Quote:Every day is a new day, and that means every day represents a new opportunity for President Joe Biden to embarrass himself and the nation he ostensibly leads on the world stage.

The president arrived in Israel on Wednesday for the start of a series of joint meetings in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Biden didn’t even get off the tarmac before things started to go wrong. In fact, his first words after departing the airstairs were “What am I doing now?”

Because nothing projects leadership, confidence, and capability like being confused the moment you step off the jet, right? He just looks so old, probably because he is so old, and every public appearance seems worse than the last. I’m not even necessarily talking about what comes out of his mouth, though we’ll get to that in a moment. Rather, his entire presentation, physically and mentally, should be concerning to anyone paying attention.

Back to the scene on the tarmac, after taking a few more steps forward, Biden only got more confused. He insulted a female Israeli servicemember while being led around like a grandpa at a nursing home. Actually, there’s a pretty good chance most people in assisted living are in better condition than this.

I was going to make a joke here about the female servicemember not being young enough for Biden to sniff (that happened again recently), but again, I think his physical appearance in that clip is the bigger story. This is not a man healthy enough to be president. He’s not even healthy enough to be a door greeter at Wal-Mart.

Things didn’t get any better after Biden started to speak, either. While attempting to comment on the Holocaust, he blurted out that it was an act of “truth and honor.”

I’d ask how he managed to make that mistake given he’s got a script to read right in front of him that no doubt has a triple-digit font, but we all know how he made it. The President of the United States is senile. Even before his flub about “truth and honor,” he mispronounced the name of a city in Israel he was attempting to cite. He also screwed up his pacing after mentioning the genocide of six million Jews, sounding like he was saying we must “continue” it before doubling back to clarify that he meant “we must continue to bear witness.”

And while Biden’s constant face-planting is entertaining in some sense, it’s also deeply dangerous for the country he leads. The United States has become a laughing stock, with tyranny on the march across the globe in the face of his fecklessness and weakness. We are talking about a man who can’t even walk without being psychically led around by his handlers. Does anyone think Xi Jinping fears Joe Biden? Heck, his Secret Service agents are probably days away from investing in one of those kid leashes for the president.

This can’t go on for another two and a half years. There’s just no way. Something has to give, whether it’s Biden’s health or those around him saying enough is enough.

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Biden Gets Snippy With Reporter in Israel, Hilariously Makes Gaffe Building up GOP

Quote:Joe Biden is visiting Israel. As we reported, it didn’t start off well, with him being confused and insulting Holocaust victims.

But it didn’t stop there. Someone on the Biden team thought it would be good for him to give an interview to an Israeli outlet, N12 News. Maybe Biden’s team thought that the American audience wouldn’t see it. No such luck; we got it.

Biden spoke about the three reasons he ran for president.

“I said I was running for three reasons and no one in my campaign agreed…,” Biden said. Alrighty, now. Does he mean even his people had issues with his reasons for running? Or were they even questioning him running? Do tell. Doesn’t that say a lot?

What’s funny about that is that he’s had problems even enunciating those reasons in the past. He claimed his reasons were to (1) restore the soul of this country, to restore “decency and honor” and (2) to rebuild the backbone of the country, which he seemed to define as the middle-class. Then he seemed to forget the third one. But given his many lies, his train wreck of a son, and those concerning connections to Russia and China, not to mention how much he has harmed the middle class with inflation, I would say he did the exact opposite.

Then there was this piece of confusion.

But it got worse.

“[Russia’s war in Ukraine] can take months, it can take years?” the interviewer asked. “It could,” Biden replied. “You think the war could take years?” she asked. Then he got snippy with her, “No, you said that. you said it could, ok?” Then he said, “No, it could.” What the heck is going on in his mind? And he wants to continually fund it, for however long it’s going to take, too–regardless of our own needs.

But if that wasn’t delusional enough, there was this huge lie — Biden suggesting that the last Administration “walked away from the Middle East.”

There was probably no president in recent memory who has done more to bring peace to the Middle East than Donald Trum; everyone in Israel knows that. Meanwhile, the Obama-Biden team has emboldened and enriched Iran with a horrible deal that they are still trying to push, regardless of the threats to Israel and America from Iran.

But then Biden had a truly funny moment, in which he didn’t even seem to understand what he was saying, but he managed to hilariously build up Trump, talking about the Republican Party being a “Mega Party.”

With people fleeing the Democratic Party and the Republicans on the rise, Joe is finally right about something. They will be even more “mega” in the November elections–when they wipe out the Democrats. The “Mega Party” is going to be great.

It’s confusing, because he’s not used to dealing with his bosses in person.

(07-13-2022 06:38 PM)Todor Wrote:  It’s confusing, because he’s not used to dealing with his bosses in person.

Ahhh, interesting….

