It’s nice to be right, and I’ve been right a lot in the past seven years since I started this blog. But after seeing President Joe Biden’s performance in last night’s presidential debate, I have to ask at what price has all this correctness come?
We saw, in vivid detail, how the sitting president is utterly incapable of serving in the office he holds, much less is capable of another four years as Leader of the Free World. I know his handlers and his unscrupulous wife will continue to prop him up so he gets through the next seven months, but what if — admittedly a long shot at this point — he should be reelected either by a fair vote or, as the Democratic Party has shown itself more than capable of doing, through some sort of dirty trick, staged crisis, or just plain old-fashioned corruption? Can this country sustain more of what it’s endured for the past three and a half years?
Before I get ahead of myself, let me point out just some, but by no means all, of the things I’ve been right about, giving the lie to the attacks I’ve sustained from denizens of the left during all that time:
— This administration, with collusion by the state media, has peddled a raft of lies to the electorate. That includes a ploy they employed during the debate last night, and which can only be described as Soviet in its absurd level of dishonesty, that Biden had a cold, which accounted for his poor performance in the debate — right.
— That Biden’s disgraceful exit from Afghanistan was the biggest disgrace in our nation’s history, and a line can be drawn directly from that to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the rising level of adventurism by America’s opponents — sadly, right.
I could go on, but I think the point is made. And so here we are today, a society and economy in disarray, in the midst of an unprecedented invasion by illegal aliens, facing growing wild fires around the world, and with a man supposedly at the helm of the country obviously incapable of steering the ship of state. If you had any doubt that I was using hyperbole when I said you wouldn’t trust this guy to drive your kid’s school bus, I’d think that doubt was dispelled last night.
It was clear, even to partisan observers, who was most physically and mentally prepared to hold the nuclear codes in his hand, and it wasn’t Joe Biden. Most of the post-debate talk, on both sides of the political divide, was how Biden could be eased out of the run he has envisaged and be replaced by someone more up to the job. And to beating Donald Trump. While the chatter among Dems was how shocked they were — why remains a mystery since Biden’s deterioration has been there for anyone to see all along — the best they could do to counter Donald Trump was accusing him of lying. Aside from the blatant lying done by the present incumbent, is that really the best they can offer? And in fact, most of their accusations were based on their own falsehoods.
It became so painful to watch Biden even Trump seemed to take compassion on him. At one point the men started arguing over their respective golf games and handicaps, and Trump finally said they should stop with the childishness. This coming from Trump, no less.
Where the Democratic Party will go from here remains an open question. It’s generally acknowledged that Biden will need to voluntarily step aside to allow his delegates to be free to vote for a new candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago in August. By then it will already be late in the game, with the first early voting in some states beginning in September. But if there was any doubt, Biden made it clear today while on the stump in North Carolina that he doesn’t intend to step aside. And clearly Doctah Jill, the First Lady and Chief Elder Abuser, isn’t encouraging her fading husband to step aside, regardless the cost to the country. Or, for that matter, to her husband.
That last part, about the cost to the country, is what concerns me most. What will be the country’s fate with another four years of this man? It’s hard to imagine, given how bad things already have become. When the country saw the damage done by Jimmy Carter it voted him out. But it is a different country today than it was in 1980, and will the country have the good sense and the courage to vote Joe Biden out? One hopes so, and the current polls show a majority are ready for a change, but there are so many unknown variables and wild cards that could be dealt between now and November, nothing can be assumed.
One wild card is the role third-party candidates — most notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr, — will have in pulling votes from one cadidate or the other. RFK Jr. is still working to get himself on more state ballots, fighting an uphill battle against the Dem power brokers. Many would have liked to see him on the stage last night as a counterpoint to both major candidates, but he narrowly missed meeting the guidelines set down by the debate organizers.
I will say, much to my surprise, the debate moderators — Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, both of CNN and both rabid Trump haters — did an amazingly balanced and measured job. Moderators of previous debates justifiably have come in for much criticism, but in all honesty, Tapper and Bash actually did a decent job, and they had some difficult questions for both candidates. Their fairness was at least in part responsible for leaving Biden to his own devices, which clearly proved insufficient.
