there was this bit:
‘Oh God I Miss Him’: Biden Laughs About Trump During First Press Conference (ijr.com)
that was amusing. 2 months in and the question is will he run in 2024 and will harris be his vp. seriously. the press is having a bit of trouble pivoting.
Yes, exactly. Well said.
A similar point of view:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/25/opinions/biden-news-conference-ghitis/index.html
That’s one area where neither Biden (nor any of his successors, I sincerely hope) will ever be able to surpass Der Trumpenstein. When they made DJT, they threw away the mold. Too bad they didn’t throw away the mold before they made him.
He is the mold. The fungal kind.
There’s a fungus amongus.
Maybe right next to the men’s room? That way the scent would be appropriate.
Hey, are we not almost up to Yeaster now?
I worry about the political impact of the border. It’s a situation that’s out of Biden’s control, and climate change makes it very likely that we are going to be dealing with this as a permanent pressure point. And it’ll be something that’s unfortunately much easier for right wing fear mongers to score points off of than centrists or progressives.
Joe the President did put forth at least part of the sensible solution to the border problem. Not a way of dealing with the mass of people at the border, because improving the situation at the border is not a solution, it is merely coping.
The solution appeared in what amounted to a short paragraph (possibly even more than one sentence) on page nine, below the fold: community- targeted aid to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in an effort to make the people who live there actually want to stay and live there.
Of course, the problem with solutions it that they tend to be unsatisfying. They often take a long time to unfuck a particular situation and lack the visceral punch of literally punching that guy. Maybe it will be possible to move forward with this idea, but it will take a lot of slogging through the bog of those who object to progress.
I’d greatly appreciate you elaborating on this: what do you figure is the worst-case, and the best-case, for ‘not a solution, merely coping’ with people when they‘ve gotten to the border instead of — as you mention — sending aid to other countries to make folks want to stay there?
The worst case would be that we keep doing what we are doing and White-Wing agitation, partially driven by their escalation of this issue, continues to increase until the nation is shattered by civil war. The best case, in terms of not solving the underlying problem is not very different from the worst case, except fewer people die in armed conflict.
Of course, the actual solution can be fraught as well. The aid absolutely must be carefully targeted to have optimum effect and not end up facilitating the assholes who make people want to flee to, of all places, texas. And, of course, if the Republicans get control of the solution, they will do their level best to fuck it up hard.
Interesting. I disagree — I’m decidedly more optimistic about our ability to deal with folks who show up to illegally cross the border than our ability to make living conditions better in other countries — but I’ll definitely be giving your ‘X, or Not Very Different From X’ take some thought.
To deal with them humanely, or to simply prevent them from crossing by any means, up to and including lethal?
We do have a pretty decent solution, in that we could just let them in, not force those seeking refuge from intolerable conditions to have to come illegally, but there are those who would object to that, and would rather leave them to suffer.
Are those the only two options?
Yes.
If we have to deal with many people at the border, we can treat them decently or treat them like the nasty enemy. There really is no middle ground.
THIS is the main thing. Sure it’s still a “crisis,” though why it’s important to label it that escapes me. No it doesn’t. The reason is so the pundits can find something wrong with the way Biden is handling it. 
(I’m lookin’ at you, Kathleen Parker.)
But the main thing is our attitude toward the immigrants. Even if right now they’re overwhelming the resources that are in place, we no longer regard them as criminals, drug-dealers, traffickers, and evil terrorists who are here to destroy the American way of life and take our jobs (but why would they WANT our jobs if they’re here to destroy us?? Never mind.). And if we still have to put children in facilities to care for them, we’re not doing it as punishment for their parents or to deter more people from coming.
BTW, I think attempting to make conditions in the countries they’re fleeing more humane so they won’t flee is pretty nuts. Better we find some way to welcome and absorb them. We’ve absorbed millions of immigrants in the past (including my grandparents).
Yes, the options are that we either deal with them humanely, or we don’t deal with them humanely. Do you have something else in mind?
What is your proposal for how we should “deal with folks who show up to illegally cross the border”?
As it is at least partially our fault that the conditions of those countries are intolerable to those trying to live a peaceful productive life, I disagree that we shouldn’t be making an attempt to improve them. Hard to say how much of what we have broken can be fixed, and no matter what, it’s going to take quite a while to accomplish.
In the meantime, the least we can do is to provide refuge to those displaced, and to give them a chance for a peaceful productive life within our borders. They can be peaceful and productive here, and we all benefit together.
The only ones that lose are the gangs and cartels of the the originating country, no longer having peaceful citizens to prey upon, and the xenophobes in ours, as they are forced to confront their fear of the “other”.
Well, you’d originally written “deal with them humanely, or to simply prevent them from crossing by any means, up to and including lethal?” And I figured that framing left more possibilities open than, well, This-Or-Not-This.
The 13th Amendment says that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. I propose that we make that a punishment for illegally crossing the border; we don’t have to go straight to it, we‘d still have the option of letting them off with a warning as we kick them out of the country — but once we’ve made clear that they can be sentenced to hard labor, we can amiably shrug if they mull it over and decide, oh, yes, that’s what I’d like, please and thank you; here I go walking right up to the border and, upon being given fair warning, accepting the offer.
It’s a re-tread of the “if you can’t even call it what it is how can you possibly do anything about it?” argument. Remember back when conservatives were convinced Obama would be unable to win the war on terror because he refused to brand the enemy as “radical Islamic terrorists”? There is a weirdly persistent belief among the conservative set in the magical power of words.
Too soon.