Patterico's Pontifications

5/23/2020

Joe Biden To Black Voters: If You’re Trying To Decide Between Trump Or Me, ‘You Ain’t Black’

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:11 am



[guest post by Dana]

So, this happened:

Joe Biden defended his legislative record in an often contentious Friday morning interview with Charlamagne Tha God, the host of the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” and argued that his presidential campaign was doing enough to reach out to black voters. At one point, Biden argued that black voters undecided on whether to vote for him or for President Trump “ain’t black.”

Transcript:

Charlamagne tha God: (17:15)
Listen, you got to come see us when you come to New York VP Biden.

Joe Biden: (17:18)
I will.

Charlamagne tha God: (17:19)
Because it’s a long way until November. We got more questions.

Joe Biden: (17:22)
You got more questions but I tell ya, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.

Charlamagne tha God: (17:28)
It don’t have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community. I would love to see-

After criticism came from both sides of the aisle because WHO SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT, Biden was compelled to apologize for his gaffe explain himself in a phone call with members of the U.S. Black Chambers:

“I should not have been so cavalier. I’ve never, never, ever taken the African American community for granted.”

“I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier. … No one should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background,” Biden said. “There are African Americans who think that Trump was worth voting for, I don’t think so. I’m prepared to put my record against his. That was the bottom line and it was ah — it was really unfortunate I shouldn’t have been so cavalier.”

Hm, was that being “cavalier,” or was that just being flippant, disrespectful, and arrogant? I’m going with the latter three…

Black Republicans were vocal in their criticism of Biden:

…Michigan Senate candidate John James, who addressed Biden in a tweeted video: “You challenging me and millions of other people out there on their blackness, descendants of slaves, from you is some seriously condescending, out of touch bullcrap,” and he questioned whether Biden should “even be running for president in the Democratic Party who says they’re for black people.”

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott told reporters on a Trump campaign call, “I thought to myself, I’ve been black for 54 years. I was struck by the condescension and the arrogance.” Scott urged his Senate colleagues to disavow Biden’s remarks and added, “Race baiting in the 21st century is an ineffective tool to attract one of the most intelligent voting blocs in the nation. He should respect African-American voters as individuals, not as a part of a group or a monolithic group of people.”

Biden’s senior advisor, Symone D. Sanders defended Biden, saying the comments were made in jest:

“The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period,”

Here are a few varied responses to Biden’s comments from the black community:

And then there was bit of insight from The Root:

First, he keeps calling Charlamagne, “man.”

“I’m following the rules, man.”

“Totally different, man.”

This is Biden’s version of a blaccent. This is the thing he’s doing to make himself cool and hip to the young black community. Imagine a white guy calling you his main man; that’s the way Biden says it. Except, he doesn’t realize he’s playing himself and the community he’s supposed to be reaching out to. Biden isn’t alone in this.

This is a thing that out-of-touch white politicians do all the time. I call it the Love Don’t Co$t a Thing move. It goes like this: Can’t Buy Me Love is a teen romantic comedy that premiered in 1987. It’s an underrated classic that centers around a geeky kid using his savings to pay a cheerleader to help him be cool. When Hollywood wanted to re-create the success of Can’t Buy Me Love, they went and grabbed a young Nick Cannon to star in a remake called Love Don’t Co$t a Thing. Two things are wrong with this idea: The first is that black audiences didn’t like the original movie. The second is that in order to get black audiences to come out, the studio had to hip-hop the title up a bit with that dollar sign for an “s.” What the studio didn’t realize and what Biden doesn’t realize is doing that is degrading and shows just how out of touch they are with the community they’re trying to reach.

You don’t endear yourself to black people by trying to talk the way you believe they do. You endear yourself to black people—hell, all people—by being genuine…

During the interview, Biden also confirmed that he was considering a black woman as a running mate:

Biden also “guaranteed” that he was considering a black woman to serve as his vice president. CBS News reported that Biden is vetting Amy Klobuchar, who is white, as a potential vice presidential pick. She is one of several contenders being scrutinized for the job by Biden aides.

“I guarantee you, there are multiple black women being considered. Multiple,” Biden said.

Biden may feel compelled to choose a black woman for the vice president slot because of his gaffe. But if it blows over and is dismissed with an exasperated “Oh, that’s just Joe being Joe” eyeroll, then his options for a vice president remain open.

So why did Biden act as if he was entitled to the black vote? Because he really believes he is, of course:

He said it because he meant it. It’s not just that he believes his record on racial issues is better than Trump’s, it’s that he’s willing to demagogue racial identity to help his party. He did it eight years ago, infamously, when he told a black audience that Republicans want to “put y’all back in chains.” Whatever the particulars of his record and Trump’s, he uttered a party orthodoxy this morning so commonplace that I think you could take literally any Democratic politician in the country with literally any Republican opponent and they’d offer the same view (privately) of whether they’re entitled to black votes or not.

