.@FoxNews: “The President has been anything BUT off the grid while here in Delaware.” He spoke to PM Netanyahu, and he “spoke with his Nat. Security team this morning, Pope Francis too, plus the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, the UK, and Canada too.” pic.twitter.com/M4k9QWUt90
— Herbie Ziskend (@HerbieZiskend46) October 22, 2023
The United States remains committed to ensuring that civilians in Gaza will continue to have access to food, water, medical care, and other assistance, without diversion by Hamas.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 21, 2023
A convoy carrying much-needed humanitarian assistance crossed the Rafah border this morning into Gaza to address the growing humanitarian crisis. We thank our partners in Egypt and Israel, and the United Nations, for facilitating the safe passage of these life-saving shipments.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) October 21, 2023
Seems good that the U.S. government is using its influence over Israel to get humanitarian aid to Gaza. https://t.co/HVoVH680Nr pic.twitter.com/PA82yAFJsL
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) October 21, 2023
Over the last two years, we've revitalized the partnership between the EU and the U.S.
Together, we'll continue to address our most pressing global challenges – including strengthening our economic security and standing with Ukraine against tyranny and Israel against terrorism. pic.twitter.com/uAUKV0c2wu
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 22, 2023
Oct 20 (Reuters) – An estimated 20.3 million people watched President Joe Biden's Thursday night prime-time speech advocating wartime aid to support Israel and Ukraine, according to Nielsen.
More than three-quarters of the TV audience was over the age of 55, Nielsen said.— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) October 20, 2023
Numbers 1, 2, & 4 of FDR’s Four Freedoms. https://t.co/SnqsjdzRhY
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 23, 2023
Seems to me Biden gets dinged a lot for not being performative; he doesn’t jump on the desk and scream at the press or the audience.
To me it’s a feature and not a bug
— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) October 23, 2023
NotMax
Dolt 45: Me, me, me.
Biden: We, we, we.
Jeffro
It must be tough as hell to be a senile old dolt AND the world’s most cunning criminal mastermind. I don’t know how Uncle Joe does it.
NotMax
@Jeffro
“Uncle Joe” always calls to mind Stalin for this oldster.
Personally did not vote for an uncle, voted for a president.
OzarkHillbilly
All the way home.
OzarkHillbilly
More at the link.
WereBear
We all voted for a President. And we got one!
And considering his long history with NATO, we got the right one.
bbleh
How DARE the President travel a hundred or so miles to his Delaware home, rather than flying a thousand miles to one of his golf resorts and charging the Secret Service full rack rate for rooms while they’re there?!? Doesn’t he have ANY respect for the office???
The Thin Black Duke
OK, let’s be honest: how many people here knew that the Joe Biden who railroaded Anita Hill years ago would evolve into the most transformative POTUS of our lifetimes? Is this the universe where Spock has a beard?
Another Scott
This seems to be good news in Argentina – Reuters.com:
Yet another instance where the polls were wrong.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
A label which deserves to be imported from across the pond with alacrity.
OzarkHillbilly
Trump is ‘single most dangerous threat’ to the US, warns Republican Liz Cheney
Interesting. All it takes to earn the label of “moderate” is to be in favor of free and
fairelections. Never mind her far right positions on damned near every other issue.ETA: deletion of the word “fair” because I would bet donuts to dollars she is all in on gerrymandering.
lowtechcyclist
@The Thin Black Duke:
To get a bit more recent, how many people here thought that the Joe Biden who was one of the chief enablers of the 2005 Bankruptcy ‘Reform’ Act would evolve into the most transformative POTUS of our lifetimes?
I was willing to believe he’d evolved in the decades since Anita Hill (and yes, I watched those hearings and was appalled and disgusted by Biden) but that bankruptcy law was one of most recent things he’d done as a politician on his own, before becoming Obama’s VP nominee. Back in 2019 and early 2020 when the nomination was still up for grabs, if I wasn’t going to judge him on that, what was I going to judge him on?
I’ve had three years to get used to Biden having become a far better candidate and President than in my wildest hopes. But every now and then I still go, “did this really happen?”
It did. Best President of my lifetime. No one else is even close.
NotMax
@
MSM: “Moderate schmoderate. What’s her favorite cookie recipe?”
//
NotMax
Dang it. Fix.
@Ozark Hillbilly
MSM: “Moderate schmoderate. What’s her favorite cookie recipe?”
//
WereBear
@The Thin Black Duke: People are SUPPOSED to evolve on a personal basis, no?
I came to regard President Obama’s ability to gather talent around him more of an endorsement than I expected :)
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
I will note that ‘damned near every other issue’ has two significant exceptions in her case. In the debate for the GOP nomination for the Congressional seat she still occupied then, she supported the science on Covid, and she argued that global warming was real and a threat.
Those aren’t exactly trivial issues, so I think it’s wrong to suggest that she’s in lockstep with GOP ideology aside from the conduct of elections. Sure, she’s way to the right of any Democrat even still, but credit where credit’s due.
NotMax
@WereBear
Removing Biden from the the insularity (and proscribed niceties) of the Senate when he became V.P. expanded his perspective.
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s been a pleasant surprise to me too. Also, Biden’s record as chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the W years didn’t inspire confidence in his foreign policy chops, but he’s done extremely well on that front, IMO.
Raoul Paste
@OzarkHillbilly: “ all the way home”
I didn’t see that coming
lowtechcyclist
Getting Mitch McConnell to come out in support of his aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, etc. was a big win for Biden. Again, how the fuck does he keep on doing stuff like that? It’s going to make it a LOT harder for the House Rethugs to refuse to bring this up, at whatever point they finally get a Speaker.
