2024 Democratic Presidential Nominee

[Kirk Gallaway]

10 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

JFK's grandson Jack Scholssberg speaking now.

I had heard a rumor that  RFKJr.'s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has suggested that RFK, JR.  join forces with the Trump campaign.

My first thought was where did she gain any standing, outside of being filthy rich to make such a recommendation? Does 5% of the population even know her name? There wasn't even an attempt to familiarize her to the public! 

I didn't see the Schlossberg speech, but I did see Jake Tapper asked Sclossberg what he thought about that. And he replied "i want him to do whatever he wants to do".

I was not happy with that response! The Kennedy family should do an intervention on that idiot and tell him, "you gave it your shot, you lost, and we have a bankable political name and if you betray it , you will be poisoning it for future generations."  

*****

I think the Dems got their presentation days mixed up. How is Bill Clinton going to hold a candle to the Obamas?

I thought "we don't  go back."                                                                                     heh heh

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 09:19 AM by Kirk Gallaway

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I had heard a rumor that  RFKJr.'s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has suggested that RFK, JR.  join forces with the Trump campaign.

My first thought was where did she gain any standing, outside of being filthy rich to make such a recommendation? Does 5% of the population even know her name? There wasn't even an attempt to familiarize her to the public! 

I didn't see the Schlossberg speech, but I did see Jake Tapper asked Sclossberg what he thought about that. And he replied "i want him to do whatever he wants to do".

I was not happy with that response! The Kennedy family should do an intervention on that idiot and tell him, "you gave it your shot, you lost, and we have a bankable political name and if you betray it , you will be poisoning it for future generations."  

*****

I think the Dems got their presentation days mixed up. How is Bill Clinton going to hold a candle to the Obamas?

I thought "we don't  go back."                                                                                     heh heh

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good point, Kirk.

They should have featured Bill Clinton as an earlier opening act for the Obamas.

Trotting Bill out after those show-stopping speeches by Michelle and Barack Obama is like having James Brown open for the Rolling Stones in the TAMI Show.  Tough act to follow.

And, speaking of Bill and the 1990s, did you notice that Steve Kerr advised the young people in the audience to Google "Michael Jordan" to learn about Kerr's glory days with Da Bulls?

[Karl Kinaski]

To @DeEugenio, Niederhut, Allison, Bulman, Speer, Gallaway,  Morrow etc. 

History is repeating itself, and it is astounding how you all are completely unable to comprehend the "IC UFO" that landed in Butler while fixating on the assassinations of the 1960s. Butler stinks the same way Dallas stank, yet you, who call yourselves historians or assassination researchers, are in a state of complete denial when it comes to what the "Secret Team" did in Butler. You may be well-informed about Dallas but I can't take you seriously anymore when it comes to things like comparative skills and recognizing the footprints of intelligence then and now.

Destracting comments and lame jokes is all some you have regarding Butler. 

 The chances of the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 reaching the White House would naturally be much better with Trump in a coffin. But a slight movement of his head and perhaps a gust of wind, thwarted a sick plan of the kind that succeeded in Dallas. 

As of Friday this week the Republicans will have in line: Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Robert Kennedy jr. You can't kill them all. The Harris-Waltz Clown-campain has a problem. 

Edited Wednesday at 12:18 PM by Karl Kinaski

[John Cotter]

On 8/20/2024 at 3:50 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Dub Nation in the house!

'Night night!' DNC erupts as Steve Kerr hits Trump with Steph Curry-inspired dig

https://www.rawstory.com/steve-kerr/

"Night night!". That's profound, Cliff.

[Paul Rigby]

Kamala’s National Security Adviser Points to Continuation of Biden’s Russia Policy

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

 

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/kamalas-national-security-adviser-points-to-continuation-of-bidens-russia-policy.html

What would a President Kamala Harris’ foreign policy look like? She’s already signaled that Israel policy will remain unchanged. How about Russia?

