Kamala Harris at Munich tells you what America is and isn’t about
Yesterday, in her remarks before the Munich Security Conference, Vice President Kamala Harris made some remarkable claims while speaking a bold truth about what U.S. foreign policy is all about.
First, let’s turn to the bold truth:
And please do understand, [Vice President Harris said,] our approach is not based on the virtues of charity. We pursue our approach because it is in our strategic interest.
I strongly believe America’s role of global leadership is to the direct benefit of the American people. Our leadership keeps our homeland safe, supports American jobs, secures supply chains, and opens new markets for American goods.
I bolded the key phrase: America’s approach to the rest of the world isn’t charitable in any way. It’s about jobs, supply chains, and new markets. It’s about dominance and profits and “the homeland.” End of story.
It put me to mind of a passage in the Bible (Corinthians) about the inestimable value of charity:
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. (KJV; 1 Corinthians 13:2)
The U.S. can certainly move (or remove) mountains with its nuclear weapons; it certainly thinks it has a gift of prophecy with all its surveillance and spy agencies; but unless it has charity toward those less fortunate, it is nothing. It’s good to hear the Vice President avow so clearly that the U.S. approach to the world isn’t in any way charitable or even well-meaning.
Charity? Nope. “Our approach is not based on the virtues of charity”
The remarkable claims came as Harris attacked the Republicans and Trump but without specifically naming them. Here’s what she said about them:
However, there are some in the United States who disagree. They suggest it is in the best interest of the American people to isolate ourselves from the world, to flout common understandings among nations, to embrace dictators and adopt their repressive tactics, and abandon commitments to our allies in favor of unilateral action.
Let me be clear: That worldview is dangerous, destabilizing, and indeed short-sighted. That view would weaken America and would undermine global stability and undermine global prosperity.
President Biden and I, therefore, reject that view.
Are Trump and his followers arguing that America should isolate itself from the world? That America should embrace dictators? That America should betray its allies? That America should be a repressive autocracy? This is a misleading and disturbing caricature of Republicans as it accuses them of treason to the U.S. Constitution.
Perhaps some believe that Trump and MAGA truly are this malevolent. But should these accusations be made before foreign leaders at a summit in Munich, Germany?
Something is seriously wrong with America’s leadership. Without charity, they are nothing.
Amazingly, the presidential election of 2024 isn’t that far away, and already the Democratic Party is doing its best to remove democracy from the process. Once again, the DNC is uniting behind Joe Biden who, if reelected, would be 86 if he finished his second term of office. Already South Carolina has been awarded the first primary in place of New Hampshire, since Biden performed much better in SC than in NH in 2020. Already the DNC has announced it wants no primary debates even though Biden faces at least one challenger of substance, Marianne Williamson. Already Democrats are being told you shouldn’t want a younger, more dynamic, more progressive candidate, that more candidates and more choice is bad, that no possible mainstream candidate is better than Biden, and anyway Democrats can’t be distracted by choice when the Republican candidate is likely to be Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis.
At the same time, Kamala Harris remains Biden’s heir-apparent, even though Harris is both politically unpopular and ham-fisted. As Krystal Ball, who can’t be accused of being anti-women, explained, Harris lacks political talent, full stop. Like most VPs, she has accomplished little, but when she has taken center stage, she hasn’t inspired confidence. Nevertheless, she’s important to the image of the party and its alleged commitment to diversity. Old white guy Joe needs to be balanced by a younger woman of color irrespective of her lack of political acumen and her lackluster record in office.
Sadly, we’re at a place where to critique Joe Biden is to be accused of ageism; to critique Kamala Harris is to be accused of both racism and misogyny. To ask for more candidates, more competition, more democracy is to be accused of being an operative for Trump. So it’s likely Biden/Harris again for 2024, like it or lump it.
