US Elections 2020

[Stavros]

How to either win the election, or so cripple the US Postal Service that postal votes don't arrive or get counted- the solution, if more and more people intend to vote by mail, is to increase funding for the Service, and hire more people-the article also makes the point that as many Agency and Department heads are 'Acting' it means they have not had Congressional approval and are thus directly appointed by the President -does this mean they are not accountable to Congress?

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...CD1KJtTZ-8koL0

[broncofan]

I believe Harris might be the least Christian candidate in US history -although she attended a Baptist school growing up, via her father I assume, her family history is dominated by her (now deceased) Hindu mother (the father left when Harris was 7 seven years old) and she also went to Hindu temples. She is married to a Jew, and although I don't believe she converted to Judaism, she has a solid record of support for Israel including the popular misconception as expressed here: "“Years later when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.” (Historical note: there was no desert to bloom before the 1880s, the fertile areas of what is now Israel were producing oranges and olives and plums and wheat and...etc no need to let Israeli propaganda spoil reality for ya) ---but that is hardly surprising for top-tier Democrats, even if she does, or used to believe in a two-state solution -you can read a snippet or two about it here-
https://www.jta.org/2019/01/11/polit...-kamala-harris

There has been some talk of her views on Israel with a picture of her with Netanyahu garnering a lot of attention. I don't think a picture of a U.S. senator with a foreign head of state, even a right-wing authoritarian head of state, is quite the gotcha some people think it is, particularly since Israel is a state the U.S. has diplomatic relations with.

With 164,000 dead Americans, most of them preventable, and an incumbent who has destroyed the rule of law and wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices to roll back civil rights I don't think her exaggerations about Israel's agricultural accomplishments are going to end up being too much of an issue.

The left could have nominated Bernie, who wanted to cut aid to Israel, block settlement building, and end the Gaza siege. He didn't do it in an exciting and demagogic way but his views were pretty clear that he was going to change the direction of U.S. policy with respect to Israel. It was one of the few things I appreciated about him.

[broncofan]

I liked the choice of Kamala Harris because she's charismatic and very good at one on one debate. I'm not the only person to think this but I just imagine her dismantling Mike Pence in a debate because she's always so prepared.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

I liked the choice of Kamala Harris because she's charismatic and very good at one on one debate. I'm not the only person to think this but I just imagine her dismantling Mike Pence in a debate because she's always so prepared.

Agree that Kamala Harris is charismatic and very good at one on one debate. and can also see her dismantling Mike-Delusional Clown-Pence in a debate,because she is always prepared.

[Stavros]

There has been some talk of her views on Israel with a picture of her with Netanyahu garnering a lot of attention. I don't think a picture of a U.S. senator with a foreign head of state, even a right-wing authoritarian head of state, is quite the gotcha some people think it is, particularly since Israel is a state the U.S. has diplomatic relations with.

With 164,000 dead Americans, most of them preventable, and an incumbent who has destroyed the rule of law and wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices to roll back civil rights I don't think her exaggerations about Israel's agricultural accomplishments are going to end up being too much of an issue.

The left could have nominated Bernie, who wanted to cut aid to Israel, block settlement building, and end the Gaza siege. He didn't do it in an exciting and demagogic way but his views were pretty clear that he was going to change the direction of U.S. policy with respect to Israel. It was one of the few things I appreciated about him.

My point was not really about policy, I was interested in the influences in her life, and wondered if her views on Israel were shaped by her marriage, or if she held those views before. The remark about blooming deserts suggests someone who has swallowed one of Zionism's enduring myths, and also suggests she either knows little about 'the others' or is in any way more committed to the interests of Israel than of the Palestinians. That the Christian component in her identity seems vague to me at the moment is one of the interesting angles, she may yet have to make some religious declarations as it has seemed since Reagan that the White House is off-limits to anyone who does not declare a belief in the Bible, attend 'Prayer Breakfasts', church on Sunday, and chant 'God Bless America'.

What has puzzled me for some time is the ease with which so-called Christians or 'Evangelical Christians' in the US support Israel at the same time as showing zero interest in the rights of Christians who have either been living in 'the Holy Land' since the days of Jesus, or through the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches and their communities have established a continuous presence in Jerusalem for over 1,000 years. Whatever.

