Picayune Plus: Bringing the victory home

& catching up on my correspondence with readers

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

My father took me to my first Michigan football game in 1963 when I was five years old and we lived at 408 Benjamin Street a few blocks from the stadium. In those days, crowds were light enough that the gates were simply open at halftime we could walk over and wander in and find an empty seat in the end zone.

Not long after that he got faculty season tickets on the 22 yard line and we attended games together for about a dozen years. Ever since we have spoken after most games, sharing the joys and frustrations of fandom.

I went back to Ann Arbor for Monday night’s national championship game pitting Michigan against Washington, and we watched sitting at the kitchen table. Michigan may win more outright titles — who knows? — but the experience of sharing this one with my dad will make it the most unforgettable.

I saw many posts on social media from thrilled Michigan fans who mentioned that they were feeling a tinge of sorrow that an important loved one with whom they had once shared so many games was no longer around the enjoy the moment with them. I know how lucky I am to have had that person with me at the table last night.

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses

Apologies for the length of this letters section, but I’ve gotten behind in my correspondence.

Newspaper woes

Pete P. — Michael Phillips’ speech at the Tribune union rally was cogent and convincing. But only to the listeners who don’t matter. To the folks at Alden Global Capital who own the paper, none of it is relevant or useful. Right now, it is obvious that the market doesn’t want to support a lot of local professional journalism.

Laurence S. — Alden only cares about responsible journalism to the point that they are making money off the deal. Why does the union believe they will ever get a fair deal? If the Trib were to lose more valuable employees and the paper shut down like so many others have done, Alden would write it off as a tax loss and move on. Therefore, they have no motivation to treat the union fairly.

Zorn — I suspect that’s true. I support the union and hope for strong local journalism, but I don’t see journalists having a lot of leverage these days. A strike? Non-union staff, freelancers and wire copy would subvert the effort and might even drive readers away long-term.

Says who? Where should attribution be on guest editorials?

Monica M. — You wrote that you are “prompted to renew (your) call for newspapers to put identifying information at the beginning rather than the end of guest opinion essays.” I cannot agree with you . We all have personal biases. I feel it's important that we be aware of them and continually check ours when forming opinions. It's better to read a piece first and come to your own conclusion about whether you agree or not with the author's point and how you feel about the argument made. If you then see the author's name and you instantly re-think your view of the piece, that is the learning moment. If you know the author in advance, it's impossible to not have that influence your view of what they write.

Years ago it happened to me twice in a week. I read a piece making the case for something I'd never considered; it was a well-made point and well-crafted argument and I found myself agreeing. I don't even remember the issue and was shocked to see the author was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel who I had very strong negative opinions about and would absolutely not have read if I'd known he was the author. Then I read a piece I thought was completely wrong with a flimsy, uninformed, and poorly-made argument only to find it was written by someone I thought highly of and really admired. That was eye-opening to say the least. That is how you spot your biases. So leaving names at the end is, I think, a pretty easy way to exercise critical thinking skills at a time when everyone chooses to get their news & views from only those they already agree with.

Zorn — But the name of the writer is always at the top of the essay in most newspapers. It's the credentialing information that's at the bottom. And yes, I know there are problems with arguments from authority, but if someone is going to bang on about, say, the virtues of electric vehicles, wouldn't you want to know as you read if she’s an environmentalist or a representative of the American Petroleum Institute?

In news stories, speakers always get attribution. You know right away who is speaking and on what authority that person is being quoted. No writer ever withholds that information to the end of the story in what amounts to a footnote.

Monica M replies — Of course footnotes with speaker attribution in news stories would be ridiculous. But news pieces are different from opinion pieces, which are to make the case for or against a particular view or course of action. I think it's very valuable to judge an argument offered by the writer on its merits without my being swayed by a preconceived notion about them or their institution. Then learning that their view is influenced by their employer, affiliation, age, school, etc., is additional information that may or may not influence my judgment of their argument.

I know names are at the top, but guest op-ed writers are not usually known names. Over my many years of reading newspapers, I have apparently trained my brain to skip bylines and go right into articles. I realize that is positively horrifying and heretical to a journalist so my apologies for that.

