In case you’re wondering why Joe Biden’s poll numbers aren’t the best, consider the fact that it’s becoming increasingly hard to believe him. For instance, here’s his official statement on 2 April.
I am outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen, including one American, in Gaza yesterday. They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war. They were brave and selfless. Their deaths are a tragedy.
Outraged. Heartbroken. Tragedy. That’s what he needs to say.
But does he mean it? Here’s a headline from the next day.
U.S. approved more bombs to Israel on day of World Central Kitchen strikes
The Biden administration signed off on thousands more bombs to Israel despite global condemnation of the IDF’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen employees
You can only rely so much on the fact that your political opponent is a corrupt, incompetent boob to win an election. Biden might win anyway, but think of the legacy he’s leaving the Democratic party…what will the Democrats do if the Republicans nominate a war-mongering, racist scumbag in the future, who isn’t quite as deplorable as Trump? I’m not exactly seeing the Democrats as a benign alternative.
Can’t he even look at the polls and see that his constituents despise the genocide we’re enabling?
The Dem bosses had centrally appointed delegates to ensure Biden would win over Sanders.
They have a collective guilt for whatever Israel does with the consent of Biden. Don’t let them get away from their part of the responsibility.
Well, it’s true. He’s outraged and heartbroken at how it means that approving more bombs is making him lose votes.
To be fair, is it possible that there’s ongoing negotiation between Biden and Netanyahu to address this? If Biden proposed a reduction of aid if Israel doesn’t change their ways, we’d be much less likely to know about it in real time than we had for “Oaf of Office” Trump.
Biden has been quite actively trying to keep the conflict from spreading, and keep civilian casualties to a level that doesn’t force him to actually do anything about it. Not spreading was mostly working, while the civilian casualties were at the upper edge of acceptability.
Netanyahu this week went and bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus and bombed a civilian aid convoy that was doing all the things it was supposed to be doing to work safely, which means no aid convoys are running because it’s just a suicide mission. Which means famine will lead to mass deaths at a scale that Biden can’t tolerate because even US citizens will be appalled.
You’re counting on people not reading the article.
Every hit like this helps Trump win in November … great job.
Kinda hard to actually read the article when it’s paywalled. I don’t find WaPo or NYT worth the money.
I can access this:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/biden-netanyahu-call-wck-deaths
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons is talking of possibly conditioning aid to Israel. At this point I’d be fine with pulling the plug entirely. What’s “conditioning”?
If they allegedly made the desert bloom Israelis certainly can handle a crash course in self-sufficiency. Who would have the political guts to cut them off though? It needs to be done.
He forgot to offer “thoughts and prayers”
Seriously uninpressed with Biden on this issue. Since I live in a crucial swing state I probably ought not mess around with protest votes. It seriously galls me the way the 2 party system rigs every election.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons is talking of possibly conditioning aid to Israel.
It’s already illegal to transfer weapons to any country where there is a likelihood they will be used in crimes against humanity. That law was passed in an attempt to condition aid to Israel. Congress and presidents have just ignored it, just like Biden just did. It’s crazy.
Listen, Biden knew that Bush was lying about Iraq, and still voted for it and proudly stood behind Bush at press events. (We have the 2005 statement of the then-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee that all Senators were told this two weeks before the vote. Every Democratic Presidential nominee since then who was in the Senate at that time voted for the war despite knowing it was based on lies.) This did not stop you from supporting him.
Biden knew that the Obama administration was lying about Libya, but was still providing cover for the operation even as they bypassed Congress to get NATO to start the war instead. This did not stop you from supporting him.
Biden knew — as the administration quietly admitted in 2021, so you can stop trying to deny it — that the Ukraine coup that Hillary Clinton’s State Department backed in 2014 was being run by neo-Nazis. The diplomatic cable leak showed this. This did not stop you from supporting him.
He knows that this won’t stop you from supporting him, either. At least 90% of the people on this board, to say nothing of the country at large, won’t back up their outrage with any sort of real action; there won’t be a sudden rush of write-in votes for third parties, and the primaries have demonstrated that Democrats will hold their noses and vote for right-wing trash. This is the inevitable result of “Blue No Matter Who” idiocy, and if you don’t like it, too bad because the point where you needed to act to stop it passed a long long time ago.
