Ubiquitous
2024-05-10 01:05:03 UTC
On the menu today: President Biden announces he's blocking the transfer
of certain weapons systems to prevent Israel from sending additional
forces into Rafah, a policy that amounts to an attempt to save the
remaining leadership and forces of Hamas. It's just the latest
shameless flip-flop from a spineless jellyfish of a man, a figure who
is spectacularly unqualified to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the
Oval Office, and who is only sitting there by default because of the
flaws of his past and current opponent. Believe it or not, a "coin
flip" of a decision might have dramatically altered Biden's career
trajectory, and one change from that moment probably would have set off
a domino effect, leaving the entire world in a different state than it
is today. Read on.
Our Self-Serving, Spineless President
I hadn't planned on writing about a topic related to Israel for the
third time in three days, but Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden
announced that the U.S. was withholding a pending shipment of 2,000-
pound and 500-pound bombs to Israel, and that he was preparing to
withhold additional shipments of artillery shells. This is in addition
to Biden's earlier decision to delay selling Israel 6,500 Joint Direct
Attack Munitions - kits that enable unguided bombs to be steered to a
target.
Biden is attempting to strong-arm Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
the Israeli government into ceasing their operations against Hamas in
Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been
used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities," Biden
told CNN's Erin Burnett. "I've made it clear to Bibi and the war
cabinet, they're not going to get our support, if in fact they go on
these population centers,"
Biden insisted, "We're not walking away from Israel's security; we're
walking away from Israel's ability to wage war in those areas,"
blithely ignoring the fact that the Israeli war cabinet unanimously
agreed that waging war in Rafah is essential to Israel's security.
Biden is once again insisting to people in the crosshairs of Hamas that
he knows how to fight Hamas better than they do.
The Editors of NR conclude:
Saying that absolutely no civilians can be put at any sort of
heightened risk during an urban warfare campaign against an
enemy that hides behind civilians as part of its war strategy
is effectively the same thing as saying that Israel cannot be
allowed to fight Hamas. What this means is that, in effect, it
is now the policy of the Biden administration to leave Hamas
in power.
Biden is the president who warned, "When terrorists don't pay a price
for their terror, when dictators don't pay a price for their
aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction," and
who promised, "Make no mistake: The United States will make sure that
Israel has what it needs to defend itself."
And now Biden is loudly and proudly cutting off certain forms of
military aid to Israel.
Biden is also the president who pledged he would stand with Ukraine as
long as it takes:
We support Ukraine fully in this moment, and we have - we have
since the start of this conflict. And we're going to continue
to do whatever it takes to give them the capacity to defend
themselves. . . . The United States is committed to ensuring
that the brave Ukrainian people can continue-continue to
defend their country against Russian aggression as long as it
takes.
And then Biden slow-walked much of the military aid, and is now
insisting that Ukraine not attack Russian oil refineries because that
might increase oil prices, just in time for the summer driving season.
"Whatever it takes, as long as it takes," but only if it doesn't harm
Biden's chances at reelection.
These strikes have already created a fuel shortage in Russia, forced
Russia to drastically reduce its oil exports, and led to speculation
that Russia may soon need to import refined fuel from places such as
Belarus. You can make the argument that the Ukrainian strikes on
Russian oil refineries are having a quicker, more pervasive, and more
deleterious effect on the Russian economy and war effort than the
Western sanctions have over the past two years.
And Biden's message to Ukraine is, "Stop doing that!"
Biden is also the president who pledged he would make Saudi Arabia a
pariah, then turned around and fist-bumped Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, and who is now offering the Saudi kingdom security guarantees
in exchange for playing ball with the Israelis. We've also built a new
joint missile-defense testing center in the Saudi Kingdom. Biden has
turned into one of the best American presidents Saudi Arabia has ever
had.
Biden assured America that al-Qaeda was "gone" from Afghanistan. Al-
Qaeda is in fact "back and thriving" in Afghanistan, profiting from its
deals with the ruling Taliban.
It's not just on foreign affairs. At home, Biden is the self-professed
devout Catholic who's pushing for taxpayer funding for abortion at any
point in pregnancy.
After years of insisting that Obamacare would not pay for the health
care of illegal immigrants, Joe Biden announced earlier this year that
the Affordable Care Act was being unilaterally expanded to cover the
health care of children who entered the country illegally.
In 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris declared on Meet the Press, "The
border is secure." Apparently, Biden didn't agree but held his tongue;
when asked in January if the border was secure, the president replied,
"No, it's not. I haven't believed that for the last ten years. And I've
said it for the last ten years." (Biden had not, in fact, spent the
past ten years saying that the border is not secure, and until January,
he never contradicted his own cabinet officials and vice president who
insisted that it was.)
