Following Joe Biden’s July 21 withdrawal from a seemingly doomed re-election campaign, Democrats instantly re-focused on picking/backing a new candidate (at the moment, vice-president Kamala Harris seems well on her way to nailing the nomination down), while Republicans took up the cry “if he’s unable to run, he’s unable to serve, and should resign or be removed.”

I’m not seeing much speculation — yet — from either camp on the equally interesting subject of  what Joe Biden’s final six months in office might look like.

There’s an old, apparently incorrect but highly applicable, western saying that the Chinese word for “crisis” embodies the written characters representing “danger” and “opportunity.”

The “danger” part of the Biden equation is easy to see: To the extent that his Democratic successor gets blamed for his mistakes, anything he does could potentially damage that successor’s prospects in November.

But what if Biden doesn’t believe Harris (or some other prospective nominee) can win the election anyway? What if he believes he’s a true “lame duck?”

If that’s the case, he doesn’t need to give a [word that rhymes with “duck”], does he? He can do as he pleases without facing much in the way of consequences.

The overbearing 21st century power of the imperial presidency, combined with extreme unlikelihood that a Democratic cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him, or a a split Senate convict him upon impeachment, leaves him sitting pretty to do things he couldn’t do if he was worried about his re-election (or his chosen successor’s election).

On the trivial end, he could, for example, pardon his son Hunter, recently convicted on (wholly unconstitutional) federal gun charges. Heck, he could probably sell pardons and other executive branch favors to the highest bidders without worrying much about how that looked.

He could also do more consequential things.

For example, in his meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, he could put his foot down: No immediate and unconditional Gaza ceasefire, no more US weapons (and the usual welfare checks might get lost in the mail, too).

He could pick up the phone and tell Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy something similar: Open real peace talks with Moscow or the weapons shipments stop.

He could re-commit the US, fully and unconditionally, to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran Nuclear Deal.”

He could end the US embargo on Cuba and fully normalize diplomatic relations with its regime.

Of course, he could go in the opposite direction, dragging the US into all-out wars with any or all of several adversaries. But based on his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan instead of nullifying his predecessor’s deal  with the Taliban, I suspect there may be a “peace president” trapped in the body of America’s current “war president.”

In fact, the Afghanistan withdrawal had me thinking, at the time, that he INTENDED to be a one-term president with a “peacemaker” legacy.

Now he has multiple opportunities to be exactly that … if that’s what he wants.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On July 19, users of about 8.5 million Windows users worldwide faced the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.” As I write this column, many remain down. Microsoft has issued a manual fix for machines that aren’t able to automatically recover, but it’s a black eye for Microsoft and for Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm whose fault software update caused the outages.

While 8.5 million may not seem like a lot of machines in the scheme of things (about a billion and a half PCs run Windows 10/11, not counting older versions of the operating system), it wasn’t the number so much as the user identity that mattered.

The victims weren’t, for the most part, kids playing Minecraft. They were corporate customers — airlines, banks, hospitals, hotels. Flights were canceled. Account holders couldn’t access their bank accounts online. Surgeries were postponed.

My knee-jerk reaction, I confess was: Well, yeah … NEVER trust Windows or Crowdstrike (I’m a long-time Linux user and consider Crowdstrike’s close relationship with, and willingness to manufacture cybersecurity scams for, the Democratic Party suspect).

But I quickly realized that WAS just a knee-jerk response. The real lesson is: Widespread and exclusive reliance on single systems is a bad idea.

This outage didn’t affect MacOS, it didn’t affect Linux (and variants such as ChromeOS), and it didn’t affect cybersecurity software other than Crowdstrike’s product.

It did, however, affect the CUSTOMERS of businesses using the Windows/CrowdStrike combo on centralized systems.

For example, four US airlines had to cancel flights.

Why were they all using the same OS/security software combo?

And why didn’t they have backup systems, running different OSes and different security software, that could be quickly brought online to work from the same data sets as the usual systems if something like this happened?

Over the last few years, we’ve seen lots of loud calls for government to impose various top-down, one-size-fits-all “cybersecurity” solutions.

This outage demonstrates the problem with that idea.  Various government operations, including 911 call centers, fell victim to the problem. Requiring private sector entities to use government-approved “solutions” would expose even more users to problems hitting those “solutions.”

In the future, we can expect more, not fewer, collapses of computer systems and networks. Putting all our eggs in one operating system / cybersecurity basket is just asking for worse and more widespread disruption.

Unfortunately, as an individual user, you remain continually vulnerable to mistakes and poor decisions made upstream from your home PC desktop.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In the wake of a July 13 assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, Chaya Raichik — better known as “LibsOfTikTok” on X, aka Twitter — got to work.

Her job description, as she saw it, broke down int three parts:

First, identify people commenting on the attack in ways she deemed inappropriate.

Second, identify those commenters’ employers

Third, try to get them fired.

She turned up the considerable heat her social media footprint provides, lighting “they should be fired” fires under “ordinary Americans” ranging from teachers to medical assistants to  Home Depot cashiers to chefs.

Backlash quickly followed … not just from her “woke” opponents, but from former allies on the right who supported her bitter complaints about “doxxing” and “muh free speech” in 2022 when the Washington Post publicly revealed her own identity.

My opinion: Sauce for the geese is sauce for the ganders, but it’s a pretty distasteful sauce on both.

I’m on record as being relatively unconcerned about most versions of “doxxing.” Perhaps that’s because I grew up in an era when every household annually received a book listing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of nearly everyone near them, and in a small town where gossip comprised about 80% of the entertainment sector.

Those who choose to publicly comment on any subject are free to SEEK personal anonymity and privacy as to their employment and such, but they’re not entitled to it. There is no right to stop others from knowing things (or thinking they know those things), and saying things, about you.

On the other hand, going all screeching meanie toward everyone you don’t like — encouraging harassment against them, attacking their ability to remain gainfully employed, etc. — is bad behavior.

It’s bad behavior if you’re a “left-wing social justice warrior.”

It’s bad behavior if you’re a “right-wing culture warrior.”

It’s bad behavior if you’re just an enthusiastic everyday gossip.

It’s the kind of behavior normal, decent people don’t engage in and don’t like to see.

Why does Chaya Raichik engage in it?

Maybe it’s a matter of abnormality and her actions are some kind of garbled cry for help with severe mental problems.

Or maybe it’s a matter of incentives — she just finds non-decency too personally, politically, or financially rewarding to pass up.

There’s nothing going on here that government laws or regulations can fix. The only solution is for all of us, as individuals, to build a kinder culture.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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