Welcome to Suspicious Angels

The Bobbsey Twins* Reincarnated —Hubert Humphrey & Kamala Harris
[*Bobbsey Twins, fictional character featured in a series of children’s books]

On November 5,1968 President Lyndon Johnson departed the White House leaving his vice-president Hubert Humphrey to run for president as the democratic candidate.

On November 5, 2024, fifty-six years later, President Joe Biden departed the White House leaving his vice-president Kamala Harris to run for president as the democratic candidate.

Why is it important? Because history matters. In the case of Vice President Harris whose fate will be decided by voters next week, it may well be decisive. Both Humphrey and Harris have an eerie similarity when it comes to their ascension to the top spot on their respective tickets, the immediate cause being the downfall of their predecessors due to their catastrophic domestic and foreign policies. The vice-presidents in the best tradition of American politics were left to justify these wrong-headed policies. How they chose to do it is stunning in its similarity and tragic in the message it sends about America’s leaders.

Begin with the implosion of both Johnson and Biden. On March 31, 1968 in a televised speech to the American people, President Johnson announced his intention to vacate the Oval Office. “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president…” Not a huge surprise when you consider, as most did not at the time, the mess he was in. Half a million U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam, 20,000 already returning in body bags in a war the U.S. never had a chance of winning. Domestically, deadly riots were destroying major parts of inner cities and the economy was in free fall. His approval rating was 36%. Losing the presidency was not the issue, winning the nomination was.

Joe Biden faced a similar set of imponderables but unlike Johnson was dragged kicking and screaming to his announcement. He finally succumbed to the demands of party oligarchs, some of the same ones who had been supporting his wars in the first place. On July 21 (less than four months before the election) he announced “while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down…” Aside from doubts about his mental competency, the U.S. had become involved in two unpopular wars—the one in Ukraine which had already cost the American taxpayer $175 billion. The Israeli attack on Gaza which has led to the deaths of 42,000 civilians most of them women and children has horrified many Americans and made the US government complicit in what the International Court of Justice deems a “plausible” case of genocide by supplying Israel with armaments worth $20 billion. On the domestic front, although the Federal Reserve keeps up the happy talk on the economy, the American people aren’t buying it. To the question — In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time? It turned out that a resounding three-quarters of Americans were dissatisfied. [Gallup Poll, October 1-12] Is it any wonder that Biden’s approval rating when he was made to retire was 39%?

What a quandary for two hapless candidates. Of all the options available, the most promising of which was to campaign as clean slate candidates, they chose the least promising. Justifying and excusing the inexcusable. Here is Hubert Humphrey in 1968 excusing his failure to challenge his boss as the Vietnam quagmire soaked up more and more American blood and treasure. “The vice president of the United States is one of the president’s advisors. He is not president. And that’s the first thing he needs to learn.” Kamala went him one better and proved herself to be in need of a good therapist. When asked by the “ladies” of the View, “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” She answered without hesitation “there is not a thing that comes to mind.“

While both sets of advisors reached for their blood pressure pills, the race was on to clean up the damage both had done to their election hopes. Stunningly they adopted similar mea culpas. First Humphrey on 9/30/1968 — “The policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday. We must look to the future.” Then Kamala came to the plate with a real whooper — “My administration will not be a continuation of the Biden administration. I bring to this role my own ideas and my own experience. I represent a new generation of leadership on a number of issues and believe we have to actually take new approaches.“

Feel reassured yet?

Neither totally renounced the hash both Johnson and Biden had made of their presidencies. Realizing he needed to put a little (very little as it turned out) distance between himself and Johnson, Humphrey added this disclaimer — “I would not undertake a unilateral withdrawal. To withdraw would not only jeopardize the independence of South Vietnam and the safety of other Southeast Asian nations. (the ‘domino theory’ was hugely popular among many of Johnson’s foreign policy advisors) it would make meaningless the sacrifices we have already made.” Kamala, on the other hand, was marching to the beat of a drummer that only she could hear. Wait for it folks, it’s coming the theme song of the whole bought and paid for congress and White House purchased by the Israeli lobby—”I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself and in particular, as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

It gets worse, much worse. When Anderson Cooper asked: “What do you say to voters who are thinking about supporting a third-party candidate, or staying on the couch, not voting at all because of this issue [the genocide in Gaza]?” Her answer (word salad alert: died and been killed?): “I don’t know that anyone who has seen the images who would not have strong feelings about what has happened, much less those who have relatives, who have died and been killed. And I, and I know people and I’ve talked with people, so I appreciate that. But I also do know that for many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries.”

What? Admittedly she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but swap the slaughter of thousands of Palestinians for affordable groceries? As Faustian bargains go, it’s a dilly.