Biden Risks Estranging Saudi Arabia and Israel While Attempting Reconciliation

Quote:President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Israel, the West Bank, and Saudi Arabia starting on Wednesday. Given the war in Ukraine and Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, the president desperately needs a foreign-policy win. And a breakthrough in Israeli–Saudi Arabian relations is poised to give Biden that win, assuming he plays his cards right. For starters, the Biden administration is hoping to finalize the transfer of two Red Sea islands from Egypt to Saudi Arabia in a deal that will bring Israel and Saudi Arabia closer to normalization.

For readers concerned with the U.S. revisiting a strong partnership with Saudi Arabia, I have previously addressed those concerns here. But, in short, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman holds the key to brokering greater Middle East peace and checking Iranian aggression, and he now rules over a kingdom that, unlike 20 years ago, opposes Islamism. Criticisms of the killing of “journalist” Jamal Khashoggi ignore the man’s very checkered past.

It is very unlikely that Saudi Arabia and Israel will announce full normalization of relations during Biden’s trip to the Middle East. As U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has remarked, “Normalization of any kind would be a long process.” Israel is also tempering expectations, with the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll stating, “I don’t think we’re going to wake up and find out we have a signed agreement with Saudi [Arabia].” A recent op-ed by Biden indicated that his planned flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia, while the first by any U.S. president, represents “steps toward normalization” rather than normalization itself.

But most promising is the advancement of a Middle Eastern defense pact against Iran. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has recently stated that he expects a “breakthrough” on “MEAD — the Middle East Air Defense” during Biden’s visit. MEAD will reportedly include Israel, countries with formal ties to Israel (the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan), and countries with no formal ties to Israel (Saudi Arabia and Qatar). The Wall Street Journal has reported that the U.S. brokered a meeting in Egypt in March with defense officials from all of the above countries to devise strategies to counter Iran’s missile and drone technology, and Gantz met with Bahraini and Jordanian officials to discuss “defense cooperation” earlier this week. The fact that Iran has issued a public statement against U.S. plans to shore up a regional defense against Iran, “solely with the aim of sowing Iranophobia and division among the countries in the region,” suggests that Iran may be taking such a strategic alliance seriously.

This budding alliance is the Biden administration’s win to lose. But the administration is poised to cannibalize the growing alliance by hamstringing Saudi Arabia and Israel in areas vital to these countries’ national interests.

First, the Biden administration risks chilling Saudi interest in such a defense agreement by not sending a clear enough message of support to the Saudis in their war against Iran’s proxies, the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. One great opportunity for the Biden administration to build confidence with Saudi Arabia and to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia closer together would be to allow Israel to give its “laser-powered air defense” technology to Saudi Arabia, as it is seeking approval to do, in addition to the UAE and potentially other Arab states. Hopefully this technology will fit into the Biden administration’s arbitrary category of “defensive” weapons that it is more amenable to letting the Saudi Arabians have.

The Biden administration stands to further lose Saudi confidence by continuing to send mixed messages to Saudi Arabia on the issue of “offensive weapons.” While the Biden administration reportedly is debating resuming the sale of “offensive weapons” to Saudi Arabia, Sullivan has indicated that “there is nothing on the table to lift that ban.” And, in more nonsense, the U.S. is considering lifting this ban on the condition that the Saudis continue to enforce the ceasefire in Yemen. While a stated purpose of the Middle Eastern defense alliance is to provide a check on Iranian missile and drone technology, there is a logical disconnect with the fair-weather U.S. support of Saudi Arabia’s fight against Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

The Biden administration can also put Israel’s participation in greater Saudi engagement at risk by linking Israeli–Saudi ties to concessions from Israel that cut against Israel’s essential national security interests. Despite the Palestinian National Authority continuing to be anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and uninterested in peace, President Biden will meet with its president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Bethlehem. But even so, Israel is prepared to build more Palestinian homes and approve an expanded cell-phone network for the Palestinians, and the country has agreed to delay building in the E-1 corridor in Judea, in addition to issuing more work permits and legalizing the statuses of Palestinians living in Israel, ahead of Biden’s visit. (READ MORE: Joe Biden Discovers the Realist Case for the US–Saudi Alliance)

But that’s not enough for team Biden. While Israeli sources are stating that a Jerusalem-based U.S. consulate for the Palestinians is not on the table during Biden’s visit to Israel, U.S. sources say that it is. This would be a blatant unraveling of President Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem by supporting a de facto U.S. embassy to “Palestine”.

Biden will visit a Palestinian hospital on the Mount of Olives and use his trip to announce U.S. funding for the East Jerusalem Hospital Network. There are conflicting reports as to whether the Biden administration will allow Israeli officials to join them in this visit. If Israeli officials do not join, this omission will violate Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Let’s also hope that this hospital network doesn’t harbor Hamas leadership, like Gaza’s Shifra hospital does, or serve as a way to use U.S. taxpayer money to fund anti-Israel activities, like UNRWA or UNESCO do.

