That's what I said out loud after reading the passage that begins "Biden embraces order and routine in his first week. How will that fit this moment of crisis?" (WaPo):
Almost every day of his young tenure, President Biden has entered the State Dining Room, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln looking down and wood burning in the fireplace. He speaks on the planned topic of the day. He sits at an undersized desk and searches for a pen to sign his latest stack of executive orders. Within 30 minutes of entering the camera’s frame, he has left it.
It is all plotted and planned. Little room is left for the unscripted or the unusual.
Biden’s first full week in office has showcased an almost jarring departure from his predecessor’s chaotic style, providing the first window into a tenure whose mission is not only to remake the White House in Biden’s image but also to return the presidency itself to what he sees as its rightful path.
The result so far is a 9-to-5 presidency — a tightly scripted burst of activity that was charted over the past few months, as Biden seeks to avoid heated conflict and stick to his plan of lowering the political temperature to a level that many Americans can tune out.
So it's a plan, eh? What else is in the plan? What will you do after we tune out? Or is this all quite beneficent — a plan to give us rest and relief, respite from the frenetic, attention-seeking Trump?
By the way, I found many things to laugh at in those paragraphs. Just to flag things that amused me: "young tenure," "wood burning in the fireplace," searching for a pen on "an undersized desk," "Dining Room... little room," a "departure... providing" a "window" (or is it a "chaotic style, providing" a "window"), a "tenure" with a "mission.".
This post gets my "I'm for boring" tag, and I am for boring. I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest. But I do see the downside of making it look boring. If you were really up to no good, you'd try to create a nothing-to-see-here atmosphere.
Naturally, I think of George Carlin's "It's The Quiet Ones You Gotta Watch." Of course, it's absurd to think that whenever nothing looks out of the ordinary, that's exactly when you should be most alarmed.
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121 comments:
Keep in mind these people campaigned on transforming the United States. Transforming the United States doesn't sound like boring to me.
In the words of Admiral Ackbar It's a trap!
This gets my "I'm for boring" tag, and I am for boring. I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest.
Spoken like a true Progressive.
The true answer isn't boring government, or government by expert, it's smaller government, less powerful government, less intrusive government that is necessary to restore our freedoms.
70,000 jobs lost, women's sports gutted, protesters tear-gassed by federal authorities in Portland, troops deployed in Washington (which became a super-spreader event). Anything can be boring if you're determined not to pay attention.
I guess
https://mobile.twitter.com/barnes_law/status/1354610336763047936
I like to imagine the same article written if Orange Man Bad were still occupying the office....”each morning a lumbering President Trump files in to his office, pausing before the bust of Thomas Jefferson, as though it might confer the power and inspiration to make America white again. His day is carefully circumscribed and limited to an unprecedented stack of executive orders, ushering in an era of dark, chilly winter and the end of democracy as we know it. Women and minorities hardest hit.
Hmm.
Biden fired 11,000 people. He lied that the 1776 Project is based on lies while supporting the 1619 Project which is clearly based on identifiable lies. He Re-authorized CRT revenge in government agencies. And now he's authorized a court packing commission.
It doesn't sound boring to me. It sounds like WAPO has an interest in keeping people from paying attention to the man behind the curtain.
Boring also = low energy.
A common feature among many of the elderly.
Indeed
https://m.theepochtimes.com/biden-administration-sued-for-halting-oil-and-gas-leasing-on-federal-lands_3674512.html
Only boring because the media makes it so.
Record number of executive orders...because only last year only tyrants issued executive orders.
The Presidency is NOT a 9 to 5 job - ever.
You know who else were well-organized and great planners? Nazis!
Well bolsheviks chavistas were as aggressive
I've noticed all the birds all stop singing and chirping -- no tweeting, you could say -- when there's a hawk in the trees.
Perhaps that's where the expression originated?
The quiet signals there's a hidden predator, a threat to all.
The Biden administration.
"Spoken like a true Progressive. The true answer isn't boring government, or government by expert, it's smaller government, less powerful government, less intrusive government that is necessary to restore our freedoms."
No reason even a "progressive" government can't also be boring, expert, small, underpowered and non-intrusive. The key is to get a less undemocratic less unrepresentative republican government.
A 9-to-5 presidency in a 24 hour world won't cut it. But we got rid of the Golden Scalp Weasel, right?
The job of the President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief and Leader of the Free World is not, however, a 9-to-5 job. It requires "energy in the Executive" as Hamilton wrote.
