Joe Biden is (currently) President of the United States

Not-so-subtle digs at Manchin and Sinema are a start, but he needs to step this shit up quickly.

Making voting the VP’s problem is not a good sign.

Dealing with voting rights attacks in at least 30 state legislatures and managing to squeak some kind of bill through the 50-50 Senate is going to be a hell of a complicated job. Biden is 78 years old. Harris is 56 years old. Delegating this to Harris seems to me like not such a bad sign as all that.

The person with no actual power (except to overrule the parliamentarian lol).

Biden 2024: Don’t Blame Me, I Told Her To Do It

Hey Dubya delegated everything to Dick Cheney!

Not-so-subtle digs at Manchin and Sinema are a start, but he needs to step this shit up quickly.

Why does he need to win them over? All the votes he's going to get from his Republican friends will outweigh two recalcitrant Dems.

(Giving the VP a responsibility or two seems like a sensible practice in general; Harris also seems likely to understand the importance of this one more than Biden does.)

Harris's power in this case is not based on the constitution, but based in her perceived ability to speak for the president. If Biden shows he'll back her up, then she will carry the power of his office by proxy. If he lets her hang out to dry, she'll be largely ignored. Presidents regularly employ VPs in both capacities, as Trump did by putting Pence 'in charge' of covid response. Too soon to know which way Biden is playing this, but it's obviously a critical issue, so he's got a big stake in her success.

Presidents regularly employ VPs in both capacities, as Trump did by putting Pence 'in charge' of covid response

Yes, using the VP as a patsy to evade responsibility is pretty much exactly why I said it’s a bad sign.

The Bidencare public option? I meant Harriscare, Jack.

Seems premature to read a 'bad sign' into it, but that reading suits your invincible cynicism about anything Biden or the Democratic Party does and who can say you're wrong at this stage of things?

The real question, Aimless, is why you still engage. You are not going to change the brick's mind.

100 days passed by a bit ago tbf

He goes to bed so early, you really have to give him a first 200 days.

.@POTUS: "How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that he engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country." pic.twitter.com/yFFwwSKxSl

— The Hill (@thehill) June 16, 2021

https://i.imgur.com/IhD5LPF.png https://i.imgur.com/IhD5LPF.png https://i.imgur.com/IhD5LPF.png

hmm?

https://i.imgur.com/WtF7H30.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WtF7H30.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WtF7H30.jpg

Joe Biden: “I’m still standing”

#onethread

not to both sides it, but has any high level U.S. official, while in office, ever admitted to even a handful of the many dozens of time the U.S. has interfered or straight up led a coup against another government?

however, that's different from proudly proclaiming national integrity in the area, as Biden does in the quote above. but that willful ignorance also seems to be a hallmark of U.S. presidents. except trump of course

Obama admitted to the coup in Iran and he and Bill Clinton apologized for U.S. policies in Guatemala and Argentina. Which prompted this:

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/120918060228-mills-romney-no-apology-story-tablet.jpg

i like countries without braggadocio

America is like Kasabian

xp thanks President Keyes! i had completely forgotten about that. welp, biden seems to have spun us back to "it never happened, pretty much"

He won't even apologize for putting the family dog in a cage on the station wagon's roof

listen, mitt romney grew up without a whole lot of money. he built his name on hard work alone, with no help from anyone. maybe he couldn't afford a BIG van that could have fit an entire dog inside of it. maybe he had to IMPROVISE with what he had. with what he earned from scratch.

so fucking cool

Joe Biden’s new anti-terrorism initiative classifies “anarchist violent extremists” that “oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which are perceived as harmful to society” as “domestic violent extremists.” pic.twitter.com/GKmsQsGBaA

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) June 18, 2021

also note the "pro-choice" extremists included there, I'm sure we can all recite the many pro-choice acts of terrorism that have disrupted this fine country

remember when an anarchist violent extremist literally wasted a president, that was cool

that willful ignorance also seems to be a hallmark of U.S. presidents

presidents are, by the nature of their job, great compartmentalizers. they can spout counter-factual nonsense like that with complete sincerity and emotional conviction to an audience. in that moment they truly believe it to be true because their audience badly wants it to be true, and so, to connect with that audience, they must feel the same 'truth' with equal emotional strength and conviction.

is that good

there ain't no good guys
there ain't no bad guys

is that good

'good' is often a murky and malleable concept when applied to politics. it depends entirely on one's perspective and whose good is being measured.

