Forty-nine Senate Republicans are threatening to derail the Biden administration’s efforts to secure a new Iran nuclear agreement within the coming days.
Any new agreement that “does not have strong bipartisan support in Congress will not survive,” the senators said in a statement issued Monday and provided to the White House. The lawmakers warned the administration that if it bypasses Congress and agrees to a deal without first allowing a vote in the Senate—as is required under a 2015 law—they will do “everything in our power to reverse it.”
“The administration has thus far refused to commit to submit a new Iran deal to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, as per its constitutional obligation, or for review under statutory requirements that passed on a bipartisan basis in response to the 2015 deal,” the senators said, according to a copy of the statement obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “Additionally, despite earlier promises to the contrary, the administration has failed to adequately consult with Congress.” Every Republican senator except Rand Paul (Ky.) signed on to the statement, signaling widespread unity in opposition to a new deal.
The statement is the latest warning to the White House that a new Iran deal has little chance of surviving into the future.
What’s up with Rand Paul?
More:
“Unless Iran ceases its support for terrorism, we will oppose removing and seek to reimpose any terrorism-related sanctions,” they said. “And we will force the Senate to vote on any administration effort to do so.”
The statement comes just weeks after nearly 200 Republican House lawmakers signed on to a similar letter expressing opposition to a new deal and promising to block sanctions relief for Iran.
…Republican leaders are now urging their Democratic colleagues to join them in opposing any deal that does not sufficiently restrict Iran’s contested nuclear program.
They need Democrats to join them in order to accomplish this, and it’s possible they’ll get them – if only because some Democrats are worried about the midterms. The following is at least somewhat encouraging:
Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has signaled concerns about the Biden administration’s negotiations and has called for increased pressure to counter Iran’s nuclear program.
A similar effort was tried by the GOP with Obama’s Iran deal; I wrote several posts on the subject, in particular this about how the bill failed to overcome the 60-vote threshold for invoking cloture (see also this). I see the same possible roadblocks now, except for one thing: the Republicans may have more Democrat senators joining them and therefore there’s a small chance that this more recent effort will be successful. I certainly don’t count on it, though.
One of the reasons for the urgency of the Manhattan Project during World War II was the fear that if the US didn’t develop a nuclear weapon, Germany would. However close or however far Germany may actually have been from obtaining one, the idea that Germany and Hitler might have done so, and accomplished it first, was terrifying. The fear was that a power-mad tyrant bent on conquering much of the world – and killing or enslaving many of the people in it – would have had little to no reluctance to use such weapons.
The United States used the atomic bomb to force Japan into surrendering. The rationale was that this prevented far more deaths than an invasion would have caused, not just on the Allies’ side but for the Japanese as well. After the war ended, there was a short time when the US held a monopoly on atomic weapons, but in 1949 that ended when the USSR detonated its own atomic weapon in a test.
Since then, of course, many nations have acquired such weapons, and during the Cold War we had MAD (mutual assured destruction) as a supposed deterrent, with one especially nerve-wrecking albeit very short confrontation known as the Cuban Missile Crisis [*see NOTE below].
However, as far as I can tell, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the first time that a major nuclear power (in this case Russia) has invaded another sovereign country and engaged it in a hot war of aggression with conventional weapons, while explicitly stating at the outset that if anyone tries to fight them in order to protect the invaded nation, then the invading country (Russia again) will be using nuclear weapons. The Ukraine action therefore amounts to not so much an invasion as a kind of hostage-taking (of another country, rather than a person) with the threat that if the hostage is freed the hostage-taker could retaliate by blowing up the world or at least a goodly part of it.
We have long been worried about nuclear weapons falling into the hand of a group that is either irrational or that does not care about the amount of destruction it causes, but that has focused on rogue terrorist groups having a small arsenal, or leaders such as the Iranian mullahs or North Korea’s. Russia had supposedly joined that group of nations – or at least was on its way to joining it – who were not using nuclear weapons as aggressive threats nor did they have any intention to militarily invade each other. NATO’s weapons were meant to be defensive or to perhaps be used as a last resort in response to chemical or biological warfare waged on its members.
One of the many casualties of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been the notion that Putin would not initiate a first nuclear strike on Europe or the US. However, he has threatened as much if his more conventional war on Ukraine is directly interfered with by those forces. (He has also declared that arms shipments from those powers are fair game for retaliation by his conventional weapons, but that’s a different issue.)
