“There is no frigate
like a book / To take us
lands away.”
Emily Dickinson, quoted in
The Wall Street Journal
“It is better to waste
one’s youth than do noth-
ing with it at all.”
Writer Georges Courteline,
quoted in The Times (U.K.)
“Facts do not cease
to exist because they
are ignored.”
Aldous Huxley, quoted in the
Lock Haven, Pa., Express
“How we fail is how
we continue.”
Poet Khadijah Queen, quoted
in The Paris Review
“He that will not
apply new remedies must
expect new evils.”
Philosopher and statesman
Francis Bacon, quoted
in the Montreal Gazette
“What’s the world for if
you can’t make it up the
way you want it?”
Toni Morrison, quoted in
Women’s Health
“Epitaph, n. An inscription
on a tomb, showing that
virtues acquired by death
have a retroactive effect.”
Writer Ambrose Bierce, quoted
in Lapham’s QuarterlyTalking points
Wit &
Wisdom
AP
NEWS 17
Poll watch
QSo far, 57% of Americans
approve of the job Presi-
dent Biden is doing, includ-
ing 98% of Democrats and
61% of independents. But
only 11 % of Republicans ap-
prove of Biden, while 85%
disapprove. That 87 -point
partisan gap in approval is
the highest measured for
any recent new president,
including Donald Trump.
Trump started off with a
76 -point gap in approval
by party, and reached
92 points last year.
Gallup
Q56% of Americans think
Trump should be convicted
in his impeachment trial.
43% think he should not be.
ABC News/IpsosBiden’s foreign policy: Pivoting from Trump
“In normal times,” President
Biden’s foreign policy address
last week “would have come
off as a string of clichés,” said
Fred Kaplan in Slate.com. But in
light of the “ravaged” alliances
and demoralized State Depart-
ment that Biden inherited,
his declaration that “America
is back, diplomacy is back”
seemed “fresh, even bracing.”
He also announced a slew of
actions: extending the New START nuclear treaty
with Russia; re-entering the Paris climate deal and
World Health Organization; ending military sup-
port for Saudi Arabia’s war with Houthi rebels in
Yemen; raising President Trump’s 15,000-person-a-
year refugee cap to 125,000; and halting Trump’s
U.S. troop withdrawal from Germany while the
Pentagon reassesses deployment levels worldwide.Biden said “nothing to make America’s com-
petitors nervous,” said James Jay Carafano in
NationalInterest.com. He “waved a finger” at
Russia, China, and the generals who’ve pulled off
a coup d’état in Myanmar, while not uttering a
word about North Korea or the Iran nuclear deal.
Instead, Biden is prioritizing a “progressive wish
list,” such as letting U.S. embassies fly an LGBTQ
flag. The new Yemen policy is a clear mistake,
said Victoria Coates in the New York Post. Biden
will halt “relevant” arm sales to Saudi Arabia “toreduce civilian casualties” in
Yemen. Biden wants to rene-
gotiate a nuclear accord with
Tehran, but the Houthis—
radical Shiites who’ve fired
missiles and rockets into
Saudi Arabia—pose a real
threat “to the stability of the
entire Arabian Peninsula.”
Removing the “terrorist” des-
ignation for these rebels will
not lead to peace, and back-
ing away from the Saudis makes the U.S. look
“weak and conflicted.”Not so, said Ishaan Tharoor in Washington
Post.com. “Biden officials also stressed that
they remained committed to protecting Saudi
territory.” The U.S. will also continue fighting
al Qaida and other terrorist groups in Yemen. But
the U.S. military needed to disentangle itself from
what Biden called a “humanitarian and strategic
catastrophe.” More than 250,000 Yemenis have
died since 2014, “when the Houthi rebellion
toppled the country’s fragile government and
prompted the Saudi-led intervention,” backed by
U.S. F-35 warplanes, bombs, drones, and intel-
ligence sharing. Many of the deaths are being
caused by starvation and disease. Biden now has
a chance to push for a cease-fire in a devastated
nation where crumbling walls are covered with
graffiti depicting U.S. fighter jets killing Yemenis.Call it the “Donald Trump two-step,” said David
Jackson in USA Today. Republicans both distanced
themselves from the former president and hugged
him in a pair of votes last week, highlighting their
“delicate dance” over the post-Trump direction of
the party. In the first vote, only 11 of 211 House
Republicans joined Democrats in removing Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene from a pair of committees.
Greene, a hard-core Trumpist, has become a light-
ning rod for past statements embracing QAnon,
suggesting that school shootings were staged, and
endorsing the killing of prominent Democrats
such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When
Greene made a speech before the vote expressing
some regret for her nutty statements, some Repub-
licans reportedly gave her a standing ovation. The
same Republican caucus voted 146-61 to keep
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney as the House’s third-
ranking Republican, defying demands from the
party’s Trumpist wing that she be demoted for her
pro-impeachment vote. What these votes suggest is
that Republicans would like to “move past Trump
while also keeping his voters.”In backing Greene, 199 House Republicans have
“embraced anti-Semitism and violence,” said
Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. They’ve“rallied to the defense” of an unhinged flame-
thrower who’s shared propaganda videos from
Holocaust deniers, questioned whether a plane
hit the Pentagon on 9/11, and “posted on social
media about hanging Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton.” After briefly sounding remorseful,
Greene reverted when she was booted from the
two committees, saying Democrats are running “a
tyrannically controlled government.”Still, the Cheney vote opens “a new chapter” for
the divided GOP, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall
Street Journal. She called Trump’s incitement
of the insurrection “the gravest violation of his
oath of office by any president in the history of
the country,” and yet remained standing. Fellow
anti-Trumper Sen. Ben Sasse also is pushing back
against “the MAGA clowns,” said Matt Lewis in
TheDailyBeast.com. Sasse taunted the Nebraska
Republicans about to censure him for his criticism
of Trump by saying, “I still believe—as you used
to—that politics isn’t about the weird worship
of one dude.” With their courageous leadership,
Sasse and Cheney are giving other principled con-
servatives “a permission structure” to renounce
Trumpism, and proving that escape from the
Trump cult is possible.Greene and Cheney: The GOP’s internal rift
No more ‘America first’