Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

hightor wrote:

"Everyone look at ME!"

When did the State of the Union message become an event for making ugly fashion statements?

Republican woman have no class

Clinton's personal attorney Bob Bennett said in a statement released Friday that the president "remains certain that the plaintiff's claims are baseless." Even so, "The president has decided he is not prepared to spend one more hour on this matter," Bennett said.

"Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to be an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any party," Bennett said.

For years now, Israeli governments have brashly and unapologetically refused to hold mandated negotiations to end the occupation of Palestinian areas. The 1993 Oslo Accords called for a short interim period in which Palestinians would secure their major cities while Israel gradually put an end to its decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands taken in June 1967. Instead, Israel has expropriated more and more Palestinian land, erecting settlements in what amounts to de facto annexation.

U.S. officials in the Biden administration have been reluctant to get involved, yet a spate of killings by Israel of Palestinians in areas ostensibly under Palestinian control appear to have forced their hand. The Biden administration recently dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken to intervene.

As Axios' Barak Ravid reports, the U.S. asked the Palestinians to resume security coordination with Israel, which was suspended last month after a deadly raid in the West Bank city of Jenin killed 10, including an elderly lady. In return, Blinken asked Israel to pause its settlement activity in the West Bank and to stop the planned demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. The U.S. also asked the Palestinians to postpone taking action against Israel at the U.N.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stuck with an extremist coalition that he cobbled together to get back in power, did not agree to the U.S. demands, though he did pause the planned demolition of a Palestinian home housing 100 people in East Jerusalem. In a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron last Thursday, Netanyahu said he would not suspend all settlement activity in the West Bank, though he said it would be "much less" than what his far-right partners desire, Ravid reported.

America's requests to both sides might seem balanced if you know nothing about the situation. If you do, however, you know that the Americans were asking Israel to stop actions that are already illegal, at least according to the Geneva Convention. In return, the Palestinians were asked to suspend legal actions at the United Nations and to continue their role as the security subcontractors for Israel without Israel even being asked to go back to peace talks.

America's proposed pause mandates that Palestinians be denied the right of resistance, recognized by international law when it comes to an occupied people, yet simultaneously demands that Palestinian leadership work overtime to thwart resistance while being blocked from nonviolent diplomatic efforts at the U.N. to end the occupation.

Any crisis management student knows that the de-escalation of a cycle of violence requires two simultaneous acts: a ceasefire and at the same time a robust political effort aimed at addressing the root causes of the violence. Yet the Biden administration informed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem last year that the time was not ripe for negotiations.

Instead, Biden's team is demanding Palestinian leaders subjugate their own people without showing any interest in recognizing or dealing with Palestinian national aspirations.

I seriously doubt Clinton would have gotten a prison sentence. He settled with Paula Jones in order to drop the case. He was sick of it by then. The cases weren't similar, in my opinion.

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Aug. 17) -- Breaking seven months of near silence, President Bill Clinton admitted Monday night that he did, in fact, have an inappropriate and "wrong" relationship with ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, but insisted he did nothing illegal. (512K wav sound)

"I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife," Clinton said, his voice breaking slightly. "I deeply regret that." (320K wav sound)

Clinton's four-minute address to the nation followed an afternoon of closed-door testimony for a federal grand jury looking into how Clinton answered questions about his relationship with Lewinsky in a deposition in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case last January.

"While legally accurate, I did not volunteer information," Clinton said.

Not all of Clinton's testimony at his deposition in the Jones lawsuit relied on the ordinary meaning of these words, however. The
lawyers for Paula Jones at one point provided him with a formal written definition of the phrase "sexual relations." Jones's lawyers then
interrogated Clinton about whether, under that rather convoluted
written definition, he had engaged in "sexual relations" with Lewinsky. Clinton denied having done so.

Is there anything liberals can do about Ron DeSantis other than quietly seethe, loudly condemn him every time he makes headlines and hope that his political flaws — his distaste for glad-handing, his less-than-inspiring public-speaking style, his conspicuous unlikability — will take him down before he gets anywhere close to the presidency? It would be tempting to write off DeSantis, the bombastic Republican governor of Florida, as another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office.

We’ve made that mistake before.

It’s reliably depressing to revisit 2016 and the misbegotten liberal conviction that America couldn’t possibly elevate Donald Trump to the presidency. We’ve already cataloged the mistakes in media coverage and dissected what we missed that somehow made Trump a viable, let alone a desirable, candidate to occupy the Oval Office. But here we go again. As the Democratic political strategist Lis Smith has remarked, the left’s reaction to DeSantis looks just like its reaction to Trump: “He’s picking these fights. He’s saying and doing abhorrent things. And all the same characters — whether in the media, Democratic politics, the punditry class, whatever it is — have the same freakout.”

