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Thanks to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, Michael Beller, who was at the time Principal Counsel — head lawyer — for the partly publicly funded PBS network in the United States, freely aired his views about America and Donald Trump supporters.
This video was filmed before the November 3, 2020 general election. Gosh:
One of his statements was particularly snobbish. Beller is grateful for being able to live in Washington, DC, because (emphases mine):
Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or states where everybody’s just … stupid?
An aghast Howie Carr, who hails from Maine, Boston and Palm Beach, played that clip on his talk radio show on Tuesday, January 12.
Beller thinks the only solution for Trump supporters is to confiscate their children and put them in re-education camps.
You cannot make this up.
He also advocated circling the White House and throwing Molotov cocktails in the event that Trump stays in office:
Good grief.
Beller has no respect for those who partly fund the PBS network:
Americans are so f**king dumb. You know? Most people are dumb …
That was nice (not).
James O’Keefe managed to track Beller down in DC earlier this week. Before Beller slipped into a restaurant, he claimed that his reference to Molotov cocktails meant a new ‘drink’. Sure, pull the other one. We all know what they are:
Fortunately, shortly after Project Veritas released their videos, Michael Beller lost his job:
Well, I hope so for America’s sake.
James O’Keefe said that this was the quickest reaction ever to a Project Veritas exposé.
Well done, PBS:
The news made the Associated Press:
I wish Project Veritas many more successes as the year unfolds.
What a week. It’s been full of coronavirus news here in the UK.
Vaccine
The UK was the first country in the world to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.
A 90-year-old grandmother, Margaret Keenan, was the first person to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock wept. He’s never openly cried about those made unemployed and destitute during the coronavirus crisis for which he is largely responsible. Sickening:
Good Morning Britain‘s physician, Dr Hilary Jones, explained that Mrs Keenan could still get COVID-19 and transmit it:
It seems to work the way that a flu vaccine does. If one gets the virus, the effects won’t be as bad as if one weren’t vaccinated.
I wouldn’t advise thinking about that too much, because it could lead down a rabbit hole:
The great scientists of SAGE also said life would not return to normal (see Select Committee section below). We are likely to be in the same situation well into next year, probably the autumn. This is what the ex-barrister and co-editor of Conservative Woman says:
Continuing down the rabbit hole re the vaccine:
Wales
Meanwhile, in Labour-controlled Wales, coronavirus hospitalisations are higher than they were early this year — despite a short, sharp lockdown, ‘firebreak’, that recently ended:
Guido Fawkes opined (emphases in the original):
Lockdowns, even short ones, evidently temporarily drop cases. Yet selling them on the promise that they enable more things to open once they end, as Welsh Labour did, appears to turbocharge case numbers far more than having simple, predictable and steady rules. The psychology of re-openings could well mean that in the long run, Wales’ “short sharp firebreak lockdown” – modelled on Keir Starmer’s demand – did more harm than good…
The Prif Weinidog — that’s First Minister in Welsh — Mark Drakeford blamed his own countrymen for the failure of his ‘firebreak’:
I couldn’t agree more. Lockdowns, firebreaks — whatever one calls them — do not work.
Why would anyone trust a government to dictate their lives? This is a photo of Grenfell Tower (public housing) in London, which burned in June 2017 because of faulty cladding:
And that brings me neatly to the next topic.
PCR versus Lateral Flow testing
The UK Government rejected a petition about PCR (swab) testing because they said they are not responsible for it. Hmm:
This is the nub of the problem. The Government absolves itself of responsibility. So do the scientists. People actually believe this guff.
Where do Government ministers get the idea for lockdown and excuse potentially faulty test results if it weren’t for the scientists and health organisations working with them?
But I digress.
Returning to testing, a few weeks ago, nearly all of Liverpool’s residents took the Lateral Flow test in a pilot programme. The Lateral Flow test works similarly to a pregnancy test and could be used on a daily basis as an ‘all clear’ strategy to give people more freedom and certainty to go about their lives. If successful, its use could allow visits to patients in care homes.
Very few of the Lateral Flow results were positive. If I remember rightly, the figure was 0.3%.
No doubt if those same people had taken the PCR test, the results would have been very different.
Therefore, this is interesting:
I’m just posting it to show there is a huge question over which test is more accurate.
PCR could work, provided the cycle thresholds were lowered from 40 to 35. But that is not happening.
The scientists of SAGE: Susan Michie
Anyone who reads Guido Fawkes regularly will know that SAGE has some questionable members, including this woman who appeared regularly on BBC News during the first lockdown. She might still be appearing on the BBC. I only watched between March and June to watch the spin they put on the Government’s coronavirus briefings:
Michie’s mother was worth a fortune:
The Daily Mail said the owners of the painting were a mystery, until all was revealed (emphases mine):
The painting was in fact sold by 30-year-old Ms Murray’s mother, Professor Susan Michie. She and her two siblings had been left the picture by their mother, the celebrated IVF pioneer Dame Anne McLaren.
When she died in 2007 she left an estate valued at £52,105,910. The vast bulk of that sum represented the value of the painting.
In her will, the Mail can reveal, she stated that if her children chose to sell then ‘if possible it should be sold to an art gallery or museum in the United Kingdom’.
According to a source, family members were ‘disappointed’ at the decision to put the painting on the market. While the sale attracted a tax bill of £20million, that would have left the trio about £10million each — more than enough to share around other members of their extended family.
Three SAGE members appear before Select Committee
Moving on to other SAGE members, Sir Patrick Vallance, Prof Chris Whitty and Dr Jenny Harries appeared once more before the Science and Technology Select Committee on Wednesday, December 9, for a year-end review of lessons learned during the pandemic. Greg Clark MP, who heads that Select Committee, and MPs from both Conservative and Opposition parties asked probing questions. You can watch the three-and-one-half hour session here.
Unfortunately, Vallance, Whitty and Harries were no clearer about lessons learned. In fact, they were vaguer than they were in earlier sessions:
– The vaccine will not be a fix for coronavirus. Not everyone will be able to take the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine because it will not be suitable for them.
