Facing Reality
Debates & Press Conferences; Black Jobs; Religion; and terrible Supreme Court decisions.

by Errington C. Thompson, MD –
I stopped watching debates 12 to 15 years ago.
What exactly is the point of a presidential debate? What are we going to learn? Are we going to learn how the candidates will govern? No. A debate is an artificial situation that has nothing to do with governing the country.
Phony, Irrelevant “Debates”
This is not 1960 or even 1980. There was no way to know. Now, before the debate begins, we know exactly where the candidates stand on every issue. Almost every imaginable question has been addressed. In 1960, where did Richard Nixon stand on alleviating inner-city poverty? Today, every candidate has a website with their positions.
We do not have debates. The candidates are not forced to stay on topic or address the question. This is nonsense. In the ninth grade, I took debate. I learned how to formulate an argument logically. Points were deducted if I didn’t address the question. Points were deducted if I made up data (lied). Nobody deducts points if Donald Trump lies. We expect it.
So, the debate did not go as expected. Joe Biden turned in a “poor” performance. Seriously, are you surprised? Remember, a young, nimble, wickedly smart Barack Obama had a terrible debate performance against Mitt Romney. Again, the sky was falling. Democrats were running around trying to decide if we needed to replace Barack Obama on the Democratic ticket. The thought is laughable now, but there was lots of consternation at the time.
Today, we have the same nonsense. Some Democrats have asked Joe Biden to step down. That time has passed. Now, we ride with Joe or don’t ride at all. But … There are no buts. This is reality. Joe Biden decided he wanted to run for reelection. We’ve had primaries. Joe Biden won. This is where we are.
The Press Conference
I think it is important for us to step back and remember who President Joe Biden really is. He is a thoughtful, religious, passionate man who is over 80 years old. He will not debate or answer questions like a 40-year-old man. That’s never going to happen. Biden has always had trouble with stuttering and fumbling with words.
He held a press conference on July 11 in which he faced the media. Again, he was thoughtful, precise, and detailed in his answers to complex foreign policy questions. (By the way, has Trump ever given detailed foreign policy answers to any question? Ever?)
Was he perfect? No. Joe Biden has never been perfect in a press conference in over 40 years of public service. He was the same Joe Biden he has always been. He clearly stated that he chose Vice President Kamala Harris because she is qualified to take over the presidency should something happen to him.
Will this press conference ease the nervous minds of some Democrats? No. There was nothing that Joe Biden could do or say that was going to put some Democrats at ease. Yet I think it is obvious that Joe Biden has not slipped. He is in charge of his cognitive faculties. He has no intention of stepping down. So, my advice to the nervous Nellies: get behind Joe Biden, and let’s elect him for his second term!
Black Jobs
Donald Trump is a lot of things, including a racist. He continues to prove that he is a racist almost daily. During the debate, Donald Trump said, “The fact that his big hill on the Black people is the millions of people that he is allowed to come in through the border. (Here comes the full Trump) They’re taking Black jobs now—it could be 18, it could be 19, or even 20 million people. They’re taking Black jobs, and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re gonna see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”
First, nobody’s going nuts over the fact that Donald Trump still cannot form a sentence. He can’t. Secondly, the best estimates suggest that in 2023, the United States absorbed 1.6 million immigrants. Not 18 million. In 1850, the first year we had stats on immigration, the United States took in over 2 million immigrants.
Finally, precisely what are Black jobs? I am a Black man. I’m a trauma surgeon. Is being a trauma surgeon a Black job? Since Barack Obama was president, is President of the United States a Black job?
Please remember that fixing the immigration problem is relatively easy. This is something that Congress can do and should do. Now let us understand, when immigrants come into this country, they take jobs that nobody else wants. Unfortunately for them, because they don’t have any legal status, they really cannot complain about being underpaid and working in terrible conditions. Agriculture, food services, and hospitality (hotel maids, etc.) frequently hire illegal immigrants.
Congress could easily pass a law that would fine big businesses vast sums of money for hiring illegal immigrants. If nobody would hire them, they wouldn’t come here. If big companies decide the cost of these fines and negative publicity are “too high,” they would stop hiring undocumented, economic refugees. It is that simple.
We could easily pass a law in which we hire 200,000 border security agents. We could lock down the border tighter than Fort Knox. But we don’t. More than 20 years ago, Republicans killed a bipartisan bill that fixed or addressed most of our issues. This was a bill proposed by George W. Bush when he was president.
Another bipartisan bill that would fix most of our issues went up in flames just a few months ago—because Republicans opposed it. They supported it in conference, in committee, and on the floor, until Trump told them not to. He literally told them to scotch the bill because he wanted to use “immigration” as a campaign issue. And they all fell in line.
When Trump was president, he didn’t pass any immigration legislation. None. He had the opportunity, with a Republican House and Senate, and did nothing with it. He didn’t even try. Because it’s much better for him to complain about “illegals” than to keep them out.
