Putin’s war continues but the world hasn’t stopped. The Russian leader’s intimations about the use of nuclear brings us back to Iran and the still dangling treaty that Trump fucked up.
Yeah, it’s still out there promising to be an even bigger problem than when the fat sociopath cancelled it. But is this the right time to be trying to negotiate it, with Russia and the war criminal Putin in the middle of everything?
And if that weren’t enough Biden has the sociopathic right wing of his own country trying to overthrow Democracy.
Joe is handling everything as well as can be expected, especially when you consider that he is consistently being undercut by factions of his own media. I’m talking about degenerate propagandists like Tucker Carlson that are turning political opposition to the Biden administration into traitorous activities aimed at weakening the position of the United States abroad so as to gain political momentum on the pre-election scene back home. It’s so obvious that even Russian journalist Olga Skaveeba commented that Carlson “obviously has his own agenda,” even as he promotes the Russian falsehood that Ukraine is not a country but part of Russia. And why would Carlson and his fellow travelers go down this road? Because if Biden is able to solve this almost insoluble international problem, he will be unbeatable in ’24 and that, not the good of the United States, is all the fanatic right cares about.
It’s the same reason why the far right is so set against Biden resuming talks on the above stated Iran Treaty. Success would only enhance Biden’s international reputation and make him a more substantial opponent in his leadership of the Democratic Party in the future.
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Meanwhile back in West Virginia, Joe Manchin, having scuttled Biden’s Build Back Better bill, thereby leaving millions of poor American’s in a hole from which they will be unable to escape, was celebrating the Senate passing of its $1.5 trillion spending bill which will have no money in it for Coronavirus testing, the Civilian Climate Corps, or other popular climate initiatives. What it will have is $2.1 Million for biomedical and behavioral research centers to be located at the University of West Virginia, his daughter’s alma mater.
Now this is not something over which we should get our balls in an uproar because these kinds of pork barrel giveaways are SOP for most politicians. The problem is really with the daughter, Heather Bresch, who is up to her eyeballs in prescription drug scams that well may land her in the hoosegow.
First it was Mylan of which she was COO. They took over the company that made EpiPens and all of a sudden the prices jumped by over $550 a shot. That is exactly the kind of crap that must be prosecuted. As COO of Mylan, Bresch saw the shit about to hit the fan and negotiated its sale to another company called Viatris that was the one that got caught in the overcharge suit and was fined $264 million.
Bresch tried her damndst to crawl out from under any responsibility in the lawsuit, but U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree commented that when you look like a duck, quack like a duck and swim like a duck, you’re probably a duck, and “since she was named as a defendant, deposed as a defendant, and alleged to be liable as a defendant, well, she’s a defendant.”
In 2020 the Pfizer owned Upjohn acquired Mylan under the name Viatris and started closing it. Christmas bonuses and thanksgiving turkeys were the first things out the door. When this was breeched with Bresch at a union negotiation she quipped, “What would you prefer, a Christmas bonus or a job?” At that point in 2015 her annual compensation was around $19 million.
When the plant closed all the Morgantown jobs were shipped overseas to India. Those laid off were given 2 weeks severance pay and health care for each year they had been employed by Mylan. Bresch managed to struggle by with a $30 million payoff.
Days before the plant closed Manchin sent a letter to the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency looking for an expedited review to keep it running.
“That’s like buying tires for a car you sold a week ago.” Said Johanna Pushkar, daughter of Mylan founder Mike Pushkar. The closing created a domino effect across the area costing the state 4,642 jobs and had a negative economic impact of over $2.5 billion but Manchin’s daughter made a fortune.
If you’re still looking for a point here, it’s that Manchin’s daughter made a fortune instead of the workers continuing to make a living. That’s what Joe Manchin and his family are all about. He killed what may be the most important bill that came to the Senate in the last couple of decades because it would have negatively affected his coal and oil holdings. Manchin has supported the “coal industry” in West Virginia for the last 3 decades, knowing full well that there is no such thing. In 2010 there were 11,418 jobs in West Virginia coal. By 2020 there were only 8,064. That’s a one third drop. We know that in the early part of the 20thand 21st centuries there were probably hundreds of thousands employed, but West Virginia labor statistics for anything before 2010 are strangely missing or confused. I guess that’s just the Manchin way.
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How can anyone consider the American public anything but brute stupid when 77% of them support the current Biden enforced ban on Russian oil and yet 70% disapprove of his handling of the current gas pricing policy. It’s obvious that those who vote in these polls don’t understand that the gas prices are, at least in a large part, due to Biden’s enforcement of the Russian ban.
I know that when they stopped teaching civics in school Americans stopped knowing anything about government and started letting ignorant assholes like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Lindsey Graham and a long list of GOP loudmouths make all the decisions for them.
To be fair, there is very little the President can do about the price of oil and Biden isn’t even doing that. What he can and should do is declare a national emergency and freeze the prices of all fossil fuels. No it’s not fair, but the oil industry has never played fair.
They’ve made monstrous profits by poisoning the world and now they are about to poison the universe. And not satisfied with killing all mankind, they want to make a huge profit on it.
Our energy supply must be safe, secure and affordable or our economy will suffer irreparable damage. Fossil fuel will never be safe. It proved that long before it started to poison the atmosphere. Nuclear can be made safe if we can take private ownership out of the equation. Our rotting nuclear facilities are quite simply the result of corporate greed. Nuclear is as safe, clean and cheap as any energy source available today but the only way to keep it that way is to maintain it properly and that costs money. Private ownership doesn’t want to spend that money because it cuts into the bottom line so nuclear is no longer safe. Fission is still at least five years away. It, along with solar and wind will eventually be the answers, but until they can expand enough to handle the universal need we have to take the energy out of private hands and, for the benefit of the planet, have it run by governments.