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Biden Boldly Goes Where No President Has Gone Before

February 22, 2023
by Peter Feinman
Kirk never took a ten hour train ride. Beam me up, Scotty.

Joe Biden has boldly gone where no American President has gone before. His journey into a war zone where there are no American troops will be remembered with alongside previous American Presidential combat trips. Who can forget John Kennedy’s proclamation that he was a Berliner at the Berlin Wall or Ronald Reagan’s call to tear down that very wall in Berlin or Donald Trump’s clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op. These are the defining moments of a presidency producing images that endure throughout history.

As one hears about the intricacies of the trip Biden undertook, one can almost hear the theme from Mission Impossible playing in the background. But now that the journey is complete, one has to ask what did it accomplish, what difference did it make?

This blog will be a bifurcated one because the significance on the global stage does not correlate with that in the domestic arena.

LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD

With this trip, Biden asserted his position as leader of the free world. He is not the leader of the unfree world. However those countries have been put on notice that he is the leader of the free world. In particular, this applies to NATO. That organization has been reinvigorated, unified, and is set to expand. None of these developments are what Putin sought when he launched his special military operation which ended up being war. The Donald Trump era of America alone and thrashing NATO is over … at least until the 2024 presidential election.

As the leader of the free world, Biden has drawn a line in sand in Ukraine. He can no longer allow Ukraine to lose. North Korea/South Korea and North Vietnam/South Vietnam divisions of Ukraine are unacceptable. There are no negotiations possible since only victory is acceptable.

PETER THE GREAT

With this trip, Biden has put Putin on notice that his dreams of Peter the Great will not be fulfilled … at least as long as Biden is President. Biden’s visit serves as a declaration that he will not allow Ukraine to fall on his watch. That means however Putin ratchets up the intensity of the Russian effort, it will be matched by Biden. There is no victory in sight for Putin.

Way back on February 6, I asked Is Putin Winning?: Joe Biden’s Moment of Truth. I wondered what Biden would do. I wrote:

The United States has expended a great deal of military equipment and moral leadership on behalf of Ukraine. Can the United States afford to just walk away from that because we fear Putin?

If we do walk away, it not only means Russia has triumphed over America, it means that China, Iran, and MAGAs have too. Far from being an isolated event, Putin’s war against Ukraine has become a world war. Think of the fuss raised over the Chinese spy balloon. Now imagine what it would be if America fails in Ukraine.

In some ways, Putin’s war against Ukraine has become Biden’s Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was not expecting an answer so quickly. One might think that Putin has received and understands the message. Now he is relegated to waiting for Western unity to crack or his lackey to return to the White House in 2025. Only then if Biden is re-elected may we learn that Putin is willing to live in the real world. Whether or not the Russian/elites military are willing to wait that long is another matter. We need to convince them that Russia is not our enemy, Putin is, and that we have a common enemy in China.

AMERICAN LEADERSHIP: DEMOCRATS

For someone with one foot in the grave – assuming he was not already dead – Biden has had a remarkably active and robust first two+ years that would make a younger President proud. Given his domestic legislation triumphs and his world leadership role against Russia and its authoritarian allies, it is hard to imagine any Democrat challenging him. So far none has. No Democratic office holder has undertaken any actions that would signify a move towards becoming a candidate.

But one needs to keep in mind that the 2024 election is a long way off. Joe Biden easily could step down on the grounds that he has achieved what he sought to achieve and then some; now it is time to turn the ship of state over to someone else. The sticking point including for those who say they don’t want Biden to run again is who that someone else should be? At this point there is no obvious successor despite the longstanding tradition broken by Obama of choosing one’s Vice President to be the successor. On the other hand, there is the example of John Fetterman. At lot can happen in a couple of years. Great athletes tend not to retire at the top of their game; they tend to wait until they have started to decline excluding any career-ending injury.

One should keep in mind that Biden does not get any credit for his achievements. He has every right to be proud of what he has accomplished. Yet somehow that has not translated into any boost in his popularity. People still say with a straight face and in all sincerity that he has not done anything. One wonders what if anything can break through that mindset.

AMERICAN LEADERSHIP: MAGA

“The President of the United States chose Ukraine over America, while forcing the American people to pay for Ukraine’s government and war,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) “I cannot express how much Americans hate Joe Biden.”

“Breathtaking that President Biden can show up in Ukraine to ensure their border is secure, but can’t do the same for America,” January 6 co-conspirator Rep. Scott Perry tweeted.

