Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

BIDEN IS A SPINELESS MORON

JULY 22
Biden: Eliminating filibuster would ‘throw entire Congress into chaos’

5 days ago
He wants to get rid of the filibuster

How can a sub-mediocre clock-puncher be so spineless after 50 years in office

The mandates were obviously stupid and unconstitutional. He had said he would never be for mandates --- and then he was for mandates

Okay , after a year do you admit that he is a disgusting failure.
US Gave Taliban List of Americans, Afghan Allies in Kabulhttps://www.thedailybeast.com › us-gave-taliban-list-of-...
2 days ago — The U.S. gave the Taliban a list of Americans, Afghan collaborators, and green card holders in Kabul as part of evacuation efforts, Politico reports.

Many political analysts blame Brexit on Obama's visit to Britain to shake his finger at everybody. Polls after he left had shifted to what Obama didn't want, the leaving from the EU

Here comes another one
Here it comes again
Here comes another one
When will it ever end?

I know whatever it is
I've not seen one before
But here comes another one
And here comes a bunch of 'em
Here comes another one
Thank God I'm not having lunch with them.

RIP Terry Jones.

Cute.... and accurate with regard to Thucydides' style. His work has survived because of it comprehensive analysis & description of a major historical event - the fall of the Greek empires. Later in this work he includes Pericles' Funeral oration, reportedly also written by Thucydides (then a general in Athens' army) . It's structure & outline became a model for orations, one which Lincoln reportedly used in composing his oration (or address), given at an analogous event at Gettysburg. Hard to be certain, but the outline & sequence of topical ideas in the two are identical. Unlike Thucydides, Lincoln had the gift of compact eloquence.

georgeob1, do you have any theories about Putin's objectives concerning NATO and Ukraine? While the oligarchs are rolling in dough, the economy of the country isn't that great and it's being hit hard by the pandemic. I'm wondering how he could even afford to deploy troops to the Americas.

And who were these analysts? Your apparent familiarity suggests you could name and cite them.


Again, you ought to be able to link to these polls you say exist.

Detailed historical accounts are a fine thing. But the passage you've quoted is rather like watching video footage of events in the Warsaw ghetto during WW2 with a narrator expressing his observation that, "Humans being humans, there are times of turmoil."

I suspect the threat to deploy troops to the Americas was an empty threat - but it did come from an official of Putin's government. I don't know Putin's intent here, but there are two likely candidates. The first is the restoration of the territorial domain of the Russian and Soviet Empires - a constant preoccupation of Putin's government since he took power, and the second involves efforts to sustain his popularity and political control within Russia. Both are noted in recent commentaries, as I expect you already know.

Ukraine' cultural origins (Kiev) and language are a bit different from those of the rest of Russia and presented similar difficulties to the Tsars of the 18th and 19th centuries as it also later did with the USSR. For example, Ukraine never developed the landed Aristocracy & serfdom that continued until late in the history of the former empire. Ukraine stoutly resisted the collectivization of its free agriculture under the Soviets and paid a heavy price for it, with a couple of million transported to the gulag, and many starvations after collectivization & crop seizures were imposed on them by Stalin. The Soviets tried hard to suppress the Ukrainian language and exported large Russian populations there as they later did with Lithuania and the Baltic states. I suspect Putin dreams of getting it all back.

Biden is dealing from a rather weak position, as he has already removed Trump's sanctions on the Nord Stream project (without getting anything for it), and stopped the previous fast growth of our natural gas production. As a result of this, and his demonstrated ineptitude and lack of leadership, his promises and assurances to our European allies now carry very little weight - if any. Sadly, Biden has made himself a figure of ridicule and contempt.

Perhaps so, but the events described in Corcyra were both unusual in their history and very consequential for the fall of a formerly great civilization.
What's going on today is, as noted, very similar, and may well lead to equally disastrous consequences.

Yes, I'm well aware of that. But we're not there yet and the absence of moral considerations is not helping ward off what might come.

But we're pretty damn close.

This part makes.it very difficult. The morally strong Republicans have already (for the most part) moved over to the Dam side already. Those.without morale can accept any and all outrageous lies without question. It is a really hard obstacle to over come. Huge wars have been fought to achieve this. I am not prepared for that.............yet!!!

In observance of MLK Day, I am posting my annual 'MLK quotes that you won't see being used by right wingers who try to act like they know who the hell MLK was':

1. “Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?

The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity.”
— “Where do we go from here,” 1967

2. “I contend that the cry of “Black Power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.”
— “60 Minutes” interview, 1966

3.
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

— “Revolution of values,” 1967

4. “Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.”

— “The three evils of society,” 1967

There is an implicit recognition from george above that a crisis (or crises, more accurately) of order with attending threats to democratic systems of governance are presently unfolding in America and more broadly in the world. In this, he's correct.

These are complex and multi-faceted matters but overall trends are undeniable. The Pentagon itself, for several years now, has recognized the threats to security arising from climate change with attending consequences of increasing migration patterns is just one, if central, elements in this picture.

Another is how our modern communication systems facilitate broad and effective campaigns of misinformation/disinformation, originating both internally and externally, which are straining or breaking prior social agreements and national/international arrangements. But it's worse than that. Also under strain or breaking are peoples' notions or what is true and false and who is to be trusted to accurately or honestly describe reality. Only 21% of Republicans in America now believe that Biden won the last election. There is always some degree of such epistemological turmoil but the periods where it becomes acute marks the really dangerous points in any culture's history.

It seems to me that the current situation of America is important quite beyond the country itself. America, despite inevitable failings of any nation/culture, was a bold, courageous, enlightened and positive experiment in governance. The real possibility that democracy (in any meaningful sense of the term) will fail there is going to have negative, perhaps very negative, consequences for the world. Temptations towards severe authoritarianism elsewhere will be validated and justified, a trend already evident. And such authoritarian regimes will follow prior patterns of isolated power and retribution against those who oppose or who are not on board. The "common good" will be defined in terms of a severe consensus about the right of the few in power to remain in power and how everyone else must behave and what they must believe. Militaries and para-militaries will enforce the demands from those few holding power.

The presumption - the mythical story - that none of this could happen in America will not survive. Except, that is, in the propaganda outpourings of those few who now hold power and continue to use the myth for their own purposes.

How the US has now come to such a state is also a complex and multi-faceted matter. There are threads that go back to the founding and other threads that go back further to the cultural inheritances that immigrant groups brought to the colonies. There are economic factors including slavery and geopolitical factors, etc.

But there are other, more recent, factors and events which have led to this dire situation. These are the subject of the piece below. Take the time and read it.

What seems to me of critical importance right now is that we don't merely think of what's going on as sort of a mechanical process which relieves us of moral duty because, "In history, **** happens."

The insurrection is only the tip of the iceberg

Behind the insurrection of 6 January was a coup plot that was months in the making, and which involved a dastardly cast of characters

The major question that is being established now is:

Will the SCOTUS uphold democracy and the US Constitution or theRumpf?

It is disgusting (and terrifying) that even has to be considered.

BUT IT DOES.

Whoa. Very scary. Very, very scary. And disturbing. The entire world should be scared.

It is a very important question/issue, yes. But the political forces which have brought this present court into being and which have justified such extremism are arguable much more important because the courts are only one element in a broad campaign to lock America into single party/single ideology rule. This movement is anti-democratic to its bones.

But SCOTUS is the last barrier. That is where their importance resides. Unfortunately, 35% of the US is solidly on board with another 10% leaning. We are.getting dangerously close. In the past, the courts have saved!