All this said, I’m continuing with my plans to relocate out of the country. While I’m likely to implement those plans regardless who wins in November, the urgency will become much greater if it’s Biden. Nightly I see how we are sooooo fucked, but we’ll be even more fucked, exponentially so, should this shell of a president be reelected.
As I said in 2020, maybe you don’t like Trump’s tweets or some of this statements or his demeanor. I get it. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I strongly urge people to get past their TDS and attitudes brewed by the unrelenting venom shot at him by the state media, and consider the good of the country. At this point, it’s borderline treasonous not to put that first. I’m happy to claim vindication for all the things I’ve reported and opined on in the past seven years, but the cost to the country has been enormous. I hope we can start to lessen that cost.
Featured Image, Bewildered Joe, CNN, used under Fair Use.
Trump and Biden Split Screen, MSNBC, used under Fair Use.
A Tale of Two Debaters, CNN, used under Fair Use.
This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.
If you live in America, as I do, and you feel like the bottom monkey in that photo, no one would blame you. That might be true in some other countries right now, too, but I’m relating it mostly to my own country.
Watching the latest missteps, blunders, malfeasance, general incompetence, obvious dementia, and shameless dishonesty of what passes for our current Administration, there is not a day nor night that goes by that I don’t hold my hands to my head and say, “We are SOOOO fucked.”
Usually multiple times. It’s so bad sometimes I have to cover my eyes, unable to witness the latest travesty to waltz across the tube. And this from someone with a pretty strong stomach when it comes to horror scenes. Unfortunately, these horror scenes aren’t cinematic, but are Washington’s version of reality.
One has to wonder how what is supposed to be the most powerful country on earth has allowed itself to sink to this level. Actually, it can all be explained, and if you read my last post (which, if you haven’t, you need to now), you’ll understand precisely how it happened, just as you would if you’ve been reading my posts over the past several years.
No, it’s not a conspiracy theory (for which I have exceedingly little patience) to say it’s all part of a huge and far-ranging plot. No, it’s all been documented. And the plotters are already warming up for the next scene in their grand scheme to once more pull a fast one on the American public. One can hope we’re now inoculated to their schemes, perhaps more than we’re inoculated to the virus that is the single biggest thing the Democratic Party has going for it, but the cynic in me is not encouraged, despite the pundits’ blather to the contrary.
Now it is true that most American voters don’t believe the senile Jell-O Joe Biden is in charge in the White House, or anywhere else outside his self-delusional imagination, and that majority has to have grown even more watching some of his latest, if rare, and excruciatingly embarrassing, public performances. Anyone who has had an even passing brush with dementia in a loved one or otherwise knows what they’re witnessing. Of course, we should all be concerned that the country is being run by a shadow government, but the even bigger concern should be how that shadow government is driving the ship of state straight for the rocks, full speed ahead.
Their intent was pretty clear even before Jan. 20, and the evidence of what it consisted of was plainly manifest when, in one day, Jell-O Joe, at the direction of his handlers, whoever they are — and I do have some theories — undid four years of progress. Now, six months and a week and some into this horror show, it’s hard to even decide on an order for listing the most egregious elements which cross all fronts, domestic and foreign. So let’s just look at some of them, not in any kind of strict order.
The Border
Whose name is on those t-shirts? Can you spell Biden?
For me, it’s a toss up, which is more concerning, our troubled foreign policy, the huge upsurge in violent crime, or the catastrophe at our southwest border. In terms of immediate impact on the country and its inherent barbarity and inhumanity, I’ll go with the border. Jell-O Joe made it clear that our border would be open to anyone who goes to the trouble of crossing it, regardless of legal right to do so, and the hordes of border crashers — about a million in the first six months of this year alone, and heading to a new all-time record of 2 million by the end of the year — have been sure to quote him as having personally issued their invitation. And along with them has come a flood of illegal drugs, including enough deadly fentanyl sufficient to kill a large percentage of the country, illegal weapons, women and children being sex trafficked, violent criminals, and a wave of tens of thousands of new COVID infections. The Mexican cartels smuggling all those illegals have profited hugely, in the billions of dollars, from this free-for-all, and they didn’t even have to contribute to the Democratic Party or be a son of the President to cash in on this bonanza.
