Biden on David Marsden

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 12:03:20 +0100

‘The BBC contacted Biden’s talent agency, which recently signed him, but no response was immediately forthcoming.’

My talent agency said, “WTAF?!”

Trump says he is revoking Joe Biden's security clearance bbc.com
BBC - Homepage https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn57p5r99xyo

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:47:00 +0100

Of course, it’s the anti-genocidal voters who didn’t buy the genocidal Biden/Harris presidential ticket who are to blame for the genocidal Trump presidency.

Seriously?!

Does anyone seriously believe she wouldn’t have continued to arm and fund Israel to “finish the job” with or without this temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange?

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 10:36:32 +0100

Bye bye Biden. A genocidal war criminal with the blood of tens of thousands of women and children on his hands. Paved the way for fascism.

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 09:52:44 +0100

Was Joe Biden a good president?
#EvanPoll #poll
Evan Prodromou https://cosocial.ca/@evan/113728994484661444

My year on micro.blog

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 21:32:00 +0100

I had a lot fun writing and publishing on micro.blog this year, and also looking back and picking out these (for me) highlights.

I started the year with the final (so far) part of my curriculum vitae series. The one where I found my dream job:

There was no welcome… it stank of piss. The only redeeming factor was that none of the inmates seemed able to move.

The beauty of the whole endeavour was that people needing care were no longer seen as tasks to be performed and checked off on a list, but as people who had lives, stories, senses of humour, wants and needs like everyone else.

Such a great thing could obviously have no future.

On the power of writing:

Having an hour or so in relatively undisturbed peace and quiet just to write whatever comes into my head has felt very therapeutic. I feel like something significant has changed within me, for the better.

On journaling:

Journaling is like legacy microblogging minus the passive aggressive bullshit and wit.

On the power of memory:

Nothing was where Jim remembered it. Like his hat, they were very much alive in Jim’s memory, but in the world we walked in the goalposts had literally moved, the final whistle had blown, and everyone had gone home except Jim.

On travelling abroad for the first time:

It all felt utterly surreal to me then, like being stranded on another planet, adrift in my bunk bed, alone in the halls of a spacecraft listening to the crickets and the ghostly sounds of train hours.

On local democracy:

The event itself was a repeat of several resident surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so. The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same.

On my four year old’s analysis of the state of British politics after the results of the May General Election:

You can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.

On the state of our national game:

Nowadays managers - or coaches - are often restricted to, well, coaching players in training and on match days, and speaking to the media before and after games. They are seen as specialists rather than all-rounders, and more specialists from the world of finance are brought in to fire the tea ladies…

On United under Ten Hag:

A clear and obvious error, if ever there was one, and yet we are forced to watch repeat after repeat, week after week of him getting it wrong. A bald man somehow getting balder…

On working from home:

Working from home has given me the time and space to transform how I work for the better. I’m better organised, more thoughtful, less rushed and distracted. I can honestly say that I’m now the most productive I’ve ever been thanks to a more comfortable, relaxed and focussed personal workspace.

On cheese:

Double Gloucester. Trump-like appearance, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a vote-winner. Biden-like quality: good all-rounder, mild, creamy, child-friendly, goes with most things, melts easily. Oily.

On the death-grip of neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism doesn’t change, and the more that the people are subjected to its bad decisions, its lust for war, for death, for oil, for money, for making the rich richer and the poor poorer, the harder it gets for people to change, and the fewer good decisions are made.

On Person Of Interest:

If you like guns, shooting people, torture, (mock) executions, (child) kidnapping, (attempted) murder, blackmail, gambling, Russian Roulette, cyber-stalking, identity theft, mob rule and police corruption, you’ll probably like Person of Interest.

On Lincolnshire sausages:

A special treat then was boiled sausages for breakfast. The skins would fall off, and we ate them with white bread soaked in the soup or broth they created in the pan along with a dash of English mustard.

