Biden news 12/30
1) The headline for this YouTube video is clickbait. Nonetheless, the RFK Jr. campaign has chosen to pursue ballot access first in states where expensive legal challenges are likely to be waged.
Here one would like to smirk at the Biden campaign's de facto position: "to save democracy, nobody will be allowed to vote for anyone but me."
2) Apparently the proposal to seize Russian assets -- basically to steal them in front of the world -- has been moved to the Biden front-burner, or so claims an editorial piece in the Washington Post. Also, it's being covered by The Duran.
3) Two days ago, the WaPo ran an editorial in support of this move. Seize the assets, it argues, and that way the Republicans can be moved to drop their objections to "supporting Ukraine." The primary rejoinder it offers against the doubters is this:
The Russian government is warning that the measure would be met with drastic retaliation. But when the U.S. and European banks froze the money last year, Moscow made similar threats and nothing came of them. Similarly, many warned that freezing the assets would undermine confidence in the U.S. dollar. That, too, has not come to pass.
In short, because the rest of the world hasn't done anything yet, they won't do anything. Doesn't impunity totally rock? Or so they believe.
4) Yesterday Joe Biden warned us that the "US Military May Get Pulled Into Direct Conflict With Russia." Here, one recalls that in October there were two articles, one run by the AP titled "No, the US military isn’t ‘laying the groundwork’ for a draft" and one run by NPR discussing how the military has not been meeting its recruitment goals. So in light of these two articles from October we might be justified in asking Joe Biden what his plan is. How is he going to get people to fill those boots on the ground he appears to want?
5) Yesterday Joe Biden also sidestepped Congress to fund Israel's "we do what we want" campaign again. "Biden administration sidesteps Congress again for emergency arms sale to Israel." Nobody was surprised. Will Joe heed the calls from both Israel and the neocons to attack Iran now? Nobody knows just yet.
6) The CNBC website copied and pasted this press release today:
Muslim leaders expand campaign to abandon Biden in 2024 over Israel-Hamas war
They have a hashtag and a website. Call all of your billionaire friends to tell them to donate.
Comments
The Democrats are not only clearing the Democratic field but
also trying to eliminate Trump from running by means of the courts as he is likely to beat Genocide Joe in the election.
So far it's Colorado and Maine
that have kicked Trump off of the ballot. We'll see.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
Aren't they potentially tossup states? NT
The CO and ME
rulings apply only to the primary ballot, not the general. The 2 parties have yet to officially nominate their candidates for the general.
Re "tossup" states, no. CO is clearly now in the D camp, while ME, with its electoral college vote by congressional district method, is 3 EVs for the D to 1 EV (rural area) for the R.
Trump is on the Colorado ballot
Because the Republican Party appealed to the Supreme Court. The judges put that clause in their ruling.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Well, not
exactly. The CO Supreme Ct ruling came as a result of a lawsuit brought by Rs and some indie voters, not D-registered voters. And in ME, that decision was from the state's Sec'y of State, not the courts.
I have very mixed feelings about invoking 14.3, where neither side is going to be happy with the outcome, and the losing side could get unruly. On the one hand, I don't believe in ignoring parts of the Con that might be politically inconvenient, but otoh the political-social backlash for keeping him off the ballot is potentially considerable, and many of those true believers are heavily armed.
I also find it undesirable in a supposed democracy for 5-6 unelected judges to decide on such dicey issues. I'm strongly against unelected, unaccountable Scotus justices intervening and deciding for the rest of us on other major issues, so at least there is consistency in my position. My preference would be for the individual state elected officials to make their best call, even if that leads to a mixed bag of decisions nationwide, and let the people hold them/their party accountable. The individual states already are allowed to apportion their state's EVs as they see fit, and of course they run the elections pretty much their own way. And as we know the political parties have always had free rein to choose whomever they want, regardless of public input.
Well, on the flip side
If Biden is proven to be corrupt (or already brain dead)
what is to stop throwing him off the ballot in various states?
Unfortunately, in its present state, law fare is dangling
civil upheaval in their justice robes.
The "throwing off the ballot" thing --
-- is a matter of empowered officials (in Maine, for instance, the Secretary of State) being able to disqualify candidates (Trump, for instance) from ballots. (In this regard the Democratic Party primaries in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Massachusetts are decided by the state Democratic Party organizations autocratically). Courts can intervene AFTERWARD.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
14.3 only
talks about insurrection or rebellion, so if a SoS tried to remove Biden from the ballot based solely on "corruption", there would be no basis in the law for doing so. An abuse of power by that SoS. Re brain deadery, the 25th Am deals with the personal impairment issue, a specific process to remove a president unable to fulfill the duties of his office.
Oh, so as long as he can read his scripts
he is fulfilling his duty? Hmm.
I didn't say that.
I said personal impairment is dealt w specifically in the 25th. It has nothing to do with 14.3.
Scholars and historians of this site will fondly recall that I was among the first to call out Joe's mental decline in the months prior to the 2020 race. But my take didn't resonate with the masses.
