Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Political Rants

Examining the Three Crises Three

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I’m guessing none of you noticed, but I returned to podcasting a week or so ago. It was a slight return, a special episode of Strange Sound – special in the sense that there was no music and no editing to speak of. We had just passed the anniversary of January 6, and I had a bee in my bonnet. Either that or a rat up my ass. Not really sure which.

Anyway, in this special episode I expounded on what I call the Three Crises Three. It’s a bit like the political version of the Three Mustaphas Three, except less funny and no music whatsoever. My main point was that we as a society are facing three very serious crises simultaneously – crises that fuel one another in a toxic feedback loop of destruction. And hell, that can ruin your whole day.

What are these Three Crises Three? Let us discuss them one by one:

Crisis One: The Coup

Though it sounds cliche to say so, we experiencing a crisis of democracy in the sense that our republican constitutional government is under serious threat. Now, I know our system is deeply flawed. The alternative, however, is not something better – it’s autocracy. The right is openly talking about this as a real possibility.

But they are doing more than talking. Last year they identified all of the trigger points in our electoral system (and there are many). This year and every year moving forward, they’re going to apply pressure at those points. They had a plan and it failed. But failed plans are good practice. Clearly, the Autocratic Party (formerly the Republican Party) is building toward a second attempt, starting with the election this fall.

Crisis Two: Trumpatosis

Yes, I call COVID-19 Trumpatosis … because he deserves it. This pandemic is literally killing us by the hundreds of thousands. It is also sickening millions more and rending the social fabric of our nation, making organizing and mutual aid much, much more difficult. The Democrats are proving themselves incompetent at coping with this crisis, failing to take the steps necessary to end it.

On the other hand, the Autocratic Party is the party of denial. They have been from the very beginning. They are building successful political careers on the basis of massive failure and negligence in their response to COVID. What’s more, the Autocrats will be hard to beat if progressive Democrats can’t engage in aggressive GOTV efforts in the upcoming elections. Which means no end in sight for this crisis.

Crisis Three: The Climate Catastrophe

This is the ticking time bomb. The climate crisis underscores the fact that our old model of politics is no good anymore. It the Autocrats take power, they will stop even the most flimsy action on climate change. They will further ramp up oil and gas extraction and restart Keystone XL and other fossil fuel infrastructure investments. We can’t afford that detour. In any previous decade, diversions of this kind could be endured, but now – with less than ten years left to address this crisis – it’s simply unacceptable.

I know that the left in America hates electoralism. They have good reason. But we simply need to do this thing. We need to turn back the political cycle this fall and send more progressives to Washington. It may not be sufficient to address these crises, but it is none the less necessary.

For more on this, give the current episode of Strange Sound a listen.

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

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I’ve said more than once that Trump was inches away from being a transformational president. The main impediment was his obsessive narcissism and his predilection for believing crazy-ass conspiracy theories. He truly was as gullible as his most crackpot fans, and they rightfully saw themselves reflected and amplified in his titanic stupidity.

That said, Trump was the least hide-bound of our recent presidents. He knew nothing about government or politics and so was liable to do anything. When COVID hit, he might have just rolled with a robust global response, spent as much as was necessary, and come out the other end looking like a hero. But the narcissist took over. He didn’t want COVID, and thought it wasn’t fair that he had to deal with it. Then came the flood, and it basically washed his sorry ass out of Washington.

Next guy, next fail

The talk about Biden back in January 2021 was that he might be the next FDR. Not even close. Roosevelt had a more expansive view of what was possible, fueled in large measure by the massive upheaval of the Great Depression and the growing power of labor. While Biden, on the other hand, is not entirely afraid of spending money, he has not moved aggressively on our most pressing problems. He, like the rest of the Democratic party’s octogenarian leadership, still has his head stuck in the 1990s.

Take COVID (please). The President has the authority to waive patent rights on the vaccines. He should have started with that, pushed production to developing countries, and used what resources are necessary to lead a global vaccination program. That is the only way to end this thing – that and providing free testing, free masks, free every freaking thing to our own people. Now, after ridiculing the idea, the administration plans to start sending people tests … upon request.

