Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years: Ukraine Part 2

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On September 16, 2026

11 Comments

With the toxic and stupid Trump 2.0 regime collapsing in the polls and the useless Democratic establishment licking their chops at the prospect of another electoral gimme in 2026, it’s more important than ever to rub shitlibs’ faces in the abysmal and inexcusable record of the murderous Biden administration.

If we keep voting blue no matter who, we’re gonna keep getting what we got.

In the interest of the public good, therefore, I make my humble offering, attempting to chronicle the three mass death events the senile husk of Joe Biden nominally presided over in his four years in the White House.

I covered COVID first. That was a debacle that many Democrats exclusively blame on Donald Trump and many GOPers and Independents have concluded was a hoax or some shit, but the reality is (as brilliantly documented by Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism in real time) that Biden’s deliberately negligent policies resulted in the death and disabling of over one million Americans.

Next I covered Biden’s role in provoking the Ukraine War from 1992-2008 as a powerful US Senator who never met a war that didn’t give him a stiffy.

Now we’re going to get to the grit, because Vice-President Biden had Ukraine as part of his portfolio under POTUS Obama from 2009-2016 and we all know what he did as President, even if some dumbasses still insist he bears no responsibility for the disaster he spent decades making.

No, Ukraine Is Not ‘Winning’

First I want to establish some facts about the current state of consensus reality by citing some very pro-Ukraine, pro-war authorities who are throwing in the towel.

I’m going to save a few thousand words by using images of the relevant headlines.

Up first, from The Spectator (UK) one of the most blood-thirsty, Russia-hating publications in the English speaking world:

From the “liberal” Wall Street Journal:

From former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s made killing Russians his passion project for years now, in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post (who had to give it multiple headlines so as not to upset sensitive pro-war liberal readers):

HT Simplicius

With that out of the way, let’s get into the time machine, loser, and go back with me to a time when a young Black President that so many Americans had invested with their “Hope and Change” fantasies needed to have an old racist white guy next to him at all times to make idiots and assholes feel comfortable patting themselves on the back for voting for a Black president.

And note, the point isn’t to excuse Putin for his actions. I’m not Russian, Putin’s not my responsibility. I do have the sense to treat Russia with respect, because I’m a student of history and I don’t know of a single instance where fucking with Russia ever ended up in anything but disaster whether for the Swedish Empire, Napoleon’s France, or Hitler’s Germany.

I’m an American and I’m concerned with the conduct of the elected officials who are supposed to be representing me.

Get In, Loser, We’re Going to Kyiv

Biden wasted no time in building upon the disastrous actions of the Bush/Cheney regime at the 2008 Bucharest summit which called for Georgia and Ukraine to be invited to join NATO. By July 2009, on his first trip to Ukraine as Vice-President Biden was already in Kyiv (we spelled it Kiev back then) lecturing Ukraine’s leadership and then flying off to Tbilisi telling them that NATO membership would be cost free (this is after they’d already had their heads cracked in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War that followed immediately on the heels of the Bucharest summit. Anyone remember John McCain saying “We’re all Georgians now”, as he tried to campaign for President on his desire to drag America into a war in a place few had heard of?).

Here’s some of what Biden said on that first visit to Kyiv in 2009, per the Christian Science Monitor which gave Biden that kind of tough guy headline (“Biden’s tough love for Ukraine”) that got him all riled up and gropy with the females on his staff:

Vice President Joe Biden had some surprisingly pointed comments for Ukrainians yesterday.

Speaking in front of 400 Ukrainians in a speech that was billed as an address to the nation’s citizens, Biden chastised Ukrainian officials for, among other things, their immaturity in dealing with inter-party conflicts. Evoking poet Taras Shevchenko, a national icon, Biden said Shevchenko would likely “be wondering why the government is not exhibiting the same political maturity as the people.”

Reforms have stalled and political bickering has become widespread after Ukraine‘s 2004 Orange Revolution. Coupled with neighboring Georgia‘s Rose Revolution a year earlier, the Orange Revolution was a source of hope for Western countries that democracy could take hold in states of the former Soviet Union.

Frustrated by the stalemate and lack of progress, Ukrainians have showed signs of throwing their support to opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich, a move that would more closely align the country with Russia and, according to some, could tip the country back toward authoritarian rule.

Biden’s remarks seem to indicate that Ukrainians aren’t the only ones who are frustrated. The vice president was expected to address Washington’s concerns only behind closed doors, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the weight of his public remarks were unexpected.