He’s a serial plagiarist who has lied about his credentials, who has falsely claimed to have visited Nelson Mandela in prison and to have helped the civil rights movement in several ways.
He was actually a close friend of Strom Thurmond, has the most believable rape accusations against a standing President since Clinton, and . . . “sniffing little girls’ hair” has a high yuck factor. And that’s “just the tip” (yuck, again!) of the Biden iceberg.
So I have to vote for the least bad option again . . .. another Green I don’t really want.
Israel’s ‘reckless’ Black Snake drone unit ‘used precise Spike missiles to kill three Brits’ says expert.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-7eC-YulB4o
@9 The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) @10 drew
Project 2025. Authoritarianism electric slide. You want this? You’ll get it. We all will.
Hillary and the Senator from MBNA disgust me too but I will vote for Weekend at Bernie’s Biden in a futile hope to prevent the alternative. I will hold my nose and puke a little in my mouth but hell yeah!
It still sucks! But could get much worse.
“He knows that this won’t stop you from supporting him, either. At least 90% of the people on this board, to say nothing of the country at large, won’t back up their outrage with any sort of real action”
My real action is aimed toward preventing Donald Trump from becoming President and ending democracy in America, you moron … and Trump would be vastly worse for Palestinians (which, considering how bad it is now, is hard to contemplate).
It would be easier if you stopped recycling lies about him. You do know that Tara Reade defected to Russia, don’t you? And his being affectionate with his grandchildren is only yucky to incels and other misanthropes.
As for his claim about being “arrested”, which he has walked back (https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/28/biden-south-africa-arrest-118134), he’s prone to hyperbole just as you are, you maggot.
As an outsider (Brit/Canadian), it’s gobsmacking that so many Americans (drew, the vicar, etc) really don’t seem to understand that the lesser of two evils is still, you know, evil. But, at least in this case, infinitely preferable to the alternative. Vote for the least evil every two/four years, work for change the other 99+% of the time. It’s not complicated.
My contempt for Trumpists is only exceeded by my contempt for ‘purist’, accelerationist, lazy douchebags. I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Not until the fire went out, anyway.
Jim Balter
I’ll probably regret this, but here it goes. Despite how you have rubbed me the wrong way in the past for similar name calling abrasiveness targeting me I find myself leaning toward the points you are making above in recent comments except for the unnecessary “moron” and “maggot” parts. You could have made similar keen and incisive points without the obligatory or habitual insults. I really don’t get that level of vitriol, but maybe that’s my intellectual dishonesty talking.
Sorry. You had me but kinda lost me except the voting for Biden to keep Trump out part at this point. Not that you care, but I feel better now having got that off my chest.
And RBG was close friends with Antonin Scalia. Being close to people with sharply different political views is a thing that people do, and it doesn’t imply that those views are shared, contrary to your idiotic innuendo. I just heard Terry Gross interviewing Christine Blasey Ford saying how much she loves her father–a man with arch-opposite political views who is buds with Brett Kavanaugh’s father and sent him an email after Kavanaugh was confirmed saying he was glad that was over and behind them … while CBF and her family were living in hotels due to death threats; it will never be over for her.
@Hemidactylus
Of course all of these comments are voluntary, not necessary, you git.
Indeed.
@Rob Grigjanis
As Noam Chomsky has said, voting for the lesser of two evils is a good thing; you get less evil.
How is it that our resident pro-Trump trolls haven’t been banned yet?
Jim Balter @19
I rather liked what you said in @18. I will overlook your insult to me, which M-W classifies as British, as you obviously cannot help yourself. Forbearance and stuff.
This is the real reason Biden is too old – he grew up with Israel being the plucky underdog.
His world view is not aligned with the nation he is expected to represent and lead because he is not representatve of the population, he cannot see events in the context of his nation, his eyes are too old and they remember the 1960’s too clearly, current events have too great a mass of learned inertia within his experience to motivate action at odds with the well settled within him.
What made sense to the compassionate fifty years ago is not as applicable as they ought feel today. He needs a little bit of youthful anger at current affairs he’s grown out of – he’s just outlived an important property of leadership that makes an elder advisor a poor leader.
You’d still be fools to vote for Trump over him, mnd your own house first befroe burning it down for fear you weren’t thinking enough of your neighbours.
What pro-Trump trolls? Comments that are critical of Biden, even by people as foolish as The Vicar and drew, don’t make them pro-Trump.