Bearing in mind that Biden is a long-practiced politician and a spectacular schmoozer with all the accompanying ambition (obviously), I think he jumped at the opportunity to remind black voters that, because he is in their corner, they should be in his corner. In other words, it was just politics as usual for the Democrat. Not a flattering picture of Biden, and certainly not a flattering picture of how Biden views black voters. But there were also practical political reasons that prompted Biden’s (risky) cringe-inducing-foot-in-mouth-over-familiarity:

First, after becoming VP to the first black president and then turning the tide of this year’s primaries via black voters in South Carolina, he may believe he’s got enough cred banked with black Americans that he’s entitled to be racially presumptuous in a way most whites aren’t. He has special privileges. Not so special that he can get away with anything — he’s not going to call anyone “my nigga,” I hope — but special enough that, sure, he’ll amiably question your blackness if you support Trump. His problem is that his self-perceived privileges aren’t clearly defined even to him, which led to him crossing the line this morning.

Second, he may be panicked that he’s underperforming with black voters. Sure, he still leads Trump head to head in every national poll, but the battleground polls haven’t been quite as solid for him and some of the data even in national polling has looked worrisome for his campaign among nonwhites…

Put it all together and Biden may be feeling anxious about his hold on the black vote. He’ll win it by a landslide, needless to say, but the exact margin of that landslide will matter to the final outcome of the election. He wants to duplicate Obama’s gigantic edge among African-Americans in 2008 and 2012 and maybe feels like he *should* be duplicating it because of his bio — but he isn’t, at least not yet. So maybe that anxiety led him into an unusually crass and desperate formulation of what black voters supposedly owe him this fall.

Meanwhile, Democratic strategists and party officials are hoping to convince former President Obama to use his immense popularity to draw in more voters and critical Democrat constituencies that are crucial for a Biden victory. Biden’s attempt to define what makes someone black certainly certainly wasn’t helpful to the cause.

–Dana

8/4/2011

Why the New York Times blacked out the Biden terrorist comments story

Filed under: General — Karl @ 10:19 am



[Posted by Karl]

The WaPo’s Eric Wemple, addressing the Politico story that Vice-President Joe Biden siad Tea Party Republicans had “acted like terrorists” in the debt ceiling negotiations, noticed it was downplayed by some big media players:

The combo of anonymous sourcing behind the Politico story plus a quasi-denial on part of the vice president appears to have steered other prominent media outlets away from the mention of “terrorists.” A Nexis search of the New York Times turns up no mention of the incident in its news pages. The Washington Post’s news operation largely stayed away, though its opinion side gave it much rotation. MSNBC doesn’t appear to have given it prominence, either.

Why? Dick Stevenson, an editor at the New York Times, writes:

Obviously we were aware of the reports that Biden had likened the Republicans to terrorists. But we had no first-hand (or even second-hand) confirmation, and the vice president’s office was disputing that he had said any such thing. We debated whether we needed at least to take account of the controversy, but decided against doing so since we could not establish that Biden had said what was being attributed to him. Maybe there is more to this than we know. But on the face of it, it is a classic example of how what were once pretty clear-cut decisions based on well-established standards are now complicated by the reality that stories increasingly get injected into the public dialogue quickly and often with minimal journalistic vetting — leaving news organizations at risk of being perceived as deliberately ignoring them if they make a judgment against publishing. (Emphases added.)

The New York Times has standards, you know. (more…)

12/29/2023

The Biden Administration Ruins My New Year’s Weekend

Filed under: General — JVW @ 12:12 pm



[guest post by JVW]

It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t exit 2023 bitching about one of my hobby-horses. From NRO:

Under the cover of night (i.e., the dark corridors of federal bureaucracies), the Biden administration handed California $6 billion for two high-speed-rail projects. The Golden State’s high-speed-rail hubris has been a big, black, cash sinkhole since the Obama administration.

Earlier this month, the office of California governor Gavin Newsom gleefully announced that California High-Speed Rail Authority “will receive nearly $3.1 billion for construction in the Central Valley, supporting the overall end goal of connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles,” while the rail project, Brightline, “will receive $3 billion to connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas with 80% of the project’s construction in California benefiting the state’s economy and labor market.”

Governor Newsom declared, “California is delivering on the first 220-mph, electric high-speed rail project in the nation. This show of support from the Biden-Harris Administration is a vote of confidence in today’s vision and comes at a critical turning point, providing the project new momentum.” The $3.1 billion grant from President Biden’s historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the single largest grant received by California’s High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA).

