Your statement of “worldwide plague of narcissistic perverts” brings to my mind how these ineffective “ leaders” responded to Covid. TFG not doing a damn thing saying it’ll be gone in Spring like magic, while we all suffered! While millions died and he blamed Obama for not keeping emergency supplies current.
Your statement of “worldwide plague of narcissistic perverts” brings to my mind how these ineffective “ leaders” responded to Covid. TFG not doing a damn thing saying it’ll be gone in Spring like magic, while we all suffered! While millions died and he blamed Obama for not keeping emergency supplies current.
Biden started turning us around immediately. The press says he’s old. But I believe history will show us he’s the best president we’ve ever had.
I don't agree with the statement that Biden is our best president ever. I certainly agree that he has been an excellent president and stands head and shoulders above his predecessor. In a Biden - Trump election, there is no doubt in my mind who is the superior candidate.
He was handed a mess. He got to do the cleanup after a fire. Unfortunately, I do not think he will not be a memorable president. Trump will go down in history books. Putin Not Yeltsin, Hitler not Merkel.
Judging by what is happening today, no one has learned from the past. Colleges should require an American history(2 semester). This would be more useful than learning to speak a language most of us will never use.
I agree with Karen below that Biden was handed a mess and he certainly did a LOT to help fix the problems generated by Trump from 2017 to 2021. However I also agree with Charles that Biden is NOT our "best" President either. He did a terrific job on many issues but he also failed in a number of ways. Most important, I think he did not take the mantle of the Democratic party and make sure it was set up to provide leadership for the foreseeable future and as a result he permitted himself to be placed in the position of "heir apparent" to himself. He NEEDED to recognize that his age is a potentially serious debilitating condition that jeopardizes his chances of being elected again and thus jeopardizes the security of the nation going forward, especially in the face of GOP Maga Trump leadership. If he loses this upcoming election (hopefully not, but not completely unthinkable either, especially after winning in 2016 against pretty much all odds) we will all pay for Biden's failure.
Hillary ran an awful campaign and was a flawed candidate who thought she was a shoe in. Her ego was as big as Don’s. Joe needs to focus on what he accomplished with NATO, the long overdue infrastructure bill and the potential in the Chips and Science bill. Of course the stupid Republican IVF policy in Alabama has a role as does abortion. And what an ass Don is.
Yea, but that's not quite known to be true. Historically Democratic voters may have been on the front lines as essential workers. It may be them who died more often in Republican-led districts.
The original article on which this NPR report is based appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Of course this is all liberal-biased mainstream fake news.)
While that may be true there were plenty of Democrats and systems (education & healthcare) that died and suffered immeasurably due to the intentional harm tffg caused the world during Covid
Please, that is NOT something any of us should be saying, even in jest. People lost their lives in the pandemic, mostly without regard to what political affiliation they were. Trump's lack of leadship not withstanding, NO ONE should be joking about the death of people from the pandemic any more than anyone should be joking about the death of civilians in Ukraine or Gaza.
Didn't the trump administration cut the budget for the department which would've made sure a program for such things as the pandemic could be handled? I believe some of the medical equipment needed special handling to keep them viable which was not done (budget cuts). Anyone hear of the Ebola pandemic during Obama's term? It did come into the country and was stopped in its tracts. That's why no one heard of it.
Yes, the Ebola virus was stopped by Obama's health administration, but it is basically erroneous to compare Ebola with Covid. Ebola is NOT spread by aerosol contact but rather by direct bodily fluid contact. That kind of contact occurs much less between humans. It is also much more severe than Covid when you DO catch it and so it becomes clear fairly quickly when someone's bodily fluid might effect you. Simply being in the same household as another Covid-infected person creates potential spread that is not the case with Ebola. So the communication of Ebola, while significantly MORE dangerous, is much less likely to happen unless you intentionally submit yourself to it. Covid, while theoretically less fatal, creates much more communication and at the outset, before there was any kind of vaccination available, made it much deadlier in the general population.
Denise, the best President EVER? After FDR and Jimmy Carter, the best in my lifetime. Yet far from perfect, sometimes betrayed by his very expertise, because long, extensive and deep experience does tend to entail a number of automatic settings, and these have proved worse than unfortunate in relation to the suppurating, unhealed wound of Israel/Palestine.
The total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, including vast numbers of innocent women and children, have no possible connection with defense or the saving of hostages.
If anyone can justify this and its seemingly uncritical, even enthusiastic, acceptance by all the American Right to me -- or better, to the Israeli people, to former premier Ehud Olmert who thinks (politely) that the current Prime Minister has had "a breakdown", they are welcome. How anyone who remembers what the Jewish people suffered when I was a small child can justify behavior reminiscent of Saddam and the Al-Assads' most heinous crimes against their own cities, I don't know.
