VP’s Son Hunter Biden Joins Ukraine Gas Corporation

23 Comments

1. 

   Arthur Gilroy on May 13, 2014 at 8:12 pm

   Naaaaahhhh…it’s not about oil and other energy sources.

   Naaaaahhhh…it’s never about that!!!

   AG

2. 

   Marie2 on May 14, 2014 at 12:38 pm

   Guess we’ll have to wait for Rush and the rightwingers to go ballistic about this and demand no further US intervention in Ukraine regardless of whatever Russia and Putin does because lord knows Democrats and liberals are going to defend Hunter Biden’s right to profit from an alliance with Ukrainian kleptocrats assisted by various US government and NGO activities and funding.

   • 

     Oui on May 14, 2014 at 12:55 pm

     Wow! Could you play it back S-L-O-W-L-Y, it’s quite complicated.
     A shame the House prioritized the Benghazi hearings.  🙂

     • 

       Marie2 on May 14, 2014 at 2:07 pm

       Only superficially complicated.  With Obama/Kerry/Nuland lined up with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the wingers are between a rock and Putin.  To go after Hunter Biden — which IMHO warrants US domestic outrage — and by extension Joe Biden and Obama, the wingers would have to align themselves with Putin.  Of late, they floated such a position but it’s a tough sell with a US population that has swallowed whole anti-Russian propaganda for almost a century.  Reinforced of late by the MSM reporting that has been trashing Putin and covering up the US participation in Ukraine events.  

       Recently they went after Harry Reid’s son over a solar power project that they mistakenly thought was related to the BLM/Bundy matter in Nevada.  So, we know that they have no hesitation in attacking a national Democrat through the financial activities of one of their children.  It still worked well enough for the wingers as it fed into their paranoia about solar-power and Democrats and it sucked up time and energy from those on the left to debunk.  Neither side seems to get how they’re being distracted and manipulated by meaningless crap while meaningful power plays and actions are taking place with little public awareness.  The gutting of Glass-Steagall was done while the public, right and left, and MSM were consumed with Clinton’s dick.

       Amazes me how few ordinary political junkies can see through the game.  The current one that can be expected to continue for another year and a half is the right attacks Hillary and the “left” rushes into defend Hillary.  Both passionately consumed by this micro-focus designed to install an unacceptable woman in the WH.  

        

       • 

         on May 14, 2014 at 3:31 pm

         Considering who McCain’s drinking buddies in Kiev are, they can’t really get excited about young Biden’s potential profiteering. The best we’ll get is “liberals” arguing with “conservatives” about whether Biden is profiteering more than Cheney did. You know, it’s not so bad because Cheney made more money in Iraq.

         I find it interesting that I can’t find a reference to young Biden’s accession anywhere in the NY Times or on the usual blogs.

         I’ve been told over at Balloon Juice that no one there gives a rat’s ass about Ukraine, which I find curious. No one cares to the point that they get really irritated that I do. Granted, the Cold War rhetoric has been toned down the last few days and there is less and less news coming out in the western press about Ukraine, but you’d think that the US backing the Nazis who burn alive people in Odessa might cause a little self-examination and some questioning about their sources of information, but no.

         I’m an old man now and thought I had it figured out, but I certainly didn’t know the extent to which propaganda trumps logic. It appears after the last month or so that most liberals are pretty much conservatives, which is depressing.

         • 

           Marie2 on May 14, 2014 at 6:10 pm

           Learned long ago that most self-identified liberals are merely partisan Democrats that filter all issues through a lens of narcissism and what’s cool.  What’s good for themselves or their families regardless of what’s good for populations, peoples, the environment as a whole.  Few young men that opposed the Vietnam War gave a rat’s ass about the killing and maiming of the people in Vietnam and the destruction of their lands.  Just didn’t want their butts to be on the line.  They like war just fine — as do their like minded women.  Today they’re good with Obama’s drones and cheered on the bombing of Libya.  

           To be an authentic liberal requires information, knowledge, and thinking through all issues based on a deep set of humanistic values, ethics, and principles and equity that cannot be compromised by affiliation with a political party.  And oppose every neo-liberal and neo-con action regardless of popular opinion and the status of those advocating military responses and more for the privileged.

           btw – I’m not a bleeding heart liberal.      

