According to the AP, the US gave Russia a heads-up that Biden was going to be there:
The White House would not go into specifics, but national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that it notified Moscow of Biden’s visit to Kyiv shortly before his departure from Washington “for deconfliction purposes” in an effort to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.
Part of the problem for Russia, I think, is that assassinating him with a hypersonic missile would probably cause such an incredible amount of collateral damage that it would make the Western reaction extremely severe.
I mean, Putin would have to be truly mad to risk any strike anywhere near Biden. If they so much as shoot at him and miss, it’s US boots on the ground and then some.
My stance on Pete is pretty much unchanged since his healthcare rhetoric in the primary. That pissed me off, on everything else I more or less like him. I’d take him over Biden, and I certainly think he’s elite at competency - and I mean that as a big compliment not some kind of shade. Like that’s the job he has right now, you need someone supremely competent.
Anyway, I think it’s pretty clear that the right views him as a future presidential threat and he’s getting the Hillary treatment. They’re going to make sure that the 35-45% of the country that tunes into Fox News regularly or occasionally HATES him before his turn to run.
Both more or less accurate. Like 95% of both major parties are pretty happy to have lax corporate regulations. It’s not like Biden was racing to restore the braking regulations from the Obama era. So I blame the Trump Administration for this stuff more than the Biden Administration, but it’s more like 65/35 than 100/0.
The US is never putting boots on the ground in Ukraine because the Ukrainian military exists. What they would do is start NATO flying sorties in Ukraine. That would be the end of the Russian military in a matter of a week or two most likely as dependent on airstrike vulnerable things like tanks and artillery as it is.
I mean, if they took a shot at a sitting president, the NATO sorties would start within the hour. The boots would take a few days to get there, so you’re right - we’d probably more or less finish off the Russian military within Ukraine before the boots ever got there.
The Ukrainians have the front filled up basically. It’s a rare situation where our boots wouldn’t make that big of a difference. What isn’t filled up is the air over Ukraine. And oh boy could we fill it up. We’d be running a thousand sorties a day and blowing up anything resembling a Russian warplane that was anywhere near Ukraine.
Lockheed Martin stock would go to the fucking moon.
And that is why it would never ever happen and why we warned them Biden was going to be in town. Safest day of the year in Kyiv probably.
I’ll say it again. This is expected from the right. The sour grapes I’m talking about is from the online left, which is why it’s so infuriating.
As for this:
it’s a flat out lie, and the phrasing you use proves my point above. Feel free to cite something, anything, that proves your statement. Hint: Anyone from the “press” who claims to know what someone is thinking or feeling without actually asking them is full of shit.
I mean, I don’t know the answer here, but the counter point is: has he come out strongly in favor of putting those regulations back? Can you point to a quote/statement/speech? If not, that’s not a good look for him on that front.
you may want to re-read my post, if I’m wrong it should be trivial to disprove
I’m literally claiming he hasn’t shown any support for increasing regulation or even returning to obama-era regulation levels, the fact that I can’t cite anything is EXACTLY what I mean. There is NO INDICATION that he supports this.
Mayor Pete has been a complete disaster as Transportation Secretary, not sure where you’re getting this competence thing from. He wasn’t even a good mayor of a small city. He’s elite at dunking on Fox News morons, I’ll give him that.
He has? You’ll recall I think Pete is a spineless careerist weasel, but I don’t have him down as incompetent. I didn’t get the impression he was a particularly bad mayor of South Bend either.
I’m sure the megacorps love him and think he’s super competent
I can’t even begin to be able to tackle how good or how bad a cabinet secretary is, how do you even qualify that?
As I said, how would you know? Is he supposed to publicize every convo he has with congresspeople? That would be boring and inefficient and you literally wouldn’t care. And as we previously established, Congress is indeed the organization with the power to make regulations.
https://twitter.com/SecretaryPete/status/1627765029855719424?s=20
Maybe, and stick with me here, supporting that kind of thing is a no-brainer and he and the administration as a whole felt that making statements on every regulation wasn’t necessary because…why wouldn’t they support it?
I assume all of you here support women’s reproductive freedom, but I’m not here demanding that you make statements saying that. It’s a no-brainer.
train derailments per capita
Yeah I’m with you on this. Congress critters have a voting record but measuring bureaucrats is beyond me. Like Dejoy objectively seemed to actively be destroying the postal system around election but usually it doesn’t seem that obvious
Well, there was a massive train derailment a couple weeks ago in Ohio that’s turned into one of the biggest industrial disasters in decades, so he had a pretty good opportunity to make the point that we should enhance regulations. Has he taken that opportunity?
If I were the HHS secretary, and some corporation dumped all their abortion pills into the ocean in response to some batshit crazy GOP law, I’d probably make a statement even though it was a no brainer.
Pete is like the best we’re going to do within the current meta in a role like this, like he’ll eek the most competency out while still being corporate-friendly. That’s my read/take. His biggest political strength outside of his current role that we should like is being all-in on democracy reform. His thoughts on that come pretty close to a best-case scenario at getting positive change and getting on a track towards a better future without massive unrest.
I’m not sure how to reconcile his support of democracy reform with his corporate-friendly stances on certain other issues.
I don’t know, has he? Mind you, I don’t have access to comms from DOT to Congress, the rail companies, the other agencies, or local government. So if you do have that access, please, enlighten me.
Have you considered gamesmanship at all?
Seems like waiting (and taking fire) allowed a nice big bipartisan coalition to form in favor of increasing railroad safety regs, and GOP especially walked into the trap. Because now:
https://twitter.com/DispatchAlerts/status/1627973159088447491?s=20
https://twitter.com/SecretaryPete/status/1628082032227102748?s=20