“Centuries from now, what will Ukrainians say of this time?” he said. “What will they say of their leaders? Will they say they returned to the past, or will they say the beginning of the 21st century launched a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But lest the news out of Ukraine been seen as all harsh, Biden was also overheard praising the country’s women. “It’s certain you have so many beautiful women,” Biden is reported to have told President Viktor Yushchenko at an unscheduled visit to a Kiev pub.

What a charmer. Note that bit about the “color revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia. At the time I thought all that shit was organic and awesome. I also thought Gene Sharp was the greatest man since Gandhi.

I’d love to get a poll of Ukrainians today on whether they think following the US and NATO down the garden path to war with Russia was “the beginning of…a period of prosperity, freedom and independence?”

But let’s keep moving.

How’d That Russian Fleet Get In Crimea? Oh Yea, Legally

Turns out the Ukrainians did, in fact, democratically elect the pro-Russian President Yanukovych. Biden’s visits to the country cease for the full duration of Yanukovych’s term.

Yanukovych signed something called the Kharkiv Pact, which extended the Russian Navy’s lease on Sevastopol for 25 years to 2042 in return for a major discount on natural gas. The Accord easily survived an opposition attempt to renounce it in 2013 in the Rada.

The Yanukovych administration also oversaw the passage of a law that forbade Ukraine from entering into military alliances with anyone. Neutrality is always the first step to fascism, war, and disaster, as all Swiss people know.

2013: Ukraine Caught Between the EU and Russia in Trade Tug of War

Shit hit the fan in November 2013 when Yanukovych backed out of the EU Association Agreement, suggesting instead the “creation of a tripartite commission of Ukraine, the EU and Russia, which would work to remove barriers in mutual economic cooperation and trade liberalisation.”

Yanukovych’s reasons couldn’t have been more sinister and inexplicable, per the OSW:

In the context of the upcoming presidential elections in early 2015, where victory is a priority for Ukraine’s ruling elite, President Viktor Yanukovych’s most important task is to stabilise the increasingly difficult economic situation. To this end, it is necessary to ensure Ukrainian goods’ continued access to the Russian market, and to guarantee external financial support. The Ukrainian government is hoping that, in exchange for the postponement of its rapprochement with the EU, it will manage to come to an agreement with Russia on the issue of a stabilising loan and renegotiating the gas contract.

The crazy cat also blamed the IMF for the collapse of the deal with the EU — and certainly everyone knows that the economic hitmen at the IMF and their ilk only bring prosperity in their wake — per the NYT:

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov of Ukraine told enraged opposition lawmakers on Friday that his government’s decision to walk away from far-reaching political and trade agreements with the European Union was based on fiscal imperatives, and ultimately prompted by the International Monetary Fund’s overly harsh terms for an aid package.
…

Protests against the government’s decision were held in several Ukrainian cities, including Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine and a hotbed of anti-Yanukovich sentiment, where more than 5,000 people joined a rally in the main square, led by Mayor Andriy Sadovy. Kiev, the capital, was pulsing with emotion that officials and commentators said they had not seen since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

On Friday evening, about 1,000 people protested in the rain in Independence Square, the revolution’s central gathering point, waving European Union flags and chanting, “Ukraine is Europe!” A bigger rally was set for Sunday. The jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, issued a statement urging people “to react to this as they would to a coup d’état” and take to the streets.

Note that it was western Ukraine that was the hotbed of protest. Good old Western Ukraine, home of legendary freedom-lovers.

Maidan Protests, Entirely Organic, Break Out

I’ll use the definitely not edited by the CIA Wikipedia entry on the Maidan Protests to tell the next part of the story:

The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government.[90] Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations,[91] and the influence of oligarchs.[92] Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.[93] The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger.[5] Euromaidan was the largest democratic mass movement in Europe since 1989[94] and led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

During the uprising, Independence Square (Maidan) in Kyiv was a huge protest camp occupied by thousands of protesters and protected by makeshift barricades. It had kitchens, first aid posts and broadcasting facilities, as well as stages for speeches, lectures, debates and performances.[95][96] It was guarded by ‘Maidan Self-Defense’ units made up of volunteers in improvised uniform and helmets, carrying shields and armed with sticks, stones and petrol bombs. Protests were also held in many other parts of Ukraine. In Kyiv, there were clashes with police on 1 December; and police assaulted the camp on 11 December. Protests increased from mid-January, in response to the government introducing draconian anti-protest laws. There were deadly clashes on Hrushevsky Street on 19–22 January. Protesters then occupied government buildings in many regions of Ukraine. The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters and 13 police.[71]