HeartlandLiberal
I read in the past two days where Biden had traveled over 19,000 miles in the past few weeks, engaged in meeting leaders in hotspots in the Middle East. Hardly a sign of doddering dementia.
Tony Jay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Nah. In that universe the evil Empress Hillary, bloodstained conqueror of Benghazi, has only just been overthrown in a conspiracy orchestrated by Lord-Chancellor Biden of Scranton and replaced by a figurehead Junta that numbers Guard-Marshall Grohl, Commandant Chomsky and Lord Keanu ‘The Harrower of Hawai’i’ Reeves in its ranks. Oh, and the world’s last, best hope rests with the legendary Resistance leader Donny ‘Loverman’ Trump and his Militia Alliance for Global Amity.
Funnily enough, no one likes Piers Morgan there either, but otherwise totally different.
Aussie Sheila
@lowtechcyclist:
Agree with that. He has surprised me since his election. He has surpassed by far any expectations I had, which were limited to the fact that he wasn’t tfg, and wasn’t a fascist.
I hope and trust he has good health and great medical support and advice and I hope and trust that the usual billions in election funding flows to him and candidates up and down the ballot that aren’t actual fascists. That would be good for everyone. Especially for the US population that doesn’t have more than a weeks worth of savings if something goes belly up in their life.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
And, once again, Piers Morgan raises his dumpling shaped head.
NotMax
@Raoul Paste
We vs. Whee.
Quasi-obligatory?
:)
HeartlandLiberal
@NotMax:
Nailed it!
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: I WISH but it could happen. I’d love a distaff rematch of 2016 SO MUCH.
Wingnut heads exploding as the dilemma of white rich woman/republican vs old white guy/democrat.
They might fry some wires.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: Now I want her to enter the primaries! They would be a dumpster fire of LIT.
mrmoshpotato
Did they cry at the commercial break?
Did it hurt to admit that Biden’s pretty damn good at this presidenting thing (and they’re a container ship load of penises?)
WereBear
@NotMax: I adore Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of LBJ (hush raven, I know) and he was absolutely driven to hold power until the day he gave it all up in 1965, for African American Civil Rights.
And threw us into the Republican backlash which still reverberates today.
Sometimes I think it’s not a personal transformation so much as a ruthless inventory of priorities. Which might explain the wisdom of age :)
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: Thanx for the clarification. And you are right, those aren’t trivial issues. I want to note that I said “damn near everything else” to allow for the inevitable exceptions.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: I hear we can go far being cool as ice cream. Then, offer them some.
WereBear
@Tony Jay: By golly, you could sell that to Disney as a superhero movie and I would want to see it.
The last few years has been — painful — and I wasn’t a fan even as a child. Unlike most, I would find the source material in the library.
WereBear
@Aussie Sheila: I was most enthused because he’d been President Obama’s veep, and he was not like Pence at all.
I think Obama surprised everyone in the nation with his Biden pick, but trust him to recognize talent :)
President Obama did not have a lot of experience in the nation, much less globally, but was smart enough to know it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raoul Paste: I have granddaughters, the youngest of whom loves to play “This little piggy”, so of course it was the first thing I thought of.
WereBear
@mrmoshpotato: They HATE all this presidentn’ he’s doing.
Why can’t he play golf in stained paints like a proper dictator!
Betty Cracker
@WereBear:
Very well put.
OzarkHillbilly
@HeartlandLiberal: Yeah, but trump once visited 3 of his golf clubs in one week.
wjca
Having served in Congress from a state with only one representative, why would gerrymandering be of personal interest to her?
NotMax
@WereBear
“Golf is the only game in the world where it takes longer to explain than it does to play.”
– Will Rogers
;)
The Thin Black Duke
I never understood the value of “institutional knowledge” in politics until Dark Brandon showed me how it’s done.
Joe Biden is a great role model for other Grumpy Old Guys like me in illustrating that getting stuck in a fossilized mindset is a choice, not a predetermined outcome.
Betty
Srnator Mike Lee referred to Biden as Caligula for being at the beach. It is believed he meant Nero. Clowns all around.
kalakal
@Tony Jay: There is no universe in which anyone likes Piers Morgan. He is the multiversal constant.
Biden has impressed the hell out of me. What I really wasn’t expecting was his diplomatic superpower(s), his achievements in shaping the US’ foreign relations are astonishing
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Tony Jay: Is that the world where James May punched Piers Morgan’s lights out and then was given an award for outstanding contributions to British broadcasting? Or am I thinking of a different funhouse mirror universe?
wjca
Has anyone told you that you are sadly deficient when it comes to seeing everything in black or white, all or nothing, binary terms?
NotMax
@Betty
Caligula At the Beach.
Fellini’s worst movie*.
*(not meant to be a true statement)
Matt McIrvin
@The Thin Black Duke: I was annoyed when Obama chose Biden as a running mate, because Biden had a long history of legislative actions and positions that bothered me. Being Vice-President seems to have matured him; his performance in that job was exemplary.
As President, I do have my disagreements with him but I also understand that he knows which way the wind blows. He isn’t as pro-immigration as I want him to be; in the current crisis, his public rhetoric leans far more pro-Israeli-state than I’d prefer. But the positions I would prefer in both cases would be deeply unpopular. (And in the case of Israel/ Palestine he seems to be using the US’s leverage to secure humanitarian aid for Gazans explicitly against the Israeli ruling party’s wishes, which is interesting and good.)
OzarkHillbilly
@wjca: Ever notice how when the House switches the majority, there is a spate of retirements in the losing party? They all hate serving in the minority.
