Lil'Buckwheat Got Pounded And Grilled Like A Cheap Steak On Beat Bobby Flay....,

MissouriIndependent  |  President Joe Biden pledged Monday to stay in his race for reelection, even after a weekend in which a growing number of Democrats asked for him to withdraw and a key U.S. House Republican called for an investigation into the president’s doctor.

In a letter to congressional Democrats, Biden argued that the calls for him to drop out of the presidential race — with just 119 days until Election Day — ignored the results of Democratic primaries and caucuses that he handily won and said he remained the best candidate to defeat former President Donald Trump.

The two-page letter ended with a call for party unity and an end to the public back-and-forth among Democrats over whether Biden should leave the race, after a June 27 debate performance that shook some high-ranking Democrats’ confidence in his ability to overcome his polling deficit against Trump.

“The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now,” Biden wrote. “And it’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump.”

Comer seeks interview with Biden doctor

Congress returns Monday from a weeklong July Fourth recess after several days in which members of both parties continued to press the issue of Biden’s fitness for office.

Republicans also began pressing for more details. House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer on Sunday called for Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, to submit to a transcribed interview about his assessments of Biden and O’Connor’s business dealings with James Biden, the president’s brother.

The Kentucky Republican said Biden and the White House had sent mixed messages about recent medical examinations of the president.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week that Biden had not been examined by a doctor since his regular checkup in February.

But Biden told a group of Democratic governors the same day that he was “checked out by a doctor” following the debate, Comer wrote.

Following the debate, Biden, attempting to explain a low, raspy voice, said he’d had a cold.

Comer also questioned if O’Connor could accurately report Biden’s health, or if he was compromised by a conflict of interest because of his involvement with James Biden’s rural health care company, Americore. James Biden has testified to the committee that he sought O’Connor’s counsel for the business.

The White House did not respond to a message seeking comment about Comer’s request.

More Democrats call for withdrawal

The holiday weekend also saw more U.S. House Democrats join a list of those asking Biden to step aside rather than seek reelection.

In a written statement on Saturday, Minnesota’s Angie Craig became the first member from a competitive district to call on the president to quit the race. Craig is the fifth member to publicly call for the president’s withdrawal.

Additional members are making private calls, according to media reports.

Four Democrats who lead House committees — Jerry Nadler of New York on the Judiciary Committee, Adam Smith of Washington on the Armed Services Committee, Mark Takano of California on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and Joe Morelle of New York on the House Administration Committee — said during a caucus leadership call on Sunday that Biden should withdraw, according to reports.

Other accounts reported more members on the call, including Susan Wild of Pennsylvania and Jim Himes of Connecticut, also opposed Biden’s continued candidacy. Wild later told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star she expressed concerns about Biden’s electability.

In an impromptu call in to the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” on Monday, Biden insisted again he was staying in the race and called for any opponents he had to “challenge” him at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.

Biden, who has secured enough pledged delegates through primary and caucus wins to clinch the nomination, would be heavily favored in a contested convention. Democratic Party rules mandate pledged delegates “shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” but are not legally required to cast their convention vote for their pledged candidate.

Why Are Biden And Blinken Complicit In The Ethnic Cleansing Of The Palestinians From Israel?

americanconservative  |   ong after the current administration passes from the scene, President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be remembered not for their bumbling, embarrassing encounters with the Chinese, nor for their steadfast refusal to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Russians, which set off a disastrous war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Instead, they will likely be remembered as the abettors of Israel’s transformation of Gaza into an abattoir, and will leave a legacy as bloodstained as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s.

But, to be fair, Nixon and Kissinger knew which country was theirs; they understood that the United States and Israel have distinct and vastly different interests. Indeed, it is little remembered today that as Secretary of State, Kissinger once ordered a reassessment of this so-called “special relationship.” 

Lacking the sheen of Kissinger’s not inconsiderable wit and intellect, Tony Blinken, a protege of Marty Peretz, erstwhile publisher of the New Republic and an ideological Zionist, may one day be remembered as his generation’s Robert McNamara: a bland bureaucrat carrying out the obscene orders of his commander-in-chief.

As if more were needed to bolster such a judgment, this week, after acknowledging that five Israeli military units had engaged in gross human rights abuses, the Biden administration signaled it will not apply the Leahy Law—which prohibits aid to militaries that have committed human rights abuses—to Israel. It would be hard to improve upon the following headline from the Hill: “US finds Israeli military units violated human rights; withholds consequences.” 

In an incredible performance this Monday at Foggy Bottom, the State Department spokesman Vedant Patel (yet another foreign-born bureaucrat who clearly knows little about the country he is paid to represent) ran cover for the Israelis once again, claiming that the IDF was now in line with Leahy and all is well.

Yet, given Israel’s widespread, heavily documented crimes, including the deployment of AI systems such as Lavender AI systematically to terrorize the Palestinian population, the application of Leahy would seem a mere slap on the wrist. Yet Blinken and Biden have deemed even symbolic measures of disapproval of Israel’s rampage as too great a burden on Tel Aviv. 

If Blinken and Biden were serious about stopping the carnage, they could have applied section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits security assistance to countries blocking humanitarian aid. In late March, a group of Democratic senators and congressmen called on the administration to do just that, writing, in a letter to the President,

Federal law is clear, and, given the urgency of the crisis in Gaza, and the repeated refusal of Prime Minister Netanyahu to address U.S. concerns on this issue, immediate action is necessary to secure a change in policy by his government.