What the fuck? Why the impediment? And why did you wait so long to do even this much? It makes zero sense to wait until after the holidays to get this done, but they’re targeting January 15. Jesus Christmas.

Promises, promises

Let’s face it – COVID is still the mess it is because the Biden administration has not stepped up the way they needed to. That is a titanic failure, and I’m not clear on how they can recover from that. Add that to the Build Back Better fiasco, his abysmal border policy, and the student loan bait-and-switch, and you’ve got a trifecta. And I haven’t even touched on their foreign policy (well, I did last week).

The student loan piece was in the news this week. Biden extended his federal student loan payment freeze until May of next year. Of course, he promised loan forgiveness, which is arguably within his power to deliver without legislation. What the hell is he waiting for? Young people to completely write Democrats off?

We live in an era when financial services companies, like SoFi, do TV commercials about the burden of student debt and how even just a modest debt restructure is cause for a frantic happy dance. Low expectations are now baked into the cake for recent graduates.

Biden needs to turn this ship around. Trouble is, he’s more like Captain Peachfuzz than Horatio Hornblower.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

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Making perfect stock for kindling wood

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2000 Years to Christmas

Cold as hell in here. Haven’t you got that fire going yet? Put some of that kindling around the bottom and let’s see if that catches. Okay, okay – nice. Hey … why does that kindling have an F-hole. MARVIN!!

Hello, friends. Well, winter is upon us again. This is the time of year when Big Green most deeply regrets squatting in an abandoned hammer mill. (Sounds like a good album name: Big Green most deeply regrets …. or not.) Squatters don’t get energy hookups. They just flat out ignore us, man. It’s like we’re not even here …. which is good if they’re the cops, but not so much if they’re delivering pizzas. (If cops start carrying pizzas, we’re all in trouble.)

The ghost of El Kabong

Okay, so we rely on Marvin (my personal robot) for many things. This week, it’s tending the fire. So I told him to go get some kindling wood so he could get the damn fireplace started. He came back with an odd but acceptable assortment of maple, rosewood, and birch fragments. I thought, “Hey, what the hell – maybe he’s not such a fuck up.”

Well, now I have to eat my epithets. I had pictured Marvin rooting through the neighborhood, picking up discarded pieces of wood. Turns out, he just made his way into our rehearsal space, smashed up some of our instruments like El Kabong, and brought the remains in to be incinerated. Okay, so … let me say that again. My robot assistant smashed an old guitar and a violin so he could have kindling for a fire.

You get the kindling. I'll just go over here for a while.

For the greater good

Hell, you know, this reminds me of a song. It’s called Greater Good, one of them there Big Green songs from the 1980s. I played a live version of it on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN a couple of years ago. Anyhow, there’s part of the lyric that goes something like this:

There’s something lurking there behind your eyes
It sees in me perfect stock for kindling wood
It’s sentimental for those bad old days
when sinners were murdered for the greater good
It wants to burn me for the greater good

Ironically, I think the guitar Marvin smashed up may have been the one I wrote that song on. Somehow he was trying to make the metaphor come true. That’s not something I strongly recommend when it comes to rock songs. Such a practice could make life even more confusing than it is now, and damn it, life is confusing enough!

What is the plan, man?

While we’re trying to keep warm over here in upstate New York, I imagine you are making plans for your holiday revelries. We are doing the same, in our own fashion, bit by bit. I’m still planning a holiday nano concert – just you wait and see. Marvin is looking forward to his annual gift of light machine oil. Mansized tuber is hoping for some more plant food. Lincoln, well …. reinstatement, perhaps, in true Trumpian fashion.

Got interesting yuletide plans? Share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Get them to me early enough, and I’ll write a lame song about one of them, chosen randomly. Because that’s the way we roll.

Political Rants

Towards yet another new cold war

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I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. As a society, we appear to be stuck in a holding pattern, circling our somewhat fractured collective memory of the Cold War. It seems we long for the illusion of a simple, good guys v. bad guys conflict, and we will stop at nothing to conjure one up again.

The echoes of the previous Cold War still reverberate, sometimes in odd and almost laughable ways. For instance, this week my Congressional Rep. Claudia Tenney called Pope Francis a communist. She is, of course, an unreconstructed Trumpist just visible under a faded coat of John Birch Society lacquer. But putting aside retrograde small-fry politicians mired in the failed policies of previous decades, we face a much larger problem.