It’s such beautiful weaselly language that the governor’s office uses: “supporting the overall end goal of connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles.” I’ve said this countless times: there will never in my lifetime, or likely anybody else’s lifetime, be a high-speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles. As we have discussed year after year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has a close to zero chance of ever acquiring the land rights to build that line, let alone figuring out a compromise with environmentalists to tunnel through the Diablo Mountain Range or have a bullet train hurtling up the densely-packed San Francisco Peninsula.

So we are where we have always been with the initial project: a desperate scramble to finish up the Bakersfield to Merced line and then call it a day, lest the Republicans come back into power in Washington DC and start demanding accountability for (and a potential repayment of) the over $10 billion of federal funds which have already been wasted by this ridiculous white elephant. And now of course they are dangling out that perennially-promised Los Angeles to Las Vegas line which will almost certainly end up being scaled back to a Victorville to Primm line, and will end up costing an order of magnitude more than the $3 billion gifted by the Biden Administration by the time all of the pigs leave the trough. If this line were financially feasible, the multi-billion dollar gaming industry would almost certainly be ponying up money to ensure that it is built. The fact that they haven’t done so after all of these years speaks volumes as to what the sharpies think about its potential.

The HSRA is set to release their annual report sometime towards the end of next month, so I’ll provide a fuller update on this epic cathedral of failure.

Happy New Year.

– JVW

5/18/2023

Biden Must be in Trouble: the Cult of Mayor Pete Makes a Comeback

Filed under: General — JVW @ 2:46 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Some of you old-timers like me may remember way back four years ago ’round about this time when a small-town mayor by the name of Pete Buttigieg, straight from the heartland of America, emerged on to the national scene and briefly became the heartthrob of a certain sort of progressive elite. No, not the old-school drawing room Marxists or even parlor pinks who dominate lefty thought from such lofty perches as Nob Hill, West Hollywood, Hyde Park, Park Slope, or Cambridge Common, and not the young radicals who were chasing the twin goals of perfect intersectionality and a lavish welfare system.

Instead, Mayor Pete’s fanbase mostly consisted of the professional class, ages 25-55, who had been educated at highly-renowned colleges as their hero had been, who like him had participated in the capitalist economy in decent-to-well-paying positions while still reserving the right to be highly critical of the unfairness of the system when Tweeting from their vacation homes, and who joined the Mayor of South Bend by articulating all of the trendy social justice positions without ever having been called upon to do anything in support of them, save for voting for the “correct” political party and candidates. Pete Buttigieg was damn near the walking-talking embodiment of the perfect résumé: Harvard and Oxford (Rhodes Scholar naturally), the U.S. Navy Reserve with a deployment to Afghanistan, McKinsey & Company consultant. He’s openly gay (yet not aggressively so, at least not to a suitable degree to satisfy the shrillest gay activists) but at the same time he’s old fashioned enough to be in a monogamous relationship. For one shining moment it almost seemed as if he might vault all the way to the top of the greasy pole that is the Democrat nomination, but Mayor Pete’s inability to close the deal with the party’s African-American voting bloc combined with the pesky popularity of a senile socialist led to the party throwing its weight behind an old (emphasis on old) and familiar hack, and Pete Buttigieg — who can make banal small talk in something like 17 different languages, though he is truly fluent in consultant blather — ended up with the “so that you don’t go home empty-handed” prize of being named Transportation Secretary.

But now the prospects of a second Biden term are getting more and more dicey each week, with questions arising of whether he can win reelection and, should he do so, if a second term wouldn’t be a Wilsonian exercise in keeping him hidden from the American public lest his advancing infirmaries be fully exposed. On top of that, Mr. Biden’s Vice-Presidential selection has shown herself to be an appalling airhead, utterly unfit for the job and even less likely to keep the White House in party hands than her boss is. So is this at long last the Buttigieg Moment? Virginia Heffernan of Wired sure seems to think so, and she writes a hagiographical piece which seems intended to get the Secretary Pete bandwagon rolling:

The curious mind of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve. Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointillist data that is his current stock-in-trade, the US secretary of transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret Go habit or a three-second Rubik’s Cube solution or a knack for supplying, off the top of his head, the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his underfurnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers. Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Knausgaard’s Spring—though not in the original Norwegian (slacker). Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.