Ann wrote, "I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
Dear blogger-in-chief: That's not how government works in reality. This government is looking to fundamentally transform America with Critical Race Theory and the Green New Deal. And, of course, this mostly benefits China and puts Americans last. It also pits race against race. That didn't work out so well in Yugoslavia. Tribal societies are bad societies. Ask the Native American tribes.
We have also seen that these so-called experts are frequently wrong and in a tragic way. Recall the predictions on the number of dead Americans that was used to justify the shutdowns. That was the biggest unforced error in recent American history. Warren Buffett says avoid unforced errors.
Order and routine is signing the most Executive orders than anybody ever in the first week that will cripple America and the people who work for a living??? Remember the good old days when Joe said this?? “I have this strange notion. We are a democracy,” Biden sarcastically said, pointing out that “Some of my Republican friends, and some of my Democratic friends occasionally say ‘well if you can’t get the votes, by executive order you’re going to do something’”.
“You can’t do it by executive order, unless you’re a dictator,” Biden continued, adding “We’re a democracy, we need consensus.”
Maybe if he had his wits about him, he would remember what he said just a few years ago, but now, he is just signing anything the radicals put in front of him like a good boy.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/bidens-united-states-of-racial-quotas-and-preferences
It’s “boring” because Biden is not well and can only be seen a few scripted minutes a day. During those few minutes of activity, he’s tearing people’s jobs from them, forcing men be allowed in women’s sports and enabling caravans of illegal immigrants into cross the border, many of whom are likely COVID positive. That is not boring, that’s hair-raising.
You know who else were well-organized and great planners? Nazis!
You know who else had a German Shepherd dog? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
Yes. It will be fine if the bitter clingers are quietly disposed of and mandatory homosexuality is calmly inserted in the rectums of our schoolchildren
.
You want to bet
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/01/28/the-morning-briefing-sycophant-press-cant-cover-for-bidens-opening-train-wreck-n1413402
Tucker Carlson summed it all up on his show 1-27-21. It's much worse than I imagined.
He lets his EOs do the talking and he has little insight into what he's signing. He's just following orders. A pathetic figure.
"I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
where have you been the last few years, althouse?
BigBlueGovt bureaucratic "experts" have shown themselves to be a monstrous non-elected cohort of the "best and Brightest" that are thrilled to run roughshod over the public interest to serve themselves and their politics.
Oso Negro: you should keep your fantasies to your self.
An ambitious government is one of the most serious threats to humanity. Progressive government has an implication of ambition. That's bad...
From what I understand ever since Biden took office Amtrak has been on time on schedule.
"I am for boring."
Actually, you aren't. Boring is dull and unbloggable.
"I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
But how? You need a Boring BS tag.
"But I do see the downside of making it look boring."
Ah, you do, don't you. Progs know their audience though.
"If you were really up to no good, you'd try to create a nothing-to-see-here atmosphere."
Yeah, nothing says boring more than dozens of radical Executive Orders. All in the "public interest," of course.
"I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
Hard working experts, outside of the military, never work for the government. They're in the private dog eat dog sector. No, the weak, cowardly, lazy, know nothings ones are in government. You should know that.
Issuing an EO a day that drives another stake through the heart of the American economy is not boring. And people are starting to pay attention. Even in blue states, which stand to lose millions or dollars in tax revenue. After just one week it is hard to fathom the absolute total stupidity that infests this administration.
Being able to Count on 90% of the media either not reporting on what you are doing or singing your praises makes it easy to keep a low profile. On top of that, silence any form of dissent by using friends on the big tech sector. If Trump had set records of executive orders each day for the first week, with each met with cries of racism or other liberal slur, it gets loud fast. That 90% of the media gets real loud when it is a conservative action. Imagine if a Trump EO eliminated tens of thousands of high paying jobs or infringed on women’s sports. Kind of like the media declaring there is no proof of election fraud when not a single court would allow evidence to be presented, and then saying their reporting is in fact proof there was no fraud.
"I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
Good one, Althouse. You are more likely to see God.
Note they don't report on what's in those orders he's signing.
Even in blue states, which stand to lose millions or dollars in tax revenue.
SALT deduction coming back. How's that for stupidity...
Spoken like a true Progressive.
The idea of the federal government's "hard-working experts, solving problems", was indeed chuckle-worthy, but associating that concept with Biden is quite insane. "Bwahahha!" <--- like that.