Biden is the president who pledged that his big-spending infrastructure
bills would "turn `shovel worthy' ideas into `shovel ready' projects."
And then by the end of last year, Biden was complaining to his staff
that "as he travels the country to tout historic pieces of legislation
like the bipartisan infrastructure law, it could be years before the
residents of some of the communities receiving federal funds see
construction begin." Politico recently determined that of the $1.1
trillion in new spending on infrastructure passed by the then-
Democrat-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022, just $125 billion - 11.3
percent - has been spent.
As a candidate on the trail in 2020, Biden pledged, "No more drilling
on federal lands. Period. Period, period, period." Then he approved
ConocoPhillips's plan to pump about 576 million barrels of oil from a
federally managed reserve on Alaska's North Slope.
The president likes to boast that "nobody f***s with a Biden," but
everyone messes with him. Everyone knows he folds under pressure.
Everyone knows he's afraid of political blowback and he's always
overpromising and under-delivering. Joe Biden may not be a man of the
progressive left, but he doesn't believe he was put here on earth to
fight the progressive left. He wants every Democrat to be happy, or at
least satisfied.
There's a recurring pattern of desperation to this presidency. Biden is
constantly publicly underestimating problems - a surge of illegal
immigration is just a seasonal pattern, "There's nobody suggesting
there's unchecked inflation on the way," "I trust the capacity of the
Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- -
more competent in terms of conducting war." And then when things go
wrong, like a national shortage of baby formula, Biden snaps that
people expect he and his team to be mind-readers. He's an insecure,
irritable, insufferably boastful, loose-tongued lightweight who is in
over his head and way too old for the job, and the American people can
tell.
Back in the summer of 2008, Barack Obama and his top campaign staff had
narrowed their options for Obama's running mate down to two men: Biden
and former Indiana governor and senator Evan Bayh. Former Obama
campaign manager David Plouffe quoted Obama as calling it a "coin toss"
between the two men.
Every now and then I think about how differently recent U.S. political
history would have unfolded had Obama selected Bayh instead of Biden.
You figure this alternate history would have continued about the same
as our reality until 2015 or so. A Vice President Evan Bayh, then age
61, would be likely to run for the presidency in 2016, and have a
decent shot of knocking off then-69-year-old Hillary Clinton in the
primary fight - an even-keeled moderate and reassuring Midwesterner
riding Obama's coattails, against all the Clinton baggage. It's fair to
wonder if Bernie Sanders becomes the phenomenon that he did in 2016 in
this scenario.
It's tough for one party to control the presidency for three
consecutive terms, so perhaps the Republican nominee - maybe Donald
Trump, maybe someone else - would have won the 2016 presidency. Wasn't
Republican fear of a Hillary Clinton presidency a major factor in the
rise of Trump in the 2016 primaries? Without Obama picking Biden, we
probably don't get Hillary, and without Hillary, we might not have
gotten Trump.
(We can probably assume that throughout the multiverse, there is no
world in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency, at least not by
running the way she did in our world in 2016. You can't just refuse to
visit Wisconsin for the final few months of a presidential campaign!)
Assuming Bayh hadn't won the presidency in 2016, this means that in
2020, he would be in the top tier of candidates in that crowded
Democratic field, although it's possible Democrats would have dismissed
him as the guy who lost to the GOP incumbent. But in this scenario, Joe
Biden probably retires from the Senate in 2014 or so. (Remember, Biden
won his Senate reelection bid in 2008, while he was winning the vice
presidency.) And no one would have been clamoring for a then-79-year-
old retired senator to run for president in 2019. If Obama had picked
Bayh, Biden would probably have been an irrelevant afterthought on the
political scene for the past decade, instead of the 46th president of
the United States.
What's more, without nominee Biden pledging to pick a woman as his
running mate, we probably wouldn't have ended up with Vice President
Kamala Harris.
With different presidents in office since January 20, 2017, does the
Covid pandemic turn out differently? Does the investigation into the
origin get as forgotten as it has in our world? Does Afghanistan turn
out differently? Without the Afghanistan withdrawal proceeding as
disastrously as it did . . . does Russia invade Ukraine in February
2022? Does Hamas attack Israel the same way on October 7, 2023? Does
inflation take off like a rocket starting in 2021? Do we see the same
waves of migrants at the U.S. southern border?
The alternative is probably not utopia, just different problems . . .
but it would be edifying to see if different choices in leadership
would have resulted in better outcomes for the country and the world.