Steven K. — You make an important point. I tend to go right to the bottom of op-ed pieces to see the credentialed info on who the author is before I read it. When I did this the other day with the column and saw that it was authored by an 8th grader, I declined to read it. But this practice, of course, is allowing oneself to be lead by confirmation bias.

Zorn — Well, speaking of that essay …

8th grader’s plan to improve the high school admissions process in Chicago

Jo A. — I am interested in what disagreement you have with Charlotte Badgley-Green’s Tribune op-ed, “Here’s what is wrong with high school admissions in Chicago,”

She proposed “CPS should create free after-school study groups for the High School Admissions Test. Teachers would stay after school for an hour once a week or every other week starting at the beginning of the eighth grade school year and ending right after eighth graders take the admissions exam. This would provide an opportunity for children from lower-income families to receive the same test prep opportunities that upper- and middle-income students have.”

I will note that New York City attempted this several years ago and it didn’t work well, but the demographics of those schools was very different than CPS selective enrollment, with a large percentage of poor but highly educationally motivated immigrant families.

Jake H. —I'm not exactly opposed to the proposal of universal free test prep, though I think the benefits of test prep tend to be overstated and misunderstood. It's not magic. When you really try to isolate the effects of prep by controlling for other factors, the effects are slight. A fascinating and complex review of studies in the SAT/ACT context is here:

I am troubled, however, by the college-like CPS selective enrollment system, where, as Badgley-Green notes, some schools are seen as good and many are seen as medium to bad.

My radical solution is to scale this system back dramatically. I don't say eliminate it. Maintain a handful of specialized academies to serve and develop the star talents that the vast majority of us will never have. And then reinvest in neighborhood high schools for the vast majority. Make all the schools "good" schools. And by "good," I don't mean a particular average test score. That will always differ from school to school and shouldn't necessarily be scandalous. I mean a school that is safe, that is serious about learning, that is a positive and supportive environment, and that has the resources and know-how to serve the neighborhood population in all its variety.

Maybe that's hopelessly naive, but I can't get over the way we seem to give up on schools and on whole neighborhoods and just decide to get people outta there. The school-choice/charter/selective-enrollment movement is all premised on leaving people behind and reinforcing the real scandal of the mid-to-late 20th and early 21st century — consigning whole swaths of our great cities across the country to death spirals of high crime, depopulation and destitution.

Zorn — An hour a week of test prep in middle school isn’t going to do much to overcome the advantages that students of privilege — like my own children, admittedly — have when it comes to testing into selective enrollment schools, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

Badgley-Green writes that “CPS could make all of its schools just as good as Walter Payton (College Prep), but our city is already so deep in debt, and that would be expensive to a fault.” But what makes these schools “good” is not their facilities but the comparative seriousness and academic talent of the student body and the ability of the administration to therefore offer numerous advanced classes.

I am all for investing in whatever strategies can create better learning environments in all schools, but I know that selective-enrollment schools are important anchors in Chicago that inspire families to keep living and paying taxes in the city.

How many marbles does Donald Trump still have?

David L. — There is certainly no shortage of very valid criticism about Trump the man and Trump as President. But dementia does not appear to be one of them.

In 2018, Trump took the highly regarded Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and scored a perfect 30 out of 30. President Biden however has to date refused to have any kind of cognitive assessment examination with public results. It would certainly be highly politically advantageous for him to do so to dispel conjecture about his age and abilities... unless he feared the results.

You may certainly use the term crazy to describe Trump's statements or actions, but President Biden by comparison is the one who is highly suspect of cognitive decline.

I would be very happy with a challenge from the media to all presidential candidates to take a cognitive test. Would you also agree to support this? I would bet heavily that Trump would do so without hesitation but that Biden would never agree to it.

Zorn – Trump claims to have aced this simple test six years ago. But of course he is a congenital, reflexive liar, so basing your assertion on his say-so is fairly iffy. And, as the Washington Post reported, Trump’s “fixation on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment … is particularly puzzling because the test is normally administered only if someone is concerned that they or their loved ones may be experiencing dementia or other cognitive decline.

I would be heartily in favor of mandatory cognitive testing for all candidates for federal office.