And about those protests, much like the 2004 Orange Revolution, I’d love to see the US State Department’s books on how much of the $5 billion Obama (and Bush and Clinton and later Biden) State Department official Victoria Nuland bragged about investing in Ukraine between 1991 and 2013 went to that kind of crap. I think there are some words for when one country spends immense fortunes to cause civil unrest in other countries; oh yea, it’s called subversion. Unless the US is doing it, then it’s just spreading freedom and democracy to a grateful world.

Crazy that some Ukrainians still wanted to be neutral and do business with Russia, who offered $15 billion in cash and a massive reduction in what Ukraine paid for natural gas. Evil Rooskies. Always up to something sneaky like that.

America’s investments in peace and democracy were bearing their fruits in the Maidan Protests in Kyiv, but a bipartisan pair of peace-loving US Senators went to the Ukrainian capital to help those fruits ripen even faster.

John McCain (R-Hell) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) addressed a crowd estimated at ~200,000 people saying, “We are here to support your just cause… And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”

McCain shared these noble sentiments while standing shoulder to shoulder with one of Western Ukraine’s most notorious freedom lovers:

Those Putin-puppets at FAIR were still bitching about it in 2018, when then-Washington Post columnist (and current never-Trump freedom lover and Substacker) Jennifer Rubin got to singing McCain’s praises for his sterling human rights record, under an unfortunately chosen photo:

The Washington Post (8/27/18) published an op-ed by conservative staff opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin praising the late Sen. John McCain for his supposed commitment to “human rights.”

Rubin waxed poetic on the ostensible “lost champion” of human rights, who “model[ed] for others the behavior of a free society.” She declared, quite paradoxically, “With the possible exception of the US military…no group was more indebted to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) than the human rights community.”

There was an, er, optical problem, however: For the header image on this column, the Washington Post used a photo of McCain speaking next to the notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok.

Tyahnybok, a longtime fascist, has called for a war on the so-called “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” (BBC, 12/26/12). The far-right leader has attacked the role of “Jews-Bolsheviks” in his country’s history, and claims that there is still today a cabal of “Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine” (JTA, 3/25/09).

John McCain met with Tyahnybok and stood next to him as the senator gave a speech in Ukraine in late 2013, as Business Insider (12/16/13) reported at the time. The Washington Post indicated in the caption on its header image that McCain was “wav[ing] to protesters during a mass rally of the opposition in Kiev, Ukraine, on December 15, 2013.” But it failed to identify the man standing next to the Arizona senator—or his extremist politics, which are the antithesis of human rights.

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Germany Honors Biden For Destroying Nordstream & Their Economy

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On October 19, 2024

7 Comments

I cannot believe this is happening:

Germany honored U.S. President Joe Biden for his contribution to trans-Atlantic relations on Friday, ahead of his meetings with European allies on Russia’s war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

TIME Magazine: Germany Honors Biden for His Contribution to Trans-Atlantic Ties as the U.S. Election Looms

Germany Honors Biden for His Contribution to Trans-Atlantic Ties as the U.S. Election Looms

The sheer delight the pathetic “Traffic Light” coalition government takes in abasing itself before the US hegemon is pornographic in its shameless indecency. Especially the same week that the Danes reported this:

Just days before the Nord Stream gas pipeline attack in September 2022, warships belonging to the U.S. Navy were on the scene and ordered nearby officials to keep away.

That is according to John Anker Nielsen, who is harbour master at Christiansø, the easternmost part of Denmark in the Baltic Sea, northeast of the island of Bornholm and close to the sites of the Nord Stream explosions.

Map showing the route of Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the southern Baltic Sea and location of the leaks. AWZ=Exclusive Economic Zone
Map: AFP / Nadine EHRENBERG, adapted

Nielsen late last month told a reporter at Politiken, a major Danish daily, that he went out with a rescue team four or five days before the blast to check on nearby ships with switched-off radios, suspecting there might have been an accident, only to find U.S. warships, whose staff ordered the team to turn back immediately.

Never forget Biden threatened Nordstream:

Biden: If Russia invades uh that means tanks or troops crossing the uh the border of Ukraine again then uh there will be uh we there will be no longer a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it.
Reporter: What? How would you how will you do that exactly since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?