         • 

           seabe on May 14, 2014 at 6:27 pm

           I used to be much more sympathetic to the Samantha Powers’ of the world; R2P and whatnot. She might actually believe what she says, I know I did. That was when I was, I don’t know? 16? 18? Slightly before Obama was elected, and after a lot of debate and reading, I came decidedly against almost every military action the US can think to muster, even IF I think we have a R2P. Either ends up poorly and makes things worse, or (usually) we have other nefarious reasons for getting involved. Hey I just heard we’re thinking of “helping” Nigeria…they’re also number 10 in oil reserves. Just like we helped out Libya, also number 9.

           Not everything revolves around resources and bad men doing bad things — many think they’re great men doing things which are right, genuinely — but it’s a hell of a lot of coincidences that just makes you stop and think. And even if the “on the face of it” connecting of the dots doesn’t fully make sense, I’ve learned one thing:

           “Now you probably noticed I don’t feel about that war the way we were told we were supposed to feel about that war, the way we were ordered and instructed by the United States government to feel about that war. You see, I tell ya, my mind doesn’t work that way. I got this real moron thing I do; it’s called “thinking”, and I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions. I don’t just roll over when I’m told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over <snap> on command, not me. I have certain rules I live by; my first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me… nothing, zero, no, and I don’t take very seriously, the media or the press in this country, who in the case of the Persian Gulf war were nothing more than unpaid employees of the Department of Defence, and who most of the time, most of the time functioned as kind of an unofficial public relations agency for the United States government. So I don’t listen to them, I don’t really believe in my country and I gotta tell you folks, I don’t get all choked up about yellow ribbons and American flags. I consider them to be symbols and I leave symbols to the symbol-minded.”
           ~George Carlin

         • 

           Marie2 on May 14, 2014 at 7:02 pm

           Bill Moyers was a huge fan of Samantha Powers a few years ago.  So, even highly thoughtful liberals can get sucker punched on occasion.  The big tell with Ms. Powers as she did her R2P dog-and-pony show pitching her genocide book in 2003 was that she never criticized the invasion of Iraq and whatever it was that Bush/Cheney were doing in Afghanistan at that time.  A few weren’t bamboozled by her simplistic (sophomoric?) and ostensibly humanitarian concerns:

           This work and related writings received criticism from the historian Howard Zinn for downplaying the importance of “unintended” and “collateral” civilian deaths that could be classified as genocidal and by Edward S. Herman and Joseph Nevin.

           Miss Howard Zinn and George Carlin — both could cut through the crap better than anyone else.

         • 

           seabe on May 14, 2014 at 6:30 pm

           Also, I consider myself a partisan Democrat; I’m partisan because I know that they can be pressured to do some things right some of the time, and state power matters. But I don’t understand what is so fucking difficult with not licking their boots and heels. Criticizing the fucks ain’t going to change many voter’s opinions such that they jump on the GOP train. If you do your due diligence, it should result in more involved in primaries and organizing…

         • 

           Marie2 on May 14, 2014 at 7:25 pm

           A boot-licking partisan of either political party is nothing other than an idol worshiper.  A political partisan accepts tiny crumbs washed down with self-censorship and hypocrisy.  Then forty years on they wake up, look around, and wonder why the roads and bridges have fallen apart and being privatized, why only 20% of Americans are living well and most Americans are in debt, why our schools are being privatized, health care costs more than over half the people can afford (Medicaid pays for half of US births), the wars continue, the US manufacturing base with “good paying jobs” disappeared, the nation (at the federal level) is $16 trillion in debt, etc.  (And the insane war on drugs remains on-going.)  Often difficult for me to see the little bit of good that Democrats did over those decades.  And on reproductive freedom and choice it’s been downhill since the ink dried on Roe v. Wade.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on May 15, 2014 at 12:18 pm

           Few young men that opposed the Vietnam War gave a rat’s ass about the killing and maiming of the people in Vietnam and the destruction of their lands. Just didn’t want their butts to be on the line.

           What!!!???

           Uhhhh…were you there, Marie?

           I was.