Jeffro
@NotMax: thanks! You know he’s not literally my uncle, right? =)
Suzanne
The evidence of the last couple of weeks seems to back up the “Biden loudly supports Israel in public, but is being a hardass in private” theory. If that’s how it has to be, fine. I have been waking up each day thinking that today will be the day we watch a bloodbath of civilians begin. And the strikes on the hospital and the Orthodox Church are terrible, but I also fear that it could be much worse.
Again, to state my position clearly, FUCK HAMAS with whatever implements, military or civilian, are most effective and convenient. I absolutely support Israel in that. I am equally concerned with the lives of the citizens of Gaza, and I am pretty well unconvinced that a ground war — or any military “solution” — will be effective at creating lasting peace and security in this conflict, and therefore, I look on with nothing but dread and sadness.
Joey Maloney
@NotMax: Personally I prefer “President Grandpa”.
NotMax
@Jeffro
Even if you follow a line through Kevin Bacon?
/silliness
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Too f’n funny.
Betty
I was also skeptical of Biden, but what I knew of two of his top advisors gave me hope. Ron Klain and Jared Bernstein are two very good guys.
Jeffg166
@The Thin Black Duke: Some people live and learn.
Joey Maloney
@Betty: When is Lee next up for reelection? Maybe Incitatus will primary him.
wjca
In fairness it should be pointed out that, in addition to his own considerable talents, Biden has going for him that the rest of the world (outside Russia, North Korea, and perhaps Saudi Arabia) was overcome with relief at having TIFG off the international scene.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: The Republican party’s Internationalist wing gained the upper hand when Eisenhower beat Taft in 1952. They maintained their advantage until Bush’s stupid and destructive Iraq war. That fiasco discredited the Republican establishment and opened a path for the Isolationists to put one of their own in the White House, in the person of Donald Trump.
McConnell is an Internationalist, as are other Republicans like House Foreign Relations Chair Michael McCaul.. They seem exceptional, but this general view of foreign policy is still shared by a majority of Republican Senators and a sizeble minority of House menbers.
McConnell and like minded Republicans are exceptional in that dynamics within their party’s base favor the Isolationists. For those Republican voters, “Bush” is now a dirty word, Romney is a RINO, and McConnell is either Satan or working for Him.
Next year’s Republican primaries will interest me in this regard. Unless we’re in a war and Americans are being lost, foreign affairs usually are second-tier issues in American politics. Will next year be different for Republicans? Probably, in that more primary challengers will likely use Isolationism as an attack issue, and maybe a successful one.
President Biden’s aid package will heighten intra-party divisions on Internationalism vs. Isolationism. A lot of House Republicans have been sitting on the fence with moistened fingers in the air. trying to find which way the wind is blowing. Now they’ll have to decide on which side of the fence to climb down on.
Scout211
In stark contrast to President Biden’s competence, the former guy is at it
againstill. You’ve all heard that he now claims Sidney Powell was “never” his attorney (which mucks up his defense plan of blaming bad legal advice for his criming), now he claims he didn’t expose military secrets at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is recoded evidence. LinkBut, but, but “Crooked Joe” is old.
p.a.
I may have, a few times in the past, referred to Joe as (D-MBNA). Things change, sometimes for the better!
Chief Oshkosh
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Pretty sure Jeremy Clarkson, not James May, punched Piers Morgan. Clarkson and Morgan deserve one another.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Yeah, that’s basically where I am too. Yesterday, I saw a couple of U.S.-based media reports attempting to throw cold water on the idea that Biden insisted the Israelis allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. But the direct quote from the Israeli defense minister in a tweet above is good enough for me.
snoey
@p.a.: Transactional politics. When he was a Senator from Delaware he represented Delaware. He’s working for all of us now.
Kay
Good article about Jordan and how he ended up with so much power. The parts about Taibbi and Shellenberger are interesting. Taibbi and Shellenberger were coached by Benz (a white nationalist who is influential on the far Right) :
I smiled when I read Taibbi’s claim of “22 million Tweets” because Taibbi is inumerate and easily fooled with large numbers- he was tricked the same way with his reporting on the 2009 financial crisis. I met two Qanoners early on in the Qanon conspiracy theory (long story- they were in our county court) and they told me “80,000” children were kidnapped by strangers annually. 80,000!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Scout211: There are tapes, you ding-dong! (Trump, not you, Scout)
My favorite part is the last line about Trump saying they never called him for a comment when there’s a comment from him in the article.
Soprano2
@The Thin Black Duke: I have a vague memory of a reference on WB’s “The Flash” to the fact that our world was the only one in all the alternate universes where TFG won that election. LOL I could be wrong about that, maybe my mind created it, but I swear there was a reference somewhere.
Michael Bersin
@Tony Jay:
And the republicans in the House have a narrow majority, they dumped their Speaker, and can’t agree on a replacement. So, exactly the same in every plane of the multiverse because the multiverse has a perverse sense of humor.
Soprano2
That reply by Defense Minister Gallant sure makes it sound like Israel would be OK with depriving the Palestinians in Gaza of food and water indefinitely if it weren’t for pressure from the United States. I’m glad Biden was able to make them allow help to reach the people who don’t have any choice about what Hamas does.
Tony Jay
@kalakal:
His dislikability is the cosmic nexus around which all other primordial constants orbit. In all universes at all times, his is the face that gods and monsters alike want to punch.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
In that universe Top Gear was a popular vehicle for anti-petrolhead polemics where Jeremy Clarkson, the shoeless hippy poet of ecological sustainability, would spend each episode extolling the virtues of turnip-powered zero-emission engines while May and the gerbil fellow would bicycle to the homes of prominent gas-guzzlers and torment them with hours of Mongolian throat-singing and drum circles.