Because Buttigieg, at 41, is an old millennial; because as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he got a first in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics), the trademark degree for Labour-party elites of the Tony Blair era; because he worked optimizing grocery-store pricing at McKinsey; because he joined the Navy in hopes of promoting democracy in Afghanistan; because he got gay-married to his partner Chasten in 2018; and because, as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, he agitated to bring hipster entrepreneurism and “high-tech investment” to his rust-belt hometown, I had to ask him about neoliberalism, the happy idea that consumer markets and liberal democracy will always expand, and will always expand together. I was also fascinated by the way that Buttigieg, who has long described himself as obsessed with technology and data, has responded to the gendering of tech, and especially green tech, by fearsome culture warriors, including Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Take my word for it, Good People, the piece doesn’t get any less annoying from there, even though it mostly turns into a Q&A with the subject himself. It comes out that ol’ Pete was in his younger days a huge fan of Comrade Bernie — no really, he’s not just trying to win over Red hearts and minds — and now that he is in the seat of federal power he’s starting to rethink neoliberalism! Ms. Heffernan continues to lob up softball questions, the answers to which are supposed to frame the Secretary as an average unthreatening Middle American dude who goes to church, eats burgers, drinks beer, and drives a muscle car, while at the same time being keenly aware that progressive ideas are the only possible way forward into a glorious future of shared wealth, racial equality, sexual freedom, and environmental bliss. Unfortunately for the subject and the author, Mr. Buttigieg also comes across as a cloistered lefty living in an echo chamber where the New York Times editorial page represents the political center and where ideas from conservatives and from libertarians can safely and smugly be dismissed as cartoonish and mean-spirited.

Naturally, people on the right are having a field day taking down this pretentious claptrap. At NRO, Charlie Cooke delivers a wicked parody of Virginia Heffernan’s obnoxious profile:

In between the seductive sips of Courvoisier atop which he builds his heady pedagogical flights, Pete Buttigieg leans back into his pulchritudinous chair and takes me through the history of the Asian subcontinent.

I am sitting in the great man’s office, in the heart of Washington, D.C., stealing a few moments of his valuable time. I was early, and he was late. But that was to be expected. Some people require their own rules.

Buttigieg, who is white but makes up for it by being gay, is young for a Secretary of Transportation. And yet, with his authoritative air, his famed ability with Norwegian, and his remarkable professional record, he has the mien of a figure who has been in the role for decades. “In just two years,” he informs me, “I have responded to more train crashes, air-travel crises, and supply-chain problems than any of my predecessors did in eight. People often ask me why I think I’m doing a good job. I think that answers the question.”

David Harsanyi has some fun from the pages of The Federalist:

It is the year of our Lord 2023, and I’ve finally read the most obsequious feature story that has ever been written about a politician in a major publication.

Wired magazine was once home to thought-provoking writing on technology and entrepreneurship. Today, it pumps out slabs of conventional left-of-center technocratic wisdom. But Virginia Heffernan’s depiction of Pete Buttigieg’s glorious mind is so much more. It is a masterpiece.

[. . .]

[I]t’s when this hypersycophantic prose collides with Mayor Pete’s real-world, tedious, cliché-ridden tautologies that the piece really springs to life.

“Fortunately,” writes Heffernan, Harvard, PhD. “he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.”

And Stephen Miller, a contributing editor at The Spectator, marveled at the amazing prose which Ms. Heffernan brought to her piece:

I’m afraid that we are going to have much more of this between now and next November. In addition to this sort of nonsense, look for the usual suspects to start coughing up pieces with titles along the lines of “The Underappreciated Steady Leadership of Joe Biden,” “Kamala Harris Quietly Proves Her Mettle under Trying Circumstances,” and “Once a Punchline, Merrick Garland Is Restoring Law in Washington.” I think a Grumpy Gus like me ought to go into hibernation for the next eighteen months.

– JVW

4/27/2023

Big Media Very Incurious About How Biden Knew What an L.A. Times Reporter Was Going to Ask Him

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:07 pm



After Fox News settled its litigation with Dominion Voting Systems for the staggering sum of $787 million dollars, many noted the fact that Fox News’s coverage of the settlement somehow failed to mention the settlement amount. Fox News viewers will never learn about this! the critics said . . . and they were right!

But is Fox News the only organization that behaves this way?

Yesterday Joe Biden appeared to have advance knowledge of a question that he was asked by an L.A. Times reporter. I’ll hand the microphone to Fox News:

As Biden spoke alongside South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in the White House Rose Garden, a photographer captured a small cheat-sheet in the president’s hand signaling he had advanced knowledge of a question from Los Angeles Times journalist Courtney Subramanian. The small paper also included a picture of the reporter along with the pronunciation breakdown of her last name. “Question #1” was handwritten at the top of the sheet, indicating the president should call on her first at the conclusion of his remarks.

“How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?” read the question in Biden’s hand.