Dayan's IDF in 1967 was a model army. Today's army behaves like a rabble. Understandable. Totally inexcusable.
Unlike most of you, I remember what it is like to be bombed. I was a 4-year old in London on the night when the first V1 rockets rained down on the city and I have never forgotten that night which implanted in me a lasting horror of the bombing of cities.
Anywhere. By anyone.
That is why I have spent so much time in Germany, trying both to overcome my own deep fears and to reach a deep understanding with my younger friends in that country. (I know too the former Leningrad and have spent time with friends in Kiev -- the city of Babi Yar -- long before the present horrors. They looked forward to the day when they could take me to visit Crimea...)
Explain to me jaw jaw diplomacy when thousands of children are daily suffering dreadful injuries and over ten thousand have been killed. Explain to me why America could not airdrop food and essential supplies to the homeless and starving. Explain why America has refused to press for an urgent ceasefire when extremist members of the Israeli government speak of war aims more important than the lives of their compatriots taken hostage.
Young Americans who express disgust with President Biden's policy here may lack perspective when it comes to their ultimate responsibility as citizens -- but is that not normal for the young? This is HIGHLY important, for these should be, should have been, among his strongest supporters in the defense of democracy from Trump's intended destruction of all the country's institutions and freedoms.
I have written now of things that mystify me but which call to mind uncomfortable memories of what's most horrific in US history -- "The only good Injun is a dead Injun".
Exported from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the West Bank of the Jordan.
BTW, my personal opinion is that the best President since FDR was Jimmy Carter. And I have a hard time placing Biden until his first term is over and we can figure out how his entire Presidency stacks up. I could see arguments for Kennedy, Johnson, Obama and even Eisenhower. Reagan would be selected by a lot of GOP but he would be in the middle of my list, along with GHWB. GWB is down there near the bottom, and Nixon is obviously just above the last choice.
On the other hand, the WORST is pretty simple. #45 so leads the pack that it boggles the mind.
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...
Your statement of “worldwide plague of narcissistic perverts” brings to my mind how these ineffective “ leaders” responded to Covid. TFG not doing a damn thing saying it’ll be gone in Spring like magic, while we all suffered! While millions died and he blamed Obama for not keeping emergency supplies current.
Biden started turning us around immediately. The press says he’s old. But I believe history will show us he’s the best president we’ve ever had.
I agree 1000%. The very best president!
I don't agree with the statement that Biden is our best president ever. I certainly agree that he has been an excellent president and stands head and shoulders above his predecessor. In a Biden - Trump election, there is no doubt in my mind who is the superior candidate.
He was handed a mess. He got to do the cleanup after a fire. Unfortunately, I do not think he will not be a memorable president. Trump will go down in history books. Putin Not Yeltsin, Hitler not Merkel.
Judging by what is happening today, no one has learned from the past. Colleges should require an American history(2 semester). This would be more useful than learning to speak a language most of us will never use.
I agree with Karen below that Biden was handed a mess and he certainly did a LOT to help fix the problems generated by Trump from 2017 to 2021. However I also agree with Charles that Biden is NOT our "best" President either. He did a terrific job on many issues but he also failed in a number of ways. Most important, I think he did not take the mantle of the Democratic party and make sure it was set up to provide leadership for the foreseeable future and as a result he permitted himself to be placed in the position of "heir apparent" to himself. He NEEDED to recognize that his age is a potentially serious debilitating condition that jeopardizes his chances of being elected again and thus jeopardizes the security of the nation going forward, especially in the face of GOP Maga Trump leadership. If he loses this upcoming election (hopefully not, but not completely unthinkable either, especially after winning in 2016 against pretty much all odds) we will all pay for Biden's failure.
There’s an old saying:” when I point at you I am really pointing at myself.”
Hillary ran an awful campaign and was a flawed candidate who thought she was a shoe in. Her ego was as big as Don’s. Joe needs to focus on what he accomplished with NATO, the long overdue infrastructure bill and the potential in the Chips and Science bill. Of course the stupid Republican IVF policy in Alabama has a role as does abortion. And what an ass Don is.
Re. America's (and Israel's) most egregious failure, see below.
The only consolation, if it is one, is many who died were tfg followers.
Yea, but that's not quite known to be true. Historically Democratic voters may have been on the front lines as essential workers. It may be them who died more often in Republican-led districts.
Jerry H: Actually, it is known to some extent:
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189939229/covid-deaths-democrats-republicans-gap-study
The original article on which this NPR report is based appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Of course this is all liberal-biased mainstream fake news.)