– Human behaviour (Harries’s speciality) is very hard to predict. Harries admitted that.
– Hospitality has been the scapegoat because that is where alcohol can be consumed.
– Conclusions on BAME communities’ susceptibility to the virus are unclear.
– Lockdown restrictions will be with us well into next year.
– The worst admission — and I have been saying this to my far better half for at least a month — was when Vallance said that self-isolation is better for the person who has a steady job and can work from home. Self-isolation, he said, is not suitable for someone in precarious employment who has to show up to work every day! (Who knew?) Good grief!
They have no real answers, yet they’re still ruling our lives via the Government!
Sky News suspends newsreader
Kay Burley, one of Sky News’s star newsreaders, celebrated her 60th birthday on Saturday, December 5, in London.
Unfortunately, the celebrations did not take place in an entirely COVID-compliant way.
Ms Burley was suspended until early January 2021. (See update below.)
Guido Fawkes has the story:
Some people won’t see that as big news, but it is.
It points out the hypocrisy of the media, who were clamouring for a lockdown in March then flout the rules when we are still in one via the tier system. London is in Tier 2.
This was Kay Burley’s apology:
The Guido Fawkes team delved deeper. This is what they discovered (emphases in the original). Guillaume Depoix (point 5 below) owns the Folie restaurant:
The trouble for Kay is that this statement does not address the whole story, and contradicts what the owner of the restaurant told Guido about the event yesterday. Either the restaurant owner was not telling the truth to Guido, or Kay has been fibbing…
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- Her party at the “Covid compliant” club was made up of ten people, split across two tables. Yet the ‘Rule of Six’ apples to social events like birthday parties inside or outside. The only other gatherings such as business meetings can exceed it...
- Kay’s statement presumes she walked all the way to the restaurant Folie to spend her penny. Despite it being not exactly next door to the club she came from.
- Kay does not mention the other people who came with her into the second restaurant. Yet the owner admitted to Guido yesterday that “several people” came in to the restaurant.
- Guido was initially told by the restaurant owner that Kay and her friends had gone in to the second restaurant after curfew “to pay a bill, that was it”. Not to go to the loo…
- When Guido put to restaurant owner Guillaume Depoix that Kay and company had been in the restaurant for quite a while, “a couple of hours”, this was not denied. Guido certainly got the impression the group were there for a considerable amount of time.
- Kay does not mention the other people who came back to her home. Yet she didn’t deny it.
Whilst Kay’s statement tries to take all the blame, Guido has yet to hear what her Sky News colleagues and party guests Beth Rigby, Inzamam Rashid, and Sam Washington have to say …
On Tuesday, December 8, i reported (emphases mine):
Sky News presenter Kay Burley has been taken off air after she admitted to breaching coronavirus restrictions, i understands. She has been replaced on the breakfast show for her remaining shows this week and is already due on annual leave until 4 January …
The TV host is facing an internal inquiry for what she described as “an error of judgment”.
Sources told i the presenter was called into Sky’s headquarters in Osterley, west London, for an urgent meeting with bosses on Tuesday morning. The channel’s most senior staff, John Riley, head of news, and Christina Nicoletti Squires, director of content, were seen entering the newsroom at the time the meeting was due to be held.
Burley will be replaced by early morning presenter Niall Paterson on Wednesday and other presenters will cover her programme for the remainder of the week. Burley was already set to be on annual leave from next Monday until 4 January 2021.
A source close to the presenter said she “doesn’t have a leg to stand on” after breaking the Government’s rules, while being employed to grill politicians over the need to follow guidelines.
It is not clear if she has been removed from air as part of formal disciplinary proceedings.
When the news of the breach broke on Monday night, Burley was in Coventry, where she was due to anchor the news channel as the first Covid vaccines were administered. She was hastily replaced and ordered back to London for Tuesday’s meeting …
Too funny.
Burley, along with colleague and birthday guest Beth Rigby, were among the media stars who endlessly criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisor Dominic Cummings, who is staying on until the end of the year, for his lockdown breach during the first lockdown during the Spring:
Burley, who presents a daily breakfast show on Sky News, has grilled politicians on lockdown throughout the pandemic.
In May, she questioned cabinet minister Michael Gove on the controversy over Dominic Cummings’ trip to Barnard Castle.
A Sky News spokesman said: “We place the highest importance on complying with the Government guidelines on Covid, and we expect all our people to comply.
“We were disappointed to learn that a small number of Sky News staff may have engaged in activity that breached the guidelines.
“Although this took place at a social event in personal time, we expect all our people to follow the rules that are in place for everyone. An internal process is under way to review the conduct of the people involved.”
Sky News declined to comment on Burley being taken off air.
This tweet shows Beth Rigby having a go at Dominic Cummings in May during his press conference:
The Guardian had more on the story:
All of the Sky staff are facing a review of their conduct by their employer, which said it was “disappointed” by the incident.
Burley’s usual 7am breakfast programme was presented from Coventry University hospital on Tuesday by Sarah Hewson. Burley is understood to have already been in the city, where the UK’s first vaccine dose was administered, when the decision was made. There was no mention of the reason for Burley’s absence when the show began …
Burley is understood to have blamed the situation on misunderstandings in planning and organising the event. But she did not address why a group of four people, including Rashid and former Sky News royal correspondent and Huawei PR executive Paul Harrison, returned to her home after the dinner, a claim that is not believed to be in dispute. Other Sky News staff are understood to be irritated by details of the event.
Under the tier 2 restrictions in London, indoor social gatherings of any kind are barred except among those who live together or have formed a support bubble. Groups of up to six can socialise outdoors. Police can impose fines of £200 for a first-time breach.
Under the rules, Burley’s initial gathering would only have been allowed if the two tables remained separate throughout and sat outside. It is not clear how many of the group went to the second venue, but Burley’s tweets suggested that the rules were broken during this part of the evening. A group of four gathering at her home would be against the rules unless they remained outside throughout.
Burley has been a stern interrogator of politicians who have been perceived as making excuses over lockdown breaches this year.
