Biden news for July 14th

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 1:39pm

RootsAction sends me an email saying don't run, Joe. Here was the substance of its argument:

Just in recent days, Biden has taken destructive and unpopular steps on numerous issues. He has become, not a climate president, but a fossil fuel drilling and pipeline-approving president. He has become the preeminent military spending president. One day he appoints Republican warmonger Elliott Abrams to a government post. Another he ships cluster bombs to Europe. Biden's recent actions do damage to the world, but benefit Republican and third-party candidates.

We can only hope, then, that RootsAction is correct, and that Joe's persistence in chasing glory does indeed benefit Republican and third-party candidates. Meanwhile, Alex Christoforou tells us in his analysis -- after having told us that Biden is going to send troops to Ukraine (probably) as human shields -- that nobody likes Joe Biden. Here's that part of the Christoforou video:

(Meanwhile, the new Simplicius post has extensive news on mass desertion of Ukrainian troops. Joe's war, now that he's owning it, isn't going so well.)

It would be good for America if the two major parties were Republican and Green. The Democratic Party deserves to die, and the sooner the better, for its support of Joe's folly in Ukraine. The primary structural problem with the Democratic Party is that it is a dictatorship, and its oligarchy has erected "superdelegates" to allow it to veto primary results it doesn't like. The Democrats are warmongers, and their current sallies at Russia and China are what will make their warmongering into a problem. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are slaves to money, and specifically to the money of the billionaires whose status they have significantly enhanced through legislation. The Democrats do not have the cultural baggage of the Republicans, to be sure, but they do have the baggage that their political class is spectacularly dishonest in its promises and that therefore it is becoming apparent to larger populations that nothing the Democratic Party political class says can be trusted.

I would cheer on Joe Biden, hoping he destroys the Party single-handedly, if I didn't think that a possible by-product of his team's efforts would be nuclear war. Maybe this is in fact AOC's strategy -- only problem being that when she endorsed Joe she signaled her willingness to go down with the ship. Let's review:

1) American history shows that, if there is to be a realignment, one of the major parties must disintegrate. In 1854 this was the Whig Party, which collapsed in 1854, with its remnant agreeing in 1856 to join the American Party. Since the "Know-Nothings" of the American Party only represented a small portion of what the Whig Party was, the Republican Party also emerged out of the disintegration of the Whigs. In this way the current duopoly was the product of the disintegration of a previous duopoly.

2) What keeps the masses voting Democrat is the speculation that the Republicans would be worse. But the Republicans want to re-elect Donald Trump, and Trump is lazy, so things get worse under Trump, just not as swiftly as they've gotten worse under Biden. Mostly, though, Trump might end the idiocy in Ukraine, in the unlikely occasion that he isn't too busy eating junk food or playing golf. Trump's conviction could change things, as could the insertion of a "No Labels" party into the election.

3) The Democrats can be expected to lose next year. How badly I don't know. But the Republicans only appeal to a small and shrinking segment of the American population, and so their victory will be a matter of the voter base's complete and justified rejection of the Democratic Party. RFK Jr. appeals to a lot of them, but RFK Jr. is going down because the party apparatus doesn't like him. So there's another reason people will be angry at the Democrats: "primaries" conducted as vast charades for a candidate who had already been selected in the proverbial smoke-filled room.

If the Democrats do fully collapse, I think it will happen after the election. These things take time.

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Submitted by QMS on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 2:12pm

christ on a pogo stick, one would hope the electorate have had
enough of that framing by now. Some things don't change.

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Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 3:36pm
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@QMS they just stayed home, and soon thereafter the slaves were freed.

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"The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening." -- Rosa Luxemburg

Submitted by usefewersyllables on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 2:15pm
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will contrive to lose again, bless their hearts. That's what they are the best at: losing. Well, losing and bitching. And scamming their donors, can't forget that. Losing, bitching, scamming their donors- oh, and gaslighting those of us who have finally had enough of them.

Right. Among their main weapons are losing, bitching, scamming, gaslighting...

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 2:53pm
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.

They just voted to kill the amendment to keep Biden from sending cluster bombs to Ukraine and to kill any audits to see where those billions have gone.