The reporter, who was in fact called upon first but whose last name was omitted by the president, asked Biden, “Your top economic priority has been to build up U.S. domestic manufacturing in competition with China, but your rules against expanding chip manufacturing in China is hurting South Korean companies that rely heavily on Beijing. Are you damaging a key ally in the competition with China to help your domestic politics ahead of the election?”

It’s not exactly the same question, but Biden clearly had notice of the substance of the question. Hmmmm!

This seems like a big deal. The President of the United States — who, you might remember, is 80 years old and seems to have his events scripted to an almost ridiculous degree — knows in advance the substance of a question that a reporter was going to ask? Is this true of all questions asked by the White House press corps, or just this reporter/newspaper? One would think news organizations would be interested in such a story.

But when you Google the reporter’s name to learn who has written about the story, you notice a curious fact: nearly all of the outlets mentioning the story are right-wing outlets like Fox News or the New York Post:

The New York Times has not said a word about it:

And the L.A. Times has not reported about it. The stories available if you click the link do not mention the controversy.

Reminds one of Fox News’s refusal to report on the damning details of its own settlement, doesn’t it? Why, if you’re a reader of the L.A. Times or the New York Times — or both! — you would never know that there is a controversy over how the President of the United States had advance knowledge of the content of a reporter’s question.

Seems odd, no?

Not really. Not if you understand how Big Media routinely ignores evidence that serves the agenda of those gross people on the right. The attitude is: “Let right-wing media cover that.” Is there evidence that some people who transition to a different gender regret it and want to transition back? Let right wing media cover that! Is there evidence that statistical disparities in police shootings of black men line up with statistical disparities in black men killing police? Let right wing media cover that! Is there evidence that Hunter Biden really did commit crimes, or that some teachers want to indoctrinate schoolchildren in ideology that shames white kids for being white? Let right wing media cover that!

And apparently, even when there is photographic evidence that the President of the United States had advance knowledge of a reporter’s question, the attitude even for that issue is Let right wing media cover that!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What is really going on here? To its credit, the Washington Post actually has published a piece about the controversy. Paul Farhi, quoting an anonymous “veteran White House reporter,” says this sort of thing has been going on for years:

How did Biden — or, more accurately, his press handlers — know that question was incoming, and know to call on Subramanian? The answer is because they asked her.

For many years, White House press employees have routinely polled reporters about their priorities and interests in advance of news meetings to anticipate what their boss might be asked when he or she appears on the podium. The practice is also common in news conferences with cabinet secretaries, such as the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State.

“Every White House press office will try to go around and take the temperature” of reporters, said a veteran White House reporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his employer had not authorized him to comment. “They want to look smart in preparing their boss for what we’ll throw at him.”

Farhi reports that the L.A. Times has denied feeding the question to the White House . . . but it also sounds like she kinda sorta did, with a wink and a nod:

White House officials declined to speak on the record, and Subramanian didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Times, Hillary Manning, said Subramanian didn’t provide White House officials with a specific or even general question in advance of the news conference. However, while covering Biden on a trip abroad, the reporter mentioned to officials that semiconductors was “one of several topics she might want to cover,” said Manning.

The White House also polls reporters before press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s daily briefings, and before “gaggles” (informal gatherings with officials). The inquiries come via email or in person. Another reporter — who also who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their employer hadn’t authorized them to talk about the topic — said that a White House press staffer emailed them recently asking “if there were any topics in particular” that they wanted to explore at an upcoming gaggle.

I’m not sure how much credence I am going to give to anonymous reporters about how long this has been going on. But the idea that this sort of thing happens seems to be corroborated by that very revealing admission by the L.A. Times spokeshole, doesn’t it?

Why would a reporter say “topic x” is a topic they might want to cover? How is that remotely ethical in any way? Why would a reporter choose to make such a statement to officials, knowing they will repeat it to the president? The answer is obvious: because they know that if they feed their questions to the White House in advance — not by saying “I will ask x” but through the far more deniable stratagem of saying “x is one of several topics I might want to cover” — they know the president is more likely to call on them.

You scratch my back and I’ll scratch your wrinkled 80-year-old back.

It’s pretty much the incestuous crap that cynical people expect, and for the L.A. Times to deny it in this Clintonian parsing fashion is an insult to the intelligence of anyone truly paying attention. They got caught and they ought to own up to it.

But, like Fox News and its massive $787 million payout, the L.A. Times hopes to bury the story and hope their readers never find out about it. And the rest of Big Media, for the most part, will help them out . . . because they play the same game.

So if you’re part of Big Media and you want to rant and rave about how Fox News is hiding facts from its readers, go ahead. I mean, you’re right, after all. But once you’re done, you might want to check for the mote in your own eye.