Joanie W. — Trump recently said that Biden would start World War II and has claimed on numerous occasions that he (Trump) defeated Obama for the Presidency. Near the end of Trump’s term, members of his own cabinet discussed whether to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence.

On books and reading

Lynne A. T. — You recently linked to “the top 10 books people claim to have read but haven't.”

1. “1984,” by George Orwell (26%)

2. “War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy (19%)

3. “Great Expectations,” by Charles Dickens (18%)

4. “The Catcher in the Rye,” by JD Salinger (15%)

5. “A Passage to India,” by EM Forster (12%)

6. “Lord of the Rings,” by JRR Tolkien (11%)

7. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee (10%)

8. “Crime and Punishment,” by Fyodor Dostoevsky (8%)

9. “Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen (8%)

10. “Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Bronte (5%)

I've read all but "Passage" and "Lord of the Rings." I didn't read "Catcher" and "Mockingbird" until I was in my 40s, and found them "meh."

Best book I have read in a long time, "The Trees" by Percival Everett. Runner up: "Tokyo Ueno Station" by Yu Miri. Best book in 2023: "Hunting the Falcon" by John Guy and Julia Fox (helps to be a Tudor history obsessive)

Joan P. —I've actually read all 10 of those novels. Loved 2, 3, 7, and 9. Loathed 4, 1, 5. And 6, 8, and 10 were okay.

Best books read this year:

Fiction: Tie: "The Bookbinder," by Pip Williams, and Bertrand Russell's "Satan in the Suburbs and other stories."

Non-fiction: Also a tie: Blair Kamin and Lee Bey’s "Who is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago," and Kate Strasdin's "The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe."

Peter Z. — “Trust” by Herman Diaz was my favorite 2023 read.

Jay G. —I've read all but "A Passage to India." "To Kill a Mockingbird" changed the high school freshman that I was. “Lord of the Rings” was extremely interesting to my high school sophomore self. I loved "Pride and Prejudice" as an adult. "Jane Eyre" I found tiresome but much better than Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d'Urbervilles.“ which I found dopey.

I didn't read (listen to) "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment" until I started devouring recorded books due to a lengthy commute. I had decided to use my commutes to read all the books you were supposed to have read in high school and college, and got through a bunch of them. I also took in James Joyce's "Ulysses" — which still escapes me — And "Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper. As an avid reader, the latter was the only book in junior high, high school, or college, for which I did not read the entire book and relied on Cliff Notes. I couldn't stand it back then. After listening to it as an adult, I still couldn't stand it — and I read plenty of dense historical stuff. I felt vindicated about Mohicans when I read Mark Twain's savage takedown of Cooper.

Zorn — Based on these responses I’ve decided to open the floor for nominations for the best book you read in 2023. My answer is Jonathan Franzen’s “Crossroads.”

Podcast Picks

Tom T. — Thanks to Johanna Zorn, Picayune Sentinel podcast columnist, for the list of her nine most memorable podcasts of the year. My wife adds a big thumbs up to “Wiser than Me, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.” For “Saturday Night Live” fans I would recommend "Fly on the Wall" with Dana Carvey and David Spade. Lots of great stories about how the sausage gets made at SNL.

Bob E. — An enthusiastic second to Johanna’s recommendation of “Sold a Story.” Emily Hanford's meticulous investigative journalism puts the lie to the promotion of “whole language” as a reading instruction methodology, and she documents persuasively why phonics works.

Should Trump be on the presidential ballot?

Jake H. — I'm overwhelmingly convinced by the legal scholarship I’ve read that the best original, structural, and textual understanding is that the constitutional ban on insurrectionists serving in public office clearly applies to the president. No other interpretation makes any sense.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says nobody may "hold any office, civil or military, under the United States" who, "having previously taken an oath ... as an officer of the United States .. to support the Constitution of the United States," engaged in insurrection, etc.

