Harris, an international embarrassment !, page-21

Geese, Tarts and Presidential Politics

· 7th August 2024

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Roger Franklin

Editor, QuadrantOnline

It was cruelly whispered of Theodora, wife of EmperorJustinian, that in an earlier life she performed indecent acts with trainedgeese. Beyond dispute is that Barbie started life as a 12-inch tart inHamburg’s low bars, an improbably proportioned doll inspired by the adventuresof a cartoon call girl known as Lilli. Today theByzantine Empress is more often remembered as a giver of laws and combatant inthe doctrinal wars of the early Christians, while a cleaned-up and renamedhooker makes her money for Mattel. As for geese, seldom mentioned of late isGargantua’s advice that the neck of a well-downed goose servesbest for wiping the bottom, so their reputation can also be said to havelifted. Thus does history offer hope for Kamala Harris to rise above that other criticism,not that she is sly rather than smart but that she has — oh, such sexism! —risen horizontally.

Loose talk of that sneering variety is, of course,to be deplored. That she should be the victim of vile slut shaming is beyondunfair, as Media Watch‘s Paul Barry gallantly observed in his defence of thelady’s reputation and wits. After all, nobody drags out DonaldTrump’s love life to use against him. Well not often anyway, and when they doit’s for a damn good New York reason, like the ‘vivid memory’ of amad woman who paints trees blue and believes he molested her ina department store so long ago she can’t recall what she was wearing, themonth of the traumatic assault or even the year. Those are the rules of thegame if you’re targeting Donald J. Trump. But a fierce, independent, ambitious,modern Indian woman (or rather coloured) should never, ever be judged forfalling in love with an older gentleman. That he happened to be a dispenser offavours, sinecures, wealth and power was but a happy coincidence and cannot beheld against her, for who can tell where love will take root? Nor that he wasmarried with children, for this was San Francisco in the Nineties and who is tojudge what conduct is and isn’t cool? The 29-year-old assistant districtattorney was just restarting her career after a successful second shot at theCalifornia bar exam when Willie Brown, 30 years her senior, the original Slick Willie, touched her as ifwith a wand. Up she floated, and floated, and has kept right on floating eversince, with only the one setback, the thwarting of her 2020 ambitions.

Today (Aug 7), Ms Harris has announced herrunning-mated, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (pronounced walls).Almost certainly she when she makes the formal announcement a few hours fromnow she will not take questions from the press. That has been the recent pattern,responding only to the odd shouted query that slips past the cordon of herkeepers at an unguarded moment. There was one of those incidents on Fridaynight when her handlers allowed their charge to stray too close to the pressmob covering the return of Vladimir Putin’s hostages and one of the hackstossed her a Dorothy Dixer. She had done well minutes earlier, a competentperformance with a vacant, slightly rocking Joe Biden standing mute as adrugstore Indian (above) as she rattled off the TelePrompter’slines. Then came her unscripted response to the US-Russia prisoner swap:

“This is just an extraordinary testament to theimportance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy andunderstands the strength that rests in understanding the significance ofdiplomacy.“

If you say so, dear.

Almost seven weeks have passed since theVice-President fronted an unscripted session with the press and two weeks sinceshe answered any questions at all. In that time Joe Biden has been hailed as thegreatest mind ever to occupy the Oval Office, destroyed by Donald Trump intheir debate, immediately relisted by his former spruikers as the dopiest mindever to occupy the Oval office, thrown over and out by his own party’spanic-stricken nobs and replaced by an understudy veep who received not one ofthe 13 million primary votes accrued by the man she has replaced.

And the week after that debate, a series ofinexplicable Secret Service failures allowed an assassin’s bullet to comewithin half an inch of spattering the Republican challenger’s brains all over astage in Butler, Pennsylvania. Given that Homeland Security, which oversees theSecret Service, consistently declined requests to bolster Trump’s securitydetail while also denying any protection whatsoever to independent Robert F.Kennedy, a prime target if family history is any guide, talk of a conspiracy wrapped in the pretense of incompetence wasinevitable.

