President Biden: tough on Russia
It has been approximately 49 days since Russia attacked Ukraine at the direction of Vladimir Putin. In recent days, President Joe Biden has changed his approach to the invasion. Specifically, President Biden’s is taking a more aggressive tack towards Russia. Here are three things that Biden is doing and saying that show his new course of action:
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger took to his social media to release a striking 9-minute video intended for the people of Russia, and the soldiers of the Russian armed forces. The video can be viewed here on Arnold’s Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762
The Atlantic published the transcript of the video here. The premise of Schwarzenegger’s video is that the Russian people are not being told the truth about Vladimir Putin‘s war on Ukraine.
Relevant sign once more
Vladimir Putin‘s Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused oil prices to skyrocket. That has in turn caused gasoline prices at the pump to increase sharply. This was entirely predictable. We are having yet another war over oil. Apparently the world has learned little since both Gulf Wars. Indeed, even Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor over 80 years ago was largely over oil.
But some folks are saying that “expensive gas is the price of freedom.” This meme can be seen all over social media. For example:
Record gas prices are how Americans can count the cost of freedom https://t.co/kSMxZs0Jnd
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) March 10, 2022
Gas is expensive. Freedom is priceless.
— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) March 8, 2022
Solar power, a better alternative to fascist Russian gas
The Shock Doctrine is the idea that, when disasters or wars strike, conservatives try to use the events to push their existing agenda, such as privatization of important government functions, in response. Republicans have foisted such policies in places as far-flung as Iraq and New Orleans. We have argued that, in turn, Democrats should institute their policies, i.e. a Liberal Shock Doctrine, when they are in power and disasters and wars occur. That might include, for example, stronger gun safety laws after the shock of a mass shooting, or the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, including government stimulus payments and other federal aid, which Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden successfully brought about in 2021 after Donald Trump‘s inaction in the face of the COVID pandemic plunged the U.S. into a recession in 2020.
Russia‘s shocking and tragic invasion of Ukraine presents another opportunity for the United States, and countries around the world, to create a liberal version of the Shock Doctrine. First, countries can promote the idea of democracy (which is well-represented by Ukraine) instead of fascist dictatorship, exemplified by Russia and Vladimir Putin. But in addition, there is one specific policy that the U.S. and the world should be pushing right now:
Apparently, mockery of Rudolph Giuliani is not new
Federal agents raided former Donald Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani‘s home and office on Wednesday, executing a search warrant and seizing electronic devices. The raid was reportedly in connection with a criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine (trying to generate false disparaging information on Joe Biden‘s son Hunter) on behalf of Trump’s presidential campaigns. But just as noteworthy as the news itself regarding the Giuliani raid was the explosion of mockery that has taken place on social media as a result. Apparently, the pent-up demand to express schadenfreude and karma regarding Giuliani is massive. Many of these social media reactions recall Giuliani “highlights,” including his melting face, his disastrous blunder renting the parking lot of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company instead of the Four Seasons Hotel for a press conference (or worse, possibly picking such an irrelevant and pathetic-looking backdrop, located between a sex shop and a crematorium, on purpose), his being caught on film with his pants down in a hotel room with a young woman in the most recent Borat movie, and more. Follow us after the jump for some of the best Twitter reactions, including a couple of our own:
Donald Trump busted acting like a Mob boss on the phone
One of the go-to tactics in the Republican playbook is distraction. In particular, when Republicans are caught doing something wrong, they try to distract the media and the public by focusing not on the substance of their wrongdoing, but on who leaked the story of the wrongdoing. We saw that, for example, in 1997, when Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was caught on an intercepted cell phone call coordinating his response to ethics charges with Republican House leaders Richard Armey, John Boehner and others, in violation of Gingrich’s ethics case settlement. The Republican distraction by focusing on the interception of the call rather than improper call itself, was a success in that instance.
On Sunday, something similar happened with Donald Trump. The Washington Post released the recording of a recent telephone call from Trump to Georgia‘s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, on which Trump begs, cajoles and even threatens Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to change the certified result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Impeachment message in timely Christmas colors
By now, many people realize that the impeachment of Donald Trump involves a public relations war. On one side, we have Trump and the Republicans claiming that the Democrats are “obsessed with impeaching” Trump, to the exclusion of all else. So what have the Democrats done effectively to counter that charge? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
First, House Democrats unveiled their Articles of Impeachment against Trump while simultaneously announcing that they had reached an agreement with Trump on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade. This is a reminder by Democrats (and they are sure to remind us further) that, not only can they govern and impeach Trump at the same time, they have passed nearly 400 bills, all of which are sitting idly on Mitch McConnell‘s U.S. Senate desk.
Republicans defending Trump: melted butter, toast, or both?
Yesterday morning, the House Intelligence Committee held another Donald Trump impeachment inquiry hearing, this time with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. To say the hearing did not go well for Trump and the Republicans is an understatement. For example, Sondland admitted that “everyone was in the loop” regarding Donald Trump’s demand that Ukraine‘s president provide “deliverables,” meaning helping Trump personally by investigating phony conspiracies about Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter, and the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential election efforts, in exchange for a meeting with Trump and crucial military aid for Ukraine that Congress had already approved.
The devastation that Republicans on the Committee must have been feeling was perfectly captured in this bit of video that is part of the tweet below, showing Republican Ranking Member Devin Nunes painfully turning to his side’s counsel after one segment of Sondland’s testimony:
As Sikhs, we are not supposed to be happy about the suffering of other human beings. Watching Republicans signalling with their eyes, “Fellas, we’re screwed” during testimony of Gordon Sondland, I have been a very, very bad Sikh today. #ImpeachmentHearing pic.twitter.com/4fbAqtz5O6
— Harjinder Singh Kukreja (@SinghLions) November 20, 2019
Mind you, Sondland is not some Democratic Party hack. On the contrary, he is a real estate businessman who in recent years has been a Republican Party donor and bundler of contributions to Republican candidates such as Willard Mitt Romney. Sondland, through his companies, donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, and then received his ambassadorship in return.
Watching Devin Nunes’ reaction to Sondland’s testimony, we can’t help but be reminded of a similar meltdown by a well-known TV character in similar circumstances:
Photo by Sterling College, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/xvdQhy
Turning off Facebook
In the very first Messaging Matters post, nearly nine years ago, we wrote: “Republicans have placed a ‘matrix’ over this country” with the help of “news media [that] are largely controlled by giant corporations,” as well as an organized Republican “messaging machine.” Based on recent revelations, it turns out that Facebook is part of this Republican machine too. As a result, we’re unplugging from the Facebook matrix.
U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
The U.S. House of Representatives has wasted no time after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump on Tuesday. Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee held a public hearing featuring Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The subject of the hearing, which was carried on virtually all of the cable TV news channels plus C-SPAN, was the just-released Whistleblower complaint against Trump, his attorney Rudolph Giuliani, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and possibly others.
The Whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zolensky to investigate activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in return for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and then sought to hide the record of Trump’s phone call, as well as Trump’s calls with other foreign leaders, on a separate, secret electronic server. The complaint contains other related allegations as well, and, for some members of Congress, was apparently the last straw that influenced them to support the House formal impeachment inquiry. Just this week, the slowly building stream of House members supporting the impeachment inquiry became a waterfall, jumping by some 75 to reach 218, the majority number needed to vote to impeach Trump or other federal officials.
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