All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[PaulBullion]

Joe Biden is not Emmet Till.

This is an absolutely disgusting comparison.

Now you see how disgusted we are when you compare him to Donald Trump.

All the evidence we have seen indicates to me that, just as with Till, this is a false allegation.


You have seen some of that evidence, you say you draw other conclusions. I cannot change your mind. But comparing the man who gave America the Violence Against Women act to Donald Trump is disgusting, plain and simple. Joe Biden is not a rapist.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Except Biden is not a rapist. He seems as much of a rapist as Angela Merkel.

Biden's a rapist.

I haven't ever seen anything reported about Merkel sexually assaulting anyone. If there are stories out there, point me in their direction.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Now you see how disgusted we are when you compare him to Donald Trump.

All the evidence we have seen indicates to me that, just as with Till, this is a false allegation.


You have seen some of that evidence, you say you draw other conclusions. I cannot change your mind. But comparing the man who gave America the Violence Against Women act to Donald Trump is disgusting, plain and simple. Joe Biden is not a rapist.

Joe Biden is a rapist. He's running for President, just as another rapist, Donald Trump, ran for President in 2016 and is President now.

What he did in his professional career does not change what he did in his personal life. There are many men who have fought for women's rights in the public sphere and have treated women terribly in their personal lives. The Democrats continue to show how little they understand about oppression.

[TheDarman]

Joe Biden is a rapist. He's running for President, just as another rapist, Donald Trump, ran for President in 2016 and is President now.

What he did in his professional career does not change what he did in his personal life. There are many men who have fought for women's rights in the public sphere and have treated women terribly in their personal lives. The Democrats continue to show how little they understand about oppression.

Your claims are as baseless as the racist in the White House claiming Obama wasn’t born in this country. A lack of evidence that a cover-up didn’t occur or a rape didn’t occur isn’t evidence that either did. And, as for this allegation, it’s clear that the evidence that exists actually seems to suggest that the behavior of both the alleged victim and the alleged abuser aren’t acting like their respective victim and abuser counterparts. And that is just on the most basic level. Failure to actually look at the evidence is causing a lot of people to make libelous claims.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Biden Announces That Accused Sex Creep and Sex Creep Enabler Christopher Dodd Will Help Him Pick a Running Mate

A former Senate staffer named Tara Reade has accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, an accusation which gained further credibility on Monday when Business Insider reported that one of Reade’s former neighbors recalls Reade having told her about the alleged incident in detail in the mid-’90s.

Biden’s defense, so far, has involved keeping his distance from the story. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has said, through a spokeswoman, that he did not assault Reade, but he has yet to address the accusation himself in public. His campaign has meanwhile signaled its confidence in Biden’s good reputation to an extent that reads as arrogance.

On Tuesday, for example, the candidate made an online appearance with Hillary Clinton, who was reportedly involved in some of Bill Clinton’s efforts to discredit women who said (truthfully, in at least some cases) that they’d had extramarital affairs with him or suffered unwelcome advances. The subject became an issue during her presidential race—and while that was to some extent because it was raised in bad faith by Donald Trump, she is, regardless, not widely seen as a credible character witness for men accused of misbehavior. On Thursday, the Biden campaign announced that its vice presidential selection committee will include former Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a longtime friend and political ally of Biden’s whose own history on the subject of sexual assault is, at the least, unsavory.

Most directly, it’s public record that a D.C. waitress named Carla Gaviglio accused Dodd and the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy of sexually assaulting her at the restaurant where she worked in 1985. According to Gaviglio, Kennedy and Dodd were both drunk in a private room when Kennedy threw her into a seated Dodd’s lap and rubbed his genitals against her until other staffers intervened.

It’s not the only account in which Dodd served as Kennedy’s lecherous wingman: The late actress Carrie Fisher, in a memoir, wrote that she went on a group date in 1985 with Dodd during which Kennedy asked her leeringly if she would be “having sex with Chris” and/or would “have sex with Chris in a hot tub,” behavior which she says Dodd observed with “an unusual grin hanging on his very flushed face.” In 1990, a writer at the D.C. paper Roll Call described Kennedy and Dodd to GQ magazine as “two guys in a fraternity who have been loosed upon the world.”

