Tag Archives: Biden

Political Rants

The Whine That was heard ’round the world

I just want to say, for the record, that Senator Lindsey Graham is a whiny little barnacle. The man has zero charisma, zero original ideas, and that’s why he attaches himself to the ample asses of men like Trump, McCain, you name it. Who’s next? I don’t know. Which right-wing garbage scow is likely to pass this way sometime soon?

In case you think I’m just going off on a random tirade, let me just say that I’m making this observation in reaction to the first days of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I shouldn’t single Graham out. The entire Republican side spent the day simpering about the unfairness of a process that has yielded them a 6 to 3 reactionary majority on the Supreme Court for the rest of any of our lives.

Playing to the freak mob

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are mostly just opportunities for political grandstanding. Senator Josh Hawley, for instance, is shoring up his Trumpist/Q-anon conspiracy theorist base, suggesting that Judge Jackson’s judicial record on cases involving child sex offenders is somehow troubling. The specific language he’s using is crafted to appeal directly to the Q crowd, who espouse a retread version of the blood libel. Democrats are pedophiles, he’s suggesting, and this judge is enabling them.

Hawley’s concern for the children moves me close to tears. I can think of one easy way he could have made a difference in the lives of literally millions of American children: support the child tax credit. Of course, he voted against it, along with all of his Republican colleagues. Democrats might want to remind people of this from time to time. They might also want to remind people of Hawley’s support for the insurrectionists who attacked the capitol January 6, 2021.

Ancient grievances

Now, I don’t want to suggest that there was a “good old days” when this sort of political grandstanding didn’t happen. There was maybe a bit more congeniality back in the 1990s and before, but these hearings were still a freak show. Back when Orrin Hatch was the ranking member and Strom Thurmond the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch opened every confirmation hearing with a long, drippy appreciation of Thurmond, a life-long confirmed segregationist shit-bum. No lie – I heard it at least twice.

The Republican’s evident resentment of Democrats on the committee stems back to the Bork hearings in 1987. Even then conservatives dominated the Court, and while Bork was turned down by the Senate, another conservative jurist, Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed instead. GOP senators at least affect to still be mad about Bork, about Thomas, and certainly about Kavanaugh, suggesting that Democrats are wild-eyed extremists attacking poor unsuspecting Republicans as they leave the office at the end of the day. Would that they were.

The humanitarian gambit

Russia’s murderous attack on Ukraine continues, as do the corporate media personalities who argue for America’s entry into the war. It is nothing less than this. They are now pushing the humanitarian intervention line – the one first used to blow things up in the Balkans in the 1990s, later trotted out for Iraq and Libya. Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe suggested to Biden’s pentagon spokesperson that not intervening might “make us look weak”.

They are using this to chip away at the administration’s resistance to direct military involvement in Ukraine. The left needs to be unified on this – no entry into this war, period. War with Russia is not an option, and hasn’t been for more than 75 years. We need to remind people of this simple, obvious fact – nuclear war means the end of organized human society, period. There is no justification for that level of risk to every living thing.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

With friends like us, who needs enemies?

Anyone who thinks what we’re doing to Afghanistan is uniquely cruel has not been paying attention over the last few decades. We did something very similar to Vietnam after that endless war ended. We sanctioned the government, denied them aid, blocked others from trading with them, and so on. That lasted decades, and I have no doubt that, given the prevailing political mood, the Afghan strangulation might last years, at least.

What the hell is the point of this policy? We bled rural Afghanistan for twenty years. Every family lost someone to our bombing runs, drone strikes, or night raids. Sniveling hacks like Lindsey Graham seem satisfied that all this killing has accomplished something, but he’s wrong, as usual, unless the point was to make some people a lot of money. As we sit around grousing incoherently about retail terrorism, a million people are on the brink of starvation, and we won’t even let them have their own damn money.

Keeping the creep-asses happy

I don’t imagine that our leaders actually care that much about people in other countries. They often pretend to care one way or the other to please some domestic constituency. For instance, it’s hard to find a politician willing to say something good about Cuba, or Venezuela, or some other official enemy. It’s not because they’re official enemies – on the contrary, they’re official enemies because our politicians don’t want to say anything good about them.