If Biden and Blinken were serious, they would have applied  Leahy and enforced the terms of the Arms Control Export Act, the U.S. War Crimes Act and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act; if they were serious, they would have supported South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice; if they were serious, they would not have instructed UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield repeatedly to veto measures in the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire; if they were serious, they would call for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and others.

But they are not serious.

Weak People Are Open, Empty, and Easily Occupied By Evil...,

Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...What vessel do they choose? The… pic.twitter.com/ugF3bMgxcx

— Camus (@newstart_2024) April 21, 2024

Tucker Carlson: "Here's the illusion we fall for time and again. We imagine that evil comes like fully advertised as such, like evil people look like Anton Lavey...

Evil is an independent force that exists outside of people, that acts upon people...

What vessel do they choose? The weak. It's weak men and women who are instruments of evil. The weaker the leader, the more evil that leader will be...

Unfortunately we reached the time in American history where every leader is either a woman or a weak man pretty much...Mike Johnson...but he's a weak man and that's the man you should be afraid of....

Weak people just become a host for evil, an empty building that evil occupies, possesses even. And that's exactly what's happening to Mike Johnson. That's absolutely crazy what Mike Johnson is doing, but not because he's evil, it's because he's weak and therefore susceptible to evil..."

The State Of The Union

 

How Long Did They Believe They Could Keep Up The Charade?

NEW: MSNBC’s finest, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Joy Reid, melt down after the special counsel said that the mentally declining president is mentally declining.

The Three Stooges couldn’t fathom how the special counsel thought Biden had mental issues.

“This line that… pic.twitter.com/AO3XRcpNI3

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 9, 2024

outsidethebeltway  | In the comments to yesterday’s post, “Biden ‘An Elderly Man with a Poor Memory’,” my friend and co-blogger Steven Taylor notes that, despite being a quarter century younger than the President, he has long had issues with remembering dates, concluding,

Quite clearly Biden is old, but the reducing of all of his mental faculties down to specific examples is ludicrous. I bet every single person reading this said something yesterday that, if taken in isolation, would make them sound like an dottering fool.

While I’ve always been really good at dates, I’ve long been pretty bad with names—an issue that has increased significantly in recent years. I’m 58 and have no reason to think I’m going senile.

As for Biden, he’s clearly slowing down with age and is having more of these mental lapses. But, while I wish there were a younger option available, I think he’s still mentally up to the job—and light years better than the seeming alternative, Donald Trump.

Alas, this isn’t an objective conversation. People are looking at both candidates through partisan lenses and, like it or not, Biden’s gaffes are judged much more harshly than Trump’s.

NPR’s Domenico Montanaro (“Biden’s rough week highlights his biggest vulnerability — one he can’t change“):

The special counsel report about Biden’s handling of classified material didn’t charge him with a crime, but special counsel Robert Hur, a Republican, seemed to go out of his way to include damning commentary about Biden’s supposedly faulty memory, like referencing that Biden, 81, “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

That was stinging.

“It clears him legally and kneecaps him politically,” Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said of the report.

The 388-page report set off a political firestorm — and an ensuing clumsy response from the White House and the president himself.

Biden angrily rejected Hur’s claim, saying Thursday night in a press conference he felt questions about Beau weren’t “any of their damn business.”

The president got choked up while showing a rosary he was wearing on his wrist in memory of Beau, then thundered, “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”

If Biden had left it at that, that might be what people remembered about the news conference.

Instead, Biden wound up walking right into the stereotype laid out by Hur when he mistakenly said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the “president of Mexico” while answering a question about current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas.

It’s a mistake. Verbal slips happen. Everyone makes them — including Trump, who is only four years younger than Biden. Trump often meanders, recently appeared to confuse his primary opponent Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; on more than half a dozen occasions in the past year mistakenly referred to former President Barack Obama when he should have said Biden; and while in Iowa, called “Sioux City” “Sioux Falls,” which is 90 miles up the road in South Dakota.

But because more Americans are concerned with Biden’s age and fitness to do the job in a second term than they are about Trump’s age, every time Biden makes a flub it will have more resonance politically.

“It’s certainly true that anything that feeds the master negative narrative is especially harmful,” Begala said. “For [Bill] Clinton, it was cheating, for [George W.] Bush, it was ‘dumb,’ Obama ‘elitist,’ which is why when Obama said 57 states, it didn’t hurt him. If it was Bush, it would have.”

“Obviously with Biden, it’s ‘old.’ So, this really really hurts him.”

[…]

“Fair or not, this just amplified Biden’s greatest challenge,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, said of the special counsel report. “It screams through every poll and focus group.”

Axelrod went viral back in November for raising whether it was “wise” for Biden to run for reelection after a series of swing-state polls showed him losing to Trump.

“Many people have made a judgment about his age and command and discount his accomplishments and attribute every problem to it,” Axelrod said.