In May, she conducted a widely shared interview with the cabinet minister Michael Gove about the Dominic Cummings affair, repeatedly asking him to clarify what the government advice would be for a member of the public “struggling with Covid-19 and you think you’ve got a problem with your eyesight”, in reference to Cummings’ explanation of his trip to Barnard Castle.
She also interviewed the health secretary, Matt Hancock, after Prof Neil Ferguson was forced to resign as a government adviser and asked: “What did you think when you read it? Did you bang your head on the desk?”
Burley’s colleague Adam Boulton, the other star of Sky News, was deeply unhappy with her. The Guardian told us all about it in ‘Kay Burley row could undermine Sky News, warns Adam Boulton’:
The Sky News presenter Adam Boulton has warned that the row over a breach of coronavirus restrictions by his colleague Kay Burley has raised concerns over “the credibility of our journalism”.
With executives at the broadcaster weighing their decision over what sanctions are merited by the actions of Burley and three colleagues who attended her 60th birthday party last weekend, Boulton retweeted several posts about the story on Wednesday, including one that read: “Look at the state of Sky News. The morons spent all summer preaching to us and now look at them!”
Speaking to the Guardian, Boulton noted that his retweets did not necessarily constitute endorsements. But he went on: “That said, I retweet things because I think they’re of public interest, and certainly my feed has reflected a lot of people who are very concerned about the credibility of Sky News, and that I think is the important issue: the credibility of our journalism.”
The intervention from the station’s editor-at-large and former political editor is the first significant comment on the situation from a senior broadcaster at Sky News, where executives have been considering how to deal with the fallout from Burley’s celebrations since Monday.
Boulton said: “My view is that Sky has worked very hard during the whole Covid crisis and has taken a very clear line about public safety, and obviously something like this perhaps underlines [the importance of] that.” And he noted that he believed the matter to be “of widespread concern” to colleagues at the station.
Since Guido Fawkes broke the story on Monday, December 7, Burley’s fellow colleagues who celebrated her birthday have also been suspended:
Beth Rigby, Inzamam Rashid and Sam Washington have all been taken off air during discussions over what sanctions will be imposed. On Tuesday, Burley was withdrawn from consideration for a prestigious TV award, while two of the group signed non-disclosure agreements as Sky sought to limit damage from the row.
Other staff at Sky share Adam Boulton’s consternation:
“The situation is just excruciating,” one producer said. “The longer it goes on, the worse it gets and the harder it is to see this ending without serious punishment.”
Boulton noted that he viewed Burley as a “remarkable” journalist who deserved her success on the station. And he added: “Whatever happens next is not my decision and obviously it’s not up to me to criticise colleagues.”
Nonetheless, his comments will be viewed with alarm by executives hoping to keep staff concerns under wraps until they reach a decision, which is expected to be this week.
It appears that Burley had a safari holiday booked:
Burley herself deleted a tweet saying she was going on holiday on Friday to go “sit with lions”, adding: “They kill for food, not sport” – a possible reference to the media coverage of the situation.
Well, she can take her time and enjoy an extended safari holiday.
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UPDATE: Early this evening, news emerged that Sky News has suspended Burley for six months! Excellent.
Furthermore, Beth Rigby has been suspended for three months; Sam Washington and Inzamam Rashid have also been suspended pending an internal Sky News enquiry. Result!
How pleased Kay and Beth were with themselves only a few days earlier …
————————————
It is a bit rich to defy coronavirus regulations then pole up to a hospital, especially one giving COVID-19 vaccinations:
I’m really glad this has come to light:
Agree. I don’t understand why people give these hypocrites any credibility.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The results for the 2020 US presidential election have never been so confusing.
In 2000, when Al Gore ran against George W Bush, life was so much simpler: Florida was the only state where the results were in dispute. Those were the days of the hanging chads.
On Tuesday evening (US time), November 10, I checked election maps in the Telegraph and at Real Clear Politics. The Telegraph had Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, going to Biden. Real Clear Politics, based in the US, had the state undeclared.
At the time I checked both maps, People’s Pundit Daily tweeted:
Neither map had this result posted.
Additionally, I could not find where North Carolina’s State Board of Elections called the result.
Even so, Thom Tillis’s opponent conceded that day:
There are two more maps I looked at that night (as it was in my time zone) — People’s Pundit Daily‘s and the one at Power Elections:
Note that, on the night of November 10, the Power Elections map was showing Wisconsin and Minnesota still undecided — along with Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, People’s Pundit Daily showed only Arizona and Georgia still in play.
As far as electoral votes go, Power Elections had Biden up by one. People’s Pundit Daily had Biden up by 50 (279-229).
I’m not blaming any of these outlets for confusing the issue, but, until this year, maps were pretty well unified after the election.
Rudy Giuliani, incidentally, seemed satisfied that Real Clear Politics changed their result for Pennsylvania (note Twitter’s response):
Just as bad is this — the coronavirus crisis:
So, what happens when an election result is in dispute across the nation?
A. S. Haley, better known online as Anglican Curmudgeon, explained what the constitutional course of action is in his November 8 post, ‘Down to the Brass Tacks’.
My fellow churchman wrote an excellent article. A big tip of the hat goes to another fellow churchman, Underground Pewster, for the link.
Excerpts follow. Emphases mine, except where noted otherwise.
First of all, for my readers who are not American, please note (emphases in purple mine):
… the rush to “call” a winner of the 2020 election has been driven by the major news networks, who are unanimously biased against President Trump. But the media have no power under the Constitution to declare anyone as “President-Elect”. That title may be bestowed only upon the winner in the Electoral College vote of December 18, or if not there, then upon the candidate selected by the new House of Representatives that convenes on January 3, 2021.
The Electoral College will meet on December 14 and the results will be available on December 18.
The US Constitution and pursuant Congressional statutes make the following provisions:
By Congressional statute (3 U.S.C. § 7), enacted pursuant to Article II, Sec. 1, cl. 5 of the Constitution, the Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a given Presidential election year has been specified as the date on which all State electors are to meet in their respective State capitals and cast their ballots for both President and Vice President. In 2020, that date falls on December 14.
