So the first guy Biden boots is the African-American Surgeon General.
And he passes over the next in line to fill in as acting--and she's a female career civil servant.
Snubbed, she understandably resigns.
Oh, and the full-time replacement will be a male Obama retread.
Neoliberals to Progressives:
Sure, sure--we'll mouth your platitudes.
And then we'll do what we want.
What are you going to do about it?
Yeah, that's what we thought.
I think you fumbled on this one. Nobody is looking back on the Obama administration today with trepidation. More like some long national nightmare. And a conclusion. And a more recent era of incompetence.
ReplyDeleteThe Abraham accords, low unemployment, improvements in compensation at the low end of the scale, breaking the back of ISIS, the lowest levels of violence in Iraq in 17 years, dramatic reductions in scam refugee admissions, and getting it all done in the teeth of constant lawfare from Hawaiian judges and schemers in the permanent government. Let's have some more of this 'incompetence'.
DeleteYou could also mention migrant kids in cages, global drone attacks, assassination of an American teenager, using the Espionage Act against journalists, the wrecking of Syria and Libya, etc during the glorious era of 44.
DeleteSince 2003 the majority of American voters since 2004 have been fine with chopping the world to pieces--so long as the chopper in chief is civil about it and maintains a facade of decorum.
As a non-Dem I have no problem being critical of Mr Obama. I give W a 2, his successor a 5, and the most recent a 0. As for Art's fake news, we have high unemployment and a host of problems caused by the bumbling of an epidemic. All he had to do is manage it competently and we would have been looking at four years of p****-grabbing instead of hair-smelling. Not a fumble, Dale, but a Taron Johnson interception return. Not even the Lions have suffered that. But that's okay.
DeleteNone of what Art said was "fake news," just uncongenial to your zero rating.
DeleteThe reality is, in the dying days of the Republic, the citizenry doesn't care about the body count so long as the man (or woman) in charge projects an appropriate level of telegenic politeness. It's how people shrugged off dead Iraqis and Syrians. And it's how Mario Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer get good ratings despite the fact they killed thousands of elderly people by shunting the infected into nursing homes. A record production of two effective vaccines against a virgin field virus? A nothingburger, if "norms" are offended.
And speaking of managed optics from Team Civility--dealing with the wreckage has gone to the back burner. The Senate Majority Leader said they'd get to the relief bill by March.
Because the important part was getting rid of the rude man. Mission accomplished.
Now an acceptably polite man is in charge, pandemic management is a dropping priority, at least for the funding branch of government controlled by the ruling party.
And the lowered scrutiny will probably work, given that people who claim to be all about accountability are bent on snarling at Trump's afterimage for at least the next two political cycles.
Hawaiian judges and schemers. Swing and a miss
DeleteAll he had to do is manage it competently and we would have been looking at four years of p****-grabbing instead of hair-smelling
DeletePer Tara Reade we're getting 4 more years of pussy-grabbing anyway.
OK.
ReplyDeleteI have no clue how what's left of Joseph Biden qualifies as a 'polite man'.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't hold any American president responsible for intramural political violence in the Arab world. See Stanley Kurtz on why public life is difficult in Arab societies (which, interestingly enough, don't feature much social violence in everyday life). You've had since 1954 five distinct insurgencies on the south Arabian coast, two quite sanguinary insurgencies in Algeria, an interminable (and quite pointless) insurgency in the old Spanish Sahara. Two distinct insurgencies in Libya (one ongoing), 90-odd years of brigandage among Arabs in and around the former mandatory Palestine, a 15 year long civil war in Lebanon (which has residues left over), repeated bouts of insurgency in the Kurdish portions of Turkey and Iraq, multi-faceted political violence in Iraq over the last 17 years, and a pitiless civil war in Syria. Adjacent to the Arab world, you've had and interminable multi-stage insurgency in the Sudan, 42 years of insurgency in Afghanistan, a five-year long civil war in Tajikistan which left the country in ruins, and chronic political violence in Pakistan which at times has claimed 2,000 persons a year. That, regrettably, is how business is done in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia in this era in which we live.
"Polite" = "no mean tweets."
ReplyDelete