All the elements of what the Democratic Party seeks — a flood of future new illegal voters, augmentation of the permanent underclass on which the party depends for its very existence, and a wave of new COVID infections on which to build fear and set the stage for stealing the 2022 mid-term elections as it did in 2020 — are there, in plain sight. Well, plain sight, if the mass media cared to show what actually is going on along the border, especially along the lower Rio Grande. But of course, unless you’re watching Fox News, you may not have seen the mass of humanity, from more than 100 countries all over the world, pouring across our non-existent border every day since Jan. 20. And if you think this is only a border problem, consider that the Administration has been secretly busing and even using the military to fly illegal aliensall over the country.
To put things in perspective, consider that a million people is more population than six states. It would be the population of the 12th largest city in the country, between San Jose and Fort Worth. By the end of the year, at the current rate, two million people will be more than the population of 14 states and it would be equivalent to the fifth largest city, between Houston and Phoenix. Add the new numbers to illegals already in the country, and you’re looking at outnumbering all except the top few biggest states. Do the math, and you’ll see why this utter mockery of U.S. law is being allowed, oaths to faithfully execute the laws be damned. Adding insult to injury, you appoint a feckless Vice President who couldn’t care less about the border as the Border Czar, and a Homeland Security Secretary whose last concern seems to be security of the homeland, and who has no problem blatantly lying about what is going on at the border.
Crime
On the chance you haven’t been on an extended underwater cruise aboard a nuclear submarine or getting your news from CNN or MSNBC, you’ve been aware of surging violent crime around the country. Consider, if you will, these numbers which compare 2021 rates with 2020 rates, which already had surged in many cities compared with 2019:
Atlanta – Homicides are up 58% and shootings are up 40%
Portland, Oregon – Homicides are up 533% and shootings are up 126%
New York City – Homicides are up 13% and shootings are up 64%
Los Angeles – Homicides are up 22% and shootings are up 51%
Chicago – Homicides are up 5% and shootings are up 18%
Philadelphia – Homicides are up 37% and shootings are up 27%
Overall, 37 cities with available data saw an average increase in murders of 18% in the first three months of this year, compared with 2020. In Austin, murders are up 79%, rising from 19 to 34 in the first five months, year-to-year.
Police cars line up in Baltimore, one of the few big cities run by Democrats for decades where the murder rate hasn’t surged in 2021. Of course, the FBI already ranks it second in the nation — only St. Louis outranks it — with a higher murder rate than El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, from whence so many of those illegal migrants allegedly are fleeing crime.
Blacks are victims of these homicides and shootings to a disproportionate degree. While last summer’s widespread violence and lawlessness and the insane call to “defund the police” certainly set the stage for this surge, legislative, judicial, and prosecutorial abandonment of cash bail and releasing known and accused criminals to roam the streets have played no small role in the surge in violent crime, including aggravated assault, in dozens of cities across the country, from New York to Philadelphia to St. Louis to Los Angeles. A sane person would say more, not fewer, police were needed — including the 81 percent of black Americans who want the same level of, or more, policing — and would think a prosecutor’s job is to (speak of radical ideas) prosecute criminals, and not release them out on the streets to victimize more innocent citizens. Instead, George Soros financially backs these renegade prosecutors, the Dems blame it all on Donald Trump, and Jell-O Joe blames it on legal gun ownership instead of looking at their own incompetence and failed policies. This band of inveterate liars even had the chutzpah to say it was Republicans who wanted to defund the police. But, of course, we were talking about sane people, weren’t we?
Foreign Affairs
It’s called the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. But have you seen who is next in line?