Normally, the electors for any given State are those persons who (first) have been nominated beforehand by a registered political party or independent candidate within that State (or Congressional district), and then (second) who have the fortune to have their Presidential candidate receive the highest number of votes cast in that State (or district) in the November election. But when is it determined that a given Presidential candidate has received the requisite highest number of votes?
Ay, there’s the rub. Again normally, the vote tallies in the various counties and districts of the State are completed within a day or two of Election Day, and are clear enough so that there can be no dispute about which candidate got the most votes. But occasionally, as happened in the Presidential election of 1876, and as almost happened in the Presidential election of 2000, there were disputes about which candidate prevailed in various States, so that the slate of electors entitled to cast votes for their respective candidate was rendered uncertain. The Constitution specifies that in such cases, as well as in any case where no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College votes, the final selection of the President goes to the newly elected US House of Representatives, and the selection of the Vice President goes to the newly elected Senate.
That last sentence is very interesting. If Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House presiding over a Democrat majority, Biden would be president. Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, and the Republican majority could select a Republican VP. Talk about fireworks.
A S Haley compares and contrasts 2020 with 2000:
As regards the election results in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, we are witnessing a repeat of what happened in Florida in 2000. You may recall that the then Democratic Party candidate Al Gore contested the official count in certain counties of that State in favor of the Republican Party’s George W. Bush. Gore, however, was under a deadline to have the recounts he requested resolved in his favor before the Florida Secretary of State certified the official count to the Governor, who would then sign the certificates attesting selection of the Republican slate of electors to the Electoral College.
Again, Congress has legislated what happens when there is a dispute in any given State over its proper slate of electors. Section 5 of Title 3, U. S. Code, provides that if election results are contested in any state, and if the state, prior to election day, has enacted “procedures to settle controversies or contests over electors and electoral votes”, and if these procedures have been applied, and the results have been determined six days before the electors’ meetings, then these results are considered to be conclusive. Six days before the prescribed meeting of the Electoral College on December 14 of this year falls on December 8. (The date is referred to as “Safe Harbor Day”, because the statute makes any resolution of election disputes reached by that date presumptively conclusive, i.e., not subject to further contest.)
Therefore, the contested results need to be ‘resolved’ by December 8. However, even then, there is a provision when they are not:
Here again, however, the federal nature of our Union kicks in. For while it probably will not be practical to have all contests in all disputed States determined in the courts by December 8, it may suffice for one such dispute to have been finally determined at the highest possible level by that date, if that determination is definitively made by the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS), and if it fairly applies in the other cases, as well. That is because, under our federal system, the rulings of SCOTUS on federal law are automatically binding on all lower courts, both federal and State.
I learned this years ago in US History class, at least twice, but never imagined that this fateful day might come to pass in my lifetime. It seemed so hypothetical decades ago. Today, in November 2020, we could be at that point.
The biggest issue revolves around Pennsylvania (20 Electoral College votes) during a year of coronavirus. Pennsylvania encouraged voters to use postal votes instead of appearing in person to vote this year. The Republican Party of Pennsylvania has brought a case against the secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar:
… which challenges the decision by a unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court to (1) extend the statutory deadline for receipt of all mail-in and personal ballots by three days after the legislated deadline of 8 p.m. on November 3; and (2) require the various election boards to include in their counts any ballots received by the extended deadline which could not definitively be shown to have been mailed after November 3 (i.e., ballots in envelopes bearing blurred postmarks, or even no postmarks at all). This ruling, be it noted, shifted the burden of proof from the individual voter to the given elections board to establish that a ballot was not sent in by the statutory deadline — and why would a Democratic-majority elections board try to prove that a ballot for their candidate had not been sent in on time?
Supreme Court Justice Alito issued an order requiring that the Pennsylvania ballots arriving after Election Day be segregated apart from those that arrived on time:
pending action on the petition for review by the full court.
Haley says that the Supreme Court could issue further orders in the days to come.
Can the Supreme Court help Trump? Haley says that things could become quite technical legally. The result could go either way:
Here is one very strong summary of the issues for the Republican petitioners, and here is another informed view that calls into question whether SCOTUS will grant any definitive relief. In the words of my previous post, “you pays your money and you takes your choice.”
As for the Electoral College, this is how electors are chosen:
Here is the language of Article II, Section 1, clause 2, which has been with us since the original document was ratified in 1789 (with my bold emphasis added):
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Thus if the various State and federal courts prove inadequate to the task of resolving the election disputes in each contested State before the Safe Harbor day of December 8, the Legislatures of those States are empowered to step in and resolve the disputes by designating their own slates of electors. And it has not gone unnoticed that of the disputed States (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada), all but Georgia have Democratic governors, as well as Democratic Secretaries of State, and Democratic election officials, while they each (except for Nevada) have legislatures in which both houses have Republican majorities.
However, will the states have the nerve to:
exercise their Constitutional power to resolve those disputes definitively, in time for the final vote of electors by December 14? On the answer to that question depends who will be President on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.
Haley rightly blames this year’s election chaos on the Democrats for their notional coronavirus concern with mail-in ballots.
If the lawsuits against individual states and the Supreme Court come to nothing in resolving the election result, then Americans have only the House of Representatives — congressmen and women — left.
There is a chance that Republicans could still control the House of Representatives:
If the vote does go to the new House of Representatives:
the vote for President will not be by a majority of its individual members, but (again as specified in the Twelfth Amendment) by the collective delegations for each State in the House, with each delegation having a single vote. As of the latest results for the 435 House elections, Republicans on January 3 will control 26 of the State delegations, and will thus have a majority of the 50 delegations so voting.
In conclusion:
what happens between now and January 20, 2021 is pretty much up to the Republican legislators elected to Congress and to their various State legislatures.
Let us hope for the best.
Joe Biden has made some interesting statements over the decades.
Just think: he could become the next leader of the free world …
This is my final post on Biden before the election.
A review follows of Joe’s ‘finest moments’ (not).