The argument that the presidency is not an "office" under the United States, that the president is not an "officer of the United States," or that the president does not take an oath to "support the Constitution" is risible on its face. There's no historical evidence to support the claim. It was so obvious, it went without saying. The expansive enumeration of people and offices to which the disqualification could apply was meant to ensure that non-obvious cases, like *electors* for president, would be included within its ambit. Everyone at the time assumed that Jefferson Davis was disqualified as a presidential candidate, for example. The clause was meant to exclude Confederates from government. And yet it would let a Confederate who swore an oath to the Constitution become *president*?? There's no historical evidence -- not one bit, not one committee report, not one scrap of evidence amid loads of contemporaneous material -- supporting the idea that the drafters meant to exclude the president -- too big and weird a thing to rely on a dog not barking -- while including, bizarrely for no apparent reason, just about everyone inferior to him. Meanwhile, there's a gazillion pieces of evidence that everyone understood the president to be an officer. It's all over the Constitution itself, for starters.

None of the Colorado Supreme Court dissenters took up this argument. Because, I'm afraid, it's lousy. I have some reservations about the opinion, but I think the Supreme Court is going to need to look elsewhere to overrule it.

Read “The Sweep and Force of Section Three.”

Jo A. —The fact that “president” was in earlier drafts of Section 3 but taken out of later drafts could certainly be considered a “bit” of evidence. Not saying that the only explanation or even the best explanation, but certainly could be construed as such. The lower court did. The Supreme Court rejected it, but it’s sure to be tossed out there in discussions by the SCOTUS. Under rules of construction which don’t focus on any extraneous material, the exclusion from the list ( not looking at prior drafts) after other specific references would still be considered meaningful.

Jay G. —The Colorado Supreme Court's decision to keep Trump off the ballot is a gigantic gift to Republicans (If they would only take it!) It gives the party the perfect chance to dump Trump "cleanly."without hurting any of the other Republican candidates, and helps to restore some of the U.S. Supreme Court’s legitimacy. Here's why:

1. Trump — who is despised by the big business wing of the party, and has proven to be an albatross to the Republican party in national elections since 2020 — gets effectively removed from the ticket without any of the other candidates having to throw mud at him. If SCOTUS upholds the ruling, all of the other states will be inundated with copycat lawsuits which will result in his being removed from enough state ballots to make a Trump win impossible.

2. The Republicans can finally "get past" Trump while they still pay homage to him as a martyr to the Republican cause.

3. His disqualification isn't solely as a Republican candidate — he will be Constitutionally prohibited from being elected to office — meaning he can't run as a third-party candidate, This completely throws open the Republican nomination process to anyone other than Trump.

4. The "existential threat" to democracy posed by authoritarian Trump is swept away.

5. With Trump no longer a threat to Democracy, this relieves the pressure on the Democrats to run a candidate other than Biden. Biden can choose not to run, opening up the Democratic side of the race to other, more dynamic candidates who can run on Biden's very positive record, and bask in its glow while taking shots at the Republican toadies who followed idiotic Trump policies because they were afraid of turning off Trump voters.

6. "Trump Republicans" truly were/are cult worshipers. They are unlikely to automatically gravitate to the most "Trump-like" alternative Trump Republican, giving more centrist candidates an opportunity to run - and attract independent voters.

7. Helps (somewhat) restore SCOTUS's legitimacy as a non-partisan court by allowing it to seem to rule against the Republicans. If Justices Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett think about what's best for their brand of conservatism (all of the cruelty, none of the crazy), they'll seize this opportunity to get rid of Trump and to do what's far better for their party and their causes. (I leave Justice Thomas out of this because he's just too far gone, and his wacko wife has drunk too much Trump Kool-Aid.) If Republican strategists (and SCOTUS) stop and think for a bit, confirming the Colorado decisions is truly the BEST thing for the Republican Party to survive post Trump.

Zorn — This is a very interesting thesis and I’ve been quoting it lately.

Beth B. -- Trump hasn't been found guilty of anything related to Jan. 6 in any court of law. I predict a convincing majority (maybe 9-0) Supreme Court ruling.

Zorn — The Constitution does not say a prospective officeholder has to have been convicted of insurrection, so my guess is that SCOTUS will kick the ball back to Congress to determine if Trump engaged in insurrection, knowing full well Congress will never vote to say that he did.

Etc.

Michael G -- One of your Top 40 Tweets of 2023 -- "I’m so old I remember when New Year’s came we sang “Lang Syne.” — doesn’t work. "Lang syne" is Scots for "long since" and "old long since" and "long since" are the same thing.

