Joe Biden's America

Rudy Giuliani did a "good job" after 9/11...

 

Yes he did and rather than build on that he turned into the joke that he is now because he was so desparate for money and power.

 

He didn't do a "good job". He just existed and did the base line competent work of telling existing departments and agencies to go do their thing.

Most of the energy he expended after 9/11 was framing himself as the hero of 9/11. Hence the meme like jokes regarding 9/11... "Did I tell you before I was the mayor of NY during 9/11?"

The reality is that Rudy was always a crooked *******.

The praise of Rudy during 9/11 says more about our sad state of our journalism and media even during that era more so than Rudy's competence and "compassion" during 9/11.

 

Exactly, and…
When DeSantis Makes His Move, Watch Out

 

There was more then just existing. He did provide leadership and rallied New Yorkers at a time when there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going in. As noted with situations where things don’t go right leadership does actually matter.

That doesn’t ignore or take away the joke they he became after. As they say past performance is no guarantee of future results.

 

I know you and @SamFisher had roughly the same type of debate here but it seems to me the common thread here is that you believe competence is merely not going into partisan rhetoric during a crisis.

Maybe I have an inaccurate perception here but I feel as most of these type of emergency services and departments are run like a well oiled machine. If we needed sincere competence at the mayoral level or an elected position to actually get these things operational during a crisis we probably wouldn't allow the public to vote on a mayor. Because a celebrity Instagram influencer can technically become a mayor if they are popular enough and to imagine the very basic public emergency services haulting because of a stupid elected mayor doesn't seem realistic to me.

I don't see anything that would make me thing Guillini was competent here. He just used it as an opportunity to become popular.

 

Rudy’s popularity had been plummeting prior to 9/11, he used that tragedy to resurrect his star. However, the shine quickly wore off for the many reasons that are obvious to all…

 

Speaking from experience, the 2001 Giuliani mythos was a pretty obvious construct at the time, I'm sure i posted about it - and guess what, the haters were right.

 

Competence is more than just not going into partisan rhetoric during a crisis. That is a part of it but being able to rally a population made of disparate players, some of whom you have criticised harshly, is a sign of leadership. For example I give Biden a lot of credit too a few weeks after he made a speech criticizing MAGA Republicans he is now working with one of the major figures in MAGA and a political antagonist.

You were in the military so I'm sure you've seen first hand where well established systems don't always work if there isn't proper leadership. The term FUBAR and SNAFU arose for a reason. As someone who has done disaster response on the local, national and even international level these are far from well oiled machines. They are very chaotic situations, when they happen there is a lot of confusion and a lot can and does go wrong. Remember the day of 911 and how much confusion there was. There were reports that the State Department had been bombed, that a plane had struck downtown LA. In Minneapolis they closed the Mall of America because there were reports that a plane was on the way to strike it. In NYC after the planes had hit there was no certainty about if the towers would collapse and one reason why fire fighters were sent into the towers even though with hindsight they were doomed. Giuliani did do a good job addressing that chaos.

Regarding democracy yes that is one of the problems with our democracy. A celebrity instagram influencer could very well be elected a mayor, governor or even President. We just lived through 4 years of a celebrity being elected president and look what it got us. Unfortunately competency isn't a requirement for office.

 

I wonder if Laura Ingraham has any expertise in determining what well run states are like or if she's just - talking - here.

 

Bidenflation

 

Anyone give credit to Biden for the Ukraine situation?

 

About as much credit as Eisenhower getting us into Vietnam.

 

Yes I have a few time and so far I think he’s done a good job. He’s threading the needle between keeping us out of outright war with Russia and not just allowing Ukraine to remain independence but also to take the offensive against Russia.

He’s also keeping NATO United even though several NATO Nations are suffering economically from issues related to the war.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjTiZnlASJC/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

 

Great to have a president that isn’t a coward like the last guy.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/us-national-debt-now-tops-210000112.html

Anyone, Republican or Democrat, ever going to attempt to meaningfully address this or do we just ignore it forever?

 

Likewise we’ve never had our GDP so high…. Or as high of a population.

We have an aging population that is drawing more entitlements every second. Old folks ain’t cheap and there’s more of them everyday.

Neither side really wants to meaningfully address it…. But one side tries very hard to be mindful of the budget through rhetoric but not action.

Frankly I’m more worried about public pensions than the national debt.

Fortunately due to immigration we actually have good demographics for a developed country.