Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

“History is watching,” President Joe Biden said this afternoon. He warned “Republicans in Congress who think they can oppose funding for Ukraine and not be held accountable” that “[f]ailure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”

At about 5:00 this morning, the Senate passed a $95 billion national security supplemental bill, providing funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Most of the money in the measure will stay in the United States, paying defense contractors to restock the matériel the U.S. sends to Ukraine.

The vote was 70–29 and was strongly bipartisan. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats in support of the bill, overcoming the opposition of far-right Republicans.

The measure went to the House of Representatives, where House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he will not take it up, even though his far-right supporters acknowledged that a majority of the representatives supported it and that if it did come to the floor, it would pass.

Yesterday, House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH)—who had just returned from his third trip to Ukraine, where he told President Volodymyr Zelensky that reinforcements were coming—told Politico’s Rachel Bade: “We have to get this done…. This is no longer an issue of, ‘When do we support Ukraine?’ If we do not move, this will be abandoning Ukraine.”

“The speaker will need to bring it to the floor,” Turner said. “You’re either for or against the authoritarian governments invading democratic countries.… You’re either for or against the killing of innocent civilians. You’re either for or against Russia reconstituting the Soviet Union.”

Today, Biden spoke to the press to “call on the Speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow a minority of the most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on—even from being voted on. This is a critical act for the House to move. It needs to move.”

Bipartisan support for Ukraine “sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom,” he said. “We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin.”

“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin. Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”

“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen. And that’s because the former President has sent a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world” Biden said, referring to Trump’s statement on Saturday night that he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the 75-year-old collective security organization that spans North America and Europe—but are not devoting 2% of the gross domestic product to their militaries.

Trump’s invitation to Putin to invade our NATO allies was “dumb,…shameful,…dangerous, [and] un-American,” Biden said. “When America gives its word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO is a sacred commitment.” NATO, Biden said, is “the alliance that protects America and the world.”

“[O]ur adversaries have long sought to create cracks in the Alliance. The greatest hope of all those who wish America harm is for NATO to fall apart. And you can be sure that they all cheered when they heard [what] Donald Trump…said.”

“Our nation stands at…an inflection point in history…where the decisions we make now are going to determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.

And I say to the House members, House Republicans: You’ve got to decide. Are you going to stand up for freedom, or are you going to side with terror and tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine, or are you going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or…with Trump?”

“Republicans and Democrats in the Senate came together to send a message of unity to the world. It’s time for the House Republicans to do the same thing: to pass this bill immediately, to stand for decency, stand for democracy, to stand up to a so-called leader hellbent on weakening American security,” Biden said.

“And I mean this sincerely: History is watching. History is watching.”

But instead of taking up the supplemental national security bill tonight, House speaker Johnson took advantage of the fact that Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) has returned to Washington after a stem cell transplant to battle his multiple myeloma and that Judy Chu (D-CA) is absent because she has Covid to make a second attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors” for his oversight of the southern border of the United States.

Republicans voted to impeach Mayorkas by a vote of 214 to 213. The vote catered to far-right Republicans, but impeachment will go nowhere in the Senate.

“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” Biden said in a statement. He called on the House to pass the border security measure Republicans killed last week on Trump’s orders, and to pass the national security supplemental bill.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has said he will use every possible tool to force a vote on the national security supplemental bill. In contrast, as Biden noted, House Republicans are taking their cue from former president Trump, who does not want aid to Ukraine to pass and who last night demonstrated that he is trying to consolidate his power over the party by installing hand-picked loyalists, including his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who is married to his son Eric, at the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

This move is likely due in part to outgoing RNC chair Ronna McDaniel’s having said the RNC could not pay Trump’s legal bills once he declared himself a presidential candidate. After his political action committees dropped $50 million on legal fees last year, he could likely use another pipeline, and even closer loyalists might give him one.

In addition, Trump probably recognizes that he might well lose the protective legal bulwark of the Trump Organization when Judge Arthur Engoron hands down his verdict in Trump’s $370 million civil fraud trial. New York attorney general Letitia James is seeking not only monetary penalties but also a ban on Trump’s ability to conduct business in the New York real estate industry. In that event, the RNC could become a base of operations for Trump if he succeeds in taking it over entirely.

But it is not clear that all Republican lawmakers will follow him into that takeover, as his demands from the party not only put it out of step with the majority of the American people but also now clearly threaten to blow up global security. “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told his colleagues as he urged them to vote for the national security supplemental bill.

Politicians should recognize that Trump’s determination to win doesn’t help them much: it is all about him and does not extend to any down-ballot races.

Indeed, the attempt of a Republican minority to impose its will on the majority of Americans appears to be sparking a backlash. In today’s election in New York’s Third Congressional District to replace indicted serial liar George Santos, a loyal Trump Republican, voters chose Democrat Tom Suozzi by about 8 points. CNN’s Dana Bash tonight said voters had told her they voted against the Republican candidate because Republicans, on Trump’s orders, killed the bipartisan border deal. The shift both cuts down the Republican majority in the House and suggests that going into 2024, suburban swing voters are breaking for Democrats.

