Shot in the Dark

Foreign Relations

SCENE: Mitch BERG is at a coffee shop. He orders an egg souffle – the last one in the fridge. As the CASHIER is giving him the egg souffle, Avery LIBRELLE steps, unbeknownst to BERG, up into line behind.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, fuuuuuuor criying out loud, how ya been…

LIBRELLE: President BIden is showing the value of having a season hand with decades of experience in foreign policy in control.

BERG: Uh…

LIBRELLE: (Ignoring BERG for the moment, speaking to the CASHIER) I’ll have one of the cheese and onion egg souffles).

CASHIER: I’m sorry, ma’…er, si…er (Looks at BERG, terrified. BERG shrugs shoulders) …uh, we are out. We just sold the last one.

LIBRELLE: (Looks at BERG). So you got the last egg souffle.

BERG: Yeah, sorry – they are apparently lo…

LIBRELLE: I wanted an egg souffle.

BERG: I know, right? They’re keto, and they’re…

LIBRELLE: We need to sort this out.

BERG: I mean, I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it this way.

LIBRELLE: We need to reach a negotiated settlement on this impasse.

BERG: I mean, I already have it. I paid for it, I’m about to eat it. What “negotiated settlement” did you have in mind?

LIBRELLE: Someone needs to remove you from this coffee shop, and leave me the egg souffle.

BERG: I find your terms unacceptable.

LIBRELLE: Perhaps you need to just disappear.

BERG: You’ve followed a bag negotiating strategy with an even worse one, one that might be chargeable as assault.

LIBRELLE: It was just a harmless ad lib from my internal monologue.

BERG: Sort of like our putative President’s negotiating style.

LIBRELLE: Hey. That was a Biden joke. And you should talk; your Saint Ronald did the same thing when he told the Soviets to tear down the wall.

BERG: Calling for real estate improvements aren’t the same as asking someone to disappear the leader.

LIBRELLE: What are we going to do about the souffle?

(BERG takes a big bite).

LIBRELLE: Fascist!

BERG: (Muffled, with souffle in his mouth) Naturally.

And SCENE.

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20 responses to “Foreign Relations”

  1. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    So everybody is talking up Biden’s Euru-gaffes, but I think that the bigger deal is his refusal to admit that they were gaffes. This goes along with his insistence that the Afghan surrender went perfectly according to plan, when we know that isn’t true — Biden himself said five weeks earlier that their would be no Saigon moment with helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof top of our Kabul embassy, and that is exactly what we got. Biden’s refutation of the study done by the military on the failures of the evacuation consisted of saying that he did not agree with it.
    Then there is Biden’s claim that sanctions were never supposed to deter Putin from invading, when there are quotes from virtually everyone in his state department, including Blinken and Jake Sullivan, saying that deterrence was exactly the point of the the sanctions against Putin.
    These things really wouldn’t bother me as much if Trump had said them, because everyone knew Trump was a blowhard with approximately 0% support from the state department and military officials who were supposed to advise him about these things.
    But Joe Biden? The guy the Deep State loves? Surrounded by all those Obama holdovers? The guy with decades of experience in the senate and 8 years as veep?
    You don’t hear it in the media, but one of the reasons his remarks about getting rid of Putin were taken so seriously, by Russia and the Europeans, was the context. These weren’t off the cuff remarks at a press conference or spoken to a partisan American audience, he said this before leaders and reps of the NATO alliance, the context in which, if he really meant it, he would announce an official American ‘Putin delenda est’ policy.
    There is something seriously wrong with Joseph R. Biden.

  2. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    You see? Progressives are correct: the egg pie does NOT get bigger through capitalism, it really IS a zero-sum game with old rich white men as Winners and everyone else as Victims.

    Failing to position others for success is just hateful. That’s not who we are.

    Not your best moment, Mitch.

  3. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    As with some others here. Perspective is required.

    One person sent 150,000 troops into a country that was not threatening him or his country’s borders. He has killed thousands, most of them non-combatants, and is in the process of carpet-bombing the populations of several major cities. He caused the single largest mass-migration of people since WWII. He continued to sow death and destruction and has had NO PROBLEM threatening the use of Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. And that one person is offended by the loose words of another world leader as a result?

    It’s not rocket science: Russia, if you want a better future change your leader.

    Biden’s point was well made, as is obvious to just about everyone (although some choose to pretend they don’t understand).

  4. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    You missed the point again, Emery.
    Biden has not made intelligent, informed decisions in the past.
    He has admitted that he voted the wrong way on both the authorization for the 1991 Gulf War and the Iraq War of 2003.
    Take a sheet of paper. Write at the top “This is why I trust Joe Biden to make the best foreign policy decisions.”
    Now fill out some bullet points below it.

  5. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Leon Panetta (Obama’s defense secretary) says that Biden speaks bluntly because he is Irish.
    Apparently Panetta hasn’t met any Irishmen, or he thinks that no one who acts like a stereotypical Irishman should be prez, or something.
    When his allies try to make up excuses for Biden’s missteps these days, their hearts don’t seem to be in it.

