Rudy came back from Ukraine promising major revelations about Biden. Of course, he could be talking out of his bodacious farthole: Remember when he promised that the world would soon be talking about Biden's alleged perfidy in Romania? And then it turned out that Rudy himself was the guilty party.
Still, I'm pretty terrified. The teevee talking heads assume that Rudy will source his smears back to disgraced former officials in Ukraine. No. As we saw a couple of posts down, the smears will come from the current Zelensky government. Unfortunately, Seth Abramson seems to be the only American writer who understands the importance of this Kyiv Post article.
Despite his (fictitious) image as an anti-corruption crusader, the current head of Ukraine is not to be trusted. Don't forget: Zelensky came that close to going on CNN and saying the words Trump wanted him to say. It's not as though he's a man of inflexible morals.
An increasing number of people are aware that Zelensky is the puppet of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, the world's greatest bank robber, who also happens to be the funder of the fascist Azov Battlaion. (Basically, Mr. K robbed from the taxpayers and gave to the Nazis.) There are indications that Kolomoisky has made a secret peace with Putin; we know that he has met with Giuliani in order to plan who-knows-what kind of skullduggery.
Zelensky's government covered up the horrible crimes committed against Valeria Gontareva, the honest Ukrainian official who revealed Kolomoisky's multi-billion dollar bank robbery. That cover-up tells you who Zelensky really is. Don't think for one second that Zelensky will refrain from playing along with Trump's plot against Biden.
Bad things are coming, folks.
Frankly, Biden should drop out now. Yes, the situation is sickeningly unfair, just as the plot against Al Franken was sickeningly unfair. But it is what it is.
Everyone should start planning for the post-Biden Democratic campaign.
Buttigieg? No. Nice guy, smart guy, but too inexperienced. I like Booker, my heart belongs to Warren, but in the end, there's a lot to be said for Amy Klobuchar. She's closer than Warren is to the nation's political center, her state is closer to the nation's geographical center, she's under 60, and there's just a whole lot less for the oppo researchers and smear-mongers to work with. She's female and thus cannot be Frankened or Epsteined. The most important issue right now is climate change, and Klobuchar is good on that score. Does anything else really matter?
Trump is trying to engineer another 1972, smearing the presumed Dem frontrunner in order to run against an easily-beatable lefty like Sanders. Warren could move toward the center, but Klobuchar is already there. If Biden dropped out now, there's a good chance that Klobuchar could win Iowa. I love ya, Joe -- but you gotta go.
The NYT offered an interesting tidbit about Rudy Giuliani: He takes no payment for his legal services to Trump, which means that he is offering aid for free. (Someone must be paying for all of that first-class travel.) But Trump's disclosure forms do not list Rudy's legal advice as a gift.
As Marcy has noted, if Rudy is not actually functioning as Trump's lawyer, then none of his conversations with Trump are privileged.
Of course, he will claim privilege anyways. No-one can stop these bastards.
12 comments:
Yes go Biden. I never liked him. Also I believe he is a liar and corrupt.
Why, Anonymous! I'm touched. It has been a while since this blog was significant enough to warrant trolling.
On the other hand, if the anti-Biden smear bots are coming HERE, I shudder to think of what they're up to elsewhere.
For the record, I think Biden is a great man. And one of the most honest men in politics. But Zelensky is going to back up whatever smear Trump and Rudy have cooked up, and I don't see how Biden can prevail.
Klobuchar is effectively a Nixon Republican. It's becoming increasingly clear that the only "Democrats" that Cannon supports are those to the right of Nixon.
2020 Trump wins. White nationalist take over the USA. The percentage of white population increases. Non-white voting power is decreased and defacto segragation increases. A Republicans win again in 2024. Russia, China and USA take over the world and remain in power until the AGI revolution in 2050.
Oh, please. If Biden goes, the Democrats will lose. The crop of candidates outside of Biden is a mile wide and an inch deep. There is NOBODY else but Biden unless Hillary Clinton jumps back into the fray.