Susan Rice seems to be the real face of the Borg.
[F]or Rice and Biden, “equity” requires not equality of opportunity, but equality of results. That’s one of the fundamental tenets of the critical race theory training that Trump’s administration banned and Biden’s reinstated on Day One.
A lower-than-population percentage of blacks in any desirable category, explains critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi, must be the result of “systemic racism,” a term Rice used twice and Biden five times on Tuesday. If you don’t agree, you’re guilty of “white fragility” and must be a “white supremacist.”
As Andrew Sullivan trenchantly observes, “to achieve ‘equity,’ you first have to take away equality for individuals who were born in the wrong identity group. Equity means treating individuals unequally so that groups are equal.”
We will see an interesting experiment if the left stays in power. Stanford already has a Physics class for POCs.
History, of course is gone. Why is that portrait of racist Lincoln still in the White House ?
Blogger MadisonMan said...
Note they don't report on what's in those orders he's signing.
It's OK. Biden doesn't know either.
Time’s person of the year: Biden’s handlers.
"Of course, it's absurd to think that whenever nothing looks out of the ordinary, that's exactly when you should be most alarmed."
Really? I thought you were a parent.
When the kids are quiet? That's the time they're up to something
No reason even a "progressive" government can't also be boring, expert, small, underpowered and non-intrusive.
Yes there is...the main one being that that is the opposite of what Progressives want. Progressives want a powerful government manned by "experts" so that they can fundamentally change society to match their vision of equity.
Remember it was the Progressives who created the permanent Income Tax their first time around, while at the same time fundamentally changing the Senate (for the worse), imposing Prohibition, and granting women the right to vote. All four efforts fundamentally transformed the relationship between the people and the government for the worse.
This new crop of Progressives want to further expand government, its powers, and its control over the American people. They want their "experts" deciding what is appropriate behavior. (see every one of the 22 Executive Orders already signed by Biden in less than a week) They want to create a UBI, that will result in a permanent illiterate, innumerate and unproductive underclass that will reliably vote Democratic in order to increase the available Bread and Circuses.
If you can't see that you're either a fool or willfully blind.
Boring like a dumpster fire. People are noticing: "Biden’s first Daily Presidential Tracking Poll put him into negative approval territory at -2. It has gotten worse. On Monday, he dropped to -4. Tuesday, he moved down again to -5. This trend is quite a feat. President Trump started at +2 and rose to +13 in the first days of his presidency."
And 9-5 presidency? Hardly. Called a lid at 2:30 yesterday afternoon!
Susan Rice is the real President of the United States.
Susan Rice has a mustache.
"I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
When has that ever happened? Watching yesterdays Climate hype I was stunned by the elimination of any science in the explanation of the focus, and non existant goals.
Howard said...From what I understand ever since Biden took office Amtrak has been on time on schedule.
He is either better than or worse that Mussolini, depending on ones perspective.
Such an improvement from #45 who was literally worse than Hitler.
"The key is to get a less undemocratic less unrepresentative republican government."
Interesting take. Historically, we believed everything should be permitted except that which is prohibited. Now, we are headed toward everything is prohibited, except that which is permitted.
[F]or Rice and Biden, “equity” requires not equality of opportunity, but equality of results.
Practicing equality of outcomes is the major threat. It requires not only destroying equality of opportunity but confiscation of wealth and property.
They're thinking a government more like Sub-Saharan Africa. Definitely not boring...
You know who else were well-organized and great planners? Nazis!
You know who else had a German Shepherd dog? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt!
———————————
And Hitler!
There is hope for the future: Susan Rice's son was the president of the Stanford Republican club.
Ah, those kids...
"I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
The naivete is strong in this one.
"President Biden has entered the State Dining Room, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln looking down and wood burning in the fireplace."
And he says, "Grampa!"
Relax... this won't hurt at all.
No more opiod treatment either.
Attention seekinng Trump = Peasant trying to change things.
Now that the rich and powerful are back beating up the Peasants, Althouse gives a sigh of relief. Besides, like most chicks she likes reading good news as opposed to bad news. Give her Pravada American style and she's happy.
If you want boring, well you'll get it from Biden. The press won't criticize him, and neither will the Establishment R's. And he's practically comotose. They'll just loot and destroy without any fanfare.
an undersized desk and searches for a pen
Oh, that's poor planning...
It is all plotted and planned. Little room is left for the unscripted or the unusual.
Wait, what? So it was just theater?
Fake news!