So here we are on the cusp of the election. Like her long-ago twin, she has ignored the lessons of history. Her party platform is long on identity politics, short on the dangers of the world inching closer to nuclear annihilation. Perhaps today Americans do not want a new boss the same as the old boss. Did they ever? Fifty-six years later and nothing has changed — the same old lies and justifications. It didn’t work for Humphrey. Will it work for Harris?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905]

How many presidents have been in office since 1945? Fourteen. How many have been in power? Zero. Heads of state in the US serve a necessary purpose and it has little to do with power. Mostly a focal point for Americans to rally around when it comes to natural disasters, school shootings or war. But the real center of power lies elsewhere — in the intelligence agencies (in sixty years the number of such secret agencies has doubled from 9 in 1964 to 18 in 2024) and in the military and their partners in the military industrial complex. Add to that the masters of the universe in business and finance, and a carefully selected group of think tank heavies and even a number of billionaires who bankroll both the republican and democratic parties.

Today we call it the deep state (aka the blob) a neocon-led gangster enterprise which promotes the fiction of US hegemony in a unipolar world.  A staple of the deep state is an aggressive foreign policy that has been instrumental in the placement of at least 750 U.S. military bases in 85 countries, in transforming NATO from a defensive alliance formed in 1949 at the start of the cold war into an offensive one making and losing wars all over the world.

Where does the president fit in?  His (or maybe hers after the November election) role in the deep state is to be a cheerleader for the corporate and financial interests that are vital to the longevity of the deep state. He is also a reliable mouthpiece for promoting the US empire as the global hegemon.

But what if he (or she) steps out of line? A big mistake as Chuck Schumer head poo-bah of the US Senate declared proudly in 2019.  No doubt he meant it as a warning to then-President Trump —“You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Even the non-conspiracy-minded took note after the ham-handed CIA response to the attempt on Trump’s life in July. Could it be the deep state’s reaction to the idea of a second Trump administration?  Even CNN, a fervent supporter of the war hawks and neoconservatives that make up the deep state, expressed some skepticism about the handling of the assassination attempt—”Secret Service faces serious questions about security footprint and rooftop access at Trump event”

Let’s be clear about one thing. Trump’s unpredictability, his habit of saying the quiet part out loud unnerves the warmongers and those who profit from wars. After the US invaded Syria, another violation of international law this time on Obama’s watch, Trump officials tried to put a happy face on it. Trump’s defense secretary, a factotum of the deep state, took the usual way out — he lied: “Our mission is the enduring defeat of Isis.”  Trump was the truthteller that day: “We’re keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.” Who knows what a second term of that unpredictability might mean for the deep state.

The deep state’s enforcement arm might also be concerned about Trump’s proclivity to accuse NATO members of “ripping us [the U.S.] off.  In 2023, the U.S. paid 68% of NATO’s defense budget, close to $1 trillion. As NATO is essential to US plans for future wars, another Trump presidency strikes “fear and loathing” in the hearts and minds of war hawks who control the deep state.

President John F. Kennedy was another president who forgot his place in the ruling class food chain. After the 1961 CIA-run Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba turned into a “shit show” (phrase used by President Obama to describe another CIA misadventure this time in Libya), President Kennedy, who had actually authorized the plan, spoke openly about “splinter[ing] the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter[ing] it into the winds.” Piling one blunder on another, he also fired the devious, yet powerful CIA director Allen Dulles. Two years later, on November 22, he was assassinated in Texas. Three decades later, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 was passed authorizing the review and release of all records related to the assassination by 2017. In a rare display of bipartisanship, both Trump and Biden have declined to release the 4,700 documents still sealed. Their refusal has “deep state” written all over it.

When it comes to the U.S. government, the question of “Who’s in charge?” can be answered in three words: the deep state. Running shotgun for this group of power-mad capitalists is the CIA. Operating outside of constitutional checks and balances, its highest priority is shredding the constitution, particularly the first amendment. It is allowed to operate any way it chooses because a little-known law, the Central Intelligence Act of 1949, exempts the CIA from all federal laws requiring the disclosure of the “functions, names, official titles, salaries or numbers of personnel employed by the agency” and gives it the power to spend money “without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds.”