Rep. Matt Gaetz Gaetz and Greene are co-sponsors of the Ukraine Fatigue Act that aims to undermine support for Kyiv as the Russian invasion of its European neighbor moves into its second year. Greene wrote. “We must impeach this America Last fool before it’s too late.”

So far the Republicans have the upperhand over the MAGAs in Congress. How long that will last remains unknown. MAGA’s think differently. They have no interest in the President of the United States being the leader of the Free World. They prefer Putin to Biden. So while the call for premature withdrawal has no traction now, the situation could change.

For the moment at least, Biden has created a historically defining moment with his visit to Ukraine and speech in Poland. In the future Railroad One may become a tourist trip. If the Democrats are smart they will contrast Trump’s submissiveness to Putin at Helsinki with Biden’s defiance at Kyiv. They will contrast Trump’s “perfect phone call” to undermine Ukraine in his first impeachment with Biden’s “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.” One year ago today, Trump praised Putin for his genius, the savvy leader who had a strong army for peace. Putin expected to be in Kyiv shortly afterwards. Instead the war has not only been Zelenskyy’s moment of glory, it has become Biden’s too. Will the American people realize that?

MAGA’s Have “A Beautiful Mind:” There Is No Cure

February 20, 2023
by Peter Feinman
MAGAs have problems connecting the dots

“A Beautiful Mind” is a movie about Nobel-Prize winner John Nash. He had delusions and was placed in a mental hospital by his wife. The movie plays somewhat loose with the facts as should be expected. Nash’s schizophrenia didn’t truly develop until the 1960s, after he had graduated from Princeton and married Alicia Nash. Apparently the visual delusions were made up for the film in order to capture the spirit of his real psychosis. The real Nash heard voices that mocked and argued with him constantly.

At times, Nash thought the voices were coming from aliens or angels. At the height of his madness, Nash believed that aliens were sending him encrypted messages through the New York Times and that any man wearing a red necktie was a member of a secret international communist organization. He feared that the government was working with extraterrestrials to destroy his reputation.

While there is not an exact one-to-one correspondence between Nash and MAGAs (or QAnons, there are lessons to be learned. Specifically there are three mental necessities that seem to lacking or in short supply in the thinking of MAGAs. They complicate the chances of the MAGAs ever abandoning their alternate reality for the real world no matter what “evidence” is presented. These are:

1. the ability to connect the dots
2. the ability to think things through
3. the ability to cope when confronted with the real world.

Actually they are very good with the last one – they simply shut it out.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

In the movie, Nash is superb as connecting the dots. The image shown here is from a scene where Nash is not operating in a state-of-art spy center as he hallucinates. Instead he is in a dilapidated run-down shack or barn. He is diligently clipping newspaper articles and photographs and connecting them with string. Periodically he “mails” proofs of the conspiracies he has uncovered to his recruiter. These real mailings are intercepted by his friends who save them until a climactic moment in the movie.

Previously I have written about the limitations of the mental necessities of our immature child loser President. He can only connect two dots. For him that is the ultimate achievement. That’s the way he was born. No surgery, no drug treatment, no analysis can remedy that shortcoming. For anything beyond two dots, he has to outsource that level of thinking.

Sean Hannity was a key person in that process. He has a superb ability to connect the dots even when there was no connection. Think of Seth Rich. It’s not easy to construct an alternate reality but, Hannity did it. Night after he proclaimed that he had unraveled the mystery and connected the dots of the Fake News Russia hoax. He did so until the lawsuit of the Rich family shut him up.

Even so, the technique survived. A critical component of the true MAGA mind is the belief that someone has connected the dots and made sense of the world. They gravitate towards the QAnons, the Steve Bannons, and, of course, Foxhub itself. They know that they can rely on these dot-connectors to present to them an explanation for what is going on. Disconnecting them from those dots is not going to be easy (see below).

THINK THINGS THROUGH

We have had numerous examples on the failure of MAGAs to think things through.

Think of the MAGA denunciations of gas prices over $5/gallon as if they never would come down. Think it through.

Think of the urgent need to shoot down all the Chinese balloons over the United States even if they turned out to be high school science projects. This “shoot first” policy is a perfect test case of the dangers of having a fully armed population where everyone can take the law into their own hands by shooting first and asking questions later. Think it through.

Think of the not-yet-indicted loser president exclaiming after the redacted portion of the Fulton County special grand jury report was released:

Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration. The USA is very proud of you!!!

He must think Bill Barr is still the Attorney General and he had just squashed the Mueller Report. And with his “perfect phone call” we witness a replay of his first impeachment.

Here we have a redacted report that eliminates the names of the targets who will be indicted and he is claiming total exoneration! What will he say when the full report is released. Think it through.