For more insight there we can take a look at Philip Gordon, currently serving as Harris’s national security adviser. He’s been around for decades. He’s a regular at the Munich Security Conference. And he is widely expected to succeed Jake Sullivan as national security adviser should Harris win the presidency.

While it’s highly doubtful that the Kamala team is sitting around a table hashing out foreign policy that they think is in the best interests of all the American people (they likely do precious little in the way of big-picture decisions), their ideological makeup is likely a representation of what US oligarchs want. And judging by Gordon’s track record, it appears the American oligarchy has no intention of using Biden’s exit as an opportunity to change course or give up on Project Ukraine. So who is Philip Gordon?

He started out serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. He then moved to a senior fellow position at the Brookings Institution from 1999 to 2009 where he founded the Center on the United States and Europe. Gordon was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013. He then went on to serve as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region until 2015.

Author James Mann writes in “The Obamians” that Gordon and others like him “represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary.”

They just think they’re smarter about it. For example, there was a time when the Obama White House touted NATO’s role in toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi  as a vindication of the decision to “lead from behind.”

Gordon joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015 as a senior fellow focused on U.S. foreign and national security policy and stayed there until hitching himself to Harris in 2020 — first as foreign policy advisor to her disastrous campaign and then as National Security Advisor to the Vice President.

In a vice president’s office that has churned through staff, Gordon has been a mainstay and is among the select group of national security officials, which includes national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to take part in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

As a longtime survivor in Washington, it’s unsurprising that Gordon is an embodiment of all the violent orthodoxy that oozes out of the Blob, such as unwavering support for Israel and the indisputable belief that China is not only a threat to the US, but the biggest one.

On the issue of Ukraine where there isn’t quite consensus (the diehard Russophobes want to keep escalating while the China hawks want to hand the bag to the Europeans so they can focus on China), Gordon believes the US can do both.

A recent Politico piece describes how European Atlanticists, nervous that they’ll be forgotten if the US focuses too much on China and Asia, love themselves some Philip Gordon. He “speaks four European languages, wrote his thesis on Charles de Gaulle and even translated a book by the notoriously irascible former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico:

In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Quite the entourage. If you dig through all the fluff, though, here’s the real money section of the whole Politico profile piece:

To this day, he’s in regular contact with the European Commission. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat member of the German Bundestag, trusts that Harris’ adviser still thinks “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power” and welcomes that he shares his “criticism” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

The fact that Gordon is among those pressuring Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine places him among more hawkish, wreckless war cheerleaders.

Let’s not forget that the Taurus missiles have a range of roughly 500 kilometers, which means that they can hit Moscow. At the same time, they’re reportedly difficult to operate, the Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do it, so Bundeswehr personnel would be called on to do so. That would mean Germany is openly firing missiles into Russia, and one can imagine all the consequences that would entail. Here’s German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht lambasting the warmongers in Germany back in March when it looked like those advocating for using the Taurus might carry the day:

 

So has Gordon lost his mind? You wouldn’t know from the Politico puff piece, which casually mentions his criticism of the German government for not going to war with Russia and moves right along to friendly quotes from former US ambassador to Russia and big advocate for WWIII Michael McFaul. He concludes that if Gordon becomes Harris’ national security adviser in a Harris administration, “Europe will have an ally.”

Here’s probably a better spot than any to insert the old Kissinger quote that is almost obligatory when dealing with US foreign policy these days: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

If we pair Gordon’s time in the Obama White House and its “lead from behind” mantra with regards to Libya with his current insistence that Germany should be launching Taurus missiles into Russia, well, that should be awfully concerning for Germans and Europeans in general. And how ironic is it that this is the person who European diplomats would greet as a major friend in a Harris administration?

While Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken aren’t expected to keep their jobs in a Harris administration, Gordon would be expected to seamlessly take the place of the former. From Politico:

We reported on initial skepticism about Harris earlier this summer, mostly due to Europeans’ unfamiliarity with the current vice president. But her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate and the likelihood that Phil Gordon, a confirmed Europhile, would become her national security adviser, appear to have quelled some jitters. 