Thus Putin has put the West in a bind. They could send non-nuclear military forces to Ukraine that would probably defeat him easily, but his nuclear threats have tied their hands to a certain extent and they are trying to carefully thread the needle in order to help the Ukrainians but not too much. And although this is about Russia and Ukraine and NATO and Europe, it’s not just about that. It’s about the precedent it sets, which is that any nuclear power can take whatever it wants by threatening to nuke the world. We already knew that, I suppose, but here’s a good demonstration of it. It’s like something out of a James Bond movie, but Bond is nowhere to be seen.
So we are reduced to guessing the answer to questions such as: How crazy is Putin? How self-destructive, if he doesn’t get his way? Is he one of those people described here?:
I don’t think that’s Putin. I don’t even think he is acting irrationally by merely threatening to go nuclear. However, it’s not as though I can read Putin’s mind. Also, I think that if Putin actually believed that Ukraine wanted to be part of Russia again, he was fooling himself,
If Putin wants Ukraine – and there is every indication that he wants it very very badly – then an invasion plus a nuclear threat is a perfectly rational (although terrible) way to go about it. However, if Putin is actually willing to begin a nuclear war if he doesn’t get his way, that would be irrational. But tyrants who have their expansionist dreams thwarted or their aggressive actions challenged often turn their destructive impulses in different directions. It is known, for example, that in the final months of World War II, when all was lost for Germany and Hitler was realizing it, that he considered that the German people should suffer maximally for letting him down.
With Putin, the other very important question is, “How crazy are those around him? Are they in agreement with him?” And no one knows the answer.
We fear challenging him; the stakes of finding out the answers seem very high. And “we” is the entire Western world.
[*NOTE: It’s beyond the scope of this post to explain the huge differences between the Cuban missile crisis and the invasion of Ukraine, but suffice to say that in Cuba missiles had already been placed by the USSR, and placed in a country almost 7,000 miles from Russia and very close to the US. Clearly, those missiles could only have offensive purposes for Russia. What’s more, neither the US nor the USSR was engaging in a related hot war at the time. The situation was resolved diplomatically.]
[NOTE II: No one knows what’s in Putin’s head or the heads of those around him, but there’s plenty of speculation – for example, this:
I asked Martynov if he thinks anyone in Putin’s inner circle is watching the images of Ukraine being broadcast by channels that do not belong to the Russian state. And if so, do they feel badly about the damage, deaths and refugee crisis?
“I feel like there are smart people around President Putin, and I believe that they understand pretty well what happens in Ukraine,” Martynov said. “They can see the same as we are, as we still have some, some independent source of information left — YouTube, Telegram and some other social media — which was not completely blocked in Russia for now. But I feel like they have decided that they are war criminals, so they can’t break this ties with Mr. Putin.”]
My favorite classical composers are as follows: Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Dvorak. Note the order; Chopin leads the way. Is that because I was heavily exposed to Chopin from the age of four in ballet class? I don’t think it’s just that. I think it’s because Chopin’s music is totally unique and exceptionally beautiful.
Many long years ago I bought one of those huge record sets that had all his works. I listened to all of the piano pieces over and over and became at least somewhat familiar with every one.
I don’t play piano, or really any other instrument. But – like so many people – I took piano lessons as a child and quit very early, maybe after John Thompson book number two.
But much later I was in law school and living in a rented house with four other women. This house had an old upright piano in the living room. One day after listening to one of my Chopin records I decided I was going to learn how to play one piece by Chopin. I bought the sheet music to a whole book of Chopin’s waltzes, opened it up, and chose one. It took many months of laboriously working it out (I read music very very slowly) and adding on little bits every day, but at some point I mastered that thing.
Well, “mastered” isn’t the correct word. But I could play it from start to finish, and I could fool people into thinking that I therefore knew how to play the piano with some vague competence. But when they asked me to play something else I had to explain there was nothing else I could perform except a few excerpts from “Teaching Little Fingers to Play,” which I’d encountered at about the age of six, and which sounded like it.
So I learned one additional piece, this time an easier one by Bach.
Later I tried Janacek – and was defeated. That was when I lived in my own house with my own family – husband and young son who briefly took piano lessons as well – and had my own ancient and not-very-good upright piano.
That was a long time ago, as well. Now I’ve lived without a piano for over twenty years and can’t play any of these pieces.
