Who’s in charge here?
By NewsPress Now
Joe Biden entered the June 27 presidential debate with one job to do. He needed to appear mentally sharp and vigorous enough to dispel any notion that he is not up to the task of a second term.
The 81-year-old president failed miserably. His befuddled appearance and incoherent answers amplified concerns about his advancing age and set off alarm bells among the Democratic intelligentsia. This 90-minute train wreck raised several important questions: Can Biden recover from the worst debate performance since Admiral James Stockdale? Should the president step down or be removed from the ticket? Who are the alternatives? How likely is a second term for Donald Trump?
These questions, which will be answered in the coming weeks and months, only address the fallout in terms of Biden’s electability.
Americans should be asking a more pressing question: What about right now?
The presidency is a demanding job – just look at the photos of President Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. But while FDR was deteriorating physically and lacked stamina in 1945, he gave an impression of mental acuity.
Biden is so stage-managed that you always wondered if he was just a shell of the man that voters elected in 2020. The debate – conducted on the Biden administration’s terms, by the way – confirmed those concerns.
The Biden that 50 million Americans saw on stage did not seem up to the day-to-day demands of running the government and dealing with crisis after crisis on the world stage. Americans have a right to ask who exactly is pulling the levers of power behind the scenes if it’s not Biden.
The unofficial White House explanation for the debate debacle – that Biden had a cold – is just a lame excuse. If this is true, it means that the country is in peril every time the chief executive encounters a germ.
There is something very selfish in disregarding the immediate lack of leadership and boiling the response to Biden’s debate performance to a fear that the country may have to endure four more years of Trump.
The next crisis might not wait until Jan. 20. If this debate was as bad as it looked, then it’s a major problem right now.
Radio silence
on K-9 death
It comes as little surprise that the death of a police dog in Savannah led to an outpouring of grief. Whether it’s a beloved family pet or a working K-9, the loss of a dog always tugs at the heartstrings.
But this is more than a sad story. Horus, as the Savannah Police Department’s K-9 was known, was also a highly trained law enforcement asset.
The National Police Dog Foundation estimates that departments spend up to $35,000 to buy and train a K-9 officer. Given this kind of investment, citizens in Savannah deserve to know more about how Horus died.
A fair reading of the Sunshine Law indicates that the police could disclose basic information on how, when and where the dog was believed to have died. If someone is killed in a car accident, police would be able to release that kind of information without compromising a deeper investigation that addresses issues of culpability or causation.
Instead, police in Savannah have responded with a wall of silence that fuels the rumor mill and creates a sense of distrust.
It only compounds the tragedy.