But yes, the episode where May jumped out of the lentil bath in which he was interviewing the Archdruid of Ynys Wydryn to land a globally applauded right-hook on Morgan’s nose is regularly voted one of that universe’s Top Ten TV Moments.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
“Sand got in everything.”
Kay
@Soprano2:
They probaby needed a way to back out of their ridiculous position. It never made any sense to make aid contingent on returning hostages but they threw down this quid pro quo publicly so were stuck with it. Biden allows them to back off it.
Biden’s biggest problem is going to be that Netanyahu and the people he puts in power are belligerent, incompetent morons and the ony people who can fix that are members of the Israeli public.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: It’s amazing to me how the press cannot even allow Biden to have that kind of victory. They really, really, really want TFG back.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I am also innumerate and was unduly impressed with Taibbi’s reporting on the 2009 financial crisis. ;-) Early in Taibbi’s heel turn, I wondered how on earth he could evaluate the Trump Russia scandal and be blind to the Trump gang’s rampant corruption — a classic white collar crime wave was taking place right under his nose! Now I understand.
Ken
I was going to quibble about cricket, but then remembered that the length of the men’s test matches was extended from three to five days.
Tony Jay
@Michael Bersin:
Except in that universe, the reason the Grandly Omnifriendly Party are without a Speaker is because McCarthy had to make a choice between steering important legislation through the House and his volunteer work for the Make A Wish Foundation, and they can’t replace him yet because none of the GOP Representatives have been able to prise the universally beloved Matt Gaetz away from the Free Hospitals he acts as paediatric specialist in long enough to vote for him.
linnen
16@lowtechcyclist;
I’d say that OzarkHillbilly has the right position on this. ‘NOT hostile to science’ and ‘NOT fash-curious’ should be the political entry-level equivalent of “You must be this high to ride this amusement.”
Liz Cheney is still further to the right of her pro-Trump replacement, Elise Stefanik. Labeling Liz Cheney as “moderate” Republican (even in air quotes) reduces the utility of the term moderate to a Broder/Brooks hashtag, #notallRepublicans. She may not hold extreme Republican views (holding 95% of them instead of 99.9%), calling her a moderate only ratchets the Overton Window to the right.
Ken
“Kevin, another Make-A-Wish kid wants to see John Cena piledrive you into the mat.”
“Well, if it’s for the kids….”
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The US has the most leverage on Israel, and in this instance the EU has been pressuring Israel as well. Israel’s biggest trading partners are EU members and in general, the EU has sided Israel diplomatically. Israelis are reluctant to turn EU countries against Israel.
Regional powers Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkiye and Egypt have also pressured Israel on this matter, and Israelis have a lot to lose if they alienate those four nations.
Pressures over humanitarian relief are accompinied by pressures over the projected Israeli attack on Gaza. In this case, US, the EU, and the regional powers might not believe the pressure will forstall a major Israeli attack, but they still hope they can influence the scope and duration of an Israeli invasion of Gaza.
The Thin Black Duke
@Soprano2: It’s a mystery to me why the TV adaptations of the DCU are so much better than the brainless, big-budget cinematic rollercoaster rides pretending to be movies.
catclub
Ummm. The tapes are of Pratt relating conversations with Trump.
NOT conversations by Trump.
topclimber
@linnen: I am curious in what ways you think Stefanik is more moderate than Cheney. More isolationist I can see, but not much else.
Geminid
@Soprano2: Gallant may have to an extent welcomed the pressure, and his grudging acknowledgement of it may be for domestic political effect.
RevRick
@The Thin Black Duke: Railroaded Anita Hill? Democratic opposition to Clarence Thomas withered when Thomas’ aide testified she never heard Thomas say such things and he indignantly called it a “ high tech lynching.” Still, 46 Democrats, including Biden voted against his confirmation.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay:
Hahahaha!
WereBear
@NotMax: He had many gems :
Also the model for Andy Griffith in a must-watch: A Face in the Crowd.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Benz’s goal was to ensure that social media was dominated by conservatives – that liberal voices were outshouted by the promotion of clickbait Right wing anger porn, and…lo and behold. That’s exactly what happened to Twitter.
Honestly the heads up on Taibbi was not the 2009 financial crisis “reporting’ he did. It was his absolutely disgusting sexual harrassment behavior in Russia and that didn’t come to wider attention until after the 2009 reporting. I mean, just think of how gross he is- he went to Russia and took advantage of Russian women who were just tryng to keep a job and survive in a cratering country. It’s the benavior of a privileged spoiled brat – an “ugly American” and that’s without the sexism. He’s a terrible person.
Betty Cracker
@RevRick: Biden declined to call witnesses who could have corroborated Hill’s claims. Even he acknowledges that was wrong.
Soprano2
@Kay: That’s probably the right read on it. The international outcry about the situation in Gaza for civilians (especially children) who had nothing to do with what Hamas did was growing harder and harder for them to ignore.
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: The GOP controlled the Senate from 1993 -2007? Biden was not chair of any committees during that period.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Agree 100% that Taibbi is an absolutely grotesque person. The Me Too reckoning exposed many notional liberal men for what they really are, including Taibbi.
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: Biden was in the minority when the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act passed by 302-126 margins in the House and 74-25 margins in the Senate.
Joe often gets kicked in the teeth for the 1994 Crime Bill, but again he was in the minority, yet still managed to get the Violence Against Women and Assault Weapons ban included in it.
JPL
@Suzanne: When some think of Gaza, they think of Hamas, without separating the two. There will be a bloodbath, and unfortunately some won’t look at them as victims. I read that already 1,900 children have died in Gaza.
