What we’re losing as we say goodbye to Joe Biden

From the New York Times, immediately before the election, “Biden Wanted to Fix Immigration, but Leaves Behind a System That Is Still Broken”:

President Biden’s legacy will largely be limited to his success in lowering border crossings. But his approach has drawn criticism, and some of his actions have moved the problem deeper into the country.

Today we can say goodbye to Joe Biden, the president who, according to the fair- and tough-minded journalists of the New York Times, was responsible for “lowering border crossings” (i.e., reducing undocumented migration compared to previous administrations). It isn’t clear why this is a “legacy” of which to be proud since we are reminded by the NYT that low-skill immigrants make us all better off. Why is it “success” to lower border crossing when diversity and immigration are our strength?

Government data via Newsweek:

Note that the number of encounters appears to have fallen from 2023 to 2024 in the chart below, but that may be because the 2024 bar is for only part of the year (through July 2024).

A screen shot of the above article:

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Kamala Harris’s sacred obligation

Kamala Harris told us that Donald Trump would end our (beloved) democracy and rule as a (hated) dictator. Today she tells us that it will be her “sacred obligation” to certify the end of democracy and the beginning of the hated dictator’s rule:

In case the above is memory-holed:

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I’m Speaking puzzle for Kwanzaa

Found at the Palm Beach Gardens Barnes and Noble on this first day of Kwanzaa 2024:

Looks like one can also buy it on eBay.

Readers: How are you celebrating this important holiday?

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Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa thought: How Donald Trump can bring our divided nation together

2024 will be remembered, I think, as one of the best years ever for progressive Jewish American Democrats. Last month’s election could have been improved, of course, but the pain of that loss is more than made up for the fact that Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are almost perfectly aligned this year. The first full day of Hanukkah is December 26, which is also when the Harris family traditionally lit the first candle of the kinara during the 1960s when it became one of the first adopters of Maulana Karenga‘s new holiday (like Donald Trump, Professor Dr. Karenga, Ph.D. beat more women than Doug Emhoff. Because of prejudice against the Black man, however, Karenga was imprisoned for kidnapping and torturing women rather than being elevated to the Presidency).

How about a Christmas wish that Donald Trump will begin the healing process for our divided nation by bringing Kamala Harris into his administration as Kwanzaa Czar? Other than Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett), there doesn’t seem to be anyone better qualified.

What about a job for Doug Emhoff? Claiming to be a victim of domestic violence is one way for a migrant to obtain asylum here in the U.S. (see “Biden administration reverses Trump-era asylum policies” (Politico, 2021)). Mx. Emhoff could be an asylum court administrative judge evaluating tales of who slapped whom in the privacy of a home 8,000 miles away.

Finally, let’s remember how much seemingly different groups of people actually have in common. The following diagram should be helpful and inspiring:

In case the above tweet is memory-holed:

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What is Hunter Biden going to do now?

Hunter Biden has been pardoned for everything that he did or might have done over the past 11 years, including any payments to the Big Guy, not paying more than $1 million (pre-Biden dollars) in income tax to the IRS so that gender studies degree loans can be “forgiven”, exercising his Second Amendment right to own firearms, etc. This has some people excited because Joe Biden explicitly said that he would not pardon Hunter. The apparent broken promise shouldn’t be difficult for a cooperative media to spin: Donald Trump is setting up a dictatorship and the resistance needs Hunter on the outside, fully armed, to lead a battalion of Warriors for Democracy (who are also collectors of original contemporary art).

Let’s suppose however that Trump, in command of a $1 trillion/year military, is too formidable a target for the #resistance to take on. What then will the Burisma board member-turned-painter do for work?

Perhaps painting is the long-term career, but “Why would anyone pay $500,000 for a painting by Hunter Biden?” (Guardian, 2021) is an even more difficult question to ask now that Hunter’s dad is no longer in a position to do favors for potential buyers. Let’s assume that the market for original Biden oil paintings has been saturated.

Legal? Hunter Biden, age 54, has a law degree, but Wikipedia doesn’t describe any experience actually working as a lawyer. Hunter lives in Malibu, California (Daily Mail), but there is no evidence that he has ever taken or passed the California bar exam. He can’t start handling family court or eviction cases, therefore. (There is no limit to the work available in California in child support litigation (the state offers unlimited profits to the successful plaintiff) or representing landlords. See below, for example.)

Lobbyist? Hunter Biden was never an elected politician or high-level government worker.

At least as recently as 2023, Hunter Biden enjoyed transportation via private jet (New York Post). Let’s say that requires at least a $2 million/year annual income. What’s the path via which Hunter Biden can make that happen?