In addition, he demonstrates no awareness, interest, or concern for the people who have been identified as targets, who now may be accused of perjury besides the election issues, and who may be indicted… and then transform into Michael Cohen! Think it through.

Finally, think of the MAGA House committees chomping at the bit to launch a series of investigations.

Think of the House committee investigating the politicization of the Department of Justice. Now it turns out the DOJ was politicized but it was by Donald Trump.

Think of the House committee investigating corruption due to foreign money. Now it turns out that Saudi Arabia is the key to the corruption and Trump and his son-in-law are the ones who need to be investigated.

One presumes that House Democrats will hold MAGA feet to the fire on these items.

One hopes that the appropriate Senate committees will launch their own investigations into the real politicization and corruption which had occurred.

THE REAL WORLD

MAGAs have had to cope with disappointments in the real world before.

1. Seth Rich did not turn out to be the key to the Russia hoax.
2. The August 14, 2021, date for the restoration of the rightful President to the White House as predicted by Pillow Head and Séance Sydney has come and gone.
3. The Inspector General report that was going to expose the Russia hoax turned out to be a nothingburger that confirmed the investigation was legitimate.

MAGA thinking has not changed.

1. The House Select Committee report with the testimony from all those Republicans did not move the needle.
2. COVID is still a hoax and the vaccines should be investigated and/or banned presumably for polio, measles, and other diseases.
3. The election still was stolen.

In January, a recount was held in Lycoming, PA. MAGAs pressured the hand re-recount of 60,000 votes. The results were a net change for the incumbent who had won the county with 69.97% of the vote. He gained 8 votes bring the total to 69.98%. It had no effect. Instead he reaction was “We’re not done” (NYT 1/16/23). The County Director of Elections Forrest Lehmann despaired that an encounter with facts would not change their minds.  Since the recount, the department has received “a series of crazy requests. They are insane,” Lehmann said sounding a lot like a Foxhub broadcaster.

Speaking of Foxhub, the emails and texts of the Foxhub personalities on what they wee actually saying when the camera was not on have just been released. Or at least some of them have. Do you think MAGAs will finally see the light and say “Gosh. I have been wrong this whole time. Joe Biden really won the election.”

Cope by denial. At one point the idea of having the three night Foxhub performers jointly say that Joe Biden really won might have made a difference. It’s too late now.

Recently, a reporter interviewed some people at a MAGA event. The two people claimed that Donald Trump was still the President in 2023. The interviewer was somewhat surprised by that answer but continued in true reporter stance maintaining his cool. The two people insisted Donald Trump was the President. In response to a question about the military, they paused because they had not thought things through. Then they rationalized that there had to be two militaries, a good military which reported to Trump and a bad military which reported to Biden. This question was asked prior to Biden’s trip to Ukraine.

Questions not asked (or asked and not shown) were:

1. If Donald Trump is the President now, then why does he claim the election was stolen?
2. If Donald Trump is the President now, then how can he run for a third term under the constitution?

We have just had proof that that stolen election will be on the ballot in 2024. In Michigan, the Democrats swept all the statewide elections in 2022 and even flipped the state legislature. This means Michigan will be a battleground state in 2024 strictly based on the actual vote. So how did the Republicans respond to this defeat in the real world? Two election-deniers battled each other for the leadership position in the Republican Party. The vote-counting was delayed due to the use of paper ballots and hand-counting! What have they learned from 2022? Nothing except to urge the Party of Republicans.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, the now announced candidate Nikki Haley said:

We have lost the seven out of eight popular votes for president. It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.

At that point Hannity should have taken her to task. Republicans lost five of six elections from 1992 to 2008 but MAGAs won the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.

One may anticipate that 2020 will be on the ballot again, that candidates will be asked if the election was stolen, and if Biden is the legitimate president. They will be put on the spot in the primaries and the winner will be put on the spot in the general election. I have not seen polls yet for 2024 comparing a candidate who thinks the election was stolen with one who does not. Republican candidates will be obligated to claim the election was stolen. Eventually someone will ask Nikki Haley about her “oversight.”  The minds of MAGA will not be changed not even by the disclosed Foxhub emails. But they will become more a more a laughingstock to Team Normal as they stick with the insane craziness and the candidates who support it.

Reduce Federal Spending in MAGA Congressional Districts

February 1, 2023
by Peter Feinman

 

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.

Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/MAGAs want to reduce Federal government spending. Getting them to specify exactly where is a challenge.

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.

