Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Political Rants

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

This week the airwaves were filled with more breathless speculation than we’ve seen since the last major award show. Biden meeting with Vladimir Putin! The newly repopulated set of Morning Joe was all a-twitter with neo-Kremlinology. They even invited John Bolton on board to share his valuable perspective (though his only use might be as a reverse barometer).

The talking heads, I kid you not, were hoisting charts that compared the wait times of various heads of state who met with American presidents over the past fifteen years. If Biden comes a half hour late, what does that mean? Is Tony Blinken frowning too much? Jesus Christ, I wish I were joking. You would think, with all the air time, they would talk about the IMF treaty, or Open Skies …. something substantive. Not a chance.

The only mildly interesting piece of this whole sordid drama was the competition for the moral high ground underway between Biden and Putin, each playing to his own domestic audience.

Sympathy for the Devil

In the lead-up to the summit, Putin was interviewed by an NBC reporter, who asked him about Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident (and ultra nationalist, btw). Now, there are plenty of counter examples Putin could have invoked in response if he wanted to demonstrate American hypocrisy. He instead chose the January 6 insurrectionists as examples of people being arrested for expressing political views.

That’s just plain adorable. Putin sees a gang of white supremacists trying to overthrow elective government as dissidents and freedom fighters, even though they had the backing of the President of the United States and more than a few members of the institution they were attacking that day. Hardly outsiders, and treated with relative kid gloves by the police. Of course, they wanted Putin’s favored candidate to remain in power – not because Putin loves Trump, but because Trump is a burning disaster.

Suggestion Box

If Vlad wanted to perform some genuine what-about-ism, he could have chosen much better subjects. Now, I’m sure he has no sympathy for Reality Winner – who was recently released from prison – because she exposed some intelligence on Russia’s influence campaign in the 2016 Presidential election. But he might have gone with Edward Snowden, who after all, is relatively close at hand (in exile in Russia).

Probably a better pick would have been Julian Assange, who is now serving hard time in London and under indictment by the U.S. Justice Department and whose health is rapidly deteriorating. Assange’s “crime” was the release of the Iraq war documents, diplomatic cables, and collateral murder video, for which they’ve been hounding him non-stop for over a decade, through administrations of both parties (see my older posts on this). They are slowly killing Assange, in essence. That’s roughly equivalent to the Navalny accusation.

Of course, Putin could also point to, I don’t know, millions of other incarcerated Americans. Or perhaps the text of our 13th Amendment. The man just has no imagination!

luv u,

jp

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

Meeting the enemy (and it is still us).

President Biden headed off to Europe this week to meet with the leaders of rich, white-dominated countries on that side of the pond. His meeting with Putin is drawing as much interest as you might expect. Some of the recent hacking attacks and ransomware incidents have been blamed on operatives connected at least tangentially with Russia. And, of course, a goodly number of people within the broader Democratic coalition see Russia as responsible for having delivered Trump into the White House in 2016. They see all this, and more, as pieces of the same puzzle, and they want Biden to read Putin the riot act.

To the extent that the ransomware stuff can be attributed to the Kremlin, it can be seen as part of the same effort that drives their illicit involvement in our political campaigns. They want to sow confusion and internal conflict in the world’s sole remaining superpower as a means of keeping us from confronting them – that only makes sense from their point of view.

But the idea that they are having an out-sized effect on our politics is vastly overblown. We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve nefarious foreign actors. Yes, we have serious problems, but they are self-inflicted, not imposed from without.

Clinton v. Clinton

I’ve said it on this blog many times before, and I’ll say it again – I never liked Putin, even back in the early 2000s when that was kind of a minority view. But the impact of their agitation in support of the Trump campaign in 2016 was marginal at best. The biggest reason for the failure of the Clinton campaign was – wait for it! – Hillary Clinton. The biggest non-Hillary factor in her loss was the FBI probe and James Comey, but even that issue was rooted in her own flat-footedness.

Let’s face it – she was a terrible candidate from the beginning, and in spite of that, was almost elected. Regarding Trump’s win, she has no one to blame but herself.

