Saturday, June 29, 2024
1776 Patrick Henry elected 1st governor of Virginia
1956 DDE signed the Interstate Highway Act
1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed after an 83-day filibuster in the US Senate
1966 US planes bombed Hanoi and Haiphong for the first time in the Vietnam War
2002 Dick Cheney served as Acting President while "W" underwent a colonoscopy
2023 Supreme Court outlawed 6-3 college race-based admission programs
I slept after a dinner of basted eggs on a bed of spinach with sautéd kippers and Campari tomatoes. Lights out around (11?), awakened at 1:30 by a LOW GLUCOSE alarm, CGM reading of 69, ate 2 prunes, and fell back to sleep until around 3 a.m. when I let Lilly out. Back to sleep until 5 a.m., but woke up feeling weak and unsteady. While cleaning up the kitchen, and loading and unloading the dishwasher, I was very unsteady on my feet.
Prednisone, day 48, 15 mg., day 12). I took my pills at 5:45 and held off on breakfast of yogurt and berries until 8:45.
Trulicity. I forgot to inject myself yesterday.
Anniversary thoughts. Ironic, isn't it, that Patrick Henry, known for "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" was a slave owner his entire adult life?
Second. what an impact the interstate highway system has had on America, not without downside costs, especially in cities, but still. I marvel over the complexity and the mastery of highway construction I see so regularly on I-43.
Third, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was one of the nation's finest pieces of legislation but also responsible in very large measure for turning the South and the new Confederacy Republican and for the Red-Blue divide in the country.
Fourth, remembering Robert McNamara's and LBJ's pipe dream of bombing North Vietnam into submission to the will of our 'superpower.' Remembering also the calls from some on the Right to "nuke'em." Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah.
Fifth, Cheney's stint as 'acting president' calls to mind Biden's performance at Thursday's debate and his vulnerability to age-based illnesses, disability, and death as well as his history of two intracranial aneurysms or "brain bleeds" in 1988.
Lastly, in 2022, it was abortion. In 2023, it was affirmative action. In 2024, it's the Chevron deference, and what's next? Presidential criminal immunity on Monday? And what more in 2025?
Biden and character. Peter Baker's article in this morning's NYTimes includes this quote from David Axelrod: “He’s a very proud guy. He’s a guy who always believes that he’s been underestimated his whole life and that he’s defied those odds." That assessment reminded me of a saying that Geri's mother used, one that I've never entirely understood: "He thinks who he is." The only two places I have found the expression on the internet are (1) in the Urban Dictionary which defines the expression as "arrogant" or "conceited" and (2) in a blog titled "Musing of an Italian-American" who started his August 23, 2010 entry: "“He thinks who he is”—such a great New York City remark; which means that someone thinks they are better than anyone else or that they are a know it all." I suspect that Joe Biden has always thought who he is. Perhaps it is related to his childhood stutter and the embarrassment and frustration, probably even shame it caused him followed by his long and mostly successful efforts to overcome it.
Maureen Dowd's take on him in today's column is telling:
"He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself.
I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.
In Washington, people often become what they start out scorning. This has happened to Joe Biden. In his misguided quest for a second term that would end when he’s 86, he has succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump. And he is jeopardizing the democracy he says he wants to save."
We are told, and there is reason to believe, that Joe Biden has many admirable qualities, notably empathy, compassion, and that hard-to-define "decency," that quality missing in Joe McCarthy. "Have you, at long last, no sense of decency, sir?" Perhaps it suggests simply respect for other people, emotional and social magnanimity, or generosity. In any case, Biden has enough generally acknowledged good qualities of character that he is widely recognized as "a good man."
That said, we ought not to overlook his not-so-admirable qualities, principally his fierce ambition for power, prestige, and position, his craving to be Number One, King of the Hill, Top Dog. This reflects selfishness, pernicious pride, and hubris about which Maureen Dowd introduces her column. He and Donald Trump are very different, but let's not forget that they also have some nasty similarities. They include vanity, self-promotion, and a readiness to lie to advance it. Some suggest that their similar vanities and self-promotion mask an underlying insecurity and self-doubt, a knowledge that each is a fraud, nowhere near as wonderful as he makes himself out to be. Each is a politician, ever on the make for celebrity, wide acceptance, and voter support.
The reason I have been so angry with Biden about running for re-election is that I believe that, as Dowd wrote "He says he is doing this for us, but he's doing it for himself." I'm furious at his wife Jill, his sister Audrey, and at Ron Klain, Ted Donilon, Anita Dunn, Ted Kaufman, and perhaps other 'insiders' who refused to join forces to 'speak truth to power' and persuade Joe long ago not to seek re-election, not to risk becoming 'Ruth Bader Biden.'
Smart money has it that Biden won't withdraw from the contest. Various reasons are given but I believe the reason is the same reason that had him seeking the job 37 years ago and every election since, because he wants to be Numero Uno to satisfy his own needs. And like Trump again and like Samson, he's willing to bring the temple down around all of us to get his own way.
H. L. Menchen on politicians.
If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. To get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
A politician is an animal that can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
Politicians, old buildings, and prostitutes become respectable with age.
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