What If…?
Old Joe Biden sure is looking…, well, old these days.
My pal, the Clay City farmer/economist Eli (whose purchase of a Prius last year branded him among his geographical peers as the bastard child of Karl Marx) says Biden’s physical appearance at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this month reminded him, a bit, of Roosevelt at Yalta.
For the history-deprived among us, the Big Three — Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt — met in the Crimean resort town of Yalta in February 1945 to discuss carving up Germany once the Allies finished kicking the hell of of them. Roosevelt at the time was damned lucky to be alive. His blood pressure regularly was topping 200. He looked wan, lifeless. His complexion sallow. His eyes sunken. Roosevelt’s perilous medical condition was well-known among those close to him but was well-concealed from the public.
It was a public, after all, that largely did not know Roosevelt was a cripple. Of course we live in a different day and age now. In fact, even going back almost 40 years, the general populace was apprised of the number of polyps removed from President Ronald Reagan’s colon during a routine colonoscopy. Some 20 years later, we were fully informed about President George W. Bush’s battle with alcohol abuse. In between, we learned about President Bill Clinton’s fondness for cigars innovatively marinated.
Anyway, Biden certainly doesn’t look as bad as Roosevelt did in the waning months of WWII, but he sure doesn’t look like a guy with a long future ahead of him.
Leading me to wonder what will happen if Old Joe keels over in, say, April or May, at the end of the primary season. What’s the Democratic Party going to do? Simply pass the mantle on to Kamala Harris like the Dems did in 1968? The party that year lost by assassination the candidate with the most momentum, Bobby Kennedy, after he won the last primary in California. They screwed over the candidate with the most delegates, Eugene McCarthy, and gave the nod to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, pretty much throwing the election to Richard Nixon. The nation wanted change and Humphrey sure wasn’t it. The backroom kingmakers, though, cared little for what the nation wanted.
This time around, though, my guess is the nation doesn’t want change, especially if the economy remains un-tanked. And should Old Joe turn in his keys to the White House any time between now and, say, this coming November, then a few ambitious Democrats’ll just declare for the primaries and the party’ll select a nominee in more or less normal fashion.
In any case, I hope party sachems are thinking long and hard about these possibilities. I figure they have to be if they’re paying any attention to Biden’s appearance these days.
Psychopathy
Florida’s state board of education this week adopted teaching guidelines that assert American slavery wasn’t all that nasty. In fact, by golly, slaves in this holy land actually benefited from their chains. Gosh dang it, slavery, under these teachings, just might turn out to be yet another example of this country giving all the advantages to black people.
Y’know, the canard that lunkheads have been shrieking about for decades now. The canard that reached a deafening roar when a certain incurious, unprepared, insensitive, uncaring, un-read, greed monkey somehow was elected president in 2016 and hasn’t subsided since.
People like Ron DeSantis saw how imbecility paid dividends for the 45th president and the FL Guv has clearly determined to go the multi-indicted pussy-grabber one better. One better? Hell. One hundred times better. The Florida school board was hand-picked by him and he had to have known precisely what they would do once they got their thumbs all over the state’s book learnin’ policies.
So, after musing on the mortality of the sitting president above, I now turn to the potential for the aspiring next president to demonstrate further lunacy. Clearly, he’s doubling down on appealing to the anencephalic mob that loves him. Usually, when people run for president, they tone down their previous edginess. I fear DeSantis, should he remain in the race through the GOP primaries, will only go further.
Don’t be shocked if by this time next year, DeSantis will have carped, espoused, fretted over, or executive ordered the following:
- Florida’s unemployed and underemployed citizens will be inducted into slavery where they can “develop skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
- Germany’s Nazi Party will be honored by Florida for establishing concentration camps where Jews gained a sense of unity, pride, and determination
- In an effort to reinforce the sanctity of binary genderism, all Florida males must wear trousers that expose their genitals (Be proud, Florida men!)
- All Florida females must have their genitals sewn shut (to be unsewn only by husbandly order)
- Specialized trucks will begin spraying Florida’s neighborhoods with the COVID-19 virus — what better way to strengthen Florida citizens’ immune systems?
- Florida’s children will be limited to one hour or less of book reading a month so they may do more shopping and praying
- Florida’s air will be taken over by private industry and made available to breathe for the affordable price of $10 a day per person.
- DeSantis will declare that should he win the presidency, his replacement as Florida governor will be a daily revolving cast composed solely of Florida Man.
Wither Radio?
It’s a damned shame. WHPK, the student-run radio station of the University of Chicago, is facing hard times. Real hard times.
The university’s Program Coordinating Council has slashed the station’s funding from a requested $57,000 (peanuts, really) to $20,600 for the 2023-24 school year. The station is appealing the cut but don’t hold your breath.
College radio has been the birthplace of countless professional DJs, show hosts, and administrators as well as big music acts. The reason anybody outside of their own families ever heard of REM, De La Soul, the B-52s, Nirvana, the Cure, Sinead O’Connor, or any of a hundred other eventual big acts is their early airplay on college radio.
It’s unknown how WHPK will weather this withering.
