Andrew Sullivan Recommends How to Beat Trump in 2024

In my view, Joe Biden is out energy and out of ideas. He should not run in 2024. I would also abhor another blow-hard narcissistic sunder-headed, divisive Trump run at the presidency.

Biden's recent marathon press conference is why he should not run. Andrew Sullivan has commented at length on what is ailing Joe Biden and the Democrats in an article titled: How Biden Lost The Plot: Listening to interest groups and activists is no way to get re-elected.

Here's an excerpt:

Here’s what hurts Trump. Biden doing sensible deals with Manchin and Sinema on tangible areas of agreement, instead of castigating and alienating them. Insisting that our election system is, in fact, solid and legitimate. Celebrating the re-opening of schools. Firing the heads of the CDC and FDA, after their appalling performance during Covid. And imagine if Biden had given a tub-thumping speech last week not on why it’s still 1964 in America, but on why he is appalled by the soaring murder rates in many cities, especially in poor and minority neighborhoods, and opposes the catastrophic soft-on-crime policies Democrat DAs are promoting around the country. Go visit the NYPD with Mayor Adams. Work with Romney on childcare assistance. Head to San Francisco to support Mayor Breed’s attempt to rein in anarchy. Now that would hurt Trump.

Biden also seems incapable of grappling with the cultural leftism — from critical race theory to the replacement of biological sex with subjective gender — that is increasingly defining the Democrats as a party. He’s just absent, distant, irrelevant on these issues, even as they have shown to be deeply unpopular and deeply divisive. Has he said anything about education and the rights of parents, a burgeoning issue for many suburban voters? Not that I’ve noticed. Meanwhile his party becomes more and more associated with the teachers’ unions, whose refusal to teach children in person for two years is now legendary.

His capitulation to the cultural left — from federal funds for abortion to “equity” across the federal government — is puzzling. I can’t believe that Biden really thinks that deliberate discrimination in favor of some races but not others is an American value, but that is what he is doing everywhere he has authority. I doubt he believes that the United States remains in its essence a slavocracy, whose true origin was 1619 and not 1776, and that this should be taught as fact in high schools across the country. But he will not say a word against the poisonous canard that helped deliver Virginia to the GOP. I doubt he thinks there is no biological difference between men and women — but that’s what his policies on trans issues reflect. Has he ever used the term “Latinx” in private? Again I doubt it, but he mouths that linguistic absurdity in public speeches.

His silence on all these things offers a chance for a future pivot, of course, to remind us that he was once Barack Obama’s vice president, and not merely Ibram Kendi’s tool. But he’s as cowed by these fanatics as the rest of his party. And I doubt he hears a smidgen of criticism of wokeness from his advisers. I mean he appointed Susan Rice to impose it on the entire federal workforce. All he hears, I suspect, is that opponents of wokeness are just racist, transphobic bigots.

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan Recommends How to Beat Trump in 2024

Democrats and their Media Tribe Beat the Drums toward Armed Conflict in Ukraine

Where are the anti-war voices at the NYT, WP and the Democratic Party? The NYT (Judith Miller and Thomas Friedman) stupidly urged us to go to war in Iraq and they haven't learned a damned thing. Watch Joe Scarborough's hawkish rant at 30 sec mark of this video. It's surreal. What real national interest does the US have in the Ukraine that we are willing to risk military action against a country with well-stocked nuclear arsenal? And where do we hear anti-war voices on the mainstream media? FOX. This is insane. Here is Glenn Greenwald's comment on this bizarre situation:

Recent headline in the NYT:

Recent item in the Washington Post:

Continue ReadingDemocrats and their Media Tribe Beat the Drums toward Armed Conflict in Ukraine

Misdirected Vax Anger Loses Sight of Unmistakable Corporate Looting

Matt Taibbi points out that we are too busy arguing with each other about masks and vaccinations to notice major league corporate theft. His Substack article at TK is titled "Vaccine Aristocrats Strike Again: As yokel-bashing reaches impressive new heights, reports of yet another year of record profits and a widening wealth gap go unnoticed." Here's an excerpt:

[W]ithout constant drumbeats about the treacherous stupidity of anti-vaxxers and “domestic terrorists,” at whom would the bulk of Americans’ anger be directed now?

A good guess would be people like the Fed-fattened private equity takeover artists who were just reported to have swallowed a trillion dollars in companies last year. These are people who force conquered companies to issue reams of new debt to pay them bonuses (taking advantage of a massive public bond-buying program intended as emergency aid) while doing things like cutting shifts for E.R. doctors and nurses in the middle of a pandemic. Even grandfatherly billionaire Warren Buffett’s company Special Metals is currently asking 450 striking steelworkers to accept pay cuts and take on $725 more a month in health premiums, while Buffett himself just floated on our increasingly phony stock market to increase his personal wealth by $1.6 billion in a single day.

. . . “Banks so far have been using profits to invest in technology, pay bonuses and buy back their own stock,” the FT wrote. Meaning, the bulk of this new wealth — most fueled by roughly $5 trillion in Fed spending since the beginning of the pandemic — is being converted into compensation for a handful of executives. Buybacks have also been rampant in defense, pharmaceuticals, and oil & gas, all of which also just finished their second straight year of record, skyrocketing profits. We’re now up to about 745 billionaires in the U.S., who’ve collectively seen their net worth grow about $2.1 trillion to $5 trillion since March 2020, with almost all that wealth increase tied to the Fed’s ballooning balance sheet.

Continue ReadingMisdirected Vax Anger Loses Sight of Unmistakable Corporate Looting