The Atlantic‘s Yair Rosenberg (“What Biden’s Critics Get Wrong About His Gaffes“) tries to handwave this away:

[T]he truth is, mistakes like these are nothing new for Biden, who has been mixing up names and places for his entire political career. Back in 2008, he infamously introduced his running mate as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.” At the time, Biden’s well-known propensity for bizarre tangents, ahistorical riffs, and malapropisms compelled Slate to publish an entire column explaining “why Joe Biden’s gaffes don’t hurt him much.” The article included such gems as the time that then-Senator Biden told the journalist Katie Couric that “when the markets crashed in 1929, ‘Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”’” The only problem with this story, Slate laconically noted, was that “FDR wasn’t president then, nor did television exist.”

In other words, even a cursory history of Biden’s bungling shows that he is the same person he has always been, just older and slower—a gaffe-prone, middling public speaker with above-average emotional intelligence and an instinct for legislative horse-trading. 

But he recognizes that there’s a perception problem and that the Biden team needs to address it head-on:

The president’s staff is understandably reluctant to put Biden front and center, knowing that his slower speed and inevitable gaffes—both real and fabricated—will feed the mental-acuity narrative. But in actuality, the bar for Biden has been set so laughably low that he can’t help but vault over it simply by showing up. By contrast, limiting his appearances ensures that the public mostly encounters the president through decontextualized social-media clips of his slipups.

As Slate observed in 2008, the frequency of Biden’s rhetorical miscues helped neutralize them in the eyes of the public. In 2024, Biden will have an assist from another source: Donald Trump. Among other recent lapses, the former president has called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “the leader of Turkey,” confused Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, and repeatedly expressed the strange belief that he won the 2020 election. With an opponent prone to vastly worse feats of viscous verbosity, Biden can’t help but look better by comparison, especially if he starts playing offense instead of defense.

But none of this will happen by itself. If the president and his campaign want the headlines to be something other than “Yes, Biden Knows Who the President of Egypt Is,” they’ll have to start making news, not reacting to it.

This strikes me as wishful thinking. Few people watch these speeches and interviews in full. If the press seizes on the gaffes—and they will—that’s what most will remember.

RIP Coach Red Pill (Should've Placed A Higher Priorirty On Your Wife And Daughter)

Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments. Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several… https://t.co/F0nOG9qGvv

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 12, 2024

Seems More Like Planned Demolition Than Organic System Failure

strategic-culture  |  American President Joe Biden likes to talk about “inflexion points” when he is lecturing about world affairs and the supposed superiority of the United States. This year is indeed an inflexion point.

It was the year that the entire world saw the truly hideous and criminal nature of U.S. power.

Washington’s fueling of the futile conflict in Ukraine and the despicable slaughter in Gaza is a wake-up call for the entire world. The United States stands barefaced and grotesque as the primary purveyor of war. There can be no doubt about that. For many it is shocking, scandalous and frightening.

Tragically, it seems, for the world, every year’s end is an occasion to witness and lament conflicts, wars and suffering over the preceding 12 months. Often the causes of wars and suffering are seemingly unfathomable.

However, this year seems to be unique. The year ends with a horrendous massacre in Gaza that is unprecedented and perpetrated by Israel with the full support of the United States. The scale of deliberate mass killing in Gaza makes it a genocide. The fact that this abomination is occurring at Christmas time when the world is supposed to celebrate the divine birth of Jesus Christ – the Prince of Peace – in the very place where he was born some 2,000 years ago makes the abomination all the more profane and damning.

What is particularly wretched is that the heinous destruction of children is happening in full view of the world. There is no remorse or pretence. It is full-blown premeditated murder done with cruelty and sickening impunity.

Virtually the whole world is horrified by the devastating, relentless violence and absolute violation of international law. The butchery by the Israeli regime cannot in any way be rationalized by the previous attack on Israel by Palestinian militants on October 7. Those killings by Hamas have been cynically used as a pretext for the subsequent and ongoing annihilation of Palestinian civilians.

This genocide could not happen without the crucial support of the United States for the Israeli regime. Financially, militarily and diplomatically, Washington is sponsoring the horror in Gaza as well as the Occupied West Bank.

This week saw the U.S. once again obstructing calls at the United Nations for a ceasefire and the urgent supply of humanitarian aid to more than two million people. The World Food Program has declared a catastrophic famine in the coastal enclave after more than 70 days of bombing and blockade by the Israeli regime. More than 20,000 people – mainly women and children – have been slaughtered with up to 7,000 more missing, presumably dead. Israeli troops are carrying out mass executions of terrified and traumatized human beings, according to UN rights monitors.

The United States is arming Israel to the hilt and enabling it. U.S. President Joe Biden has pointedly refused to join international demands for a ceasefire. The United Nations has voted by an overwhelming majority for a cessation of the violence. Washington has repeatedly rejected the world’s pleas because the Biden administration is obscenely amplifying Israeli lies and distortions. “Unwavering, unshakable support” is how the White House arrogantly boasts about it without a hint of shame that it is self-indicting.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions have been flown to Israel to carry out “indiscriminate bombing” (Biden’s own admission). One-tonne bunker-buster bombs have been dropped deliberately on refugee camps and hospitals. And still, the Pentagon shamelessly refuses to impose any red lines on the use of its munitions.

This genocide has Israeli fingers on the triggers but it is ultimately an American-sponsored genocide. Based on Nuremberg principles, Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu would be both in the dock, accompanied by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin and their counterparts in Tel Aviv.

If there were previous international doubts about Washington’s systematic criminality, the whole world knows for certain now.