Paging Howard Phillips!

Back in the days before the Internet, crazy people could only make their voices heard on radio and direct access cable television. One of those crazy people was the late Howard Phillips, co-founder of the American Constitution party or Taxpayers’ Party. Phillips had a regular show on direct access in the 1980s and 90s where he would rail against China, show scary videos, and look kind of grisly on his best days.

The reason I raise this is that even back then, this mentality was dated. We used to laugh about Phillips’s big map of “Red China” behind his desk, straight from the 1950s. Now he’s gone, but the anti-China rhetoric is still with us. Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty to criticize about China. But people in glass houses …. etc. The folks that angst over China’s policy towards Taiwan probably don’t give Puerto Rico’s status a moment’s thought.

Barry’s pivot, redux

True to form, Biden is resuscitating some of the worst parts of Obama’s foreign policy while preserving some of the worst elements of Trump’s. Both of his predecessors took aim at China, most notably Obama, whose “pivot to Asia” filled me with both dread and anger at the time. (What’s with the “pivot” language? Clearly meant to conjure up images of howitzers, or some gun fighter turning on his heel.)

This is obviously a priority for Biden, as indicated by the fact that he was willing to put the French government’s nose out of joint in service to their planned confrontation with China. They have continued training exercises, started under Trump, with the Taiwanese military, and extended arms sales. What’s more, their pullout from Afghanistan has freed up additional forces that they can devote to confronting China.

Slow-motion train wreck

Look, folks – this is not good. We are heading for a conflict with a nation of over a billion people The policies we are putting in place will eventually lead to military clashes between our two countries, whether intentional or accidental. That would have catastrophic consequences.

We need to stop this madness before it starts. Make clear to your congressional representatives that you do not want this coming war. Tell your friends and neighbors, even the Trump-ites. My guess is that no one wants this to happen, so the sooner we make our voices heard, the better.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

An extra shaky finger on the button … again.

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I’m not an avid reader of blockbuster books about the current political moment, whatever that moment might be. On the contrary, I tend to spend my time listening to what others have to say about it. That’s my approach to the new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa entitled Peril.

As with practically every book about the Trump administration, Peril sounds like a rough mix of the hilarious and the terrifying. In the first category, there’s a supposed transcript of a call between Mike Pence and his fellow Hoosier, former VP Dan Quayle. Quayle reportedly talks Pence down from any thought of giving Trump what he wants, namely the nullification of the 2020 election result. That’s right – Dan Quayle as the savior of democracy. Who would have guessed it?

Hands across the water

Now, I’m not suggesting that the Quayle call isn’t scary – it is, as we came very close to a coup. More disturbing, though, is the passage about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley taking steps to separate a psychotic president from the means of starting a war. If true, this adds another layer to Trump’s plan to stay in power indefinitely, and a particularly toxic one at that.

This is what the pundits call “pulling a Schlesinger,” in reference to Nixon’s late-stage meltdown and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger’s orders to the Pentagon not to follow Nixon’s commands. (Scarborough used the example of Kissinger during the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, telling allies not to freak out … though to suggest Kissinger was a steady hand on the tiller is kind of a reach). It’s kind of worse than that, though. Milley’s contention was that Trump was toying with starting a war against China in order to distract the public into allowing him to cling to power. That’s just nuts, and not at all out of character, as previously noted.

Best laid plans

I think it’s fair to say that Trump became fond of the office of the presidency and all the power and protection it afforded. He most certainly did not want to let it go. I wasn’t the only one who thought throughout 2020 that Trump wouldn’t leave if he lost. And now it looks like he had a plan for doing so.

Fortunately, the plan broke down at every level. But someone around Trump is paying close attention to this issue. The ex-president is pushing for replacing pretty much all of the officials who stood in his way last year. He might not end up the direct beneficiary of these moves, but someone in his party will.