Let’s pay closer attention this time.

First, we shouldn’t underestimate DeSantis. He may resemble Trump in his politics — but not in his intellect or resolve. Compare their respective backgrounds: Whereas Trump’s acceptance into the University of Pennsylvania, after an academic record notable only for its mediocrity, was an egregious example of leveraging personal connections to get into a prestigious university, DeSantis, the son of a TV ratings box installer and a nurse, actually earned his way into the Ivy League. People bent over backward to ascribe some accidental form of grifter street smarts to Trump. But DeSantis is demonstrably intelligent and industrious. He worked his way through Yale while playing baseball and graduated magna cum laude.

Whereas Trump skirted military service with a convenient discovery of bone spurs, DeSantis was a commissioned officer in the Navy. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He may share Trump’s taste for bluster, but this is not someone who bumbled his way into public office. As Dexter Filkins observed last year in a New Yorker profile, “DeSantis has an intense work ethic, a formidable intelligence and a granular understanding of policy.”

Because we can assume DeSantis knows what he’s doing, we should make careful note of his record in Florida, where he has been governor since 2019. His approval rating in Florida is consistently over 50 percent and includes high ratings among Latinos and in former liberal strongholds like Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties.

The jury is still out on whether DeSantis’s unorthodox response to Covid-19 was a colossal error or an unexpected success or, more likely, something in between, but the fact that he took an aggressive approach to avoid the pains of lockdown on small businesses and families wasn’t lost on Florida voters. While other politicians prevaricated and dithered, DeSantis spoke with conviction and seemed to be doing something, and to many working families in Florida, that mattered.

When I visited Miami from Covid-conscious New York in 2021, the vibe in bars and restaurants in the Wynwood art district — where nobody asked for proof of vaccination and I was the only person in a mask — was euphoric. In that young, overwhelmingly liberal corner of the city, people weren’t faulting DeSantis for his pandemic policies. He also acted decisively last year during Hurricane Ian, a response that won strong bipartisan approval.

In a country where government often looks sclerotic, DeSantis’s knack for action bears notice. We can decry his stunt in shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but we should also be attending to the real concerns of people living in areas of heavy immigration. Lest we forget, Hispanic voters in Florida preferred DeSantis to his Democratic opponent in last year’s election for governor; they also supported his Martha’s Vineyard escapade, according to a Telemundo/LX News poll. “There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down,” one pollster explained at the time.

Democrats need to grapple with this appeal. It would be easy to write DeSantis off as a cartoon culture warrior or as racist, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic. He may well be all those things, and so may some of his constituents. But he may not be, and either way, it would be foolish to characterize all his followers as such. Assuming a stance of moral superiority will do us no good. (See: Hillary Clinton, “deplorables.”)

Finally, we shouldn’t let DeSantis co-opt positions on which Democrats have historical strength and a natural advantage: education, health care, jobs. There are reasons so many Americans are relocating to the Sunshine State beyond the balmy weather. This month, DeSantis released a budget plan that featured targeted tax cuts aimed at parents, salary increases for state employees, including teachers, and significant investments in schools, including programs in civic education.

DeSantis’s maverick approach to primary, secondary and higher education has brought widespread condemnation from Democrats, particularly from their more progressive wing. But we should pay attention to why his policies land better with voters than with progressive critics. A law like the Stop WOKE Act of 2021 (later partly blocked by a federal court), which limited the discussion of certain racial issues during diversity training sessions offered by private employers and in the classroom, may come with an incendiary name and some egregious efforts to curtail free speech. But it’s important to recognize that aspects of it appeal to Floridians tired of racial and ethnic divisiveness and the overt politicization of what’s taught in the classroom.

As many liberals will quietly acknowledge, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which DeSantis signed last year and which opponents nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, has reasonable and legitimate attractions for a broad range of parents who worry about the focus, efficacy and age appropriateness of what their kids are learning in primary and secondary school. Democratic leadership should worry, too. Keeping quiet or pretending those concerns aren’t real won’t make them go away.

Then there’s college. The challenges of higher education have never been a strength for the Republican Party, which has long ignored the myriad needs of indebted students and the financial and existential pressures on academic institutions. If ideological conformity has taken root in American universities, long a bastion of liberal ideals, then Democrats are the ones with the knowledge, experience and record to attend to the problem. It’s on liberals to check the excesses of illiberal orthodoxies rampant among those on its far-left wing. It’s on us to ensure academic freedom and the kind of educational system parents can trust.