As we used to say, "Thanks, Obama."
--
Let's go Brandon!
of certain weapons systems to prevent Israel from sending additional
forces into Rafah, a policy that amounts to an attempt to save the
remaining leadership and forces of Hamas. It's just the latest
shameless flip-flop from a spineless jellyfish of a man, a figure who
is spectacularly unqualified to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the
Oval Office, and who is only sitting there by default because of the
flaws of his past and current opponent. Believe it or not, a "coin
flip" of a decision might have dramatically altered Biden's career
trajectory, and one change from that moment probably would have set off
a domino effect, leaving the entire world in a different state than it
is today. Read on.
Our Self-Serving, Spineless President
I hadn't planned on writing about a topic related to Israel for the
third time in three days, but Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden
announced that the U.S. was withholding a pending shipment of 2,000-
pound and 500-pound bombs to Israel, and that he was preparing to
withhold additional shipments of artillery shells. This is in addition
to Biden's earlier decision to delay selling Israel 6,500 Joint Direct
Attack Munitions - kits that enable unguided bombs to be steered to a
target.
Biden is attempting to strong-arm Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
the Israeli government into ceasing their operations against Hamas in
Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been
used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities," Biden
told CNN's Erin Burnett. "I've made it clear to Bibi and the war
cabinet, they're not going to get our support, if in fact they go on
these population centers,"
Biden insisted, "We're not walking away from Israel's security; we're
walking away from Israel's ability to wage war in those areas,"
blithely ignoring the fact that the Israeli war cabinet unanimously
agreed that waging war in Rafah is essential to Israel's security.
Biden is once again insisting to people in the crosshairs of Hamas that
he knows how to fight Hamas better than they do.
The Editors of NR conclude:
Saying that absolutely no civilians can be put at any sort of
heightened risk during an urban warfare campaign against an
enemy that hides behind civilians as part of its war strategy
is effectively the same thing as saying that Israel cannot be
allowed to fight Hamas. What this means is that, in effect, it
is now the policy of the Biden administration to leave Hamas
in power.
Biden is the president who warned, "When terrorists don't pay a price
for their terror, when dictators don't pay a price for their
aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction," and
who promised, "Make no mistake: The United States will make sure that
Israel has what it needs to defend itself."
And now Biden is loudly and proudly cutting off certain forms of
military aid to Israel.
Biden is also the president who pledged he would stand with Ukraine as
long as it takes:
We support Ukraine fully in this moment, and we have - we have
since the start of this conflict. And we're going to continue
to do whatever it takes to give them the capacity to defend
themselves. . . . The United States is committed to ensuring
that the brave Ukrainian people can continue-continue to
defend their country against Russian aggression as long as it
takes.
And then Biden slow-walked much of the military aid, and is now
insisting that Ukraine not attack Russian oil refineries because that
might increase oil prices, just in time for the summer driving season.
"Whatever it takes, as long as it takes," but only if it doesn't harm
Biden's chances at reelection.
These strikes have already created a fuel shortage in Russia, forced
Russia to drastically reduce its oil exports, and led to speculation
that Russia may soon need to import refined fuel from places such as
Belarus. You can make the argument that the Ukrainian strikes on
Russian oil refineries are having a quicker, more pervasive, and more
deleterious effect on the Russian economy and war effort than the
Western sanctions have over the past two years.
And Biden's message to Ukraine is, "Stop doing that!"
Biden is also the president who pledged he would make Saudi Arabia a
pariah, then turned around and fist-bumped Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, and who is now offering the Saudi kingdom security guarantees
in exchange for playing ball with the Israelis. We've also built a new
joint missile-defense testing center in the Saudi Kingdom. Biden has
turned into one of the best American presidents Saudi Arabia has ever
had.
Biden assured America that al-Qaeda was "gone" from Afghanistan. Al-
Qaeda is in fact "back and thriving" in Afghanistan, profiting from its
deals with the ruling Taliban.
It's not just on foreign affairs. At home, Biden is the self-professed
devout Catholic who's pushing for taxpayer funding for abortion at any
point in pregnancy.
After years of insisting that Obamacare would not pay for the health
care of illegal immigrants, Joe Biden announced earlier this year that
the Affordable Care Act was being unilaterally expanded to cover the
health care of children who entered the country illegally.
In 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris declared on Meet the Press, "The
border is secure." Apparently, Biden didn't agree but held his tongue;
when asked in January if the border was secure, the president replied,
"No, it's not. I haven't believed that for the last ten years. And I've
said it for the last ten years." (Biden had not, in fact, spent the
past ten years saying that the border is not secure, and until January,
he never contradicted his own cabinet officials and vice president who
insisted that it was.)