Back in 2018, Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since. The reason Gordon was calling for such approach wasn’t just the situation in Ukraine, but because “of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

So Gordon is also a purveyor of the misinformation that Russia was behind Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss. [1] He and Blackwill proudly announced that, “If this package of measures sounds like a prescription for a new Cold War with Russia, it is.”

Gordon’s position has not changed. Here he is driving that point home more recently:

 

Of course, “enduring” could mean a few months in DC, but for now the Harris team — or its benefactors — are sticking to that line.

What about “America’s dad,” vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the other figure Europeans are breathing a sigh of relief over? Maybe he could be a voice of sanity? Keep looking.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova says that among American governors, “Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country.”

Walz was one of the first US governors to condemn Russia in 2022 and issue an order requiring that state agencies terminate existing contracts with Russian entities and refrain from entering into any such future contracts. He’s been on board ever since.

 

In conclusion, all signs are that a Harris administration’s Ukraine policy would be a continuation of Biden (as would its Israel policy). In at least one way, it’s even worse because it’s throwing away another opportunity to take an off ramp. We’ve heard a lot about how the Biden team just wanted to drag the whole sorry affair across the election finish line. Now, the money behind  Harris is announcing that even with new faces the losing and dangerous strategy will remain unchanged.

Notes

[1] Gordon is also a big believer in dubious chemical weapon allegations against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Not only that, but he is critical of one of Obama’s few successful foreign policy decisions — the one where he chose not to bomb Syria over the cooked intelligence that Assad crossed the chemical weapons red line in 2013. Gordon told The Atlantic in 2016 that “we should have bombed Assad.”

[W. Niederhut]

        Geez... thank goodness we have such keen, reality-based insights about American history and contemporary politics from our three colleagues in Austria, Ireland, and England.

        I wonder if Kinaski, Cotter, and Rigby realize that American history scholars have accurately ranked our serial felon, Donald Trump, as the worst President in American history.

       Do they know anything about the Trump/Heritage Foundation Project 2025?

       About Trump's offer to sabotage clean energy and climate change mitigation for Big Oil?

       About his pledge to cut more taxes for billionaires in exchange for 2024 campaign cash?

       About his role in organizing slates of False Electors, and inciting a violent mob attack on the U.S. Congress?

       Meanwhile, Trump's former National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, is currently trying to warn Americans about Trump's subservience to Vladimir Putin.

     

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, John Cotter said:

"Night night!". That's profound, Cliff.

An American sports reference obviously over your head.

[John Cotter]

1 hour ago, Paul Rigby said:

Kamala’s National Security Adviser Points to Continuation of Biden’s Russia Policy

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

 

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/kamalas-national-security-adviser-points-to-continuation-of-bidens-russia-policy.html

What would a President Kamala Harris’ foreign policy look like? She’s already signaled that Israel policy will remain unchanged. How about Russia?

For more insight there we can take a look at Philip Gordon, currently serving as Harris’s national security adviser. He’s been around for decades. He’s a regular at the Munich Security Conference. And he is widely expected to succeed Jake Sullivan as national security adviser should Harris win the presidency.

While it’s highly doubtful that the Kamala team is sitting around a table hashing out foreign policy that they think is in the best interests of all the American people (they likely do precious little in the way of big-picture decisions), their ideological makeup is likely a representation of what US oligarchs want. And judging by Gordon’s track record, it appears the American oligarchy has no intention of using Biden’s exit as an opportunity to change course or give up on Project Ukraine. So who is Philip Gordon?

He started out serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. He then moved to a senior fellow position at the Brookings Institution from 1999 to 2009 where he founded the Center on the United States and Europe. Gordon was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013. He then went on to serve as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region until 2015.

Author James Mann writes in “The Obamians” that Gordon and others like him “represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary.”

They just think they’re smarter about it. For example, there was a time when the Obama White House touted NATO’s role in toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi  as a vindication of the decision to “lead from behind.”