Putin’s Favorite POTUS

Did Putin want Trump to be president? Probably, as likely any Russian leader would. It was obvious that Trump was going to make a mess out of everything from the very beginning. That comports with Russia’s long-term strategic goals viz the U.S. And yes, Trump was nice to Putin as part of his constant self-dealing (he wanted that Trump Tower Moscow), but U.S. policy towards Russia was basically the same as in recent administrations.

As Americans, we have no idea of what it’s like to be a nation in the world that has to deal with the United States. The U.S. is the most powerful military, economic, and political player on Earth, and we don’t exactly walk around on tiptoe. Basically every other nation is dwarfed by our power and influence, so they reach for whatever they can to throw us off.

In the case of Russia, the most cost-effective methods of doing that include exacerbating existing divisions between political factions and, perhaps, making commodity prices – gas and beef – go up. That’s espionage 101. We do similar things in other countries, only from a position of power.

What will Biden say to Putin? God only knows. It would be nice if he did some serious work toward de-escalation of differences, maybe reinstating the IMF treaty, etc., but only time will tell. When you have most of the power, you are inevitably tempted to wield it in increasingly arbitrary ways. That would be hard for Biden to overcome, and he shows no sign of doing so.

luv u,

jp

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

Knocking down the big lies (and little ones).

It’s not typical for me to blog about the same topic two weeks in a row, but it’s a little hard for me to turn my attention away from the bloodletting in Gaza. As someone who has been following this conflict from a comfortable distance for five decades, it has always been a prominent issue for discussion and disagreement. (I can recall arguing with my friends in Junior High about it, probably on the occasion of the 1973 war or shortly thereafter.)

As most conflicts, it is fueled largely with lies – a category that includes distortions, misleading tropes, and outright falsehoods. You’ve heard the really big lies on basically any news channel you watch or listen to. Most of the pro-war voices you’ll hear read off of the same lies / talking points used by the Israeli government and military. Let’s look at some of these points:

Big Lie #1: Israel has a right to defend itself like any other nation

This is a handy one, as it sets out a pretty simple principle that’s hard for most people to counter, all things being equal. But all things are not equal. Some nations are strong, others not so much. Israel, for instance, has one of the most powerful militaries in the world; it also has the active support of the planet’s last remaining superpower (spoiler alert: it’s the United States).

That means states like Israel have both the right and the ability to defend themselves. On the other hand, weak societies, including stateless peoples like the Palestinians, have the same right but far less ability. So while the statement is, on its face, almost obviously true, it is meaningless in the context of this lopsided conflict.

Big Lie #2: Hamas uses the Palestinian people as “human shields”

This one usually comes in the form of criticizing Hamas for having offices in populated areas. First of all, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth, so there’s no strategic depth for Hamas. Second, Hamas is the government of Gaza, so naturally they have an official presence in neighborhoods throughout the territory’s urban zones. Third, what does the IDF think? That Hamas is going to stand out in the middle of a field with targets on their backs, waiting for Israel’s U.S. supplied munitions to blow them to bits? Not a realistic expectation, frankly.

In any case, I’m sure the Israeli government and military have offices all over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other population centers, so this point is blatantly hypocritical.

Big Lie #3: The IDF is the world’s most humane military

This one is frankly infuriating. Sure, the Israeli military sometimes calls the owner of a building before they blow it up. But they also just blow things up in the middle of the night. If they’re so obsessed with minimizing civilian casualties, why do they use high explosives in densely populated areas? It’s quite predictable that people are going to die in large numbers if you do that. If the IDF’s intent is truly not to kill civilians, then they’re either completely disingenuous or the worst shots anyone has ever seen.

My own feeling is that they seek to cause pain and misery for the population in Gaza with this military campaign because that is what they do in the non-military context all the time. They are still punishing the Palestinians for voting for Hamas in 2006. They want them to turn on Hamas out of anger and frustration and overthrow their administration. Where’s the humanity in that?

I could go on, but that’s probably enough. There’s a lot more to say about all of these issues, and I will try to address some of that in other contexts, on Strange Sound, on Twitter, and elsewhere. This killing is unacceptable, and Americans need to use our leverage to stop it now.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.