Well, at least they’re happy
The last true liberal/progressive Democratic nominee who tried to bring real hope and change to America was George McGovern in 1972. Nixon trounced him, of course, and Democrats at the top abandoned “leftist” notions for a pro-business, pro-banking, pro-military, and pro-money agenda, as implemented by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Both were two-term presidents, both were good at posing as champions of regular folk while implementing agendas that were old-school Republican. Meanwhile, the real Republicans drifted ever further to the right.
America today is stuck with two rightist parties, a uniparty of sorts, where the agenda favors the richest few versus the poorest many, the powerful versus the powerless. Sure, the Democrats profess they are more “woke” and are willing to talk about systemic racism, sexism, LGBTQ issues, and so on, while the Republicans, incredibly, are both more populist and more willing to question massive spending on weapons and war. Yet both parties remain bought and paid for, serving the interests of the big-money owners and donors. In short, 2024 promises a rigged deal, not a new one, no matter which major party candidate wins.
And that’s a shame, because America needs a New Deal for the poor, the powerless, the workers, the regular folk, but they’re not even allowed to have a candidate, let alone a choice. At this moment, the most likely “choice” is between Biden/Harris and Trump/DeSantis, and if you think either ticket will support meaningful change…
Establishment America is bereft of new ideas and new possibilities; thus, the dynamism of our nation is dying, smothered by greed and cynicism. It’s “no change” Biden versus “very unstable grifter” Trump, or possibly “younger grifter” DeSantis. What a choice!
So, who would I vote for if the election were held today? Marianne Williamson. She’s not perfect (there is no perfect candidate), but she’s articulate, empathetic, and open-minded. Better yet, she’s not bought and paid for. If I were a Democrat (I’m not), I’d vote for her just because the establishment dismisses her as an unserious crystal/aura lady. Imagine: she dares talk about love and compassion and pursuing peace. We can’t have that in America!
I hope Williamson gains traction within the party, enough so that the DNC can’t suppress debates, because real debates would reveal what many have already noted: that Biden has slipped too much to be entrusted with the presidency for another four years. Yet, unless he collapses on stage, or even if he does, the DNC will continue to prop him up as vigorous and able to serve.
That ongoing sham reveals a harsh reality: who is president doesn’t really matter in America when the candidates and their staff are pre-selected by the real power centers like Wall Street and the National Security State.
I woke up today to the news the Democrats will keep control of the Senate through 2024. Democracy is saved! I guess the Russian bots didn’t steal the election this time around, nor did election deniers mount a coup against democracy. The status quo prevails in America. What great news for all workers, all those who are struggling to make ends meet, to learn that nothing has fundamentally changed in the best of all possible countries.
Heck, it’s even good news that Republicans are likely to gain a narrow majority in the House, thereby demoting Nancy Pelosi to House Minority Leader. I can look forward to House impeachment proceedings against various Democrats, because such proceedings are truly what working-class Americans want and need from their government.
President Biden promised to take action to codify Roe v Wade into law if the Democrats won, so I suppose he’ll weasel his way out of this promise if the House tips Republican. Not that his action was going to change anything, since Biden refuses to touch the Senate filibuster.
What we can look forward to is two more years of divided, do-nothing government in Washington, DC, with politics being dominated by Donald Trump’s new run for the presidency against Sleepy Joe and Giggles Harris. Happy days are here again!
Of course, a “divided” Congress will still come together to support massive Pentagon spending and a blank check of military aid to Ukraine. Nothing unites Democrats and Republicans like weapons and wars.
What you won’t see, of course, is a higher federal minimum wage, single-payer health care, or anything else the working classes could truly use. America, of course, is an oligarchy and Congress and the President serve the oligarchs. As George Carlin memorably said: “You have no rights” — and no say.
Ready for a depressing repeat?