On living and breathing music:

It’s hard not to love such amazing musicianship, singing and songs, all performed with unconfined joy in the moment.

And:

I do wonder if sometimes songs speak to me even when I’m not actively listening? When I do pay attention to the words they do carry meaning for me. They just needed to be heard.

On journaling (again):

Doing this work has made sense of a lot of daily, weekly and monthly events, habits, routines, scenarios, relationships, that otherwise would have remained loosely connected, strung together like the Christmas tree lights every year when you take them out of the box you left them in in January. In a mess, tangled up, half-working.

On the bales:

My fingertips took several days to regrow. I had fifty pence deducted from my wages for the cost of replenishing the first aid kit, and received a straight knockout for bleeding on the ropes.

On writing (again):

I write for me. It helps me breathe and to feel alive.

On local democracy (again):

If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining.

On driving (and living):

Always look ahead as far as possible.

On Al:

We think Al is dumb. But we elect dumber, and Al will only get less dumb.

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:23:54 +0100

I don’t understand how people think Joe Biden is a good guy. He’s probably done more than anyone to drag the political centre to the right, and paved the way for fascism.

Suggesting that pardoning his drug addict son is somehow good and righteous is obscene.

Blaming smartphones is laughable.

Bye Bye Biden

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:16:00 +0100

Some highlights and thoughts from Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic 📚

Against Biden’s best efforts, disaster had been averted. (p. 127)

This seems to sum up his career neatly. Far from the popular public image that he has cultivated and that the media have happily gone along with for the most part.

Foreign policy

“I’m not going to start World War Three for you!”

Not Biden, but British army General Mike Jackson refusing to follow Biden’s friend General Wesley Clark’s orders to confront Russia in Kosovo. (p. 172)

The book was written before Russia invaded Ukraine. It seems that Biden wants to go out with a bang, despite his previous utterances.

”There is no such thing as a winnable nuclear war.” (p. 152)

Biden saying one thing and doing another is characteristic of his entire political career. He’s not unique in that respect, of course, and perhaps he’s actually better at it than most. He did get elected president after all.

Israel

Biden was the ultimate Friend of Israel. He helped provide Israel with huge amounts of US aid money, and Israel lobbyists on his campaign staff returned the favour helping Biden raise huge amounts of money to run his various election campaigns.

Biden spent his entire career giving unqualified support to Israel, and claimed that Americans “couldn’t afford” to criticise Israel in public.

Yugoslavia

Toward the end of Bush’s term, the ex-communist Eastern European country of Yugoslavia began disintegrating in a miasma of nationalism and ethnic and religious sectarianism, forces unleashed by a Western-imposed program of economic “shock therapy” that in essence exported Western neoliberal policies to the once prosperous country, running its living standards into the ground. War soon broke out. (p. 156)

Later, Biden agitated for Clinton’s military intervention in Serbia, which lay the foundations for future “humanitarian” bombing campaigns elsewhere.

If you cared about political survival, it was safer to err on the side of war. (p. 158)

Iraq

Despite [or because of?] his role in starting the war, Biden was still considered one of the party’s wisest heads on foreign policy. (p. 173)

George W. Bush apparently followed Biden’s instructions on selling the war on Iraq to the American people and the United Nations.

Biden proposed an ethno-nationalist “three state solution” for Iraq similar to Israel’s proposals to came up Arab states into weaker sectarian units.

He proposed to Balkanise Iraq into smaller ethnic and religious sectarian states with limited freedom of movement and borders controlled by foreign troops.

A bit like Gaza and the rest of the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories now.

Flawed as it was, the plan burnished Biden’s credentials as a foreign policy expert. (p. 179)

Iraq duped Biden forcing withdrawal of US troops. In response, ISIS ‘emerged’ from an oppressed religious minority.

War on Terror

Biden’s ‘counter-terrorism plus’ policy saw the US bomb seven Muslim countries without declaring war, much like Israel is now doing with more American bombs.

