Category: Biden/Harris

COVID-19 state of emergency ending?

by philg

H.J. Res. 7 proposes that coronapanic in the U.S. be officially terminated, despite Joe Biden’s desire to continue the State of Emergency at least through May (at which point it can be extended if a variant of concern is identified!).

Who wants to continue cowering? Let’s look at how the democratically elected representatives of the people voted…

We can look at the roll call in the Senate for either double-nays or a “nay” and a “did not vote” (some of these folks are too old to show up to work anymore!). States where cowering is most highly prized:

  • California
  • Hawaii
  • Maryland
  • Maskachusetts
  • New Jersey
  • New York (defrost Andrew Cuomo to manage, with some help from young women?)
  • Oregon
  • Rhode Island
  • Vermont
  • Washington

It’s a little more complex in the House.

Not a single Republican who Follows the Science could be found and there were 11 Deplorable Democrats (one from Florida, of course!). The Scientists of Massachusetts celebrated diversity and independent thinking:

How’s CVS helping in our national fight against a virus that attacks the obese? Cadbury (owed by Hershey, which promotes women ahead of the other 73 gender IDs recognized by Science) eggs can be obtained at a discount… if you buy 10. Coca Cola, which is “Creating a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion”, is available on favorable terms in quantity 36. M&Ms supports women flipping the status quo… if you buy two enormous bags. From the CVS we can walk to:

Hate had no home in our neighborhood back in Boston (at least to judge by the lawn signs of the all-white homeowners) and it seems that SARS-CoV-2 has no chance anywhere in the U.S. that CVS does business.

(What if you want to protect yourself against COVID-19 by consuming several pounds of candy without an explicit social justice message on the wrappers? The U.S. brands of Ferrero are potentially DEI-free: Butterfinger, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Nestlé Crunch, etc. Lindt, Swiss-made at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire airport, does not single out any subgroup of consumers on its package. Mondelēz, which owns Toblerone, Milka, Freia, and Côte d’Or, also refrains from advertising its social justice credentials on the packages.)

Related:

  • “WHO experts revise Covid-19 vaccine advice, say healthy kids and teens low risk” (CNN, March 29, 2023) is a “revision” not a “reversal” on the question on whether 6-month-old babies should be injected with an experimental medicine (as Science/CDC says they should) against a disease that kills 82-year-olds
  • “The President strongly opposes HJ Res 7, and the administration is planning to wind down the COVID national emergency and public health emergency on May 11…” (Fox News)
Full post, including comments

ChatGPT waxes poetic about Joe Biden and Corn Pop

by philg

Here’s ChatGPT (Feb 22) on the Vanquishing of Corn Pop:

What if we need a poem about the second greatest American?

Why is Kamala Harris only “a role model for girls everywhere”? What stops an ambitious young person of any of the 74 gender IDs recognized by science from having sex with a powerful decades-older politician?

Suppose that we want to brighten a Deplorable friend’s day?

“It is important to remain neutral and impartial in my responses and not take a position on controversial or divisive issues.”

Full post, including comments

Honduran and Venezuelan coffee bad; Honduran and Venezuelan migrants good

by philg

Here’s a tweet in which a famous advocate of open borders for people says that he wants closed borders for commerce:

In other words: Honduran and Venezuelan coffee bad; Honduran and Venezuelan migrants good.

Is there any philosophical inconsistency in wanting to increase the tide of migrants washing into the U.S. while simultaneously refusing to buy goods and services from foreigners who’ve elected to stay in their home countries?

Full post, including comments

Why hasn’t Maulana Karenga been invited to the White House to light the kinara?

by philg

President Biden has made Kwanzaa an official U.S. government holiday. Examples:

‘

Wikipedia says that the creator of Kwanzaa, Professor Maulana Karenga (formerly “Ron Everett”), is alive and well and working at California State University, Long Beach. Why hasn’t he been invited to the White House to light the kinara? Who knows more about Kwanzaa than the person who invented it, a couple of years after Kamala Harris was born:

Professor Karenga could also address systemic racism in our criminal justice system. From Wikipedia:

In 1971, he was convicted of felony assault, torture, and false imprisonment of women. He denied involvement and claimed the prosecution was political in nature. Karenga was imprisoned in California Men’s Colony until he received parole in 1975.

One of the victims gave testimony of how Karenga and other men tortured her and another woman. The woman described having been stripped naked and beaten with an electrical cord.

Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said. They also were hit on the heads with toasters.

Karenga has declined to discuss the convictions with reporters and does not mention them in biographical materials.[24] During a 2007 appearance at Wabash College, he again denied the charges and described himself as a former political prisoner.

And, of course, to readers who are celebrating, let me wish you a joyous and peaceful Kwanzaa. When I was growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, the first day of Kwanzaa (December 26) was a special time. Friends and family members would fill our home. We would listen to the elders tell stories. During dinner, we would discuss why the Hanukkah presents, e.g., socks, that we had received over 8 nights were so much crummier than all of the awesome Christmas presents that the neighbor kids had received in just one morning.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Matt Taibbi’s story about Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story

by philg

Have folks tried to follow and understand the story about Twitter’s pre-election-2020 suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and other material that politicians asked them to deep-six?

I think there is supposed to be a narrative in here, but it is so chopped up by the presentation as individual tweets that it is tough to follow.

Has Matt Taibbi mostly proved that Twitter needs a substantial re-thinking to be suitable for long-form text? (I think tweets should be allowed at any length up to the standard relational database CLOB (character large object) limit of 2 billion characters, but a reader sees only a short summary (that long-form authors are forced to craft) until he/she/ze/they clicks “more”)

Readers: Have you figured out whether there is anything of interest in this reveal of internal Twitter machinations?

