Yesterday, thanks to Crooks and Liars, I found a new parody video site. It’s a hoot – it shows genuine non-English-speaking clips nd adds parody CC. The first one I saw (which will be in today’s video thread) showws a Putin press conference (note to Americans – 10cm is approximately 4″ – that should give you a feel for the numbers.)
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
PolitiZoom – Read A Beautiful Tribute To Joe Biden, Penned By A Former Republican
Quote – Democrats can be obtuse. And we had some terrific candidates, which in a sane world, which the years leading up to the 2020 election emphatically were not, we might have put together on a dream ticket. One such dream ticket would have been Elizabeth Warren in the top spot with Pete Buttigieg as her VP. That would have been a fine use of our talent. But it never would have flown against Trump. Biden was the only one who could do it[.] Click through for full tribute (what I have quoted isn’t even part of it.) It’s well worth your time
Civil Discourse – Democrats Hold the Senate—and the Ability to Appoint Federal Judges
Quote – At the end of the Obama administration, there were 104 judicial vacancies in the district courts and the courts of appeal, plus the one at SCOTUS. That’s unheard of. Appointing federal judges is one of the most important jobs of the presidency, shaping a legacy that lasts well beyond a president’s time in office. Ronald Reagan’s appointments had an impact for decades, with 15 or so of them still on the bench. On the floor of the Senate, after Barrett’s confirmation, McConnell said with glee, “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election. They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” Click through for full article. Of course Joyce is a lawyer, so this is the first thing she thinks about, probably for every Federal election. But it’s one of the first things I think about also, for exactly the reasons Mitch McConnell shared. He is a wily old – mmphmm, bird.
The US midterms showed more than a weakened Trump and a relieved Biden. Are the prophets of doom right about America?
I’ve been posting disappointed, cynical and perhaps even angry comments on Politics Plus since the polling booths closed. That may seem a little unfair to many Democrats who are happy the Red Wave didn’t come to fruition and election day was spared expected violence from the right. However, as seen from afar through a democratic lens, both events are not enough. We had hoped for more. I leave it to Stan Grant, an Australian analyst, to explain what the American midterms mean to a long-term ally. His article is taken in full from the ABC News site.
America has been spared Donald Trump’s political resurgence but for how long?(AP)
You can hear the sighs of relief that the anticipated red wave in the American midterm elections did not happen.
The United States has been spared a resurgent Trumpism … at least for now. The question is: why did anyone think there would be a resounding Republican triumph?
Remember the presidential election? The same pundits were predicting a blue wave. An America exhausted by the turmoil of the Trump years, they said, would swing behind the Democrats and Joe Biden.
Well, just like now, there was no wave. Yes, Biden won the presidency. But nearly 70 million people voted for Donald Trump, the highest number of votes ever for a sitting president.
America is divided. That’s the point. These midterms have just underlined it.
The US is wracked with political tribalism, cutting across fault lines of class, race and geography. So weird is American politics that in a poll before the midterms most Americans believed the Democratic Party, not the Trump Republicans, is the more extreme.
America is so unruly. So apparently ungovernable that some have even wondered if the Union itself will hold. At their most breathless, prophets of doom have warned of civil war.
Of course, America has been here before. It has actually had a civil war. In the 1960s the United States was torn apart by political assassinations, riots, racism and economic strife. In the 1970s it weathered Watergate and the corruption of the Nixon presidency.
America can always rebound. It is still a beacon for so many. At its best it remains a dazzling place. But equally the past 50 years may just prove that America’s unravelling is long and deep.
America has survived tumultuous presidencies before, including corruption of the Nixon years.(ABC News: Shakira Wilson)
American decline continues
Those breathing a little easier now need to ask themselves what they are celebrating. A Biden reprieve? The likelihood of another Biden term at the next presidential election? What is there to be relieved about in an ailing nation where far too many have abandoned hope?
Biden has not arrested American decline. Inflation is rampant. The economy is shrinking. The poor are getting poorer. Life expectancy is decreasing. Americans have less faith in democracy, not more.
When Biden took power he promised to re-energise the country. America would build things again. It would regain its moral core. It would lead the world, not shrink from leadership. America is back, said Biden.
But what has happened? Serious questions are being asked about Bidenomics: his stimulus cash splash only fuelled inflation. His America is more protectionist. He urges Americans to buy American; laws promote the use of American iron and steel and hands out subsidies to local manufacturers in industries like electric vehicles.
All of that might boost local jobs. But analysts warn there is a downside. Protectionism hurts other nations. It inspires tit for tat – beggar thy neighbour – economic retaliation.
The Economist newspaper recently warned of increasing red tape, of higher prices for goods, dulling Biden’s “go-green” environmental push. It warned that such measures tempts other countries into China’s orbit.
The Economist wrote: “Rather than putting up barriers, America should reap the benefits of openness.”
Abroad, Biden’s first two years in office were marked by the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. The most powerful military in the world humbled by the Taliban.
Yes, Biden has sought to rally democracies. He has thrown his support – but not troops on the ground – behind Ukraine in its defence against Russian invasion.
Biden says don’t bet against America. But the jury is out on that.
Xi Jinping is a wild card
Putin’s Russia is not Xi Jinping’s China. There is a greater threat looming: war over Taiwan. Biden has been confused and confusing in his response. He pledges that the US will defend Taiwan only for the White House to have to walk back his words.
China, not Russia, looms over the 21st century. It is on track to usurp the US as the biggest economy in the world. Even as its economy slows it is still growing at around 4 per cent while America stands on the brink of recession with growth at 1 per cent.