Joseph, you really need to take a break because this is making you sick. I can hardly stand to read this nonsense.
Joseph, have you ever read "What It Takes," Richard Ben Cramer's book on the 1988 presidential primaries? If not, it's probably the best book on presidential politics ever. The first 2/3 of the book is a deep dive into [most] of the major candidates on both sides -- Bush, Dole, Dukakis, Hart, Biden, Gephardt -- describing how each had gotten where they were, what they'd overcome, what they'd achieved in earlier positions. You come out of it with a new understanding and, yes, an admiration, of sorts, even for those you'd never found palatable. Truly, any of the six could have been a pretty decent president -- not that *that's* such a high bar these days.
The last 1/3 of the book watches as each of three campaigns disintegrates. You realize the traits that made each a strong candidate and a worthy potential leader were also their collective Achilles' heels. As the primary race limps to its end with Bush and Dukakis getting the nod, you can't imagine how either can last through the actual election.
I bring this up because 1988 was the year Biden remembered his father had been a coal miner. I remember that speech in particular, as I'd met Kinnock a few years earlier while working for the Fabians, and I'd seen coverage of his speech the first time it was given. Cramer addresses the gaffe in his book, but unsatisfyingly -- mainly because Biden could never offer an explanation that even neighbored on making sense. In that pre-Trump era, it seemed like such an egregiously pointless falsehood, so easily documented and for such negligible gain, I felt for certain Biden had been unmasked as dangerously unstable and his political career irretrievably doomed. I can't tell you how astounded I was when he reappeared in 2008.
I know you feel he has other closeted skeletons that would inevitably emerge should he be nominated, but in my eyes that lapse of judgment disqualified him 30 years ago. Of course, the GOP hasn't been able to field a qualified candidate for nearly as long, so I'd have to take a cranky, elderly mythomaniac over the sociopath currently in office, but I'd prefer for that not to be the only choice.
When do Democrats win against all odds?
When they have a candidate like Clinton or Obama who can ignite the ash covered passions and the flickering hope in not just diehard Democrats, but in a wide ranging demographic.
Granted, Hillary and Bernie both have passionate supporters, but not large enough and not inside every demographic.
And that is why Trump won all be it with some help and cheating since he was so obviously incompetent, unqualified and a total buffoon.
The only candidate left that can pull this off is Warren in my opinion.
In today's political climate, even a strong and charismatic candidate maybe slaughtered by Trump and the Republican house machine.
A centrist, safe, let's not rock the boat candidate will be pulverized.
So I guess in a backhanded way, I agree with Joe.
OTE, it IS making me sick. I know what's going to happen because I read the Kyiv Post. You don't. Nobody else on the left -- not even anyone working for MSNBC! -- is bothering to do that, even though it would seem to be the obvious first step.
You thought I was spewing nonsense when I predicted a Trump victory at a time when Hillary seemed to have an insurmountable lead. How many times must I say it? OPTIMISM KILLS. Only a ruthless, brutal cynicism can help us prepare for what's about to hit.
As for the other comments -- well, again, I'm touched. I haven't had trolls in a while. Looks like I'm making a comeback!
Klobuchar to the right of Nixon? HILARIOUS. Keep it coming! I needed that laugh.
William, you had it more or less right until you said that China, Russia and the USA would take over the world. The US is dying. It will be split up soon, just as the UK is going to split.
maz -- seriously? You're bringing up the Kinnock thing in THIS day and age? That whole pseudoscandal was nonsense in 1988. In fact, that controversy marked the moment I became a Biden fan. I figured that if he was being smeared over bullshit, he must pose a threat to the Republicans.
You've forgotten that Obama cribbed speeches (without attribution) from others during the 2008 campaign, and nobody cared. People care about such things only when the teevee propagandists TELL them to care.