Biden: We will. I promise you we’ll be able to do it.

and Nuland did it too. This video is still up on the State Department’s official Facebook page because they’re proud of it:

“If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

And Never forget what Nuland said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 26, 2023:

“I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you [Ted Cruz] like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

Blinken celebrated it as an economic opportunity:

“…ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity.  It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.  That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come…”

And then there was this from Anne “It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory” Applebaum’s husband who’s a Polish official:

Former Polish FM thanks US for damaging Nord Stream pipeline

The consequences of this have been the deindustrialization of Germany:

German industry increasingly struggles to compete on the world stage. Particularly hard hit are its mighty chemical and heavy industry sectors, which are now in rapid decline. One of the main drivers is policies that have made energy costs skyrocket, and there Germany serves as a canary in the coal mine for other leading industrial nations.

It’s kind of grimly amusing that Forbes’ use of the euphemism “policies that have made energy costs skyrocket” rather than say “self-defeating sanctions on cheap Russian gas combined with the biggest act of industrial sabotage in modern history” and it also doesn’t mention that it’s been America’s policies that have deindustrialized Germany.

It’s also so humiliating as an American that the neo-conservative cabal of psychopathic nitwits has been in sole control of US foreign policy since the Clinton administration and now they have a lock on US corporate media as well.

The above mentioned Anne Applebaum provided the perfect example of their delusion and idiocy with her September, 2022 prediction that Ukrainian victories in Kharkov would bring down Putin.

But that brings me back to Germany’s pathetic ruling coalition. This is how well they’ve done in recent state elections:

In the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia, the far-right AfD received more than double as many votes as the three parties which make up the federal coalition government — the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), environmentalist Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) — combined. These parties’ results are each in the single digits. The Greens in Thuringia and the FDP in both states even failed to meet the 5% threshold to be represented in the state parliaments.

And on the left:

A newly established populist party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), managed to score votes in the two-digit range in their very first election.

The German people are chomping at the bit to vote out the gang of traitors who have allowed the US to annihilate their economy.

Although in fairness, they also gave the last US President who walloped the Germany economy the same award:

“Biden received the highest class of Germany’s Order of Merit, which was also bestowed on former U.S. President George H.W. Bush for his support of German reunification.”

Kind of fitting that the era of American unipolarity is framed this way. Bush at the beginning. Biden at the end. The Germans footing the bill for American foreign policy.

 

 

 

The Senders stumble into the Terror Dome

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On October 1, 2024

9 Comments

Soundtrack for this post.

William S. Burroughs postulated four political parties in his 1959 novel Naked Lunch: Liquefactionists, Senders, Divisionists, and Factualists.

Per Wiki:

The city is contested by four rival political parties: Liquefactionists, who want to merge everyone into one protoplasmic entity; Senders, who want to control everyone else through telepathy; Divisionists, who subdivide into replicas of themselves; and Factualists, who oppose the other three.

The Senders are a metaphor for mass media propaganda as practiced by Edward Bernays, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Goebbels, and American political consultants.

The Democrats and their allied Never Trumper Republicans are the heirs to this legacy.

The rise of the Internet, then the World Wide Web, and finally social media initially threw them for a loop and played a role in Trump taking over the G.O.P.

Their reaction was to impose a surveillance and censorship regime using the tech monopolies as bottlenecks:

Essentially the Biden administration’s communications policy has been to relentlessly and flagrantly spin, distort, lie

Unfortunately, combining surveillance and censorship with slick media campaigns using the power of celebrity to encourage supporters to form parasocial bonds with politicians is way too much power for anyone to handle.

Because there’s no way not to get high on your own supply.

As YouTuber History Legends said of the Ukrainian war effort:

The propaganda was too strong and too effective.

We have an entire army of NAFO trolls (on) Reddit and Twitter. People that believed 100% everything that was being said by Ukraine.

The Ukrainians will only show their successes to their population as if the Ukrainians are constantly winning.

At the same time we have a million Ukrainian men abroad. We have countless Ukrainian soldiers and enlisted personnel that are not at the front.

We have people in Kiev partying as if there’s no war happening.

The problem for Ukraine is that they haven’t managed to create (a) national feeling of it’s now or never. They always try to portray the war as ‘oh we’re winning. It’s fine.’

So everybody kind of kept their life going because everything is going well at the front but it’s not true and now it’s too late.

