This is a piece, the ideas for which, have been simmering in my mind for a while now. Unfortunately, the more time I spend observing, the more obvious the problem has become.
Every week there seems to be some sort of new policy blunder or verbal faux pax committed by the current inhabitant of the White House. This continual incompetence on display within the Executive Branch only reinforces what many of us had suspected well before last year's primary season - that Joe Biden struggles mightily in the area of mental acuity and capacity.
But now, the fact that the Emperor has no clothes is even being hinted at by as unlikely a source as the editorial page of the New York Times (12/14), whose center-left opinion columnist Bret Stephens was granted permission to call into question Biden's "fortitude" by publicly noting his often rambling incoherence, frequent mental lapses, and inability to inspire confidence. (1) Mind you, this is no small thing. It is rare indeed that the country's farthest left major newspaper would drop the protective shield instinctively reserved for their political allies and allow a dissenter to breach their Praetorian Guard-like defense of a Democrat Chief Executive.
What is on display for all to see is a seemingly aimless meandering from one disastrous policy failure to another and one incomprehensibly self-destructive executive order after another. That, in combination with reports of a major rift between the President and his toxic Vice President in the midst of their plummeting poll numbers - all does little to inspire confidence with the American people. While on the international front, the fecklessness and incompetent blundering displayed by this empty suit Commander in Chief does not escape the notice of the leaders of China, Russia, Iran and other belligerent and openly hostile foreign powers.
So while the whole border reparations story itself may be old news for many of you, still, it is illustrative of the state of mind (or lack thereof) of the President.
In an administration known for it's divisive leftist political vision combined with a string of disastrously implemented policies - for instance the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco, spiking crime rates, supply chain breakdowns, and spiraling inflation - perhaps none has been quite as flagrantly dangerous and destructive as the administration's blatant open border policies with Mexico. And nothing about this man-made fiasco is quite so ludicrous as the proposal outlined in the Wall Street Journal late in October (10/30). According to the article, three of the most corrupt and partisan agencies in the Federal government - the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services - were in talks to essentially pay human traffickers from south of the border nearly half a million dollars each for the "lasting psychological trauma" they endured attempting to illegally smuggle children into the United States. (2)
It was an idea so absurd that, even in what many think is the dementia-addled mind of President Biden, it was initially dismissed as ridiculous. When first confronted with the proposal, his response was that the report was to say"That's garbage," while emphatically adding when questioned by Fox News' Peter Doocy, “That’s not going to happen.” (3)
At least that's what Biden said before he was informed by his puppet-masters that it actually was going to happen, despite what he may have thought or wanted. Lesson learned: Don't put the parrot in the spotlight until you are sure he can repeat his lines.
By the next day, however, one of his spokeswomen, deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, assured the press that the President was - or had become - “perfectly comfortable" with the concept of paying off foreign criminals for the troubles they may have endured in the process smuggling children into this country. And by Saturday, November 6, Biden was emphatically denying that he had even called the outrageous proposal, "garbage". (4) Of course, that is likely just another example of his short-term memory loss.
Perhaps some historical review is in order. During the previous administration, As part of the attempt to quell the lawlessness and chaos at the border, someone had the profound idea to simply enforce existing law as written. The Trump administration's answer was the 2018 'zero tolerance' policy: Arrest, prosecute, and deport all those caught sneaking into the country between our ports of entry.
At the same, decades of selective non-enforcement, meant that potential illegal aliens were becoming increasingly aware of the fact that special treatment was being granted to those who crossed the border accompanying a child. The law of unintended consequences meant this policy encouraged drug runners, child traffickers, and others with evil intentions to beg, borrow, and sometimes literally steal a child to gain preferential treatment in their attempt to illegally enter our country. Perhaps many - or even most - of the groups illegally sneaking into the country may well have been actual biological families. However, the shear numbers of illegals overwhelming the system made it very difficult to determine if groups claiming to be family were actually blood relatives or merely criminal drug runners using innocent children as Saddam Hussein-type human shields - and in some cases, human traffickers smuggling kidnapped children across the border for even more evil purposes.In arresting, prosecuting, and holding these criminal aliens for trial, innocent children were indeed separated from their criminal parents - instead of being held with them in jail. (The same parents, incidentally, who had risked their children's lives sneaking through the drug-cartel controlled Mexican desert.) On the other hand, children were also separated from child traffickers, drug runners, and their captors. This, in much the same way as the children left behind in a bankrobber's getaway car, are not imprisoned awaiting his formal charges, bail hearing, and trial. So despite the faux outrage from the left - the practice of imprisoning an entire family for the crimes of the family patriarch mostly ended (at least in the west) sometime during the age of enlightenment. (6)
But back to original point, when one contrasts the President's initial response with the actual policy, it leads one to wonder if Mr. Biden is even a full participant in the role of the Presidency. Was this simply just a case of him not being fully briefed, as his defenders stated? Could he really forget something this potentially explosive, or was he never in the loop to begin within?
He was caught completely unaware, and certainly not in control of, a highly controversial policy being pursued by his appointees and/or handlers. Without the aid of a prepared script projected on his large print, Jumbotron-sized teleprompter, he was caught unaware of what his people were doing, presumably on his behalf. Time and time again, left to his own devices, he quickly meanders into unintelligible gibberish and demonstrably false anecdotes. However the internal machinations of the Biden White House are contrived, it's clear his handlers need to better brief and instruct the President concerning his core principles.
But perhaps even more important than individual policies, the question to be pondered here is who it is actually hiding behind the curtain in the White House, who is to be held responsible for making all these destructive decisions? Decisions to try to spend our way out of an inflationary spiral, decisions to leave hundreds of U.S. citizens and tens of billions of dollars of military equipment for the Taliban, and in this case, decisions to financially incentivize and reward those criminals who unapologetically risk children's lives by dragging them through the drug cartel-controlled Mexican desert and illegally smuggle them into this country.
Who is in charge here, anyhow?
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1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/opinion/biden-age-election-2024.html
3. https://news.yahoo.com/peter-doocy-presses-biden-admin-212503925.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-calls-report-to-pay-separated-immigrants-450k-garbage
4, https://news.yahoo.com/biden-gets-heated-over-proposed-152115632.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
5. https://news.yahoo.com/border-sheriff-apos-perplexed-apos-134533586.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
6. https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/610113364/transcript-homeland-security-secretary-kirstjen-nielsens-full-interview-with-npr "First of all, the law says if you cross between the ports of entry, you are entering without inspection and that is a crime. First time is a misdemeanor. After that it's a felony. And then it goes on from there. So that hasn't changed, that's the underlying law. Our policy has not changed in that if you break the law, we will refer you for prosecution. What that means, however, is if you are single adult, if you are part of a family, if you are pregnant, if you have any other condition, you're an adult and you break the law, we will refer you. Operationally what that means is we will have to separate your family.
That's no different than what we do every day in every part of the United States when an adult of a family commits a crime. If you as a parent break into a house, you will be incarcerated by police and thereby separated from your family. We're doing the same thing at the border." - Kirstjen Nielsen
"someone had the profound idea to simply enforce existing law as written." What a concept! As vilified as Trump was, and he certainly brought a lot of criticism on himself, merely enforcing the law should not have drawn such a hysterical reaction. If you don't like the law, change the law! As it is, the current border situation, so forcefully opposed by appalled liberals in the Trump era, is even worse now. VP Harris, supposedly "in charge" of the border situation has done... nothing. Just watches from afar as the situation only worsens.
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