First 100 days "Sleepy Joe" is not so sleepy

 

By Steve Otto

Today on TV I heard some announcer bring up the fact that President Joe Biden has passed his first 100 days in office. His approval rating is 52 percent. The announcer said that one reason he doesn’t have more support is that the country is more polarized and most Republicans hate Biden. That isn’t all that surprising. But for many of us on the left, we didn’t expect much from ol’ Sleepy Joe. Speaking of sleepy Joe, I called him that on a Facebook comment and some woman called me on it. She accused me of using Trump type insults. I explained that the comment was mostly meant for irony rather than an insult. Still the name seems kind of funny today, because Biden is anything other than “sleepy.”

Biden ran as a centrist in the election against Trump. So I didn’t expect much from him. But there have been a few good surprises. He announced that he will pull all the troops out of Afghanistan. That needed to be done. It should have been done years ago. There are the usual talking heads, mostly military and conservative political hacks in Congress, who wine and wail about all the terrorist that will strike us once we take the troops out of Afghanistan. The real losers are the imperialist who want to zap that country and the whole middle east of its resources, especially oil. Oil and US needs are the real reason the US gets hit by terrorist.

Another surprise was when Biden called the Genocide against Armenians, conducted by the Turkish government during World War I, Genocide. Past US presidents wouldn’t do that because they just love having Turkey as an ally. That won’t change, of course. The change is purely symbolic. A few years ago the Recep Erdoǧan government of Turkey had stripped away democracy for the Turkish legislature. When President Nicolás Maduro did that, the US tried to use a coup to remove him from office. So what did the US do when Erdoǧan did the same thing—nothing! Absolutely nothing! This country should have done something. But it didn’t. So this is better late then never.

On the issue of climate change, Biden has set out some goals. That is a big change from Donald Trump who didn’t believe in climate change. So there is a noticeable change already. How ever we now have to wait and see if Biden can reach any of his new goals. We have the next four years to find out.

Of course there are the usual disappointments. Biden still supports Juan Guaidó rather than Maduro. So much of our imperialist foreign policy remains. But as I said, I didn’t expect much from the centrist Biden. He is a centrist and most centrist sit on their buts and do nothing. So if he does anything at all, it is a refreshing change.    

Pix by Sack cartoon: Sleepy Joe | Star Tribune