Tag Archives: POTUS

The President of the United States meets the King of All Media…

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Howard Stern made his bones as a “shock jock” a million years ago. For the last 20 years, though, I’ve been following him because for my money he does the best celebrity interviews of any broadcaster of his generation. 

I usually only listen to Howard on the days he’s scheduled to be live – which is why I wasn’t tuned in last Friday when he broke into his own channel on SiriusXM to conduct an interview with President Biden. I did, however, take the time over the weekend to give it a proper listen. The King of All Media did his expected a yeoman’s job of preparing for and conducting an interview and drew out.

Look, even though he sat through a strong interview, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m suddenly enamored with Joe Biden. We still have significant policy differences, but since the guy still believes in the basics like fidelity to the Constitution and rule of law, it was good to see him trying an approach to outreach that that his predecessors studiously avoided.  

If you haven’t listened to the interview, I highly recommend checking it out. If you’re not a fan of Howard (or Joe), maybe this is the chance to take a look at one or both of them in a new context. Everything I learned about American politics when I was taking my degree seems to be hopelessly out of date, so I have no idea of this is the kind of thing that might move the needle seven months out from a general election. In any case, I’d say it’s still worth doing. If you’ve got some free time, give the King of All Media and the president a listen. You might find it as interesting as I did. 

Things I’d rather…

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This is a non-exhaustive list of things I’d rather vote for in 2024 than Donald Trump for President of the United States:

1. Revoking American independence and ceding the country back to the United Kingdom.

2.  Abolishing the office of President and creating a cabinet government.

3. Mandatory gender-neutral high heels.

4. Changing the national anthem to The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

5. A law specifically requiring me and me only to burn my books.

6. Syphilis for everyone!

7. Every home with more than ½ acre of open land must maintain 6 chickens or 2 goats.

8. All pizza must be made with only mushrooms and anchovies.

9. Henceforth, no gin may be imported to the United States or its territories and dependencies.

Like I said, the list is certainly not exhaustive, but should serve well enough for illustrative purposes. 

Hey, I was there with you in 2016. I didn’t love the guy as a candidate, but assumed that the trappings of the office would smooth off some of his rougher edges – that he’d feel the weight of the office and 227 years of precedent and that would constrain his worst impulses. I was wrong.

His particular brand of poison can’t be allowed to continue spreading through the body politic. There’s not a power on earth or in heaven that could compel me to vote for the twice impeached, now federally indicted and arraigned ex-television host-in-chief.

The profit motive…

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About once a day you can count on President Biden tweeting about evil oil companies making money hand over fist while “excess profits are going back to their shareholders and their executives.”

As much fun as it is to watch the president attempt to turn “profit” into the next dirty word, I respectfully suggest he’s out of his damned mind on this track. I mean it’s not as if oil companies are chartered non-profit organizations. The whole point of investing in a company is the expectation that you’ll receive a return on that investment. The board and corporate executives would probably have some legal liability if they weren’t actively trying to return value to shareholders. The shareholders are the ones bearing the risk that accompanies running a business after all. 

I know that POTUS and his Twitter account like to pretend it’s just the 1% getting dividends… but according to a Gallup report dated May 12, 2022 the number of Americans who hold individual stock shares or who are invested through mutual funds or IRAs is in the neighborhood of 58%. That number probably ticks up a bit if you account for the various and sundry pension plans that also invest widely across the whole market. Even without accounting for pension funds, that’s a majority of Americans who stand to gain when businesses profit, dividends are paid, or stock is bought back by the company. That large percentage of Americans being “in the market” in some way would seem to indicate their belief in the power of growth and profit. 

Maybe the big buy backs and dividends would be moderated a bit by a political environment that was more encouraging of entrepreneurship, of R&D, or of exploration. As it is, Big Energy doesn’t have much incentive to spend money on those things under an administration that would very much like to kill off their entire sector. Companies tend to invest when they have a nice stable regulatory environment, rather than when the government keeps threatening to yank the rug out from under them.  

Our president, it seems, wants to have it both ways. He wants the cash cow to fund the welfare state but he also wants to butcher it and sell off the pieces. Having said that, if President Biden were serious about any of this, he’d be working with Congressional leaders to cut off federal subsidies to the energy industry and the broader system of subsidies in general instead of Tweeting about it every afternoon. I’d be the first one on board if he made that pitch. Until then, I’d appreciate it if Mr. Biden could give it a rest with trying to demonize the profit motive. 

