I'm pleased to see such boring choices. Remember — a couple weeks ago, the news was that Pete Buttigieg wanted the U.N. ambassador job? I was sarcastic about that: "of course it makes sense that his background as mayor of a small city in the midwest sets him up well to deal with international affairs."
IN THE COMMENTS: Rocketeer said:
So will I be the first to start referring to the VP, SOS, and POTUS as Winkin', Blinken and Nod?
Meade read that out loud to me and I immediately recited...
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe--
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"I couldn't continue verbatim and I couldn't free-style rhymes about Biden and Harris, so I'm not bragging about my poetry expertise. Just saying I loved those Eugene Field poems when I was a child. I'm just seeing now that Eugene Field's father was the lawyer who represented Dred Scott:
His father was Roswell Martin Field, an attorney who once represented Dred Scott, an African American man known for the 1857 U. S. Supreme Court case in which he sued for his freedom. Many believe the denial of Scott's bid by the court prompted the U. S. Civil War.
And here's the poem done with animation by Disney and music by Donovan:
Posts
73 comments:
Boring choices to advance disastrous policies. Yes, that's much better than risky choices to implement successful policies.
Susan Rice passed over again. Boring white man picked over strong black woman.
Biden still want to partition Iraq? Does that sound boring enough to pass muster?
Trump creates wealth by making deals where both sides come out ahead. Biden creates deals which leave the swamp in the income stream.
They live off of problems that are no longer solved, or worse are created again.
Are these Biden's choices, or Xi Jinping's?
Women are bored by insights about how systems work.
"They live off of problems that are no longer solved, or worse are created again.”
He went to Iraq to negotiate the Status of Forces agreement, which fell through as we all remember, and really ended up setting back Iraq, but his brother James came away with a 500 million dollar cut of a 1.5 billion dollar project to rebuild the homes he had voted to bomb.
Joe Biden always looks out for America, and when America is not looking, his family gets richer.
The modern world is so fast paced. Boring and slow has its merits. This is not a comment on the quality of decision making. Just that PDJT lost millions of votes sounding often like a columnist from Townhall.
"In that role, Mr. Blinken helped develop the American response to political upheaval and instability across the Middle East, with mixed results in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
"Mixed results." The Obama administration managed to bungle all four, to varying degrees of disaster.
"Boring and slow has its merits. This is not a comment on the quality of decision making."
A boring return to the swamp that is full of bad decisions has its merits...I fear we are doomed...
And his foreign relations policies SUCKED. God, people are gullible.
So will I be the first to start referring to the VP, SOS, and POTUS as Winkin', Blinken and Nod?
Rocketeer - Now that is funny. Gold star for you. I am ready to start dealing with clients now.
Thank you!
Obama/Biden policies brought us peace in the Middle East, right? Oh, that's right, it brought us a revolution in Egypt and Libya, promoted the Muslim Brotherhood and funded Iranian terror. But other than that, the results were mixed.
Blinken was one of Santa's reindeer. Right?
I think the President may have something to say about that.
Interesting you label these decisions as boring. They are, of course, but I never thought of them that way. Go back to sleep, America, politics is once again boring. No need to worry your head.
Oh that’s heartening... not a new idea in sight. Just revert to more of the same that brought Trump to the presidency.
Rocketeer thanks for the laugh!
What the fuck good is boring, if it going to get American soldiers killed somewhere over profit, like in Libya? Boring means the deep state and the globalists are back in power.
Still trying to figure out if Althouse is an agent provocateur or just incredibly naive.
Jersey Fled said...
Blinken was one of Santa's reindeer. Right?
Has me wondering what Winken and Nod have been up to.
So we're back to leading from behind?
with mixed[!] results in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Strangely, they left off Ukraine and Iran.
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see through your masks
War is never boring for the people dodging the bullets, nor is it boring for the people cashing the big checks. I am sure Biden’s good friend Dick Cheney will keep things calm in the world. Not to many refugee ships capsizing and drowning hundreds.
By all means, let's get back to the boring, deep state, operatives who are all so scholarly and certain how the world works.
