Final Nite 4 of the Dem Nat’l Tent Revival

(joe and jill nite 4; they put on their masks when joined by kopmala)

Patrick Martin watched so we wouldn’t have to, and reported what he saw on August 21, 2020, bless his pea-pickin’ heart.  (w/ the site’s permission)  He likens it to a cliché-driven religious revival featuring ‘the Moral Superiority of Biden compared to Trump’, Biden’s ‘deep empathy for children and the downtrodden’ (add identity ___ at will).  Hell, Bill Clinton was the master of fake empathy: biting one thumb with ‘sorrow’ in his eyes, and intoning: “I feel your pain.”

“The sheer contempt for the intelligence of the population and the viewing audience was summed up in Biden’s acceptance speech. His speechwriters appeared to have been trying to cram every possible trite phrase into a single 20-minute address.

He ran through a laundry list of promises, from climate change to racism to student debt, none of which the Democratic Party has the slightest intention of actually carrying out. Only two phrases had real meaning.

Biden reassured Wall Street and the billionaires, “I’m not looking to punish anyone.” This sent a message to the financial aristocracy that, while the candidate was compelled to make demagogic attacks on the wealthy for electoral purposes, these would have no lasting consequences. “Nothing will change” for the super-rich, he told a Wall Street fundraiser last year, and that pledge he will keep.

And the former vice president denounced Trump for being too soft on Russia, threatening to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for allegedly paying bounties to Taliban fighters who attacked American troops in Afghanistan. This phony story is just the latest fabrication by the New York Times in its four-year-long campaign to provoke a US war with Russia.

The tone for the convention’s final day was set by the report Thursday afternoon that a group of 73 former national security officials from four Republican administrations were endorsing Biden and denouncing Trump in an open letter to be published in the Wall Street Journal. The list includes an array of militarists and police-state operatives who are responsible for the death of millions of people in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Among the most prominent and most deserving of prosecution for war crimes endorsing Biden are:

• John Negroponte, with a bloody record from the contra terrorist war against Nicaragua to the occupation of Iraq in the 2000s;
• Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and secretary of state during the 2003 Iraq War, in which he played a central role in justifying a war based on lies;
• Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and later CIA director, who oversaw CIA torture programs and domestic spying;
• Robert Blackwill, deputy director of the National Security Council with responsibility for Iraq war policy in 2003–2004;
• Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the younger Bush; and
• William Webster, director of the FBI under Reagan and of the CIA under the elder Bush.

The support of these former leaders of the military-intelligence apparatus only underscores the real character of the conflict between the Democratic and Republican parties, the twin political instruments of the American ruling elite.

The Democrats oppose Trump, not because of his tax cuts for billionaires or his attacks on democratic rights and the rights of immigrants and refugees, but rather because of differences over foreign policy related to the Middle East and particularly Russia. An incoming Biden administration would immediately adopt an even more provocative and aggressive anti-Russian policy.

This was underscored in one segment after another of the final day’s program leading up to Biden’s acceptance speech, with military veterans and Republicans brought forward to speak in video segments. The most strident pro-war message came from Senator Tammy Duckworth, who denounced Trump as the “coward in chief” for his alleged capitulation to Putin over the bounties.

As for domestic policy, Biden’s closest political associate, his Senate chief-of-staff Ted Kaufman, who heads the transition team preparing for a future Biden administration, told the Wall Street Journal Wednesday that the rising federal budget deficit would make ambitious spending programs impossible. “When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare,” Kaufman said. “When you see what Trump’s done to the deficit… forget about COVID-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we’re going to be limited.”

The reference to what “Trump’s done” is a fraud, since the both the Democrats and Republicans endorsed, on a nearly unanimous basis, the multi-trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street in March. The coronavirus pandemic—which, as a result of the policies of the ruling class, has produced a social and economic catastrophe for the American population—has been utilized by the ruling elite as an opportunity to loot the public treasury. And it is the working class that will be forced to pay.

Despite claims by Bernie Sanders that Biden could become the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt, the real policy orientation of a future Biden administration was signaled by the appearance of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who gave the last speech before Biden himself was introduced, pouring scorn on Trump as a poor businessman and incompetent manager. It is the billionaires and the military-intelligence apparatus, not political charlatans like Sanders, who will call the shots if the Democrats win the White House.”

I did locate the letter from the Republican Nat Sec agencies, and it’s a real mind-blowing lollapalooza.   Of course many of the signatories will be drafted into Biden’s administration, should he and Kopmala win.

“A Statement by Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden

We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

Gotta love the accidentally satirical branding of this ad hoc group: ‘defending democracytogether.com, because as we all know, what this nation does best is ‘Export Democracy ™’.

Of their 10 bullet points I’ll feature a few headings:

3. Donald Trump has solicited foreign influence and undermined confidence in our presidential elections
4.  Donald Trump has aligned himself with dictators and failed to stand up for American values.
5.  Donald Trump has imperiled America’s security by mismanaging his national security team

Part of their closing arguments cum job applications:

‘In contrast, we believe Joe Biden has the character, experience, and temperament to lead this nation. We believe he will restore the dignity of the presidency, bring Americans together, reassert America’s role as a global leader, and inspire our nation to live up to its ideals.’

Andre Damon has a wrap-up of the 8-hour infomercial he’s published today: ‘The Biden campaign and the attempt to “rescue” American hegemony’.  Had I read any of their coverage past Nite1, I wouldn’t have felt so sucker-punched by these bombastic hegemonic quotes and threats:

“These conflicts were partially revealed on Tuesday night, when the convention aired a pre-recorded segment featuring a group of seven military, intelligence and diplomatic officials who claimed that the Trump administration was not fighting the US wars in the Middle East and pursuing its conflicts with Russia and China aggressively enough.

Commenting on Trump’s Middle East policy, Brett McGurk, in charge of the US operations in the Middle East under Obama, said, “Our military had a policy to maintain our presence in Syria,” which Trump went on to “abandon.” He concluded, “It’s shameful.”

Rose Gottemoeller, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, concluded that Trump “hasn’t been standing up” to Russia and China “at all.” Another State Department official added, “Thanks to Donald Trump, our adversaries are stronger, and bolder.”

Following the segment, General Colin Powell added that Biden “will make it his job to know when anyone dares to threaten us, he will stand up to our adversaries with strength and experience. They will know he means business.” The “business” for which Powell is best known is the destruction of Iraq and the death of one million of its inhabitants, based on false claims about “weapons of mass destruction.” [long snip]

“American imperialism confronts intractable problems, and first among them is the growth of social opposition within the United States itself. Among the considerations motivating support for the Biden campaign within the ruling class is the hope that it can somehow establish a broader base for imperialist aggression abroad. The promotion of identity politics is aimed at further integrating privileged sections of the upper middle class behind the project of global domination. This is what Kamala Harris represents.

A Biden/Harris administration will not inaugurate a new dawn of American hegemony. Rather, the attempt to assert this hegemony will be through unprecedented violence. If it is brought to power—with the support of the assemblage of reactionaries responsible for the worst crimes of the 21st century—it will be committed to a vast expansion of war. Trump and Pompeo are barreling headlong toward a conflict with China. Biden’s critique of this disastrous course is that the United States needs to get “tough,” whether against Russia, China, Afghanistan, Syria, or everywhere in between.”

Iran?  Biden swings back and forth on Iran, but his good friend was John McCain?

anthony freda’s ‘War Machine’

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)