As Trump tries to complete his takeover of the formerly grand old Republican Party, its members have to decide whether to capitulate.

History is watching.

(...)I now always know it is one of two things:
1. What it's presented to be OR 2. Intended to look like what it's presented to be.

Biden inches away from Netanyahu as Israeli PM fails to heed US on Gaza
David Smith
in Washington
After walking fine line between Israel and US Arab community, experts say Biden has justification to take ‘harder line’ before election

A long time ago, Joe Biden signed a photo for Benjamin Netanyahu. “Bibi, I love you,” he recalls writing. “I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.”

This twisty, best-of-frenemies relationship has been at the heart of the crisis in Gaza for the past five months. Unfortunately for the US president, the message from Jerusalem has been: he’s just not that into you.

After the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, Biden invoked his long commitment to the country by giving full-throated support to its government’s right to defend itself. Biden’s embrace of the Israeli prime minister was supposed to come with an understanding – spoken or unspoken – that Netanyahu would heed US advice, show restraint and alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

But as the months have gone by and the death toll has mounted, it is a case of all give and no take. Biden is fond of saying “This is not your father’s Republican party” when considering the influence of Donald Trump. Slowly but surely, he has been forced to confront that this is not your father’s Israeli government, either.

“We’re not dealing with the old Benjamin Netanyahu,” said Aaron David Miller, a former state department analyst, negotiator and adviser on Middle East issues who has worked for several administrations. “The risk-averse Israeli prime minister would take one step backward, one step forward and one step to the side.

“We’re dealing with a different incarnation. He’s almost desperate to keep his coalition and prioritises it above all else even at the risk of incurring suspicion, mistrust, the anger of an American president. We’re five months into this and you’ve yet to see the administration impose any cost or consequence.”

Biden, 81, and Netanyahu, 74, have known each other for nearly four decades, since the days when the former served in the Senate and the latter worked at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Biden became chair of the Senate foreign relations committee and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.

Netanyahu served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and became prime minister in 1996, holding the position intermittently ever since. Relations with the US have not always been smooth. Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank, said: “I remember when Bill Clinton emerged from his first meeting with Netanyahu in June 1996. He exploded. He said: ‘Who’s the ******* superpower here?’ Frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu is not new.”

Tensions flared during Obama’s presidency when Biden was vice-president. A 2014 report in the Atlantic magazine characterised US-Israel relations as on the edge of a “full-blown crisis”, but Biden publicly declared that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies”, adding: “He’s been a friend for over 30 years.”

However, the Israeli prime minister undercut the Obama administration by speaking before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill and denouncing a nuclear deal that the US and its allies were negotiating with Iran. Relations with Obama never recovered.

When the 7 October attack happened, Biden was unequivocal as ever in declaring himself a Zionist and duly travelled to Israel to meet Netanyahu and his war cabinet in person. It was a classic diplomatic play: bear-hug Netanyahu in public while urging restraint in private. The administration claims that Israel has duly heeded its advice and taken steps to minimise civilian casualties.

But the overall Palestinian death toll from the war has surpassed 28,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, while Netanyahu has been reluctant to pursue a long-term peace agreement (and rejected calls for Palestinian sovereignty). Anti-war protests have erupted across the US and demonstrators have interrupted Biden’s speeches to brand him “Genocide Joe” – a potential disaster in an election year.

Brett Bruen, a former global engagement director for the Barack Obama White House, said: “Biden went out on a limb for him and part of that effort is that Netanyahu, even if it was not explicitly said, needed to do the minimum to keep things from getting untenable for Biden. And yet it seems as though Netanyahu’s back to his old way of operating, and that’s going to prove costly because Biden now has a pretty strong justification for taking a harder line.”

Bruen, the president of the public affairs agency Global Situation Room, added: “It’s fair to say that the relationship is on the brink of breaking. With the president, you have an unstated expectation that we’ve known each other for a while and therefore can call on some of those favours from time to time and it clearly isn’t working. So you’ve not only alienated key members of the cabinet but also folks who are critical for Biden’s re-election effort.”

NBC News reported this week that Biden has been “venting his frustration” over his failure to persuade Israel to alter its military tactics, complaining that Netanyahu is “giving him hell” and impossible to deal with. The president makes contemptuous references to Netanyahu such as “this guy” and “asshole”, according to unnamed sources who spoke to NBC News, and has said Netanyahu wants the war to drag on so he can remain in power.

Larry Haas, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, said: “There’s no question that political matters are weighing on Biden, and the fact that these reports have come out, that Biden is saying this and that about Netanyahu in private, is not accidental. In a political sense, Biden and his people are trying to walk a fine line between supporting Israel and responding to the complaints of the Arab community and progressive Democrats.”

Biden did flex some muscles by issuing an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians. He has also been increasingly critical in public. Last week he described Israel’s military assault in Gaza as “over the top” and said he is seeking a “sustained pause in the fighting” to help ailing Palestinian civilians and negotiate the release of Israeli hostages – though this is still far short of the ceasefire calls that progressives are demanding.