When Kissinger Said "We'll Kill Your Family" He Meant It - Biden/Blinken? Not So Much...,

pacemaker  |  I've been waiting for today, knowing it was pre-planned and coming. Today in Riyadh at the China-Arab Summit President Xi of China formally invited the Arab nations to trade oil and gas in yuan on the Shanghai Exchange. Now the way diplomacy works (because it seems to have been forgotten in the West) is that Xi would not have made the invitation unless all the Arab states gathered in Riyadh - and particularly Saudi Arabia as host - had already agreed as a matter of joint policy to take action accordingly. Oil and gas will price in Shanghai and in yuan, breaking the dollar monopoly the US has imposed and enforced since 1974. Since the dollar-for-oil monopoly was the lynchpin of Bretton Woods II stability, it follows Bretton Woods II ended today.

To refresh memories, President Nixon unilaterally repudiated the US treaty obligation under the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement to redeem dollars for gold in 1972. The chaos in foreign exchange markets that followed led to instability, made worse with the inflationary OPEC oil embargo of 1973-74.

In July 1974 the US Treasury Secretary William Simon and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a top-secret flight to Riyadh to meet King Fahd. They offered a deal: sell Saudi oil exclusively for US dollars and buy US Treasuries with the proceeds, or we kill you, your entire family, and occupy the oil fields with the US military. Unsurprisingly, they left with a secret agreement.

The same deal was more or less extended to all of OPEC. Leaders like Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who strayed from the US dollar were killed, their countries destroyed and destablilsed, as an example to others. Iran, Syria, and Venezuela have resisted more successfully, but have been badly destabilised by US occupation, oil theft, attempted coups, attempted assassinations, and economic sanctions.

So today marks a big and admirably brave shift. After sending all the weaponry it could spare to Ukraine all year, ending oil and gas trade with Russia under sanctions, weakening allies with surging inflation, and depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of a record amount of oil to blunt inflation before the midterm elections, the US is not in an ideal position to launch wars in every Arab state at once. In fact, it probably can't launch a war or coup even in Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia will have prepared and provided for that risk. In any event, a new war in the Middle East would make the inflationary shock of the Ukraine war pale in comparison.

Signs of a shift have been in the wind all year. The fist bump and low-key reception of President Biden compares poorly to the lavish state reception of President Xi. Then Biden's attempt to get GCC states to sanction Russia was unanimously rejected.

And OPEC's outright refusal to defer oil production cuts until after the American midterm elections was a further sign Saudi and OPEC+ no longer take orders from Washington. Saudi took the unusual step of officially rejecting the US request in public.

When a presidential state visit by Xi to Saudi began leaking in the fall I began to watch for confirmatory signs of OPEC moving East. There were quite a few, but nothing as momentous as the extravagant welcome for President Xi to Riyadh and the China-Arab Summit. President Xi and King Salman signed a 30-year Strategic Partnership Agreement for cooperation on virtually all forward economic plans yesterday: energy,  telecoms, investment, trade, infrastructure, regional development, Belt & Road Initiative, etc. Significantly, the Agreement bars interference in domestic affairs by either nation, a principle China has urged widely for many years. 

The Entire World Knows That Biden Lacks The Mental Capacity To Write An Op-Ed

sputnik  |  US politicians have been quick to make glib comparisons between Russia's de-Nazification operation in Ukraine and Hitler's invasion of Europe or terrorist outrages. Scott Ritter, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, said Joe Biden couldn't even string such an argument together.

US President Joe Biden lacks the mental ability to draw parallels between Russia and Hamas, says a former US Marine. 

 

The Washington Post ran an op-ed under Biden's byline at the weekend, likening the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas' breakout from the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7 to Russia's military operation in Ukraine in defence of the Russian-speaking Donbass region — following eight years of Ukrainian shelling of civilians.

 

Biden "didn't write this" as he "doesn't have the mental capacity," Ritter told Sputnik.

 

"I'm not picking on him, I'm just being honest," he said. "This was written by his national security staff. It was edited by Jake Sullivan. I believe [US Secretary of State] Tony Blinken came in with a lot of stuff that this was a collaborative effort by the people who are managing Joe Biden."

"This is the story, not the content of the op-ed," Ritter stressed. "The story is that Joe Biden, the president of the United States is lacking in such mental capacity that the presidency is being managed by people who weren't elected to do that job. That's what people should be worried about."

But he said the words attributed to Biden no longer carry the same weight as comments by previous presidents, thanks to the proliferation of alternatives to the mainstream media.

 

"So when Joe Biden or his managers publish an op-ed of this nature, it no longer has the same cachet, the same impact that it would have ten years ago," Ritter argued. "Today, it's immediately cancelled out as ridiculous as absurd."

 

Ritter wrote for Consortium News last week that Biden and Blinken were being disingenuous in their call for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, given that no Israeli leader in decades has been serious about implementing it.

 

"Even if such a governing coalition could be crafted together to politically sustain the idea of a two-state solution that fails to resonate with Israelis and Palestinians alike, there remains the ultimate hurdle that needs to be cleared before any notion of a lasting peace between Israeli and Palestinian states premised on the notion of equality — Israel’s nuclear weapons program," Ritter wrote.

 

The former weapons inspector said Israel's nuclear program had been "shrouded in ambiguity from the moment it was born, back in the 1960s when they actually produced a weapon."