The disorientation goes to the top, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s new piece for Foreign Policy illustrates.

The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago. [Really??] But our work is unfinished. The United States must sustain its fortitude across administrations to shake the revisionists’ assumptions. It must be prepared for the revisionist states to deepen cooperation with one another to try to make up the difference. It must maintain its commitments to and the trust of its friends. And it must continue to earn the American people’s confidence in the power, purpose, and value of disciplined American leadership in the world.

Meanwhile, air alerts over Israel:

All of Israel is covered by air alerts

Eyeless in Gaza, indeed.

Ryan Grim tweets:

This is either a complete and total failure to contain the conflict by the Biden administration -- or this is what the White House wanted and it's the most egregious lie told to the public since WMD. Either incompetence or duplicity--no 3rd option. Malevolent in either case.

Incompetence or duplicity? What do we think?

Biden Picks Kamala Harris as VP

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On August 12, 2020

81 Comments

The two most important consequences of this decision derive from the fact that Biden is old and almost certainly senile.

This means that Harris stands a good chance of becoming President if Biden dies or his incapacity cannot be concealed, even with the best drug cocktails.

If that doesn’t happen, Kamala is odds on to be the next Presidential candidate of the Democratic party.

Kamala is ruthless and ambitious, a hard person willing to do whatever it takes to win. That might be acceptable, but her ruthlessness has been used mostly in favor of doing evil. (Here’s a rather long list.)

Particularly comic-book-villain-evil was fighting to keep someone she knew to be innocent in prison. You have to be particularly twisted to do that.

Of course, Wall Street is thrilled, they know they can’t lose. Trump/Pence win, great! Biden/Harris win, great! If either President dies, the person who replaces them will take great care of rich people whose money comes from parasitical rentierism and direct financial subsidies from the Federal Reserve.

Biden/Harris will be worse in foreign affairs than Trump has been (despite the screams). Domestically, they’ll be somewhat better, but will keep the shovels feeding trillions to the rich going. American decline will continue. In four to twelve years, odds are Donald Trump’s true successor, the competent authoritarian “populist” will win, and that’ll be all she wrote.

The US has been offered many off-ramps (the most recent being Sanders, twice) and refused them all. Decline will continue until it is irreversible (it may already be), or until Americans accept that right-wingers aren’t going to produce good results, whatever their party, gender, skin color, or sexual orientation.

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Hunter Biden’s Corruption

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On October 1, 2019

36 Comments

So, this has been covered, but is worth emphasizing:

Let’s start with Hunter Biden. In April 2014, he became a director of Burisma, the largest natural-gas producer in Ukraine. He had no prior experience in the gas industry, nor with Ukrainian regulatory affairs, his ostensible purview at Burisma. He did have one priceless qualification: His unique position as the son of the vice president of the United States, newborn Ukraine’s most crucial ally.

Pretty clear. It may not be illegal, but it is corrupt influence-peddling.

Lots of people get upset at me for saying the problem with Biden, Sr., and many others, is how they prioritize family…

Recently, Hunter Biden told The New Yorker that “the decisions that I made were the right decisions for my family and for me.”

Yeah. Self-dealing and making sure your family is rich, even though they have no qualifications, is exactly corruption. Exactly.

This family worship among public servants, politicians, and even corporate officers has to end. When you’re in a position of trust, your salary and your self is all that your family should get out of it. Not a cushy goddamn job for which they are in no way qualified.

This stuff is rampant in DC and elsewhere. A ton of corruption is semi-hidden. The politician doesn’t seem to take a lot of money, but their husband or wife, or their kids and their friends, well, they’re well taken care of.

This is a large part of how routine “in-office” corruption happens. After office, of course, those who play the game are given low, seven figure salaries, but before that, they wash it through the family.

Give me bachelors and spinsters every day. Give me people estranged from their families.

Your family love is your biz, but should have nothing to do with your public service.

And because corporations have the rights they do because they are supposed to be acting in the public interest, that applies to corporations as well.

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Why Uncle Joe Biden Is Leading Polls

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On May 3, 2019

25 Comments

I’m finding the Biden run amusing, after a fashion, because of Joe’s absolute refusal to pander. He was right on NAFTA, doesn’t regret three strike laws, thinks the bankruptcy bill was great, is taking money from lobbyists (and started his campaign at a lobbyist run party), and so on.