Joe Biden will now sit down with Xi Jinping, a meeting of the world’s two most powerful leaders. Both leaders need the meeting. Both face headwinds. But Xi Jinping believes he needs America less than America needs China.
For certain, Biden cannot dismiss Xi. The unipolar world – the American century – looks to be over. The era of great power competition is upon us again as the Chinese ask: Can two tigers live on the same mountain?
Xi Jinping is a wild card. President for life. He dresses in military fatigues and warns of war. But Xi is not Vladimir Putin. He cannot easily be put in the deep freeze and Biden must talk with him.
A rapprochement is too much to expect but new Cold Warriors who think China can be isolated, who imagine a showdown with China, flirt with catastrophe.
Xi Jinping can not be put in the deep freeze and Joe Biden must continue to talk to him.(Reuters: David McNew)
What do the midterms tell us?
This is the backdrop to the midterm elections: war, the threat of war, economic strife, an ailing America and a nation far from the so-called shining city on the hill.
What do the midterms tell us? Donald Trump is weakened but it is too soon to write him off. He still has a grip on the Republican Party.
Trump is a carnival act. An American Barnum and Bailey creation. He’s personally odious and politically dangerous. He has concocted conspiracies. Incited insurrection. Exploited racism. Bragged of his misogyny and sexual predatory.
Yet he speaks to the dying heart of the country. His vision is American carnage, not American dreams. And right now, for too many Americans, that sounds right.
After the elections American politics faces gridlock. Neither party commands the country. But the midterms were not just about Democrats and Republicans. They were about America.
And that means they were about all of us.
Stan Grant is the ABC’s international affairs analyst and presenter of Q+A on Thursday at 8.30pm. He also presents China Tonight on Monday at 9:35pm on ABC TV, and Tuesday at 8pm on the ABC News Channel.
Glenn Kirschner – Mike Pence reveals in his book that he refused to report/covered-up Donald Trump’s election crimes (While I agree that was wrong – who was he going to tell? Bill Barr? Jeffrey Clark? Anyone else in Donald Trump**’s Justice Department? Yes, he could have talked to Biden’t DOJ once it existed. Or, yeah, a Federal judge.)
MSNBC – Huma Abedin: Everything Has Now Changed For Biden
Thom Hartmann – You Won’t Believe What Far Right Did To Stop Midterm Votes For Democrats (sorry it’s so long.)
Ring of Fire – Trump Staffers Admit To Treating Him Like A Toddler To Appease Him
Liberal Redneck – 2022 Midterm Results
Beau – Let’s talk about the economic power of the parties…
Glenn Kirschner – Oath Keeper Elmer Stewart Rhodes testifies in his own defense at trial and goes full Trump
The Lincoln Project – The Red Mirage
CNN – I don’t like to use videos this long, but this is information (including emotional information) you likely wan’t get elsewhere, and Anderson IMO did a remarkable job of drawing it out. You may need a hanky.
MSNBC – Sean Patrick Maloney flattens Chuck Todd for blaming Biden: ‘The president gets a bum rap’ (Sadly, e lost re-election.)
Watch This Stray Cat Do A ‘Crab Dance’
Beau – Let’s talk about Trump, special counsels, advice, and delays….
Yesterday, when I got to the computer (yes, later than usual) I had 105 emails in my inbox. I deleted, as quickly as I could,, all that were not subscriptions … and had 20 left. That’s actually not too bad – usually I have around 80, plus or minus, and end up with just about 20, plus or minus. So the volume was not all that alarming. The content, however, was another matter. Heather Cox Richardson’s Monday night letter (which as always I read this morning – even when it comes befroe mifnight, it generally comes after I leave the computer for the day), for instance, the statement of a Trump** stooge that if there was not s definite result tonight, “it’s going to look very suspicious.” Well, yes it is, to the ignorant – whether or not their ignorance is voluntary. Besides the delays in every election, which are unavoidable and not at all suspicous, a judge in Cobb County, GA recently ordered that a substantial number of voters who had applied for and not eeceived absentee ballots (now that actually does look suspicious) must be provided with replacement ballots and given unto November 14th to get them in (which is only fair.) And, even more disturbingly, the leader of the Wagner Group (the privately owned military company), who is a Russian oligarch, publicly took credit for interefering in US elections on a grand scale, both in 2016 and continuing, and with no intention to stop. Regardless of the truth (or lack of it) of that statement, it has a good chance of inspiring violence in people already radicalized. Well, at this point, we have done all we can (unless you are one of those Cobb County Georgia voters who got stiffed), and all we can do is brace ourselves.
Cartoon – 09 Bonaparte RTL
Short Takes –
Democratic Underground – Biden Stops Mid-Speech
Quote – Amid a crowd of hundreds watching President Joe Biden speak at a North County campaign event for Rep. Mike Levin on Thursday, Jared Smith and his handwritten sign stood out. It read: “Thank you for having a stutter.” About 20 minutes into the speech, President Biden noticed it, but couldn’t read it. Click through for full (short) story. The poster provides a source, but I thought this was so sweet – and so telling – just as it was that I went with the DU post.
The New Yorker – Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
Quote – Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted. In this case, the failure was “particularly impressive,” since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from. The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking. Click through for article. Not exactly news, and kind of discouraging, but something we all need to come to terms with. Except – have you ever changed your mind on a political issue, or an issue of faith? Not necessarily religious faith, but just something you strongly believed was true? I have – I wouldn’t say many times, but definitely not just once, on a variety of issues. It has tended for me to be gradual, and to require thought and analysis, and in the end generally it comes down to the fact that the belief I am discarding as erroneous has come into conflict with something else I believe more strongly. Sometimes newly learned facts have been involved – but not always.