Gordon joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015 as a senior fellow focused on U.S. foreign and national security policy and stayed there until hitching himself to Harris in 2020 — first as foreign policy advisor to her disastrous campaign and then as National Security Advisor to the Vice President.

In a vice president’s office that has churned through staff, Gordon has been a mainstay and is among the select group of national security officials, which includes national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to take part in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

As a longtime survivor in Washington, it’s unsurprising that Gordon is an embodiment of all the violent orthodoxy that oozes out of the Blob, such as unwavering support for Israel and the indisputable belief that China is not only a threat to the US, but the biggest one.

On the issue of Ukraine where there isn’t quite consensus (the diehard Russophobes want to keep escalating while the China hawks want to hand the bag to the Europeans so they can focus on China), Gordon believes the US can do both.

A recent Politico piece describes how European Atlanticists, nervous that they’ll be forgotten if the US focuses too much on China and Asia, love themselves some Philip Gordon. He “speaks four European languages, wrote his thesis on Charles de Gaulle and even translated a book by the notoriously irascible former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico:

In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Quite the entourage. If you dig through all the fluff, though, here’s the real money section of the whole Politico profile piece:

To this day, he’s in regular contact with the European Commission. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat member of the German Bundestag, trusts that Harris’ adviser still thinks “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power” and welcomes that he shares his “criticism” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

The fact that Gordon is among those pressuring Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine places him among more hawkish, wreckless war cheerleaders.

Let’s not forget that the Taurus missiles have a range of roughly 500 kilometers, which means that they can hit Moscow. At the same time, they’re reportedly difficult to operate, the Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do it, so Bundeswehr personnel would be called on to do so. That would mean Germany is openly firing missiles into Russia, and one can imagine all the consequences that would entail. Here’s German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht lambasting the warmongers in Germany back in March when it looked like those advocating for using the Taurus might carry the day:

 

So has Gordon lost his mind? You wouldn’t know from the Politico puff piece, which casually mentions his criticism of the German government for not going to war with Russia and moves right along to friendly quotes from former US ambassador to Russia and big advocate for WWIII Michael McFaul. He concludes that if Gordon becomes Harris’ national security adviser in a Harris administration, “Europe will have an ally.”

Here’s probably a better spot than any to insert the old Kissinger quote that is almost obligatory when dealing with US foreign policy these days: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

If we pair Gordon’s time in the Obama White House and its “lead from behind” mantra with regards to Libya with his current insistence that Germany should be launching Taurus missiles into Russia, well, that should be awfully concerning for Germans and Europeans in general. And how ironic is it that this is the person who European diplomats would greet as a major friend in a Harris administration?

While Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken aren’t expected to keep their jobs in a Harris administration, Gordon would be expected to seamlessly take the place of the former. From Politico:

We reported on initial skepticism about Harris earlier this summer, mostly due to Europeans’ unfamiliarity with the current vice president. But her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate and the likelihood that Phil Gordon, a confirmed Europhile, would become her national security adviser, appear to have quelled some jitters. 

Back in 2018, Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since. The reason Gordon was calling for such approach wasn’t just the situation in Ukraine, but because “of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

So Gordon is also a purveyor of the misinformation that Russia was behind Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss. [1] He and Blackwill proudly announced that, “If this package of measures sounds like a prescription for a new Cold War with Russia, it is.”

Gordon’s position has not changed. Here he is driving that point home more recently:

 

Of course, “enduring” could mean a few months in DC, but for now the Harris team — or its benefactors — are sticking to that line.

What about “America’s dad,” vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the other figure Europeans are breathing a sigh of relief over? Maybe he could be a voice of sanity? Keep looking.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova says that among American governors, “Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country.”

Walz was one of the first US governors to condemn Russia in 2022 and issue an order requiring that state agencies terminate existing contracts with Russian entities and refrain from entering into any such future contracts. He’s been on board ever since.