If the worst thing about our current shift in foreign policy was a return of the apology tour that began under Barack Obama, things in this arena wouldn’t be too bad. But when we are berated by China for our alleged human rights abuses, and we just sit there and take it, and say nothing when Beijing mows under the rights of Hong Kongers and threatens Taiwan and Japan, that’s a more serious issue. And what can you say when the Commander in Chief has to resort to index cards to explain U.S. policy toward North Korea, or when the same said CiC keeps mixing up Syria and Libya on an international stage? What I’d say is that we’re in the proverbial deep doo-doo.
Biden restored $235 million in aid, frozen by the Trump Administration, to the Palestinians, and within weeks Hamas rockets were launched by the thousands onto Israel. For their good behavior and peaceful attitude, he added another $38.5 million to sweeten the pot and ostensibly pay for more rockets, which Hamas buys from the Iranians and other sources.
Of course, that’s just chump change compared with the $3 billion in funds that Biden unfroze so they could be returned to Iran. All part of the Administration’s plan to revive the disastrous nuclear agreement with that country. After all, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism which has vowed death to America and to Israel wouldn’t dream of using all that money for any nefarious purposes. Would it?
We’re pulling out of Afghanistan, which might not be the worst idea were we do to it in a controlled and honorable way. Instead it’s like we just discovered we passed our stop on the Metro and need to jump off the train and call an Uber at the next station. Never mind the carnage that many Afghans, who stood by us and supported us through the 20 years of this seemingly endless engagement, already are facing, or the abandonment of perhaps the best government the Afghans have had, ever.
Now no discussion of our misadventures in foreign affairs would be complete without mention of Secretary of State Antony Blinken inviting the UN, that bastion of human rights, to investigate “the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia” in the U.S. After all, the UN’s Human Rights Council includes such bastions of human rights as China, Cuba, Libya, Eritrea, Algeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. And let’s not forget Mauritania, where slavery is actively practiced to this day. Don’t you feel all fresh and clean, confessing your sins to these paradigms of liberty and justice? What? You don’t? You MUST be a racist!
Energy and Inflation
Under Trump, America became energy independent for the first time in 62 years. It felt pretty good knowing it wasn’t Saudi princes or Russian oligarchs profiting when I filled up at the pump. But that couldn’t be allowed to persist under Biden, and one of his first acts was canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, keeping the oil it would have carried from Canada on less environmentally sound trains and trucks, and XTing as many as 11,000 good paying union jobs (which he likes to blather so much about). Now while America and its close ally Canada doesn’t need a pipeline, in Biden’s world, Putin, Russia, and Germany do, so he greenlighted Russia’s Nord Stream 2 Pipeline by waiving sanctions against the company building it, Nord Stream 2 AG, and its German CEO, Matthias Warnig. Oh, did we mention that Warnig is a close ally of Putin, is a former East German Stasi intel officer, and has served on the supervisory boards of major Russian companies? Now who is Putin’s puppy?
Homelessness isn’t just hidden away any more.
You may have noticed, as I have, how it’s costing you nearly 60 percent more at the pump than it was a year ago, and in some places, like California, gasoline is approaching $6 a gallon, more than in many European countries. Also rising are electric rates, up more than 20 percent in my case, and it’s not all due to the rising cost of petroleum. And if you miss those wild wonderful Jimmy Carter years, we’ve even experienced fuel shortages and lines at the pumps.
Rising energy costs are just one factor fueling inflation, which is surging at rates not seen in 13 years and, in some categories, in 30 years. Along with fuel, consumers are seeing increases in categories as diverse as food, vehicles, home purchases, and construction materials. Record federal debt — currently standing at $28.5 trillion, and climbing — and gratuitous federal payments that make it more attractive for many workers to stay home than go back to work add to the upward pressure on prices. We’ve — by “we,” I’m referring to our illustrious Congress, which the American public holds in even lower esteem than it does the mass media — now come to talk about trillions like they’re rounding errors. Can anyone spell Weimar Republic?