Already, the cries of fraud are rising from the smouldering ruins of California’s recall effort. That is 100% the playbook for the GOP now – yell fraud, like the thief who cries “Thief!” We’ll have to see how far they can get with this strategy.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

We’re not doing this for our health

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News flash: our health care system is broken. That is to say, it is broken from the standpoint of the people who need medical treatment. From the industry investor standpoint, it’s working just fine. People are making a killing, quite literally, from COVID and other illnesses, lending credence to that line from our song Well, Well, Well: “from every misfortune a fortune is made.”

I say this on a week when women’s health is under attack to an even greater extent than usual. The Texas anti-abortion law, which the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to go into effect, has effectively made abortion illegal in the lone star state, regardless of what their moronic governor claims. This inevitably will be followed with similar restrictions in other “red” states. But even under the best of circumstances, women have trouble accessing and affording care precisely because of the kind of system we still have.

Promises, promises

When he was running for president, Donald Trump promised that he would replace the ACA (“Obamacare”) with something much better, a plan that would cover everyone, etc. Of course, that was a transparent lie that he had no intention of even pretending to make good on. Then last year, when he was running for president, Joe Biden promised adding a public option to the ACA. No sign of that yet, either.

I don’t know what Biden’s plans are for the reconciliation package with respect to health care. What I do know is what he said during the campaign. Back then, he claimed that workers loved their employer-based healthcare and suggested that they had “negotiated” for it. I pointed out back then on my podcast Strange Sound that this was balderdash. Less than 15% of American workers (generously) have union contracts. No one other than a subset of unionists ever “negotiates” the particulars of their health coverage with their employer. The plain fact is that employers provide substandard coverage to their employees, by and large, and that it leaves tremendous gaps.

The six thousand dollar man

As some of you know, I spent about a week in the hospital at the height of the COVID first wave back in April 2020. (It was an ailment unrelated to COVID, as it happened.) After I got out, I got bills that amounted to about $6,000. Now let me be clear – if I did not have health insurance, provided by my employer, the cost would have been much higher. But with this great insurance that Joe Biden suggested I love so much, I was six grand out of pocket over an unexpected illness. I opted for a payment plan with the hospital (which, I should point out, receives a lot of public subsidy).

That is not the way it works in civilized countries. In civilized countries, they do their best to make you well, and that’s it. No bill, or none of any consequence. In Britain and France, I believe, they even give you money when you leave the hospital, under certain circumstances. Why are we not a civilized country? I don’t know. Ask Joe Biden. And every other president, for that matter.

I am fortunate that i had the resources to bear that cost with only minor sacrifices. Most people – including many with employer based coverage – are not that lucky. We need a system that works for those people, not the people who seek to profit from our misfortunes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Voting the bums in for the last time.

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Okay, so the “For the People” act did not overcome the filibuster this past week. That was no surprise, of course. Neither was the fact that Republican senators made no effort to specify exactly why they thought the provisions of the act would negatively affect Republicans. They speak in billboards, these people – short, snappy phrases like “power grab” and “stop the steal,” with no key as to what the hell they’re talking about.

But let’s be clear: in statehouses across the country, GOP legislatures and governors are putting the mechanisms in place to commandeer the next election, regardless of who gets the most votes. The “For the People” act would have rolled much of those back. Without some restraint from the Federal level, it’s going to be very difficult for poorer and disenfranchised people to access the ballot in coming elections.

Nothing new under the gun

Republicans have been working on this stuff for a long time. They’ve been pushing voter i.d. laws, rolling back early voting, and resisting policies like automatic voter registration for decades. During the Bush II administration, they even fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys for not aggressively prosecuting voter fraud cases (which, frankly, were practically non-existent even then). The reason is simple: the more people vote, the more they tend to lose because their stated policies are so deeply unpopular.

Also, they have long tended to appeal to their constituents’ baser instincts – namely, fear of immigrants, fear and hatred of dark people more generally, fear of crime, etc. Democrats have resorted to this as well, but less so over time as white people have become a proportionately smaller part of the electorate. (Many of them do accommodate the views of their Republican colleagues, of course.)