The CIA has virtually limitless power to invade or interfere in the affairs of other countries on the made-up excuse of restoring order, thwarting “aggression” or fighting terrorism. Have the results of their operations strengthened the U.S. militarily, economically or socially? History provides the answer. After 38,000 young Americans died in the undeclared Korean war back in 1953, the U.S. emerged empty-handed, with only an armistice to show for the appalling loss of both Korean and American lives. The U.S. was not so lucky in subsequent wars, it took fifteen years to hightail it out of Vietnam, ten years to lose in Iraq and twenty years before it gave up the ghost in Afghanistan. Another debacle is waiting in the wings as the U.S. continues its military and financial support of Ukraine’s failing proxy war with Russia. Trying to destroy Russia’s economy, the U.S. and its allies have slapped massive sanctions on it. Far from hurting the Russian economy the sanctions have reinvigorated it. Sanctions are never the answer as those targeting Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and China have also been a bust.

With failure on the battlefield the norm, who or what is keeping the deep state in business? The rich folks and their criminogenic enterprises, particularly arms manufacturers like Raytheon and Boeing, tech firms like Apple, Goggle and Meta, financial asset firms like Blackrock and Vanguard, and the biggest, most powerful U.S. financial institutions. U.S. officials brazenly admit that the deep state is designed to make the world safe for corporate profiteering anywhere in the world.

The deep state’s MO is to set the world on fire by interfering in the affairs of sovereign countries and deposing their leaders (Iraq, Libya) and when all else fails launching endless war (Vietnam, Afghanistan). Strange how the US marks its territory. One of their all-time favs is labeling countries authoritarian which in US parlance makes them a legitimate target for invasion or deposing their leaders. Countries like Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Libya have been so “blessed.” Funny thing they just happen to possess 50% of the world’s oil. Coincidence?

A few vignettes will tell you all you need to know about the power of the deep state. In 2008, William Burns was the US ambassador to Russia. Fearing the signals he was getting of U.S. moves against Russia, he sent a cable “Nyet means Nyet”’ to the foreign policy team in Washington predicting Russia’s response if the U.S. and NATO followed through with their plans to enlarge NATO up to Russia’s borders — “Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.” [“Nyet Means Nyet,” William Burns]

What a difference a big, fat promotion makes. In 2021, Biden appointed Burns CIA director, making him the virtual head of the deep state. Notice how his tune (and tone) changed: —”Putin is a bully and is going to continue saber-rattling from time to time… the Kursk offensive [Ukraine invades Russia in a failed offensive] is a significant tactical achievement. It’s not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale. It has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin’s Russia and of his military… the United States has provided massive support for Ukraine throughout this war and we will continue to… [It is generally conceded even by the Pentagon that Ukraine is losing badly which Bill Burns undoubtedly knows but is afraid he will lose his job among other losses if he comes clean]

Maybe he’s just proficient at reading the historical tea leaves. Once upon a time way back in 1973, William Colby was appointed CIA director. He was the perfect choice as his career in the CIA marked him as the perfect American intelligence agent — a ruthless killer willing to go the max to accomplish whatever task his superiors ordered. In 1963, he oversaw the coup that murdered South Vietnamese President Diem when the U.S. determined it was time to get rid of him. From 1967 to 1972, he ran the Phoenix program which was an attempt to identify and destroy North Vietnamese soldiers and anyone the U.S. thought might be a sympathizer. Before it was discontinued, the Phoenix program killed 20,000 civilians many of them innocent peasants, using a variety of gruesome methods.

Maybe he had an epiphany but in 1975, he testified before the Church Committee, a Senate Select Committee, that was investigating abuses in Vietnam by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA. Colby made public a set of internal reports known as the “family jewels,” describing the CIA’s illegal activities including assassination plots and other dirty dealings. In 1976, a horrified President Ford fired him. To be clear, horrified not for the “dirty deeds” but for spilling the beans. Having committed the unpardonable sin of shining a light on some of the darkest corners of U.S. activities, he was ostracized from the intelligence community.

Based on what you’ve already learned about the CIA’s MO, the unfortunate end of ex-CIA director William Colby can be chalked up to business as usual. His body was found nine days after he was reported missing. Days earlier his canoe had also been found. According to the police, Colby had an irresistible impulse to go boating in the pitch dark while his half-eaten dinner was still on the table.

Murder and mayhem by American “patriots” aside, where do we go from here? The deep state still has its murderous fingers in many pies — whether in the Middle East, where the US is complicit in Israeli violations of international law, including but not limited to genocide, assassinations and ethnic cleansing or in Europe where taunting Russia risks all-out war between two nuclear-armed countries. The neocons who control the deep state whom President George H.W. Bush once described as “the crazies in the basement” are running amuck leaving wastelands where there used to be thriving countries, millions of displaced people where there used to be families and garrison states where there used to be sovereign nations.