It’s such a tragic situation.
Betty Cracker
@RevRick: Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995. Here’s an excerpt of a 2019 NYT article on Biden’s apology to Anita Hill and also a gift link so you can read the whole thing for yourself.
Chris
@WereBear:
I mean, the vibe I get from Biden is that he’s always been right in the middle of the Democratic Party. When liberal politics have the wind in their sails, he backs them. When they didn’t, which was unfortunately for much of his career, not so much.
Biden is, among other things, a welcome indicator that the party has been moving steadily leftward since the mid-to-late2000s. (Which is largely, in turn, because public opinion has allowed it to).
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: True. But the hearings had dragged on for 98 days and the public pressure to wrap things up was immense. It was ugly from front to back and the conservadems who voted to confirm were undermining Biden’s ability to continue the process.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
I don’t know jack shit about cricket, but rumor has it that that’s true of that sport as well.
I bet Tony Jay might be able to comment more knowledgeably. :-)
lowtechcyclist
@The Thin Black Duke:
As Dylan said, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying. Biden’s still busy being born.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
The really good sign on that front was in the Obama years, when he argued against the troop surge, was skeptical of the Kabul government, supported a drawdown in troops, and generally was a loud voice for “we can’t do any more good back there.” This at a time when much of the administration was still hung up on either the belief that the war could still be won, or that admitting otherwise would mean spending too much political capital.
montanareddog
@Chief Oshkosh:
I am pretty sure you are right. It was Rentagob on Rentagob action.
Betty Cracker
@RevRick: I remember it well. I had just started my first “real” job, and the thing that struck me and all of my female colleagues was how utterly fucking clueless even well-intentioned dudes were about sexual harassment in the workplace. There was no excuse then, and there’s no excuse now, though thank fucking dog many people — including Joe Biden — have evolved on the issue.
sab
@JPL: Gaza has a population of 2 million, and they have already lost this month more people than were killed in 9/11.
Shalimar
In the most immature asshole in the world competition, Elon Musk is lapping the field. He offered Wikipedia $1 billion if they change their name to Dickipedia. He’s example #1 for why billionaires are the worst people among us.
Soprano2
@The Thin Black Duke: I’ll have to take your word for it; The Flash is the only one of those programs I watched regularly, and I’ve never watched any of the movies. I did get tired of the constant “This is the most crazily powerful bad guy ever how will we defeat him/her/it”, and when Iris spent a whole season “behind” that mirror I was not happy.
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
:-D
To quote Billy Joel,
Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out, the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Chief Oshkosh:
Yes, but that happened in our world. I was asking about the mirror universe Tony Jay was describing.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Yes, but it’s also important to realize this works both ways. Politicians, or at least successful ones, change their message and policy depending on the electorate they’re targeting. Senator Biden of Delaware was engaged in a ruthless inventory of priorities as much as VP Biden and President Biden. It’s just that as Senator for Delaware, his priorities were much more focused on what was good for his home state than what was right for the nation as a whole. This is a constant danger in trying to understand the views of any politician; what they say and do is always slanted by the need to win the next election or achieve the next governing compromise.
FelonyGovt
On domestic policy, Biden spoke out in favor of same-sex marriage before Obama did, and kind of pushed Obama to that position.
Fake Irishman
@RevRick:
Dems held the Senate through 1994 and then again from June 2001 until January 2003
JPL
@sab: Hamas came into power after Bush pushed for free and fair elecions even after being told it was not the time. 2006 was the only election they had, but not many news stations mention that.
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
The only thing I knew him from before this was that article from 2010 or thereabouts on the teabaggers which suitably tore them a new one and specifically by calling out the racism and hypocrisy at the root of the movement. At a time when far too many people were still insisting that the teabaggers were just misunderstood or economically anxious or whatever, it was a breath of fresh air.
Never read enough else from him to see where his eventual Trumpism came from, but it was nevertheless sad to read from a guy who at least at one point had the movement (or its predecessor)’s number.
linnen
@topclimber:
My Google-fu is lacking, but I seems to remember comments in the BJ threads when Cheney was being replaced by Stefanik that Liz Cheney had a voting record supporting about 95% of GOP legislature, while Elise Stafanik’s recorded support was only around 85%.
Chris
@Kay:
At some point recently I learned that post-Soviet Russia became a sort of El Dorado for a certain type of white male Westerner, because it was a place where you could do all the same shady sex tourism you do in Thailand or the Philippines or wherever, but the women are actually white.
No wonder the kind of people who went ga-ga over Trump have such a fond association with that country.
Ken
Take the offer, and once the check clears, take my offer of $1 to change it back to Wikipedia. When howls begin, point to clause in contract allowing this, and recommend that in future, Musk read before signing.
Geminid
@Chris: I think Biden was the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking minority member for the first six Bush years, and became Chairman after the 2006 midterms.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: He was the toast of Balloon Juice and every other liberal, center left blog in the early Obama years. People overlook obvious flaws when their previously held priors are confirmed. His reporting on the financial crisis was rubbish if you judge it only by facts.
Heh but he called Goldman Sachs the Giant Squid, so what if he fudged some zeros. We only make fun of the lack of mathematical abilities of columnists we already hate like McCardle.
There are lefties (DSA types) out on X, TikTok etc proclaiming they are not going to vote for Biden. I would check how much of Hamas’s funding comes from Russia.
sab
@JPL: Less than half of Gazans voted in that election. Wasn’t their favored guy in Israeli jail at the time?
Fake Irishman
@Betty Cracker:
Those hearings were a watershed for how ugly workplace sexual harassment could be.