Joe…

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Let me say it straight from the shoulder… I’m not a big fan of Joe Biden as president. From spearheading America’s flight from Afghanistan to the current conflicted economic environment the administration is determined to cheer as rosy, while simultaneously decrying as hard times and painfully inflationary, it feels like the presidency is his in name, but that the hard work of the office remains, somehow, out of his grasp. 

I’ve never met him, but maybe he’s a nice enough old man. I’d be willing to go so far as to say he’s probably well intentioned. He might even be successful his role as head of state (à la Elizabeth II) where the main function is unveiling plaques, making proclamations, and waiving at crowds. I have to believe that even those who supported him during the election have found him wanting when exercising his awesome constitutional role as head of government. His performance when it comes to the hard stuff could, charitably, be called something between mixed and abysmal.

I’m certainly not advocating for a return to the batshit crazy administration of Donald Trump and his band of merry insurrectionists, but the fact that Joe was popularly recognized as the best available option really should concern every one of us. The best thing he could possible do would be to, as soon as the midterms are over, go on television and announce that he won’t seek a second term. I’m sure I’ll still hate the next contender’s policies, but the job deserves someone more engaged and energetic. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The United Nations. According to reports, the UN press office has instructed staff not to call the current Russian war against Ukraine a “war” or “conflict.” I’m sure somewhere, somehow the UN manages to do something useful, but I’m equally sure this ain’t it. Having spent the last two decades in the belly of one of the world’s great bureaucracies, I know ass covering when I see it. It’s not surprising from an organization that continues to allow Russia to chair the Security Council while simultaneously committing countless war crimes against clear and obvious civilian targets. It’s not surprising, but it’s damned well disappointing. 

2. Our Arab allies. Leaders of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have refused phone calls from the President of the United States in recent weeks. These “allies” of ours are quick enough to pick up the receiver whenever the need to re-up an order of military hardware or need a big bad superpower to keep their neighbor in line. When the issue is opening up the spigot and pumping some more oil, tough, we’re met with a deafening silence. If we had any sense as a country it’s the kind of thing we’d remember and exact a price for the next time our allies need spare parts for their fancy American fighter jets.

3. Off ramps. The Twitter space is filled with voices calling for the world to find an “off ramp” for Vlad the Invader. The world, they say, needs to give Vlad a way to back away without smelling like he’s fallen directly through the outhouse floor. I’m sorry. No. Vlad needs to put his tail between his legs and slink back to Moscow having been bled militarily by a country he assumed would roll over and crippled financially by a resolute western alliance. The world will get far better terms once he squeals than if he’s allowed to thump his chest and claim some sort of victory no matter how pyric. Treat him like North Korea’s glorious leaders – put him in a box and mostly ignore him. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Schedule. I’m deep in the weeds of designing a schedule for a three-day event where, at best, there’s one day of real content. The inevitable result will be a proposal that nobody likes – but that everyone will eventually go along with because no one else wants to come up with a better alternative. It’s just another week in the belly of the bureaucracy as an event planner, I suppose. Thank God there’s no real-world events taking place globally that would be a better place to allocate limited time and effort.

2. Joe Biden. I get it, he’s not Don Trump. At some point, though, that has to stop being enough reason to give the guy a pass. I never had particularly high expectations for a Biden Administration, but setting aside our policy disagreements on the proper role and function of the federal government, the first year has been less successful than even I expected. From the bungled evacuation of Afghanistan to rampaging inflation to failure to ramp up testing for COVID, most of what’s come out of the White House in the last 365 days has felt botched in many greater or lesser ways. Maybe it’s just me, but I expected more polish and poise from an administration who are largely old hands inside the beltway.

3. Google. About a decade ago, I set up a “Gmail for Your Domain” account to support jeffreytharp.com. It gave me up to 50 “branded” email address overlayed on the gmail.com platform and some other nice integration features. At the basic tier, that was a “free” service provided by Google (presumably for giving them the right to data mine your various inboxes). For a long time, it’s been a totally painless experience. They’ve just announced the end of this as a free service and now I have to decide if $6 a month is enough of an annoyance and pain point to motivate me to find an alternative and migrate to it between now and May 1st. Otherwise it’s a matter of abandoning tens of thousands of emails and other records in place and starting fresh with a new provider. Stupid Sophie’s choice.