Here is the Chopin I decided to learn and did learn. I chose it because I liked it, it’s relatively easy (for Chopin), and (best of all) it’s in the key of C. Well, that is, it starts in the key of C, and then it has some lovely key changes later on. I could play that waltz by heart – which was fortunate, since I can only read music at geologic speed. Once I had memorized it, it was all in the body memory, and I could pay attention to making it sound sort of good:
10:36 15:50
I don’t even remember which Bach piece I learned, but here’s the Janacek that defeated me:
And now let’s come to the Chopin polonaise that is, after all, the subject of this post. Here’s a modern-day pianist named Lang Lang with what is known as Chopin’s “Heroic” polonaise:
He’s good, but whatever he’s doing doesn’t get to me. It seems to be a surface kind of playing compared to the old school – the school that some call too emotional and histrionic but that I much prefer. Here Rubinstein seems to me to be so beautiful and smooth and graceful, and expresses whatever the music is saying and meaning so much more satisfyingly:
And here Horowitz is so dramatic – with pianissimos so soft and fortissimos so loud. And yet he also retains what I see as the essence of the music. Apparently there are some wrong notes in this performance; I certainly don’t hear them, nor do I care one whit:
There’s an awful lot written about both Rubinstein and Horowitz and even about the two versus each other. On Horowitz:
Even more important than popular acclaim, in a way, was the enormous respect, often tinged with awe and perhaps a bit of fear, with which other pianists viewed him. Horowitz “made me feel deeply ashamed of my persistent negligence and laziness,” Rubinstein confessed, and he was not alone among pianists in this feeling, though he was more eloquent than most in expressing it. Rubinstein finally went into a sort of identity crisis, withdrew from performing until he had radically improved his own playing and ultimately consoled himself with the idea (shared by many other music lovers) that Horowitz might be the better pianist but Rubinstein was the better musician….
Many colleagues considered [Horowitz’s] technique — positioning of hands and fingers, wrist action etc. — awkward and impossible to imitate; it worked for him, but not for others,
This unusual hand position was noticeable with Horowitz’s Chopin, even to me – and that flowing liquid style, as though his fingers were rendered temporarily and magically boneless.
Horowitz’s style frequently involved vast dynamic contrasts, with overwhelming double-fortissimos followed by sudden delicate pianissimos. He was able to produce an extraordinary volume of sound from the piano without producing a harsh tone. He elicited an exceptionally wide range of tonal color, and his taut, precise attack was noticeable even in his renditions of technically undemanding pieces such as the Chopin Mazurkas. He is known for his octave technique; he could play precise passages in octaves extraordinarily quickly. When asked by the pianist Tedd Joselson how he practiced octaves, Horowitz gave a demonstration and Joselson reported, “He practiced them exactly as we were all taught to do.” Music critic and biographer Harvey Sachs submitted that Horowitz may have been “the beneficiary — and perhaps also the victim — of an extraordinary central nervous system and an equally great sensitivity to tone color…
Horowitz’s hand position was unusual in that the palm was often below the level of the key surface. He frequently played chords with straight fingers, and the little finger of his right hand was often curled up until it needed to play a note; to Harold C. Schonberg, “it was like a strike of a cobra.” For all the excitement of his playing…Horowitz’s body was immobile, and his face seldom reflected anything other than intense concentration.
Rubinstein was born in Poland and is considered one of the greatest of Chopin interpreters:
At age two, Rubinstein demonstrated absolute pitch and a fascination with the piano, watching his elder sister’s piano lessons. By the age of four, he was recognised as a child prodigy. His father had a predilection for the violin and offered Rubinstein a violin; but Rubinstein rejected it because he thought his instinct was for harmony and polyphony. The Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, on hearing the four-year-old child play, was greatly impressed, telling Arthur’s family, “This boy may become a very great musician — he certainly has the talent for it… When the time comes for serious study, bring him to me, and I shall be glad to supervise his artistic education.
More:
Rubinstein, who was fluent in eight languages, held much of the repertoire (and not only that of the piano) in his formidable memory…
Rubinstein also had exceptionally developed aural abilities, which allowed him to play whole symphonies in his mind. “At breakfast, I might pass a Brahms symphony in my head,” he said. “Then I am called to the phone, and half an hour later I find it’s been going on all the time and I’m in the third movement.