Let's "engage" with Iran.
Let's re-start bi-lateral talks between Isreal and the Palestinians.
Let's encourage "color" revolutions.
Let's start buying Chinese goods again and ship all our IP to China.
Let's start paying for the defense of Europe so they can spend money on their welfare states without worrying about defense.
Let's join the Paris Climate accords so the U.S. can try to achieve goals no one else pays attention to.
Let's even go ahead and ban fracking so the Russians are again energy strong.
Trump had MAGA.
Biden has MDSGA
MAKE THE DEEP STATE GREAT AGAIN!
Boring equals more endless wars.
Boring equals more American soldiers killed for no reason.
Boring equals more American treasure spent on worthless "nation-building."
Boring equals more bending the knee to China.
Boring equals more worrying about the interest of other nations while ignoring our interests.
We are to return to pre-Trump foreign relations and that is seen as a good thing? Maybe for the super smart Washington wise guys, but certainly not for America and Americans. This reveals that all the Trump hate and opposition was the result of Trump's shutting down of the foreign policy gravy train.
Burismas coffee fetcher shirley but his wife works for axios so the reacharound is assured.
You are really smart Althouse and can be really dumb too. You think our foreign policy for the last 30 years [pre-Trump] was successful? Smart? Boring?
"Remember — a couple weeks ago, the news was that Pete Buttigieg wanted the U.N. ambassador job? I was sarcastic about that: "of course it makes sense that his background as mayor of a small city in the midwest sets him up well to deal with international affairs."
Your idiot son wanted Buttigieg to be President. You know, the ultimate decider of international relations. Not a peep from you.
For 72 years the establishment foreign policy experts have been fumbling around with the Middle East and getting zero results. Trump gets in and with one hand tied up pushing away a false Russia collusion scam (perpetrated by those same establishment foreign policy experts), uses the other hand to open a door for peace between Israel and a number of Arab countries, looking to form a block of defense against Iran.
If Trump had had 4 more years, the Middle East would have looked very different than it has since 1948. Now that Biden is in, the Middle East will again regress into a boiling cauldron of hate and hurt. Iran will once again see a US leader offering them things in return for bad promises and photo ops.
We made so much progress. And now the 'experts' are back to show us regulah folk how it's done. I don't know about you, but I have as much respect for our Establishment foreign policy and National Security apparatus as I do for our media/press. Which is to say, none at all any longer.
... "the old moon asked the three. We've come to fish for the beautiful fish that live in this beautiful sea. Nets of silver and gold have we, said Wynken, Blynken and Nod..."
lol my memory can't be right. Fields would never write beautiful twice, he was a master. The sea must have been marvelous or such. Wondrous!
Blogger Temujin said.."If Trump had had 4 more years, the Middle East would have looked very different than it has since 1948. Now that Biden is in, the Middle East will again regress into a boiling cauldron of hate and hurt. Iran will once again see a US leader offering them things in return for bad promises and photo ops."
And he is exactly right. Congratulations Democrats!! THE WORLD AT WAR FOREVER MORE!!!! YAY!!!!
I just don't understand how you can hate a man so much, that you want to take down America, and keep us in constant wars, and poverty just to prove how much you hate him.
My favorite Eugene Field’s poem was “The Duel”
What bothers me is that someone as bright and accomplished as Ann would apparently prefer quiet and disastrous foreign policy than effective and not so quiet, esp when the quiet that she so loves is there to cover for the corruption that it is based on. Wake up. It is quiet because it is being sold. If they weren’t spending so much time hiding what they were doing, we could see better how they were enriching themselves.
Ask yourself why we would do anything as idiotic as rejoin the Paris accords? It is highly likely to plunge us into a recession. The recession that was delayed to a great extent by Trump’s energy policies, resulting in our energy independence. Why would that be good for the country? It wouldn’t. Of course. But it would continue to enrich the Biden family, as well as other well connected families. (And, yes, the Paris accords are based on fake science, justified by faulty computer models and manufactured data, mostly, in this country, by the government agency that derives more of the financial benefit than maybe any other agency in our govt from the fraud - NOAA)
Why intentionally hurt our economy? Obama might have done it out of his international economic justice views, that are, essentially, a front for international socialism, if not communism. Essentially following the tenets of his father. But for the Bidens, Clintons, etc, it is all about the money. They take it from countries that want harm to this country and then implement policies that those countries want them to. And it is done quietly, because it is so corrupt, selling favors to foreign governments that harm ours.