I also note that her maternal Grandfather, PV Gopalan was as hostile an activist to the British in India as Obama's father was to the British in Kenya, and that he was a Minister in Nehru's government dealing with refugees from 'East Pakistan' before accepting another job dealing with the rehabilitation of refugees in Zambia. She has been critical of India'a treatment of Kashmir, so it remains to be seen if this other extremist (and his even more aggressive sidekick Amit Shah) will claim her as 'India's own' given that the last thing he wants is to be publicly criticised for his annexation of Kashmir.
Her maternal Grandmother in Jamaica was a member of the Jamaica Labour Party.

Of course she has baggage, and not just from her years in California, and on policy issues I would expect her to lean more to the 'play it safe' side of the Democrat party, to be a reassuring voice to moderate voters, the opposite of how the Presdident and his teams are depicting her, though it is a bit rich for the nastiest and most foul-mouthed President to call her 'nasty'.

Right now I don't think the Republicans know how to handle her, but there is some way to go yet, and if it comes down to impresssions, it is up to her and Biden not to make major gaffes. But will she tell the truth about the debt and take the view taxes must rise to pay it off? And is she soft on Wall St?

[broncofan]

My point was not really about policy, I was interested in the influences in her life, and wondered if her views on Israel were shaped by her marriage, or if she held those views before. The remark about blooming deserts suggests someone who has swallowed one of Zionism's enduring myths, and also suggests she either knows little about 'the others' or is in any way more committed to the interests of Israel than of the Palestinians. That the Christian component in her identity seems vague to me at the moment is one of the interesting angles, she may yet have to make some religious declarations as it has seemed since Reagan that the White House is off-limits to anyone who does not declare a belief in the Bible, attend 'Prayer Breakfasts', church on Sunday, and chant 'God Bless America'.

I understand your point and also the implication of saying the Israelis "made the desert bloom", which is a vapid and foolish claim. In addition to being politically motivated propaganda, the idea is a racist one in the sense that it assumes people who were there for centuries could not cultivate the land or were incapable of using the land. I also don't like the claim that an area containing some desert is somehow improved by transforming it. I don't think everyone who says this thinks through the negative implication though. They may think they are speaking to Israeli efforts and not be aware they are misrepresenting the history of the area and erasing the existence of its Palestinian inhabitants, which is wrong.

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff only got married a few years ago when they were both about 50 years old. But that doesn't mean she had strong opinions about the subject or a lot of knowledge about it until then. I would be surprised if her marriage to him did not influence her stance on Israel simply because Doug seems to be politically active in pro-Israel circles.

My point, and I didn't mean it as a rebuke, is one that you kind of alluded to in your post. Her stance is not out of step with the Democratic party for the most part. I was very happy to see during the primary season both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren avoid going to AIPAC. That IS extremely important because these kind of glib talking points are ones you would hear at the venue of a political lobby like AIPAC. I don't think the choice of Biden should be seen as a rejection of that type of change since this is not a hugely visible issue in our primary season.

[Stavros]

I agree with your last point -the US is committed to the defence of Israel and I see no change taking place to that strategic partnership. It doesn't mean, however, that every US administration should bend the knee to Benjamin Netanyahu, but we saw with Obama what happens when they don't, though in Obama's case, it was clear Netanyahu was never going to even think a Black man could be his equal, let alone his superior.

Whatever the ignorance American politicians share about the Middle East with the general public, the framework within which decisions are being made is shaped by the broader conflict in the region between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a conflict that has overtaken the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that dominated the region for so many year.

The UAE's recognition of Israel, for example, is a ruse that has been cobbled together by Under-President Kushner and his buddy, Yousef al-Otaiba, the one whose 'legendary' parties in DC and other more private sessions going back at least 5 years has brought Saudi Arabia's mad Crown Prince MbS into contact with -and more worryingly, agreement wiith- Gen. Petraeus, Martin Indyk, and eventually the Kushner elite, enablling MbS to boast he has Kushner in his pocket, though the amount of gold that might have passed between them has not been confirmed.
All of them loathe Qatar, which, though less urgent than Iran, is small enough to be pushed around for daring to support the Palestinian cause.

It is easy enough to get Netanyahu to say there won't be any new settlement activity, as he will merely encourage it to expand in existing settlements. More broadly, the Saudi Arabia-Israeli alliance has brought the UAE into its orbit, as both have been involved in the catastrophic war in the Yemen, with the UAE, lacking armed forces of any size, using Erik Prince to create 'mercenaries' fighting on behalf of the UAE in this repeat of the futile war that engulfed the Yemen in the 1960s, the first time Israel and Saudi Arabia came together, the US using Israel as a corridor through which to ship arms to Saudi Arabia.