And he’s way ahead in the polls. Oh, his lead is exaggerated because the polls are under-representing younger voters, who will actually come out for Sanders in higher than normal percentages. They’re also not including Independents who will vote in Democratic primaries and who broke for Sanders last time.

But they’re still accurate in the sense that a plurality of Democrats (and in a 1 v. 1 scenario, surely a majority) approve of Joe.

When Biden declared, most pundits were whinging on and about his record, which is terrible.

I wrote about the persona of “Uncle Joe” because that’s what matters to his electability. Joe is a meme, and in the meme he looks great. Your friendly, wonderful Uncle who’s maybe a bit handsy, but doesn’t mean anything by it. That’s Joe.

Moreover, most Democrats thought that the Obama/Biden administration did a good job. They’re, in my opinion, delusional (unless they’re in the top four percent or so), but that doesn’t matter, it’s what they believe. To them Obama was a good–even great–President.

And Joe was part of that. In fact, the most common Biden meme is some version of him and Obama having a great time (the Onion bears a huge responsibility for this, and if he wins they will have a great deal of responsibility for the disastrous policies which ensue (or his loss to Trump.)

So people think “Joe is a great guy” AND “Joe was integral to Obama’s Presidency, which I loved.”

Yeah…

Joe isn’t unbeatable, I suspect, but he starts out with some massive advantages. Sanders (or perhaps Warren, if she genuinely moves ahead of Sanders, which she has not yet, for the same reasons the polls overstate Biden’s support), will outperform the polls significantly.

But he’s still the odds-on favorite.

Because he’s “Uncle Joe” and because too many Democrats think Obama was the next coming of FDR, rather than the bought-and-paid-for servant of the banker class, and merciless murderer (he massively ramped up drone attacks, chose to destroy Libya, and supported the Saudi’s genocidal war on Yemen).

This is definitely the stupidest timeline: Trump and now a candidate who may be elected based on a persona created by memes, while his actual record is largely ignored.

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Biden Declares: He’s Not Your Uncle Joe

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On April 26, 2019

34 Comments

So, Biden’s in the primary. Plenty of other people are chewing up his record, which is terrible, so I’ll pass on that. Just remember that he’s the representative for fucking over poor people and minorities.

I want to address something else: Uncle Joe.

See, the thing is that Joe seems like a great friend, and an even better family guy. I believe that’s true, I’ve seen Biden and this comes across as genuine. Minus being overly handsy, Biden just has a really friendly vibe to him.

He’d be a great friend, and a better father or uncle.

But he’s not your father or uncle (well, unless he is, which is not my expected blog demo) and he never will be.

People have weird relationships with politicians. I remember back in 2000, the poll that showed people wanted to have a drink with Bush, and not with Gore.

Great, except “drinking buddy” isn’t your relationship with the President or anyone important enough to be nominee for president.

Don’t have fantasy relationships with politicians.

A politician is someone with power, and your relationship with one is as someone they can either help or fuck up, whom they don’t care about personally.

What matters is not how they act towards friends and family, but how they act towards people they don’t care about.

How they’re going to act towards you.

Biden has a clear record. If he doesn’t know you, and you aren’t rich, he doesn’t care about you. If you’re poor, owe money, or a cop ever thinks you might have done something wrong, he wants you hurt, badly.

That’s his record.

If you’re rich, of course, Biden’s a good candidate if the only people you care about are you and your rich friends.

But Biden capability of being a great friend and family member doesn’t apply to you unless you are actually his friend or family member.

What’s his (or any other politician’s) record toward people like you?

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Joe Biden’s Touching Problem

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On March 31, 2019

24 Comments

So, Biden has someone accusing him of inappropriate touching.

Biden, as a perusal of news photos will show, has always been very, errr, touchy, with women.

Though he hasn’t said he’ll run for President in 2020, Biden is regularly included in the polling and generally runs just slightly ahead of Sanders, with the two of them well ahead of the other contenders. (Polling at this time is largely a matter of name recognition.)

This isn’t a problem which will go away. If Biden runs, more and more women will make these accusations, because Biden has been free with his hands. It may well be that he meant nothing offensive by it, but the fact is that he does it.

How much this matters is unclear. Trump did far worse things, we have tape, and it didn’t matter.

On the other hand Biden is running as a Democrat, not a Republican.

I suspect the wisest course of action for Biden would be not to run. But he’s reportedly upset he didn’t run last time, after seeing Clinton lose.

If he does run, however, this will be a persistent, open sore throughout his campaign, and probably into his Presidency.

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