And Biden’s biggest paymaster? China, of course. And what country has been harmed the most by Trump’s foreign policies? Likely China, though Iran may be a close second, and Russia third. Critically, China is considered a developing country, and is thus mostly exempt from the idiotic restrictions of the Paris climate accords. This is the country that gave us the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Yes, the country that almost assuredly manufactured the virus that is preventing people from celebrating Thanksgiving this year. Every time you have to put on a mask to go in a store, you can thank the Chinese government (the virus appears to have been assembled in a government lab - but its looking more likely that it was a PLA virology lab in Wuhan, than one of the civilian labs).
The Biden foreign policies may be implemented quietly, in order to cover the underlying graft and corruption, but the results are not likely to be quiet. China and Iran will almost lay assuredly be resurgent (which is why they backed Biden so heavily). One of the very great thing about Trump’s win, was that the funding of Iranian backed terrorism throughout the Middle East was greatly reduced. We were not only restricting how much oil they could sell, but we also with our own energy independent helped keep the international price of oil low. Of course, Obama/Biden were also complicit in Chinese adventurism throughout much of the world, but esp in bullying its neighbors, and stealing their territory. If Biden actually triumphs, I think that we can expect the world to be a much more violent place.
Hope you are happy with your quiet Ann.
Great. First, do we have to pretend Biden is making these decisions? Second, this guy is a Russian Hoax leader. We’ll be back to dropping bombs on brown people, and screwing up the middle-east in no time.
Even Althouse is on the bandwagon redefining words to fit a narrative – “Boring”.
“ Let's join the Paris Climate accords so the U.S. can try to achieve goals no one else pays attention to.”
Not true. The EU, and esp the Western European countries running it, take it probably even more seriously than our leftists do. And destroyed their economies even more aggressively. The funny thing to me is that the gross double standard explicit in the agreement (a feature, not a bug) appears to be at least partially to atone for their colonial guilt - except that the country that didn’t just shoot themselves in the foot, but blasted it off with a shotgun, was Germany, that never really had a colonial empire.
The US government is designed to be adversarial: the branches are supposed to fight and be at each other's throats and jealously protecting their power and spheres of influence. It's a government designed for a strong people with a thick skin, not weaklings who can't handle a bit of conflict.
On the other hand, it is so comforting that our elite betters from the Ivy League will be back at the helm.
As the Obama SecDef Robert Gates said about Biden, "I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
That's the kind of boring consistency only an academic could celebrate.
How things really get done
https://mobile.twitter.com/thealexvanness/status/1330719154693935105
"...mixed results in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya."
Mixed results? Yeah, death mixed with refugees, disease and war.
Well, perhaps we Deplorables can make the next four years exciting for Althouse.
So now we're resuscitating the Iran nuclear appeasement deal. I will never understand Obama's and Biden's obsession with helping Iran achieve nuclear status. What's next, another planeload of money? Biden hates Israelis so much, he's willing to fuck over their neighbors for normalizing relations with them. "Wrong about everything for the last 40 years" and working hard to keep that string intact. Stupid and obstinate combined in a deadly mixture.
Althouse will love all the Boring Wars she gets if Biden's team completes the steal.
"I'm pleased to see such boring choices"
With Biden, membership in the CFR is a sure way of getting your resume to the top of the pile.
Here at the casino we are patronized by our betters.
I will never understand Obama's and Biden's obsession with helping Iran achieve nuclear status.