Out of this, I wonder how much a new Democrat Admin can change. The most obvious, and the easiest foreign policy change will be to take the US back into the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

The Iran Nuclear Deal is a tough one, because Iran has changed its position -but, were the US to lift sanctions on Iran, indeed, to open dialogue with it, this might change Iran's position, added to which its inept handling of Covid 19 and falling oil revenues mean it is in need of funds and support. But this would upset the US-Israel-Saudi linkage and though Biden might be reluctant to upset them, I think he must. By intervening in the triangle of terror that the UAE-Saudi Arabia and Israel has formed , Biden could bring an end to the war in Yemen, which in reality both Saudi Arabia and the UAE want out of, and which with a dialogue with Iran might be achieved, as Yemen is really of little use to Iran, and has in any case split apart again as it did in the 1960s.

If Biden and Harris want to be different, a new approach to the Middle East as outlined above is one way to do it, but will meet fercious resistance by religious nutters in Congress, and by Netanyahu -though his own future as Prime Minister is not secure- as for MbS, we don't know how he will cope with Biden and Harris, as they cannot be as easily bought as the current President (or can they?).

it is also not clear to me what the US position is on Libya, Syria and Iraq, while its position on Afghanistan and negotiating with the Taliban is also in disarray. At the heart of the Libyan conflict is Kushner's buddy, the UAE, using its money to curry influence with the French at the expense of the Turks, leaving Biden with a thorny problem, given the legacy of the Benghazi raid. Who to back in Libya? What Biden might want in Syria, regime change, is looking unlkely for the time being, unless Bashar al-Asad is assassinated (and if so, by a member of his own family) or the Russians reduce their commitment to the place. A new Democrat admin must ask, does the US stay in these places, or make a serious attempt to negotiate settlements?

Two last foreign policy obstacles the current admiin has created: 1) Russia and the future of nuclear weapons development; and 2) China in general and trade in particular.

If we assume Biden cannot take the US back to where it was in 2016, where does he want the US to go from here? Most of the world has pushed the US aside, and the 45th President has been integral to the strategic weakness the US now finds itself in. Could it be that in the new dispensation, Biden is an ineffective world leader, because crucial players no longer rely on the US to get what they want? A new US administration could thus present credible and practical solutions, and be ignored by those for whom political power comes out of the barrrel of a gun.

Some links to cause thought-
A Prince, An Arab and A Russian meet in a bar-
https://www.fastcompany.com/90233994...l-in-trump-d-c

Otaiba, Otaiba
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/23/...gi-washington/

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.pre...line-1.8918626

https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/201...el-real-enemy/

[Stavros]

"It is easy enough to get Netanyahu to say there won't be any new settlement activity, as he will merely encourage it to expand in existing settlements."
My mistake, Netanyahu has said Israel will not annexe the West Bank, which it probably wasn't going to (at this time) anyway.

[Stavros]

"President Donald Trump says he has heard Democratic running mate Kamala Harris "doesn't qualify" to serve as US vice-president, amplifying a fringe legal theory critics decry as racist."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53774289

Again? What is wrong with this man? Has he no policies he wants to talk about that he thinks needs four more years? Or is he just going to spend three months insuliting and abusing Americans?

[KnightHawk 2.0]

"President Donald Trump says he has heard Democratic running mate Kamala Harris "doesn't qualify" to serve as US vice-president, amplifying a fringe legal theory critics decry as racist."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53774289

Again? What is wrong with this man? Has he no policies he wants to talk about that he thinks needs four more years? Or is he just going to spend three months insuliting and abusing Americans?

That's rich coming from a Clueless Buffoon who is has done a terrible job of handling the CO-VID 19 Global Pandemic and has absolutely no business being the president of the United States,and this is just another example of him stoking fear and division to rile his base of supporters and enablers. he is an uneducated,unfit,unqualified,mentally unstable demagouge and malignant narcissist who thinks by using the race card and attacking Kamala Harris,he'll increase his chances of getting re-elected,and the US doesn't need four more of him and corrupt administration. and this also shows that he is afraid of powerful women, and i think that Kamala Harris is qualified to serve as US Vice President,unlike that delusional clown Mike Pence.