One further point that does need to be raised about Biden is that while it’s important to critically examine his role in the Clarence Thomas hearings, we should also remember that he also chaired Judiciary during the Robert Bork hearings in 1987. And he very calmly let Bork light himself on fire and destroy his own nomination without trying to rescue it. His chairmanship (and the voters giving Dems a Senate majority in the 1986 elections) saved Roe for 30 years and set the stage for a tremendous expansion of pro-LGBT+ jurisprudence starting in the 1990s ( with Romer vs. Evans striking down Colorado’s anti-gay rights constitutional amendment and proceeding through Lawrence and Obergefell). Replace Kennedy with Bork and the timeline becomes a lot darker (no EPA authority to regulate GHG, for example…)
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Certainly. But the stances they’ve consistently taken in the past haven’t stopped them from making whatever choice can best be used as a bludgeon against the Democrats, regardless of consistency with those past stances.
Geminid
@JPL: Hamas came into power in 2006 by fighting it out with the PLA’s police and throwing a bunch of them off roofs. The elections were a consequence, but by then everyone knew who would call the shots in Gaza.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: I did not say that McConnell and McCaul are not hypocrites and ruthless partisans
sab
@Geminid: It’s really interesting to me that I learn more from you, a literate landscaper, than I learn from watching news professionals on tv.
Fake Irishman
@FelonyGovt:
I still don’t know if Biden speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage was a gaffe, a “gaffe” that he planned with his own team to pressure the administration or a “gaffe” that he fully conspired with Obama and their political team on with as a way to create a public permission structure to “evolve” Obama’s public position to match rapidly changing public opinion on gay rights.
Geminid
@sab: That’s landscaper plus skilled landscape designer and contructor!
Also, a part timer with a lot of freedom to research what interests me.
Soprano2
@sab: I learn more from this blog overall than I do from listening to NPR or watching news on TV.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: I think you’re right that Taibbi did have the tea creeps’ number, and he wasn’t wrong about the greed and corruption at the heart of the financial meltdown either. He could be funny and insightful about both back then, but the problem is, he’s a shoddy thinker.
I think it’s an occasional pattern with lefty writers who suffer a midlife crisis of some sort, including guys like the late Christopher Hitchens. They’re good writers but shoddy thinkers.
When they are writing from the confines of an established world view that isn’t fucked up and bullshit, they can write impressively. But when they stray from that (usually in response to cultural factors that personally terrify them), they fall for the dumbest shit and become one-note, tiresome scolds.
Warblewarble
Unlike his critics ,Biden shows a remarkable capacity and willingness to learn, that coupled with empathy is very formidable.
RevRick
@Chris: He wasn’t chair until 2007, when the country had already soured on Iraq.
lowtechcyclist
@linnen:
‘Should be’ is doing heavy lifting there. How many elected Republicans at the Congress/governor level acknowledge that global warming is a genuine threat? How many encourage people to be vaccinated against Covid?
I thought Stefanik represented New York, not Wyoming.
I called her no such thing. I don’t regard her as a moderate. But it’s still worth saying that at least on a few genuinely important issues, her views are well outside of GOP orthodoxy.
Given that it’s a genuinely existential threat, I would regard a politician’s views on global warming to have a weight of well over 5% in evaluating where they stand.
Chris
@Geminid:
*PLO
RevRick
@Fake Irishman: It was a 50-50 Senate from 2001-2003. Cheney had the deciding vote.
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
I think movies are just not a good match for comic books. Comics are above all else a serialized medium that depends on cranking out material on a fast, regular schedule. That’s a much closer match to TV than to blockbuster movies, so TV is a better match. If there’s something surprising, it’s that the MCU has managed to make the blockbuster movie approach work as long as it has, not that the DCEU has failed. That and Kevin Feige is a genuine comic lover who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel’s comics, while Zach Snyder doesn’t really like his source material and feels the need to change everything to match his vision.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
I know, but the Dems had been blocking similar bills for years while in the minority; in the Senate, you can do that. 2005 is a while back, but my recollection is that Biden advocating for the 2005 version of the bill brought a lot of Dems around on it.
Geminid
@Chris: I thought that by then the ruling entity in Gaza was the Palestinian Authority. I guess I should have said “PA” insted or better, spelled that out.
The Palestinian Authority, now under the tenuous leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, grew out of the PLO.
Marcopolo
@WereBear: looking back, one of Obama’s biggest challenges when he was elected Prez was he had such a meteoric rise through politics that his “Rolodex” of folks he knew & felt he could trust was small. I’m pretty sure that’s how we wound up with, for example, Raum (terrible CoS) & Arne (even worse Sec of Ed). I think those picks worked as constraints on his administration in doing a lot (tho just passing the ACA was a singular milestone). From my vantage point it seems like Biden, with 50 years in politics, seems to know just about everyone in D politics, and, after Clyburn & s. Carolina AA Ds resurrected his presidential campaign he leaned into empowering those folks. Last thought, Biden as an old white “moderate” may have had greater leeway to bring more diverse folks into his administration from outside the centrist mainstream than Obama. Just my 2 cents. Biden’s been a much more positively surprising Prez than I ever imagined he would be.
Chris
@Warblewarble:
It’s that, but I think he’s also just got that FDR “I agree with you; I want to do it; now make me do it” thing going on. He’ll go to bat for liberal causes, so long as he doesn’t think they’re political/electoral losers. All the good liberal politicians are like that; they’re as liberal as the political scene allows them to be. It’s just that unfortunately, for reasons that have more to do with the public than the politicians, the political scene was not kind to most liberal causes until about fifteen years ago.