Weak in size and spirit…

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The occupant of the White House is a member of the Democratic Party. Members of the Democratic Party also constitute the majority, though a slim one, in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This week they’ll be struggling mightily to pass monumentally large spending bills, not crash headlong into the debt ceiling, and keep the lights on at federal departments and agencies across the country.

One thing I think we’re going to have to give up now is the illusion that our legislative process is broken because one party or another is made up entirely of obstructionists who live to say “no.” When one of those parties holding all the reigns of power is still struggling or fails to get their agenda passed, the fiction of blaming the opposition party is awfully hard to sustain.

If the party in power fails to pass signature portions of their own president’s agenda or fails to gin up the votes for their own spending priorities, or can’t manage that most basic of Congressional functions – passing the federal budget – that tells me not only is the majority weak in size, but also weak in spirit. If the Congressional Democrats can’t get the job done when they hold all the reigns, they’re ripe to be picked off in the 2022 election cycle.

So as it turns out both of our dominate political parties are bad. One because it will cheerfully burn the republic to the ground if it means they get to hang on to power and the other because they can’t find the matches with both hands and a flashlight.

Shutdown prep…

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Years ago, the federal government was touted as stable employment, promising a career that wouldn’t make you rich, but ensured that you wouldn’t die poor. It was a guarantee of a solidly middle class lifestyle during your working years and a comfortable retirement when the time came. The trade off, for such stability was forgoing the big salaries that could sometimes be had for similar work in the private sector. Those salaries, of course, came with risk that the contract that paid so well could disappear overnight.

Stable is a relative term, of course. Over the last fifteen years I’ve worked through hiring freezes, furloughs, and more government shut downs than I can really remember. That’s not the hallmark of a particularly stable employer. Then again, when I look at the elected officials who the people, in their questionable wisdom, have sent to Washington to represent them, “stable” isn’t a world I’d choose to use for many of them – both the politicians and the electorate.

So here I am, with the next government shut down hovering in the wings, once again preparing to defer or stop payments and dramatically reduce the scope and scale of operations at Fortress Jeff.

I’ve got enough years on me now to ride out a run of the mill government shutdown if I must. Still, planning for a few weeks or months without pay does make you question going with the “stable” choice all those years ago. If you’re going to be planning how to cut spending down to the bone every couple of years anyway, maybe some of those contract jobs would have been better in the end.

Our elected representatives are increasingly incapable of acting like grown adults, but then again, the same is true of the people who elect them. The curse of democracy is we continue to get exactly the kind of politicians, government, and society that we deserve.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Opinions. Having an opinion is a fine thing, but it’s helpful to remember that not all opinions are created equal. I don’t know at what point we decided the ideas of random cranks on social media carry equal value with the opinions of those who have spent a lifetime studying medicine and health policy, but here we are. It’s just the latest bit of the long thread of anti-intellectualism that weaves its way through American history. At some point, though, it would be really nice if we could hold dumbasses up to public ridicule and shame rather than lionizing them as telling secret truths “that no one wants us to know.” 

2. Joe Biden. In an interview this week, President Biden defensively maintained that there was no for American forces to get out of Afghanistan “without chaos ensuing.” Having spent a fair amount of my early career working in various emergency response activities, I’ll admit that they are often messy… but the heart and soul of managing through a crisis is having a sense of what to do after you get hit in the face with a shovel. The answer shouldn’t be telling American citizens to get to the airport while in the same breath warning them that the US Government has no plans to ensure their safe conduct to the airport from other locations in Kandahar – let alone any poor bastards stuck elsewhere in the country. That’s before we even get into a discussion about the responsibility we have for Afghan nationals who worked with and for us over the last two decades. The handling of this last gasp of American power in Afghanistan heaps shame and ignobility on the President of the United States, the State and Defense Departments, and the entirety of the United States of America.

3. Bandwidth. That’s it. That’s all the bandwidth I’ve got for this week. Between the continued rise of misguided opinion over verifiable fact and the absolute debacle in Afghanistan, I simply haven’t had room to process anything else this week. I’m sure there were a million other points of annoyance I walked right past, but there’s only so much anyone should be expected to process in a single sitting.