GOP election strategy: one and done

There is, however, a difference in kind, not degree, about the current “conservative” movement. Now they truly seem determined not only to steal elections via legal and extralegal means, but to set themselves up so that they permanently remain in power. Trump is not what I would call a “thought leader” on the right, but he does have utter contempt for rules, restrictions, and institutions, and I think he deployed this to supercharge the autocratic tendencies in the Republican party, which now seems enamored with his erratic, dictatorial behavior.

Readers of this blog will know that I had my doubts last year over whether Trump would leave office if he lost the election. Based on what we know he and his cohorts attempted to do, I think that sentiment was justified. In all honesty, if Trump or some Trump clone runs for president in 2024, I think there’s a better than good chance that, with the support of these GOP legislators and governors, that candidate will be named the winner. And once they pull that off, staying permanently becomes that much easier.

Keith was kinda right

At the beginning of Trump’s term, Keith Olbermann put out a series of videos attacking him as a usurper, a criminal, and an autocrat. While I think the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff was way overblown, he was kind of right about Trump’s congeniality towards the idea of ruling like a freaking King Rat. I, for one, will not underestimate the danger of autocracy again, and I strongly suggest that you take the same precaution.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Meeting the enemy (and it is still us).

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President Biden headed off to Europe this week to meet with the leaders of rich, white-dominated countries on that side of the pond. His meeting with Putin is drawing as much interest as you might expect. Some of the recent hacking attacks and ransomware incidents have been blamed on operatives connected at least tangentially with Russia. And, of course, a goodly number of people within the broader Democratic coalition see Russia as responsible for having delivered Trump into the White House in 2016. They see all this, and more, as pieces of the same puzzle, and they want Biden to read Putin the riot act.

To the extent that the ransomware stuff can be attributed to the Kremlin, it can be seen as part of the same effort that drives their illicit involvement in our political campaigns. They want to sow confusion and internal conflict in the world’s sole remaining superpower as a means of keeping us from confronting them – that only makes sense from their point of view.

But the idea that they are having an out-sized effect on our politics is vastly overblown. We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve nefarious foreign actors. Yes, we have serious problems, but they are self-inflicted, not imposed from without.

Clinton v. Clinton

I’ve said it on this blog many times before, and I’ll say it again – I never liked Putin, even back in the early 2000s when that was kind of a minority view. But the impact of their agitation in support of the Trump campaign in 2016 was marginal at best. The biggest reason for the failure of the Clinton campaign was – wait for it! – Hillary Clinton. The biggest non-Hillary factor in her loss was the FBI probe and James Comey, but even that issue was rooted in her own flat-footedness.

Let’s face it – she was a terrible candidate from the beginning, and in spite of that, was almost elected. Regarding Trump’s win, she has no one to blame but herself.

Putin’s Favorite POTUS

Did Putin want Trump to be president? Probably, as likely any Russian leader would. It was obvious that Trump was going to make a mess out of everything from the very beginning. That comports with Russia’s long-term strategic goals viz the U.S. And yes, Trump was nice to Putin as part of his constant self-dealing (he wanted that Trump Tower Moscow), but U.S. policy towards Russia was basically the same as in recent administrations.

As Americans, we have no idea of what it’s like to be a nation in the world that has to deal with the United States. The U.S. is the most powerful military, economic, and political player on Earth, and we don’t exactly walk around on tiptoe. Basically every other nation is dwarfed by our power and influence, so they reach for whatever they can to throw us off.

In the case of Russia, the most cost-effective methods of doing that include exacerbating existing divisions between political factions and, perhaps, making commodity prices – gas and beef – go up. That’s espionage 101. We do similar things in other countries, only from a position of power.

What will Biden say to Putin? God only knows. It would be nice if he did some serious work toward de-escalation of differences, maybe reinstating the IMF treaty, etc., but only time will tell. When you have most of the power, you are inevitably tempted to wield it in increasingly arbitrary ways. That would be hard for Biden to overcome, and he shows no sign of doing so.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Bad side of Buchanan.

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The historic second impeachment of Donald Trump got under way this week. I have to say that it was more engaging than the first impeachment in some respects. The House impeachment managers seem a bit sharper to me, though they are working what seems like an open and shut case. At some level this is all performative, as it seems unlikely that a sufficient number of Senators whose constituencies are made up of rabid Trump supporters will vote to convict the man. Still, anything that reminds people of the shit show that led up to this last election and the rabid, racist attack that followed it can’t be bad. Trump himself said something like “never forget this day” to his supporters. I embrace that entirely: we should never let Republicans forget January 6, 2021 for as long as they live. That should be one of our political obsessions moving forward.