Every republican president of my lifetime has voted to cut taxes on the rich and gutting social programs and when a dem president follows they have allowed to let the tax cuts stand.

I could probably go on all day about how both parties have screwed we the people, but y’all know about it. If any 2 parties should rule then I recommend the green and the workers parties.

And any republican that wants the Ukraine war to end wants to train the military on to China. Both parties were fully on board with the wars in the Middle East. And the forever wars that only gawd knows where are troops are.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 4:24pm
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@snoopydawg The difference is that they are honest about sucking, whereas the Democrats want to jump in front of your parade and head it down Loyalty Way.

edited sign_0.jpg

Remember that scene in "National Lampoon's Animal House" where the marching band heads into a blind alley? That's the Democratic Party.

So, today, while climate change gives us the hottest June ever, the Democrats tell us "vote for us, and get 80% of the same policies the Republicans will give you, or the Republicans will win."

Republicans disagree because they are open about their advocacy of mass suicide. Democrats pretend to agree while sending you down the path of mass suicide when you aren't looking.

And speaking of the war the Democratic Party owns, I saw this guy at the Oregon Country Fair, a celebration of peace and love, who wore a t-shirt that said "fight like a Ukrainian." I can't think of a slogan that would be closer to "eat sh*t and die" than "fight like a Ukrainian."

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"The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening." -- Rosa Luxemburg

Submitted by on the cusp on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 3:08pm

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by exindy on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 3:17pm

It's old yeller time for the country. We are a failed state by any definition. In my lifetime I watched our country go from one which had so much potential go to one which is a hollow shell of what it was. We have lost more than an entire generation and I do not see that reversed by anyone on the current stage.

Oh, RFK could start the process but unless the foundation is laid he will fail, buried under the "rules" of financialization and investor greed.

Caitlin had a wonderful piece today:

Profit-Driven Systems Are Driving Us To Our Doom

Just think about that for a second. Under our current systems for profit generation, which is the primary driver of human behavior on this planet, making a quality product that lasts a long time instead of quickly going obsolete or turning into landfill will actually drive you into bankruptcy.

An article in The Atlantic about the bankruptcy filing similarly illustrated this point last month:

“From the point of view of the consumer, this makes the Instant Pot a dream product: It does what it says, and it doesn’t cost you much or any additional money after that first purchase. It doesn’t appear to have any planned obsolescence built into it, which would prompt you to replace it at a regular clip. But from the point of view of owners and investors trying to maximize value, that makes the Instant Pot a problem. A company can’t just tootle along in perpetuity, debuting new products according to the actual pace of its good ideas, and otherwise manufacturing and selling a few versions of a durable, beloved device and its accessories, updated every few years with new features. A company needs to grow.”

This just says such dysmal things about why our planet is facing the existential crises it’s now facing. Corporations will die if they don’t continually grow, and they can’t grow without things like inbuilt planned obsolescence or continued additional purchases, which in a sane society would just be regarded as shoddy craftsmanship. Our entire civilization is driven by the pursuit of profit, and to keep turning large profits your corporation needs to continually grow, and your corporation can’t continually grow unless you’re manufacturing a crappy product that needs to be continually replaced or supplemented, and you can’t manufacture those replacements and supplementations without harvesting them from the flesh of a dying world.

As writer Robert Moor recently observed on Twitter, “The fact that Instant Pot is already being framed as a corporate cautionary tale — the company that went bankrupt because they made a product so durable and versatile that its customers had little need to buy another one — instead of as a critique of capitalism is deeply, deeply depressing.”

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/07/13/profit-driven-systems-are-drivin...

Lest there be any mistake, EVERY product that has been developed or produced since the raygun era fall into this category. That includes electricity, education, transportation, automation, healthcare, and so on. EVERY product, every bit of infrastructure. All are designed to fail, insisted on failure.

And that includes the courts, the political parties, the military, ALL.

A good start? Look at what China and Russia have done over the last 35 years and mimic it.