As I said, it’s voluntary, you dolt.
drew @ # 10: … the most believable rape accusations against a standing President since Clinton…
Some of your accusations would be better served with links; others, with a little thought about a president before JRB…
Trump would much worse. It sucks, but we have two choices and only one is acceptable.
@fentex
Popular American opinion has only bent against Israel very recently. Biden’s views about Israel are consistent with the U.S. political establishment that has been developed over decades by AIPAC and other hasbara influences. As a Jew who became aware of the plight of Palestinians in the 1960’s via my older brother who was a member of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the PLP (Progressive Labor Party), it has long pained me to see how the criminal State of Israel exploits antisemitism, the Holocaust, and sympathy for the oppression of Jews. Am I also too old? No, I just know things. I voted for both Hillary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 knowing that what I disagreed with them most was their stances toward Israel. (And Hillary has if anything become more hardened since 10/7.)
Oh, and I just noticed this counterfactual idiocy from birgerjohansson:
Sanders’ only hope, and his strategy, was to win a brokered convention since he could manage at most 30% of the delegates; he lost to democracy, not bosses (same in 2016 when Hillary received 4 million more votes). It was largely Black Americans who threw their weight behind Biden and it was because of that support, not “The Dem bosses”, whoever that’s supposed to be, that Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Beto all endorsed Biden on the eve of super Tuesday. Sanders is fine as a firebrand but the Biden administration has been the most effective in decades–and there are so many things that don’t make the papers, especially in re the environment (half a dozen were mentioned in the last issue of Sierra, the Sierra’ Club’s journal that I just read). I knew early on from his nominations of Deb Haaland and Lisa Kahn that Biden was going to be a lot more progressive than I had expected, while falling far short of what I would prefer, especially on Israel.
It is interesting to hear where you are at though because the votes in your state are going to help decide the election.
@27 Jim Balter
I thought your bio stuff for background on your views toward Israel compelling and had me empathetic but then you dragged a crowd favorite across the keelhaul with:
You could have corrected birgerjohansson if applicable without dragging like that. So where I could learn from you stuff I get put off by gratuitous insults too. Regardless of your opinion toward birgerjohansson I still value birgerjohansson‘s contributions here more, because for one thing the lack of gratuitous insults directed toward me. birgerjohansson doesn’t dive bomb the comments section with personal invective like that. I still assume you have value to add here if I can meticulously overlook your robotic insults. This comment of mine was an epic fail on my part. I’m a human with empathy. I’ll try harder next time. Maybe.
Hemidactylus:
Some people are exactly the opposite of you, and value content more than attitude.
Not the first such, but yeah. At least you’re aware of it.
So is Jim.
In fact, this disingenous snipe is exactly what Jim does, without the disingenuousness.
A value judgement attached to the comment.
Nah. Such as you need your social lubricant.
John Morales @30
I thought you were different than that. You don’t seem to trade in explicit insults. But you are ok with such things. Noted.
(sigh)
Telling someone “I’m a human with empathy.” can fit into three categories:
(1) The person whom you address is not human with empathy; or
(2) I too am human with empathy but you lack the empathy; or
(3) A human with empathy would not insult someone.
Presumably, you intend the third category, but that itself is an insult.
I grant that if you hold that overt insults are inferior to covert insults, then your stance is consistent.
@#12, Hemidactylus
The thing that says the US should support Israel as they commit genocide, you mean? Sounds like we’re already doing Project 2025, with Biden. (That isn’t the only part he’s pushing, either — it recommends his stance on fossil fuel extraction on public lands, hands-off pipeline construction, and bunch of other things Biden has been only too happy to let happen.
We all already are. GWB proposed “Total Information Awareness” and then had to back off because it was so obviously a totalitarian nightmare. Obama implemented literally every part of it except for the name. In the same way, Biden has created a whole new federal program to fund extra federal money to cops “for training” (who are often being trained in Israel, incidentally, to treat anybody the cops don’t like the same way Israelis treat Palestinians. Frankly, I would throw Biden off a cliff for that all by itself). We’re on the fast track to fascism under Democrats. You are not helping anybody even slightly.