COVID
Finally, in this round-up, we come to what has been the national obsession of the past 18 months, COVID-19. If one wants to be generous, the best one can conclude is that the Biden Administration has succeeded — and that “success” lies in sending out incredibly mixed and confusing signals. If one looks closer at the facts, little of the twisting and turning public pronouncements make any sense, and both the hypocrisy of the Administration’s positions as well as their real purpose come into focus. While bleating about wanting more people to get vaccinated, the Administration comes out with new “guidelines” telling vaccinated people to again wear masks under certain circumstances. Never mind that a fully vaccinated American has a higher chance of being hit by lightning or bitten by a shark than contracting COVID-19, much less dying from it. By the CDC’s own numbers, breakthrough infections — not deaths, just infections — occur in one of 10,000 people. That’s .01%. Deaths from COVID in fully vaccinated individuals are even more rare. Yet we’re supposed to change our behaviors once more over this supposed new threat.
Much hoopla is made of the Delta variant of the virus, but what isn’t being said is the fact that this variant, while more contagious than initial variants, is less deadly. Far less, for vaccinated individuals. Those in power don’t want you to know that, but even in Britain, where this variant took off after its introduction from India, they’re acknowledging this fact.
If you’re expecting consistency from the likes of CDC Director Rochelle Walensky — who seems to have roughly the intelligence of your average chihuahua and kowtows to the party line, whether it comes from the White House or the powerful American Federation of Teachers — you’re not going to get it. Any more than you’ll get it from the Exalted Poobah Anthony Fauci who, among a litany of flip-flops that could occupy an entire piece, lies to Congress about the NIH’s possible role in creating COVID-19 in the first place.
Meanwhile, while studies show that having contracted COVID-19 conveys natural immunity in most cases, we have absolutely no information on how long the immunity granted by vaccination lasts or whether booster shots will be needed. One would think that finding some evidence addressing these questions would be a top priority.
Some people feel you just can’t be safe enough. That’s how the Administration wants you to be.
If you’re confused by the messaging coming out of the White House and its own version of Baghdad Bob, spokesbabbler Jen Psaki — who tells you to follow the guidance just because they told you to — look behind the scenes to see what people in power do. This might reveal their true motivation. Remember what I said up above about all those infected illegals being allowed in and then shipped all over the country? And how they’re indicative of how the Administration really isn’t serious about limiting spread of COVID and is a key piece in the Dem plan to create the nationwide fear and panic to steal the 2022 mid-term elections, like they did the Presidential election of 2020? If you have the bad habit, as I do, of applying logic to what people do, it’s hard to avoid coming to this conclusion.
Another indication of how little the Administration really cares about your well-being is the recent decision by the Justice Department to drop its investigation into the 15,000 COVID nursing home deaths in New York, or similar huge death counts in other Dem-controlled states, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, while limiting its investigation in New Jersey. Anyone who felt sorry for Attorney General Merrick Garland not making it to the Supreme Court can drop their regrets now that we see he’s just one more hard-left Dem apparatchik. So much for justice, even for the dead or their families.
Me, I’m happy to live in the free state of Florida and to have a governor not subject to the whims and wishes of the White House and the Democratic Party. I just hope all those people fleeing here from the unfree states don’t bring their stupid political ideas with them. As a country we might be like that bottom monkey in the photo, but here we’re hanging on as long as we can, trying not to be screwed any more than we are, anyway.
And make no mistake: We all are.
Photo credits: Featured photo by cottonbro on Pexels; used with permission. Biden Let Us In by Washington Examiner; used under Fair Use. Baltimore Police Cars by Bruce Emmerling on Pixabay; used with permission. Historic political cartoon, source unknown; used under Fair Use. Downtown Tent by Adam Thomas on Unsplash; used with permission. Masked Couple by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash; used with permission.
Beginning with this post, I’ll also be posting on Substack in my new community there, Issues That Matter. Follow me here, and there.
Yesterday I presented my Profiles in Cowardice 8-5. If you haven’t read that piece, which includes an explanation of the Profiles, you should read it first.
Today we present Profiles in Cowardice 4-1.
4. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Like with Chicago’s Lightfoot, a reasonable person has to scratch his or her head and wonder, how did this overgrown buffoon get to be mayor of America’s largest city? It’s said that New York City has good water, so there must be another explanation. The answer lies with mindless Democratic Party loyalism and the mental frailty known as liberalism.
Back when I lived in New York I came to realize that most New Yorkers, despite the reverie in which some hold the city’s residents, aren’t terribly bright. But even New Yorkers were fed up with the widespread crime and dirt and deterioration that marked Gotham in the 1970s, when I lived in the city. It took a Rudy Giuiani twenty years later to get things sorted and return New York to the realm of habitability after three decades of decline and decay. But that wasn’t something de Blasio could tolerate, and in short order he plunged New York back into the chaos that preceded Giuliani. And then, in a single week at the end of May, he allowed the forces of anarchy and destruction near-free reign, finishing the job he started, and things have only gotten worse in the months since.
New Yorkers report that the homeless have taken over the subway system – the world’s largest mass transit system – child molesters have taken over formerly upscale hotels, and nude men wielding 2 x 4s roam the streets. Thugs knock over elderly people just because they can, violent criminals are released overnight on their own recognizance, only to return to the streets and commit more crimes, and whole blocks of formerly tony boutiques and shops are boarded up. Along with hundreds of other businesses, looters ransacked Macy’s flagship store on Herald Square (yes, Virginia, there is an idiot in Gracie Mansion), and the murder rate has soared to levels not seen in many years. Is it any wonder that so many people are leaving New York that moving trucks are double-parked as they load the furniture of those who have given up on life in New York ever returning to normal?
After urging people to go about their normal lives at the beginning of the coronavirus fiasco, de Blasio continues to keep the city locked-down, and the country’s most populous city remains a ghost of its former self.
In his latest act of cowardly moronicy, de Blasio has announced he will put all top city employees, including himself, on furlough to help ameliorate New York’s massive budgetary shortfalls. But New Yorkers must wonder, in de Blasio’s case, if they will be able to tell the difference.
3. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
If it seems that I’m picking on New York, it’s because it’s so easy to pick on. Cowardice seems to have taken over the state, beginning right at the top with the Empire State’s chief executive. Or Coward in Chief, if you will.
It’s hard to overplay Andrew Cuomo’s cowardice, even harder to overplay his utter, shameless dishonesty. A shell game conman in Brighton Beach would seem like the epitome of honesty and discretion compared with Cuomo.
While Cuomo made small rodent noises decrying the violence downstate in Gotham – more indicative of the antipathy he and de Blasio have for each other – he didn’t do anything about it. If that were his worst offense, Cuomo might have been spared receiving his own Profile in Cowardice. But Cuomo’s offenses are far greater than that.
This recipient of the white feather yowled about how he needed ventilators, needed hospital beds, needed PPE, needed just about everything to deal with the coronavirus pandemic coming to his state. Never mind that, as governor, Cuomo had taken no action to address a possible pandemic. While it’s a matter of some debate whether Cuomo was willfully remiss or was just doing what his predecessors had (or hadn’t) done to prepare, it’s not a matter of debate that Cuomo got everything he begged Trump for, and then some. In return for receiving every ventilator needed – New York wound up with so may ventilators it started sending them to other states – for getting a U.S. Navy hospital ship, which was hardly used, and a complete Army field hospital at the Javits Center which treated about 1,100 patients before being closed in May for lack of need, Cuomo now has come out and accused the President of having “caused” the coronavirus outbreak in New York. Do we want to talk about ignorance with impudence? One need go no further than Cuomo.
Let’s look at the numbers, Governor. The death rate in New York State stands at 1,703 per million population (it’s significantly higher than that in New York City, but let’s just look at the state of New York). The only higher death rate in all the world is across the river in New Jersey, another Democratic state, where it stands at 1,744 per million. Outside the U.S., the highest death rate is that of San Marino, with 1,237 deaths per million, followed by Peru with 935 deaths per million. The death rate for the U.S. overall stands at 607 per million – about a third of New York’s rate, and eleventh in the world.