Yet he and other Republicans go on TV, day after day, crying that nothing is being done about the influx of these economic refugees. Congress has the power to fix this. Congress should fix this. But Congress refuses to fix this: like Trump, they’d rather complain about it that do anything about it.
President Biden has done what he can through executive action in the face of congressional inaction. This is not the way our government was designed. This is not the way our government should work.
My Religion is Better than Yours
Louisiana has decided that it is a great idea to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom. US News and World Report states Louisiana ranks 50th as a state. They rank 50th in crime and 49th in their economy. They are 46th in healthcare. They are 40th in education. (See www.usnews.com/news/best-states/louisiana)
I would like to know what the Louisiana legislature thought they were doing when they passed this law. Were they going to improve education? I doubt it. Were they going to improve their crime stats? I doubt that, also. They need to improve their education and job opportunities. This mandate does nothing to help the problems in the Pelican state.
But it does position them as the holier-than-thou hypocrites Jesus describes.
“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6:5,6)
In my reading of the Bible, Jesus was about loving your neighbor. He was about lending a hand to the poor. It is hard for you to read the teachings of Jesus and not believe in universal healthcare, quality education, and opportunities for success in life. Apparently, though, Louisiana likes being 46th, 40th, and 49th respectively in those categories, and #1 in hypocrisy.
Oklahoma, not to be outdone, has decided that the Bible needs to be taught in the classrooms. My first question is, which version of the Bible? Because that matters. In the King James version, the sixth of the Ten Commandments reads, thou shalt not kill. But, when you read the original Hebrew, the commandment reads thou shalt not murder. The two statements are not congruent. They are very different. So, the exact version of the Bible you are teaching does matter. Secondly, if we are going to inject religion into our public schools, shouldn’t we be fair? Should we teach Judaism as well as Islam?
Why shouldn’t we teach the five core beliefs of Buddhism? Abstain from killing human beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxication. This sounds reasonable. This sounds like what we as a nation need.
The legislators from Louisiana and Oklahoma would lose their minds if we forced these well-intentioned teachings on them. They would talk about our children being indoctrinated. Yet, this is precisely what these misguided congressmen are trying to do with the Ten Commandments. They tell us that we cannot teach sex education in the classroom. Instead, the parents need to teach that. Yet, they don’t see their hypocrisy.
The Supremes
I’m unsure that a word exists to describe my disappointment in recent Supreme Court decisions. All I can do is smile sarcastically and shake my head. What else can we do?
In nearly the blink of an eye, the Supreme Court has changed how federal agencies do their daily tasks. Every federal agency, from the Environmental Protection Agency to Health and Human Services to the Department of Education, has to interpret the laws that give them the power to act. Since the 1980s, the Chevron doctrine has existed. This doctrine allowed agencies to interpret statutes in a “reasonable way.” The Supreme Court says that this was “fundamentally misguided.”
The Big Bombshell
Of course, the big bombshell is that the Supreme Court states that the president has total immunity for “official acts.”
More than 50 years ago, disgraced Watergate-tied President Richard Nixon sat down with television interview specialist David Frost. Frost was testing what Nixon thought the limits of presidential powers were. He asked if the president could do something illegal. Nixon answered, “Well, when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
At the time, the answer was laughable. Both Republicans and Democrats, as well as legal scholars, were rolling on the floor laughing at Nixon’s arrogance.
Richard Nixon resigned from office because he thought he was certainly going to be impeached. Not only would he be impeached, like Donald Trump, but he would have been removed from office by the Senate. Remember, Richard Nixon orchestrated the Watergate break-in and then orchestrated the cover-up.
Today it appears that Richard Nixon did not need to resign after all. All he had to do was wait for this Supreme Court. They may have stamped Watergate as official presidential behavior so he would be immune from prosecution. So this raises a few questions that need to be addressed by the same Supreme Court—and by the electorate:
What if President Joe Biden decided that former president Trump was/is a one-man crime spree? Could he have him arrested by the FBI? What if Joe Biden decided that the Supreme Court was destroying the United States? Could he have several Supreme Court justices arrested and jailed? Would there be no repercussions?
Handing out pardons is an official act, according to the Constitution. So would a President Trump be immune from prosecution if he decided to charge a fee for them? If so, how much? $100,000 to commute a sentence? $1 million for a full pardon? $10 million? $50 million?
We have had terrible Supreme Court decisions before, and we will have bad decisions in the future. But this seems particularly awful. It seems on the level of Dred Scott, which may be the worst Supreme Court decision ever. Losing elections has consequences—long-term repercussions. We must vote. We must vote for progressives who share our values. We need to vote not just in November but in every election.
We need to vote for state legislative candidates and local city councils and county commissions. We need to vote every year. We need a clear majority in the House and Senate. We need not one but four more progressive judges to turn around this disastrous court.
We have a lot of work to do.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed here, as well as assertions of facts, are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.