 

"The United States has been the principal reason why this has happened," Ritter pointed out. "The Nixon administration was confronted with the fact that Israel had nuclear weapons. We knew it. And they were in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, because even if they didn't sign the treaty, we signed the treaty. And the treaty only allows five declared nuclear powers. So we would have to sanction Israel."

Lester Holt And Antony Blinken Nervously Pretending Biden Didn't Shit The Bed

MSDNC  |  But at a press conference at the end of the meeting, Biden made a pointed remark that underscored the gulf between the two countries. Asked by a reporter if he stood by his characterization of Xi in June as a “dictator,” Biden answered that he did. “Well, look, he is. I mean, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours,” Biden said. “Anyway, we made progress.”

As he said this, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was seated in the front row, visibly winced. Blinken’s apparent pain at his boss’ blunt language has gone viral — inspiring mockery of the Biden administration, and prompting some right-wing commentators to describe Biden’s language as a sign of senility-induced incompetence. David Sacks, a right-wing venture capitalist, posted on X, “This was a bumbling act of senility in which Biden fell for a reporter’s obvious gotcha question, erased the whole point of the diplomatic summit, and caused his own staff to shake their heads in disbelief.” Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing commentator, observed in a response to Sacks: “China would be foolish to trust anything the Biden administration offers them at this point.”

Is Biden’s age a valid concern as he pursues another term in office? Yes. Does that definitively explain his behavior here? No. The simplest explanation is that Biden was being Biden.

First, it’s unclear that Biden’s comment could even be characterized as a gaffe. The question, after all, was whether the president would disavow a view he articulated just a few months ago. Biden knew if he changed his position he would be vulnerable to attacks of inconsistency out of political expediency. China has the same style of government today that it had in the summer, and there is nothing inaccurate about what Biden said. Biden is also aware that the right is constantly looking to attack him for being soft on China, and that very well may have happened if he had used softer language. It’s a bit of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario when it comes to Biden’s critics on the right.

Second, even if one assumes that Biden veered from the kind of language his staff advised him to use, anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock knows that Biden has misspoken, said something off-color, or unexpectedly deviated from talking points for his entire political career — particularly in the realm of foreign policy. As senator, vice president and now president, Biden tends to feel confident making edgy off-the-cuff remarks that cause others headaches. It’s difficult to argue that any impolitic comment he makes can be attributed to his age when this is the same man who, as vice president, forced former President Barack Obama to change his position on same-sex marriage by freelancing on the issue on “Meet the Press.” (Biden has even called himself “a gaffe machine.”) So even if one wants to argue that Biden was behaving incompetently, the bar for proving that it has to do with declining mental acuity is high.

Blinken’s reaction was funny to witness, a rare example of a seasoned diplomat shedding their poker face. But it doesn’t mean Blinken thought Biden didn’t know what he was doing — he could’ve simply disagreed with the president’s on-the-fly judgment. It’s possible he would have preferred that Biden had, for example, ignored the reporter’s question and shifted the topic to focusing on the progress that had been made at the summit, thereby neither confirming nor denying the question. Perhaps Blinken would’ve valued such a response after a summit when the U.S. and China made substantial diplomatic progress and their heads of state were unusually chummy with each other — including sharing nostalgic photos, exchanging birthday wishes and showing off their presidential cruisers. But unlike Blinken, Biden is primed to consider domestic audiences more than international ones; their judgment on this could simply be irreconcilable.

 

 

 

What Geniuses Cobbled Together This Malarkey And Said "Let's Pretend That Biden Wrote It!"

WaPo  | Today, the world faces an inflection point, where the choices we make — including in the crises in Europe and the Middle East — will determine the direction of our future for generations to come.
What will our world look like on the other side of these conflicts?

Will we deny Hamas the ability to carry out pure, unadulterated evil? Will Israelis and Palestinians one day live side by side in peace, with two states for two peoples?

Will we hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his aggression, so the people of Ukraine can live free and Europe remains an anchor for global peace and security?

And the overarching question: Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?

Both Putin and Hamas are fighting to wipe a neighboring democracy off the map. And both Putin and Hamas hope to collapse broader regional stability and integration and take advantage of the ensuing disorder. America cannot, and will not, let that happen. For our own national security interests — and for the good of the entire world.

The United States is the essential nation. We rally allies and partners to stand up to aggressors and make progress toward a brighter, more peaceful future. The world looks to us to solve the problems of our time. That is the duty of leadership, and America will lead. For if we walk away from the challenges of today, the risk of conflict could spread, and the costs to address them will only rise. We will not let that happen.

We have also seen throughout history how conflicts in the Middle East can unleash consequences around the globe.

We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against the murderous nihilism of Hamas. On Oct. 7, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, including 35 American citizens, in the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. Infants and toddlers, mothers and fathers, grandparents, people with disabilities, even Holocaust survivors were maimed and murdered. Entire families were massacred in their homes. Young people were gunned down at a music festival. Bodies riddled with bullets and burned beyond recognition. And for over a month, the families of more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas, including babies and Americans, have been living in hell, anxiously waiting to discover whether their loved ones are alive or dead. At the time of this writing, my team and I are working hour by hour, doing everything we can to get the hostages released.

The U.S. Will Fight The West Asian Part Of WW-III Down To The Last Israeli...,

geopoliticaleconomy  |  It is crucial to stress that Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world.

In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it:

If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.

There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.

Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.

I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison…

They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.

First of all, it goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire economic infrastructure all around the world relies on fossil fuels.

The world is gradually moving toward new energy sources, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the entire global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in the global oil and gas markets.

But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is that the United States has tried to maintain control over every region of the world.

This was stated very clearly by the U.S. National Security Council in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:

[The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.

Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”.

Now, historically, when it came to the Middle East, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. And until the 1979 revolution in Iran, the country was governed by a dictator, a shah, the monarch, who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.

However, with the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.

It is not just the massive oil reserves and gas reserves in the region; it is not just the fact that many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia.

It is also the fact that some of the most important trading routes on Earth also go through this region.

It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. This connects trade from the Middle East going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, and around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods.

Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, you have a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, right off the coast of Yemen. And there, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.

"Our" Crisis du Jour Makes It Clear That The U.S. Government Is A Purchased Entity

PCR  |  US Representative Matt Gaetz  has courage and principles, for the most part good ones.  

It was Gaetz who had the courage and leadership ability to get rid of Rino McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

It is Gaetz who understands that hardly any member of Congress in either party represents Americans.  Instead, they represent the military/security complex’s power and profits, the profits of the pharmaceutical companies,  the profits of agri-business (ethanol for example), the profits of Wall Street, the profits of energy, timber, and mining, and so forth.  And especially, the US Congress represents the artificial state of Israel and all of Israel’s agendas.  

Indeed, Matt Gaetz himself cannot escape having to support an occupier of Palestinians’ land, claiming that it is Israel’s.  The fact that even a brave man like Matt Gaetz has to support an aggressor against a people abandoned by the “moral” West shows how captured the US government is at all levels by vested monied interests.

Gaetz along with the entirely of the US Congress and the President  are purchased by the billions of dollars that American taxpayers are forced to hand over to Israel each year. American taxpayers are forced to give Israel annually billions of dollars that are used to purchase our government. Israel, considered a rich country, does not need foreign aid, but any member of Congress who does not vote for  Israel’s billions finds in his next election a challenger financed by Israel’s billions  and himself a victim of Israel’s slander machine. The same thing happens if you vote against an excessive military/security budget or against the agendas of powerful organized interests.  A government whose election is financed by interest groups has to represent those interest groups.

So, obviously, the solution is not term limits on members of Congress.  The solution is to take the money that Congress gives Israel to buy our government out of politics along with the ability of corporations to purchase the US government, thanks to an  unconstitutional ruling of the  US Supreme Court that it is a “free speech right”  for corporations and foreign interests to purchase the US government for their own use. 

There you have it. The US government is a purchased entity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with American interests or protecting the interests of the American people.

What needs to be done?

Matt Gaetz, the conservatives and libertarians naively  think that term limits is the answer.  This is another of Americans’ insouciant mistakes. The real solution is to extend, not limit, the terms of members of Congress and to give Congress the police powers  on which Congress’ enemy–the executive branch–has a monopoly. The corrupt Justice Department can frame up and arrest  members of Congress, and Congress has no corresponding powers.

The founding fathers distrusted democracy because of their fear of ignorant mobs. For this reason they limited the terms of US Representatives to two years.    So US Representatives and Senators are turned into whores prostituting themselves for reelection money as soon as they are elected. It is never possible for Congress or the President to represent American’s interests.

This is because of money.  The solution is to take out of politics the ability of corporations, Israel, and foreign interests to purchase the services of the US Government, which as a result of interest group funding of election campaigns turns the US government into a whore.  The Founding Fathers should have lengthened the terms of Congress and the President, prohibited all outside money from financing election campaigns, and financed at taxpayer expense free speech forums for candidates to debate their differences.  They also made a mistake by creating a legislative body too large for a common interest to emerge. This failure of the Founding Fathers doomed America to the control of vested interests.  The Democrats when they limited the terms of committee chairmen eliminated legislative power centers that could stand up to the executive branch and thereby weakened Congress as an institution.

The Empire Can't Spin The Murder Of Thousands Of Children

🇵🇸🇮🇱🚨‼️ “We wrote their names on the children’s bodies so that we would recognize them when they were torn into pieces.” pic.twitter.com/vQFG9njJwS

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) October 29, 2023

catyjohnstone |  Propagandists are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this. They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.

Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation — as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.

Propagandists are able to control civilization so effectively because they understand that humans are storytelling creatures whose lives are dominated by mental narrative, so if you can control the narratives the humans are telling each other, you can control the humans. A globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States depends heavily on its ability to indoctrinate us with subtle mass media messaging from a very early age.

The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.

The longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.

By murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see.

Eyes are opening everywhere. People are being radicalized in record numbers. The streets are being flooded with protesters. Very inconvenient questions are being asked. Rigorous scrutiny is being applied in places it was seldom applied before. Light is shining in through cracks that weren’t there before.

This is all so, so horrible and so, so painful to watch day in and day out. But something is moving underneath it all. Something big. The empire has done irreparable harm to its ability to keep everyone sleeping and complacent going forward. A healthy world may be in our future yet.