I think presidents experience this compartmentalization as highly rewarding behavior, firstly on a practical level because it helps get them elected and grants them power, but also it's emotionally rewarding because it earns them public praise, helps them maintain popularity and secures their high social status. thus, very 'good' in their eyes.

if you want a wholly objective analysis of its goodness or badness, you will be looking it for a very long time.

It's not good.

how so?

well it seems to enable passively rewriting history for one

what am I saying? nothing passive about it.

Going to register my doubt that a significant percentage of Joe Biden’s voters really feel the looming danger of Antifa and ‘pro-choice extremists.’

Biden’s actions (whether on this one or the aforementioned willful ignorance) aren’t born of strategizing about what got him elected - they’re what this fossil believes.

it seems to enable passively rewriting history for one

Do presidents have sole custody of history and how it is written? No.

Is writing history their primary job? No.

If Biden had said what is undoubtedly true, which is that the USA had frequently fomented coups and interfered with elections in dozens of countries, as well as instigating wars of conquest throughout its long, criminal history, how would that have been greeted? By millions of Americans suddenly accepting this dismal fact? No.

Would it have strengthened his political purpose of painting Russian interference in US elections as something insidious, wrong, and to be strenuously objected to? No.

It seems to me that the good you have identified is tenuous at best, in that the 'good' effect on history you imply would result is beyond merely being uncertain, it is so unlikely as to be vanishing.

If you would like further contradictory rationalizations, apply below. I would hardly rate your cited 'good' as beyond a multitude of reasonable doubts.

remember when liberals shrieked about how trump was destroying the concept of truth lol

lol I and p much everyone I’ve dated in the last five years are terrorists now, I guess. fun!

also, as Charles Pierce pointed out, this mf was on the Church committee, he’s not just actively lying about history, he’s lying about his own experience of it, which happened on live tv

xp Gee. If you would like to make it a competition, as I vaguely recall being reported, Trump was cited for about 20,000 blatant untruths during his presidency. So may that those who kept track eventually gave up on attempting a thorough accounting. How about citing Biden's score since his inauguration? He'd need about 1900 more than the one we're discussing to keep up with Trump.

btw, I am not in any way arguing that Biden's denial that the US has frequently interfered with elections was anything but untrue. It was so far from the truth it enters the realm of delusion. What I am arguing is that this sort of participation in the collective delusions of the US masses has an identifiable political value, and substituting the dismal truth in that situation would have had almost zero practical benefit to society.

The only viable alternative was to say nothing about US history in this regard, but he chose to surf on the delusion in order to leverage the delusion on his behalf. That is not admirable, but it is good politics. As the newspaper editor at the end of "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" says at the end, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. The legend of US purity and benevolence is unalterable fact to tens of millions.

wonder why

maybe something to do with entrenched power spreading falsehoods deliberately over decades

who can say

I blame Joe Biden. He could fix it if he wanted to.

thank you for reminding me why I stopped posting in these threads lol peace

you should run for office instead. the world needs you.

I blame Joe Biden. He could fix it if he wanted to.

Unless you think puppetmasters are literally putting words in Sleepy Joe’s mouth… he actually can fix this. No one makes him say stupid and absolutely false things like “the US interfere in elections? Who could imagine that, Jack?”

I noted he had the alternative of saying nothing about that history. So we agree about that.

I was addressing the contention that Joe refraining from lying about the US history in this instance would somehow affect how history is written and generally was estimating how much measurable 'good' would have been accomplished by his saying nothing at all, or alternatively citing chapter and verse of all the US crimes in this regard, while he was speaking about Russian interference in US elections.

It's not like these facts are mysteries to ILXors; they are not buried by historians. The conversation was about Biden saying one stupid, untrue thing in order to strengthen his contention that the Russian interference was bad for the USA by citing a pure falsehood about our history. As cause for complaint in presidential conduct this is just belly scratching. We do it mainly because it feels good.

RIP Champ

is it beneficial to have all elected reps be sociopaths who think that voters are too stupid or fragile not to lie to, or does it kick in at a certain level of influence?

i dunno bro, ask Obama