Dodd, moreover, was a leading Democratic recipient of donations by Harvey Weinstein, whom he referred to as his “good friend” in a 2011 New York Times interview. After he left the Senate in 2011, Dodd became the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. “I’ve known Harvey for 25, 30 years, and we’ve been friends,” Dodd told the Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “He was very helpful to me as a candidate for Congress and as a senator over the years.” Informal accounts of Weinstein’s frequent sexual misconduct were widely, widely circulated well before they were ultimately made public in New York Times and New Yorker exposés, and he is now in prison after having been convicted of third-degree rape and first-degree commission of a criminal sexual act (forced oral sex).

Defenses of Biden that have been made by his campaign and by Democratic surrogates have emphasized not just that he denies Reade’s allegations but that he embodies the decency of a person who could never be associated with such acts. That message is undermined by his decision to remind the public of his long association with Dodd, who at best was passively adjacent to, and at worst complicit in, the behavior of two notorious, powerful men during the era in which Biden—then, himself, one of the most prominent politicians in the country—is accused of assaulting Reade.

[PaulBullion]

I find the accusation that Obama's team should have so bad at vetting Biden a disturbing attack on our first black president.

[Powerboy]

Biden's a rapist.

I haven't ever seen anything reported about Merkel sexually assaulting anyone. If there are stories out there, point me in their direction.

As Alyssa Milano said, the allegations against Bill Clinton should have been thoroughly investigated. Same with Kavanaugh (clearly swept under the rug, not allowed to be properly investigated and dismissed as a foregone conclusion), same with Clarence Thomas and Trump. Same with Biden.

Yes, it puts us in a real bind because it potentially results in a self-absorbed child winning another term as President with all the damage that will entail. So it's a rock and a hard place.

In the long term, going through with a real investigation marks the Democrats as the Party of Integrity rather than the party of, "Oh, so when it comes down to it, you do exactly the same thing the Republicans do". But it also ends with four more years of insanity.

My opinion is that if you hold the other side to an idealism they never meet, be an idealist yourself. Investigate Biden. Condemn or exonerate him based on the evidence. If he fails, have the next person in line be the candidate or someone you believe can win. Personally, I think Michelle Obama would be a great candidate because it would galvanize a lot of people to vote who otherwise would not and, true or not, a lot of people would just assume Barack was advising her and that it was effectively another term for him.

I would note that simply because someone filed an accusation does not equal guilty. But if true, there tends to be a pattern, not just one incident. It needs to be honestly investigated.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

I find the accusation that Obama's team should have so bad at vetting Biden a disturbing attack on our first black president.

Obama's a war criminal.

Please, do think I'm attacking Obama. I don't want anyone to ever think I feel anything but utter disgust for the man.

[Iron Maiden]

Meanwhile the Republican president is a rapist who's assaulted several women.

I think it's up to around 20 accusers out there for Trump. The most mysterious one was linked Michael Epstein. Never named publicly, she gave a signed deposition with Jane Doe being used as the name. What is telling is that a former "recruiter" for Epstein backed her story. She is referred to as "Tiffany Doe" This recruiter would go to various places in NYC or Florida (Epstein had a home there) to find young girls to "work" at his homes.

You can view her deposition here Note that both signed this "under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct" She dropped the case and AFAIK there has been no further contact with authorities and has been reported on this since.

[TheDarman]

Biden's a rapist.

I haven't ever seen anything reported about Merkel sexually assaulting anyone. If there are stories out there, point me in their direction.

Did you believe Amber Heard?

Obama's a war criminal.

Please, do think I'm attacking Obama. I don't want anyone to ever think I feel anything but utter disgust for the man.

Do you think the Democratic Party should look more like FDR’s?

[Powerboy]

I think it's up to around 20 accusers out there for Trump. The most mysterious one was linked Michael Epstein. Never named publicly, she gave a signed deposition with Jane Doe being used as the name. What is telling is that a former "recruiter" for Epstein backed her story. She is referred to as "Tiffany Doe" This recruiter would go to various places in NYC or Florida (Epstein had a home there) to find young girls to "work" at his homes.