@#13, Jim Balter
We don’t have democracy in America. Where’s the single-payer universal healthcare that a majority of the country has supported since 2010? Where are the cuts to military spending? Where’s the Green New Deal that a majority supported back in 2020? There’s no democracy here. What you really mean is that you are against reasonably-well-off white people living in America having to deal with the same conditions that pretty much anybody who doesn’t fit that description already deals with.
@#16, Rob Grigjanis
Rob Grigjanis
Ah, okay, that explains it. Your background is from two countries with a history of colonialism just as bad as that of the US (ever go for a Starlight Tour?) and whose economic interests would be sunk immediately if the status quo protected by US militarism were to crumble.
@#18, Jim Balter:
The fact that you cited that situation as though it backed up your point, rather than horribly undermining it, speaks volumes about your opinions. Please feel free to shut up at the first opportunity, you terrible person.
John Morales @32
I’ve had a very shitty day with getting my trunk rear ended by another driver and such. In insurance limbo hell. Not an excuse but an explanation for mood. Despite that (or because??) I have been excessively nice. Very much so. Another version of me in the past would unleash hell. You might think I have something against you. I don’t. I’m not that other person who dwells on you I will not name. And I still differentiate you from someone else here now.
America needs preferential voting and mandatory voting, as per Australia.
With that people can vote for unlikely candidates and still ensure their vote goes to the lesser of two evils if that’s what it boils down to.
Hemidactylus, relax. Sorta topical, FWTW.
Maybe. Thing is, niceness is not relevant to truth. You can, but you need not be nice.
Won’t bother Jim, I assure you, any more than it would bother me. Which ain’t much.
Jim? He never consented (explicitly), but I took him as my sifu long, long ago.
(Before your time, but on this site)
—
See, this is a similar thing. You obviously mean Silentbob, my would-be nemesis.
My arch-antagonist, as he sees it. Kinda weird and obsessive, and so most definitely not you.
But you named him not, obvious as your meaning was.
(Word-mincing has its place, of course, but Sifu disdains it, though I myself indulge on occasion)
The stage was set for this when Biden stupidly offered Netanyahu ‘unconditional support’ following the Hamas attack.
Disingenuousness like “unnecessary”, “can’t help yourself”, and “robotic”, after I have twice pointed out that my swipes are conscious and intentional. Of course we could have a long discussion about determinism vs. free will (and the possibility, per compatibilists like Dennett, that it’s a false dichotomy), but that won’t change just how disingenuous is that tone troll’s pointless blather about my decision to insult people like drew–and hemidactylus himself when he offers up these pointless virtue signaling ad hominem deflections. And he can’t even tell the difference between dragging a person and pointing out that their statement is counterfactual idiocy … idiocy repeated over and over by berners who repeat each other’s nonsense–it’s not personally directed at birgerjohansson. hemidactylus values birgerjohansson’s contributions more than mine … Christ, who cares, and why is it a contest? birgerjohansson no doubt has made many fine contributions, certainly more than I have since he’s a regular. hemidactylus’s whole intellectual framework is so immature. But hey, he’s built that way. He too is a robot and can’t help himself.
Back when I was the anonymous (and regular) Truth Machine (and before my unfortunate blowup with SC … we almost went on a date; she said she dodged a bullet … it was a big disappointment for me and I departed the blog around then IIRC). It made more sense to me in terms of how I was presenting myself back then … I don’t really understand it but it’s kind of sweet. :-) And I have to (well, I choose to) admit that I’ve been less critical of you than I might have been otherwise and have held back disagreements. Hey, I’m human.
Not really, but who cares? All your comments are about how people feel about each other, which strikes me as superfluous and narcissistic. I spend a lot of time in the chat about the daily puzzle on chess.com and a lot of people repeatedly comment on whether they solved the puzzle and how easy it was for them (it turns out that most of them are very weak players and are lying). There are pages and pages of that … and no one cares, and these people are repeatedly called out for being trolls. I never comment on whether I solved the puzzle or how it was for me to do so or anything else personal about me (I do make comments about how hard the puzzle is relative to other puzzles and why), I only comment on the chess–why certain moves work or don’t work, who played the game if the puzzle was taken from a game, why the puzzle is constructed the way it is–things that other people might care about and benefit from.