Regarding Rubenstein and Poland:
At the inauguration of the United Nations in 1945, Rubinstein showed his Polish patriotism at a concert for the delegates. He began the concert by stating his deep disappointment that the conference did not have a delegation from Poland. Rubinstein later described becoming overwhelmed by a blind fury and angrily pointing out to the public the absence of the Polish flag. He stopped playing the piano, told the audience to stand up, including the Soviets, and played the Polish national anthem loudly and slowly, repeating the final part in a great thunderous forte. When he had finished, the public gave him a great ovation.
And here’s a quote from Horowitz:
“I was born very, very lazy and I don’t always practice very long”, he said, “but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpractice. When you do, the music seems to come out of your pocket. If you play with a feeling of ‘Oh, I know this’, you play without that little drop of fresh blood that is necessary — and the audience feels it.”
Predators prey on the weak, and the US is now weak and clearly perceived as weak. It’s not just Biden or Harris themselves. They are merely the current manifestation of a long decline. We’ve reached a state in which people can rightly say we seem unserious, focusing instead on woke infighting and minutiae, and flagellating ourselves for ancient (and often distorted by a leftist looking-back) history.
Biden and Harris are, however, the current visible cannot-be-denied manifestation of that weakness for all the world to see. In vain do the left and their handmaiden the press attempt to spin this as competence and success. Everyone except those dedicated to the party can see it for what it is.
“Every time he gets up and talks to the American people,” Jackson continued, “it’s not just the American people that are watching him speak. It’s the whole world, and that’s part of what the problem is here. He looks tired, he looks weak, he looks confused, he’s incoherent, and it sends a message of weakness all over the world, and they’re seizing…on that.”
Kamala Harris isn’t old enough to have creeping senility as an excuse, but she’s no better in terms of coherence or strength. In fact:
Kamala Harris is everything the left said Sarah Palin would be.
Harris at least has the decency to be seem embarrassed and afraid – at any rate, that’s how I read her affect when I can bear to watch. Her problems are not the same as Biden’s, but they have the same effect, one that is obvious to the world.
But most the time I can’t bring myself to watch either of them, although I read what they say. It’s not just their policies and lies, which I detest. It’s that German word we discussed earlier, and for which I’m indebted to Gregory Harper. I feel it for them in spite of myself:
Fremdschamen. That’s the German word for feeling embarrassment for someone else.
So – to get around to the question in the title of this post – what were they thinking? I think the Democrats:
(1) Didn’t realize Biden and Harris would be this bad.
(2) Especially didn’t realize they would cause so many obvious disasters that couldn’t be hidden from the public nor could they be successfully spun in a way that blamed others (at least, most observers don’t seem to be buying their attempts to do so).
(3) They thought that if Biden got bad enough they would just replace him with Kamala Harris. But they didn’t bargain on how awful she would be or that she’d be awful in such an obvious way that the public would be so turned off by her so quickly. They should have known, based on observations of her performance in the primary season. But they were in denial.
(4) They were short-sighted and didn’t look past the short term but extremely vital goal for them of ousting Trump, and they had few alternatives.
Short version is that they ignored Obama’s advice by underestimating Joe’s ability to f*** things up.
Now, you might say that the destruction of the US’s place in the world was a feature for them, not a bug. Perhaps, but I doubt they wanted to do it so obviously and so dangerously that people would quickly become very very alarmed and perhaps even start looking on the Trump years as good ones in retrospect.
Yes, I know some of you feel the Democrats don’t care what the public thinks, because they’ve got election cheating all wrapped up. But even so, there’s probably a limit on how much it can overcome. If the anti-Democrat vote is overwhelmingly large, it may be hard for them to offset it.
You may notice that I haven’t written about the Ukrainian biolabs and all the swirling speculation about them. That’s because I think we don’t know all that much, but it’s also because I’m in general agreement with this statement of Ace’s:
I don’t particularly care that a foreign country that doesn’t threaten the US has a bioweapons program. Most countries do. I guess in a perfect world I’d like no one to have these programs, but I also don’t worry about it…
I also do not remotely believe this supplies Putin with some justification for invasion. Putin himself has a bioweapons program that dwarfs anything the Ukranians could come up with.
In addition, the Ukranians already had the old Soviet bioweapons. Are they really afraid that Ukraine has come up with some incremental advance that makes anthrax 1% more transmissible and 4% more deadly?
But what I do care about is the endless, endless remorseless lies from the government, and the insistence that we are not allowed to ask questions. And that if we point out that their obvious lies are in fact obviously lies, we’re Russian Agents…
I no longer expect the US government to behave with morality or honor. But can it lie with something approaching everyday-joe intelligence?