Just sayin’.

9/15/2022

To Our Shame: Biden Administration Says Its “Obligated” to Grant Entry Visas To Russian Minister Lavrov And Iran’s President Raisi To Attend UN General Assembly

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:58 pm



[guest post by Dana]

This is so disappointing:

The United States has given Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a visa to travel to New York for the United Nations’ annual gathering of world leaders next week with half the delegation Moscow requested, a Russian diplomatic source said on Tuesday.

Moscow had asked Washington for 56 visas, according to a Sept. 2 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia. The Russian diplomatic source said on Tuesday the United States had approved 24 visas.

Nebenzia had also noted in his letter that the flight crew for Lavrov’s plane had not received visas. It was not immediately clear if Washington had granted visas for the Russian flight crew or if Lavrov would be expected to fly commercial airlines to New York.

Note: Under the 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement,” the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But Washington says it can deny visas for security, terrorism and foreign policy reasons. So, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Lavarov’s accusation that the U.S. and our allies are to blame for the war, how he is he *not* a security risk? And it’s worth noting that Lavarov met with the chief political leader of the Hamas terror group earlier this week in Moscow to discuss “Israel’s violations,” among other things.

On the upside, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D) and Lindsey Graham (R) have just introduced legislation to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism:

“The need for this measure is more pressing now than ever before,” Blumenthal said, citing the killings of civilians and other “brutal, cruel oppression” in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

Graham said the designation would send a strong signal of support for Ukraine and to U.S. allies. He said it also would impose penalties on Russia and tighten sanctions.

It was not immediately clear when or whether their measure might come up for a vote.

The White House is against the legislation because “the consequences could delay food exports to parts of war-torn Ukraine and jeopardize deals to move goods through the Black Sea.” They claim to be looking at other options analogous to the legislation.

One should also take into consideration the anguished testimony of Ukrainian medic, Yuliia Paievska, who was captured by the Russians in Mariupol in March and suffered, along with untold others, torture at the hands of her captors:

Searing descriptions of the suffering of detainees poured out…

Torture sessions usually launched with their captors forcing the Ukrainian prisoners to remove their clothes, before the Russians set to bloodying and tormenting the detainees, she said.

The result was some “prisoners in cells screaming for weeks, and then dying from the torture without any medical help,” she said. “Then in this torment of hell, the only things they feel before death is abuse and additional beating.”

The Geneva Conventions single out medics, both military and civilian, for protection “in all circumstance.” Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat and co-chair of the Helsinki Commission underscored that the conditions she described for civilian and military detainees violated international law.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

Ukraine’s government says it has documented nearly 34,000 Russian war crimes since the war began in February. The International Criminal Court and 14 European Union member nations also have launched investigations.

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says it has documented that prisoners of war in Russian custody have suffered torture and ill-treatment, as well as insufficient food, water healthcare and sanitation.

But sure, in light of all of this, let’s allow Russia’s Lavrov waltz right into New York City to attend the sham UN General Assembly meeting where today UN Secretary-General, António Guterres said with a straight face, “We face a world in peril across our work to advance peace, human rights…”

Along the same lines, the Biden administration is actually and unbelievably considering granting President Raisi of Iran an entry visa to the U.S. so that he too can attend the UN General Assembly. Some members of Congress are working on legislation to prevent that from happening:

Congress is moving to prevent Iran’s president from entering the United States to attend U.N. proceedings but is facing resistance from the Biden administration, which says it is “obligated” to allow the hardline president into the country.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is circulating a bill that would bar all officials tied to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, including President Ebrahim Raisi, from obtaining the U.S. visa necessary to attend a meeting of the United Nations’ General Assembly, which is taking place this month in New York City.

This pressure campaign has failed, however, with the Biden administration claiming it is “obligated” under U.S. law to allow Raisi into the United States. “As host nation of the U.N., the United States is generally obligated under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement to facilitate travel to the U.N. headquarters district by representatives of U.N. member states,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon. “We take our obligations under the U.N. Headquarters Agreement seriously.”

It seems that the administration is unclear about what the parameters of those obligations are, and whether the U.S. has the ability to deny visas under certain circumstances and for various reason:

U.S. law enables the president to deny visas to foreign officials who engage in “espionage” or pose a direct threat to national security. Raisi could likely be denied a visa for engaging in “terrorist activities,” given that he helms the Islamic Republic’s regional militant operations. Raisi also gave a speech in January in which he threatened to assassinate Pompeo and former president Donald Trump.

The State Department this year also listed Raisi as a major human rights abuser under the 2012 Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act—a designation that could allow the Biden administration to deny him a visa.