That helped to fuel anti-Americanism and an immigration and prisons crisis.

Instead of providing homes for the poor, he would spend the following decades housing them in jails. (p. 85)

Domestic policy

Race relations

Racist Clinton doubled the American prison population and achieved the world’s highest rate of incarceration. Mostly with black people.

This policy usefully helped to reduce official unemployment figures and paint Clinton’s neoliberalism as an economic miracle.

Another lesson Biden had first wrongly internalised from American apartheid: that people of different backgrounds simply couldn’t live together in harmony. (p. 177)

Instead Biden backed segregation (busing) and individual states’ rights over a united federal states of America.

Women’s rights

”I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.” (p. 184)

Biden on the Roe v. Wade decision in 1974

Biden’s neoliberalism

Biden presented as a progressive liberal on the side of the working class. But he spent his career siding with Republicans and moving the Democrats ever further to the right.

At one time even a former Klan recruiter thought Biden had gone too far. Another Klan leader praised Biden’s election platform claiming it was as if it had been written by a Klansman.

Supporting spending cuts

Biden said Jimmy Carter was nothing special, and welcomed Reaganomics as a step in the right direction. Although in typical Biden fashion he also claimed Reagan’s first budget would be an economic disaster before voting for it (along with 29 other Democrats).

Reagan’s cuts cost 270,000 jobs and reduced access to financial support for millions of Americans. Rather than reducing the deficit, it increased it, and made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Like Thatcher in Britain, Reagan’s greatest achievement was in transforming his opposition into his mirror image. You still get a choice at the polls, but there’s very little, if any, substantive policy difference between the two.

”Biden isn’t a liberal anymore.”

Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan, who lost to Biden in the 2012 vice-presidential election, but declared a more important victory.

Biden’s support for tax cuts for the rich wasn’t a one-off. This was a repeated pattern of voting indicating where his true loyalties lay. Indeed, later he proposed his own tax cuts that were more severe than Reagan’s, and “right out of the Tea Party playbook”.

Where once the tyranny of “special interests” meant the control of government by big business and the super-rich, it now referred to the ordinary Americans the New Deal had sought to protect from those same powerful entities. (p. 68)

No longer aligned with the working class, Biden now focused on the middle class, solidly Conservative, tax-and-government fearing supporters of the super-rich.

”It’s the middle class, stupid.” (p.147)

Much like the South where Biden always pivoted for support of anti-union, pro-slavery and white supremacist votes. Biden could have tried to bring Southern voters to the Democrats, but instead chose to lead the Democrats to align with the politics of the South.

Biden had successfully facilitated the decades-long wholesale robbery of working- class Americans by law enforcement. (p. 91)

Enter Bill Clinton, who with Biden’s full support, carried on Reagan’s economic policies leading to ever more cuts in government spending and hardship for millions more Americans.

Biden again offered trillions of dollars of cuts to retirement funds, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, giving Mitch McConnell everything he asked for.

As president, much of Obama’s job involved cleaning up messes that Biden had helped create. (p. 191)

The major legislative accomplishments that Biden had racked up in prior decades had succeeded because they had been in pursuit of Republican goals. (p. 199)

Biden did what he always did: plead fealty to working class voters in public speeches filled with references to his Scranton roots while privately appealing for the support of big-money interests. (p. 214)

By 2020, Biden had shifted (and shifted the Democrats) so far to the right, he was finally electable and the safest establishment option to defeat Trump as president.

My Cheese-o-meter

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:50:00 +0100

For the best sensation, please read this post at room temperature.

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

What’s so special about the cheesemakers?

Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Now, I’m going to milk this for all it’s worth, but I would question the last sentence. I’m going to stick to cheese. Not literally, of course. That would be messy and smelly. Always wash your hands after operating cheese.

I’m going to stick to cheese, metaphorically - for the benefit of the cheeseless.