Before getting to those, however, here is the latest update from Tucker Carlson on the missing documents he spoke of two days ago. This is from Thursday, October 29:
Part of what he said might — or might not — tie in with an article from NBC News:
NBC’s article says, in part:
The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.
The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator.
I haven’t seen anyone cite that report. I’d not heard of it until seeing their tweet.
In any event, President Trump’s campaign communications director tweeted:
Now on to a summary of what Tucker Carlson said in the video above.
Tucker said his show would make public only things that concerned Hunter and Joe, not Hunter alone. He said that they receive information every day about the Bidens that they vet. Most of that information cannot be used on the show.
Tucker said that he and Hunter lived near each other for a time in DC. They knew each other. He said he knew Hunter had problems, so, for that reason, he wasn’t going to make him the target of his reports.
He also had an update on the lost documents. UPS, the courier company in question, sent him the thumb drive that they were on. Tucker’s staff had sent him a thumb drive, not actual documents. Two people saw the thumb drive sealed in the envelope addressed to Tucker. Somehow — and UPS now declare the matter closed — the envelope was opened in NYC, where it was sent, and it seems that an hourly employee opened the envelope and removed the thumb drive.
UPS said that it must have happened in the room where all the packages are processed. They said that the room has no security cameras.
Whoever did it put the drive anonymously on the supervisor’s desk. UPS then returned it to Tucker, with their apologies.
Jesse Watters on media’s cover-up of Biden’s dealings
On Friday, October 30, Jesse Watters hit back over Big Media’s charges that Biden’s dubious dealings are fake news:
Here’s a transcript (H/T to GA/FL) of what he said, speaking first to Juan Williams. ‘Tony’ refers to Tony Bobulinski, one of Hunter Biden’s business associates and retired US Navy officer (emphases mine below, unless stated otherwise):
Jesse Watters: “This claim that the Wall Street Journal debunked this story has been debunked, Juan, first of all.
Second of all, I don’t think you have read the Wall Street Journal, because if you read the article, they did not debunk it, they actually helped to substantiate what they saw.
[…] question for the next week, let’s see if they can do this […]
‘Scuse me Juan, let me just give Peter (Doocy?) some advice, Ask the Vice President (Biden), ‘Hey, Mr. Vice President, Have you ever met Tony?” Let’s see if he can answer that question, ’cause that would settle a lot of things.
You bring up credibility, alright, let’s bring it up. Who do you believe? Do you believe the Naval Officer, who held the highest security clearance, that commanded a nuclear submarine, that has emails and documentation and voice recordings, that went to the FBI under penalty of perjury, and said his story…..or do you believe the political family with a history of plagiarism and shady deal-making, who’s hidden and ran for the hills since this probe, and three of their business partners are in prison.
The deal is very simple – they cooked it up in 2015 while Joe was VP. The Chinese Communists sent 10 Million Dollars to the Biden family. 5 Million of it was an interest free loan, the other 5 Million went to the holding company where Jim Biden held back 10 (%) for the ‘Big Guy.’
So then, Tony meets with the VP twice on this. And then when Tony wants to put in good corporate governance, Joe Biden says ‘no’ – they cut Tony out of the deal and then they smear him as an..a Russian agent when he goes to the FBI.
Then the best part of the story is this – the Communist Chinese guy, who they were doing the deal with? He was under the FBI surveillance because he was a spy.
And then when he got popped by the SDNY for bribery, Hunter Biden represents him for a million dollar fee. And now he’s serving 3 years in jail.
So the Biden family was doing business with Chinese Communist spies who were under FBI surveillance. Boom! – How’s that for a Boom?”
Biden as Obama’s VP
Obama’s birth certificate — and his father’s identity — were scorching hot topics during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Although the annual Gridiron Dinner is supposed to be full of barbed humour, Biden did himself few favours with this joke. WND reported on the 2009 event:
“You know, I never realized just how much power Dick Cheney had until my first day on the job. I walked into my office, and you know how the outgoing president always leaves the incoming president a note in his desk?” he asked rhetorically. “I opened my drawer and Dick Cheney had left me Barack Obama’s birth certificate.”
Lame Cherry, a blogger often read by ex-Democrats during the first Obama-Biden campaign in 2008, stated that Biden knows a lot about Obama. This entry is from February 15, 2010:
… Biden knows very well that Obama is a usurper …
Even then, suspicions brewed about Biden’s health in general compared with Bush Junior’s VP Dick Cheney:
So Obama and Jarrett send out Joe Biden, who has been having this huge knife stuck in his back from the Clinton people who have been busy floating rumors the brain dysfunctioning Biden is about to be dumped from the ticket and Hillary put on as Vice President, to save Barack Obama from another Dick Cheney half time event …
If you did not notice this, Dick Cheney is looking younger, stronger, healthier and more manly than Joe Biden. Joe Biden looks drained of body fluids, like he is hooked up at the geezer home on an IV and never has seen sunlight in 13 years.
Cheney is thriving in this rough and tumble and Obama gets white hair, his staff is fleeing him and Biden looks like he was trying out caskets that morning …
Then Biden gets so rattled on NBC that he says Iraq was not worth the cost, which says that Obama and Biden think that genocide should not be stopped on Muslims. Biden’s saying Iraq was not worth the cost means that all of the dead and wounded Americans wasted their sacrifice as their heroic duty was too high of a price to pay for American security.
Essentially:
Joe Biden just said the world would be a better place with Saddam Hussein in it.
Apropos of Dick Cheney, this is what Biden said of him in 2015 (The Daily Caller has more) — note ‘legal parameters’ of being vice president:
Last year, on the campaign trail, he said:
2016 presidential campaign
In 2015, Joe Biden was viewed as a ‘centrist’. This is from an ex-Hillary supporting blog from 2008, HillaryIs44 (long since renamed The Trumpet, in honour of Donald Trump). Emphasis in the original in the quote below:
Bottom line: Hillary’s late, week before the debate move, won’t help her with the Bernie Sanders’ kooks, hurts her with the Biden “centrist” crowd, and the timing aids Barack Obama’s eventually knife in the back treachery against her ...