If the half-dozen states with the highest death rates – all Democratically controlled states – were taken out of the equation, the U.S. death rate falls to about 362 per million, twentieth in the world, down between The Netherlands and Ireland. Now you probably don’t know that, if you get your news from the mass media, who would have you believe the U.S. is the worst case in the world, but those are the facts, if you’re still one of those increasingly rare people to whom facts matter. But we digress.
What you also might not know, and which secures Cuomo’s place among my Profiles in Cowardice, is that it was his order to send thousands of elderly COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, leading to thousands of excess deaths – estimated between 6,400 and as high as 12,000 or more – among nursing home and long-term care facility residents and staff, ostensibly to save space in hospitals, even as the Comfort hospital ship and the Javits Center field hospital went underutilized. Even as the policy was being questioned, Cuomo doubled down on his decision, despite having called nursing homes a “feeding frenzy” for the virus.
“It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” said one person whose elderly father had been in a nursing home where 50 people died, before dying of the ailment at home.
The DOJ is now investigating New York, along with three other states – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – whose Democratic governors followed similar policies as Cuomo’s.
Cuomo, more than perhaps any other governor in the country, has tried to present himself as the most effective counterweight to the coronavirus, and when you have a brother who is a CNN anchor providing you with journalistic oral gratification, you can try to get away with that. A look at the facts tells a different story, and Cuomo has earned his place on our list.
2. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
We’ve talked about Nancy “Let Them Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi before, and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this, we’ll probably have to talk about her again. Meanwhile, she has earned her place on our Profiles of Cowardice.
If you’re disturbed by hypocrisy, as I am, it’s hard to find a bigger hypocrite than Pelosi. You know when she says she’s praying for Donald Trump, the saints are rolling over in their graves, groaning. When she says she cares about the Constitution while tearing up the President’s speech right up there on the dais, the Founding Fathers are rolling their eyes. When she says she’s looking out for the ordinary people, you can just see her bankers rubbing their hands together as they count her many millions of dollars and her fellow millionaires who are Dem donors doing the same. And when she says she wants to get assistance to the millions of individuals and businesses suffering due to economic dislocation caused by coronavirus shut-downs, if it doesn’t include payoffs to Democractic causes and sacred cows, she’s not in any rush, so suck it up, suckers.
Ice Cream Nancy’s latest display of hypocrisy was another hair styling kerfuffle (what is it with politicians and their hair?) After publicly supporting closure of hair salons to keep from spreading coronavirus, Pelosi was caught on camera trotting maskless around a San Francisco hair salon, which had been closed to the public, so she could get her hair done. After all, she’s Nancy Pelosi, and you’re not. The graceful thing to do would have been to cop to what she did. Even Lori Lightfoot, in her own way, claimed responsibility for her hair salon hypocrisy. But Pelosi is too much of a coward to do that. Reminiscent of the words used by former Washington Mayor Marion Barry when he was caught red-handed snorting cocaine in a hotel room with a prostitute – “Bitch set me up!” – Pelosi used virtually those same words.
No one put Pelosi in that stylist’s chair other than herself, any more than the police put Barry in that hotel room. Neither was set up, but both are cowardly liars. Meanwhile, the owner of the salon – it was not her but an independent stylist who let Pelosi in, but it was she who released the security video – has gotten so much hate directed at her that she has to permanently close her salon and leave San Francisco. Not a word of remorse, much less apology, from cowardly Pelosi. No, indeed. It’s Ice Cream Nancy who has demanded the apology from the salon owner.
But Pelosi earned her penultimate place on our list for something much more serious than her hypocrisy. As cities across the country burn, she has blocked every piece of law-and-order legislation that has been brought before the House. If it’s bad for Trump, Pelosi’s arch-nemesis, let ‘er burn. The irony is that Pelosi’s strategy might actually be working in Trump’s favor. It wouldn’t be the first time.
1. Joe Biden
And the winner of the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice (envelope, please): Jell-O Joe Biden.