It should be cause for alarm that recent polls show Republicans holding an advantage on educational issues. Rather than dismiss parents’ concerns as somehow unfounded or wrongheaded, we should be listening to them and finding better solutions to their grievances. Telling parents they’re bigots or are unenlightened for not embracing the latest faddish orthodoxy is not a winning message.

Which brings us back to Trump. We know that he takes DeSantis seriously because Trump has shown signs that he’s scared of DeSantis as a competitor. If even Trump knows that much, Democrats are capable of knowing more. Trump may think the best way to defang DeSantis — whom he calls “DeSanctimonious” — is to mock and belittle him. Democrats should recognize it will take far more than that.

Well, you probably should.

The father of a 20-year-old woman who died of a fentanyl overdose has said that Marjorie Taylor Greene “crossed the line” when she heckled President Joe Biden’s telling of his daughter’s story at the State of the Union.

Doug Griffin told The Independent that he found it “really nasty” when the controversial GOP congresswoman interrupted the president’s address during what should have been a “moment of reverence”.

“I was startled as that was the only time during the entire speech that he was heckled in that way,” he said.

“It was really nasty in what was a time of reverence. I think she crossed the line.”

“It’s a constant battle between far left and far right – a struggle to be able to do anything,” he said.

“And I think that was the perfect example of that when she broke in there. It’s not the time or the place to do that.

“And I’m a Republican – but the issue of drugs is not a partisan issue.”

Mr Griffin’s daughter Courtney – a talented musician who had dreams of moving to Hawaii – was just 20 when she died of a fentanyl overdose in September 2014.

Since her death, Mr Griffin has fought to raise awareness about the stigma of addiction and called for better access to substance use disorder treatment services.

On Tuesday night, Mr Griffin and his wife Pam attended the State of the Union as a guest of first lady Jill Biden, where Mr Biden shared Courtney’s story with members of the House and the Senate – as well as the millions of TV viewers across America.

“Joining us tonight is a father named Doug from Newton, New Hampshire. He wrote Jill my wife a letter and me also about his courageoeus daughter Courtney. Contagious laugh. Her sister’s best friend,” the president said.

“He shared a story all too familiar to millions of Americans and many of you in the audience. Courtney discovered pills in high school. It spiraled into addiction and eventually her death from a fentanyl overdose. She was just 20 years old.

“Describing the last eight years without her, Doug said, ‘There is no worse pain.’

“Yet their family has turned pain into purpose, working to end stigma and change laws. He told us he wants to ‘start a journey towards America’s recovery.’

“Doug, we’re with you. Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year.”

At that moment, Ms Greene – who made repeated outbursts during the speech – and several others began heckling the president.

The Georgia congresswoman could be heard yelling out: “It’s coming from China!”

Another lawmaker chimed in: “It’s your fault!”

Mr Griffin didn’t react to the disruption at the time, with the camera panning round to show him sitting solemnly in the gallery.

But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was seen shushing members of his own party.

Mr Griffin told The Independent that the interruption “took me away”.

“At that moment he was trying to tell her story and get a response to the story and [Ms Greene] broke the momentum of that moment,” he said.

“I traveled a long way for me and my wife to be there to hear it and she crossed the line and broke the momentum of the minute.”

To Mr Griffin, it was a big moment to be invited to the State of the Union and for Mr Biden to use part of his major annual address to speak about his daughter and the fentanyl crisis.

It’s something he has been pushing the government to do more to tackle since Courtney’s death in 2014.

As Mr Biden mentioned, Mr Griffin had written to the president two years ago – and so he was “surprised” when an invitation came this year.

“It must have been at the back of their mind all this time,” he said.

“Courtney’s story has been told in congress before but this is the first time a president has told it.”

He said that he knows his daughter would have been “proud”.

From a young age, Mr Griffin said that Courtney always had the same dream in life.

“Since she was four years old, she said she wanted to be a Hawaiian,” he laughed. “She always had the same answer.”

The family travelled a lot and she was in a band.

But in high school, Courtney first took drugs and she soon became addicted to heroin.

Mr Griffin said that his daughter fought her addiction and joined the Marines “to get away from drugs”.

“She was only a little thing, five foot one, at this bootcamp and was getting through it and then in the entrance exam one urine sample came back positive for marijuana and they threw her out,” he said.

“She had finally got on the path and she loved the discipline. She came out and she crashed as she felt like she had failed, like she was worthless.”

Courtney then applied to college – only one: the University of Hawaii.

Mr Griffin said she was accepted but because she was still battling addiction at the time she didn’t go.

Courtney really wanted to get help, booking into a treatment facility in 2014. But when the health insurance company refused to cover the treatment, she had no choice but to leave.

“They told us it’s not a matter of life and death,” Mr Griffin said.