While that may be true there were plenty of Democrats and systems (education & healthcare) that died and suffered immeasurably due to the intentional harm tffg caused the world during Covid
Ohio? The review did quantify the limitations of the survey. It did not say this is it black or white.
Not nearly enough of them, however.
Please, that is NOT something any of us should be saying, even in jest. People lost their lives in the pandemic, mostly without regard to what political affiliation they were. Trump's lack of leadship not withstanding, NO ONE should be joking about the death of people from the pandemic any more than anyone should be joking about the death of civilians in Ukraine or Gaza.
Please.
Didn't the trump administration cut the budget for the department which would've made sure a program for such things as the pandemic could be handled? I believe some of the medical equipment needed special handling to keep them viable which was not done (budget cuts). Anyone hear of the Ebola pandemic during Obama's term? It did come into the country and was stopped in its tracts. That's why no one heard of it.
What Obama put in place to help protect the population if a contagion entered our borders, tRump tore up the playbook soon after entering office.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/obama-team-left-pandemic-playbook-for-trump-administration-officials-confirm
Yes, the Ebola virus was stopped by Obama's health administration, but it is basically erroneous to compare Ebola with Covid. Ebola is NOT spread by aerosol contact but rather by direct bodily fluid contact. That kind of contact occurs much less between humans. It is also much more severe than Covid when you DO catch it and so it becomes clear fairly quickly when someone's bodily fluid might effect you. Simply being in the same household as another Covid-infected person creates potential spread that is not the case with Ebola. So the communication of Ebola, while significantly MORE dangerous, is much less likely to happen unless you intentionally submit yourself to it. Covid, while theoretically less fatal, creates much more communication and at the outset, before there was any kind of vaccination available, made it much deadlier in the general population.
Denise, the best President EVER? After FDR and Jimmy Carter, the best in my lifetime. Yet far from perfect, sometimes betrayed by his very expertise, because long, extensive and deep experience does tend to entail a number of automatic settings, and these have proved worse than unfortunate in relation to the suppurating, unhealed wound of Israel/Palestine.
The total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, including vast numbers of innocent women and children, have no possible connection with defense or the saving of hostages.
If anyone can justify this and its seemingly uncritical, even enthusiastic, acceptance by all the American Right to me -- or better, to the Israeli people, to former premier Ehud Olmert who thinks (politely) that the current Prime Minister has had "a breakdown", they are welcome. How anyone who remembers what the Jewish people suffered when I was a small child can justify behavior reminiscent of Saddam and the Al-Assads' most heinous crimes against their own cities, I don't know.
Dayan's IDF in 1967 was a model army. Today's army behaves like a rabble. Understandable. Totally inexcusable.
Unlike most of you, I remember what it is like to be bombed. I was a 4-year old in London on the night when the first V1 rockets rained down on the city and I have never forgotten that night which implanted in me a lasting horror of the bombing of cities.
Anywhere. By anyone.
That is why I have spent so much time in Germany, trying both to overcome my own deep fears and to reach a deep understanding with my younger friends in that country. (I know too the former Leningrad and have spent time with friends in Kiev -- the city of Babi Yar -- long before the present horrors. They looked forward to the day when they could take me to visit Crimea...)
Explain to me jaw jaw diplomacy when thousands of children are daily suffering dreadful injuries and over ten thousand have been killed. Explain to me why America could not airdrop food and essential supplies to the homeless and starving. Explain why America has refused to press for an urgent ceasefire when extremist members of the Israeli government speak of war aims more important than the lives of their compatriots taken hostage.
Young Americans who express disgust with President Biden's policy here may lack perspective when it comes to their ultimate responsibility as citizens -- but is that not normal for the young? This is HIGHLY important, for these should be, should have been, among his strongest supporters in the defense of democracy from Trump's intended destruction of all the country's institutions and freedoms.
I have written now of things that mystify me but which call to mind uncomfortable memories of what's most horrific in US history -- "The only good Injun is a dead Injun".
Exported from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the West Bank of the Jordan.
BTW, my personal opinion is that the best President since FDR was Jimmy Carter. And I have a hard time placing Biden until his first term is over and we can figure out how his entire Presidency stacks up. I could see arguments for Kennedy, Johnson, Obama and even Eisenhower. Reagan would be selected by a lot of GOP but he would be in the middle of my list, along with GHWB. GWB is down there near the bottom, and Nixon is obviously just above the last choice.
On the other hand, the WORST is pretty simple. #45 so leads the pack that it boggles the mind.
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...
Will that historical judgement come within our lifetime?