The president told Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call on Sunday that Israel should not go ahead with a military operation in the densely populated Gaza border town of Rafah without a “credible” plan to protect civilians. More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have fled to Rafah to escape fighting in other areas.

If Netanyahu ignores him again and presses ahead, Biden could signal his displeasure by slowing or restricting weapons sales to Israel, changing course at the UN by throwing America’s weight behind a ceasefire resolution or coming out aggressively for Palestinian statehood.

Any of these would make a point, but would they make a difference? Miller doubts they will happen since the US believes the key to de-escalation in Gaza is achieving an Israel-Hamas deal – which requires Netanyahu’s approval. “I do believe that without the Israel-Hamas deal, you can hang a ‘closed for the season’ sign on this administration’s handling of this crisis,” he said. “They need it.”

I think it's a lot more likely that Israel got caught flat-footed

Flat-footed just don't cut it.

(...)

Sir Alex Younger, a former head of MI6, said Hamas was likely to have been able to achieve surprise by “the complete abandonment of any electronic device or signature”, thereby evading electronic surveillance or signals intelligence.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The Today podcast, Younger said he believed one issue was a structural problem, Israel’s “overreliance on a set of technology systems” to defend itself, including sensors to detect hostile activity near its border with Gaza. “Technology is good at revealing capabilities and actions, it’s not good at revealing intentions,” he said.

But the former spy chief, who stepped down in 2020, said Israel’s failure to pre-empt the attack also stemmed from a wider “failure of imagination” – and drew a parallel with the misjudgment in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks.

“9/11 classically was that. The assumption was not that we were vulnerable to anything in terms of this type of attack. The assumption was that it essentially wasn’t possible,” Younger said.

“And it is my assumption, therefore … that there will have been data breaking through which probably could have been interpreted differently and certainly would be, with hindsight, but people were just not looking at it in that way.”

That thinking was reflected in the fact that, Younger said, Israel had deployed at least 70% of its military in the West Bank, “including units territorially dedicated to Gaza”. There was “a conscious decision” to switch significant force away from the south, he said.

(...)

The former British spy chief also warned that Hamas was “essentially laying a trap for Israel and would be well pleased if Israel commits itself to a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza” – because of the intensity of fighting and the inevitable loss of civilian life that would follow. “You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists,” he said.

(...) source

Duh...well, yeah, obviously.

Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law Wednesday that will allow authorities to confiscate money, valuables and other assets from people convicted of spreading “deliberately false information” about the country’s military, AP reported.

The bill sailed through the lower and upper houses of the Russian parliament, and was unanimously endorsed by the upper house last week.

The speaker of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the measure includes harsher punishment for “traitors who sling mud at our country and our troops” and would “strip those scoundrels of honorary titles, confiscate their assets, money and other valuables.”Guardian

Russian officials have used the existing law against “discrediting” the military that covers offenses such as “justifying terrorism” and spreading “fake news” about the armed forces to silence Putin’s critics. Multiple activists, bloggers and ordinary Russians have received long prison terms.

This should be very interesting!

mRNA vaccines are a newer type of vaccines that work by telling the body to make a protein. This protein triggers an immune response, providing protection against future infections. In contrast, traditional vaccines [of which there are three types] contain weakened or dead viruses or parts of viruses, which also trigger an immune response.

Both mRNA vaccines and traditional vaccines have advantages and disadvantages. mRNA vaccines have a shorter manufacturing time and cannot transmit a viral infection, unlike live vaccines. However, traditional vaccines have a longer shelf life, and some offer lifelong immunity against infections. source

Suozzi is a known quantity on Long Island. He's a former Nassau County executive and is a former congressman. Democrats essentially billed the race as a moderate, adult in the room vs. an extremist, MAGA candidate.

Quote:

No, it's not interesting.

Well yes it is. You know nothing about that security barrier. Your "flat-footed" comment bears this out.

Can you even describe the security barrier? Obviously not, or you wouldn't have offered your "flat-footed" explanation for such a breach.
________________________________________________________________________

And since you've brought it up, the spike protein you refer to has been deemed harmful by the Salk Institute AFTER the FDA gave it the thumbs-up. This was covered in the PCR-Test Cycle Threshold Issues thread.

https://able2know.org/topic/557001-1

How long is your last booster good for? A far cry from joe and tony's assurance that if you get the shot you can't get covid, huh?. Pretty dumb of them to talk out their asses, but what about the people who still believe their original lie?

The experimental injection doesn't prevent infection or transmission. So they were forced to change the definition of "vaccine"to accommodate the fact that it doesn't do what a vaccine does.

Well yes it is.

You know nothing about that security barrier.

Your "flat-footed" comment bears this out.

And since you've brought it up, the spike protein you refer to has been deemed harmful by the Salk Institute AFTER the FDA gave it the thumbs-up. This was covered in the PCR-Test Cycle Threshold Issues thread.