What America needs now is a really nice guy. Fortunately, we’ve got one.
I almost did a Virtual Front Page, but that would have been the third in just eight days! I don’t want to spoil y’all, so we’re going for an Open Thread instead. They’re easier: I don’t have to come up with a lede and rank the items in importance, and I can pull in opinion, which is more in my wheelhouse anyway. (I was the front page editor at two papers in the ’80s, but that was a long time ago — or so everyone keeps telling me and Joe Biden.)
The hard thing about VFPs is, there are a lot of rules. Things are looser in an Open Thread:
- A Dishonorable Senate — This is an NYT editorial, and my only beef with it is that “An.” What, like we have an array of Senates, like multiple universes, and there’s just this one bad one? No. Until we work out the quantum inter-universal travel thing, this is the only Senate we get. And it has shamelessly, blatantly, without any pretense of doing anything else, completely abandoned its constitutional duty. More than abandoned, spat upon it. Look, we knew they were going to acquit, but we did have a right to expect an actual trial first. Is this it, folks? Is the loss of our republic now inevitable? Has it happened already? I didn’t think I’d live to see this…
- Why don’t we all just ignore Iowa and New Hampshire? — Not a bad idea, particularly given that Iowa is caucuses, not even a primary. Have you READ the rules of this insanity? People standing around in groups, and then if their group is less than 15 percent of the total in the room, they regroup and the losers gravitate to second choices? It’s like ice-breaker games at that team-building retreat the soulless corporation you work for made you go to. (See what I did there? Two dangling prepositions in one sentence! Can I write, or what?)
- Joe Biden: A Really Nice Guy for President — This is a column by Frank Bruni, which means it’s the third opinion piece in a row from the NYT. But hey, they had some good pieces today. There’s only one cure for Trump, one thing to set this nation back on course: Replace him with a really nice guy. Last thing we need is to replace him with another one of those angry people out there — you know, the ones who can’t string two sentences together without saying “fight” at least once?
- Senate hears closing arguments — Switching over to news now… and can you imagine that they’re still going through the motions as though this were still an actual trial being conducted by an actual credible deliberative body. I don’t see how the House managers made themselves get up this morning and do this. But at least they are doing their duty, so my hat’s off to them.
- Super Bowl halftime show was ‘sexual exploitation,’ Franklin Graham says — Really? Ya think? I knew that and I didn’t watch it. Has Graham been doing a Rip Van Winkle for the last five or six decades? Has he been somehow walled off from popular culture? Why the news flash at this particular point?
- Earth Fare grocery chain closing all stores, including in Columbia — This just in, and it kind of blew my mind. It suggests a lot of questions: Why now, instead of back when Whole Foods opens? Do we think Whole Foods will last since Amazon has taken it over and corporatized it? Couldn’t Earth Fare have hung on a little longer to see what happened there? How do small local shops like Rosewood Market and 14 Carrot hang on while Earth Fare can’t? Business and the way it works is just such a mystery to me…
- Super Bowl Ads 2020: Strange, Serious, Smaaht, And So Very Expensive — Some of y’all probably watched this, so tell me: Were there any really good ones, ones I might want to go watch on YouTube?
Did anyone besides me find it kind of hard to read the Roman numeral, with that odd thing between the L and I?
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To whet your appetite for that Bruni piece, here’s how it starts:
Bruni’s making the same point I’ve made here before — I can’t recite policy positions when it comes to Joe, because I don’t care about them. I just want to have a decent, normal human being as my president. And Joe fits that perfectly…
To quote Bruni again: “He’s running to reconnect America with the best of itself…”
He’s reaching out to us the way Lincoln did, appealing to us to listen to the “better angels of our nature.” And I utter reject the cynicism that dismisses Biden’s appeal to get along as unrealistic in our era. Even as the nation was breaking apart and beginning four years of the bloodiest war in our history, with Americans killing Americans by the hundreds of thousands, Lincoln had the courage to say:
And ultimately, when all the bloodshed was done, he was right…
And four years later, he had not lost that “naive” way of seeing things:
It’s because we have the example of people like him that people like me have the courage to carry with trying to bring about the dream of America…
We should sever all ties with Rome …
The Senate dishonors itself by seating dishonorable people, like one Lindsey O. Graham, who recently tweeted the following wad of hog hockey:
“There is a mountain of evidence to suggest the Bidens’ behavior was harmful to the United States.”
https://twitter.com/lindseygrahamsc/status/1222561796382433281?s=21
Regarding Franklin Graham’s comments, I have long believed that out hyper-sexualized society is harmful to children’s development and to adults’ value systems. I wish he had the moral insight to see the greater sins we are falling for – you know, the ones Jesus actually spoke about and counselled against. I guess the logs in his eyes like excessive compensation for heading two non-profits and impaired judgment concerning Donald Trump’s behavior and intentions keep him from holding much weight with me when lecturing others.
When I try to imagine how any Christian could reconcile support of Trump, I find myself thinking of the Fosterites in Stranger in a Strange Land. Now THERE’S a church I would imagine being full of Trump voters…
I’m with you on the difficulty reconciling following Jesus and Trump. Then I examine the church in Germany during the third reich. Split between the Confessing Church and most Catholics on one side and the state-oriented German Evangelical Church, Hitler seized and controlled one and considered the other group enemies of the state. One got the power and privilege, the other the scorn and persecution. All the state church had to give for that status was their conscience and souls. One Nation! One God! One Reich! One Church! Yes, it can happen.
American numbers are good enough…
Whatever one may think of Schiff, he is eloquent and his rhetoric put the GOP Senators in the tightest possible box for Wednesday’s vote.
If the GOp can’t crawl out of the amoral hole that they have dug themselves protecting the indefensible president, perhaps they will vote against conviction and removal – and also against acquittal? If that is as far as the Senate feels they “dare* tread…
History is going to be very unkind to the last five years; and to those who chose to be complicit.
Where does Biden need to place in Iowa tonight? Top three?
Oh, I have no idea. I don’t think in those terms. Iowa is an idiotic contest, which the nation should ignore. But since it won’t, it would be great if he won there. It would save a lot of trouble. But if he doesn’t win there, we’ve got South Carolina.
Carolina…
“Iowa is an idiotic contest, which the nation should ignore.”
NARRATOR VOICE: Little did they know how right he was…
Wow, what an absolute meltdown in Iowa last night.
I just put up a separate post about it.
Still no results…