Conservative: Biden’s Mental Woes Growing
When it “plays out on the world stage,” President Biden’s “fatuity . . . can be downright horrifying,” notes Spectator World’s Amber Athey. At his meeting Tuesday with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Biden’s staff “made sure he was armed with a laminated note card,” reminding him “to welcome Johnson to the White House and speak positively about the relationship between the UK and the US. An easy thing to forget for a president, apparently.” But “most shameful” was how Biden’s staff, after BoJo took some questions from the UK press, “cut the British PM off mid-sentence, yelling at the media to leave the room. Biden eventually appeared prepared to respond to a question about the border from CBS’ Ed O’Keefe, but the wranglers continued to shout,” so his answer went unheard. “Biden’s mental deterioration must be even worse than we realize if his staff members are willing to treat foreign leaders with wanton disrespect to prevent him speaking to the press.”
Libertarian: No, Joe, America Is Not at Peace
In his Tuesday United Nations speech, President Biden “made a curious and inaccurate claim,” namely “that the United States is no longer at war,” Scott Shackford observes at Reason. Yet after his Afghan pullout, “we still have thousands of troops in Iraq and are currently planning to keep them there indefinitely,” where they will “most definitely still be involved in fights against the Islamic State.” In Somalia, we are still doing “airstrikes against al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab.” And then there is the who-knows-how-many drone strikes “in places like Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya.” Biden may not consider all this “war,” but it sure isn’t “actual peace.” The nation has not truly “turned a page.”
From the right: Choice and Income Inequality
New census data “confirm that the aspiring new citizens at our southern border are 100 percent correct that the US remains the land of opportunity,” argues The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman. For all the noise on income inequality, “Americans rise up and fall down the income ladder over time, in large part because of the individual decisions they make.” In fact, “income has a lot to do with how much people work” and the choices they make. Simply put: “The key demographic factors that explain differences in household income are not fixed over our lifetimes and are largely under our control (e.g., staying in school and graduating from high school and college, getting and staying married, working full-time, etc.).”
Canadian: US Pols’ Election ‘Interference’
Ex-President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tweeted out “best wishes” for Justin Trudeau in Canada’s latest election, while Sen. Bernie Sanders voiced his “support” for the New Democratic Party and Jagmeet Singh — prompting the National Post’s Colby Cosh to gripe that “it is fascinating that American statesmen, particularly ones from a political party that is pathological about the wrong kind of foreign interference in US elections, should consent so blithely to being used as human billboards.” And “equally fascinating” is “that Canadian statesmen, living in a country that professes to be paranoid about American political influence, should use Americans in this way.” Canadians should ask if “such propaganda is even healthy” for the two nations.
Media desk: Fake News, Phony Outrage
“As Haitian migrants flood by the thousands across the Rio Grande into Texas,” writes the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, the left exploded over “video footage of mounted officers trying to control the invasion.” The focus of this “embarrassingly vapid round of hand-wringing” was false reports of Border Patrol agents whipping migrants, when “what were clearly pictured in their hands were horses’ reins.” Yet Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas still lambasted his own agents. It’s an all-too-familiar tale: “Law-enforcement officers are forced into unprecedentedly tough situations by politicians and try their darndest to do their jobs under the hostile scrutiny of left-leaning critics and media bent on attacking and undermining them.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board