You can view her deposition here She dropped the case and nothing AFAIK has been reported on this since.

Trump is desperate to win a second term and hopes he does in office or is so old by the end of his second term that he will have prison time waved due to age and bad health. The moment he is out of office, he will be slammed with charges.

[PaulBullion]

Obama's a war criminal.

Please, do think I'm attacking Obama. I don't want anyone to ever think I feel anything but utter disgust for the man.

Which war exactly are you addressing, Rosa?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Right-Wing Think Tanks Are Using Covid-19 To Push War with Iran

Since the global Covid-19 pandemic began, a cluster of U.S. think tanks has been aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to escalate militarily toward Iran and tighten U.S. sanctions. This push has come despite warnings that such sanctions are worsening the death toll of Iran’s outbreak, which is one of the worst in the world. The think tanks leading this effort—the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and American Enterprise Institute (AEI)—have cranked out non-stop statements, research documents, videos and media appearances since the crisis began. They are not shouting into the wind, but speaking directly to an administration that has proven willing to act upon their words.

In the 47 days since March 11, when the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, the FDD has posted 56 articles, podcast interviews and videos on its website which either demonize Iran as a uniquely bad actor or urge the United States to take a confrontational posture towards the country. While the steady stream of anti-Iran invectives is not new, the insistence that the Covid-19 crisis builds their case is. One piece from April 14, for example, argues that the crisis strengthens the case for “regime change,” because it will diminish “the regime’s credibility even further and add fuel to the outrage and anger that have been building for years.” The unproven theory that mass suffering will accelerate an uprising against the government has long been used to justify a host of punishing U.S. policies against the Iranian people, including sanctions—a form of collective punishment has only unleashed poverty and premature death upon ordinary people.

Yet, throughout the crisis, the FDD has published a flurry of materials arguing that the United States must not let up sanctions during the pandemic. The organization is funded by pro-Israel billionaires and started out in 2001 as an explicitly pro-Israel organization called EMET (Hebrew for truth). Since the pandemic began, it has published written and video posts that include: “Tehran Can Afford to Fight Covid-19 Even Without Sanctions Relief,” “The Coronavirus Is Absolutely No Excuse To Lift Sanctions on Iran” and “Humanitarian channels to Iran continue to be wide open.” In a March 27 video, Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of FDD, released a video arguing that “the Iranian people know that this is the wrong time to give sanctions relief.”

In fact, doctors in Iran have been begging the Trump administration for relief from sanctions, which are cutting off critical medical supplies, like ventilators, leading to an increase in Covid-19 deaths. While humanitarian exemptions technically exist on paper, they are rendered largely meaningless by a difficult-to-navigate web of sanctions, as well as threats and intimidation from the Trump administration, which have scared global banks and firms from doing business with Iran. Researchers were warning that sanctions were causing a shortage in medical supplies before the outbreak began: As Human Rights Watch said on April 6, “these exemptions have failed to offset the strong reluctance of U.S. and European companies and banks to risk incurring sanctions and legal action by exporting or financing exempted humanitarian goods.”

Hoda Katebi, an Iranian-American community organizer with the No War Campaign, told In These Times that the FDD’s role is “wildly ruinous—there's no nicer way to put it.” According to Katebi, “You'd think a humanitarian crisis would be a time when war hawks pause rather than ramp up their project. It is telling what their goal is. With all their talk about wanting to help the Iranain people, it’s very clear it's quite the contrary.”

Amid calls for sanctions relief, the Trump administration has only dug in more, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issuing a statement on March 18 announcing a new round of sanctions that “will deprive the regime of critical income from its petrochemical industry and further Iran’s economic and diplomatic isolation.” This was soon followed by the Trump administration’s intervention to block an emergency $5 billion loan to Iran from the International Monetary Fund (a position the FDD also supported). But this did not satisfy the FDD. On April 23, a group of “experts and formal officials” signed a letter to Trump urging his administration to “double down on the maximum pressure campaign.” Of the 50 people who signed, 22 were from the FDD, according to a report in the conservative publication The National Interest.