How about motivational speaker? Americans love a recovery story and Hunter’s can be inspiring. Maybe he can talk about how his 16-year-younger immigrant wife saved him from various addictions and there will be two much-loved themes to hit (drug-/alcohol-dependency and the benefits of open borders). Hunter could get paid $10,000 per hour to speak to groups of Democrats.

Separate question: Does Navy Joan Roberts get to see her grandfather President Joe Biden now? (state-sponsored NPR) What does Joe Biden have to lose by spending some time with the stripper-turned-plaintiff’s daughter? He’s not going to be running for another political office.

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How was the immigration of José Antonio Ibarra supposed to make the average American better off?

Let’s take a moment to remember Laken Riley. In a closed-border world she would in all likelihood be getting ready to enter the nursing profession, ideally here in Florida where population growth means that we’re always short of healthcare providers. Instead, she is gone, her murderer welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris administration in 2022.

Suppose that José Antonio Ibarra hadn’t killed Laken Riley or committed any other violent crimes. What was there in his educational or employment background that the U.S. needed? We are informed that diversity is our strength and that every immigrant enriches us culturally and economically. What was there about José Antonio Ibarra that made us want to welcome him to the U.S., pay for his housing and airfare from NYC to Georgia, etc.? What is the rationale for our open borders policy, in other words? Why wouldn’t it have made sense to screen out Mr. Ibarra even if we didn’t expect him to kill anyone?

Laken Riley was killed back in February, so I hope that it isn’t too soon to look at the economics of what happened. José Antonio Ibarra killed a universally liked young soul who would have earned about $86,000 per year (BLS) in 2024 dollars. If we assume a 40-year working career and don’t do a net-present value adjustment, that’s $3.44 million in GDP that will be lost (perhaps $1 million was invested in Laken Riley’s upbringing and education, so that investment was destroyed via opening our border to Mr. Ibarra).

What will it cost to imprison this 26-year-old migrant for the rest of his life? USA Facts says that there is a big variation from state to state, with Maskachusetts being the leader:

It’s tough to believe that Georgia is able to imprison the convicted at $30,000 per year when Massachusetts is spending over $307,000/year, but maybe this is correct. If Mr. Ibarra can live to 82, the life expectancy for Hispanics nationwide (due to systemic racism, apparently, more than 3 years longer than white Americans can expect to live), this will cost approximately $1.7 million in 2024 dollars (probably not accurate because prison costs should rise faster than inflation).

On the third hand, if imprisonment means that Mr. Ibarra is prevented from reproducing, the U.S. taxpayer may actually spend far less on him than we spend on the typical low-skill migrant because the typical low-skill migrant and his/her/zir/their descendants require multiple generations of public housing, free or subsidized health insurance (Medicaid), SNAP/EBT, and Obamaphone.

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My mom’s aide ain’t Black and ain’t an immigrant

I decided to conduct a Scientific poll this evening around our kitchen table. My mom is 90 and came over from assisted living accompanied by an aide. The aide is an immigrant from Haiti via the Dominican Republic. She probably gets paid about $20/hour and lives in the Democrat stronghold of West Palm Beach, Florida (our own town of Jupiter is, unfortunately, majority-Deplorable/garbage). So that the kids might be exposed to a diversity of political opinions, I asked her if she was eligible to vote and, if so, for whom she had voted and if she was happy with the election outcome. “I voted for Trump,” she said. “Harris didn’t do or say anything in the last four years while she was in office.” In other words, by Biden/Democrat standards this Haitian-born lady ain’t Black and ain’t an immigrant.

There’s more bad news… she has a high-school-age son… who is a Trump supporter as well. Could it be that elite Democrats picked such a bad candidate that their choice has caused a Long Republicanism disease among young people?

How about the unionized public school teachers? I would expect them to be reliable Democrat voters. They’re supposed to reveal their personal political views, but our 5th grader suspects at least some of harboring sentiments in favor of smaller government(!) and Donald Trump.

My post-election Facebook post (if only they had a “defriend count” on a per-post basis!):

How much truth is there in the therapy/pacifier angle? “Harvard Professors Cancel Classes as Students Feel Blue After Trump Win” (Crimson):

At 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Sophia R. Mammucari ’28 woke up to a phone call from her mom — and the news that Donald Trump had been officially reelected.

“I still had some hope that she was going to win by a small amount. And then I woke up this morning, and that’s not what happened,” Mammucari said. “I probably cried for like an hour.”

