The Republican press and pundits have been carrying on a merciless campaign of ageism against Joe Biden. “He’s too old,” they whine. “He’s losing it,” they scream. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” they inject into every conversation.
“You mean like Mitch McConnell?” is the next logical question. But Mitch, whatever his problems, isn’t the point here. The point is, as always, Trump, and how he compares to Biden.
Trump is a couple of years younger than Biden but anyone who has watched the way he behaves and followed his decision-making, might think he passed into senility and insanity decades ago. Look at the record.
Trump passed one piece of significant legislation in four years in the White House and spent the rest of his time there, lying, bragging, and scheming about ways to subvert the Constitution and commit other felonies that would end up getting him Impeached twice and indicted four times, so far. His one piece of legislation cut taxes on corporations and the rich and added them for the middle class, resulting in the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. This week Biden passed a bill that will cut prices on all kinds of drugs, saving the Federal government over a hundred billon over the next ten years and making those drugs more affordable for the same people Trump screwed with his legislation. That’s called getting shit done. It’s something Trump and his incompetent GOP buddies have never heard of.
In less time than Trump had in office, Biden has passed infrastructure bills, chips bills, climate bills, an immigration restructuring and now a prescription drug bill to lower the costs of life saving drugs for everyone. He would have done a lot more if we hadn’t fucked him up by giving the GOP the House in 2022. The House, just like any normal GOP operation has stopped everything in its tracks.
No one is asking anyone to do any deep deductive reasoning here. All we ask is that you look at what Trump did in his four years and what Biden has done with his first two and then decide which is better for the country.
The work of Congress too complicated for you? Okay, let’s look at foreign policy. Once Trump allowed Russia to help him get elected, he had to kiss Putin’s ass in every situation. He put the nation in the same position. His nonsensical foolishness with Kim put us in a vulnerable position for North Korea’s experiments with nuclear weapons, and his belligerence with China left us vulnerable to a possible incident in the South China seas, that could have led to war. You really want this clown to be president again?
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Larry Hogan, possibly the best of the GOP presidential possibilities, was interviewed by Bob Costa, who may be the best interviewer currently without his own show, and as usual Hogan showed us why he is the best hope of the Republicans as soon as they decide to actually think.
The fact is, Hogan isn’t running because he realizes that he won’t survive in a crowd of candidates that have nothing special to sell to a GOP audience. They are not looking for intelligent, straight-thinking candidates who understand how to run a government that works for the people. They are looking for bullshit artists and con men who will sell them a giant cow flop and try to convince them it’s a cure for cancer.
Hogan, however, has hinted that he may eventually be the one who steps into the third-party void that is being manipulated by No Labels. Whether that becomes a reality or not is still very much up in the air. Even though he is a Republican, Hogan would be a much better third-party candidate than Cornell West.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene the reigning nut case of congress is babbling about impeaching Joe Biden. She didn’t even know what the word meant before Trump earned his impeachment. Now she and the Nazi Right are threatening to dump McCarthy if he doesn’t put together a committee to investigate Biden for, and get this, what his son may have done.
Justice has taken on a whole new aura within the conscienceless GOP.
But what does Taylor-Greene look to accomplish? Anyone with any ability to reason understands that nothing can come from this impeachment nonsense. Trump got impeached because he openly admitted his crimes. Biden isn’t even being accused of anything specific. They just want to nuzzle around in his business and waste his time so his future accomplishments will be limited. It seems impossible that no one has attempted to explain to the intellectually crippled Taylor-Greene that Presidents are not responsible for the actions of their relatives. If they had, she might understand why Trump hasn’t been indicted for the actions of Don Jr., Eric and Ivanka, while Carter was never crucified over that piss-water, Billy Beer. *****
Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, was interviewed last Sunday, and the word “Trust” was bandied about in regard to China. It isn’t about trusting the Chinese; it’s about figuring out a way to define terms so that they mean the same thing to both parties when we are in negotiations. It’s also about the difference between the Chinese POV as it existed under previous administrations that were most interested in being a world leader in commerce, and this administration, which appears to be most interested in being a world leader in aggression.
There was a time when Chinese leadership seemed to understand that their goal of being the worlds leader in commerce ran through international trading, but now Xi seems to feel that it runs through international intimidation, a path that has hurt China, cut its leadership role and is fast dropping it to a permanent position as a second-place commercial power. A nation that had seriously challenged us as world commercial leader has now fallen far behind. *****
Something interesting is going on at The Museum of Modern Art. Curator Michelle Kuo is presenting a huge Artificial Intelligence piece composed of 90,000 works by 26,000 artists,
assembled with the help of AI by Refik Anadol.
The work itself has a certain brilliance. It resembles nothing more than a giant 3D television screen with a constantly changing image as Anadol, by means of AI, continually manipulates the 90,000 paintings into a mélange of intermixed images that he promises will continue to interplay for a hundred years without duplicating any single image. But that is a technical, not an artistic achievement. That is AI saying, “we need a human brain to take the next step.” Which may or may not be true.
Like many abstract expressionist paintings, the imagery is at times stunning but more often than not the incredible imagery is sapped by a need for it to do something that says something.
Like Robert Ryman, whose infamous white on white paintings offended the walls of this Museum, this accumulation of brilliance seems to be lacking a reason for being.
Anapol after all, isn’t the artist, not even one of the 26,000. He is merely an arranger using AI to manipulate other’s skills. He is so good at it that he would appear to have, through his manipulation, created something wholly his own, but I don’t think that is true because he, despite his brilliance, is unable to make a statement of his own. The work never says to us, “look at me, this is why I am here, this is why I exist.”
I am one of those old, old fashioned art lovers who no matter how visually enthralling, like their art to have a point of view, even if it’s only that the barn in the painting might be a pleasant place to live.
Anatol’s piece, as visually fascinating as it is, seems to be lacking that thing needed to raise it to a higher plain. Maybe it’s because AI can’t create. Or if it can, maybe it’s because Anatol allowed his tool to become master of the process.
Continuing to ask how a candidate as Trump could exist, as well as the perplexing question of the existence in Congress of Marjorie Taylor-Greene , are both pointless.
They are true representatives of their constituents. As Americans, we have been fed from early on the pablum of believing politicians in general, and believing that our interests are being served by elected people that we think are larger, more talented, or brighter than ourselves. There could be hope in educating larval citizens that trust is not faith but something earned by our representatives. This learning process would be understandably slow. But as we know, even the late great Jayne Mansfield was not built in a day!