Meade said...
["Spoken like a true Progressive. The true answer isn't boring government, or government by expert, it's smaller government, less powerful government, less intrusive government that is necessary to restore our freedoms."]
No reason even a "progressive" government Meade said...
"Spoken like a true Progressive. The true answer isn't boring government, or government by expert, it's smaller government, less powerful government, less intrusive government that is necessary to restore our freedoms."
"No reason even a "progressive" government can't also be boring, expert, small, underpowered and non-intrusive. The key is to get a less undemocratic less unrepresentative republican government.can't also be boring, expert, small, underpowered and non-intrusive. The key is to get a less undemocratic less unrepresentative republican government."
From wikipedia:
"According to historian William Leuchtenburg, "[t]he Progressives believed in the Hamiltonian concept of positive government, of a national government directing the destinies of the nation at home and abroad. They had little but contempt for the strict construction of the Constitution by conservative judges, who would restrict the power of the national government to act against social evils and to extend the blessings of democracy to less favored lands. The real enemy was particularism, state rights, limited government."
In other words, 'No reason even a "progressive" government can't also be boring, expert, small, underpowered and non-intrusive.' ain't happening under a Progressive regime.
"We're just going to be boring until you stop looking."
You can't look at something they won't show you.
“The goal for the establishment media isn’t to point out merely that Biden is a sort of American Everyman. It’s to use that supposed normalcy to disguise the fact that his agenda is absolutely abnormal.”
-Ben S.
As I think of it, that is your point!
"I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
The "experts" part was the cutest part of the statement/wish. Experts like Fauci and Birx.
Let's start with going after little girl ballerina companies in Madison, WI. Then gov't can raise everyone’s gas prices and utility bills to give us “choices”. And while we’re not looking the Justice Dept can prosecute people for memes posted in 2016. Meanwhile the Chicago Teachers Union puts out a laughable dance video about keeping schools closed for "safety". Liberals are insane.
It’s gonna get really bad, really fast.
To serve man...you know the thing.
He sits at an undersized desk and searches for a pen to sign his latest stack of executive orders.
The "pen" thing is Chekov's gun foreshadowing. When the time comes, the press will be able to say they reported the signs.
If you want boring, turn off your TV, restrict your internet browsing to DIY links, and take up knitting or artisan bread baking, but don't submit the rest of us to your idea of a "boring government". My idea of boring is to not be engaged in war, an economy that benefits everyone, no cities burning down every night, and the free and fair exchange of thoughts, ideas, and goods and services. In my world, Trump's presidency was far more boring than this one is turning out to be, and it's only been a week.
The true answer isn't boring government, or government by expert, it's smaller government, less powerful government, less intrusive government that is necessary to restore our freedoms.
You were given a clue yesterday and are still clueless. A boring government as Althouse described it would exactly be a less intrusive government. It is there and needs to be there, but it is hardly a bother as to be boring and uninteresting.
To this lover of freedom, that sounds perfect. I need a government to provide good roads, sanitation, power to home as gas or electricity, police, and fire; but I want it to be the bottom news story of the day. Smaller and less powerful may be nice, but not as critical to me as less intrusive. To help understand the difference; I want a powerful military that convinces the opposition not to pick fights with us, so that the military is hardly used. I'm ok with a powerful government that doesn't need to yield that power often.
What we have now is a government flexing its power such that it is the number one news story. You thought the election was over on a Tuesday in early November? Gotcha, it is a problem for months on end with no satisfying resolution. You thought a transition to a new government would heal old wounds? Gotcha, we will prosecute the old government using new found authority. You thought we would end the year long lockdowns? Gotcha, you need to double mask to go out in public. That's not boring. This it the Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times".
It sucks. I rather have boring too. Boring is just a simpler way of saying the fruits of what you consider to be a smaller, less powerful, less intrusive government.
Biden has already demonstrated that he is not for boring based on his executive orders. I also get a kick out of Ann's cute belief that government can be quietly competent. When was the last quiet and competent administration? Eisenhower?
Anyway, from Insty this morning.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/27/the-media-may-ignore-but-bidens-presidency-is-already-radical/
"wood burning in the fireplace every day". "As Biden vows monumental change, fossil fuel industry digs in for a fight" (WaPo). Fires in a Biden fireplace do not release any greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. They are green, eco-friendly fireplace fires.
Everything releases carbon even wood.
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/frank-biden-inauguration-day-ad/
I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest.