 

In conclusion, all signs are that a Harris administration’s Ukraine policy would be a continuation of Biden (as would its Israel policy). In at least one way, it’s even worse because it’s throwing away another opportunity to take an off ramp. We’ve heard a lot about how the Biden team just wanted to drag the whole sorry affair across the election finish line. Now, the money behind  Harris is announcing that even with new faces the losing and dangerous strategy will remain unchanged.

Notes

[1] Gordon is also a big believer in dubious chemical weapon allegations against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Not only that, but he is critical of one of Obama’s few successful foreign policy decisions — the one where he chose not to bomb Syria over the cooked intelligence that Assad crossed the chemical weapons red line in 2013. Gordon told The Atlantic in 2016 that “we should have bombed Assad.”

Thanks for posting that excellent article, Paul.

So the foreign policy "philosophy" of Kamala Harris's adviser, Philip Gordon, is essentially the same as that of the neocon nutjob Victoria Nuland, who was famously recorded saying, "F*** the EU".

I wonder if the Democratic Party supporters in this forum endorse that mentality. 

[John Cotter]

9 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

An American sports reference obviously over your head.

I understand perfectly well what the effect of the irrelevant claptrap of a basketball coach at a political conference is intended to have on the gullible masses.

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 hours ago, Paul Rigby said:

Kamala’s National Security Adviser Points to Continuation of Biden’s Russia Policy

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

 

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/kamalas-national-security-adviser-points-to-continuation-of-bidens-russia-policy.html

What would a President Kamala Harris’ foreign policy look like? She’s already signaled that Israel policy will remain unchanged. How about Russia?

For more insight there we can take a look at Philip Gordon, currently serving as Harris’s national security adviser. He’s been around for decades. He’s a regular at the Munich Security Conference. And he is widely expected to succeed Jake Sullivan as national security adviser should Harris win the presidency.

While it’s highly doubtful that the Kamala team is sitting around a table hashing out foreign policy that they think is in the best interests of all the American people (they likely do precious little in the way of big-picture decisions), their ideological makeup is likely a representation of what US oligarchs want. And judging by Gordon’s track record, it appears the American oligarchy has no intention of using Biden’s exit as an opportunity to change course or give up on Project Ukraine. So who is Philip Gordon?

He started out serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. He then moved to a senior fellow position at the Brookings Institution from 1999 to 2009 where he founded the Center on the United States and Europe. Gordon was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013. He then went on to serve as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region until 2015.

Author James Mann writes in “The Obamians” that Gordon and others like him “represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary.”

They just think they’re smarter about it. For example, there was a time when the Obama White House touted NATO’s role in toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi  as a vindication of the decision to “lead from behind.”

Gordon joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015 as a senior fellow focused on U.S. foreign and national security policy and stayed there until hitching himself to Harris in 2020 — first as foreign policy advisor to her disastrous campaign and then as National Security Advisor to the Vice President.

In a vice president’s office that has churned through staff, Gordon has been a mainstay and is among the select group of national security officials, which includes national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to take part in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

As a longtime survivor in Washington, it’s unsurprising that Gordon is an embodiment of all the violent orthodoxy that oozes out of the Blob, such as unwavering support for Israel and the indisputable belief that China is not only a threat to the US, but the biggest one.

On the issue of Ukraine where there isn’t quite consensus (the diehard Russophobes want to keep escalating while the China hawks want to hand the bag to the Europeans so they can focus on China), Gordon believes the US can do both.

A recent Politico piece describes how European Atlanticists, nervous that they’ll be forgotten if the US focuses too much on China and Asia, love themselves some Philip Gordon. He “speaks four European languages, wrote his thesis on Charles de Gaulle and even translated a book by the notoriously irascible former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”

Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico:

In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Quite the entourage. If you dig through all the fluff, though, here’s the real money section of the whole Politico profile piece:

To this day, he’s in regular contact with the European Commission. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat member of the German Bundestag, trusts that Harris’ adviser still thinks “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power” and welcomes that he shares his “criticism” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

The fact that Gordon is among those pressuring Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine places him among more hawkish, wreckless war cheerleaders.