In May 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump announced doubts about Hillary Clinton at one of his rallies. This Daily Mail report is from May 26 that year:
The Democratic National Committee is considering a plan to re-insert Vice President Joe Biden into the presidential race, Donald Trump said Wednesday in California, a stunning claim on a day when front-runner Hillary Clinton faced new questions about her classified email scandal.
‘I hear they’re gonna actually slip Joe Biden in and he’s going to take Bernie’s place,’ Trump told a rally audience of thousands in Anaheim, California, referring to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
‘I hear they want to slip him in,’ he repeated. ‘Cause I will say, the system is rigged against Bernie, 100 per cent.’
In the end, Bernie Sanders fared quiet well, thanks to the Democrats. Shortly after dropping out of the race, he and his wife bought another house. A number of his followers ended up voting for Donald Trump, the anti-Establishment nominee.
On August 15, Biden campaigned for Hillary, saying that Donald Trump was not ‘qualified’ to hold the nuclear codes:
On September 22 that year, an Obama White House staffer leaked details of Michelle Obama’s and Joe Biden’s schedules. The Daily Mail carried the story:
The hack also revealed a Power Point detailing the recent trip of Vice President Joe Biden to the Intercontinental Hotel in Cleveland on June 26 of this year.
The detailed report includes how many stairs Biden will be walking up as he arrives at the hotel loading dock and makes his way up to the second floor of the facility …
And even a Hillary Clinton event held in May of this year in Houston is detailed, from who will be meeting the Democratic hopeful to, once again, the number of steps she will walk up and down.
In October 2016, Biden lamely campaigned for Hillary, the Democrat nominee. InfoWars carried one of his quotes from a Hillary rally — I use the term advisedly — in Bristol, Pennsylvania around October 7:
I know some of you, and some of the people you are trying to convince are not crazy about Hillary. I know that. Okay.
I think she has gotten an unfair deal. But the truth of the matter is there is a lot of people — but folks don’t, don’t wake up on November 9 and find out we lost Pennsylvania by 2,000 votes and say, ‘If I only… If I had only taken my neighbor. If I only gone. If I only. If I only.’
And there has been a lot of elections. Remember Al Gore?
In December, Biden delivered Hillary’s post mortem. He told CNN’s Jake Tapper that her campaign had no respect for the working man and woman, many of whom were worrying about where their next paycheck would come from. This is a really good three-minute interview. As we now know, the working man and woman were the basis of Donald Trump’s victory and, we hope, of his re-election this year.
The Trump Years — gearing up for 2020
In September 2017, Newsweek reported that Obama’s ‘inner circle’ was split as to whether Biden should be the 2020 Democrat nominee:
His camp’s loyalties could be split however if Joe Biden decides to run, with many of Obama’s trusted confidantes close to the former vice president, who is said to be considering his options for 2020.
Biden is one of a number of high-profile politicians reportedly mulling a 2020 bid, with 2016 hopeful Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s names coming up alongside buzz about Senator Kamala Harris, from California, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, from New York.
In October 2018, he campaigned unsuccessfully against Republican Congressman Andy Barr, who has been serving Kentucky’s 6th District since 2013:
One week later, he managed a small rally for a Democrat candidate in Nevada:
That gave rise to jokes about Biden not being able to fill a phone box:
The Democrats gained the House of Representatives in 2018. When it came time to vote for the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi won, followed by the Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy. Joe Biden, among several others, managed only one vote:
Border control
In 2014, Biden, as vice president, defended border facilities:
In 2018, with Trump in the White House, Biden railed about illegal migrant children coming in over the southern border of the United States.
On June 28, Vox reported:
Former Vice President Joe Biden released a strongly worded statement on Wednesday afternoon calling the Trump administration’s practice of separating young children from their parents “unconscionable” and “abhorrent.”
“A policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a ‘deterrent.’ It’s unconscionable,” Biden, who is currently topping the polls as a 2020 presidential candidate, wrote in the statement. “A policy that traumatizes children isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s abhorrent. And a President and an administration that continues this policy isn’t protecting our border and our people. It threatens to make us a pariah in the world.”
And yet, and yet:
The Obama administration also faced harsh criticism for its actions at the time. Obama was sometimes referred to as the “deporter in chief” by immigrant rights groups, which criticized his administration’s removal of more than 2.5 million people with immigration orders between 2009 and 2015. Large numbers of migrants were also detained while waiting for deportation proceedings under his administration.
Trump made the policy clearer, having been made aware of human trafficking with fake parents and offspring. He wants to stop the trafficking.
Last year, on the campaign trail, Biden either made a mistake or the truth came out:
Biden proud to see Europeans and their descendents disappear
On the topic of migration, Biden was happy to see European populations recede. These clips are from 2016. But he also said that ‘in 2017’, Americans of European stock would be ‘an absolute minority in America — fewer than 50% then and on … that’s not a bad thing … it’s a source of our strength’:
The next video has much of the content of the preceding one but includes Biden saying, ‘We have the affirmative task of creating a New World Order’:
He definitely wants to increase immigration well beyond the current annual limit of 1.2m people. I heard one of his 2020 speeches wherein he said that the first thing he would do would be to regularise the status of 11m illegal immigrants in the United States.
Here is another plan of his:
His views on America were equally shocking
On February 16, the Washington Examiner reported:
Speaking on German soil 75 years after the U.S. and its allies prepared for D-Day, Joe Biden described America as “an embarrassment” and its trade policies “self-defeating.”
He does not care about Americans:
In fact, he insults them:
I don’t say this as a defence, but that was to hide his frustration that he was not doing well in the New Hampshire primary:
One month later, he insulted an auto worker in Detroit who dared to ask a question about the Second Amendment:
First Amendment can be abolished
In 1974, two years into his long tenure as a US Senator, he gave the following warning about the First Amendment.
Breitbart has the story:
The current 2020 Democrat frontrunner made the comments to Washingtonian magazine while being interviewed for a profile published in June 1974. Biden, then only 31-years-old, came to regret the interview, as his penchant for gaffes and insensitive remarks—traits defining later portions of his career—heavily colored the piece. At the time, however, Biden appeared eager to discuss his life as the nation’s youngest senator.