           Up in front. Working/writing in NYC for Rat Newspaper and before that in Cambridge MA with thousands of other students. Living on the edge of the culture with hundreds of thousands of my peers. You are absolutely, totally wrong.

           If you were there…how could you be so wrong?

           Unbelievable.

           AG

         • 

           Marie2 on May 15, 2014 at 12:33 pm

           If you were one of the “few,” so be it.  (You know everything that’s discussed here isn’t about you as much as you’d like it to be.)

           Guess it was just a coincidence that the anti-Vietnam War movement shriveled up when the draft ended even though the war went on for several more years.  Mostly for the Vietnamese and funded by the US.  A model for how this country would in the future wage its wars of aggression.  Publicly promulgated most stridently by Republican POTUS candidates who easily win the older white male and usually white women’s vote.  Yeah, those folks really opposed the Vietnam War when it wasn’t about US troops getting their butts shot.      

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on May 15, 2014 at 12:48 pm

           Answer my question.

           Were you there?

           If not, you are just talking through your hat.

           History lies.

           Only those who lived through the real deal know the true stories.

           AG

         • 

           Marie2 on May 15, 2014 at 1:24 pm

           In this instance, I was there.  Not that that is a singular requisite criteria for knowledge of history, culture, etc.  Lots of marches, anti-war demonstrations (1970 student strike against the Nixon’s Cambodian escalation with Barbara Boxer, one of the few in DC that seems not to have forgotten).  First boyfriend drafted (he managed to get out on a hardship claim by marrying a single mother), second boyfriend a draft dodger (and unlike many, he retained a lifelong opposition to US wars) but he paid a high personal price to avoid being drafted.  Jimmy and Billy were too “patriotic” not to go — they didn’t come home.

           So, fuck off Arthur.  

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on May 15, 2014 at 3:09 pm

           So you were there and you really believe that  “Few young men that opposed the Vietnam War gave a rat’s ass about the killing and maiming of the people in Vietnam and the destruction of their lands. Just didn’t want their butts to be on the line,” eh?

           I cannot deal with that level of ignorance and cynicism. I really can’t.

           AG

         • 

           seabe on May 15, 2014 at 5:38 pm

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on May 15, 2014 at 1:04 pm

           P.S. The draft ended in 1973. The most important countercultural movements…both the anti-war movement spawned by young, mostly white people and the civil rights movements…were already dead by 1973, assassinated by the same forces that killed their primary leaders. Altamont was the effective end of the youth movement in 1969…it just sputtered out into drug-infused hopelessness after that…and by the late ’60s/early the urban black communities that were in the real forefront of change in the U.S. had been so hopelessly gutted by riots and government-sponsored (or at the very least ignored) drug plagues that there was not much left that could do any real work in terms of change.

           Sure…once federal control over the work/slave classes (of all races) had been re-established then the draft could be “ended.” Who needs a draft when the military is just about the only job choice left for the poor?

           “Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant” goes the misogynist rap.

           “Keep ’em poor and hopeless” is the warmongers’ analogue.

           Works every time.

           Gota give the PermaGov credit.

           They succeeded.

           AG

         • 

           Oui on May 15, 2014 at 2:03 pm

           .

           Looking Back: The End of the Vietnam War

           (ABC News) – Forty years ago, on March 29, 1973, the United States ended its military involvement in Vietnam.  Although the war would continue another two years, the South Vietnamese would no longer receive American assistance.

           The nearly 10-year war divided the nation, defined a generation and changed how the U.S. military would operate. In all, 58,282 American soldiers lost their lives and another 303,644 Americans were wounded.

           End of a Washington era: ‘reform’ falls on hard times

           (CS Monitor) June 6, 1980 – The often-dizzying flow of government reforms in the 1970s is showing signs of coming to an abrupt halt, and perhaps reversing, as the new decade begins. In the great wave of national moral reassessment that followed by Vietnam war. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misadventures, and the Watergate Scandal. American government had in rapid succession:

           •  Curbed the military powers of the President.
           •  Ended the draft.
           •  Tightened supervisions of the CIA.
           •  Installed new safeguards against political corruption.
           •  Democratized Congress.
           •  Tinkered with the federal election machinery.

           The ’70s are only a half year behind us, but already important elements of all these reforms are being seriously questioned, sidestepped, softened, or virtually repealed altogether.