I actually do not expect to find anything especially shocking or nefarious at the end of this spool of lies. But I will not hold it against people who do harbor those suspicions.
The Biden administration has richly earned our distrust, unfortunately. That doesn’t mean that everything they say is a lie, including “and” and “the.”
ADDENDUM: For what it’s worth, the UN isn’t buying Russia’s claim that it’s a bioweapons lab. One of Russia’s problems was that it presented no evidence to that effect.
I’ve said it before but I want to say it again: one of the effects of the progression of US administrations of the 21st Century – Bush II followed by Obama followed by Trump followed by Biden – has been enormous reversals in a US foreign policy that used to be much more stable no matter which party was in power.
There were exceptions, of course, notable among them Vietnam. But still, there was a more basic majority bipartisan attitude, with hawk-dove variations but nevertheless a stability compared to now.
At this point I can’t imagine that anyone would trust the US no matter who’s in charge. The reversals have come fast and furious, the parties have alternated, and the world is realizing that the US is both weak and careening between two alternating points of view.
I saw a comment on this or another blog making the point that maybe distrust of the US will lead to a sort of enforced American isolation on the world stage. The person making that comment was happy about such a prospect. Although there’s something about it that attracts me as well, I see a huge danger. I’m far from a globalist, but I just don’t think isolation is possible in modern times. For better or for worse, what happens in the world affects us greatly. You can run, but you can’t hide.
For the last several weeks, reports of a new JCPOA “nuclear” deal with Iran being imminent have surfaced. Even as Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States was said to be forging ahead, with an announcement to be made any day. That despite the fact that Russia itself was the chief mediator.
…[L]ast Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unexpectedly demanded sweeping guarantees that Russian trade with Iran would not be affected by sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine – a demand Western powers say is unacceptable and Washington has insisted it will not agree to.
Unexpectedly?
Russia’s envoy to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, dismissed suggestions that Moscow was the reason the talks had stalled, however.
“The conclusion of the deal does not depend on Russia only,” he told reporters after meeting EU coordinator Enrique Mora. “There are others actors who need additional time and who have additional concerns, and they are being discussed.”
He said he hoped the talks would conclude at the earliest time – but he could give no timeline for when they may resume.
Interesting.
European negotiators from France, Britain and Germany had already left a week ago as they believed they had gone as far as they could and it was now up to the United States and Iran to agree on the outstanding issues…
Four Western diplomats had said the talks were all but finalised until Russia made its demands.
So what’s going on? Do we have a temporary reprieve of sorts regarding the Biden administration’s intentions regarding Iran, due to Russian demands in light of its invasion of Ukraine? And if so, why, and is that the only reason?
My own theory – for what it’s worth – goes as follows: it’s partly that the Russians figured that while the US was making concession after concession after concession to Iran, they might as well get a concession that would be important to them. Why not, given how weak this administration is? So they may have miscalculated on that. But why would the US negotiators not just give in, in order to get their much-desired deal? I believe it may be because they thought better of signing a deal right now that most of America would hate if and when voters discovered what was in it.
And by “right now” I mean prior to the midterms, which are not all that far away. Most of this Iran deal isn’t a big story yet to anyone except political junkies. Perhaps it behooves the administration to keep it that way until after the November election, after which they may suddenly discover that they will have more flexibility. And then I predict that, even if the Democrats do poorly in the Congressional elections in November, the Biden administration can go full stem ahead with the deal as planned.
That’s my theory of the moment, anyway.
Two days ago I wrote a post in which I speculated on the administration’s motives in pursuing a deal so awful, and I added that I hoped that “there will be some sort of sticking point that will mean that no accord is reached.” That appears to be what has happened – for now. I have little doubt that the Biden administration has the same goals as before, though.
What are those goals? We already discussed some possibilities in that previous thread I just linked. But right now I’d like to add a suggestion to ponder, from this article by Caroline Glick:
The Biden administration justifies its pro-Iranian and anti-Israel/Sunni Arab policy by claiming it is a means to disengage the U.S. from the Middle East at a time that Washington is keen to concentrate its resources and attention on Asia and the rising threat of China. While on its face, this justification seems reasonable, it stands on a rotten foundation.
During his term in office, then president Donald Trump sought to minimize U.S. presence in the Middle East in order to focus U.S. efforts and resources in Asia to contend with the rising threat from China. To achieve this goal, Trump empowered America’s allies – Israel and the Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. He provided political, diplomatic, logistical and when necessary, military support to ensure the success of their efforts to combat Iranian aggression against them.