But I’ll give you a feeling: I am genuinely sympathetic about you having a shitty day and having your trunk rear-ended … that
sucks and I’m truly sorry (empathy-wise, not fault-wise, of course) that that happened to you. I hope that you suffer minimal cost and inconvenience. Being human, I relate it to things that have happened to me and to my friends and how they made me feel. Of course, I’m a robot and can’t help the way I feel, but that’s neither here nor there … the feelings are real.
:) Human and emotional, aren’t we all!
—
Anyway. My personal belief (and I’m not entirely uninformed by open sources) is that, however bad Biden might have been and currently is in relation to Israel/Palestine, Trump would have been worse by no small margin. The same Trump that formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocated the embassy from Tel Aviv, the which is not an insignificant signifier.
So, sure, bash Biden as much as is appropriate, but it doesn’t follow that Trump would be preferable, just because Biden is bad. Trump is worse, by basically any metric sane people might value.
[oh yeah, and it’s a two-person race. Simple as]
The depths of dishonesty and stupidity of The Vicar are not worthy of specific response. His rhetoric is straight out of the depths of Putin’s GRU, meant to divide the left and put Trump into power, just as in 2016. The hallmark of intelligence is the ability to make distinctions, but he’s a long stream of false equivalences. And it is BIPOC who will suffer most from Trump or any increase in power of the GOP, and the 6:1 ratio between the wealth of white and Black households would greatly increase. The Vicar is a dishonest piece of crap who knows nothing about democratic socialist me and my stance toward “reasonably-well-off white people” vs. the rest of the world.
Jim: ♥
In a small, perverted, shameful way I admire The Vicar’s commitment to his schtick, he’s been shilling for Republicans for decades now while pretending to be on the left side of politics. He may even genuine believe he’s on the left, I dunno, but functionally he exists to bleed support from the Democrats in a two-party system.
And on virtually every other issue Trump is vastly worse–and he’s a grifter, a criminal, a narcissist, and a sociopath. Democracy or not (of course the U.S. is partially a representative democracy), things will be vastly worse under autocratic Trump with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025), which is not at all what we have now, contrary to that pathetic lie from The Vicar. And remember that the GOP tax cuts for the middle class end on Dec 31, 2025–we haven’t even begun to see the end of the harm from Trump’s first term, when numerous people in his administration limited the harm he was bent on doing–under Project 2025 the entire federal government will be vetted right wingers and Trump sycophants sworn to loyalty. And he will pardon all the J6 criminals and any and all of his grifter friends. It will be hell on earth, similar to his models, Russia, Hungary, North Korea, etc.
@badland
Check. And tragically there are many like him.
(offtopic)
Re # 36, I have to laugh because Morales seem to have decided I’m his arch-nemesis or sometheing and even invented a mantra to ward me off like draping yourself in garlic to ward off a vampire. X-D
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-5/#comment-2213227
Back in the real world he never actually crosses my mind until I see some new trollish comment from him and poke fun at it. Morales, stop posting troll comments and I’ll stop poking fun. You don’t need a magic spell, lol. As soon as I press ‘Post Comment’ I’ve already forgotten you exist.
(/offtopic)
[Ah yes, Morales. bob the Unsilent’s White Whale. What makes you bob pop]
Anyway. Topic is Joe saying “tsk, bad bad Israel, here are your bombs, now be nice with them”, basically.
(Trump would instead have said “More bombs for sure, what’s my quid pro quo?” — mind you, last time around, there were “adults in the room”)
The Vicar’s Putinesque lies about the 2014 revolution in Ukraine (an uprising in which hundreds of thousands of people join in efforts to overthrow the government is not a “coup” in any normal sense of the word) are refuted here and here. I’ve no idea what The Vicar means by saying the administration admitted it “was being run by neo-Nazis” in 2021 – perhaps he’ll provide an actual link to that admission, but I imagine the “diplomatic cable leak” refers to the leaked (phone) conversation between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt – which actually comes from the period during which the US was openly involved in trying to broker an agreement between Yanukovych and the opposition; it is the government that would have resulted if that agreement had held they are discussing, not the one that followed Yanukovych’s flight. There certainly was far-right involvement in the revolution, particularly its violent side, and for a few months afterwards the far right Svoboda party had several ministers, but they were soon gone, and the far right made a dismal showing in the May 2014 elections – its vote share has never since risen above 3% (compare that with France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland…). The far right is not known for casually allowing power to slip from its hands, so the idea the revolution was “run by neo-Nazis” is obvious nonsense and remains so even if, as The Vicar claims, the Biden administration “admitted it”.
