The Joe Biden Presidency II : He's too old...or something like that!

The orange fascist paved the way with his deal with the Taliban. That certainly worked out well for all!

 

Well, for all the Taliban it did.

 

Carole Cadwalldr with some worrying thoughts for the upcoming US presidential election...

Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America
The presidential election is three months away. What if the billionaire contests the result? What if he decides democracy is overrated?

Just over four years ago, an insurrectionist mob found each other online, descended on Washington, stormed the Capitol and threatened the vice-president with a noose. But that was the good old days. We’re living in a different reality now. One in which the billionaires have been unchained.

Because back in the golden days of 2020, tech platforms, still reeling from a public backlash, had at least to look as if they gave a shit. Twitter employed 4,000-plus people in “trust and safety”, tasked with getting dangerous content off its platform and sniffing out foreign influence operations. Facebook tried to ignore public pressure but eventually banned political ads that sought to “delegitimise voting” and scores of academics and researchers in “election integrity” units worked to identify and flag dangerous disinformation.

But still, vast swathes of the American population became convinced the vote had been stolen and a violent mob almost pulled off a coup. Fast forward four years, and we’re now in a very different – and significantly worse – place.

Because while Kamala Harris is enjoying her hot girl summer and liberal America is sighing with relief, it’s to Britain that the US needs to look. To rioters in the streets and burning cars and contagious, uncontained racism spreading like wildfire across multiple platforms. To lies amplified and spread by algorithms long before the facts have been reported, laundered and whitewashed by politicians and professional media grifters.

Because just as Brexit prefigured Donald Trump’s election in 2016, there are signs that we are again the canary in the coalmine. The same transatlantic patterns, the same playbook, the same figures. But this time with a whole new set of dangerous, unchecked technological vulnerabilities to be exploited.​

Wikipedia says, Cadwalladr, 'rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal'

She's also the woman who had this exchange with Isabel Oakeshott,about whether Cambridge Analytica had interfered with the brexit vote.

Obviously Oakeshott is an independent journalist who would NEVER let her personal beliefs and relationships interfere with her journalistic standards... natch!

 

Good bump for Joe's thread.....He did that!

“The IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high wealth tax dodgers since last fall, the agency announced Friday, crediting spending that has ramped up collection enforcement through President Joe Biden’s signature climate, health care and tax package signed into law in 2022,” the AP reports.

 

I followed Cadwalladr on twitter through her ordeal, being bullied in the courts by Farage using the UK’s weak libel laws. She’s a smart and brave reporter who has been right about the corrupt and fascist takeover by Russia and tech co.’s from early on.

 

I guess someone, somewhere, is sitting on a large inventory of “Biden did that” stickers. Not sure they will be ever used again ….lol


“The oil market is in another tailspin. Producer group OPEC+ is scrambling to stop the bleeding. And gas prices are falling fast, with more to come,” CNN reports.

“US gas prices fell to a fresh six-month low of $3.31 a gallon on Thursday, down 50 cents from this point last year.”

 

I filled my car last week and paid $2.97 (used Chevron rewards, so probably 5 or 10 cents higher) and my wife filled hers at $3.20 because it was the weekend. The prices around here seem to be hovering between $3.00 and $3.25.

 

It was $4.50 yesterday at a station near where I live.

 

Day-im! I filled my tank at BJs Sunday and it was $3.01. It's usually cheaper than most gas stations, but I passed by one that was $3.09.

 

I filled up at the reduced price of ~$8.30 a gallon so... hurrah

 

I want to bump this thread for a couple reasons.

One, again, thank you Joe for being as good and consequential of a president as one can be in 4 years, with the exception of Abe Lincoln, which isn’t a bad dude to be runner up to.

And thanks for dropping out in a way that pulled the party together. His superpower since 2009 has been building a consensus or coalition, behind the scenes, that creates change. (Remember, his “gaffe” forced Obama to endorse marriage equality. He knew America was ready.)

Finally, thanks for picking and mentoring Kamala.

 

John Adams and JFK would like a word.

 

JFK wasn’t consequential and the glory he gets should be going to LBJ. Which, if anything, will happen when people born before 1963 move on, along with Kennedy being seen as a mediocre President.

 

Polk was far and away the most consequential one term President...

 

Rutherford B. Hayes!

He started the Hipster movement--he only ate organic food, wore hand-stitched leather boots, but it's unclear if he had a sleeve tattoo, since all photos show him in long sleeves.

 

Make that argument about Hayes perhaps-- he was consequential, but not in any good way. Ending reconstruction half-finished is a good bit of how we got to where we are today...

Without Polk we might not have about 40% of our contiguous territory, even might not have a pacific coast at all. You might regret the ethics of a whole lot of what he did-- as did he-- but the vision he pursued has worked out pretty well, not just for the US, but for many other nations also.

As far as "positive consequentiality" goes second place maybe should go to America's Becket, Chester A Arthur, for not resisting anti-corruption efforts... or you could give JFK really big points for being a better poker player than Krushchev...

 

JFK and I have the same birthday. But I concur.

 

"A woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. JFK not only had his Cubans but them others too!

I miss his press conferences...his banterings with Helen Thomas were epic!

 

Joe Biden is so much a better man then I can ever be.....


“President Biden and former President Trump spoke over the phone on Monday after an apparent assassination attempt against the Republican nominee at his Florida golf course,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “We had a very nice call. It was about Secret Service protection.”

 

He has no top knot but he looks like he would corner someone and talk about his favorite obscure IPAs, unprompted, for 20 uninterrupted minutes.

 

He was close to one-armed: though not amputated, his left arm was shattered by a Minie ball early in the civil war--South Mountain-- and had some of its bone removed IIRC. His luck was not so good as he was wounded four more times during the war. He was William Mc Kinley's role model; though McKinley was a much better President...