“I am proud to be a politician,” Biden told then-Washingtonian writer Kitty Kelley, who authored the profile. “There is no other walk of life which can do more good for mankind than politics. It influences everything that happens to the American people.”
Biden proceeded, according to Kelley, to lean “over his desk to shake his finger at me” while explaining elected officials like himself had the power to “take away” constitutionally protected rights if they saw fit.
“And, whether you like it or not, young lady,” he said. “Us cruddy politicians can take away that First Amendment of yours if we want to.”
Gaffe about women
In 1973, one year before he gave the aforementioned interview to Kitty Kelley, he gave a speech, having just been elected to the Senate. Breitbart has a news clipping with the story:
To illustrate how Nixon tried to handicap Democrats ahead of the 1972 presidential election, Biden tried a football analogy. While explaining, he said women present in the audience would not understand football and that he was led to believe their attendance wasn’t welcome.
“The only analogy that I can really think of, is a football analogy,” he said. “And I apologize to you women in the audience for not being able to think of a more appropriate analogy, but they told me they didn’t want you here anyway.”
“I didn’t expect any women to be here,” Biden added.
Outright lies
Why would someone lie so egregiously?
Physical violence in politics
Last year, Biden made another outrageous statement about physical violence against senators and in a revolution.
Given this year’s riots, one wonders if activists got the idea partly from this:
Biden on crime
Hmm. If Biden says politicians can get rid of the First Amendment, imagine what he would be like on crime.
This video from 1992 will give an indication:
Years later, he admitted he was wrong about drug sentencing:
That crime bill did irreparable harm to black Americans, who were disproportionately locked up for years for minor offences.
President Trump put an end to it:
Biden on healthcare
Be afraid, be very afraid. Biden’s channelling one of Obama’s biggest untruths about healthcare:
Good grief — words fail me:
Race relations
The most interesting — and worrying — aspect of Joe Biden’s political career, however, concerns race relations.
Biden says ‘what is good for the Negro’ — 1973
Breitbart reported that the quotes came from a 2019 investigative book into Democrats:
The racially insensitive comments from Biden, a white man from Delaware who was at the time newly elected to the U.S. Senate, resurfaced, thanks to a new book from leftist journalist Ryan Grim of the Intercept. The book, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to AOC, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, has already landed a few other major blows, including on former President Barack Obama, regarding his “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal legacy, but this revelation about Biden’s torrid history with race–as told from the left–is particularly damning for the current Democrat 2020 presidential primary front runner …
“Joe Biden, elected to the Senate in 1972, was a leading voice in the attempt to win back white working-class voters by showing them how tough Democrats could be against affirmative [action], school integration, and other priorities of the civil rights movement,” Grim writes …
“In 1973, during a speech at the City Club in Cleveland, Biden told an audience that the Nixon-era resurgence of Republicans in the South was a good thing,” Grim writes:
“I think the two-party system,” he said, “although my Democratic colleagues won’t like my saying this, is good for the South and good for the Negro, good for the black in the South. Other than the fact that [southern Senators] still call me boy, I think they’ve changed their mind a little bit.”
School busing in the 1970s
In the 1970s, some of the northern states decided to implement a policy whereby minority students were bused into white majority schools miles away. In exchange, white students were bused in to minority schools.
It was a difficult — and deeply contentious — conundrum, with equally valid pros and cons on either side of the debate.
The knottiest problems depended on who was supporting what side of the debate.
Those favouring more integration did not want the disadvantage of children enduring one-hour-plus bus rides.
Those opposed to forced busing did not want segregationists’ endorsements. Nor did they want the long bus rides.
The most important objection, though, was that it could have been federally mandated, which was what Joe Biden — rightly, in my opinion — opposed.
It was a highly contentious time in modern American history when both sides wanted an equitable outcome, the objective being to level up and do away with social and educational inequalities.
The subject resurfaced in one of the 2019 Democrat candidate debates. On June 28, 2019, CNN reported a conflict between Biden and Kamala Harris, also running for the Dem nomination, now his running mate:
… he rarely discusses one of the earliest — and most controversial — issues he championed in the Senate: his fight against busing to desegregate schools. His record on the issue was at the center of the most dramatic moment of the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday, when Sen. Kamala Harris confronted him about his position, and how it impacted a little girl in California.
“That little girl was me,” Harris said. “So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”
When pushed by Harris on whether he was wrong to oppose busing, Biden shot back, “I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education, that’s what I opposed.”
Biden opposed busing more than four decades ago as a battle raged across the country — and in Congress — over sending white students to majority-black schools and black students to majority-white schools often far away from their own neighborhoods. Biden forcefully opposed the government’s role in trying to integrate schools, saying he favored desegregation, but believed busing did not achieve equal opportunity.
In a series of never-before-published letters from Biden, which were reviewed by CNN, the strength of his opposition to busing comes into sharper focus, particularly how he followed the lead of — and sought support from — some of the Senate’s most fervent segregationists.
“My bill strikes at the heart of the injustice of court-ordered busing. It prohibits the federal courts from disrupting our educational system in the name of the constitution where there is no evidence that the governmental officials intended to discriminate,” Biden wrote to fellow senators on March 25, 1977. “I believe there is a growing sentiment in the Congress to curb unnecessary busing.”
Biden, who at the time was 34 and serving his first term in the Senate, repeatedly asked for — and received — the support of Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a leading symbol of Southern resistance to desegregation. Eastland frequently spoke of blacks as “an inferior race.”
“Dear Mr. Chairman,” Biden wrote on June 30, 1977. “I want you to know that I very much appreciate your help during this week’s committee meeting in attempting to bring my anti-busing legislation to a vote.”
I thought that busing had been abolished decades ago, but apparently not, at least in Delaware:
Paying reparations
Despite what Biden says today, this is what he had to say about paying reparations in 1975:
Lying about participating in civil rights marches
In 1987, in an unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination, Biden claimed to have participated in civil rights marches.
