Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Election fraud in many forms has been around for a very long time. The art was initially over 150 years ago perfected by the Democrat Tammany Hall group in New York, growing from just Manhattan to state control (and largely supported by large numbers of Irish immigrants). Later similar enduring Democrat political dynasties in Chicago, St Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans and other cities & states joined in. It's been fairly well documented that a combination of Joseph Kennedy Sr. the Dailey machine and the Mafia turned a close election in Cook County Il. (Chicago & environs) to JFK in a very close national election and may well have been the decisive final factor. There was widespread concern over the issue but Richard Nixon refused to push for redress, as he said "for the good of the Country".

I grew up in a political family (Democrats) in Michigan and witnesses some of this stuff myself.

I believe what at least appears to be your axiomatic assertion that there was no fraud at all, particularly in the key swing states, is demonstrably false, and very unrealistic. There is certainly ample evidence that fraud was occurring at several levels in States from California to Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Whether it was decisive in any of these stated is something I don't claim to know. Trump was certainly very focused on the possibility in both his many statements and attempted actions on the matter. Contributing factors were likely his very combative nature and the experience of, protracted and often illegal, efforts to disgrace unseat and impeach him, none of which yielded anything decisive or of sufficient legal merit, and much of which was attended by criminal actions on the part of senior Democrat Government officials. These things have consequences.

We have seen much more thuggery attending the riotous takeovers of Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle and events in many other cities than has been established in any Trupm or Republican inspired efforts. That's just an observable fact.

You are a smart guy, but your categorical assertions in this and other matters suggest either a serious lack of objectivity or, more likely in my view, an excessive zeal for particular political causes, and the blindness that often results. You, of course blame me for the same thing. I believe you are wrong.

While there may well be an organized Republican effort to focus on this stuff, there is also an equally well organized Democrat effort to control the election process in key swing states and to loosen restrictions on voter ID and ballot security. What do you suppose are the motives behind Biden's refusal to enforce existing immigration laws on our southern border and rather secretive dispersion of immigrants throughout the country -combined as it is with continuing efforts to get such illegal residents access to the ballot box. This is exactly how Democrats turned California (with a long history of effective Republican governors) into a solid Blue state over the past 25 years.

Human nature remains full of contradictions and complexity. It defies the rational organization in every form, and the authoritarian governance that must attend and support it. Efforts to achieve such perfection have all failed, yielding only tyranny and poverty. Key elements of the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, which addresses the folly of such efforts, are also found in the Sumerian Epic Gilgamesh which preceded it by more than a millennium.

Contributing factors were likely his very combative nature and the experience of, protracted and often illegal, efforts to disgrace unseat and impeach him, none of which yielded anything decisive or of sufficient legal merit, and much of which was attended by criminal actions on the part of senior Democrat Government officials.

We have seen much more thuggery attending the riotous takeovers of Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle and events in many other cities than has been established in any Trupm or Republican inspired efforts.

I have not claimed that Biden's victory was necessarily a result of fraud, though it remains a possibility … just as does JFKs election.

I wonder how most Biden voters feel about their choices now.

The Republican Party has long ceased to offer policy ideas and is focusing on culture wars and obstruction. Their big statement this week has been to throw “Let’s go, Brandon” into speeches and, in the case of Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), into a rap video in which she stars. The phrase means “F**k Joe Biden,” for those in the know; they use it because social media moderators do not flag it.

The press secretary for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tweeted it out on Thursday morning, just after the president announced a framework for the Build Back Better bill, the larger infrastructure package the Democrats intend to propose alongside the smaller bipartisan infrastructure bill. Congress has been negotiating this larger package intensely for months, and it appears to be reaching a final form.

But while the media has followed every twist and turn of Democratic disagreements over the measure, suggesting those normal disagreements are somehow a sign of dysfunction, the big story of the negotiations has gone largely unnoticed. That big story is that Republican lawmakers simply refused to participate in discussions over a series of proposals that as a whole are backed by 57% of the American people and that have even higher approval rates individually: one poll found 83% of Americans eager to give the government the power to negotiate lower drug prices. (In contrast, only 33% of the American people liked the Trump tax cuts passed without Democratic votes in 2017.)

A refusal to join debate on such a popular issue is dysfunction, indeed.

Instead of participating in the democratic system, Republicans turned over to conservative Democrats, especially Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the job of making conservative changes to the measure, while they simply fired insults at the president.

Republicans are frustrated in part because Biden and the Democrats are remaking the nation. After forty years in which lawmakers rolled back government action, the Democrats under Biden are investing again in the American people.

In his remarks about the Build Back Better plan on Thursday, Biden noted that for most of the twentieth century, we invested in ourselves, and that investment in our families and children, including through education, was key to our prosperity and international standing.

In the 1980s, though, we abandoned that investment, handing the task of developing the country to private interests. It didn’t work. From being first in the world for infrastructure, the World Economic Forum now lists us 13th. From leading the world in educational achievement, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development now ranks us 35th out of 37 major countries for investment in childhood education and care.

“We need to build America from the bottom up and the middle out, not from top down with the trickle-down economics that’s always failed us,” Biden said. “I can’t think of a single time when the middle class has done well but the wealthy haven’t done very well. I can think of many times, including now, when the wealthy and the super-wealthy do very well and the middle class don’t do well.”

While outlining the details of the Build Back Better plan can wait until there is a final bill, we do know that the final blueprint provides a massive investment in childcare and eldercare, families, and education, and it uses the need to address climate change to produce good jobs. The government will serve the American public, not a small group of business leaders.