           “Perhaps it went too far,” says one House of Representatives Democrat who in the past supported much of the reformism. “Now we are trying to redress the balance. The pendulum is swinging the other way.”

           Among the measures getting a critical second look:

           Curbs on the President’s power to hand out foreign military aid. Congress appears ready to relax several restriction imposed during the late 1960s and early ’70s, when lawmakers became concerned that Presidents Johnson and Nixon were abusing their aid-dispensng power to escalate the Vietnam war.

           At the top of the list: quintupling from $10 million to $50 million the annual limit on emergency military supplies and services which the President on his own can send to friendly countries — a device Mr. Nixon used to arm the Cambodian military without the approval of Congress.

           The house is expected to approve the liberalizations this week.

           50 years ago today: the first draft-card burnings to protest of the war in Vietnam

           ○ North Vietnam, 1972: The December Raids of Hanoi
           ○ Ford Offers Clemency to Draft Evaders – 1974

         • 

           Marie2 on May 15, 2014 at 3:17 pm

           Those that were there would know how disingenuous your factoid citation is.

           The numbers of those drafted for the Vietnam War ended in stages beginning with the Draft Lottery in 1969 for those born from 1944-1950 (highest number called in 1970 was #195; highest number called in 1971 was #125, and #95 in 1972).  That significantly reduced the number of men at risk for being drafted.  (Also in 1969 and for the first time, US troop levels in Vietnam were reduced.)  Also worth noting is that 75% of the US troops in Vietnam were enlistees.  

         • 

           Oui on May 15, 2014 at 6:08 pm

           It wasn’t really a choice once you knew you would be eligible for the draft. Many young men preferred to enlist in Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps. The draftees knew that the Vietnam jungle would be their destiny, defying a shorter term to serve and survive. Was it 2 years? For the Navy and Air Force one would serve up to 4 years but would be well cared for in a less perilous duty for your country.

           ○ Why I Was in The Navy During The Vietnam War
           ○ The U.S. Army in Vietnam
           ○ Statistical Info Fatal Casualties Vietnam War specifics Marine Corps

           The US forces never recovered from the TET offensive in February 1968. A Marxist review of US troop readiness as war was extended – Vietnam: The Soldier’s Revolt. It seems to me the Marines took the brunt of the casualties and did the tough battles in Vietnam.

           “The Vietnam War was costly to the U.S. Marine Corps. From 1965 to 1975, nearly 500,000 Marines served in Southeast Asia. Of these, more than 13,000 were killed and 88,000 wounded, nearly a third of all American causalities sustained during the war.”

           ○ U.S. Marines In Vietnam fighting the North Vietnamese near DMZ

3. 

   Oui on May 14, 2014 at 2:42 pm

   So our top diplomat William Burns was involved in Iran, Egypt, Syria and Russia and Ukraine. Wonderful job and legacy. Apparently the neocon playbook will not be derailed by something inferior called diplomacy, not under Bush and not under Obama.

   PS Let’s not forget US policy on Libya.
   PS2 Burns did lead the back-channel talks to open the relationship with Iran. Keeping fingers crossed.

4. 

   on May 14, 2014 at 3:44 pm

   Just took a quick tour of right-wing links (Breitbart, The Blaze, Drudge, Alex Jones). Not a word about Biden the Younger. You’d think if there were any independence among the right-wing blogs that someone would mention that the Democratic Vice President’s son is profiting from the coup in Ukraine. Maybe a mention. Nothing.

   Fascinating. You wonder how complete the blackout is. Pretty complete.

   I see lots of comments about the Kiev regime and the US’s hypocrisy, but all the stories in the MSM are slanted against Bad Man Putin and The Russian Bear.

   It seems like the NY Times isn’t allowing comments online about stories on Ukraine, undoubtedly because readers point out what’s left out in their coverage.

   • 

     Oui on May 14, 2014 at 5:19 pm

     VP Biden isn’t running against Hillary in 2016?!

     h/t somebody @MofA
     ○ Sounds like Biden got bribed by Kolomoisky

     h/t Fran
     ○ The Federalist: 9 Questions To Ask About Biden’s Work With A Gas Company In Ukraine