Joe Biden

"Li misused public funds. But he was also playing a political game recognizable to any other party secretary. One of the Communist Party’s personnel practices (inherited from imperial times) is to rotate officials between various jurisdictions, forcing them to gain broad experience and preventing them from drawing their power base from their home province. China has few officials with careers like Joe Biden’s, who, before becoming vice president and then president, spent his entire political life representing Delaware. Li Zaiyong had been an official all over Guizhou before landing in Liupanshui. The way for him to reach even higher office was to demonstrate a track record for growth."

"my. Ray-Bans become the glasses of heroes, the American pilots, who parade through the Italian cities liberated from Nazi-fascism in 1945. The fashion of pilot glasses invades postwar America, movie stars turn them into legend. The first is Marlon Brando, who sports Aviators while riding his motorcycle in the 1953 film The Wild One. The list is long, the girls of my generation all fell in love with Tom Cruise, who flaunted teardrop-shaped glasses in Top Gun in 1986, a movie that brought them back into fashion, increasing Ray-Ban's sales by 40%. But it's not just Aviators that become iconic, the Wayfarers with the black plastic frames become immortal after the Blues Brothers. It's not only the actors who turn Ray-Bans into a myth. The most American glasses there could be, as we have seen, become a natural accessory for the President of the United States: from JFK's to Joe Biden's Aviators."