One clear result from this election is Joe Biden’s commitment to run again in 2024, when he’ll be 82 years old. Truly, anyone can be president in America, as long as the oligarchs sign off on you. Biden running again reminds me of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the early 1930s, when Paul von Hindenburg, also in his eighties, ran against and defeated a certain Adolf Hitler in 1932. Of Hindenburg it was said that the men around him “shoved him — with dignity.” And I suppose the operatives around Biden will also shove him about, with (or without) dignity, as age takes its inevitable toll on him.
Biden will likely keep Kamala Harris as his vice president, not wanting to admit his mistake in picking her. Put charitably, Harris has been a non-entity as VP, so she’s perfect for the job, but if Biden runs and wins in 2024, there’s a decent chance she could become president during Biden’s second term. Of course, the oligarchy vetted and picked her exactly because she’s predictable and obedient to power. But some people will crow about how amazing it is to have a Black Asian female president when her views and allegiances are almost exactly the same as a white Catholic male president like Biden. But, you know, diversity!
So it’s two more years of hearing Democracy is in peril because Trump is running again when we all know or sense that whatever democracy we had ended in America decades ago, and most certainly by 1980. (Of course, America was founded as a republic by a bunch of privileged white guys, who weren’t exactly trusting of democracy, seeing it as mob rule.) Still, I like to think there’s hope in America, because more and more people are waking up to the harsh realities we face as a people. Don’t tell me I’m wrong about this; I’d like to keep a scintilla of hope, if only to preserve my own sanity, which will be sorely tested in the run up to the 2024 election.
So here’s to another two years of “democracy,” American-style, meaning no democracy at all. I wonder why an obvious con man like Trump gains so much traction here in the land of the not-so-free?
I watched Joe Biden as he tried to answer simple questions from Jimmy Kimmel and it just made me sad. Comedian Jimmy Dore skewers sputtering Joe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVG6-qWjXMo
And I use the word “sputtering” because Biden apologists still like to suggest that Biden’s problems are attributable to a stutter, which Biden overcame decades ago. Watch Biden speeches from the 1980s to when he was Obama’s Vice President and you hear a person who can speak fluidly, if often not honestly. Joe’s ability to speak clearly and to remain focused had obviously declined by 2020 when he campaigned. It’s likely, given the demands of the job, that his acuity will continue to trend downwards, as Ronald Reagan’s did in his second term in office.
What’s to be said here? First, it’s hard to believe Biden’s handlers thought it was a good idea for him to go on TV in a somewhat unstructured environment, but I guess they did. Second, Jimmy Kimmel showed a lot of class in not exploiting Biden’s incoherence. Third, to state what’s obvious, at least to me, Joe Biden shouldn’t run in 2024. He’s not currently up to the rigors of the duties of the office he occupies, and only Benjamin Button ages in reverse. If the DNC and Joe’s wife and family allow him to run again, it will truly be shameful.
The scary thing for true-blue Democrats is the apparent alternatives, Kamala “Giggles” Harris and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg. They hit certain diversity targets, but neither is inspiring. Both in their own way are political lightweights. Both, however, are beloved by party operatives because they’re willing to take orders from the owners and donors. Harris is a Clintonite and Mayor Pete is the ultimate square-checking apple polisher. Here’s hoping both fade away and quickly.
Perhaps Michelle Obama will enter the fray as the great Democratic savior. At the very least, she could save Joe Biden from a possible second term that would likely be even more disappointing if not disastrous than his first term is proving to be.
Disclaimer: Sorry, this isn’t about Trump. If Trump runs again, I won’t vote for him. Why? Because Trump is a man who serves only himself. So please don’t spin my worries about Joe Biden as some kind of weird endorsement of Con Man Donald. It isn’t.
Joe Biden’s been president for a year and a few months; it’s time to award him a provisional grade for his performance as president. Here are a few factors to consider:
* Biden ended the Afghan War. Sure, it was a disordered ending, a pell-mell evacuation, a calamitous collapse that saw Afghan innocents killed in a final drone strike (nothing new about that, I suppose). But he did end a twenty-year war, so credit to him for that.