@Althouse, lots of people would like that, but it hasn’t happened since World War II and it probably won’t ever happen again. Case in point: Anthony Fauci. What is his expertise? If you, like Donald Trump, mistakenly imagine that his expertise lies in science or medicine then both of you are wrong. Fauci sits atop one of the myriad federal bureaucracies, and his expertise lies solely and entirely in navigating the federal bureaucracy. He applies this expertise in the service of his career and absolutely not in the service of the public interest except on the rare occasion that the two align. Now multiply him by few hundred thousand and that’s the federal bureaucracy.
*Was* Der TrumpenReich's Reign of Terror really chaotic and disorderly? Or is that just how it was reported?
Imagine if the press - rather than turn the outrage meter for every single action of Trump's up to eleventy, had just reported the news of the day? How many people would *ever* have known what Trump was saying or tweeting, except that the press reported it to us? That IS the filter through which we learn pretty much everything - it's not as though Joe Sixpack hies himself to the White House web site each day to see what the President is up to.
His administration can say there was no COVID plan to inherit, even though the previous team said they had 300 meetings to go over the supposedly non-existent plan, but that's not dishonest and the words "offering no evidence" have suddenly gone AWOL.
The new narrative is that *nothing* Biden is doing is in any way different from what presidents have always done during their first weeks - he's bringing normalcy/decency back to the Oval Office. He can issue twice as many executive orders than the last 7 presidents combined, but that's not alarming or UNPRECEDENTED!!11! or even slightly undemocratic/authoritarian (as opposed to the reax to each single action of Trump's, about which the volume was cranked up to 10).
Boring/normal vs. alarming/unprecedented -- it's all in how it's reported.
I ain't buying what the WaPo is selling.
Boring can be evil.
As an exiample, John Kerry is a dull man whose has the personality of a piece of plywood. His whole demeanor is boring. Yesterday he claimed that the oil and gas workers who are going to be losing their jobs due to the new policies of this administration needed "better choices" and could be "retrained" to make solar panels. That entire statement, delivered so cooly and matter-of-factly, has huge assumptions built into it. It's the same sort of banal, bureaucratic evil that countless apparatchiks of the past century and more have delivered to the masses.
Of course the response to it resulted in the tiresome "Republicans pounce" headline.
"Ann wrote, "I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
"Dear blogger-in-chief: That's not how government works in reality...."
By "envision," I certainly don't mean that's what I'm picturing going on right now! Come on. It's a vision, a utopia. I presume human nature prevents us from ever getting there. Your comment comes across as disrespectful.
The reality is they are hammering every part of this economy like the Art of noise video.
The Ricky Vaughn Federal prosecution for a meme is terrifying.
Narciso linked to it above.
https://mobile.twitter.com/barnes_law/status/1354610336763047936
Tucker covered it last night.
Press Release:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/social-media-influencer-charged-election-interference-stemming-voter-disinformation-campaign
“He lets his EOs do the talking and he has little insight into what he's signing. He's just following orders. A pathetic figure.”
Incredibly, this is exactly right. And it seems to be completely unexamined, even by those appalled by the idiocy emanating from this puppet administration.
This isn’t boring, Althouse. The American people are moving inside history right now. In a way they haven’t probably since the Second World War. And when all the partisans are dead and the historians turn their dry gaze on this time, imagine their incredulity at the gullible and self-absorbed people who threw it all away for...nothing.
We're just going to be boring until you stop looking.
That is the big lie that they want you to "get". What is going on is NOT boring. It is actually quite "exciting" in that we are losing rights, control, economic freedom, etc. but it is being done by the "right" person, to all the "wrong" people so no news here. Just go back to sleep. Rest easy that "top men" are back in charge and sleep, sleep deeply and don't notice the pillow being pressed down on your face.
They worked on this for four years can you imagine this madness.
Follow the link at Insty if you haven't seen info on Biden* appointments already. Readering, Inga - I'm not sniping here. Please educate yourselves on this. Unless you are truly of the view that the USA needs to be dismantled you will be shocked at what is happening here.
Althouse. Boring = under the radar. In four years this country will be unrecognizable. This isn't chicken little stuff. Divided as we are America won't survive this onslaught.
Be nice if they can go after the federal prosecutor and pierce the prosecutor immunity...
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/attention-doj-why-not-indict-leftist-kristina-wong/
Bunch of Democrats had similar memes.
And the law they are using!
And where is the aclu, much less gop politicians decrying this.
