who sleeps through life, eating when fed, or if feral, going out to search for food when hungry... Specifically, I knew who was president and some of the things happening, but in a full-time job that included long hours and much pressure, and from which I ultimately went into job burnout and walked out, well, I didn't have the time or take the time to know what was happening nationally and world-wide...
Probably just like the majority of Americans, right? Anyway, just because I wasn't sure I wanted to be a jackass, so I went out to google the meaning...and found this instead! LOL I predict most of us will be just as confused except that the creator had been bullied and apparently felt we, as citizens, may often think of politicians as bullies? Let me know if you can add to this tail...LOL
Anyway, what I discovered more and more is that my choice for our president has some really sound basis for doing so--at least from my personal opinion. Consider this issue...even before I read this book, I was opposed to solicitation of funds for candidates from the citizens! Still am, for that matter, although I did break down and contribute to Biden...because of fear and my assurance that he was the right man at this time! My point of reference was my background in Personnel and then in academic administration where the university, itself, paid for advertising and interviewing potential candidates. To me, this made sense. We all had already contributed to the government through taxes. So, why wasn't our taxes used to search and seek out those to fill vacant positions. While I recognize that the government is far larger than the average corporation, it is also a decentralized organization, each with individual budget allocations...so the head of each unit would need to plan for replacement of personnel, just as part of the normal annual budget planning. Believe me, it is really not a hard process to develop and operate an active personal services budget!
I admit though that I was surprised to see that Biden had written on this same subject!
Jim Eastland and I got off to a less auspicious start. I got crossways with him right away—on campaign finance reform. One of the few issues I really dug into my first year was election financing. There has been constant public plaint about public office being bought by big money and big corporations. And it’s a justifiable concern.
Back in 1973 the liberals in the Senate were calling for reform along the lines of setting strict limits on individual and corporate campaign donations. But with another freshman, Dick Clark of Iowa, I was making the pitch for total public financing of elections, and Mansfield asked me to make a presentation about our proposal in the Democratic caucus.
Freshmen rarely spoke in caucus, but I made my pitch. Once I got on a roll, I just kept going. Public confidence in the process was eroding with every election cycle, I reminded my Democratic colleagues, and the scandals surrounding the Nixon reelection campaign finances had been a new low point. Public financing was a way to win back the trust. We would never again have to worry about who our contributors were or what high crimes and misdemeanors stuck to them. It would free us all. We’d be beholden to no individual and no interest group. We’d be answerable to our true constituents only—the American people.
And our proposal was simple: The government would finance every congressional election. A sitting officeholder, like those of us in the room, would get a certain amount of funding to work with, and because of the obvious advantages of incumbency, challengers would get that same amount plus an extra 10 percent. A minimal amount—a few dollars—from every tax return could easily fund federal elections, I explained. I’d done my homework; I had the math. When I finished talking and sat down, there was silence.
“Any comments?” Mansfield asked the room. Still dead silence. Nobody said a word. The senior leadership—Bob Byrd, Daniel Inouye, and Eastland—sat rock still at the front table. Eastland was chewing hard on his cigar.
Later that day, in the cloakroom, Warren Magnusson literally yelled at me: “Biden, goddammit, get over here…. I want you to cut the crap. Shut it down. I didn’t spend thirty years in the U.S. Senate to give away my seat to some sniveling little jerk who got 10 percent more money than me.”
But in the caucus that day, after the interminable silence, it was Eastland—and Eastland alone—who finally spoke up. “They tell me you’re the youngest man in the history of America ever elected to the U.S. Senate,” Eastland said, still chomping on his cigar. Actually, I was the second youngest ever elected, but it didn’t seem a good time to correct him. “Y’all keep making speeches like you made today,” Eastland continued, “and you gonna be the youngest one-term senator in the history of America.”
With that Mansfield banged the gavel: “Adjourned!”
I REMEMBER FEELING that day like I was playing high school football again and I’d just taken my first tough hit of the season. Now I had to prove I wasn’t going to stay down. Game on. Let’s go. I was respectful of my colleagues, but I was not intimidated. I understood how improbable it would be to push through public financing of campaigns: When a rabidly conservative southerner like Eastland and a liberal westerner like Magnusson agreed on something with that sort of vigor, I knew I wasn’t going to find much support. But I didn’t back off; I was determined to push this.
