shanen's Journal: It's a fine mess everyone has gotten ourselves into...

[Into the black hole this went:]

What to do about Putin's war against Ukraine? Go after the Saudis. Tell MBS he can't buy any more American weapons. He can only barter for them. Oil on the barrel head, as the joke goes. But the Saudi oil starts with a barter value 10% below the current market price, and the value drops 10% for each month Putin's war continues. MBS will be forced to flood the market with oil and Putin couldn't possibly stand that. Time for peace.

[The % sign turned out to be yet another block against citizens writing "to" the White House. The WH webform rejected the submission, but with no explanation. How did I guess that a "special" character could be the problem? Because I used to program with PERL. Hasn't everyone? Doesn't everyone know all about poisoned webforms and query insertion attacks? So what other special characters black hole the black hole?]

For my next joke, let's all try to imagine the House of so-called Representatives passing the required legislation to do the right thing. Most people want to do the right thing, but can you imagine Congress doing the right thing? No matter how obvious? LOL. But that still doesn't mean the president can't ask Congress to do the right thing, right? ROFLMAO.

Now for a joke about the White House website and how it became a black hole. My fuzzy recollection of the history is that there was a brief period at the dawn of the Internet Age when you could just email [e-mail] and there seemed to be a live human at the other end. Painless at the sender's end, but apparently an overwhelming nuisance, so Dubya's people switched to the tedious webform with the tiny character limit. Much more tedious for citizens, but MUCH easier to black hole the ideas while still harvesting the one-way email addresses that are so convenient to the point of rudeness. Is there anything funnier and ruder than email from a noreply email address? I don't think so, but that's the sick joke the president@whitehouse email address is now.

So now it's time to get serious. Just kidding. Now I have to laugh about the new classified documents scandal. What was bad for TFG the goose feels worse for the gander Biden, eh? What can anyone do but laugh?

But it isn't funny. If mishandling classified documents is bad, then it's bad no matter who does it. It doesn't matter how incompetent TFG is and how much I disagree with him. It doesn't matter what a nice guy President Biden is and how much I do agree with him. "Mistakes were made" is no excuse, even if the mistake was thinking TFG was above the law or Joe Biden is too nice to do such a thing.

[Early in that paragraph is where it hit the character limit.]

So here's what you should do, Joe. Let the Department of so-called Justice (time for another LOL) deal with TFG's clear and obvious crimes. For your OWN little classified-document fiasco, you need to call for a complete investigation and demand that the culpable person be penalized, even if it's you. Let's face it. If you can't keep track of classified documents, you shouldn't be handling them. There's some wiggle room if there was a mistake by some member of your staff, but even then your culpability is going to get endless debate, and we don't need more fake debates in the House of fake Republicans. We're in for two years of it anyway, but that's too sad to even be funny.

No insult intended, Joe, but your biggest problem is the TMB thing, even if it ain't true. TMB stands for Too Many Birthdays, which is a kind of doctor's joke for what ails you and me and anyone who lives long enough. Maybe the truth is that you haven't had too many birthdays and you're as sharp as you ever were. I sure want to make that claim for myself, though I have to concede on the physical side--and I ain't nearly as old as you are. When I was a young whippersnapper I couldn't even imagine I'd live as long as I already have, but now that I'm old and whippersnapped, I still feel like I have some good years left to me. But I don't feel I could handle the pressure of the American presidency, and that makes it really hard for me to imagine you can... So far I think you've proven the doubters wrong and done a good, even great, job of it, but you had the House on your side, and now you don't and things are going to get much worse. If that's possible, now that I've been reminded of Putin's war on Ukraine...

Frankly, Joe, I think you should promise to resign if the latest document fiasco turns out to be your own fault. If the evidence clearly shows you messed up, then admit that protecting classified documents has become too much for you to handle and you need to step back. Or maybe that's a threat? Not sure I see any solution along the path of making the laws about classified information more restrictive if they don't apply to certain people, eh? And the government is already too secretive and classifies way too much stuff that the public should know about.

Next joke? I actually admire and even like VP Harris and think she'd do a good job as president, but the polls say that makes me rather special these years. Then again the polls have become another kind of sick joke. There are a few honest pollsters out there, but the valid data is buried under the flood of manipulated and crooked survey results. It's easy to create a worthless poll, but only a tiny effort is required to produce whatever results are being paid for. Why else are so many of the biggest and best liars working as pollsters these years? Getting the truth with a survey is actually quite difficult. Why would anyone bother with the truth now?

For my final joke of the day, let me try to imagine my vote matters. Oh wait. That joke collapses because the fake Republicans finally managed to cancel my vote. Why should I even try next time? And my very "own" Representative doesn't even care about that. He's safe in a sacrificial district of level two gerrymandering, and now that sick joke is working so well I think it has created a concentration of Democratic nonvoters who are completely correct to believe that their votes don't matter. No more jokes, eh?

[And one of my replies from a public discussion elsewhere:]

Maybe I should have included something explicit about "And good intentions are no excuse, either." Seems to me like these days there are too many crimes that are dependent upon the bad intentions of the criminal and it's too easy for clever lawyers to muddle those waters. Yeah, Joe Biden knows his intentions were good, but no one knows just how bad (and criminal) TFG's intentions are at any moment.

Or maybe a joke along the lines of "There are times for the president to be a nice guy, and there are times when the presidency is no job for a nice guy. And this is not one of them." With the usual apologies to the fictional Inspector Clouseau, who is always trying so hard not to be a nice guy... The American presidency has become one of those jobs that isn't fit for human consumption or occupancy?

Or maybe the biggest joke is that the part you're reacting to didn't even make it as far the black hole? But it doesn't feel, even to me, that it's worth the effort of reloading the webform to finish the job. Seems like we're in one of those places where things are going to keep getting worse, much worse, before they might start to get a little less worse. Depending on the insanity level of the fake Republicans' nominee in 2024?

Back on the Putin topic, I'm doubting that the financial approach would be likely to work. The premise of putting pressure on the Saudis was that Putin actually needs international money for his war, and therefore cares about the price of oil. On the one hand, it's true that a lot of Putin's key supporters are concerned about the money, on the other hand that hasn't stopped Putin from murdering them for murmuring anything along such lines. I actually think the last pair (that I heard about) were ordered suicides. Something along the lines of "I have decided you need to die now. You have one week to do it yourself or you will be helped to do it along with your entire family. My assistant Ivan Ivanovich is here to answer any questions you might have about where and how to kill yourself without creating any complications. I'll see myself out, eh?"

It would be interesting to get some accurate data on how the Russian people feel about all of this. I actually think lots of the older ones miss the "glory days" of the USSR and a lot of the younger Russians might agree with various statements about how making Ukraine part of Russia would benefit their own wallets. However I really doubt any significant number would agree it was worth a war--but maybe that's why Putin is so afraid of that label? No truth in advertising, eh? However the key poll question should be "Would you be willing to go fight and risk death in Ukraine to help make it part of Russia?" I'm pert' shure the positive answers to that kind of question would be extremely scarce.

Putin is really stuck now. Putin can't win. Could never occupy and pacify Ukraine, even after he assassinates Zelenskyy. But Putin can't afford to lose, either.

Hmm... Maybe Biden should just guarantee the Ukrainian resistance fighters will get at least as much support as we gave to the mujahideen in Afghanistan? Though you can also argue that one didn't work out well for anyone...

[And it isn't like I'm expecting a constructive solution discussion on Slashdot...]