And through all of the above, not a word from theWhite House to explain who is running the country. Was it Kamala — is she nowde facto president? — who has ordered the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrierstrike group to take up station off the Middle East? Was it Kamala who finallyapproved extra protection for Trump and Kennedy? Is it Kamala who is talking tothe Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve about Wall Street’s ongoingconvulsions? Nobody knows and nobody is explaining anything about the redistributionof executive authority, especially the Vice-President herself. Thequestions, oh so many of them, that have been hanging since Joe Biden’s debatehumiliation are pointedly ignored by both the Biden (sic) administration andlegacy media. Were reporters being similarly stonewalled by a Republican WhiteHouse, the Briefing Room would be in loud and outraged revolt.

How is it that, apart from 2020’s setback when herbid to be the Democrats’ nominee faltered before even making it to Iowa,the current Vice-President has once again floated to a position for which noevidence of competence has ever been evident? The inevitable observation isthat acclaim without achievement has been the story of her life. There wasnothing to recommend her for a $40,000-a-year part-time gig on California’sworkers compensation board to which pillowmate Willie, speaker of the state’slower house at the time, appointed her, nor when she was presented with anothernice little earner ($72,000) via a seat on the state’s Medical AssistanceCommission. Willie, now 90, plied her with presents that included a BMW,taxpayer-funded international junkets and he introduced his lover to fellowDemocrat powerbrokers, presenting her as the girl going places.

The greatest gift of all, though, was his politicalmachine’s backing her bid to serve as San Francisco’s district-attorney. Theboss and his ward heelers knew how to get out the vote. The office ofCalifornia’s attorney-general beckoned next, a position also obtained withBrown’s backing. Cases involving Brown’s generous supporters were dropped orsimply allowed to languish. All of the above is on the record, yet the womanwho might be the next president has received scant attention from Big Media’s dying dinosaurs. There just hasn’tbeen the time or space to squeeze some history into all the Kamalamania fillingbroadcasts, web sites and newspapers.

Not to further denigrate America’s mainstream pressfor its shortcomings but the ability to turn a blind eye is definitely not oneof them. As Joe Biden wilted, the aspirant president systematically repudiatedevery position she has ever held. Ban fracking, as she once pledge to do? Thatwouldn’t go down well in frack-friendly Pennsylvania, a key swing state wherejobs depend on it, so that had to go. As The Hill, noright-wing redoubt, put it: “Here is the simple question: WasVice-President Kamala Harris lying about her position onfracking in 2019, or is her campaign lying now? Every American deserves to knowthe answer. So far, a sympathetic media supposedly charged with holding truthto power is allowing her to stay silent.”

The silence of the media eunuchs extends far andwide. Is she still an ardent supporter of “gender-affirming care”? No one isasking. Is she still for sanctuary cities, which running-mate Walz supports?What about her plans for obligatory gun confiscation, which would requiresomehow circumventing the Second Amendment, and how does she propose to pullthat one off? Outlawing private health care, granting permanent residency andeventual citizenship to illegal border-crossers? Even fellow Americans wishingeach other a merry Christmas has stirred her ire. “How dare we speak MerryChristmas! How dare we!” she said in 2017, lamenting that there can be no moralright to a festive season when the children of illegal aliens “will not have aMerry Christmas.”

So far it is working. The stonewalling, thesilence, the pretense that the knifing and replacement of the sitting Presidentand primaries winner is just politics as usual. The swing state polls now showa tight race — she’s a point behind Trump here and a point ahead there, butnowhere is the Republican’s lead greater than the margin for cheating. Covidgave Joe Biden’s crew the excuse to keep him off the campaign trail and safefrom questions. Unless China unleashes another engineered virus, a physical“basement strategy” isn’t an option, so Kamala’s high-approval honeymoon willdepend on more of the same — no impromptu answers to unapproved questions.

Think of it as the Mobile Basement Campaign and youwon’t go far wrong.