Let’s not forget that the Taurus missiles have a range of roughly 500 kilometers, which means that they can hit Moscow. At the same time, they’re reportedly difficult to operate, the Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do it, so Bundeswehr personnel would be called on to do so. That would mean Germany is openly firing missiles into Russia, and one can imagine all the consequences that would entail. Here’s German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht lambasting the warmongers in Germany back in March when it looked like those advocating for using the Taurus might carry the day:

 

So has Gordon lost his mind? You wouldn’t know from the Politico puff piece, which casually mentions his criticism of the German government for not going to war with Russia and moves right along to friendly quotes from former US ambassador to Russia and big advocate for WWIII Michael McFaul. He concludes that if Gordon becomes Harris’ national security adviser in a Harris administration, “Europe will have an ally.”

Here’s probably a better spot than any to insert the old Kissinger quote that is almost obligatory when dealing with US foreign policy these days: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

If we pair Gordon’s time in the Obama White House and its “lead from behind” mantra with regards to Libya with his current insistence that Germany should be launching Taurus missiles into Russia, well, that should be awfully concerning for Germans and Europeans in general. And how ironic is it that this is the person who European diplomats would greet as a major friend in a Harris administration?

While Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken aren’t expected to keep their jobs in a Harris administration, Gordon would be expected to seamlessly take the place of the former. From Politico:

We reported on initial skepticism about Harris earlier this summer, mostly due to Europeans’ unfamiliarity with the current vice president. But her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate and the likelihood that Phil Gordon, a confirmed Europhile, would become her national security adviser, appear to have quelled some jitters. 

Back in 2018, Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since. The reason Gordon was calling for such approach wasn’t just the situation in Ukraine, but because “of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

So Gordon is also a purveyor of the misinformation that Russia was behind Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss. [1] He and Blackwill proudly announced that, “If this package of measures sounds like a prescription for a new Cold War with Russia, it is.”

Gordon’s position has not changed. Here he is driving that point home more recently:

 

Of course, “enduring” could mean a few months in DC, but for now the Harris team — or its benefactors — are sticking to that line.

What about “America’s dad,” vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the other figure Europeans are breathing a sigh of relief over? Maybe he could be a voice of sanity? Keep looking.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova says that among American governors, “Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country.”

Walz was one of the first US governors to condemn Russia in 2022 and issue an order requiring that state agencies terminate existing contracts with Russian entities and refrain from entering into any such future contracts. He’s been on board ever since.

 

In conclusion, all signs are that a Harris administration’s Ukraine policy would be a continuation of Biden (as would its Israel policy). In at least one way, it’s even worse because it’s throwing away another opportunity to take an off ramp. We’ve heard a lot about how the Biden team just wanted to drag the whole sorry affair across the election finish line. Now, the money behind  Harris is announcing that even with new faces the losing and dangerous strategy will remain unchanged.

Notes

[1] Gordon is also a big believer in dubious chemical weapon allegations against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Not only that, but he is critical of one of Obama’s few successful foreign policy decisions — the one where he chose not to bomb Syria over the cooked intelligence that Assad crossed the chemical weapons red line in 2013. Gordon told The Atlantic in 2016 that “we should have bombed Assad.”

 

Paul , what can I say? I hear you. I don't expect any major foreign policy differences for now between Biden and Harris.

But this Gordon guy can't walk and chew gum at the same time. There are actually 2 conflicts going on right now! On the top burner, there's the Israel Hamas War. Any real article is going to deal with both of those. You might look into that. Or do you have any convictions? What are they?

But you're really just a lad  railing against what is. There's no coercion or "deep state" effecting that equation. The current centrist safe haven positions  between the parties are rather close, and there's no huge public outcry against it..

Here's how they'll change, Take your pick Paul,

Re: Israel Hamas ,Harris will push back a little more against Netanyahu, and Trump will let Netanyahu do whatever he wants to do to "finish the job."

Re: Ukraine,  the prevailing position is the status quo, except if Trump is elected  some pro Trump Putin Republicans are prepared to  give Putin most or all of what he wants.