Biden is the president who pledged that his big-spending infrastructure
bills would "turn `shovel worthy' ideas into `shovel ready' projects."
And then by the end of last year, Biden was complaining to his staff
that "as he travels the country to tout historic pieces of legislation
like the bipartisan infrastructure law, it could be years before the
residents of some of the communities receiving federal funds see
construction begin." Politico recently determined that of the $1.1
trillion in new spending on infrastructure passed by the then-
Democrat-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022, just $125 billion - 11.3
percent - has been spent.
As a candidate on the trail in 2020, Biden pledged, "No more drilling
on federal lands. Period. Period, period, period." Then he approved
ConocoPhillips's plan to pump about 576 million barrels of oil from a
federally managed reserve on Alaska's North Slope.
The president likes to boast that "nobody f***s with a Biden," but
everyone messes with him. Everyone knows he folds under pressure.
Everyone knows he's afraid of political blowback and he's always
overpromising and under-delivering. Joe Biden may not be a man of the
progressive left, but he doesn't believe he was put here on earth to
fight the progressive left. He wants every Democrat to be happy, or at
least satisfied.
There's a recurring pattern of desperation to this presidency. Biden is
constantly publicly underestimating problems - a surge of illegal
immigration is just a seasonal pattern, "There's nobody suggesting
there's unchecked inflation on the way," "I trust the capacity of the
Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- -
more competent in terms of conducting war." And then when things go
wrong, like a national shortage of baby formula, Biden snaps that
people expect he and his team to be mind-readers. He's an insecure,
irritable, insufferably boastful, loose-tongued lightweight who is in
over his head and way too old for the job, and the American people can
tell.
Back in the summer of 2008, Barack Obama and his top campaign staff had
narrowed their options for Obama's running mate down to two men: Biden
and former Indiana governor and senator Evan Bayh. Former Obama
campaign manager David Plouffe quoted Obama as calling it a "coin toss"
between the two men.
Every now and then I think about how differently recent U.S. political
history would have unfolded had Obama selected Bayh instead of Biden.
You figure this alternate history would have continued about the same
as our reality until 2015 or so. A Vice President Evan Bayh, then age
61, would be likely to run for the presidency in 2016, and have a
decent shot of knocking off then-69-year-old Hillary Clinton in the
primary fight - an even-keeled moderate and reassuring Midwesterner
riding Obama's coattails, against all the Clinton baggage. It's fair to
wonder if Bernie Sanders becomes the phenomenon that he did in 2016 in
this scenario.
It's tough for one party to control the presidency for three
consecutive terms, so perhaps the Republican nominee - maybe Donald
Trump, maybe someone else - would have won the 2016 presidency. Wasn't
Republican fear of a Hillary Clinton presidency a major factor in the
rise of Trump in the 2016 primaries? Without Obama picking Biden, we
probably don't get Hillary, and without Hillary, we might not have
gotten Trump.
(We can probably assume that throughout the multiverse, there is no
world in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency, at least not by
running the way she did in our world in 2016. You can't just refuse to
visit Wisconsin for the final few months of a presidential campaign!)
Assuming Bayh hadn't won the presidency in 2016, this means that in
2020, he would be in the top tier of candidates in that crowded
Democratic field, although it's possible Democrats would have dismissed
him as the guy who lost to the GOP incumbent. But in this scenario, Joe
Biden probably retires from the Senate in 2014 or so. (Remember, Biden
won his Senate reelection bid in 2008, while he was winning the vice
presidency.) And no one would have been clamoring for a then-79-year-
old retired senator to run for president in 2019. If Obama had picked
Bayh, Biden would probably have been an irrelevant afterthought on the
political scene for the past decade, instead of the 46th president of
the United States.
What's more, without nominee Biden pledging to pick a woman as his
running mate, we probably wouldn't have ended up with Vice President
Kamala Harris.
With different presidents in office since January 20, 2017, does the
Covid pandemic turn out differently? Does the investigation into the
origin get as forgotten as it has in our world? Does Afghanistan turn
out differently? Without the Afghanistan withdrawal proceeding as
disastrously as it did . . . does Russia invade Ukraine in February
2022? Does Hamas attack Israel the same way on October 7, 2023? Does
inflation take off like a rocket starting in 2021? Do we see the same
waves of migrants at the U.S. southern border?
The alternative is probably not utopia, just different problems . . .
but it would be edifying to see if different choices in leadership
would have resulted in better outcomes for the country and the world.
As we used to say, "Thanks, Obama."
--
Let's go Brandon!