For the U.S. the road ahead presents a surfeit of challenges. Once a creditor nation now the largest debtor nation in world history with a national debt of $35 trillion, the U.S. survives on the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. How long will that last?  The U.S. is rapidly losing friends around the world for its arrogance in becoming the world’s cop, for the wars it has started all over the world and for imposing sanctions on a multitude of countries. Not exactly sure-fire ways to win friends.

As if that isn’t enough, the U.S. has frozen Russian and Venezuelan money deposited in U.S. and European banks. Another name for this practice is stealing.  

Where does that leave the US, a declining empire that has gone from the most admired and respected country in the world to one of the most despised. Perhaps the US will suffer the same fate as other failing empires “leaving behind a mountain of squandered dollars and an ocean of blood.”  [“The Madness of Antony Blinken” Joe Lauria, Consortium News, September 24, 2024]

Hoist your glass, hum a few bars of “So long it’s been good to know you.  Elvis (aka Joe Biden) has left the building. As he departs stage left, democratic pols and main stream media perennially in the tank for the dems along with befuddled celebs jump into action. As they sprint to the podium to declare their love and devotion for the man they just threw overboard, both their relief at Biden’s downfall and their desire to make sure the condemned man had a stupendous last meal is evident. 

The dynamic duo, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff got out ahead of the crowd: “he’s beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision.” [Nancy Pelosi, 4 days before she slammed down the hammer on him]. “[Joe Biden] has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a Senator, a Vice President, and now as President has made our country better.” [Statement from Congressman Adam Schiff who also participated in the Biden (symbolic) beheading]. Other media personalities and celebs kissing the ring included Rachel Maddow (of course), Stephen Colbert. Even the Veep and now presidential candidate, weighed in with her usual styleless prose: “Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishments over the past three years is unmatched in modern history” [Kamala Harris]. 

Everyone who mattered got in on the benediction.  Look over there, a war criminal singing the praises of a fellow war criminal: “From a proud Israeli Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for fifty years of public service and fifty years of support for the state of Israel.” [Benjamin Netanyahu, July 25] Make no mistake about it, Biden’s “support for the state of Israel” has brought him a very bountiful ROI. During his 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest recipient of donations from pro-Israeli lobbyists taking in $4.2 million. Moving on to his 2020 presidential campaign, grateful Zionists passed the hat and made his campaign the top beneficiary of their largesse: $3,747,383 [Open Secrets]

“Biden will go down as one of the great ones” Wait a minute what is this a coronation or a requiem for a fallen hero? Should we be readying a spot on Mount Rushmore? Or has TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) induced a state of total amnesia in America’s movers and shakers? History matters and in the case of Joe Biden who has been around so long, it matters immeasurably. So let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane and see how Joe the Senator, Joe the Veep and Joe the President fulfilled his promises to the people who elected him. The two areas that might reveal the real Joe Biden are first his foreign policy with particular emphasis on U.S. wars—both shooting wars and economic ones and second his domestic economic policy.

As a senator Joe Biden had the nasty habit of voting with the republicans as they pandered to the donor class.  He voted yeah with his republican brothers and sisters in 1981 to slash the top tax rate paid by the 1% from 70% to 50% and created exemptions from the estate tax for lots of millionaires and billionaires. That was just the beginning. In 1986, Biden voted (along with 32 other Democrats) to pass another of Ronald Reagan’s tax “reforms,” which lowered the top marginal tax rate, already at 50% to 28%. During his long tenure in the Senate, he always took the low road, voting to balance his gifts to the 1% with austerity for the 99%. When it came to making the 99% pay for the government revenue lost by tax cuts to the rich, he voted for draconian changes in Social Security including a gradual increase in the “normal” age for full retirement benefits from 65 to 67. Here’s how slippery Joe defended the undefendable —“While this program is severe, it is the only proposal that will halt the upward spiral of deficits, [which threaten] an economic and political crisis of extraordinary proportions.” 

There’s much more havoc that Joe’s undying support of corporate and financial interests wreaked on the 99%. We’ll only touch on two acts which together precipitated the 2008 financial collapse in which 11 million Americans lost their homes — the repeal of Glass Steagall, originally passed during the 1929 depression, prohibiting commercial banks from engaging in risky security trading (too late he described his vote as the “biggest regret” of his career) and the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, another pig in a poke.

When it came to U.S. involvement in wars (which it never won), both as senator and vice president, Joe never saw a war he couldn’t cheerlead. An early advocate of NATO intervention in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, he doubled down by supporting a resolution authorizing President Clinton to send in American ground troops. He was all in for the Iraq wars (both Clinton’s and Bush’s). You’d be hard pressed to find a war that Joe couldn’t get behind including the war on drugs which by dint of its harsh penalties helped make America the number one penal colony in the world particularly for people of color (another war the U.S. lost).