* Biden was able to pass an infrastructure bill, though it was disappointingly small. Still, America truly needs to invest in its infrastructure (rather than, for example, nuclear weapons), so credit again to Biden.
* Biden kept his promise to nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court. The court is still overwhelmingly conservative, so her presence won’t make a critical difference to decisions, but dare I say, it’s about time the court looked more like the diversity of America.
* When Biden announced his candidacy, the first thing he did was meet with Comcast executives and other high and mighty media- and business-types. He told them nothing would fundamentally change under his administration. That’s a campaign promise he’s kept.
* Another promise Biden has kept is sizable increases to the Pentagon’s budget. If you’re part of the military-industry complex, you’re probably more than satisfied with Biden’s budgets.
* Finally, some people assert that Biden has stood firm against Russia and Putin, marshaling the West against Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. I beg to differ with this assertion, but more on that below.
Now, let’s look at where Biden has failed or proven to be a disappointment.
* Biden has kept none of his progressive promises, which is unsurprising, given his track record as a senator from Delaware. No $15 federal minimum wage. No public option for health care. No student debt relief (just moratoriums on payments). On these and similar issues, Biden’s defenders place the blame on obstinate “centrist” senators like Manchin and Sinema, or they blame the Senate Parliamentarian for ruling against the $15 wage increase due to a technicality. It’s all special pleading. When their own Senate Parliamentarian got in their way, the Republicans simply replaced that unelected person with someone more tractable. Chuck Schumer could easily have done the same. Manchin and Sinema can be cajoled or coerced if Biden had the will to do so. But “centrist” Democrats adore Manchin and Sinema because they serve as convenient scapegoats for why Biden can’t be more progressive.
* Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan died a meaningless death, but, once again, this was more by design. Recall Biden’s key promise that nothing would fundamentally change under his administration.
* Again, withdrawing from the Afghan War was a sound decision, but it was poorly implemented.
* The Russia-Ukraine War: Biden has gone all-in with his military approach to the war, meaning more money for the Pentagon, more weapons for Ukraine, harsh sanctions that hit ordinary Russians the hardest, and rhetoric that declares Putin to be a genocidal war criminal. Diplomatic efforts have taken a back seat to efforts to effect regime change in Russia. Some people may see this as tough and hard- minded; I see it as provocative and incredibly foolhardy. Brinksmanship with Russia risks nuclear war, with Biden’s harsh rhetoric leaving little room for a negotiated settlement. More than a few people see the U.S. as weakening Russia in a proxy war in which Biden is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Toughness is not about more weapons and war; it’s about finding ways to build fewer weapons and to end war.
* Inflation is reaching new highs and many Americans are struggling economically, but Biden’s main approach here has been to blame Putin. Unlike Harry Truman, the buck never stops with Joe Biden.
* The Biden team made a disastrous choice for his vice president. Biden has no affinity with Kamala Harris, and Harris herself has wilted on the world stage. High staff turnover suggests she’s a polarizing figure and a poor boss. The only good thing about Harris, from the Biden perspective, is that people dislike her more than they do the president.
* Biden’s unpopularity. Predictions for the midterm elections this November are dire for Democrats. It’s possible, even likely, Republicans will regain both the Senate and House, leaving Biden a lame duck for his final two years in office. Few if any Democratic candidates are seeking Biden’s support or planning to ride his coattails to victory.
* Biden’s mental status. Biden will be 80 this November. I’m not an expert on dementia. But I’ve seen plenty of speeches by Biden where he’s become forgetful; when he can’t remember words; when he gets frustrated. I feel for him. He can read from a teleprompter but get him off-script and he becomes unpredictable and says nonsensical things. Occasionally, he looks lost or at a loss. Something similar was happening to Ronald Reagan in his second term.