Trump’s concept, which was successfully diminishing both the level of violence in the region and the U.S.’s direct involvement in the Middle East, was that since America’s allies share the U.S.’s interests in the Middle East, the more able they are to defend their own interests, the less the U.S. will have to invest in protecting its interests in the region.
Trump created institutional frameworks for cooperation between U.S. allies both by forging the Abraham Accords which effectively ended the Arab conflict with Israel, and by integrating Israel into Central Command and so fostering operational military cooperation between Israel and the U.S.’s Arab allies under the aegis of the U.S. military.
Those were the days, my friend.
Then, the deliberate reversal:
Biden’s policies are the polar opposite of Trump’s policies both conceptually and substantively. Biden’s policies represent a reinstatement and escalation of Barack Obama’s policies for Iran and the wider Middle East. In contrast to Trump, Obama, Biden and their advisors believe that the U.S.’s Middle Eastern allies – Israel and the Sunni Arab Gulf states – maliciously worked for decades to entangle the United States in the wars of the Middle East. To disentangle America from the region and its pernicious “allies” the Obama-Biden doctrine posits the U.S. must realign itself away from its allies and weaken them, and towards Iran, which it must empower.
This brings us to Israel, and what its government must do in the face of the administration’s betrayal. Since supporting Iran and undermining Israel are the founding principles of Biden’s Middle East policies, they are not subject to change. Israel cannot influence them. It doesn’t matter how many times Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid gush about Israel’s “true friends,” Biden and Blinken. They have chosen a path that is impermeable to reason and argument.
It appears that Glick’s article was written prior to the current stalling of the Iran Deal talks. But I don’t think that the stoppage would affect her analysis of what’s behind the administration’s policy and whether it will ever change.
Glick adds:
In 2014-2015, in their efforts to sell their original cataclysmic nuclear deal with Iran, Obama and his advisors ran a campaign to demonize Israel and its supporters in Congress specifically and in U.S. public life more generally. Now that Biden has agreed to an even more dangerous nuclear deal, Israel can expect for the demonization campaign that awaits it to dwarf its predecessor.
I would add that, because an Iran Deal was a prioritized goal of Obama from the very outset of his presidency, the retreat from decades of consistent US policy towards Israel began much earlier than 2014-2015. It took the form of Obama rejecting Netanyahu, and was spun as being about Netanyahu and his administration. But although Obama detested Netanyahu, I don’t think it really was about that at all. It was part of Obama’s campaign to ingratiate the US with Iran, in the service of the great big deal.
The Biden administration and its negotiators are still fully onboard with that general policy. Glick may indeed be correct about the reasons behind it; her explanation is a better one that most I’ve seen so far. One flaw, though, is that I don’t think this administration has any interest in “concentrateing its resources and attention on Asia and the rising threat of China.” I think that’s some sort of excuse. Perhaps the more basic reason behind this is to diminish the influence of the US and Israel – as well as Western nations in general – on the world stage.
I would have liked to have seen a longer sentence, but at least he got one:
Embattled actor Jussie Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail and 30 months probation on Thursday for falsely reporting to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack in 2019.
“You’re just a charlatan pretending to be a victim of a hate crime,” Judge James Linn told Smollett while announcing the sentence…
The judge excoriated Smollett during Thursday’s sentencing, saying he fabricated the tale for the attention. Linn said the false claim hurt genuine victims of hate crimes and that Smollett tried to exploit the real past and current injustices in the U.S.
“You took some scabs off some healing wounds and you ripped them apart for one reason: You wanted to make yourself more famous,” Linn said. “And for a while, it worked. Everybody was talking about you…
Smollett was also ordered to pay around $120,100 in restitution to the city of Chicago and was fined $25,000, the maximum allowed.
Smollet, ever trying to gain victim status for himself, gave this response:
…repeating, “I am not suicidal!” He said he was innocent that “if anything happens to me when I go in there, I did not do it to myself,” referring to jail.
The Babylon Bee outdid itself with this: “Cruel: Jussie Smollett Will Be Forced To Share A Jail Cell With His Attacker”:
When asked for comment, Jussie Smollet angrily yelled “This is MAGA country!” before punching himself in the face.
And again, it was a hate crime, not a hate crime hoax; it was a legitimate hate crime, in which he sought to direct hate and violence towards white people. The fact that he did so through deceptive, false-flag means does not mean it’s not a real hate crime.