MisterDancer
@Fake Irishman: I think there’s a bigger-picture thing going on, too.
If I take my Dad’s opinion as seeing to the truth of things in this case, Biden was always more left-of-center. But he operated at times when being a Liberal was more and more “dangerous”…until Obama.
I think we still underestimate how intense the changes to the culture we saw during the Obama Administration. And I do mean culture — HAMILTON is unlikely to be a huge hit without the validation of both a Black President AND the rise of Hip-Hop as a major musical force. We had discussions about Black Reparations! There was the shift in Feminist movements towards actually making non-White voices matter, and the push to integrate Trans people into that movement along with the wider culture.
Biden was at the center of all that. Your question notes he was pushing for at least some of these changes! Also, too — I think it changed no less that Hillary Clinton. Since s_c is doing Old Home Week with Tablibi, it’s important to note that Clinton 2007/8 was a very different POTUS run than Clinton 2015/6. I think it’s painful to recall how Progressive that later run was, the things she had on offer than were not just a continuation of what we saw with Obama, esp. later Obama, but pushing in some new directions.
But Biden would have seen that, too. And he would have seen something he got a good look at while in the VP role — RACISM. Not just in indirect experiences he stood against all his life, if oftentimes problematic. But now, thru his friendship with Barack, a very visceral understanding of what it’s like to be Black and be under attack.
Seeing Trump raise the stakes on this even higher, along with attacking and defaming Women — another long-standing issue for Biden — I think woke him up, and I use woke very directly. We know, because he’s said as much, that Charlottesville specifically was a major wake-up call for him, around service to this country.
Biden is riding a wave, yes. But it’s a wave I think holds something close to his truth, a wave that he’s fully aware of and encouraging.
JPL
@Geminid: You also have an amazing memory. Before the elections several were encouraging Pres. Bush to stop them. I just can’t remember who.
Chris
@Geminid:
Yeah, PA is probably the correct phrase, you’re right.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris:
Ick.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
If I read your comment to mean that there was nothing out of the ordinary about their siding with Biden on this, I apologize.
Geminid
@Marcopolo: I don’t know that Rahm Emanuel was a terrible Chief of Staff for President Obama. He might not have been a good one though.
I wonder if Emanual’s service as Ambassador to Japan has smoothed some of his rough edges. I haven’t seen much about him except that he has publically sided with advocates for same-sex marrige there. But he’s had plenty of work to do maintaining good relations with our most important non-Nato ally. I guess that in this area, no news is good news.
Geminid
Low Tech Cyclist: Well, I certainly wasn’t trying to say there was nothing out of the ordinary with their siding President Biden. I was trying to place McConnell and McCaul within the broader context of Republican Party foreign policy since the Second World War.
narya
Also: Biden has populated his administration with a ton of smart and capable women–they’re not major donors or decorative figureheads. I realize that Dems in general do this, while Rs essentially eliminate half the population from their consideration, but it’s still notable.
evodevo
@HeartlandLiberal:
Just the jet lag effects alone would have me in bed for a week!
Fake Irishman
@RevRick:
Jim Jeffords defected in June 2001 and became an independent, leaving the Dems with a 50-49 working majority.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Do you consult? [ not joking ] I’m in Belmont, CA and I could use some help.
Bokonon
This media blitz is an answer to a lie being circulated on the right that Biden spent the weekend hanging out at the beach, sunning himself, out of touch while the world burns. They included photos of him taken months ago sitting under an umbrella.
People are flipping out about it and posting lots of “GET BACK TO WORK!” comments.
It’s impressive how good these $#%#$@ are at creating powerful visuals that bypass critical thinking.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: I wonder if the stunt was a riff off of ‘Libertarian Policeman’?
linnen
@lowtechcyclist:
– Well the ‘Should be’ is aspirational. Much like “I would like our Representatives and Senators to have a grip on reality. I would also like a pastrami on rye with mustard”
– Sen. Stefanik replaced Sen. Cheney in the number 3 GOP leadership position.
– My bad. I managed to read your comment as an objection to OzarkHillbilly’s comment on the mis-use of the term ‘moderate.’
– I consider Global Warming to be an existential problem as well. I also recognize, even as a white cis-het/oriented male, that other existential problems that are more important to other groups can also impact my situation. So I will accept that as long as a politician accepts the science driving Climate Change that they might consider other liberal issues more immediate.
Hope this helps.
Michael Bersin
@Tony Jay:
I was flipping through my multiverse channels on basic cable and couldn’t find that one. Is it on the Right Wingnut Billionaire Performative Charity Channel, premium tier?
linnen
148@Bokonon;
“Get Back to Work” was also trotted out for Pres. Obama when he was not in the office wearing a suit.
That the media did not say this for Pres. W Bush working on clearing bush for his ranch or Trump’s numerous golfing trips says quite a lot.
Geminid
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I would be happy to consult. Many if not most landscaping problems can be addressed from a distance, without a site visit. You would need to do the work yourself or hire somebody, but I could help you come up with a good plan.
I’ve been meaning to email WaterGirl about a potential post topic. I will do that this evening and also let her know that she can give you my email address.
bjacques
@lowtechcyclist: yeah, I used to read exile.ru back in the day when I didn’t know any better. The context of all that stuff Taibbi and his buddy Mark Ames got up to was pretty clear if you care to look.
In the early 2000s, it was supposedly the Russian IRS that shut them down and forced them to make a hasty exit. If so, it was the last solid that country’s government did for civilization.
Anyway
By the second term the Obama administration had a good bench of entry and mid-level staffers. Ron Klain used the Obama bench as the base for staffing the Biden admin (which is as it should be). The eight years of Dubya had thinned the D ranks.