Always looming in the background and foreground is the party of Trump. To my mind, the best way to defeat rightwing popular authoritarianism is to have leaders who answer to the people rather than to corporations and oligarchs. The Democratic Party is venal and corrupt, which allows Trump & Co. an opening to play a (false) populist card. The Democrats, as presently led by Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, et al., are easy foils for authoritarian dipshits like Trump.
Trump would be far less dangerous if the Democrats actually believed and acted on their various campaign promises to help people rather than oligarchs and corporations.
The ultimate grade of Joe Biden’s presidency will depend on whether through his actions and inaction he gives Trump an opening to win the presidency in 2024. Assuming Trump wins again in 2024, Biden’s final grade will be an “F.”
His provisional grade? First, I’m not a Democrat. Second, I despise Trump, a man totally unqualified to serve the public in any capacity. Overall, my grade for Biden is a “C-,” and on less generous days I’m inclined to give him a “D.” He is a man who’s often out of his depth, a man well past his prime, a man who perhaps shouldn’t have run in 2020 and who most certainly shouldn’t run again in 2024, given the demands of the presidency. (Recall that when Biden suggested a run for the presidency in 2020, Obama told him, You don’t have to do this, Joe. Not exactly an inspiring vote of confidence!)
What do you think, readers? What grade has Joe Biden earned so far in your opinion?
Joe Biden has done it again, calling for Vladimir Putin’s removal from office as president of Russia, and refusing to apologize for it. Being charitable, I’m calling this rhetoric “careless,” but really it’s inflammatory and even unhinged when you consider the U.S. and Russia could easily destroy the world in a nuclear war.
I’ve never been a fan of Joe Biden. When he ran for president in 1987-88, he lied about being near the top of his class (he was near the bottom, actually), lied about how many majors he took, lied about an award he falsely said he’d earned, and generally came off looking like a lightweight. He was trying way too hard, including “borrowing” without attribution, i.e. plagiarizing, from the speeches of Neil Kinnock and Bobby Kennedy. Most political commentators back then dismissed him as a has-been before he ever was.
But Biden bided his time, improved his bona fides with the big money players, and became the boring white guy sidekick to the upstart Barack Obama in 2008. Biden served loyally as Obama’s VP for eight years, failing to distinguish himself in any meaningful way. Occasionally, he’d blurt out something tough, something manly, like the time he commented about confronting the Islamic State at “the gates of hell,” but it was all bluster.
When Biden ran for president in 2019-20, he was obviously well past his prime, which was never that high to begin with. But he promised the owners and donors that nothing would fundamentally change if he was elected, the one promise he’s kept since he gained office. Throughout his campaign, he lied through his blindingly white teeth about how he supported a $15 federal minimum wage and how he’d work for a single-payer option for health care, among many other whoppers. One of those whoppers has gained considerable press lately: his son Hunter’s laptop and the emails on it, which Biden said was an obvious Kremlin plant. Wrong again, Joe. Hunter’s emails were all-too-real and incriminating, as was his phony yet high-paying job ($50,000 a month) for Burisma in Ukraine.
Politics is almost always a miserable affair, now more than ever, but during the campaign Biden showed he was a gaffe-prone liar who was nearing the end of his mental tether. No matter. The mainstream media got behind him and plenty of Americans were rightly fed up with Donald Trump and his bungling of the response to Covid-19, and that was enough to make him president.
Biden is now pushing 80, slurring words, and calling Putin a war criminal and saying that he needs to go. It’s the kind of behavior you’d expect from a blowhard who’s had a few too many drinks at the bar, not from America’s most senior leader.
I joked to my wife that I really don’t want to die today in a nuclear war due to Biden’s bizarre bombast. If any leader needs to go, it’s probably Joe Biden, but he has an iron-clad insurance policy: if he goes, we get Kamala “giggles” Harris as our new president. So I guess I have to be very careful what I wish for.
