Joe biden

They say a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. Clearly that’s another old adage Joe Biden no longer remembers, as this week his White House announced the unsanctimonious jettisoning of Major, the president’s German shepherd, in favor of Commander, a younger, friendlier pup. “Welcome to the White House, Commander,” a tweet from the official POTUS account read. The president’s social media flacks then posted a video of the new First Dog playing with Biden. In the clip, Commander sits in order to earn a treat from the president: clearly an upgrade in the behavioral stakes. https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1473057147017744390 Major, you may recall, was a rescue taken in by the Biden family in November 2018.

I come neither to bury Kamala nor to praise her. Commentary on her vice presidency is polarized. Harris’s well-known praise chorus is completely deranged. True, she is the first woman to become vice president, and only the second “person of color,” to use a term in vogue. These are historic achievements to those who understand history through the thick lens of demographic taxonomy. True, also, Harris has over the last year shown a near-total lack of the political skill generally needed to make a serious run at the presidency. She has been given large projects and failed to advance the administration’s goals. She has not improved as a speaker and comes across as indifferent, haughty and detached. Her approval ratings lag even those of her feckless boss.

A Washington Post opinion writer believes that President Biden is receiving worse treatment from the media than Trump did. It is a laughable theory, so naturally the media loves it. Dana Milbank’s piece is headlined, “The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here’s proof.” Using a data analytics unit, called forge.ai, the writer claims he was able to confirm his sneaking suspicion: journalists are being meaner to the “empathizer-in-chief”, as the Hill once dubbed Biden, than they are to “The Monster Who Feeds on Fear”, as the New York Times once dubbed Trump.

Much has been written about the expansiveness of the Biden administration’s signature priority: the Build Back Better Act (BBB). The legislation is projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to spend more than $1.6 trillion in its attempts to address countless Democratic priorities ranging from climate change to the expansion of Medicaid. One aspect of the bill, however, has attracted far less fanfare than it should have: its impact on the cost of prescription drugs. Provisions in the bill would, among other things, impose rebates on drug manufacturers if prices rise faster than inflation. It’s an idea that sounds great in the current moment of creeping inflation, but is ultimately little more than a market distortion likely to produce an array of adverse consequences.

One of the most gripping scenes in the classic film Casablanca is at the very beginning, when many of the characters who would feature in the story are seen together in a busy city plaza. Suddenly silent as a small Lisbon-bound plane passes overhead, they all look up, and the audience can see in their faces the cumulating stress of not knowing when, or even if, they would get out of wartime Morocco and fly to America. I never imagined I would experience anything remotely like that until just a few days ago when my twenty-eight-year-old son Zachary and I were wrapping up a long-planned and, due to the coronavirus, frequently postponed vacation to South Africa.

Nearly ten months after President Biden ordered defense secretary Lloyd Austin to undertake a comprehensive, across-the-board review of America's military overseas, the Pentagon finally concluded the study this week. And it landed with a loud thud of disappointment. So far as we can tell (the entire product won’t be released to the public), the results of the Global Posture Review (GPR) range from unimaginative to pitiful. Or, in the words of one congressional aide familiar with the findings, "No decisions, no changes, no sense of urgency, no creative thinking. Lots of word salad.” Of course, the GPR is hardly the first government report to be classified this way.

The fate of the Build Back Better plan is now in the hands of the Senate. The House approved the gargantuan $1.85 trillion bill on Friday despite efforts from Republicans to delay the vote. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy played the role of Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, railing against the legislation in an over eight-hour-long speech. The Associated Press suggests that McCarthy viewed his talk-a-thon as an opportunity to show his conservative bona fides should Republicans take control of the House in 2022 and he decide to push for the speakership. “This is a tipping point,” McCarthy said on Friday morning as he wrapped up the speech. “This is a point of not coming back. The American people have spoken, but unfortunately, the Democrats have not listened.” Which Americans?

A new poll was released yesterday showing 50 per cent of Americans don't think President Biden is in good health. Turns out: they are right, with the country's oldest ever Commander-in-Chief today forced to transfer power to his deputy while he is under anesthesia getting a colonoscopy. That means, for a 'brief period of time' the leader of the free world will be none other than Biden's bungling running-mate... Vice President Kamala Harris. Officials have been keen to stress that the arrangement has a precedent from the Bush-Cheney years when the former underwent the same operation in 2002 and 2007.

The worst kept secret in Washington, DC is that Joe Biden is a one-term president — whether he knows it or not. This weekend, palace intrigue stories from Politico and CNN pitted Vice President Kamala Harris against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The kids are fighting over Grandpa Joe’s inheritance before he’s even cold. Biden doesn’t acknowledge this. He’s signaled multiple times that he intends to run for a second term in 2024. He has been trying to capture the White House for over thirty years. He’s not just going to give that up willingly as he managed to go from party punchline to party patriarch in the span of one election. But to believe the choice is up to him is to believe that his staggering fall in poll numbers is imaginary.