Tag Archives: obama

Political Rants

Fifth Column.

Last week their minions were storming the capitol building, attempting to stop the counting of the electoral votes by any means necessary. This week, all they want is for everyone to get along. Fuck that shit. Republican members of Congress, particularly those who actively supported stealing the election and handing it to Donald Trump (the loser) appear to have played an integral role in the insurrectionist attack on the center of American legislative power. As I write this post, the attackers are plotting an even broader campaign against both federal and state targets. There’s reason to believe that this campaign will not only coincide with the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but that it will continue well beyond the change of power unless they are put down in a serious way. The only way to do that effectively is by holding their allies in Congress fully accountable and expelling those who coordinated with the racist minoritarian insurrectionists.

The House voted to impeach the president a second time this week. That’s a step in the right direction, but not nearly enough. Naturally the president should be removed and barred from holding public office ever again, and that should be done yesterday … or the day before, perhaps. But aside from that, we need a deep and timely investigation of this attack, with particular focus on who in the House and Senate may have aided and abetted these criminals. There’s some indication that cooperation may have involved both members and staff on the GOP side. Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, who spent part of last Wednesday hiding from the mob with Congressman Dan Kildee, has spoken about capitol tours given the day before by Republican congress members and staffers – tours have been suspended during the COVID pandemic – that were reminiscent of intelligence reconnaissance (Sherrill is a veteran).

Then, of course, there are members like Rep. Lauren Boebert from Colorado, a first-year congresswoman who promoted herself brandishing a handgun in some vain attempt to paint herself as Palin 2.0. Mission accomplished, as she appears to be a moron, like Palin, but also someone willing to egg on the angry horde that descended upon the capitol. “It’s 1776” she tweeted in advance of the attack. 1776? What happened then … a revolution, right? So … you’re in favor of the attack? Interesting. I understand that the relevant law enforcement agencies are looking closely at contacts between congress members and the mob – sounds like a good idea, but they’d best move with a bit more alacrity, because as I mentioned earlier, this battle is not over. If there’s a fifth column in the House and Senate, we need to know about it sooner rather than later. And we need to expel collaborators pursuant to the 14th Amendment. Now.

We didn’t get here overnight. We got here on a decade’s worth of lies about everything from Obama’s birth certificate to the legitimacy of 2020 election. We need to start holding people accountable, and the best place to start is with these freaks in the Republican caucus.

luv u,

jp

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

Stop The damn War.

We’ve entered a presidential transition, sort of. Sure, one candidate is crying foul and trying to foment a coup d’etat in the most ham-fisted way imaginable, but inasmuch as our short-attention-span culture has already all but normalized this insane behavior, we can consider ourselves well into the process of transition. And no, I don’t mean the the current president is transitioning to some new identity. I mean that he is in the process of being replaced by his general election opponent, who won the November election kind of hands down, despite all the noise.

Given that Biden is busily appointing members of his executive team – some okay, others pretty bad – this seems like a good time to make our policy preferences known to the President-Elect. Everyone’s getting their two cents in, whether it comes in the form of suggesting new policy directions or pushing potential nominees forward. I personally think people on the left should pick an issue or two and start shouting about it, figuratively speaking (or literally, if you prefer), so that Biden can hear us loud and clear. We will all have our preferences as to what demand should come first, what second, etc. I can tell you where I would like to start: STOP THE DAMN WAR.

As of October of 2021, we will have been engaged in this insane war on terror for twenty years. Obama indicated that he would stop it, and he didn’t. Trump said he would stop it, and he hasn’t. Biden is making some similar noises, but I think we can guess that the same political pressures that were brought to bear on his two predecessors will be applied to him as well. The longer we wait, the harder it gets – the conflict has metastasized to encompass other nations, from Iraq to Somalia to Yemen to Libya to Syria, and with each new “front” comes new bogus justifications for why we can’t leave now, new sets of facts on the ground, new twists and turns in the logic of imperialism. Enough. We need to get out now – that’s what Biden should hear from us.

There’s no question but that Trump has made the process of forging an agreement with other nations more fraught with difficulty. Who will sign on to a treaty with us when they know it may be ripped up by the current president’s successor? Nevertheless, I think we need to act on the knowledge that most Americans are sick of the war in Afghanistan, load our troops onto trucks and planes and head for the border. If we don’t, it will just never end.

That’s my ask. What’s yours?

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

Bus hat.

It’s probably best for me to start by saying that I was always against U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war – this was the case during the Obama administration and it remains the case now. But because our troops have been there in numbers exceeding 1,000 for years now, and that we have worked them into Syria’s complex web of security guarantees, alliances, and bitter enmities, it seems only right that we should consider the consequences of whatever decisions we make, whether it means pulling troops out or putting more in. This is a situation in which every power is in it for its own gain, and that includes the United States. That’s why the goddam war is still going on … and thanks to Trump this week, it’s likely to move into a new and more deadly phase.

The Syrian Kurds, who made the mistake of fighting for us as part of the conflict in their country, are now in the crosshairs of a massive military operation by Turkey – an incursion into northern Syria with the aim of establishing a buffer zone between the Turkish frontier and the Kurdish population, which Erdogan considers an enemy. Trump has chosen to throw the Kurds under the bus, so he has proven that he is, after all, an American foreign policy traditionalist. Our foreign policy establishment has been arranging bus hats for that dispossessed people since the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. (See Jon Schwarz’s article in the Intercept for a thumbnail history of our various betrayals of the Kurdish people.) It’s a little mystifying as to why mainstream foreign affairs talking heads are so unhappy with Trump right now. He just pulled a Kissinger.

Trump's expandables

The only fortunate thing for the Kurds of Syria is that a broad swath of American articulate opinion supports them. The trouble is, Trump doesn’t, and apparently Erdogan has something the fat boy wants, hence the policy about-face. Or maybe it’s because, as Trump incoherently said, they didn’t help us during World War II. In any case, Americans tend to love Kurds when they are useful, like they’ve been in Syria, like they were in Iraq in 1991 and after. They also hate and undermine them when they stand in opposition to friendly countries, like the Turkish Kurds in the 1990s. But that’s half a loaf, at least – other stateless peoples, like the Palestinians, don’t even get that.

Like so many others we have on our heads, this bloodbath could have been avoided.

luv u,

jp