There was a time when America produced leaders like FDR, Ike, George C. Marshall, even Ronald Reagan, who had the guts to dream of a world free of nuclear weapons. Reagan may have called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” but he also knew how to negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev for a better, safer world. America is hamstrung today by narcissistic nincompoops like Biden, Harris, and Trump; somehow, we have to take a long, hard look in the mirror and find it within ourselves to demand better.
I had no idea America elected Joe Manchin and the Senate Parliamentarian as the two most powerful people in our country. Senator Manchin has been the convenient obstacle and scapegoat for the corporate Democrats. He’s allegedly blocked tougher action on climate change. He’s helped to defund efforts to make community college free, to extend Medicare, to lower prescription drug prices, and so on. The Senate Parliamentarian, meanwhile, who is in fact unelected and has no real power, ruled that hiking the minimum wage is something that simply can’t be countenanced under budgetary reconciliation rules. I think I got that right, not that it matters. It’s all a smokescreen, it’s all BS. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, answers to the owners and donors. It is doing exactly what it’s been told to do, abandoning all its progressive promises (it never had any principles) in the false name of compromise and bipartisanship.
And this is exactly why Donald Trump will be reelected in 2024.
Not that the corporate-owned Democrats care, mind you. Things are actually easier for them with Trump in office. They can raise more money off their fake “resistance” to Trump, and they can wash their hands of tax cuts for the rich and more and more corporate-friendly deals, blaming them on Trump when of course the Democrats too support all these things. For that matter, so too does the Supreme Court. Justices like Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett weren’t just picked because they lean against abortion: they were picked because of their pro-business sympathies. Joined by Justices Roberts and Thomas and Alito, corporations can count on winning cases in their favor by at least a 6-3 margin. Corporations are people, my friends, and they rule us through the political parties they own and the court they have packed.
If many Americans don’t know this, they certainly sense it. They know politicians like Biden and Harris are phonies. They are so phony that people actually prefer a twice-divorced wife-cheater, con man, and reality TV host like Trump for his authenticity. At least Trump speaks their language and apes their grievances.
Former President Obama, meanwhile, gives speeches blaming the voters for not voting. He says with a straight face that we can’t always get what we want, but that if you don’t despair and keep voting blue no matter who, you may yet get a few crumbs after 2024. Who believes this anymore?
Hillary Clinton and the DNC were so bad in 2016 that America elected a failed casino owner with a fake university named after him. Biden/Harris and the DNC are so bad now that in 2024 America will elect a bloviating dictator wannabe and coup-plotter who threw his own VP under the bus as president. Yup, the same guy again. Maybe this time Ivanka will run the World Bank or possibly the State Department (can she be worse than Mike Pompeo?).
That blurry man is returning — and so too is his daughter. Not so sure about the guy on the right
America has become a very bad joke — worst of all, the joke’s on us.
Did you know Vice President Kamala Harris is Chairwoman of the National Space Council? I didn’t — until a friend notified me of a feel-good video featuring Harris and a few earnest and photogenic kids on YouTube. The kids were decidedly diverse: boys and girls, black and brown and white, but they all had something in common. No, it wasn’t their enthusiasm for space — it’s that they were all paid actors.
As my wife and I watched the video, my better half turned to me and said, “stagey” and “fake.”
I had to laugh as Kamala Harris tried to wow the kids about seeing craters on the moon. My goodness — on a clear night you can see craters with the naked eye. A decent pair of binoculars (I have 10×50 Tasco binoculars) will reveal plenty of gorgeous detail. You don’t exactly have to visit the Naval Observatory to see moon craters.
Even through my relatively cheap $200 camera, I can see plenty of detail. Here’s a photo I took of the moon, a handheld shot done quickly and inexpertly:
The Moon by me. Look at the craters!
I have some experience talking to real kids about astronomy. Elementary school kids can be fun. One class I talked to wanted to know all about UFOs. Another wiseguy kid asked about Uranus, pronouncing it “your anus,” of course. I smiled, quietly corrected his pronunciation, and answered his question. We both had a laugh.