Are you like Gordon and just a Russia, Russia, Russia guy?

One issue" guys don't make it.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 04:53 PM by Kirk Gallaway

[W. Niederhut]

55 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

An American sports reference obviously over your head.

Yes, Cliff, unfortunately, our Hibernian friend doesn't know anything about Steve Kerr.

Sports fans know him as a championship coach and former teammate of the GOAT, Michael Jordan, but I admire him most for his commentaries denouncing Donald Trump and Mike Pence for their racist attacks on the Black Lives Matter civil rights protesters.

At the time, Trump had inspired a lot of white guys in America to threaten NFL boycotts, and Kerr went out on a limb to take the bull by the horns.  So did Greg Popovich.

Profiles in courage.

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

Interesting point you brought up.  It seems like Harris has tried to track left in domestic policy e.g. price gouging, housing, raising  top end tax rate by several points.

But she has said little about foreign policy.  IMO, Blinken and Sullivan have been  failures. But if she replaces one of them with this Gordon guy, it will be more of the same.

The Shanahan interview was an eye opener. So much so that I think I will write about it.  I mean its one more example of the DNC taking no prisoners, pretty much what they did with Sanders.

Edited Wednesday at 05:45 PM by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, John Cotter said:

I understand perfectly well what the effect of the irrelevant claptrap of a basketball coach at a political conference is intended to have on the gullible masses.

You clearly don't understand the "night-night" reference,  

Edited Wednesday at 08:31 PM by Cliff Varnell

[John Cotter]

8 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You clearly don't understand the "night-night" reference,  Or perhaps you have no sense of humor...

I'm not interested in the publicity stunts or pronouncements of celebrities, including multimillionaire professional sports people, anywhere on the planet. I'm not interested in identity politics.

Martin Luther King concluded towards the end of his life that poverty was a more serious issue than racism, and I agree. The Democratic Party doesn't agree. It uses issues such as race and gender - as personified by Kamala Harris - to mask its plutocratic ideology.

MLK also said the US was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet, and I agree. Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration which is prosecuting two bloody proxy wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and as explained in the article Paul posted, If Harris is elected she may be even worse than Biden. 

Neither you nor any other Democratic supporter here responded to my question as to whether you agree with this US barbaric foreign policy.

[Cliff Varnell]

3 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

I'm not interested in the publicity stunts or pronouncements of celebrities, including multimillionaire professional sports people, anywhere on the planet. I'm not interested in identity politics.

Martin Luther King concluded towards the end of his life that poverty was a more serious issue than racism, and I agree. The Democratic Party doesn't agree.

The Democratic Party passed the Child Tax Credit which cut child poverty in half.  The Republicans blocked its renewal.

Democrats expand Medicaid programs delivering health care to the poor.  Republicans block the expansion of Medicaid.

In Minnesota Walz signed a bill giving all students regardless of family income free breakfasts and lunches at school.

Democrats vote to expand the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to provide food security for 41 million poor people a year.  Trump promises to end SNAP.

Just to name a few Democratic anti-poverty policies.

3 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

It uses issues such as race and gender - as personified by Kamala Harris - to mask its plutocratic ideology.

So due to Kamala's race and gender she's not abundantly qualified, especially compared to Trump?

3 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

MLK also said the US was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet, and I agree.

Putin and Netanyahu are the greatest purveyors of violence on the planet.  I oppose both.

3 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

 

Kamala Harris is part of the Biden administration which is prosecuting two bloody proxy wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and as explained in the article Paul posted, If Harris is elected she may be even worse than Biden. 

Not on the subject of Gaza.  Netanyahu complained about her after they met in DC.

3 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Neither you nor any other Democratic supporter here responded to my question as to whether you agree with this US barbaric foreign policy.

I'm opposed to US foreign policy regarding the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.  I support cutting off military aid to Israel.  Kamala's chilly meeting with war criminal Bibi gives me a glimmer of hope.

I support military aid to Ukraine.  Putin's invasion was a historic blunder.