For example, a piece in the UNZ review:

The One Chart That Explains Everything
https://www.unz.com/author/mike-whitney/

Look carefully at the chart above. What do you see?
You see the development of a high-speed rail system that is unrivaled anywhere
on earth. You see the actualization of plan to connect all parts of the country with modernday infrastructure that reduces shipping costs, improves mobility and increases profitability.
You see a vision of the 21st century in which state-directed capital links rural populations with
urban centers lifting standards of living across the board. You see an expression of a new
economic model that has lifted 800 million people out of poverty while paving the way for
global economic integration. You see an industrial juggernaut expanding in all
directions while laying the groundwork for a new century of economic integration,
accelerated development and shared prosperity.
Is there a high-speed rail system in the United States that is comparable to what we see in
China today?

No, there isn’t. So far, less than 50 miles of high-speed rail has been built in the
United States. (“Amtrak’s Acela, which reaches 150 mph over 49.9 miles of track, is the US’s
only high-speed rail service.”) As everyone knows, America’s transportation grid is obsolete and
in a shambles.

But, why? Why is the United States so far behind China in the development of critical
infrastructure?

That article paints a very bleak future for us.

Everyone was so excited that Musk was failing in Twitter. a Pyrrhic victory. We desperately need the means to a regulated discussion space where we can work together to solve problems. Believe me, there is no one and I mean no one anywhere in our current societal structure who can contribute anything toward a bright future, either for us or humanity. No one. I have worked with them and watched them destroy anything that got in the way of their power grab.

Lambert Strether had a different take on it in nakedcapitalism:

Twitter’s Lost Weekend (“Something Went Wrong”)
Posted on July 3, 2023 by Lambert Strether of Corrente.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/07/twitters-lost-weekend-something-...

We had a lively weekend on the Twitter, driven by the decisions and actions of the world’s richest human as measured in dollars, Elon Musk, squillionaire; necessarily so, since Musk is the platform’s sole owner, and committed to a “hands-on” management style. Since Musk’s decision-making process is completely opaque, I am left in the pleasant position of being entirely free to speculate on the causes of the error strewn debacle episode, which I shall shortly do. First, however, I will present an apologia for the platform, explaining why it is important and interesting. Then I’ll give a chronology of the weekend’s events, followed by competing theories on why what happened happened.

Why Twitter Is an Important and Interesting Platform

Here is the essential fact about Twitter: Twitter is a universal address space[1]. At least until this weekend, Twitter was a social graph where every user — not merely logged-in account, but user — is one degree of separation away from every other user. If I want to go find some idiotic eugenicist
statement from Rochelle Walensky, I can do so with a search, logged in or not. (If I want to call Walensky a eugenicist, I must log in, but that seems only fair, and I can still do it.) Further, through embeds, Twitter’s graph extends outside the platform, which is why you see Tweets quoted everywhere. Twitter’s universal, open address space is in great contrast to the “walled gardens” of other platforms, especially The Zuckerberg™’s evil and decaying Facebook.

Many valuable use cases flow from Twitter’s universal address space. Twitter is ideal for public service announcements like emergency services and information about the weather. Twitter is ideal for breaking news, as users spontaneously coalesce around threads following the event. Twitter is ideal for public collaboration across geographic and institutional barriers; I am 100% convinced that the aerosol scientists would not have been able to take it the droplet dogmatists and win the day on the science without Twitter; the same goes for mask users and the Covid-conscious.

It's an interesting piece and I think very much provides an example of what we should be doing. Instead of building upon the foundation laid by MUSK, it is being torn down in favor of some clown college dropout who came to fame by doing a female critique for nighttime antics.

Maybe next we should look to Michael Hudson's piece on why we will never reindustrialize unless we do a major turnaround.

We got to this place by standing on the shoulders of giants and now we worship at the altar of greed.

Ahh, I've used up my time.... Thank you.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 3:21pm

who headed up the team that monitored and tested any suspicious chemicals that might be found in or near the White House.
He said the likelihood of cocaine getting inside was pretty strong, since security is metal detectors, no drug dogs.
However, he said there are security cameras everywhere, except the bathrooms. The likelihood of not being caught by camera was almost impossible. He laughed at the Secret Service investigation, just figured the chief said "leave it alone".

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 3:54pm
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@on the cusp one of those drugs typically used by people with enormous egos who are detached from reality? I guess, then, that it's no wonder they found some in the White House.