In 2019, Breitbart reported on a New York Times story uncovering the untruth:
The New York Times‘ Matt Flegenheimer, in a Monday report, resurfaced the 1987 lie by Biden before an audience in New Hampshire, where he was campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president for the first time in his long political career.
“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Biden said in New Hampshire in February 1987, according to the Times. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes” …
And when Biden made that false claim that he had marched in the Civil Rights Movement when in fact he had not done any such marching, his aides cringed, per the Times’ Flegenheimer.
“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” Flegenheimer wrote. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”
A few months later, in September 1987, Flegenheimer writes that Biden’s lies and “recklessness as a candidate” had finally “caught up with him.”
“He was accused of plagiarizing in campaign speeches,” Flegenheimer wrote. “He had inflated his academic record. Reporters began calling out his exaggerated youth activism.”
On Capitol Hill, Flegenheimer writes, Biden called a “stop-the-bleeding news conference” at which he “vowed that day to fight on.”
“I’ve done some dumb things,” Biden said at that presser. “And I’ll do dumb things again.”
Despite his vow to fight through the mess and keep campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president, Flegenheimer writes, Biden “quit the race within a week.”
Praising segregationist senators
In 1988, he praised the segregationist US Senator John Stennis of Mississippi:
In 1997, he gave a speech lauding Strom Thurmond:
More recent quotes — equally terrible
One wonders if the Democrats were reluctant for Joe to run based on the following comments he made about Indians, Obama and blacks between 2006 and 2012, while having a go at President Trump in 2018:
This one is from 2019:
President Trump rightly called him out on the remark:
Biden says segregationists easier to work with
In case anyone thinks all the above is old news, on June 19, 2019, Biden defended segregationist senators in a campaign speech and said they were easier to work with. Wow.
CNN had the story. I’ve inserted an explanatory note:
Former Vice President Joe Biden pointed Tuesday evening to two segregationist senators as examples of colleagues he could work with during an era where “at least there was some civility” in the Senate …
During a fundraising event in New York, the Democratic presidential candidate recounted being a member of the Senate in the 1970s with southern Democrats who opposed civil rights and desegregation. He specifically named Mississippi Sen. James Eastland [see section on school busing above] and Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge, who Biden called “one of the meanest guys I ever knew.”
“I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son,’ ” Biden told donors.
“Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done,” Biden said. “We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished.”
“But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore,” he said.
Biden’s remarks drew sharp rebukes on Wednesday morning from his rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Regardless of Biden’s talk about ‘the other side’, those men were also Democrats:
Sen. Cory Booker, one of his rivals, demanded an apology for Biden’s praise of segregationists:
Campaign aides gave up:
Tells black man he ‘isn’t black’
Earlier this year, black Americans rightly took issue when Biden insulted a black voter. No doubt the man is now a Trump supporter.
Here are a few reactions:
Biden did not apologise:
Plagiarised climate change plan
Just as Biden plagiarised his speeches in 1987 (see above), he also plagiarised his 2020 climate change plan:
Trump on Biden
Here’s President Trump on Joe Biden:
Closing thought
How can anyone vote for a candidate who says this?
Or this?
Or this?
It is hard to understand why someone who had a political career spanning four decades — from the Senate to the White House — could not have effected the change of which he speaks on the campaign trail. He had his chance and did nothing. Why would he change the habits of a lifetime should he be elected?
This is the truth of the matter — should Joe win, he will not be leading the country:
Let’s hope that Joe Biden has many pleasant days ahead in Delaware — away from politics.
———————————————————————————————–
N.B.: Lectionary readings will appear tomorrow. Forbidden Bible Verses will appear on Tuesday.
Joe Biden, 78, has made so many gaffes on his campaign tour, it’s hard to know where to start.
Here are but a few.
This six-minute compilation, a parody of a Time-Life advert, is a great starting point:
Yes, Joe Biden really did say this:
At the end of his Erie, Pennsylvania ‘rally’ — I use the term advisedly — he wasn’t sure where to go. And, Biden, who wants every American to wear a mask, didn’t bother with his:
NBC’s Katy Tur reminded him how to wear one in Nevada:
He removed his mask to cough in front of an audience:
During the summer, he nearly fell asleep and forgot what he was going to say:
Last week, he called for a $15 million minimum wage, corrected it to $15,000 and finally got there with $15:
On Monday, October 12, in Toledo, Ohio, he said he was running for the Senate. Oh, dear:
On a more serious note, he recently told Pennsylvania voters he would not ban fracking, but he’s been consistent on saying he would ban fracking and fossil fuels (replaced by what, exactly?!) throughout his campaign:
Can you imagine if Donald Trump had done any of these things between 2016 and now? These clips would have been broadcast repeatedly. But, because it’s Biden, the Dems in the media (99.9%) ignore them.
As for packing the Supreme Court — adding more justices to it rather than just replacing them one by one — he consistently refuses to answer the question.
In this interview, he tells the reporter that only Republicans want to know the answer to the question and they don’t deserve that information:
Therefore, we can assume the answer is ‘yes’.
California congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, says the Democrats aren’t what they used to be:
In closing, Jesse Watters has an excellent summary of the Biden-Harris campaign platform:
In short, Joe Biden would undo all the good work that President Trump has done at home and abroad.
That means the possibility of war, dodgy deals with China and more, e.g. Iran.
At home, the probability would be soaring taxes, a crippling Green New Deal combined with increased poverty and inequality.
Why did it take Obama-Biden so long to get the US out of recession after 2008?
President Trump completed the job in short order in 2017.
Furthermore, Obama’s infrastructure promises of ‘shovel ready’ jobs and ‘I’m gonna build me some bridges’ never materialised during his eight years in the White House.
Why would Joe Biden operate any differently?
In closing, Biden voters should be aware that they are actually ticking the box for Kamala Harris, because she would be in the Oval Office fairly soon should Biden win. Based on his campaign utterances, Biden is unlikely to be able to take important decisions on his own and will be kept out of sight except on rare occasions.
This is dangerous territory.
Vote wisely. Use 2020 vision.