“Any single element of this framework would fundamentally be viewed as a fundamental change in America,” Biden said accurately on Thursday. “Taken together, they’re truly consequential.”

The Biden administration announced another major investment in the American people this week.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a plan to modernize American diplomacy. The plan centers around State Department employees, “because,” Blinken said, “they’re our greatest asset.” He promised to “elevate new voices and encourage more initiative and more innovation,” and also to encourage diplomats to engage more fully with Americans at home, so that our foreign interactions both reflect the needs of our democracy and make sense to American citizens.

Blinken intends to ask for congressional approval to establish a new bureau for cyberspace and digital policy. He will also name a new special envoy for critical and emerging technology. This new push will challenge China’s growing power in these fields and reestablish U.S. leadership; Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius called it “part of a much broader effort by the Biden administration to get serious about the global technology race.”

Blinken also plans to increase staffing to address future pandemics, and to seek funding for training diplomats to address climate issues.

His focus on the people of the State Department illustrates the nation’s shift away from unilateral actions and military solutions and toward multilateral diplomacy, meaning that the U.S. wants to “cooperate with other countries to contend with the greatest challenges of our time, none of which we can tackle effectively alone.” “[W]herever and whenever new rules are being debated, for example, on how the global economy should work, how the internet should be governed, how our environment should be protected, how human rights should be defined and defended,” Blinken said, “American diplomats need to be at the table.”

Under Biden, the Democrats are replacing the Republican ideology of the past forty years, which focused on individual liberty and cowboy diplomacy, with a plan to invest in our people and to cooperate with other countries.

This return to principles that ushered in our most prosperous years hardly seems like a good reason to curse the president.

Quote:

Frank Apisa wrote:

Apparently the fact that the dozens of election fraud cases have been laughed out of courts all across the country...many presided over by judges appointed by Trump...

...just does not register with the right, George.

Some have some have not. No surprise there. I have not claimed that Biden's victory was necessarily a result of fraud, though it remains a possibility … just as does JFKs election.

I wonder how most Biden voters feel about their choices now.

Pfizer admits it’s treating Israel as a unique “laboratory” to assess COVID jab effects. Whatever happens in Israel can reliably be expected to happen elsewhere, months later
Pfizer entered into an exclusivity agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Health, so the only COVID shot available is Pfizer’s. The Pfizer shot has a higher risk for heart inflammation among young men than some of the other COVID shots, but Israeli youth have no option but to get the most dangerous one
Pfizer’s shot went from a 95% effectiveness in December 2020 to 39% by late July when the Delta strain became predominant in Israel. In response to obvious vaccine failure, Israel started giving out third boosters at the end of July 2021
Vaccine failure is also evident in Israeli data showing fully vaccinated are at higher risk of severe illness when infected with SARS-CoV-2 or any of its variants than unvaccinated, and now make up the bulk of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths
Natural immunity is far superior to the protection you get from the COVID shot because when you recover from the infection, your body makes antibodies against all five proteins of the virus, plus memory T cells that remain even once antibody levels diminish.

The next Presidential election is almost three years away. I'm reminded of an old Arab fable, which put into contemporary language goes like this::

Three Bedouin wanderers were caught attempting to steal some prized horses from the Sultans stables, and summarily brought before him for pronouncement of punishment, which was quickly done . All three were condemned to decapitation the next morning, and thrown into a prison chamber for the last night of their lives. As they were being led out, one of the three , the ever-adventurous Ahab, spoke up to the Sultan claiming to be a man of extraordinary abilities and promising him that, given a year he could teach the Sultan's prized stallion to talk, and that, if he failed he would happily submit to the punishment. The Sultan pondered a moment and then said "You can have your year, but if at its end the Stallion cannot talk you will suffer a very painful death." That night in the prison chamber Ahab's companions reminded him that with a swift stroke of a sword they will be with Allah the next morning while you, Ahab have a year in which to contemplate a painful death. " That's true" replied Ahab, "but a year is a long time. In a year the Sultan may die , or I might die, … or the ******* horse might talk."

Trump may not be the Republican candidate in the next election, there are after all, a number of emerging strong contenders.

Moreover, apart from a frequently expressed visceral hatred of Trump I believe you would have a very hard time convincing any intelligent observer that our country is any better off now than during Trump's term of office. Our economy is faltering, the cost and quantity of our petroleum imports is rising, inflation is accelerating at a higher pace than anytime in the last three decades ( it was worse only under Jimmy Carter); violent crime is rising fast, our allied are dispirited, our competitors and potential enemies emboldened.

[True enough. But my concern would hold if the candidate were not Trump, but rather someone who thinks what Trump has done is not disqualifying. Actually, my concern would hold if the candidate were not someone who is ACTIVELY opposing what Trump has done during his time in office...and since.

Trump was (is) the worst thing that has ever happened to our Republic...and that includes the Civil War. The truth is we may never recover from what happened during the years he was in office. With some luck, we will, but the amount of luck will have to be massive. America's trouble right now is NOT the state of its economy...but the condition of is democracy.

And above all, in order to recover, NO REPUBLICAN SHOULD EVER BE ELECTED TO THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT AGAIN...and as few Republicans elected to the Congress as possible.

Hope all is well with you and your family, George. I wish nothing but the best for you.

You can ignore the evidence.