It's easy to understand: Anti-Americanism. Obama was a academic radical who believed all the crap about how the US was the source of the world's problems, and so reflexively sided with the US's enemies, as did the people he appointed to key positions in foreign policy. Helping Iran achieve nuclear status was a way of undermining US and Israeli power in the middle east, in favor of third-world indigenous powers. The goal was to eventually make Iran the regional hegemon, displacing US-backed Israel and Saudi Arabia.
I doubt Gats is interested in a Biden job.
His father was Roswell Martin Field, an attorney who once represented Dred Scott, an African American man known for the 1857 U. S. Supreme Court case in which he sued for his freedom.
I have a book about Dredd Scott which asserts that, had his lawyer not been incompetent, he and his wife would have been free and the case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court.
Thank you, Bruce Hayden.
So if Robert Gates tells us that Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue over the last 40 years, does that mean that Blinken has been wrong for twenty years?
“trusted ally”
On the grift.
Stuart Woods used this poem as part of a spy novel where bad guys tried to set off a nuke in southern California, during a recital of Gershwin tunes!
In that role, Mr. Blinken helped develop the American response to political upheaval and instability across the Middle East, with mixed results in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Ri-ight. "With mixed results."
Do today's culturally impoverished children still learn nursery rhymes and traditional therapeutically violent fairy tales and folk tales?
A refreshing side to Trump appointees was the departure from Democrat incest.
The downside for President Trump was the disloyalty of some of his choices. The upside for the country was that the repetitive stupidity and dishonesty of the swamp was frequently avoided.
What kind of name us Blinken!? Is that what he will be doing while negotiating with China? We will just be Biden our time the next four years. Disaster!
Who cares?
So the same guy responsible for giving Joe shitty advice that fucked up world affairs is rewarded, and will do it all over again?
Definition of insanity anyone?
more of this frabjous joy,
https://empowerwisconsin.org/all-woke-up-bidens-reparations-czar/
Good times. Paying Iran billions while they go nuclear, then the Mullahs bomb Israel. Valerie Jarrett smiles, America subsides as China and Islam kill each other. Silly Jared Kushner.
""including the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal and the World Health Organization — that were jettisoned by Mr. Trump." . . . I'm pleased to see such boring choices"
Yes, subjecting the U.S. to a terrible agreement, supporting Iran, and rejoining a CCP-dominated organization are "boring."
Glad you define boring as other people's children deployed to clean up stupid foreign policies that led to continuous middle east instability. Others of us are not so sanguine as it is our sons and daughters in harm's way.
The Iraq War was not a boring choice.
Putting China in the WTO was not a boring choice.
These were disastrous decisions.
The evil that boring men do.
Mr. Biden is also expected to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service who has served in diplomatic posts around the world, as his ambassador to the United Nations, according to a person with knowledge of the process. Mr. Biden will also restore the post to cabinet-level status after Mr. Trump downgraded it, giving Ms. Thomas-Greenfield, who is Black, a seat on his National Security Council.
.......................
Is black capitalized now? Went to google it, must have missed this—
AP says it will capitalize Black but not white
By DAVID BAUDER
July 20, 2020
https://apnews.com/article/7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f
At least listen to the prospective Secretary of State discussing the Obama administration's dithering policy on not arming Ukraine, and his convoluted suggestion that our election system could not be hacked but somehowRussia was responsible for the outcome of the 2016 election and that Trump colluded with Russia, even though Blinken was clearly in a position at the time to know that never happened. The Putin Files: Antony Blinken
Not at all reassuring.
I need boring like I need a hole in the head.
Wait...
The worst political cliché of the age has to be, "The adults are back in charge." They said that when Obama took over. It didn't quite turn out that way. Maybe they say that when any new president takes over. The adults are gone and didn't leave a forwarding address. It's just a different set of kids who are running things every 4 or 8 years.
Mixed results? I guess that’s newspeak for abject failures.
Blogger dd said...
So if Robert Gates tells us that Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue over the last 40 years, does that mean that Blinken has been wrong for twenty years?
Bingo ! What else you wanna know?
He will be Edgar Bergen to C McCarthy from Pa oops Delaware oops MBNA.
"Hey, Blinken."
"Did you say Abe Lincoln?"
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