February 16, 2024
When I was a boy growing up in New York City I was taught – and re-taught – to always save half of my weekly allowance and never spend more than I had in savings.
Too bad Joe Biden was not taught this useful Presbyterian virtue. Recently, Biden’s government has sought $106 billion in the latest aid for arms for Israel and Ukraine, the biggest expenditure since the Vietnam War. This while the bills for the incredibly foolish war in Afghanistan keep coming in, to date $2 trillion.
Now, the US in high-fever pre-election time, is lavishing billions upon Israel. Most of the world is trying to get Israel out of its lethal rampage in Gaza, but the US and its failing colonial partner, Great Britain, continue to wave the banner of empire. Britain, as hardly anyone has noticed, has been bombing Yemen for the past 14 years, supplying warplanes, bombs and mercenary pilots and technicians.
President Biden is growing desperate as the election draws closer. Polls show him way behind Donald Trump. Both Trump and Biden are too old for the job of president. In my old-fashioned view, only military veterans should be allowed to run for high office.
Meanwhile, Biden is splashing around tens of millions on schemes for blacks, who have become his electoral mainstay. Jewish voters who ardently back Israel are said to provide a large proportion of the Democratic party’s finances. They are advocating deeper US involvement in the Gaza Conflict and even more money for Israel, already the largest recipient of US cash.
Pandering to Israel is standard pre-election behavior. In the old days elections were always marked by huge cash grants and the latest US weapons lavished on Israel. And money on the ‘three I’s,’ Israel, Italy and Ireland.
Biden and his aides seem to have lost all concept of money. What’s being dished out to Ukraine and Israel is green paper. This huge amount was not raised in true democratic style but by slapping these mammoth charges on the national credit card – better known as the national debt.
The newly proposed $106 billion for Israel and Ukraine will delight partisans of the two beleaguered nations. But what people forget is that these little green pieces of printed paper are IOUs for the nation’s debt. Much of the war costs we have incurred were for Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine and Israel which, in Washington’s eyes, have become almost one united nation. Talk that Ukraine is fast becoming `new Israel’ appeals to many Israeli voters whose ancestors came from Ukraine or western Russia.
Joe Biden has created a tsunami of inflation with his giveaways to black voters, his open-ended support of Israel’s far right government and now billions more spending. It’s been a financial disaster. Donald Trump understands. After all, it was he who ended the stupid, pointless war in Afghanistan.
Now Biden and his free spenders are inflicting even more runaway debt on the government. The latest, in January 2024, is $34 trillion of debt! We are in hock up to our heads, yet we still keep dishing out the little green paper. This is the behavior of very drunken sailors.
Copyright. Eric S. Margolis 2024
The war in Afghanistan wasn’t pointless. It was to restore and protect the opium trade after the Taliban destroyed it and of course to give 2 trillion dollars to the war industry.
Israel and Ukraine are to continue this.
Eisenhower warned about embracing the military industrial complex Joe Biden not only embraced them he gave them the chequebook by putting Raytheon board member Lloyd Austen in charge of the military.
I’m not sure what will save us from this massive debt issuance though it certainly won’t hurt the military industrial complex. God help the enemies of the West or those who ask for ceasefire.
I know it’s abhorrent to everything in your nature to give credit to a Democrat for anything, but it was Joe Biden who officially pulled the troops out of Afghanistn – for which he reaped a lot of grief from all sides. And it was good, stalwart Republican George W “He’ll No, I’d Rather Not, Dad” Bush who got the US there in the first place, along with Iraq which also had nothing to do with 9-11. That was the same time the Republican party finding themselves in full control of government and the budget actually in the black after eight years of Clintonian – Democratic – fiscal prudence – discovered that “Deficits Don’t Really Matter” so what the he’ll was a trillion dollars in a fun little war. And thus another man who failed to run even a single successful business in his life – and he had some help – including, most remarkably, the Texas Rangers, started America down the road to fiscaL ruin. Can’t wait for Trump to finish the job.
Thank you, again, Mr. Margolis.
Biden and gang are bomb happy.
How many different countries has he bombed this week?
Last week? The week before?
He deserves to lose, except that the alternative is worse.
Years ago, I read Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid”, an incisive look at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
That led me to travel across Israel and West Bank from Hebron to Ramallah to Bilin to Jenin to the gates of Gaza.
I witnessed dozens of acts of Israelis’
denigration and brutality daily. I wondered what gave one country the imagined right to occupy, brutalize, and daily subjugate people in another country.
If American soldiers did this to us in Canada, I, too would boil, protest and harass our oppressors. Would my grandchildren throw stones?
Richard Forer in “Wake Up and Reclaim Your Humanity” describes these ugly details of the current apartheid and subjugation. He talks about the need for people to see the true humanity in others. This is lacking in Israeli leaders. They believe themselves to be above UN and the World Court.
Please Mr. Margolis, I beg you and your cohorts of conscience to spend as much time as it takes to hammer this message across to Americans.
Mr. Biden does not get it.
Mr. Trump is not capable of compassion or understanding oppressed people.
Americans needs conscientious writers like you to hammer this message home. Please write more on this.
Sincerely,
Joe from Canada
A very impressive post, imho.
And I agree with your request.