Zorn – True enough. “Lang syne” is an archaic way of saying “long since;” so archaic, in fact that they didn't even use it anymore in 1788, the year Scottish poet Robert Burns adapted the words to a 60-year-old song about war veterans by poet Allan Ramsay that began, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, though they return with scars?"

Burns added the words "days of" to both the first verse and the chorus so as to let the words fit the now-familiar tune, then a song known as "The Miller's Daughter." The joke works better the less you know of this trivia.

Trish S. — I find it disappointing that you felt it necessary to comment on the dating life of a 34-year-old woman when you wrote in your predictions that “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will break up. … Celebrity romances are notoriously fragile in any case, but Swift’s track record suggests she moves on quickly.”

The only one who should have an opinion on Taylor Swift's romances is Taylor Swift. It's literally no one else's business. Her music is not for me -- I cannot name a single song she's done -- but she's hugely successful in her career. If you wanted to get predictions about her, maybe how many Grammy Awards she'll win in 2024, or whether or not her next tour will be as successful as the Eras Tour.

Joan P. — Considering that she's pretty much made a career out of writing songs about her dating life, I'd say she's made it the public's business. Though why other people care is a different story.

Steven K. —Your point suggests that you’ve never heard of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Brady, Justin Timberlake, Robert DeNiro, Eminem, Mark Walberg, Sean Penn, Burt Reynolds, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Alex Rodriguez, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Jerry Seinfeld, Joe Namath, The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Gene Simmons, Clint Eastwood, or any of the thousands of other male showbiz celebrities whose romantic lives have long been grist for the gossip mill. So now you have.

D. Dale W. — I was pleasantly surprised to see the picture of Phil Burno in the Sentinel, then immediately saddened to read he had died. I had the pleasure of interacting with Phil in my first job. He taught me a lot about philanthropy and how to be a kind person. My life is so much better for having known him, as are the collections at the University of Chicago Library, which he generously supported. I will always remember vividly dinners with Phil at Gene & Georgetti's, along with so much more.

Peter Z. — They should award the Heisman Trophy at the end of all the bowl games. It is supposed to be for the best college player of the year, and performance in bowl games should figure into it. At least it would force the candidates to play if they want the award on their resume.

Zorn- Agree. Especially beginning next year when the playoffs expand to 12 teams and will give rise to even more memorable heroics as well as moments that expose weaknesses. These awards traditionally are to recognize regular season performances, and that’s still possible if the best player is on a team that doesn’t make the playoffs.

Expletive placement matters

I didn’t watch the Buffalo Bills game against the Miami Dolphins Sunday night but I could easily guess what local Democratic political consultant Pete Giangreco meant moving the expletive from in front of quarterback Josh Allen’s name to the middle: In the first half of the game, Allen was exasperating; in the second half he was heroic.

(For specific, see “Bills take good, bad and ugly with Josh Allen en route to AFC East title.”)

A slight shift in placement of a crispy profanity slightly turns a contemptuous oath into an enthusiastic exultation. How to explain this to a non-native speaker?

Ya gotta see these tweets!

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

Yeah, I know, political tweets start with a huge advantage so it’s almost not fair to lump them in with non-political tweets, but I’m running low on decent entries here, folks so email me— ericzorn@gmail.com — some nominees.

Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

A reader comes up with 25 reasons not to vote for Joe Biden

In response to my link to Mark Jacob’s list of 200 Reasons Not to Vote for Donald Trump, reader Tom S. submitted the following, which I reproduce in lightly edited form with my comments interspersed in italics:

Tom S. -- As a conservative (more of a libertarian than Republican) I have no love for Trump, but that list of Jacob’s is stupid and repetitive. I have my own list of reasons not the vote for Joe Biden or the Democrats:

1. Open Borders – The Biden administration refuses to regulate and control illegal immigration. Immigration experts estimate that 90% of asylum claims will be rejected yet hearings are years out. How many of these illegitimate “refugees” will show up for their hearings?

The lack of control at our southern border is a salient concern, I agree, and it’s a vexing problem, how to balance our nation’s values with our territorial sovereignty. We do not have “open borders,” though. That’s a Fox News slogan. My family sought refuge on these shores in the 1930s. I’m guessing your family did at some point, too. Yes, they followed the legal process, one that was much looser at the time, but their hopes and dreams were the same as those who are seeking to escape grinding poverty in the underdeveloped world. Leaders of both parties have failed to resolve this problem for many decades.