Walk like an egyptian
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/xiden-cancels-wh-petitions/
When it comes to government, my personal preferrence is boring but competent. But if I have to choose between boring and competent, I'll choose competent every time. I'd rather have a loud, noisy firebrand who did competent things than a boring tyrant or a boring intrusive oligarchy.
Was this your card?
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/27/u-s-renews-relations-with-the-terrorists-of-hamas-n1412705
“I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way. I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest.“
Well I’m afraid you’re just shit out of luck. Maybe forever.
Is leaving me alone boring? If so I'll take boring. But Dementia Joe and the State-shtuppers he surrounds himself with don't seem let-alone types. They seem more like the Wesley Mouches of Red Diaper Barry's administration. Remember? "Stroke of the pen--new law--pretty cool!"
FBI boringly arrested a twitter troll:
"According to the complaint, Mackey and several unnamed co-conspirators sought to stoke confusion about the voting process by claiming on social media that supporters of one of the two major presidential candidates could vote by posting online or texting."
Our hostess envisions "hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
This has been a model for government embraced by many Americans. But it seems that two vital questions are not addressed in this model:
1. What kind of and how much hard-working expertise is there that can understand difficulties, correctly identify problems, and "solve" them with solutions that work for a very diverse population living in 50 very diverse states? How much can a human mind (or even a covey of human minds) know and take account of? Can all these hard-working experts stay centered on really identifying (that's hard!) and solving problems, or might they lapse into just picking up the fashionable "problems" and "solutions"?
2. What keeps the experts focused on and actually aware of the "public interest"? After all, these folks have their own interests that are always in mind. How does the public (and we actually have a lot of quite different publics) get through to them and keep their interest attuned?
These are the kinds of questions the Founders asked, and citizens used to keep asking. Our faith in expertise has eclipsed them, and as a result, whole segments of our society are suffering from misdirected "solutions" to problems that they can better solve themselves.
I'm tuning out because all I can do is my own work, to make some profits and try to hide my ass before the Dem brownshirts come for it. Which it seems right now they are very intent on doing, even to little old me.
Those experts? They often know nothing, and are often bought and paid for by China or some other entity antithetical to my interests as a US citizen. Therein lies a problem for us all.
I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest.
This would be an idyllic vision if it weren’t so remarkably and profoundly out of whack with reality. The only “experts” in gub’ment are expert partisans and ideologues. Susan Rice, for example, is an expert at everything bad we can imagine. These kinds of experts cannot wait to get their greasy paws on the levers of power.
If the powers of government were limited to defense, public safety, and inspecting 🥩 meat, it can be as boring as possible and we can sleep at night without worry.
- Krumhorn
The portrait of Lincoln has to be on the ceiling to look down.
And what type of wood is burning in the fireplace?
If Joe Biden is actually working 9-5 every day I'll eat my hat.
The way the WAPO is reporting this is like the analogy of boiling the frog. WAPO wants us to think that ol’ Uncle Joe is giving the frog (representing the citizens of the USA) a nice bath in luke warm water in a pot. The frog is content as the water is a nice temperature. Then, while the frog is lulled into a false sense of security after its last year of stress under its previous caretaker, Joe turns up the heat (represented by the fireplace in the background????). By the time the frog realizes it made the wrong choice for its caretaker, it is boiled to death. The end and the end of the world as it once knew and enjoyed.
"I certainly don't mean that's what I'm picturing going on right now! Come on."
Come on . . . where I have heard that phrase recently?
Anyway, the point of the criticism of Althouse is that her desires are beside the point, that the prog moves were entirely predictable, and that both the abstentions and pro-Dem votes by nice women are helping to ruin the country.
Calling for "boring" or "experts working in the public interest" or "centrism" is irrational in the best of times, ludicrous when a leftist revolution is happening before our eyes.
Fortunately, Althouse does have her eyes open and enables the rest of us to say what we see. That's something.
WaPo wrote ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
That name is a trigger in SF and no longer welcome.
Hard working government "experts" got us into all the problems we're facing. If nothing else, Covid unmasked the expert class as charlatans & grifters.
So far Biden has been boring for the media and Twitters, but he's been traumatic for Americans out in the field, such as where the pipelines go. Trump churned the media and Twitter, but regular Americans had rather boring lives to the point they could enjoy the latest Twitter storm with amusement.
A lot of those who voted for "calm" are going to learn that their social media window into the world might be calmer, but their RW lives are going to be lot less so than under Trump.