 

 

 

Why Two Carrier Groups Are A Useless Response To Gaza

Aurelian2022  |  In reality, the relationship between the use of force and the attainment of a defined political objective is a highly complex, inexact and uncertain art, and is much easier to explain theoretically than to do in practice. It implies a whole series of complicated, asserted relationships that don’t necessarily exist tidily in real life. To begin with, of course, you need to have a defined political objective, which is agreed, practicable and measurable. Bombing somebody, or firing off some shells like the French ship, is not an objective in itself, and is often indistinguishable from a display of pique to make yourself feel better. What the military call the “end-state” has to be clearly distinguishable from the current state, not to mention better than it, or there is no point in pursuing it.

You also have to be reasonably sure of how the political end-state will play out, or you could be in a worse situation than you were at the start. This implies a realistic knowledge of the political situation you are trying to affect, and what the political consequences of your military actions might be. So the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 was intended to humiliate the government of Slobodan Milosevic by forcing the surrender of Kosovo, and so remove him from power in the elections the following year. It was assumed that the government that replaced his would be grateful to NATO for bombing them, and would adopt a pro-western, pro-NATO stance. What was not anticipated  (well, except by those of us who were paying attention) was that Milosevic would be brought down by nationalist agitation, and replaced by a hard-line nationalist President, Kostunica. And as for the idea that a teetering Gaddafi, perhaps on the point of being overthrown in 2011, could be pushed over the brink by western intervention, leading to a stable, pro-western democratic system … well if there is a stronger word than “catastrophic” to put before “misunderstanding” let’s by all means use it. Oh, and let’s not even get into the political fantasies of western capitals about what would follow the forced resignation of Vladimir Putin.

So this use-of-force-for political-objectives thing looks a bit more complicated than we thought at first sight, doesn’t it? It also means that you might just get your fingers trapped in the wringer. For example, the US has deployed two carrier battle groups to the eastern Mediterranean. Now, this is a traditional action of governments that have no other options really open to them, and not, of itself, necessarily criticable. In the circumstances there is a political obligation to do something, whatever that something might be. And to be fair, carriers are very useful for evacuating foreign nationals, under military protection or otherwise, as the French showed in Beirut in 2006.

The problem is that it’s virtually certain that the carrier groups have been deployed according to this “do something” logic, which is to say that there is almost certainly no accompanying political strategy: as often, the US is making it up as it goes along. (Talking about “deterrence” or “stabilisation” is not a strategy, it’s an attempt at a justification.) The difficulty with all such deployments, though, is that they are much easier to start than stop. To withdraw the force is to send a political message that you think the crisis is over, or at least manageable, which may not be the message you want to send. So you keep the force in position, and eventually you replace it, because you don’t have any choice. The difficulty is that, apart from evacuations, there’s almost nothing for which the career group can be usefully employed. Intelligence gathering maybe, but there are far easier and more discreet ways of doing that. In the meantime, they are large targets, probably limited to flying patrols and not much else. (I’m assuming that the US would not be so insane as to join in the bombardment of Gaza itself.)

In turn, this reflects the effective impotence of the US in the present conflict. Its historical attempt to combine the positions of independent facilitator with doglike devotion to one side was always dubious, but was tolerated insofar as the country was actually able to have some influence. That’s clearly no longer true. Nobody in the Arab world is going to be influenced by the US now, and it has also ruled itself out of any influence over Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Biden’s initial maximalist rhetoric has effectively given away most of the influence the US might have been able to assert over Israel as well. Which doesn’t leave a lot, and doesn’t leave a lot for US military power to actually do, either.

In any event, even if a decision were made to use military power, in a political vacuum, and just to look threatening, what could the US actually do? For the moment, nothing. Now if a major ground invasion were to start in Gaza, and if Hezbollah were to react militarily along the northern frontier, then theoretically the US could target them, but with massive attendant risks to the Lebanese population, and considerable risk of casualties to itself, in other places where there are US troops. Put simply, an attack agains Hezbollah which is large enough to make a difference could cause massive collateral damage to Lebanon, whereas anything smaller will not make a difference anyway. The US has invested massively in the stability of Lebanon in recent years, and is not to going to put that investment in jeopardy now.

There is certainly every chance that Iran would consider a large-scale attack on Hezbollah to be an unfriendly action, and then retaliate. The problem for the Americans is that the Iranians can inflict far more damage on them and their interests than they can inflict on the Iranians. This is nothing to do with the sophistication, or even numbers, of weapons: it’s a lot more mundane than that. Get out a map, and have a look at the region, and ask yourself, where could US carrier groups safely go? Which countries could be expected to provide airfields, ports and harbours and logistic depots? In the present political situation, the answer is probably “none.” No doubt an air- and sea-launched missile attack on Iran could do some damage, but what would be the point? What possible proportional political objective could be served thereby? No conceivable amount of damage caused to Iran could compel the government, for example, to cut off support for Hezbollah, or for the current government in Syria. By contrast, severe damage to a single carrier, even if it were not sunk, would  be enough to drive the US  out of the region.

I think we can draw some general lessons from these examples, which in turn may help us understand how the current Gaza crisis may eventually resolve itself. We can start by recalling that the theory of using military power to achieve political end-states is important, but primarily as a limitation. That’s to say that, whilst military action without a political objective is pointless, the mere fact of starting military action towards a declared political end-state doesn’t mean that you will automatically get there. You still have to do the hard work of turning the one into the other, and it’s that that I want to talk about now.