Cavan Kharrazian, international program researcher for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told In These Times, “Their letter echoes the State Department's categorically false line that these broad economic sanctions have no humanitarian effects. Despite claiming that their ‘hearts go out’ to the Iranian people, they actively contribute to an extremely dangerous foreign policy that harms millions of ordinary Iranians and pushes us closer to escalating military conflict.” This danger is underscored by Trump’s April 22 claim that, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea”—a reference to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

One of the signatories is the FDD’s senior advisor Richard Goldberg, who worked in the Trump administration from 2019 to 2020 while he was also at the FDD. When serving as Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton created a job just for Goldberg: “director for countering Iran’s weapons of mass destruction.” As Bloomberg reports, “The goal was to counter what Bolton saw as a desire at the departments of State and Treasury to weaken the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran.” While Goldberg served on the National Security Council, he remained on the salary of the FDD.

Goldberg’s double role is not the only evidence of a close relationship between the FDD and the Trump administration. When Iran declared in August 2019 that it was imposing sanctions on the FDD and Dubowitz for “unilateral and illegal economic terrorism,” Pompeo came to the think tank’s defense. “The U.S. does not take these threats lightly, and will hold the regime and its ‘apparatuses’ to account,” he tweeted. On April 17, Juan Zarate, Chairman of the FDD’s “Center on Economic and Financial Power,” appeared on a roundtable, organized by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), alongside Andrea Gacki, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he argued in favor of U.S. sanctions. Among the FDD’s biggest funders is billionaire and Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who was one of Trump’s largest donors in 2016 and has been clear about his fervent belief that “Iran is the devil,” as Eli Clifton reported.

FDD is not alone in its campaign. The AEI, which has received millions from Koch foundations, as well as corporations such as ExxonMobil, has launched a campaign to counter activists who are calling for sanctions relief. Yasmine Taeb, senior policy counsel at Demand Progress, tells In These Times, “FDD and AEI have always pushed for policies aimed at war. FDD led the charge against the Iran nuclear deal under Obama, and it opposes U.S. diplomacy with Iran on principle: It sees any U.S. relationship with Iran as coming at the expense of the U.S. relationship with Israel, and it has a track record of supporting escalation for the sake of escalation.”

“The difference between the FDD and AEI today is that the AEI is a prominent conservative organization that supported Bush’s march to war in Iraq in 2003,” she continues. “It is not leading the charge for war with Iran today: The FDD is playing the role that the AEI played in the lead-up to the Iraq War.” Notably, AEI’s board of trustees includes former Vice President Dick Cheney alongside and a number of corporate leaders, including Christopher B. Galvin, former CEO and chairman of Motorola.

While the AEI might not be playing as large a role as the FDD, it also is not silent. On March 20, 26 progressive organizations released a statement asking “President Trump, Sec. Mnuchin, and Sec. Pompeo to loosen the administration's crippling sanctions regime on Iran for 120 days in order to aid the Iranian people’s fight against the virus.” AEI responded with a press effort to oppose that effort. On March 24, AEI resident scholar Michael Rubin directly blasted the letter in an op-ed in the Washington Examiner titled, “Don’t lift Iran sanctions, not even for the coronavirus.”

Then, on March 25, AEI senior fellow Danielle Pletka wrote an op-ed in The Dispatch titled, “Sorry, now is not the time to lift sanctions on Iran.” That piece also responds to the letter from 26 organizations calling for sanctions to be lifted. In late March, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar and others circulated a letter calling for immediate sanctions relief for Iran (that letter would be publicly released on March 31 with 34 congressional signatures). On March 25, Rubin wrote an article for The National Interest titled “Sorry, AOC: Donald Trump can’t give Iran a sanctions pass for coronavirus.”

[PaulBullion]

You love to see it:

Trump's Favorability Among White Christians Falls in Double Digits

Measuring by religious affiliation, Trump held the support of 77 percent of white evangelical Protestants in March 2020, up 13 percent from his 2019 ratings. But that number has since fallen back down to 66 percent at the close of April. Among white mainline Protestants, Trump's share of favorable ratings fell 18 percent from 62 percent in March to 44 percent in April.

[TheDarman]

Tara Reade now says she submitted “an intake form” rather than a complaint.

This story keeps changing.