A few weeks later I testified before the Senate Rules and Administration Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. And I was perfectly candid. I went on the record about my experiences with the machinists union and the wealthy investors in Delaware and the sense I got that their donations to my Senate campaign came with strings attached. I told the subcommittee members I believed the system turned off people who really wanted to be involved: “The small contributor, in my opinion, feels what in the hell difference does it make whether I make the small contribution because those Democrats are the product of big labor and those Republicans are the product of big business.” And I told them that we public officials were being ripped off by the system, too: “There is a great deal of pressure, in the one particular area at least, to prostitute our ideas, if not our integrity.”
I believed then that real campaign finance reform is the fastest way to restore some measure of public confidence in the system. Nothing would do more to bind politicians to the average citizen than a guarantee of clean elections. Thirty-five years later I still believe that.
Well, folks, I have to say I was laughing in glee when I came upon this first "proposal" from our now President... No, he was not successful then or at any time since, but that did not change how he and I...and maybe YOU, feel about big money buying our government positions?
Consider the former president. Not only was big money following him, but he also didn't give up any ownership of businesses that could be controversial. And we all learned about how he would go weekly to golf or to his present home in Florida where he would invite people for meetings and thus bring big bucks not only for the meetings but for housing... Surely you are aware that many hotels in many areas complained that they weren't even able to attempt to solicit people to stay at their facilities, given that the "understanding" was clear where they would be staying... Of course, there was the excessive budget used for the presidential inauguration ball(s), the government rental of property in Trump Tower, and, of course, the infamous reason for his second impeachment when he attempted to bargain government funds in order for the president of Ukraine conducting an investigation on Biden's son's employment there. In face, there were routine issues that arrived for him and his staff that were questionable...yet never addressed!
I won't go into all of the other ethics issues that took place while he was in office, including, for instance, a deal for his daughter, Ivanka's business, with the Chinese, based upon their "visiting" there for governmental reasons...
But, worse, let's look at what has happened since The Big Lie took control of the republican party... Trump continues to solicit donations from his followers for this or that "lie" that he has been charged with...and millions are rolling in, even while so many criminal charges are underway, including the latest on the Trump Organization which has resulted in the chief financial officer being indicated and convicted...that it is hard for us to even keep track... Tell me, who would reasonably expect to be paying for legal fees on his crimes? Only those who have denied truth and work to undermine today's democratic nation!
And, of course, I should include the millions that were solicited for a "wall" by his crony, Steve Bannon... who has also been indicted for fraud...
In my opinion, the real reason for their to be republican anger by citizens in the continued cry for money TO COVER LEGAL EXPENSES FOR HIS AND OTHER'S LIES!
Go figure...I can't, for the life of me, wonder how in the world that so many can have been conned, so easily...while so many of us have seen right through the use of government funds for personal, conflict-of-interest purposes... You may recall that the Ethics director resigned shortly after Trump took office, because he could see that "ethics" was never part of any equation and figured he was going to be out of a job anyway, if he "tried" to do his job...
Money buys power. In my opinion, it has resulted in corruption for many that are in office and/or seeking office. Men like Doug Mastriano and "Dr. Oz" who are running in Pennsylvania!!! They are running for one reason... while John Fetterman, for instance, while in state office, refused to use state money to open the house he could have had, and instead stay in his own home... While the governor candidate has acted on behalf of those, for instance, who had been sexually abused and who had suffered without action until Josh Shapiro took on the difficult task of dealing with proof, the concurrent pain, yet the need for recognition by those victims... This is just one of the things he has tackled quietly in PA... and, for this one, caring, choice to recognize this great need is enough...I'd take him over anybody else from the republican party! We surely don't need men who are in it for the money--for the power--and for their own ego! One Trump was enough...be careful... do your research, check out their character, their actions, and their background... check out multiple news sources if you have concerns... I did! You Should be sure that those you vote for will bring about those types of actions that Biden has accomplished in such a short time, even though it seems long, doesn't it?
And if you don't know already what accomplishments have been made by Biden's administration, you aren't, in my opinion, watching the right news sources... Change your channels and discover MORE!