Not to worry though: I've already predicted, for the record, that Grandpa Joe will step aside and not be the D nominee. I haven't predicted the eventual nominee. The better choice would be Whitmer, but Newsom has an early advantage.
ok, got it: not 14.3 but 25
was trying to feel my way thru an incompetent CIC ..
not a constitutional scholar, but if they guy at the wheel is
mentally gone and he might crash us, what to do?
thanks
I was making fun of Biden’s mental decline
as were many others back then. I remember posting tweets from the media who were talking about it…that was until Obama cleared the field and got others to drop out of the race. Then the media got behind him and his many 'gaffes' went unnoticed.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Never overlook
Her, wokkamile. She hasn't gone away.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I suppose,
like Adlai/Hubert/Gene McC kept running until literal death spared the rest of us from another dreary electoral appearance. I wouldn't recommend it, and I'm not sure the usual Beltway Bunch is clamoring for such a nightmare scenario either.
Biden's past Ukraine behavior
Aaron Maté tells us:
Now, I'm still not clear about how Joe Biden could have "blocked" a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, since he's ruler neither of Russia nor of Ukraine. Certainly it's possible, but what actually happened is something to ask about. And the post is paywalled, and I'm not going to get the 7-day free trial. There's a discussion on RT with the same title as the Mate piece but, you know, it's RT. So I'm not going to make any great claims here about Joe Biden's past behavior with Ukraine.
A present-day assessment can be found in this interview with Larry Johnson, mixed in with a lot of garbage attitudes about the culture of the West. "The Israelis basically own Washington DC." And Johnson's notion that the US is pressuring Israel to put the conflicts to an end? I would like to know whether the US is -- for real -- doing anything more than virtue signaling. A lot of what Larry Johnson says is what a fair number of other people have said: more wars are coming because the hubris of Team Biden is infinite and its trustworthiness is zero.
Simplicius has finally gotten around to discussing Russia's main weakness. Apparently Ukraine has some ability to cause Russia a lot of pain in battles involving drone warfare in which the Ukrainians play a defensive role. In his extended discussion, Simplicius likes to use the acronym FPV, so here's a website link. At any rate, here's a key quote from the Simplicius diary:
So yeah, we're going to see a lot of fast-forwarding of technological development in the art of death-dealing over the next few years. One would like to say that what we are seeing now with Ukraine and Gaza is actually the World War Three of which I was warned back in the last century. It's happening now.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
Simple: Biden,
through the US's puppet PM Boris Johnson, just made it clear to Z that Ukr would enjoy considerable US financial and military assistance if it walked away from those negotiations, but not to expect any such aid or support of any kind if Ukr went ahead and made a deal w Russia.
Old news
Putin explained what happened during his recent interview with journalists. The agreement was that Russia would take no land and Ukraine would not enter nato. Boris told Zelensky that the western governments would have his back if he kept fighting. Dunno what substack covered it but I think simplicious did. Check his older articles.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Pretty good air threat analysis
It's so proximate to the battlefield it's hard to separate ground forces from the air threat as a separate conceptual realm.
I'm a dinosaur but I will hazard a countertactic anyway. My first instinct is go around it. So ballistic missile attacks on logistic hubs, bridges, hqs, fuel depots, ammo dumps, truck parks, can completely go around this threat. Starve the people at the opposing front line cut them off. One can develop cheap countermeasures favoring the defender at the front, but the cost to defend against the longer range threat is much greater. Ignore the maginot line. I'm treating this as a tactical puzzle. I'm not really cheering for this war or any other for that matter. I'm over the my team has gotta win mentality. Nothing to cheer about here. My preference is that the armed conflict be stopped now. These wars are beyond my worst nightmare.
語必忠信 行必正直
Looking back,
It now is clear that the US has long since abandoned all but the pretense of Democracy. By the time Bush v. Gore arrived, our ‘representatives’ were already frontmen for the permanent shadow government, spawn of the WWII OSS under Alan Dulles, and the international banking cabal. This only with the benefit of Janus’s hindsight on my part.
Perhaps ‘Democracy’ was always a dream, an artificial notion created by erstwhile feudal lords and monarchists as a tool to extend their control over the masses. Be that as it may, any reckoning from the bottom up will be messy and chaotic. Who will pick up the pieces when the dust settles? Will the rabble morph itself into a coherent and benevolent whole?
Is this human experiment on Planet Earth going somewhere, or just going around in circles, ad infinitum?
Fool that I am, my hope for the future for us all still remains, battered, but not yet dead.
Happy New Year, 2024!
“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Good luck with 24!
Just before New Years' Day
I was listening to KSKQ radio in my car, and I tuned in to a regular syndicated Sunday show called "Philosophy Talk." The hosts discussed "American Futures," speculating about the political future of America. The "optimistic" future they had, one which saw a return to "normal politics," was one in which:
1) Joe Biden is re-elected
2) Donald Trump is reined in by the Republicans as a "transgressor of norms"
The "pessimistic" future was envisioned as one in which the US became something like, say, "Russia." The hosts then struggled "forward" along this line of "reasoning" to try to avoid saying anything specific about the real world.
I thought their schtick was hilarious. Who pays these people?
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
Bidden campaigning