 But the best is yet to come. As Obama’s VEEP, he was pleased as punch to cheerlead the coups and war policies that resulted in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Honduras, Egypt, and Ukraine and military assaults on Yemen, the destruction of Libya and assassination of its leader, expansion of AFRICOM, the aggressive “pivot to Asia,” the subversion of Venezuela and war against Syria.

“I’m the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” [Joe Biden, address to the nation, 7/24/2024]

That’s your president doing what American presidents do best. Lying. On the same day he made that [ludicrous] claim, the Pentagon announced air strikes in Yemen (which were unsuccessful). But what really gets the Prez’s juices flowing is the engagement of U.S. ground forces, which he managed to do in five countries (not counting Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza). [Cost of War Project, Brown University Annual Report]

How do we know all this? Because Biden told us —Oh, sure, I had months [to challenge Trump], but I was also doin’ a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working––anyway, But look…” [Biden to George Stephanopoulos, 7/25/2024]

While we’re at it, the War Hawk in Chief forbade Ukrainian President Zelensky from negotiating with Putin to end the Ukraine war several months after it started. A tragic decision from the view of both the Ukrainian and Russian people and an expensive decision for Americans who watched $175 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars fly into the most corrupt country in Europe. 

But demented Joe wasn’t through enriching those who least deserve it. He was Johnny-on-the-spot becoming a full-blown accessory to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. 

We can see how well Joe is doing at blowing up the world by checking out the Doomsday Clock (The Doomsday Clock illustrates how close humanity is to self-destruction, due to nuclear weapons and climate change). For purposes of comparison, in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the signing of the START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction treaty) the Doomsday Clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight. Now three decades later, after four ex-presidents and the sitting president have exercised their military muscle and catapulted the U.S into a military juggernaut, the hands of the clock stand at 90 seconds. Since Biden took office and started cranking up the war machine, the doomsday clock has lost another 10 seconds going from 100 seconds to 90, the closest to global nuclear catastrophe it has ever been.

That only counts the shooting wars Biden has led the U.S. into. The Biden administration has also waged world-wide economic war. Remember when Joe announced what the media called “punishing sanctions” on Russia? Joe promised to “turn the ruble into rubble. How did they work out? As the death knell to America’s hopes that it had successfully crippled Russia’s economic engine, the International Monetary Fund predicts that Russia will record economic growth of 3.2% this year, more than in any of the world’s advanced economies.

No doubt about it, the Biden foreign policy is a bust, but what about the domestic economy? Can he hang his hat on how his policies and programs have affected the lives and fortunes of the American people (aka voters)? Let’s check out some of the key metrics of how the economy is doing: Gas has risen more than 50% since the beginning of Biden’s presidency. [AAA, April 2024]; home prices are up 47% [Yahoo Finance, May 2024]; mortgage rates have more than doubled, a 21-year high [Newsweek, 9/26/2023]; most often purchased grocery items up 35% [Wall Street Journal]; during the Biden administration, student loan interest rates went from 3.73% to the current 6.53%.  As another mark against the administration, surveys indicate that almost half of Americans (46%) don’t have $500 in savings. Feeling hungry? A Big Mac will cost you 27% more than it did four years ago.

Joe’s entire 52-year career in public office is a troubling tale of betrayal of the peoples’ trust to serve the interests of wealthy backers. On two occasions he made haste to absolve his ultra-rich campaign donors of any responsibility for the highest income inequality the U.S. sports among all advanced nations. In 2018 — “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.”  And in 2019 —”Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people.”

On the campaign trail, he promised to deliver jobs, reduce poverty and tackle climate change. What the American public got instead was wars abroad and austerity at home. What he considers the signature acts of his administration — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act and the Infrastructure Act have been huge moneymakers for one group of Americans: the billionaires. Have the vast majority of Americans benefitted? No. Inflation is still high, particularly in the service sector (rents, insurance, mortgages etc.) which is 80% of the economy. But American corporations made out like bandits receiving $1.65 trillion in direct subsidies and tax cuts.

There’s lots more to be unimpressed by but what it adds up to is a leader who put politics over principle, who never saw a billionaire or a war he didn’t love, who played havoc with the free speech guarantees of the first amendment, became a partner in genocide and faced with a declining empire set at least one-third of the world on fire.

“Joe Biden will go down as one of the great ones, having led the country out of the disastrous term of his predecessor and quietly doing good things for all Americans… accomplishments that put him up there…with LBJ and FDR. Joe, I can’t imagine where we’d be without your selfless service.” [Ken Burns]

Who are you going to believe Ken Burns, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi or your lying eyes?