“Back in 2014, if the world knew you were doing drugs you were treated as a junkie and treated with less respect.”

Courtney died just one month later.

For Mr Biden to speak about the fentanyl crisis in Tuesday’s speech shows that his administration is now “trying” to address the issue, said Mr Griffin.

“I think he’s really trying. I don’t think the average person realises the depth of the problem and I think his administration is aware of that,” he said.

Mr Griffin would like to see the government channel more money into grassroots programmes.

“The money needs to get down to people in the grassroots,” he said.

“Millions of funding goes to well-vetted agencies and yet most of the critical work is done by nonprofits that have boots on the ground and I wish we could get more funding down to that level.”

To him, the key areas to tackling the epidemic are: education and prevention.

“We need to start early. We talk a lot about people once they are addicted to drugs but let’s go before that and educate people,” he said.

“People are driven to drugs in the first place to feel normal or because they’re bullied…”

Mr Griffin feels that his daughter may still be alive if he and his family knew more about addiction at the time.

“We’re losing people because people are uneducated about it,” he said

But he's right.

Messages don’t come any more mixed.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic believe that President Biden has done a good job — 81 and 78 percent, respectively, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. They can see what an increasingly ungovernable country we’ve become, how much he has accomplished despite that, how admirably he has kept his cool (for the most part) and how well he has honored his overarching promise: to put the puerile and corrosive drama of the Trump administration behind us. For Donald Trump, we needed noise-canceling headphones. For Biden, hearing aids.

The silence is golden.

Regardless, 58 percent of those same Democrats and independents said that they want a Democratic presidential candidate other than Biden in 2024. They seem to like him. They’re apparently grateful for him. Yet they’re ready to kick him to the curb.

It doesn’t add up. And the person to whom the arithmetic must feel strangest — and coldest — is Biden.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, he strongly signaled that he’ll seek re-election. So that settles that? I don’t think so, not when you factor in the metabolism of politics today, the predictable unpredictability of the world, and his age, 80, which comes with the increased possibility of deteriorating health and sudden illness.

The worries about his ability to endure the rigors of a presidential campaign and come out a winner aren’t going away. Nor will the calls for him to wise up, stand down and let a younger, fresher, more dynamic Democrat claim the center of the stage.

My Times colleague Michelle Goldberg issued such a plea in a column on Monday. I second it. I agree with her analysis, including her assessment of a Democratic bench deeper and more interesting than the party’s perpetually self-doubting downers realize. I wrote about that bench last November — and I didn’t even include Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland or Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, promising leaders for whom 2024 is just a bit too soon.

But I nonetheless want to pause and fully acknowledge what an extraordinary and difficult thing Michelle, I and others are asking Biden to do.

It took him, well, forever to reach the top. That’s perhaps the most compelling part of his political story — his patience, his perseverance, his resilience. And now that he finally stands at the summit, we’re telling him not to get too comfy or savor the view for too long?

In saving us from a second term of Trump, Biden quite likely saved us from ruin. And so … we’re done with him?

That’s beyond cold. It’s close to cruel.

On Tuesday night, as he delivered his State of the Union speech, he mustered more energy than he was thought to possess, projected as much confidence as he ever has and radiated a good humor that’s at odds with the heavy burden of the presidency. It was the kind of performance that, in some ways, should quiet people’s doubts. But it won’t.

I know because my doubts aren’t quieted. I registered his endearing brio as he made his remarks, but I also registered his stumbles, the moments when he seemed to lose his way. He has had many of them over recent years. There are surely many, many more to come.

And while it’s impossible to say what or how much they mean, it’s equally impossible to deny that they could mean something; that a presidential campaign is a physically and psychologically grueling odyssey for anyone, let alone for someone who’s 80; and that any unsteadiness Biden exhibits is a window of opportunity for a Republican challenger. That’s a big, legitimate concern.

Campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Biden told us to choose him over the other contenders because the stakes of depriving Trump a second term were incalculable and he was the safest bet against Trump. He carried the least risk.

Well, the stakes in 2024 aren’t much different, whether or not Trump secures his party’s nomination, because whichever Republican emerges victorious from the Republican primaries will have been touched and corrupted by Trump’s election denialism, his attacks on democratic institutions, his zest for provocation, his resentments, his divisiveness.

So, Democrats once again need to tread a cautious path. That caution explains the paradox of the poll I previously mentioned, and that caution is Biden’s lesson and legacy — which is how he should look at it. Democratic voters aren’t faithless or fickle. They’re fearful, just as he told them to be.

In other words, they’ve been listening to what he’s been saying since Trump came along. That’s a compliment to him. It’s a tribute. May he bask in it.