  6. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The world has not universally scorned Biden for his comment about Putin staying in power. Everyone who values democracy understands Putin can’t stay in power long term. There’s no deal and no battle solution that will ever change the way the world views him. Everyone is thinking through what internal Russian forces could force Putin’s regime to end.

    Biden has done a remarkable job uniting the allies, supporting Ukraine, drawing lines between active involvement and inactive involvement, and imposing sanctions. It ceases to amaze me that conservatives always miss the opportunity to say something positive about Biden – because it just might mean their view of the world is wrong.

  7. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Everyone who values democracy understands ___ can’t stay in power long.

    Trudeau – called out by European leaders for acting like dictator of Canada
    Castro – actual dictator of Cuba
    Khamenei – dictator for life of Iran
    Mohammed bin Salman – crown prince, deputy prime minister, minister of defense and dictator-in-all-but-name of Saudi Arabia (who won’t return our calls).

    Need I go on?

    The world doesn’t value democracy, it values stability. Calling for the assassination of any world leader is inherently destabilizing. That’s why we don’t send assassins, we promote color revolutions leading to rigged elections which provide a fig leaf of democracy to conceal the behind-the-scenes installation of our puppet.

    Take a chill pill, E. The Democrat money-laundering operation in Ukraine is going to be okay. Russia will take the eastern provinces and the coast, Ukraine will keep the rest, Congress will give $18 billion to Zelenskyy to Build Back Better, he’ll make grants to major corporations to restore the economy, they’ll put Hunter back on the Board of Directors, and The Big Guy will get his 10%. Everything will be back to normal soon. Relax.

  8. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    JD, c’mon, admit it, you have a crystal ball under the bed, right?

  9. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The statement of Biden’s speech (a very good speech) was: Putin cannot remain in power.

    This is key. Negotiating with Putin is useless. We must aid the Ukrainians with whatever it takes to “defeat” the Russian invaders. The Russian people must remove Putin. The Germans nearly removed Hitler in July 1944. Too bad they failed. Let’s hope the Russian people are more successful.

  10. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Biden stands by saying Putin shouldn’t stay in power: ‘I’m not walking anything back’
    “But it doesn’t mean we have a fundamental policy to do anything to take Putin down in any way,” the president told reporters Monday amid criticism of his remark over the weekend.
    Biden is well past Carter ineptitude and closing on Buchanan.
    Joe Biden will always be the guy who graduated 76th out of 85 from a third-tier law school

  11. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    MP, you can’t fix stupid.

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Trump asks for Putin’s help — again.
    Putin is a pariah — Trump still sees him as a political asset.

    Good to know while Millions of Ukrainians are displaced refugees, Ukraine cities are being pulverized, and Russian body bags are piling up…Trump is still thinking of himself…
    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/29/trump-putin-hunter-biden-00021223

  13. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    The critical item that is always missing from Biden’s foreign policy is “prudence.”

  14. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Emery’s 10:26 is a perfect example of “Trump derangement syndrome.” Emery is thinking about Trump more than Trump himself is thinking about Trump.

  15. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Your killing me smalls..

    Woolly’s 8:26 is classic BDS… seek help…

  16. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Yet again, Emery shows all of SITD that he does not know how the English language. An on-topic comment is not “BDS.”

  17. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Well, I guess that explains your juvenile comment — not quite worthy of a 13 year-old.
    There’s nothing whatsoever in the comment that is constructive, informative, critical, original.
    Zero.

    Biden said out loud something that every sane person in the West is thinking. Is there anyone (apart from Orban, Le Penn, Farage and the rest of the cabinet of horrors) who seriously doesn’t want to see Putin gone?

    Putin who’s deployed chemical weapons in Europe. Putin who invaded a neighboring country to change the regime. Putin who is threatening using nuclear weapons. Putin, whose army is routinely shelling civilian buildings. Putin who’s been destabilizing Western democracies for at least a decade.

    Seriously, what’s with the pearl clutching, woolly?

  18. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    “Seriously, what’s with the pearl clutching, woolly?”

    This, from the people who were driven to steal an election to get rid of The Bad Orange Man because . . . Mean Tweets.

  19. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Me: “We should exercise prudence.”
    Emery: “Why the pearl clutching, Woolly?”

  20. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    It’s a far cry from Biden being “experienced” at foreign policy to being good at it. I’ve long stated that if you want a successful foreign policy, hire Joe Biden as an adviser and as a rule, do the polar opposite of what Biden recommends.

    As to Emery’s comment:
    Biden said out loud something that every sane person in the West is thinking.

    To borrow from The Godfather, never tell someone outside the family what you’re thinking. Telling Putin that’s he has zero options that don’t end with him likely imprisoned or dead is not useful. What incentive does that give him? What does he have to lose? For all of the “hot” times during the Cold War, the US and USSR generally avoided direct, official conflict– Soviet pilots flew in the Korean War with NK or Chinese markings, for example. We fought each other by proxy, as the risk of direct conflict was escalation up to and including nuclear war.

    Fortunately, it doesn’t appear Moscow was fazed by the gaffe. Putin likely is a better poker player than Uncle Joe from Scranton…

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