Economics lecturer Maxim Boycko wrote in a Wednesday email to students in Economics 1010a: “Intermediate Microeconomics” that the course’s typical in-class quizzes would be optional.

“As we recover from the eventful election night and process the implications of Trump’s victory, please know that class will proceed as usual today, except that classroom quizzes will not be for credit,” Boycko wrote. “Feel free to take time off if needed.”

“At an Upper West Side synagogue, Jews gather to ‘sit shiva’ following Trump’s win” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency):

Congregants at the Upper West Side synagogue B’nai Jeshurun had gathered for a post-election prayer service on Wednesday night, but the congregation’s senior rabbi, Roly Matalon, understood that they had really come together for a different kind of Jewish gathering.

“We’re sitting shiva,” Matalon said to a crowd of about 100, including both members and guests. “Sitting shiva with a sense of loss, of grief.”

The synagogue characterizes itself as “inclusive”. In theory, they’re not “Reform”, but they seem to have two females who call themselves “Rabbis”, one of whom is the author of Faithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay. (Would one good reason for a Muslim feminist to “stay” Muslim be that leaving Islam is punishable by death?)

Related:

  • In case someone is looking at this 10 years from now… “Biden: ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black’” (CNN)
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Why is Kamala Harris still raising money?

Email received just now:

Suppose that I do send in the requested $60. Kamala Harris has thus far raised $1.4 billion from her billionaire supporters. Will the $60 additional actually change what they can do over the next four days? How? Or is there some other reason for trying to convert me into a financial supporter at the peasant level?

The above email came two hours after a request for $47:

We need everyone, honestly. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for an expensive final push.

$47 to help get voters to the polls — voters we need to win.

$47 to make sure Trump never returns to the White House.

$47 one last time before the election. For Vice President Harris. For our democracy.

(They say “honestly”. Does that mean that previous statements from Harris and/or Walz were dishonest? Also, “our democracy” is at stake. Is that a message for the truly passionate anti-Trumpers to spend $47 on ammunition?)

At 5:23 pm today:

“our very democracy is at stake”! Where is a Latter-day Thomas Matthew Crooks to save our very democracy?

There were quite a few more today. My favorite has a subject line of “Your neighbors in Cambridge are counting on you!” (the direct mail hucksters have figured out that we moved to Florida; why couldn’t the political machines?)

At 12:14 pm, the price of virtue had fallen to just $1: “That is the donation we’re asking you to make directly to Kamala Harris’s campaign for president today. Yes, we’re lowering our ask to just $1 in the hopes you’ll chip in for the first time.”

So… with just a few days to go before what used to be considered the “big day” (before mail-in ballots and early voting) why does a $1 donation help? Why does a $60 donation help? Is the idea to build habitual donors so that money can be spent on the 2026 election?

(I can’t show any comparable examples from the Trump-Vance campaign because either they aren’t emailing out similar appeals or their computers agree with Harris-Walz’s that I am a Massachusetts progressive Democrat.)

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Another call from Kamala Harris for Donald Trump to be assassinated

Here’s Kamala Harris, a few days ago, referencing Hitler and warning of “unchecked and extreme power” that could soon be wielded by the hated dictator Donald Trump:

(Notice that the person who calls everyone opposed to her a “Nazi” has chosen to wear a brown shirt.)

Is there a way to combine the above warning with Kamala Harris’s worrisome poll numbers in such a way that it isn’t a call for Donald Trump’s assassination? Americans are too stupid/deplorable to save themselves from Nouveau Hitler via the electoral process, according to some polls, which means it will fall to latter-day replacements for General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Henning von Tresckow, General Carl-Heinrich Rudolf Wilhelm von Stülpnagel, and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Assuming that there is a Nakba on November 5, will it be Pete Buttigieg, fresh back at his/her/zir/their desk from maternity leave, who leaves a briefcase under a conference table at a Trump transition meeting? Who could suspect a smiling friendly Mayor Pete?

Separately, I encountered Donald Trump, fresh from a shift at McDonald’s, and a Secret Service agent, at a neighbor’s house last Saturday night:

Related:

A screen shot in case the above tweet is memory-holed:

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One-year anniversary of a Republican conspiracy theory

One year ago today… “Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory that Biden won’t be on the ballot” (NBC):

Though no incumbent president has declined to seek a second term since Lyndon Johnson in 1969, there is an unfounded conversation among a faction on the political right that goes something like this: Democratic power brokers will intervene at the last minute to replace a weakened 80-year-old Biden with someone else as the party’s nominee.

Let’s go back four years to see what I was writing here….

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