Moreover, the US denied visas to several Iranian officials who were involved in the taking of American diplomatic hostages during the Iranian revolution.

Additionally:

In 1987, the U.S. government declared Austrian President Kurt Waldheim ineligible for a visa because of his responsibility for the persecution of Jews and other civilians during World War II. Washington also refused to let Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visit in 1988 because of his responsibility for acts of terrorism.

The pressure on the White House increased last week when a letter sent to President Biden, signed by a bipartisan group of 52 lawmakers, strongly urged him to deny an entry visa for Raisi:

And today in New York City, protesters were outside of the United Nations buildings demanding that Raisi not be allowed to enter the United States:

It’s despicable that President Biden would consider a man like President Raisi to enter the U.S. – for any reason. By doing so would signal to the world that we, as a nation, are not serious about human rights and the violations therein. As has been said: Even by the standards of the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, Raisi is not a run-of-the-mill politician. He has been a driving force behind the state’s pervasive abuse of its citizens over the past four decades. Allowing Raisi to visit the United States while the regime he represents is plotting to kill Americans is a mistake.

The gross hypocrisy of the U.N. knows no bounds. The cruelty of Iran’s leader(s) knows no bounds:

President Biden is obligated to deny Raisi a visa for entry into the United States.

–Dana

5/5/2022

Biden Administration Considering Sanctioning Chinese Firm Which Was Going to Hire Barbara Boxer as a Lobbyist

Filed under: General — JVW @ 9:44 am



[guest post by JVW]

Reported yesterday:

The Biden administration is weighing a move to place sanctions on the Chinese video surveillance firm Hikvision, the Financial Times reported. The move would result in the first designation of a major Chinese tech firm under the Global Magnitsky Act.

The Commerce Department had previously added Hikvision to its export-control blacklist in 2020, over its role in constructing the mass surveillance apparatus used to surveil ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. The video-surveillance trade group IPVM recently published an interview with a Kyrgyz survivor of the Xinjiang camp system alleging that he saw Hikvision-branded cameras in his cell.

Then, last year, the White House designated Hikvision under its Chinese military companies list, which barred U.S. nationals from investing in the company.

The expected move to designate Hikvision under the Global Magnitsky Act will result in its addition to the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals List, blocking the company’s assets and prohibiting Americans from doing business with it.

I bring up this story because it pertains to a post I wrote almost sixteen months ago, regarding the Trump Administration’s eleventh-hour designation of Beijing’s treatment of the Uighur community as genocide:

So now how does the incoming administration respond? There is little doubt that China will complain about this last-second move and will furiously lobby behind the scenes for it to be rescinded (they tried to hire retired United States Senator Barbara Boxer to work on behalf of the firm who supplies the surveillance equipment used in the internment campus and throughout Xinjiang, but backlash against her registering as a foreign agent for the Chinese Communist Party led her to rather testily pull out of the arrangement). [. . .]

This is just a reminder of what an execrable Senator and truly awful person Barbara Boxer was and is. Unfortunately, not only was her successor no better in office, but she has also been more successful in rising to the top of the Democrat Party sewer. But I suppose the retired Senator can find other work representing the interests of the brutal butchers who run the People’s Republic of China, perhaps as an emissary to Apple, Disney, or the NBA.

– JVW

2/22/2022

Open Thread: President Biden’s Update on Russia-Ukraine

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:49 am



[guest post by Dana]

I’m going to open a fresh thread on the Russia-Ukraine situation. Things are pretty fluid right now. Journalist Dimitri Alexander Simes sums up Putin’s demands:

Putin lays out three conditions for normalizing relations between Russia and Ukraine. They are:

1. Ukraine recognizes Crimea as part of Russia
2. Ukraine renounces NATO aspirations and pledges neutrality
3. “Demilitarization of Ukraine”

Mitch McConnell responds to the ongoing crisis with a level head:

“Through his rhetoric and actions, Vladimir Putin has turned his back on the Minsk process and diplomacy in favor of escalation and invasion of a sovereign country.

“Every indication suggests these actions will almost certainly be used as a prelude to even further aggression and an even larger invasion. If that occurs, many Ukrainians could die. The humanitarian consequences could be catastrophic. And the threat will not stop with Ukraine. All the free nations of the world will be affected if Putin’s aggression is allowed to stand unchallenged.

“The world is watching. Our allies, our adversaries, and neutral countries will all judge the West by our response — and plan their futures accordingly.

“As he escalates his war against Ukraine, Putin must be made to pay a far heavier price than he paid for his previous invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. This should begin, but not end, with devastating sanctions against the Kremlin and its enablers. The President should waste no time in using his extensive existing authorities to impose these costs.