2. The Democrats have never seen a government program that they didn’t like, no matter how wasteful and useless it may be. “Make the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share!” they cry, yet almost 50% of Americans pay Zero Federal Income Tax. Dems have never explained what a “fair share” is. The debt has topped $33 Trillion and climbing. Small government and less regulation is much more efficient. Bureaucrats do not know best.

Conservatives and Republicans love to bang on and on about taxing and spending, but when they have power – Gov. Bruce Rauner in Illinois and President Trump when the Republicans held both houses of Congress for just two examples — they fail to identify specific and significant spending cuts because they know the public doesn’t want to cut popular programs. It’s another facile talking point.

3. Biden’s unrealistic push for “Green Energy” policies. Yes, we need to reduce our carbon footprint, but draconian regulation and a war on fossil fuels is not the answer. Solar and wind will never replace them. Forcing electric vehicles and other mandates into a grid that can handle it is not realistic.

If you believe the climate science — and I know most conservatives don’t — then we have to take significant action in a hurry to prevent catastrophic changes. Let’s hear your better ideas.

4. Biden opposes voter identification laws. Ridiculously long early voting and mail-in voting laws not only provide opportunities for fraud and ballot harvesting, they cost an inordinate amount of money.

There is no evidence of significant voter fraud. Voter ID requirements are pushed by those who want to suppress the Democratic vote. Need I remind you that Republicans used to love mail-in voting?

5. Biden favor student loan forgiveness. Sorry but if you borrow it, you pay it back.The real problem is college costs and easy money. Attack the cause, not the result.

I tend to agree with you here in that the special pleading for student debt doesn’t make moral sense to me. Prioritizing it over crippling medical debt, say, or mortgage debt or other forms of debt seems to favor certain kinds of people over others. Now, there are arguments that relieving or absolving student debt would be a long-term boost for the economy and would pay for itself, and I’m open to those arguments.

6. Biden is weak on foreign policy. There’s a reason that Russia, Iran, and China are such threats. They see an opportunity with our weak president.

They have been foreign threats to the United States for decades, and Trump coddles dictators and autocrats. He’s soft on tyrants. You prefer that?

7. Biden supports woke military policies. It’s the military stupid. Woke belongs to Disney, not our soldiers.

8. Biden Emphasizes LGBTQ+ rights. They are a small minority that’s causing a huge uproar. I don’t care what they think they are, but I don’t have to approve of it.

I’m not sure what you mean by “woke” or what your problem is with LGBTQ+ people. Treat others with dignity and respect even if you don’t like their presentation or what they do in the bedroom. Learn the difference between what’s your concern and what isn’t any of your concern. Go ahead and disapprove of whatever you want. People only care when you want your disapproval turned into laws and regulations that disadvantage them. I thought you libertarians understood that.

9. The embarrassing and disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

Trump said was determined to pull out of Afghanistan but dithered, as he did on announcing his big, beautiful health-care plan (we’re still waiting). Then on April 18, 2021 he released a statement criticizing Biden’s Sept. 11, 2021 withdrawal deadline saying, “We can and should get out earlier…Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.”

10. Hunter Biden. Influence peddling? Pretty obvious. Time will tell.

Fever dream of the right? Pretty obvious. Time will expose this as a big nothingburger.

11. Biden supports sanctuary states and cities.

Again, this is a public policy question that is easily oversimplified. There are good reasons not to involve local law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement.

12. Biden supported the Black Lives Matter movement. That turned out well. Riots were “mostly peaceful?”

You’re quoting CNN here, not Joe Biden. Here’s conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg in 2021:

Last summer, after months of protests and riots in response to the murder of George Floyd, the phrase “mostly peaceful,” often used by the media and Democrats to describe the protests, achieved parody status thanks to a CNN clip.

“It showed a reporter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, standing in front of a burning building and cars ablaze. CNN’s chyron read, “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING.”

