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Notes -
So, let me see if I'm understanding this situation right:
Per a 2021 article by Axios, Harris was "appointed by Biden as border czar." Their wording: "Why it matters: The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the "root causes" that drive migration." Yet another 2021 article by Axios says this very same thing, saying that Harris was "put in charge of the border crisis" and calling her border czar.
So Axios in 2021 (and many other such media outlets) call Harris "border czar" when they think it might make Harris look good and bolster her importance. Axios then conveniently disavows this label and issues a correction to their own article only three years later, in 2024, once it's discovered that the situation at the southern border might not reflect well on Harris now that she is running against Trump. Note both the second article calling Harris border czar and the one saying she was never border czar were written by the very same journalist. One moment it's Huzzah, Harris is border czar and the next it's You guys, Harris was never border czar, the Republicans just made that up, and we have always been at war with Eastasia. Democrats have already produced internal memos telling their people how to fall in line on this issue.
My understanding of this whole situation is that this is one of the things that are technically true, but that these pedantic fact-checks are obviously partisan and misleading (and designed to lead you to a different conclusion than it actually warrants). Yes, the term "border czar" doesn't exist, and so technically Harris cannot have been border czar. But "czar" is an unofficial term that is generically used to describe people in positions of power like this, going back to the Bush era. Clearly the media thought it was an appropriate term in 2021, but not in 2024, and the fact that they're now going back and "recontextualising" their previous articles based on whether or not it's politically convenient is an extremely bad look.
It is correct that her role was not to literally manage everything regarding border policy, and she was not directly in charge of the border. She did, however, have a responsibility to try and stem the core cause of the border crisis, engage in diplomacy to do so, and to work with these countries to enforce borders, something that she also admits to in this tweet. If she really did what she was tasked to do, she should be able to confidently reply that she offered solutions to these problems that weren't taken up, not to claim that she holds zero responsibility on one of the few issues she was asked to assist with. As Biden himself states:
"In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border."
"[T]he Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders."
This entire thing just seems like one of these comically exaggerated Ministry-of-Truth-esque things that happen often in election cycles, the last one being the total 180 on Biden, where before the debate they were proclaiming that Biden was in the best shape ever and that all the alt-media outlets talking about his mental decline were just conspiracy theorists, then right after that shitshow of a debate that they couldn't BandAid over, all of a sudden the calls to resign started up and it turned out his party had been silent about his decline for years despite knowing about it.
I am not a fan of overusing "Orwellian" but this is as close a case as I've seen to all those comments about everyone receiving a simultaneous "download" of their new talking points.
"Border czar" is not and never was an official title - so when everyone says "Harris was never appointed border czar" - yes, technically that is true. (Technically, the Vice President has precisely one official duty, which is breaking ties in the Senate. Other than that, the VP has only whatever duties and authority the President assigns, and there have been VPs who basically faffed around for four years with nothing to do.) But clearly Harris was referred to as "border czar" and everyone understood what that meant, even if it was a strictly informal title.
Frustratingly, mentioning this to my Harris-supporting friends just gets sighs and eye-rolls, like "Why does this even matter?" And how good a job she did as "border czar" probably doesn't matter all that much - what matters (to me) is watching the entire media apparatus turn on a dime to reinforce DNC talking points and everyone thinks that's fine and that people trying to point out the discrepancy are just bad-faith Harris-haters.
Go to Google.com and type "attempted assassination of Donald" or "of Trum" and look at the predictions.
The entire Dem system is orwellian, there is no other word for it. It's not possible to overuse it.
You've just gotten used to it, because that's what you have to do to feel like a Sensible Moderate rather than one of those witches you sneer at.
Also, I did this just to indulge you (I assume "Trum" was a typo, or is that supposed to be some new meme I am not familiar with?), and the top results were the latest AP, CNN, ABC, and Fox News stories, followed by links from the FBI and Wikipedia. What new Dem Orwellian nefariousness am I supposed to be seeing, exactly?
As you can see, the only Trump related suggestion was "attempted assassination of donald wiki" meaning that "donald" isn't a filtered keyword in suggestions, but that someone at Google manually removed the most obvious suggestions.
/images/17221839899043539.webp
"assassination biden", "assassination kamala" etc don't autocomplete either, which might imply they've simply removed a bunch of obvious phrases to avoid some other guy taking a pop at one of the candidates and the news stories being written about how the (potential) assassin had Googled this phrase before grabbing his rifle. (Yes, no-one's attempted to assassinate the Dem candidates, but you'd still expect them to autocomplete for people to find, for instance, reactions by Biden or Harris to Trump assassination or so on.)
Considering that nobody has tried to assassinate them, this seems to be expected behaviour?
If Boris Johnson flashed parliament, would the fact that google has no suggestions for 'blair flashing' have any relevance to the results you might get for 'Boris flashing'?
Again, do you think the expected behavior would be autocomplete not delivering any results?
Both "tony blair flashing" and "boris johnson flashing" do indeed not deliver autocomplete results, as expected. (well I wasn't sure about Boris)
Whereas if either of them had been flashing anyone lately, I would certainly expect Google to autocomplete accordingly -- what else would you expect?
Once they manage to integrate advanced
hallucinationLLMs into their search, I guess the engine might make something up -- but otherwise once you get down to a level of specificity that will return very few to zero results, "nothing" is exactly what autocomplete should do.If you do the actual google search on Boris you will find that he opposes 'cyber-flashing' (whatever that is), and that somebody in Parliament claims that Angela Rayner was flashing him during Question Period to put him off his game -- there doesn't seem to be an obvious autocompletion there, given that it's supposed to work by suggesting 'hot searches'. (as it were)
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