The Biden challenge to them to “show me the budget” is a step in the right direction. Right now all they have are jargon, buzz words, and talking points that test well in MAGA focus groups and on Foxhub. They should be constantly pressed to identify specifically where the reductions would occur. Find the “waste; find the “fraud;” find the “fat” to cut.

The words of Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council and Shalanda Young, director White House Budget Office ring true: call on McCarthy to release the MAGA budget so it can be compared to a real world budget.  Show me the money!

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.

It is possible to calculate how much each state sends to Washington compared to what it receives in return. In general, the Union states subsidize the Confederate states and urban states subsidize rural ones. The same analysis should be brought down to a congressional district level. Incumbents, even MAGA, love to brag about bringing home the bacon even if they opposed the legislation.

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.         

Once the numbers are known for how much MAGAs want to reduce the budget and how much the federal spending is in their individual district, then challenge the MAGAs to show what spending they want to cut in their own districts. Their decisions may vary from district to district but that’s fine. The people who shout the loudest about cutting spending and getting the Federal Government off the backs on the voters, will have the opportunity to how exactly where they would reduce spending in their own district.

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.

Assuming the MAGAs refrain from specifying what they would cut in their own district, then hold town halls in the MAGA districts so the people who shout the loudest about cutting spending would show the country just how it is done. A related possibilities is to have the networks both mainstream and right wing conduct televised town halls so the nation could watch how the sausage is unmade. The example of Americans reducing spending in their own Congressional districts would be inspirational to other districts. See! It can be done! Look at how the districts of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and the other MAGA representatives showed how the budget could be balanced.

THE CONCORD COALITION

The Concord Coalition may be instructive in this exercise. According to its website:

The Concord Coalition is a nationwide, non-partisan, grassroots organization advocating generationally responsible fiscal policy. The Concord Coalition was founded in 1992 by the late former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), former Senator Warren Rudman (R-N.H.), and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson.

The Concord Coalition is dedicated to educating the public about the causes and consequences of large-and-growing federal budget deficits and national debt, the long-term challenges facing the economy and how to build a sound fiscal future for all generations. The Concord Coalition’s national field staff and volunteer Fiscal Lookouts cover the country, hosting lectures, facilitating interactive exercises, conducting classes, giving media interviews and briefing elected officials and their staffs.

The mission of this organization dovetails nicely with what the MAGAs claim they are trying to achieve. The Concord Coalition goes beyond the efforts of the MAGAs. The Coalition not only talks the talk, it walks the walk.

Budget Exercises

One of the most important sets of tools The Concord Coalition uses to highlight the importance of fiscal responsibility and the choices involved in being fiscally responsible is our interactive budget exercises. These exercises allow citizens at the grassroots level, whether as part of town hall meetings with their members of Congress or as students in the classroom, to learn in a group setting that takes advantage of the interactions with people of different generations or different ideological or political backgrounds.

We also have an experienced network of field staff around the country who lead these exercises in person and help volunteers and teachers learn how to facilitate the exercises themselves.

So it already is prepared to conduct workshops and town hall meetings on how to reduce spending and balance the budget. It has a proven tool or game that can be applied in each MAGA congressional district. The MAGA participants would be able to demonstrate to the country exactly how the reduced spending sausage is made.

Principles and Priorities

Principles & Priorities is an interactive exercise in which participants learn how difficult it is to balance the federal budget. Constituents working in groups of five to ten, review current tax and spending policies, suggest priorities for the future, and apply their personal principles throughout the exercise. 

What you’ll learn

The most popular exercise from this collection is “Principles and Priorities” which is designed to help groups learn about the competing pressures facing members of Congress in budgeting over the next 10 years. The participants gain exposure to current policy options that Congress often debates, while getting a sense of the political and time pressures that arise legislative sessions. Our “Debt Busters” exercise is a condensed version of “Principles and Priorities” designed for use in limited time sessions. And, we offer our “Penny Game” which can be used for elementary and high school students who want to learn the basics about where we get and spend our tax dollars.

What is Principles & Priorities?

Budget exercise

1-2 hour immersive course
Appropriate for business, community and college groups
Exercise for multiple groups of 4-10 people
Suitable for as few as 8 or as many as 200 people

Imagine if such workshops were held in the MAGA congressional districts throughout the land. The ratings would easily trump those of the January 6 House Select Committee exposing the insurrection attempt led by Donald Trump.

Every day between now and the June apocalypse, Joe Biden and the Democrats should be calling on the MAGAs to show the American people the money. That won’t happen because:

Democrats bring a plastic spoon to a gun fight and wonder why they lose.

Perhaps they can learn from the example of Hunter Biden.