Gahrie,
On your Constitutional amendments, I'm afraid I'm rather attached to my right to vote. On the others, though, you have a point. The income tax (which, a bit over a century ago, was, remember, 2% on the very highest incomes, zero for everyone else!) we are now stuck with, naturally. Proposed alterations to NYC's tax system and NY State's would bring NYC taxes for the highest earners to something like 66%, where the Laffer Curve does start to seem real.
Direct election of Senators? Well I realize that Senates in the Bad Old Days (not like today!/sarc) were big ol' horse-trading floors. But all we get out of that amendment, really, is 33 hideously expensive campaigns every two years to persuade people who couldn't even name their Senators to vote for one, as opposed to the same number of much more focused campaigns directed towards people who damn well know who their Senators are to support one (or not). State Legislatures get a bad rap, which isn't undeserved (indeed is hotly contested: Mirror, mirror on the wall/Who's the worst Lege of them all?), but at least they have a clue what the actual issues are.
And Prohibition. I have a feeling that one of the salutary, if unintentional, results of the utter failure of the 20s was to make it impossible actually to outlaw cigarettes and other tobacco. They can make the packaging repulsive, and tax them up the wazoo, and spend umpteen gazillion dollars on "anti-smoking campaigns" totally unhinged from reality (Europeans smoke much, much more than we do, in the teeth of those longer life expectancies and such that we're constantly being taunted about), but an actual ban remains off the table. Possibly this is because any young person can walk into a "recreational MJ" establishment in many states and buy whatever toke floats his boat. "Hard" drugs are going the same way; already municipalities will give you everything you need to shoot up "safely" (!) save the actual product, which you can buy on any of a couple dozen street corners in any decent-sized city.
By "envision," I certainly don't mean that's what I'm picturing going on right now! Come on. It's a vision, a utopia. I presume human nature prevents us from ever getting there. Your comment comes across as disrespectful.
Yet another Progressive statement. Disagreement equals threat that must be attacked.
Ann, I must echo a lot of your other commenters: This is "boring" only if you pay attention only when told to. Looked at by any objective standard, Biden's giant stack of executive orders may be terrifying or cause for rejoicing, but either way it's a stupendous political shift, made more, um, interesting by the fact that the man signing them literally (in his own words) says he doesn't know what he's signing. It's like any of a dozen murder mysteries (Dorothy Sayers' Unnatural Death comes to mind first, but there are a lot of others) where a testator is tricked into signing a will when s/he doesn't want to, or one whose contents are other than s/he desired.
By "envision," I certainly don't mean that's what I'm picturing going on right now! Come on. It's a vision, a utopia. I presume human nature prevents us from ever getting there. Your comment comes across as disrespectful.
Then why "envision" it? The problem isn't just that it isn't what's going on now under Joe Biden (or even under Donald Trump, with nearly the entire federal bureaucracy aligned against him). The problem is that as long as you hold this image in your mind you will be inclined to support policies that drive the federal government to rely more and more on government experts that will never be experts in anything but enlarging their bureaucratic turf. You might as well envision a utopia where all of us sprout wings and fly.
And if it sounds as though we are being disrespectful, well, utopian visions are never worthy of respect.
"...Biden seeks to avoid heated conflict and stick to his plan of lowering the political temperature to a level that many Americans can tune out..."? Biden has an odd way of trying to "...heated conflict...?" One of his first orders is the stop the Keystone Pipeline and 70,000 + workers lose their jobs. Nice way to calm everyone down. Oh, the real doozy is signing an Executive Order preventing the use of the word "China Virus". Truly earth shattering order? At the rate his "young" administration is proceeding his dictates create daily conflict if they believe all of these orders will heal this Nation. Self absorbed like all 'Elites' - 'do as I say not as I do'. I dub him the 'Village Idiot'.
I'm sure many of the functions of Stalin's government were carried out in a boring, bureaucratic manner. Once the revolution has prevailed, the banality of evil takes over.
Imagine it's so boring
It's easy if you try
Your business isn't being looted
Or your savings running dry
Imagine all the people
About to get the shaft
You
You may say I'm a dreamer
I'm not the only one
Bend your knee before us
You deplorable, Trumploving scum
Ann wrote, "I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest."
I'm sorry Ann, if you really believe this, then there's no hope for our Nation, World or Humanity.
Tell us poor plebes which actions taken by any government helped our society.
We need less government not more.