If I were to assume the best about Biden, I would guess that he won’t agree to free up Afghan reserves held in this country because he doesn’t want to be criticized for appearing to support the Taliban. I’m sure he can hear the attack ads in the back of his mind – Biden gave money to the Taliban! He supports terrorists! Not unlikely, though the right wing is going to say that anyway, regardless of what he does. So maybe a million kids need to die so that he can avoid some amount of criticism. That’s the best case.

For reasons of state

What’s the worst case? That they’re cravenly putting people’s lives at risk for some perceived gain. It’s kind of the same thing, except maybe more actively evil. Our leaders are well-practiced at standing by and folding their arms while thousands die. Look at the global COVID pandemic – we could have taken steps to tamp down the virus all around the world, thereby saving maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. But we didn’t because, well, we value free markets and private property over all other things. Even people.

The Lindsey Grahams of the world affect to be afraid that, if we don’t kill them over there, they’ll find some way to kill us over here. From what I’ve heard of the rural experience in Afghanistan over the last twenty years, I would guess that we are now in more danger from angry Afghans than we ever would have been had we decided not to invade. So, either the Senator is an imbecile or maybe he just doesn’t care that we’re making people bitter enough that they’ll want to get back at us one day. (My guess is that, by then, Graham will be long gone.)

Self-licking ice cream bomb

There is, of course, a financial incentive. The Pentagon budget is a tremendous bonanza for defense contractors. Untold fortunes have been made off of these massive, multi trillion-dollar budgets. Because institutions have a tendency to perpetuate themselves, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that our global war on terror is likely to keep rolling and rolling, regardless of success or failure.

The machine is doing exactly what it’s built to do. No, it’s not keeping us safe – that’s not what it’s built for. It is making people rich, though, and so by that standard, our foreign policy is a screaming success.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Twenty Years and Counting … And Counting.

This week marked the 20th anniversary of our illegal and profoundly immoral post-9/11 prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Lord knows I’ve been posting about it long enough.) And though the Afghan war is over, there’s no end in sight for the remaining 39 prisoners captured following our invasion of that unhappy country.

At a time when we should be following through on multiple presidents’ pledge to shut the place down, we’re doing the exact opposite. Biden’s Pentagon is planning another $4 million secret court room in the island compound. Looks like we’re planning on prosecuting some detainees, though under what auspices it’s not clear.

Never the less, let’s look at some of what is clear about Gitmo.

Where the hell is it, again?

Okay, so … the United States has hundreds of military installations around the world, including a significant number in Central and South America. But typically those facilities operate in what we consider to be friendly countries. The reason is simple – our military is an imposing presence, so much so that only a friend could tolerate their presence.

But Guantanamo is located in Cuba, a country that has been under unrelenting attack from the United States since the very early 1960s. You would think we might have packed that place up long ago, but it’s too valuable an instrument of intimidation. Does anyone think Cuba willingly accepts the presence of a U.S. base on their territory, occupying their principal eastern-facing port? It’s a little hard for us to credibly criticize Russia for leaning on Ukraine when we do this kind of shit.

The remaining victims of GWOT

Thirty-nine detainees remain at Guantanamo, of whom 27 have not been charged with a crime. The remaining detainees are basically un-prosecutable by any reasonable standard, as they have been subjected to torture and forced interrogations. The Biden Administration has recently approved five detainees for release, but this means next to nothing. The prison at Guantanamo is a Kafkaesque trap, holding men whose lives mean nothing to their captors.

The fact is, they won’t be released because to do so would have negative political consequences. No president wants to take the heat for releasing “jihadists”, even if none of the detainees cleared for release has ever raised a hand against the U.S. When Obama lost his nerve on this issue back in 2009-10, that was our last chance to shut this dump down. Now the only thing that can kill Guantanamo is us.

What the hell do we do about it?

So glad you asked. We can call our representatives, our senators, our president, and tell them that twenty years is more than enough. Shut that atrocity down now and release the remaining detainees. Recompense them in some measure for the harm we caused them. Represented by a moron? I know the feeling! Call him/her anyway.

luv u,

jp

P.S. just posted an new episode of Strange Sound – the first one in several months. Give it a listen at Anchor.fm or wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.