[@davidmarsden](https://micro.blog/davidmarsden) I am still waiting, cheeseless.

annie's micro(b)log https://micro.blog/Annie/49637183

That’s it! Cheese! We’ll go somewhere where there’s cheese!

Cheeseboard Disclaimer

While I don’t consider myself to be any kind of big cheese - I’m not a cheese authority or cheese expert - I’m perfectly qualified to write a cheesy summary of my life in cheese.

Please note that I am not affiliated to the Cheese Marketing Board, and clicking any of the links in this post will not help to feed my hungry cheese-loving children.

Cheese-o-meter

Without further fondue, here’s my Cheese List.

Triple Gloucester. The elusive holy grail of cheeses. From Gloucester.
Double Gloucester. If you have trouble finding Triple Gloucester, then you can’t go wrong with its populist sibling Double. Trump-like appearance, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a vote-winner. Biden-like quality: good all-rounder, mild, creamy, child-friendly, goes with most things, melts easily. Oily. Used in cheese rolling competitions. From Gloucester.
Single Gloucester. Pale and aloof, Double’s estranged half-sister. From Gloucester.
Mature Cheddar. Hard, white, crumbles under pressure. The epitome of Englishness in cheese form. Ideal in a cheese and tomato sandwich, or a Ploughman’s lunch. Mixes well (grated) with Double Gloucester. From Cheddar.
Vintage Mature Cheddar. See 4, but harder, whiter and crumblier.
Mild Cheddar. See 4, but less pale, slightly softer, and less crumbly. Almost tasteless. Pointless waste of milk.
Red Leicester. Underrated cheese. Red. Makes a fine cheese sauce for cauliflower or macaroni. Makes a great topping for a Shepherd’s Pie (better than mixing Cheddar and Gloucester - Gloucester can get a bit oily). From Leicester.
Wensleydale. White, crumbly. Perfect with a mince pie. From Wensleydale.
Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Cheshire. Lumping these all together not because they’re are all the same, but because it’s so long since I tried them I can’t remember what they are like. From Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Cheshire.
Gouda. Sliced foreign cheese. Kids eat it.
Edam. A very special Dutch cheese which is made backwards. Don’t eat the rind!
Jarlsberg. Sliced foreign cheese. Full of holes.
Emmental. Stringy cheese. Good for toasties and the bin.
Swiss cheese. American cheese. From Switzerland.
Brie. Fancy French cheese. Round, rindy, soft and stinky. Nice with a cracker.

Camembert. See 16. It’s like no cheese I’ve ever tasted.
Blue cheese. French. Mouldy. No thanks.
Stilton. See 18. Not French. From Stilton.
Ricotta. Soft, creamy. Perfect with spinach on a pizza, or better still in a calzone at Pizza World.
Mozzarella. On a pizza.
Mascarpone. In a cheesecake. Not a cake.
Halloumi. Fried. On its own or with olives, hummus, pitta. From Cyprus.
Feta. Greek salad. From Greece.
Cottage cheese. My Mum loves it. From a cottage. From-age?
Goats’ cheese. From goats.
Sheep’s cheese. See 26, but from sheep.
Parmesan. Baby sick.
Smegma. You don’t want to know where it’s from. One of the first bands I was in at school was called The Amgems. We weren’t as good or as funny as we thought we were.
Lung cheese.

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:01:26 +0100

Now we can all agree that Biden was a total failure of a president.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 07:38:55 +0100

Dear President Biden…

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:01:46 +0100

Front page of today’s Independent newspaper, headlines:

Biden calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

UK legal experts, lawmakers and military leaders call for a ban on arms sales to Israel.

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:38:00 +0100

the Biden administration does in fact have tons of leverage it can use to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza, it just doesn’t want to because it would be “politically unpopular” and because “Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”

How has Israel managed to kill some ten thousand Palestinians in Gaza without managing to do any real damage to Hamas if Hamas fighters are hiding amongst all those civilians?

Caitlin Johnstone at Twitter