This link takes you to a news report of a wealthy donor fundraiser for Joe Biden last June in which Biden is quoted directly as saying "It’s all within our wheelhouse, and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change."
This was not a gaffe, this was the authentic Joe Biden.
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Speaking of Joe Biden, this from a review of the new film "Official Secrets" - a film depicting the whistleblower Katherine Gun, who tried to stop the Iraq invasion, is largely accurate, but the story is not over, says Sam Husseini.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/29/film-official-secrets-is-the-tip-of-a-mammoth-iceberg/
"Leading presidential candidate Joe Biden — who not only voted for the Iraq invasion, but presided over rigged hearings on in 2002 – has recently falsified his record repeatedly on Iraq at presidential debates with hardly a murmur. Nor is he alone. Those refusing to be held accountable for their Iraq war lies include not just Bush and Cheney, but John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi."
You gotta love it. To Biden, income inequality is a problem not because of the fact of economic inequality and its consequences for the real people with whom he likes to identify. The problem is that it will lead to populism and demagoguery or revolution. We certainly don't want to risk the destruction of our world, the best of all possible worlds.
As to Jerry's point, I think politicians long ago reached the conclusion that we have to lie about foreign policy otherwise we couldn't conduct foreign policy. To think I started my college education at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.
A big reason for the 2nd Iraq war vote by Democrats was that they were badly burned for their opposition to the 1st Iraq war. That turned out to be a big hit with the public. Norman Schwartzkopf was a national hero. When George II's war vote came, they put their tails between their legs and voted for it. No profiles in courage they.
Or they supported the war because their campaigns are also funded by defense contractors. Moreover, the military industrial complex ensures that anything being produced is made across various local districts and constituencies, so that if any politician votes against a war bill, they are also harming some economic sector of their voter base (e.g., the parts amounting to a single fighter plane are produced across the USA). This is equally a problem for democrats and republicans and it has nothing to do with 'courage' or being burned during the 1st Iraq war.
Cause is a very difficult thing to establish in history. But given the fact that the same defense contractors and their contributions were around as much before the first Iraq war as the second, ditto the location of military-related production facilities, that doesn't seem likely. The Democrats who voted No on the 1st war and Yes on the second found themselves being unpopular for each vote.
The incestuous relationship between the military industrial complex and both parties is an established fact at this point. That one party votes against a war, or intervention, and yet the intervention still occurs, suggests to me, NOT that they actually opposed the intervention, but that they could get away with a symbolic 'no' vote, while knowing if a 'yes' vote was needed, the party hacks would line up and obey.
I think this because, as far as I know reading post WWII history, the US has intervened everywhere, almost all the time. We almost never sit anything out if the military can make a profit on said ventures. So are these no votes real? I doubt it.
How to Lose to Trump Again 101: nominate creepy Joe Biden
I never would have predicted that Biden would have been such a favorite with African American voters, especially not with Harris and Booker in the field, as well as his history, e.g., Anita Hill. Apparently, Anita Hill indeed is history, and the glow from being Obama’s number two overrides Harris and Booker. A key remaining question is where the votes from the drop-outs go. Right now it’s only the one percenters who are dropping out, so the second choices of these folks don’t add up to much. But when one of the top five or six drops out, where will their supporters go? I don’t think many, if any, would go to either Biden or Sanders. They both entered the race with strong name recognition. The voters knew them the way they didn’t know the others. But that is likely to have been their high point. They were a lot of people’s first choices, but appear not to be many people’s second choices. The one who seems to lead in that area is Warren. If I were a betting man, as they say, she’s the one I would bet wins it.
UNRELATED: Has anyone else seen Leiter's latest rant on his blog, about Dan Hicks' comment on this blog from several months ago? Leiter labels him nuts, as he does all his critics. What is so weird is that he is posting his little-man angry screed so long after the event. Has he been brooding on it for months? (The best bit is at the end where he nobly refrains from linking to this blog out of respect for RPW. Because it is so hard to find this blog absent a link.)
Anonymous,
Since I was one of those who defended Wolff having dinner with Leiter previously, let me say something about it.
I guess that if someone said that you weren't fit to have dinner with, you'd brood about it too, wouldn't you?
Maybe you attach another significance to having dinner with someone than I do. The fact that Wolff has dinner with Leiter does not mean that he is endorsing everything that Leiter has done or said in his life-time. It probably just means that he is interested in conversing with Leiter as a fellow philosopher, both of them specializing in Marx and as a fellow public intellectual. Maybe he likes Leiter too as a person: I have no idea.
I confess that I like Leiter. However, I can't think of almost anyone who I'd refuse to eat with. Not Hitler, but then I don't understand German. I'd sit down with Trump for an hour or two out of curiosity, so too with Nixon or Henry Kissinger. In fact, I'm curious enough about Nixon to have dinner with him a few times. What's more, I don't feel that I'm so holy that I can't be polluted by the contact with someone else, be it Charles Manson or Trump or Roman Polanski. Are you yourself so holy?
A blog post this late is...weird...
Surely the timing of Leiter’s blog post has to do with Hicks’s recent appointment at UC Merced. This is information Leiter would report as a matter of routine, and he probably felt he couldn’t do so without also mentioning Hicks’s recent outburst on this blog.
Chris,
What's wrong with being weird?
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