If you’ve been watching Joe Biden over the past several months, you’ve seen a doddering old fool babbling nonsensically, almost entirely sequestered in his Wilmington basement. Propped up by his wife, Jill, and his faceless political handlers, an unprejudiced observer would call what is being done to Biden elder abuse, all in the cynical pursuit of political power. It’s painful listening and watching this man as he embarrasses himself on a daily basis. The few questions he answers are softball questions that have been scripted or pre-approved by his handlers. Without a teleprompter, he’s lost, even responding to these cream puff questions. He can barely get by with a teleprompter, mechanically reading statements prepared for him.
As a human being, not as a politician, I have sympathy for Biden. I’ve been around dementia and have seen its debilitating effects first hand, and Biden exhibits all the symptoms of it. It’s a difficult and frustrating stage that afflicts many older people. I can see old Uncle Joe having his Jell-O with other kindly elder folk at dinner in a rest-home dining room. Thus my name for him. What I can’t see is him at the helm of the nation in the Oval Office.
Biden, as we’ve previously documented in several postings on this site, has been mired in various corrupt deals and bad policies for much of his political career, most recently during his stint as Barack Obama’s Vice President. Biden’s corruption goes beyond enriching son Hunter, who leveraged his father’s position to fill his coffers and fortunes in Ukraine and China. As former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi ably laid out in detail at the Republican National Convention, Biden has spent a half century in politics enriching various members of his family, much like a crime family boss. It’s impossible to determine his position on any issue since, if you don’t like what it is today, wait a day or two, and it will change. He is the quintessential opportunist.
It’s pretty obvious that the Dem power brokers know Biden can’t possibly serve out a full term, if by chance he is elected President, and they have installed Kamala Harris – another malleable politician who will blow with whatever wind is beneficial to her – as his putative running mate, but who is the real candidate. Speaking in Tampa on Tuesday, in one of his rare trips out of his basement, a befuddled Biden let the cat out of the bag when he referred to the “Harris-Biden ticket.” Doing a verbal dance around the reality, Harris in a recent speech referred to “a Harris administration,” even if she tried to recover with a closing reference to the “Biden-Harris ticket.” Do you wonder who the real head of the ticket is?
It’s not Biden’s corruption, and certainly not his mental state, that earns him the top spot on our Profiles in Cowardice. No, it’s his willingness to put himself ahead of his country, his willingness to be used and manipulated politically, his willingness to do and say anything, just so he can be President of the United States, even with the full knowledge he is not up to the task. He has as much as acknowledged that fact himself, and that was months before his condition had deteriorated to its current degraded state.
If you were on an airliner and Joe Biden was the pilot, you’d get off that airplane. Joe Biden himself would. Yet, he wants to put himself at the controls of the country, be captain of the Free World. And for that, he deserves the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice.
It wasn’t always like this in American politics. There was a time when those who would run for high office put their country, and not their own political or vain egotistical interests, first. If you’re of a certain age you might remember, as I do, a former Senator from Missouri named Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton was named to be George McGovern’s running mate in the race for President in 1972. And then it came out that Eagleton had suffered over the years from bouts of depression and previously had been hospitalized and given electoshock treatments. After some hemming and hawing and questions about his suitability to be the next in line to have his finger on the nuclear button, Eagleton stepped down.
Eagleton had performed well in all the positions he held, including Missouri AG, and he went on to serve two more terms in the Senate. I’d venture that Eagleton would run rings around Biden given their respective conditions at the time of their nominations. But while Eagleton set aside his political ambitions, Biden refuses to acknowledge what is openly apparent, allowing himself to be used as the figurehead in a political ploy that might well be the biggest act of fraud ever attempted in American political history.
I give you my nomination for the No. 1 spot on the Profiles of Cowardice, Jell-O Joe Biden.
May God (or the American electorate) save us.
Photo credits: White feather featured image, Max Braxmeier, Pixabay, used with permission. The following used under Fair Use: Bill de Blasio, Robert Miller, New York Post; Andrew Cuomo, AP Photo; Nancy Pelosi, greatamericandaily.com; Joe Biden, Kevin Lamarque, Reuters