Consider a political end-state of some kind. It doesn’t have to be heaven on earth or for that matter the surrender of your enemy. It can be something simpler, such as an enforceable decision by your neighbour to stop supporting separatist groups in your country. So let’s assume you define that political end-state, which we’ll call P(E). Now the first thing to say is that this political end-state must actually be politically (not just militarily) possible. It must be within the capacity of the other government to agree to, or failing that the balance of political forces at the end of the conflict must at least make it possible. It is pointless and dangerous to attempt to force a country or a political actor do do something that is beyond their power to do; not that this hasn’t been attempted often enough.

What's Left Of Biden Still Believes The Lie About "Team America World Police!"...,

sputnik  |  Asked whether there should be a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, US President Joe Biden said in an interview for CBS that Israel has to go after Hamas and called them a “bunch of cowards.” “Israel is going after a group of people who have engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust. And so, I think Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of cowards. They’re hiding behind the civilians,” Biden said. Gaza is a small, densely populated 140.9 square meter area with over 2 million people. Travel in and out of Gaza is heavily controlled by Israeli forces. Biden emphasized that Hamas needs to be “eliminated entirely.” Biden also said that he is in talks with Egypt and Israel about the establishment of a humanitarian corridor in the area.

“We’re also talking to Egyptians whether there is an outlet to get these children and women out of that area at this moment. But it’s hard,” Biden said in the interview. The US President also responded “yes” when asked if he supported humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza, something Israel has been blocking, including food, water and electricity, though Israel announced on Sunday that some water services had been turned back on. At least 13 Americans have been missing since Hamas’ attack, and 30 Americans have been confirmed dead. Biden said that the US is trying every avenue they have to see its remaining citizens returned safely but would not provide details. The interviewer noted that Biden had called the missing Americans’ families and spoke to them on Zoom.

While Biden consistently stressed throughout the interview that the United States supports Israel in their fight against Hamas, he suggested that they do not attempt to occupy Gaza. “I think it’d be a big mistake. Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that … It would be a mistake … for Israel to occupy … Gaza again,” Biden said. Biden added that he does not think committing American troops will be necessary in the conflict. The President stressed that he still supports a two-state solution in the area, which has long been the official US policy, but said that right now is not the time to press for it. He also said that the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not dead because of the conflict. “The Saudis, and the Emiratis, and other Arab nations understand that their security and stability is enhanced if there’s normalization of relations with Israel,” Biden said. “It’s just going to take time to get done.”

Biden also addressed the conflict in Ukraine, saying that the United States can handle both it and Israel at the same time. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history– not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” The United States has provided at least $111 billion to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special operation. Earlier this month, an additional $24 billion in aid was blocked by a group of House Republicans. That debate resulted in the ousting of House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Congress is now frozen until a new speaker is elected. The White House has continued to ask Congress for aid for both Ukraine and Israel. When asked if the situation in Congress threatens world security, Biden responded “yes,” putting the blame on “MAGA Republicans.”

Cornpop Hopped Up On Drugs, Reading The Teleprompter And Slurring His Words

WSJ  |  As explosions rang out and bullets flew over Tamir Erez’s home in Mefalsim near the Gaza Strip border, he said he kept asking himself, “Where is the Israeli military?” He fled town with his children holding their heads down so they couldn’t see the bodies of dead Israelis killed by Palestinian militants.

“It will take a long time for us to recover from this day,” Erez said. 

Israel’s failure to anticipate an attack Saturday that left hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead and militants rampaging through villages punctured a sense of invincibility built on its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus. It left the world questioning what went wrong and Israel’s leaders facing pressure to retaliate with overwhelming force.

The assault came as Israel faces its most difficult series of threats in the decades since what remains the country’s greatest security failure, the Yom Kippur War, the surprise attack launched 50 years ago this week by Egyptian and Syrian forces.

Iran has provided unprecedented coordination among the forces of several militant groups, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and stoked deadly conflict in the West Bank, putting Israel at risk on three fronts.

Using rockets, paragliders, motorcycles, pickup trucks, and boats, Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip launched a coordinated attack that showed an unexpected level of sophistication. 

Israeli forces appeared to be caught completely by surprise as Hamas militants in Gaza used bulldozers to tear down the security fence with Israel and streamed into the country.

How Israel’s Iron Dome works

Interception

The missile destroys the incoming rocket by exploding near it.

Launcher

Each has 20 interceptor missiles

with an in-built radar seeker

Mobile control Unit

Analyses trajectory, estimates impact point and commands launch of interceptor missile

Radar

Identifies rocket shell

Source: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems

“Clearly this was a well-planned operation that didn’t just emerge overnight and it’s surprising it was not detected by Israel or any of its security partners,” said Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington. “It’s hard to think of a security failure of this magnitude in Israel’s recent history.”

Israeli security leaders had played down the threat from Hamas in recent months, as the group abstained from conflicts started by its smaller ally in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There was a sense that Israel, with its Iron Dome air defense systems, had rendered ineffective Gaza’s main threat of short-range rockets. 

Last month, the Israeli military confidently characterized Gaza as being in a state of “stable instability,” suggesting that the dangers posed by Hamas militants were largely contained. 

Recent Israeli intelligence assessments of Hamas were that the militant group had shifted its focus to trying to stoke violence in the West Bank and that it was looking to avoid launching major attacks from Gaza in an effort to avoid the kinds of punishing Israeli military responses that have devastated the isolated area in the past.