“Our NATO and EU allies must likewise take action to impose significant costs on Putin. Germany’s suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a welcome but overdue announcement and must be turned into permanent cancellation.

“We must also stand by the brave Ukrainians fighting to protect their sovereignty. The United States and all friends of Ukraine must ensure a pipeline of support, including arms, flows to Ukrainians resisting Russian aggression.

“We must also shore up NATO’s defenses along its eastern flank and make clear that aggression against NATO countries will be met with an overwhelming collective response.

“Finally, the United States and our allies across the world must fully acknowledge the growing threats posed by decades of Chinese and Russian military modernization. We need to rebuild our atrophied ability to deter and defend against aggression by these adversaries. That means we must invest more robustly in our own military capabilities to keep pace. Our budgets have to reflect reality.

Prior to President Biden addressing the Russia situation today, the White House called Russia’s actions an “invasion”:

[T]he White House signaled it considers Moscow’s actions in Ukraine to be an invasion. A US official noted a “severe response” is in the works.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday recieved authorization from the upper chamber of parliament to use Russian troops outside of the country. He told reporters this was necessary to formalize the military’s deployment in two rebel regions of eastern Ukraine, which Russia recognized as independent on M+onday.

The White House called the provocations an invasion of Ukraine.

“I am calling it an invasion,” deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told CNN. He said, “sanctions on Russia will be rolling out in a matter of hours.”

And just now:

On a side note:

Hey, Barack Obama . . .2012 called, and it wants Mitt Romney back.

Others are admitting that Romney was right:

At the time, the attack worked. Obama cast himself as the candidate who understood the current threats — led by al Qaeda. Romney was the candidate still stuck in the Cold War age, a black-and-white figure in a colorful — and complex — world.

But today, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, Romney’s comments look very, very different. And by “different,” I mean “right,” as even some Democrats are now acknowledging.
“This action by Putin further confirms that Mitt Romney was right when he called Russia the number one geopolitical foe,” California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu said on CNN Monday night.

What looked like a major flub during the 2012 campaign — and was used as a political cudgel by Obama — now looks very, very different. It should serve as a reminder that history is not written in the moment — and that what something looks like in that moment is not a guarantee of what it will always look like.

–Dana

6/15/2021

Supreme Court Unanimously Rebukes Biden DoJ Pander to BLM

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



Ed Whelan has the scoop here. The Supreme Court unanimously held “that a crack offender is eligible for a sentence reduction under the First Step Act only if convicted of a crack offense that triggered a mandatory minimum sentence.” Whelan says the unanimous opinion was a blow to the credibility of the Biden administration.

How, you might wonder, can the Supreme Court’s unanimous affirmance of a federal criminal sentence be a huge defeat for the Biden administration?

The answer is that the Biden administration, which inherited defense of this case from the Trump administration, informed the Court on March 15—the very date the United States’ brief on the merits was due—that it would not defend the judgment below and that it was confessing error in the case.

Both the confession of error and the timing of the confession were extraordinary. The Department of Justice routinely defends criminal convictions and sentences in cases on appeal that it is almost certain to lose, yet it refused to defend this case that informed observers recognized that it was very likely to win. The only plausible explanation is that the Biden administration confessed error in this case in order to pander to the Black Lives Matter crowd and other constituencies in the Democratic Party.

Prosecutors in DoJ played defense attorney for political reasons, to pander to black voters. But the law was decidedly not on their side, as a unanimous court held.

This is a disgusting abdication of the rule of law. When an administration subverts justice, it is supposed to be on behalf of the president’s personal friends, not Black Lives Matter.

6/11/2021

In Upcoming Talks Between Biden and Putin, Guess Whose Side Trump Is On?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:29 am



An Internet friend says “Trump’s.” And that’s ultimately the right answer. But if all Trump cares about is himself, then ask yourself: given that Putin has praised Trump and Biden has criticized him . . . then between Biden and Putin, whose side is he on?

The answer is wholly unsurprising:

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday wished President Biden luck in his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and also encouraged him to stay awake.

“Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin—don’t fall asleep during the meeting, and please give him my warmest regards!” Trump said in an emailed statement.

“Warmest regards” to Putin; “don’t fall asleep” to Biden. Friendliness towards the President of Russia; derision for the President of the United States.

Yeah, he’s on Putin’s side.

Such basic hostility to our side — such a basic lack of patriotism — cannot be justified on the basis that it’s attributable to narcissism. Even though it obviously is.

Trump cares about Trump — more than principles or our country, he cares about himself. And dictators know this about him, which is why they are able to play him like a fiddle.

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