Why'd Biden make that mistake in '88? The answer is simple; he has explained the situation many times. Biden had quoted Kinnock on several other occasions, naming the original source. On that one occasion, Biden neglected to name the original speaker. It was a minor verbal gaffe, of the sort we've come to expect from Biden. Maybe his occasional trouble with putting his thoughts into words has something to do with his history as a stutterer. I consider it akin to my own bad habit of leaving out small words (usually prepositions) while writing. Truth be told, there are also plenty of occasions when, upon re-reading a post, I realize that I need to include a new sentence or small paragraph in order to make my train of thought comprehensible.
A word like "mythomaniac" is ridiculous.
Back in '88, everyone should have immediately understood that Biden was quoting a Brit. Americans don't use the word "thick" to mean "stupid." At any rate, I was overjoyed to see an American politician express solidarity with the poor and the working class. We didn't hear a lot of that in the Reagan era.
The "closeted skeleton" to which I have previously referred is something that Trump might not consider important. We all know that Trump's closet has more bones than a graveyard.
George Will, now an Independent, is a tad right of Tricky Dick Nixon, but he goes straight to the Democrat Party's supposedly unified endorsement of "The Green New Deal."
In 10 years America will have only non-carbon renewable energy. (Exxon Mobil plans to produce 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017.) By then, "every building in America" will be environmentally retrofitted, "farting cows" (methane gas; say goodbye to hamburgers) will be on the way out, fast electric trains will make airplanes unnecessary, "every combustion-engine vehicle" will be gone (but relax: charging stations will be "everywhere").
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, averse to government by arrested-development teenagers, dismissed the Green New Deal (GND) as a "suggestion." Its enthusiasts, buffeted by gales of derision, responded with gusts of dissembling as implausible as the GND: Their fact sheet was a mere draft, or a dirty trick ("doctored"), or something.
Do they know how the actual New Deal fared? Devoted to curing unemployment, the unemployment rate never fell below 14 percent until 1941, eight years into the New Deal, as America prepared for war. The 1937-38 "depression within the Depression" was the twentieth century's third-worst recession.
Every endorser of the GND thereby endorses its claim to life-and-death urgency, yet — cognitive dissonance alert — every endorser knows that none of it will happen. Its authors say, "There is no time to waste." Strange. The last Democratic administration, which departed just 25 months ago, proposed approximately none of what the GND says we cannot survive without.
Gadfly, if you care about the Democratic Party OR the climate crisis, you yourself will disavow the Green New Deal in the strongest possible terms.
We keep referencing Nixon in this discussion. Well, Nixon said one thing that Democrats refuse to heed: "Losers don't legislate."
The Green New Deal is a concept associated with AOC -- and AOC IS NOT POPULAR.
That's a fact. That fact has nothing to do with whether you or I think like AOC. Whether she SHOULD be roundly disliked is immaterial. The hard fact is that she is hated.
Again: Stop talking only to your prog friends, and stop thinking optimistically. Optimism kills.
Nothing is more important than solving the climate crisis. Thus, nothing is more important than getting Dems elected. And in order to accomplish that goal, nothing is more important than announcing loudly that you think AOC is full of shit.
That's not the way things SHOULD be, but that's the way it IS.
Another point: What a politcian says during a campaign is not the same thing as the actions taken in office. Again: That's not the way things SHOULD be, but that's the way it IS. The polling on the Green New Deal is fairly good, but there are many parts of the country where it is hated. I would say that the best approach would be to emphasize the jobs it could create, while critiquing the less-popular aspects.
Joseph -
I know Biden's explanation, and it's bullshit. He didn't copy-and-paste text; he didn't somehow forget to say something like, "Oh, and if I was Neil Kinnock, I could say ... blah blah blah." Let me refresh your memory:
"Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife... is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? ...Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It's because they didn't have a platform on which to stand."
If you want to attribute that to a slip of the tongue, go right ahead. But there's a world of difference between forgetting to credit another's phrasing and appropriating their life-story -- with the exception of proper names and locations.
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