If the jury (i.e. the United States Senate) in this proceeding were inclined towards acting in good faith rather than in their own narrow political self-interest, it might be relevant to emphasize the fact that, despite the similarities, an impeachment is not the same as a criminal trial. The standard of guilt is quite different, as are the stakes. I realize that barring someone from high office isn’t a small thing, but it’s certainly not what most people would consider a severe punishment. It’s not like a conviction in the Senate would send Trump’s ass to prison; no, it would simply keep him from holding office again. It’s not taking away your rights, because no one has a right to the presidency – it’s an office that must be earned. In that way, impeachment is kind of like a reverse job interview. I think people have a tendency to forget that, sometimes kind of conveniently.

I don’t know if you’ve ever perused one, but on the web there are a number of rankings of presidents from best to worst that get updated every year or so, as per historians’ assessment of the various chief executives and their impact, good and bad. I believe all of these polls put James Buchanan at the very bottom, though he is sometimes challenged in this honorific by Andrew Johnson, who most often appears second to last in the rankings. (Of course, these two putrid presidents flank Abraham Lincoln on either side, Lincoln being ranked number one almost universally.) Now that Trump is an ex-president, he will be included in these surveys. If I were a gambling man (which I’m not), I would put my money on him landing on the bad side of Buchanan. Trump likes to call himself “The 45th President of the United States” as a way of avoiding being referred to as a former president and, therefore, admitting failure, defeat, etc. Actually, the nomenclature might fit the next time these historians render their judgment. My guess is that he will, indeed, be named the forty-fifth president in the line up from best to worst.

We shall see what judgment the Senate hands down on Trump, but I think history’s judgment has already landed and it’s not pretty.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Week One.

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A lot might be said of any administration’s first week in office, Because we’re coming off of a presidency like no other, and not in a good way, there’s going to be a tendency among members of the press to be more deferential than might otherwise seem appropriate. On a human level, that’s understandable – White House correspondents are happy to see the daily briefing return, and to see it managed with a lot less tone. After four years of being subjected to withering attacks from Trump and his crew, reporters are breathing a sigh of relief and, I’m sure, hoping that this signals a return to the normal routines of previous presidencies, when there existed a more generally congenial symbiotic relationship between the press and the press office. (There was symbiosis between Trump’s administration and the press, but it was of a more corrosive variety.) They want their cheap-glamor White House Correspondents Dinner back, roast and all.

I’m not sure they’re going to get their wish this time, not entirely. The media universe is much more fragmented now then it was even five years ago, and the broad flaccid consensus that the mainstream media so worships may prove elusive. This is a divided country, with what looks like a larger number of people on the side of our standard mediated democratic governance, and a large minority seemingly (and in many cases openly) advocating for autocracy. It’s really more than advocacy, though – large numbers of them have been moved to violence, murder, and active disruption of the constitutional order, such as we saw on January 6. Now the vast majority of the insurrectionists have melted back into their home communities, unmolested, perhaps celebrating their success at delaying the electoral vote certification beyond the statutory deadline. Millions of people believe ridiculous lies about fraudulent votes in the last election – it’s hard to move on from that fact.

As we approach an impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump’s second, Republican senators are taking issue with the process, attempting to stop the trial by arguing that because Trump left office, the issue is moot. When the facts aren’t on their side, Republicans always go for process. They’re doing everything they can to obstruct the majority. I have to say, it is not surprising but still shocking that, after that Trump-fueled hate mob busted into the capitol looking for Pence’s head and those of the Congressional leadership, these senators can still casually tut tut over the effort to hold the former president accountable. They were almost impaled on the end of a pitchfork just three weeks ago, and yet they still go to bat for the outside strategy … and for every rube to remain duped. Un-effing-believable.

I started critical coverage of the Biden administration on this past week’s episode of Strange Sound, with a focus on foreign policy. I encourage you to do the same, even if just for your own edification.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.