What’s most notable about the Vicar’s stance – aside perhaps from its consonance with those of Putin, Trump, and the Cato Institute – is its complete denial of any agency to the Ukrainian people. They cannot possibly have wanted rid of a grossly corrupt and authoritarian leader, just as they cannot now actually want to resist the Russian invasion – they can only be puppets of the far right, or of the USA.
Hey, Vicar, beholder, you never answered my questions upthread from here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/03/25/does-anyone-care-that-the-republican-candidate-is-obviously-ill/#comment-2216932
On the last eelction related post on this blog. I’m really hoping you actually might and disappointed that you seem incapable of doing so which I guess is rather telling..
The Australian Prime Monster has also expressed his outrage at the murder of an Australian aid worker yet Australia continues to manufacture and supply weaponry to Israel. This includes parts for the drones used to murder the aid workers.
You know, you CAN condemn Putin’s invasion AND the Israel’s obvious genocide. Just saying…
@54 And virtually everyone here does, so what’s your point?
The democratic revolt in Ukraine was extensively covered by news media from all over the world.
The idea it was a job by neo-nazis is only spread by Russia.
Afterwards, the existence of a small ultra-nationalistic group in Ukraine was taken as evidence by the Russian propaganda appatatus that a majority of the Ukrainans are pro-nazi ; an absurd claim that was mainly aimed at the russian audience and to some extent at the segment of westerners not having good access to a wide variety of news sources (also, see “low-information voters”).
But I assume I am just another nazi propagandist getting caskets full of Krugerrand…
.
In regard to Joe Biden: he would not do well in a nation with a modern voting system (the flaws in his policies have been extensively covered elsewhere) but for now it is either him or the much, much worse guy who thinks Hitler did some good things.
That Trump is the worst candidate is hardly controversial. Stop him.
.
Well before Biden has to step down, organise in time so a new breed of progressive Democrats can take over and push out the dinosaurs.
Stop corporate money to politics.
Reform the voting system.
It is hard work but repairing the crater made by a second Trump term would be much harder.
This concept should not be complicated.
Yep, and reforms, while too slow imho, will only even be possible under Democrats. Even “getting” the ability to actually have the slightest bloody chance to elect someone from a different party… well, that is ironically more likely to happen anyway, because the Republicans are currently measuring out lengths of rope, then hanging themselves on it, with the number of people willing to put up with the “current” MAGA run GOP slipping. Whether it will be enough, or they can somehow get people among the “not likely to vote, so we didn’t bother to poll them”, crowd to swing things in their favor. Well, I am somewhat optimistic that this aint happening.
That said, it might require most of the oldest generations of politicians retiring, or just plain dying out (since retiring usually means going to work as lobbyists) before the “fed up” generations swing things in a more sensible generation. But, unless we can get voting reforms in… And, seriously, MAGA has tried every trick in the book, including retrying tricks over and over, in the hope they can find judges willing to buy it the next time, to rig the system so its like China – You get to pick a party, but both of them will be some flavor of Republican fascist, and all other parties, including the precious “Greens” some clowns here think are viable options in an election for president (eyeroll) will simply become “illegal”. They want to make McCarthyism look like a mild disagreement, with no victims, given the crap they are “already” trying to pull, and spouting off.
Populist movements like the astroturf Tea Party, Brexiteers or the MAGA cult come and go – they are only against things but not in favor of policies that would orovide tangible venefits for their followers.
I know examples going back to Pierre Poujade in 1950s France.
Unfortunately, they can cause great harm before they burn themselves out.
The groups who prevail (Le Pen, the Austrian extreme right, the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish xenophobe parties) take advantage of the failure by the traditional parties to deal with societal ills, and with the feeling of having no influence and being ignored by the politicians.
I notice the booming economy of the 1950s and 1960s made it possible to solve so many issues that populists were swept away.
The incompetence of the MAGA Party creates a brief window of opportunity for progressive politicians to create real solutions before the orchs recover and storm Gondor.
This time the stakes are higher: Martin Luther King or the contemporary feminists did not have climate change hanging over them!
@ 55
You could have fooled me, considering your condemnation of PZ’s thought crime of criticizing your precious two-faced centrists the Dems keep sending us. Are you also afraid that Tinkerbell will die if you say fairies aren’t real as well?