Nations and Empires have fallen do to the ever encroaching hand of Government's officials and their lackeys the 'Bureaucrats'.
PM said...
WaPo wrote ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
That name is a trigger in SF and no longer welcome.
But...but...he's the greatest Democrat president evar!!!!!
/sarc
hstad,
Yes, the "China Virus" EO. I eagerly await amendments prohibiting mention of the "UK Variant," the "South African Variant," and the "Brazilian Variant," since those are at least equally racist, nyet? Also, bans on "Lyme Disease," "Norovirus," "Legionnaires' Disease," "MERS," "Ebola," and all the rest of those nasty identifying names for illnesses. You wanna talk about something that emanated from South Africa? Give it a code -- an add-on to "COVID," presumably -- and never mention SA at all. Remember, chant after me: the virus knows no borders!
Not to mention "Kung flu," "Winnie the Flu," &c. Though getting Biden to understand that "Winnie the Flu" is named after Xi, because he looks kinda like this character in a 19th-c. children's book named Winnie the Pooh, might be beyond our powers, frankly.
“Young tenure...”
Hahahahahah
does banality of evil +>>> tantamount to evil is boring?
uttered in cruelly neutral insouciance
Althouse
“I envision hard-working experts, solving problems, serving the public interest”
Right. Hard working not what comes to mind thinking of govt workers. Experts? Credentialed, perhaps, or highly skilled in political wiggling, or just jackasses like the sainted Fauci who has gone from zero to one to two masks in the last year and insinuates that the vaccine will change nothing for the individual until the infection rate is zero. Worldwide. Keep the mask on. Keep social distancing. Don’t travel. That kind of expert.
What bullshit.
The limited, programmed, robotic appearances do not represent a master plan to present Biden as a normal, boring, ordinary president - they are all he is capable of.
That's the story here.
Biden is, aided and abetted by feminists, pushing girls and women to the back of the bus, under the bus, under the gun. Keep women barefoot, available, and taxable. You've come along way, baby... Fetal-American. h/t PC
All's quiet at the Twilight Fringe: out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
Boring doesn't sell newspapers or glue peoples' eyes to screens. Boring will end as soon as clicks decline.
I would like government to operate in a boring, reliable way.
AA prefers the banality of evil.
A few months ago, a commenter here said Biden represented the banality of evil. We are seeing that in action here. The media is representing his tenure so far as normal, returning to traditional presidential behavior while ignoring all the dangerous things he is enacting in those EOs. Low information members of the American public whose sole news source is the MSM, will exist in their smug slumber while Rome burns. How I wish I could join them in that slumber.
The purpose of executive orders is to tell the executive branch how to carry out the law. Not to make the law. Anything else is an abuse. The president does not have the authority to order anyone else to do anything, or to order members of the executive to do anything not authorized by law. Congress needs to do something to make this clear.
I'm quiet....so you won't hear me say "ha, ha,hah,ha, ha, ha, ha,ha......"
Blogger Howard said...
From what I understand ever since Biden took office Amtrak has been on time on schedule. 1/28/21, 8:20 AM
Howard, you don't "understand" anything. You're just mouthing off on opinions not facts.
Took, Amtrak train from L.A. to San Diego - was 35 minutes late. I suspect it so on the East Coast also. Question for Howard, when has Amtrak ever been on time?
hstad said... [hush][hide comment]
Blogger Howard said...
From what I understand ever since Biden took office Amtrak has been on time on schedule. 1/28/21, 8:20 AM
Howard, you don't "understand" anything. You're just mouthing off on opinions not facts.
Took, Amtrak train from L.A. to San Diego - was 35 minutes late. I suspect it so on the East Coast also. Question for Howard, when has Amtrak ever been on time?
1/29/21, 2:32 PM
Maybe you are misunderstanding Howwie. You know who else made the trains run on time? Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. You know what he was, right? He was a Fascist! Maybe Howwie is finally admitting in a subtle way that badtouchBiden is a Fascist?!? He can't come out and say it, he has to hint at it. Doesn't want to lose his sweet posting gig and the folks that pay him are all in on badtouchBiden so he is kind of like the hostage trying to send Morse code via eye blinks. You have to read between the lines to get his message.
Yeah, I'm for boring, too.
It worked for Brezhnev.
“Of course, it's absurd to think that whenever nothing looks out of the ordinary, that's exactly when you should be most alarmed.“
It’s in your enemy’s interest to attack you when you are sleeping.
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