I used to have some "friends" who lived in one of those off-campus student houses back in the day, when college was affordable and not everyone was a STEM student. They got kicked out of the house, however, because the landlord had to sell the house, having spent his substantial fortune propping up his cocaine addiction. The new landlord wanted to sell to a family.

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"The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening." -- Rosa Luxemburg

Submitted by on the cusp on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 4:14pm

@Cassiodorus made a ton of money selling cocaine, then quit doing business before he was caught by the cops. His customers were all white, all rich, most were professionals, such as lawyers and accountants. Some were elected officials.
I do not understand how the NSA hasn't tipped off some sheriff or FBI agent to let them know when he is making a purchase, and from whom. The NSA cannot establish probable cause, but routinely gives cops sufficient info so that they can be at the right place at the right time to make an arrest. The method is known as "parallel construction". We defense attorneys see it used all the time.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 4:24pm
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@on the cusp

I read about it all the time in my local rag. Guys transporting millions of dollars of drugs through Utah wouldn’t check to see that their taillights are working and wouldn’t go 30 miles over the speed limit, but that’s why highway patrol stops them. It’s so bogus every time, but people cheer the cops for getting them.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 4:19pm
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@on the cusp

Remember when Biden said that he had no problem with WH folks using marijuana and then he fired everyone who admitted they used it? Why anyone would have trusted the guy who wrote the crime bill and got harsh sentences on people who used the cheaper crack cocaine than the upper class folks that could afford the more expensive powder cocaine.

They ain’t black!

But when’s the last Hunter Biden was drug tested? Of course they can find who brought the cocaine there. They just don’t want to.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Fri, 07/14/2023 - 5:00pm

@snoopydawg you must drug test at every monthly visit to your probation officer, as well as drug test at any random time the officer requests.
Unless you are the President's son.
The only way they could have gotten drug tests from everyone who was in the West wing that day would be by consent, as there is no real probable cause to test anybody.
So, the security cameras on the particular entry where it was found, on an event day with a huge and expected crowd, didn't work.
At the White House. No effort to get the camera's repaired.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 11:56am

The video of Biden molesting the Finnish child has been taken down. And while they were at it, the DOJ removed it's information on child sex trafficking.
edit: it is still on Twitter, doesn't seem to be otherwise available.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by QMS on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 12:19pm

@on the cusp @on the cusp

sick old man
for the world to see
moralless pos

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 12:39pm

@QMS and the crowd laughed when he told them how he and his young brothers enjoyed the parent's in the bed, being "restless", and their head board knocking against the wall. The boys heard it through the wall.
Exactly what can be made of shit he does without coming to the conclusion he is a pervert?

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by lotlizard on Sun, 07/16/2023 - 8:36am
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@on the cusp  
during rehab about him, her father, liking to take showers with her as a child.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10896941/Florida-woman-Ashley-B...

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 1:06pm
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@on the cusp

This is NOT normal behavior. It’s creepy as hell and anyone giving Biden a pass for it should be ashamed. First off Biden thinks it’s okay for him to invade women’s personal space. Remember during the primaries he got called out for his behavior towards kids? One week after he acknowledged he was in the wrong he did it again and said that he got permission from the boy he did it too.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 1:31pm

@snoopydawg I found the video with him joking about thin walls and hearing the headboard. In the one I saw, I heard the nervous laughter from the crowd.
Anyway, it is out there.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by QMS on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 2:07pm

@on the cusp

the snaky coke head he is? With a father like that
as a role model, deprivation is expected.
Normally, I would say best kept in the closet but
old uncle Joe can't seem to help himself enough
to hide his lust for young flesh.
Yucky poodoo.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 5:31pm

@QMS imo.
Yeah, Hunter has a father who set no good example, and I am actually surprised Hunter isn't a worse criminal/druggy/thief than he is.
But then, Dad has an insurance policy to keep him in office. The Gaffes top anything Biden ever did.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by mimi on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 6:18pm
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@on the cusp

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 07/15/2023 - 6:22pm

@mimi I might ask?
Her "gaffe" was explained by saying she meant "pollution", not population. But it might also be a Freudian slip.
Hope you are doing great, mimi.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by lotlizard on Sun, 07/16/2023 - 8:42am
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And in answer the lead for the universe’s writing team for Earthly Life, History, and Fate said, “Hold my beer.”

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