The minute you aren’t allowed to criticize a politician for their obvious you become… well, you become like Trump and the Republicans.
Anyway. when it comes to Gaza, it doesn’t matter who wins. Trump would only accelerate the genocide, but Biden will just let the murder occur at its “natural” rate.
Either way, the Palestinians are as good as dead.
This does rather underestimate the role of the far right in the 2014 revolution – particularly among those ready and able to use force, they were a significant element. And there were and are disturbing aspects to Ukrainian poliitcal culture, such as the widespread admiration (particularly in western Ukraine) for the fascist terrorist Stepan Bandera. But the aftermath of the revolution shows that it cannot possibly have been controlled by the far right.
Easily, because you’re such an intellectually dishonest moron.
But that’s not what I did, you dishonest cretin. My comment was about how this post ignores the content in the article, which is that the arms shipment was approved prior to the strike on WCK, so the assertion of insincerity isn’t well grounded here. No doubt other arguments can be made for Biden’s insincerity, but this one isn’t honest.
And as a democratic socialist, “two-faced centrists” are not precious to me, you dumb fuck, but not being an imbecile like you and The Vicar I understand that it’s either Biden or Trump no matter how much irrational gits like you resist that binary. And I already wrote about how Biden’s admin has been more progressive than I expected and less progressive than I would want, especially on Israel. But cynical fatalistic garbage like you ignore all distinctions and virtue signal your purity. You say that either way, the Palestinians are as good as dead–I think it will be a huge disappointment to you if that doesn’t happen, as you are so vested in it. For you, “Palestinians” is an abstraction for your political posturing, like fetuses for the forced birthers; the idea that the numbers of dead and the quality of their lives might be different under Trump is beyond you. And in your moronic insistence of “Biden just as bad” in order to rationalize your sociopathic and elitist lack of concern for Trump winning you ignore every other aspect of the difference between them. You will always find some way to equate them in your bad faith.
And in no case did I say anything to suggest that I don’t condemn both the invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s obvious genocide, and you saying that I could have fooled you is just an acknowledgment of how stupid and intellectually dishonest you are. I’ve been a champion of Palestinian rights for 7 decades, I first pushed back at the Zionism of my mother and other relatives during the 1967 war, I have lost friends over the current events–that is, I refuse to be friends with people supporting or rationalizing the genocide–I push back against hasbara propaganda and Zionist genocidists on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere … so fuck you, you stupid vile piece of crap. Here is my twitter profile:
and here is my pinned tweet from last November, before the genocide had fully geared up (I suppose I should update it):
https://x.com/j_q_balter/status/1722046296247164938
So again, fuck off, you stupid vile piece of Trump-indifferent trash.
KG @ 61
I am aware that russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine suffered after 2014. While I do not approve of it, it is regrettably common during ‘decolonization’ of nations for people of the ‘wrong’ nationality to suffer badly in the nationalistic frenzy. The detailed role of Ukrainan extreme-right nationalist groups is not known to me.
@63 Jim Balter
Is that supposed to impress us?
You’ve been doing fuck all for seven decades, apparently, and when anti-Zionists hit a nerve, you piss and moan about how we’re all supposed to genuflect before Dear Leader Biden like a bunch of good authoritarians. Because he’s genociding them nicely, or something.
Piss and moan some more. Call us all imbeciles, cretins, and morons again for the hundredth time ⸺ you’ve got nothing else.
beholder, who is ‘us’? Certainly not me.
The actual quotation: “And as a democratic socialist, “two-faced centrists” are not precious to me, you dumb fuck, but not being an imbecile like you and The Vicar I understand that it’s either Biden or Trump no matter how much irrational gits like you resist that binary. And I already wrote about how Biden’s admin has been more progressive than I expected and less progressive than I would want, especially on Israel.”
Nothing there about genuflecting — that’s entirely your deliberate and ridiculous mischaracterisation.
But then, you’ve got nothing else.
That’s because you can’t be honest about Jim. No surprise there.
I mean, I just quoted something else! So it’s there, when it’s not ignored by such as you.
Heh.
By all means, you piss and moan some more.
Bizarre the way that beholder – who has very few admirers here – assumes the right to speak for “us all”. Delusory, even.