Yet apparently Kamala Harris is not to be trusted talking to real kids who might go off-script. Perish the thought of a kid who might make a joke about Uranus. The horror! It doesn’t inspire confidence that she’s only a heartbeat away from the presidency, as the saying goes.
If and when the space aliens come for me, I know what I’m saying: Take me to your leader — mine is lost in space.
America doesn’t have a foreign policy, it has a business plan, and it’s business as usual in the Biden administration. Joe Biden promised his donors that nothing would fundamentally change in his administration. Kamala Harris said her agenda wasn’t about substantive change. So what we’re getting under the Biden/Harris team is eminently predictable:
More blank checks for Israel, and no recognition of any rights for Palestinians.
A revival of the old Cold War, with China as the leading “threat” but with Russia not forgotten.
Politics subordinated to the military, rather than the military in service of political aims. In brief, military dominance is America’s foreign policy.
Related to (1-3) is dominance of the world’s trade in weapons. The State Department has become a tiny branch of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex. It’s all about closing arms deals, moving hardware, selling weaponry, making a buck.
Naturally, one of Biden’s first acts as president was to bomb a foreign country, in this case Syria. So presidential!
In Joe Biden, America has a fading and flailing man to lead a fading and flailing empire. In Kamala Harris, America has an example of old wine in new packaging. She’s a woman, she’s Black, she’s South Asian — and she thinks like Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger.
Joined at the hip
Remember when Joe Biden said he’d be all about diplomacy? That the power of America’s example would rule over the example of our power? Nice words, but that’s all they’ve been so far. Words.
Two examples where Biden has appeared to offer meaningful change are with Afghanistan and Yemen. With Afghanistan, Biden has promised a complete military withdrawal by 9/11/2021. But does this apply only to combat troops while excluding mercenaries, the CIA, special forces “trainers,” and the like? It’s not yet clear. Plus anything can happen between now and 9/11 for Biden to switch gears and keep some combat troops in place.
With Yemen, Biden made a point about excluding offensive arms sales to Saudi Arabia while still allowing defensive ones. Almost any weapon can be labeled as defensive in nature, so it’s doubtful whether Saudi operations in Yemen will be impacted at all by Biden’s weasel-word policies.
The Biden/Harris foreign policy, such as it is, is retrograde. It’s a return to the Cold War, with an emphasis on new nuclear weapons and larger Pentagon budgets. It’s about global dominance while America at home burns. It’s foolish and stupid yet it will make a few people richer for a few more business cycles.
And thus it’s business as usual in Washington, which is exactly what Biden/Harris were hired for.
Who knew that choosing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, two pro-business, pro-establishment, anti-progressive tools with limited charisma, would result in an election that is currently too close to call?
Meanwhile, Trump has made his own call. He won! Here’s what he had to say earlier this morning:
Trump falsely declared himself the winner around 2:30 a.m. Eastern. He said he would call on the Supreme Court to stop counting ballots in states where he led, while urging more counting in states where he was behind. He claimed “fraud” (for which there is no evidence) and he called the election an “embarrassment to the country.”
My wife and I had a good if grim laugh at this. Trump is like that ten-year-old bully in a class election who says: “Let’s count the vote until I’m winning, then we’ll stop.” Every kid would shout that that’s unfair and wrong, until the bully threatened to slug them.
It’s truly astounding that so many Americans think Trump is a competent and desirable president. Again, though, it didn’t help matters when the DNC tilted the table in Biden’s favor, then picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, another establishment tool who faded fast after her fifteen minutes of post-debate, that-little-girl-was-me, fame.
Of course, Biden/Harris may yet prevail, assuming Americans can muster some patience and that the Trump-leaning Supreme Court doesn’t intervene. But if they lose, the loss is truly on them and the DNC operatives who went all-in on them.
Bracing Views 