There are also reports that Biden will ask Israel for a settlement freeze while on the trip. Such a call would violate Israel’s right to build in Judea and Samaria.

While encouraging developments are bringing Israel and several Arab countries closer together against Iran, the Biden administration will jeopardize these gains by antagonizing Saudi Arabia, Israel, or both. Instead of making counter-productive requests of its allies, the Biden administration should shore up consensus and military and economic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

(07-13-2022 06:38 PM)Todor Wrote:  It’s confusing, because he’s not used to dealing with his bosses in person.

Our local Ruskie spouting off his anti-Semitic nonsense.

Biden Begs The Middle East Nation He Called A ‘Pariah’ To Give Us Oil After He Throttled U.S. Energy

Quote:President Joe Biden landed in the Middle East on Wednesday with high hopes for his first visit to the region as commander-in-chief. The agenda included revitalizing a nuclear deal with Iran, pursuing peace in Yemen, and desperately pleading to the Saudis for increased oil production.

While the Biden administration has sought to throw cold water on claims that his first trip to the Arabian Peninsula is an effort to produce more oil, the president himself nearly said as much in The Washington Post. In justifying his upcoming visit with the Saudi crown prince — the same prince the U.S. government says is responsible for the execution of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — Biden explained that the nation’s “energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

“This trip comes at a vital time for the region, and it will advance important American interests,” Biden wrote. Presidential pleas to ramp up oil output are an open secret, after repeated calls for increased production were rebuffed by the Arab nation.

The trip also represents an about-face from the president who campaigned in 2019 on making the Saudi state out to be “the pariah that they are” over Khashoggi’s killing the year before. Now Biden writes in the same publication for which Khashoggi worked, “From the start, my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years.”

The reality is that Biden is desperate to find global oil reserves ready for market consumption after 18 months spent shutting down American production. From his first day in office, Biden has followed through on his signature campaign pledge to “end fossil fuels.”

Within six months of his inauguration, Biden shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, killed plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and canceled oil and gas projects nationwide with an illegal suspension of new leases on federal lands. Even though the administration has resumed the oil and gas program under the Department of the Interior, the suspension lasted 18 months. Its return featured an 80 percent drop in available acreage and a 50 percent spike in royalty fees, all while White House officials promised to resist new leases.

“President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands,” assured White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy on MSNBC.

As the administration placed blame for rapidly rising oil prices on the Russia-Ukraine war in May, the Interior Department canceled even more drilling projects from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico.

The persistent animosity toward U.S. oil and gas producers has been enough to chill Wall Street investment in the capital- and labor-intensive industry. The suppression of output due to this lack of capital now has Biden begging overseas nations to save the global economy from the entirely self-inflicted crisis of an energy-induced recession. Unsustainably high energy prices are fueling a new era of inflation that’s rising at a 40-year high and growing worse, according to new numbers out from the Department of Labor on Wednesday. A trip to Saudi Arabia, however, is unlikely to do the trick.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron tried to warn the president that the major oil-rich Arab countries are already producing at capacity.

“[The] Saudis can increase by 150 [thousand barrels per day] — maybe a little bit more. But they don’t have huge capacities before six months’ time,” Macron said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Germany.





A Bloomberg analysis published on Sunday confirms Macron’s warning of slim capacity in the Middle East.

“Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the only members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] with significant volumes of unused output. Together they currently have a buffer of about 3 million barrels a day, official data from the countries indicate,” Bloomberg reported. “That’s about 3% of global oil output. … But the margin of emergency supplies could be even narrower than official figures indicate.”

“The obvious thing for Biden to do is massively ramp up oil and gas production in the U.S. both for domestic use and export,” environmental author Michael Shellenberger explained in a Substack post. “It would be a win for American energy firms and workers, as well as for our allies in Europe and Asia.”

Biden, however, has refused and instead opted for a trip to the Middle East after his “unprecedented” releases from the U.S. emergency petroleum reserves have failed to keep gas prices from reaching record highs. Last month, the nationwide average for a gallon of regular unleaded eclipsed $5. American firms, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with high electricity prices as they near new peaks, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Nearly 1 million barrels from the emergency stockpile landed in China after the Biden administration hampered U.S. refining capacity. While shutting down leases for new drilling operations this spring, the president also blocked a permit for a major refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands in March.

A visit with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has become an option of last resort for a president desperate to bring down energy prices ahead of the fall midterms. The November elections are already expected to favor Republicans in a cycle that’s historically hostile to the party in the White House, especially in an environment where the president has a 39 percent approval rating.

(07-14-2022 01:04 PM)B_Hawk06 Wrote:  

(07-13-2022 06:38 PM)Todor Wrote:  It’s confusing, because he’s not used to dealing with his bosses in person.

Our local Ruskie spouting off his anti-Semitic nonsense.

Actually, if true, that would be pro semitic whatever a semitic person is. It would indicate they have great power.