Obama’s worst noms were Rahm Emmanuel, Arne Duncan and Tim Geithner (imo obv)
cain
@OzarkHillbilly: They have lost their goddam minds. Every time they close the fist, they lose more and more people.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Geminid: thanks
cain
@Another Scott: I feel like these fascist movements are starting to lose steam. Keeping actors like Putin busy means that they have less time to fuck around with other countries.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Man, that is one fucked up universe (except for the Piers Morgan hate)….
noncarborundum
@lowtechcyclist:
Stefanik replaced Cheney in the Republican House leadership, not in her congressional district.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: LBJ himself didn’t ‘give it all up’. He did the right thing (along with the Democratic Majority in the House and Senate) and knew it would torpedo the Southern Democratic Party in future years.
glory b
@WereBear: In spite of everything else, LOTS of black people happen to LIKE LBJ. Just saying.
Paul in KY
@The Thin Black Duke: Excellent point.
cain
@NotMax: and exposed himself to the racial foundations of this country. 2016-2020 showed all of us what Black people have been trying to tell us for a long while now. Biden got a good dose of it personally.
Paul in KY
@Joey Maloney: I hope so. Incitatus would be an improvement over Mike Lee.
catclub
There have been no more elections in Gaza since 2006.
UncleEbeneezer
@Warblewarble: And while it’s easy to say “but that’s what everyone should be expected to do” if you take a quick look at human beings and our society in general, you can’t help notice that willingness to evolve/learn is not the default for a majority of people. Not even close. Most don’t do it and/or think that refusing to do so, is virtuous.
Kay
@Chris:
The part that made me cringe the hardest was the role of the American woman who was Taibbi’s colleague in Russia. You have to have been a woman in the workplace in the 1980s and 1990s to understand this, but there was a certain kind of “cool” women who facilitated male sexual harrassment by winking at it and joking about it. “I told them telling the Russian women they should suck their dicks under the desk was wrong! I told them they had gone too far, ha, ha.ha!” They’re terrified that they won’t be included in the Kool Boys Club so they turn it all into a super savvy joke and throw the women they work with under the bus.
Taibbi had one of those women.
I always felt like it was to protect themselves from the accusation that they were “humorless feminists” (uncool). Anyway. Makes me cringe. Ugh. They were as horrible as the men.
Paul in KY
@Kay: That’s like one of those Steven King novels where 327 kids have been murdered in this one small town since the 1950s.
Kay
@Chris:
And this is part of the nostalgia that middle aged former hipsters like Taibbi have – they miss the “cool girls” who would happily throw other women under the bus if it meant they would be included in the boys club. Younger women don’t do that anymore- they don’t joke about men demanding workplace subordinates give them blowjobs. Aging hipsters like Taibbi and Freddie deBoer miss it. “Remember when women were FUN and would let us do whatever we wanted to them at work?”
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: that’s an insightful way to look at it – thanks for that!
Kay
@Paul in KY:
This was just wild. I engaged them in dialogue in the courthouse hallway because the bailiff told me about the case. He’s a gossip but he knows everything.
They had decided that this Black Latino woman who lives in town had been trafficked as a girl and brought up from Central America. Okay, she did come from central America but she came legally as an immigrant. But they told the poor parents of a little black girl who did disappear 25 years ago in Milwaukee that this woman was their daughter, now gown up. This was complete nonsense but they managed to fool enough people to get police in Milwaukee and a black state rep in Wisconsin involved. They badgered this poor woman until she finally agreed to DNA testing and of course she was not, in fact, the little girl who had gone missing.
Kay
@Paul in KY:
And the REASON the parents of the little girl who went missing in Milwaukee were vulnerable to this bullshit was because at the time (25 years ago) Milwaukee police were super racist and had made little or no effort to find their little girl. They (rightfully) compared this to what happens when a white child goes missing. So these disgusting conspiracy theorists took advantage to the grain of truth (police didn’t search for the little girl) and expanded that to a grand conspiracy where the girl had been trafficked to central America.
Geminid
@catclub: Yes. I guess I should have said election, singular. But the fact that there have been none since 2006 is fairly ccommon knowledge. At least, its been referenced here many times in the past 16 days.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: They are still a problem. They are commonly referred to as Chill Girls™ nowadays, or at least that’s what they were referred to last time I checked, but there might be a new name now. They were really prominent back in the 2010’s when Rebecca Watson, Anita Sarkeesian, Jessica Valenti etc., for their public Feminism. They are the girls that misogynist boys/men love to hang around and point to as the ideal woman, because they enable and excuse misogyny and love to shit on Feminists to get clout from boys/men. They’ve also been a subset of women (the larger group) and while they are often Right-Wing, there’s also a significant number of them on the Left too.
Paul in KY
@Kay: That poor family in Milwaukee (and any others they hounded with their cray cray)!! Some sad, boring people (who tend to be narcissists) just want the world ™ to be ever so much more ‘interesting’ than it is for them and they don’t care if it is bad interesting or good interesting. In fact, they probably gravitate to the bad interesting (makes their sad lives more understandable).
Paul in KY
@Kay: God! What a bunch of POSes. Just heartbreaking that the poor family up in Milwaukee had to relive it and deal with these weirdos.
Kathleen
@MisterDancer: I agree that he watched the treatment Obama received from the media, Republicans, some Democrats I’m sure, and maybe even Secret Service. I think his response to WHPC and media in general are due to how they treated Obama. He knew what they were doing and he is having none of it as a result. I think his empathy and appreciation for how Black people are treated have sensitized him even more than he was.
Kathleen
@cain: You said that so much better than I did!
wjca
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