Conservatives loved it — me included. It summed up a long, hot, pandemic summer of being told not to believe our lying eyes when it came to the violence we saw either on our TVs or in our communities. Thousands of properties and businesses around the country had been burned, damaged or looted, costing billions.

Still, the reality was a bit more complicated. The “mostly peaceful” thing was mostly true. A study by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that 93% of protests were, in fact, peaceful. Part of the problem, according to the authors, was that the media couldn’t resist showing images of violence (duh!), which created a misperception about the protests.

13. Biden is a union stooge. Anti- Capitalist / Anti-free enterprise attitude.

You can support organized labor and still believe in capitalism. Many working people do.

14. Biden is a career politician. Never had a real job in his life. How’d he get so rich?

Is this a standard you really want to apply to public officials? Biden’s net worth is estimated at $10 million. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s net worth is estimated at $35 million.

15. Biden has pretty obvious cognitive issues. He’s too old for another term.

I think both Biden and Trump ought to repair to their rocking chairs and let the next generation take over, but I don’t think the addled, ignorant Trump holds any cognitive advantage over Biden.

16. Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, was simply a diversity pick Same with Biden’s Supreme Court Justice pick Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Whereas Clarence Thomas was the best qualified judge in all the land to sit on the Supreme Court? Give me a break. Racial, gender, geographic and ethnic diversity appointments are common in both parties.

17. Biden supports Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance and he supports Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. I support equal opportunity not equal outcomes!

You’ll have to be specific about what exactly you don’t support, but creating genuine equality of opportunity requires some rebalancing of the scales that were grossly out of whack for centuries.

18. Biden traded a basketball player for a terrorist. Left others to rot.

19. Biden Iran access to $6 Billion in a five for five prisoner trade.

I didn’t like the prisoner swap for Brittney Griner either. She got to the front of the line of the wrongly imprisoned because she was famous, not because she had the most compelling case. And the deal with Iran, though it ostensibly delays their nuclear ambitions, also seemed like a high price to pay for American hostages/prisoners. But as the Associated Press reported:

The Biden administration is, of course, hardly unique in prisoner swaps. The Trump administration engaged in similar deals, with former President Donald Trump inviting some Americans who’d been freed under his watch to appear with him at the 2020 Republican National Convention. The Obama administration in a 2016 deal that drew consternation granted clemency to seven Iranians charged in the U.S. in exchange for the release by Iran of four Americans. The U.S. also made a $400 million cash payment.

These deals and payoffs incentivize hostage taking.

20. Biden supports D.C. statehood, a blatant attempt to grab two more liberal Senators. Retrocession makes more sense. Leave a small Capitol district and cede the rest to Maryland. Then the residents will be represented in Congress.

Washington D.C. has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming and about the same number as Alaska and North Dakota. How about we retrocess the Dakotas and combine Wyoming and Montana?

21. Biden desires to pack the Supreme Court with liberal judges.

Desires? What do you base this on? A nomination, a proposal, a statement? Or just a hunch?

22. Biden supports abortion anytime for any reason.

My reading of the record is that Biden supports the Roe. V. Wade decision, but if you can link to an “anytime for any reason” quote from him, I’d like to see it.

23. Biden engages in name calling, such as “MAGA Republicans!” They are citizens and constituents.

Are you kidding me right here? You’re against Biden because you think he’s a name caller? Compared to schoolyard bully Donald Trump who, by the way, says “MAGA” all the time?

24. Biden takes excessive vacations.

Be serious here. The Trump Golf Count site logged nearly 300 daytime visits to golf clubs by Trump at a cost to taxpayers of about $144,000,000

25. “Bidenomics”, “Putin Price Hikes!”, “Transitory Inflation”, “Build Back Better”, and “Inflation Reduction Act”. All lies and BS

The economy is doing really well, inflation is down, and, meanwhile, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall and Trump’s tax cuts for the rich exploded the debt.

I would say nice try with your list, but it really wasn’t. It was feeble, vague and filled with “lies and BS” to quote you. I’m not arguing Biden has been perfect or I’ve agreed with everything he’s said and done. You make a handful of strong points here. But Mark Jacob has enumerated scores of false, cruel, bizarre things that Trump has said or done that show him to be not just a bad, dishonest leader but a repellent, dangerous person.

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