Update: In the official NYT version of history, Twitter’s shaping of what viewpoints people could express (or send to each other in private messages) never happened. The front page of the NYT time has space to talk about “notable diversity” of the U.S. World Cup team, but there is nothing about the Twitter files reveal. (Separately, I dispute that the US team is diverse. There are no gender ID requirements for World Cup players and yet for some reason players of only one gender ID have been selected.)

(Joe Biden’s granddaughter also does not exist according to the NYT. A search for plaintiff “Lunden” Roberts or granddaughter “Navy Joan” yields no results on nytimes.com.)

Full post, including comments

The Illustrated History of Corn Pop as a Christmas Gift?

by philg

It’s December and therefore time to think about Christmas gifts. My vote for best all-around gift, suitable for friends and family of all ages… Joey: The Story of Joe Biden, by Dr. Jill Biden (who better to tell the story than a physician who wasn’t around at the time?).

The Vanquisher of Corn Pop who kept Americans safe from SARS-CoV-2 was an early safety advocate:

Sometimes the best way to avoid spreading a contagious virus is a communal bowl:

Readers: Any better ideas for Christmas gifts?

Related:

Full post, including comments

Why didn’t Joe Biden visit his granddaughter in Arkansas for Thanksgiving?

by philg

Joe Biden spent Thanksgiving connecting with the American working class and hearing about their struggles in an economy ravaged by inflation. “Biden, family hit Nantucket stores for some holiday shopping” (AP):

Biden, his wife, Jill, and daughter Ashley went from store to store on Main Street in downtown Nantucket, lingering at Polo Ralph Lauren, Murray’s Toggery Shop and The Black Dog, among other establishments.

The president’s son Hunter and his wife, Melissa, were also shopping with their 2-year-old son, Beau.

The real story is about the Second Wannsee Conference, chaired by a Mexican-American and a Black poet:

As Biden went from store to store, a reporter asked what he thought about a dinner meeting former President Donald Trump recently had at his Florida home with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist. Both of Trump’s dinner guests have expressed anti-semitic views. Trump has said he did not know anything about Fuentes’ background.

(the first Wannsee Conference happened in 1942, the year that the Vanquisher of Corn Pop was born)

I’m curious as to why President Biden didn’t go to Arkansas, home to the nation’s greatest American art museum, to visit his granddaughter Navy Joan, daughter of retired stripper Lunden Roberts, whose family court career gives men roughly 5 million good reasons to study Ye’s early work carefully:

Like Nantucket, Arkansas is home to some of our working class brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters.

Entering “lunden roberts” and “navy joan” in the New York Times search engine yields no results. So I am apparently the only person in the U.S. who wonders why Joe Biden’s granddaughter does not get to meet her famous grandfather.

Photos from a January 2019 visit to Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas:

A 2SLGBTQQIA+ painting from 1885:

Bentonville’s Elizabeth Warren museum predicted the exodus from Twitter:

It would have been nice if this had been our rental car:

There’s also the Walmart Museum, in which we learn that Sam Walton’s twin passions were computers and flying light aircraft!

Ice cream was available at pre-Jimmy Carter prices:

Full post, including comments

Is Joe Biden the American Hugo Chavez?

by philg

A leader introduces bold Bigger Government policies. The economy deteriorates. Violent crime rates rise. Inflation rages. Even for those with money, there are shortages. Voters express their undiminished love for the leader under whom they’ve become poorer affirmed his leadership at the polls.

Who did this the best? Hugo Chavez! (see Hugo Chavez: Great politician; poor administrator for how the only thing that kept Hugo Chavez from winning more elections was his death from cancer in 2013)

If Hugo Chavez is the master, let’s check in regarding the apprentice. From the NYT:

“the best midterms of any president in 20 years” in what certainly is not the best economic environment or crime rate trend environment of the past 20 years. The article is also interesting because the purportedly neutral journalists characterize Biden’s borrow-and-spend schemes as “accomplishments”:

“I’m not going to change,” he said. While open to cooperation with Republicans, he defiantly said he would block any efforts by the opposition to unravel the accomplishments of his first two years. “I have a pen that can veto,” he said, making a signing motion with his hand.

Not “What he claims as his accomplishments” but verified-by-the-NYT accomplishments.

Full post, including comments

Despite privilege, a tall white man leads a “life of struggle”

by philg

The New York Times, which previously informed us how easy white men had everything, regarding our most noble citizen… “After a Life of Struggle, Biden Faces One More Inflection Point”:

Before heading into a community center for a campaign rally the other day, President Biden stopped to speak to the overflow crowd …

Faith has been Mr. Biden’s calling card in his nearly two years in office — faith in the system in which he has been a fixture for more than half a century, faith that he could repair the fissures of a broken society, faith that he and he alone could beat former President Donald J. Trump if they face off again in 2024.

Biden is a man of faith and draws overflow crowds.

The presidency he envisioned, one where he presided over a moment of reconciliation, is not the presidency he has gotten.

Saying that anyone who votes for a Republican is traitorously ending our democracy did not work for reconciliation?

To whom can this greatest of living men be compared?

Like other presidents in stressful moments, he has turned to Abraham Lincoln for inspiration.

Abe Lincoln had only a battle to fight…

“One possible lesson for President Biden, who’s engaged in a profound battle to preserve the Constitution and the rule of law, is that moral commitment matters and can prevail, no matter how difficult the struggle,”

Noble Joe has a profound battle against the enemies of the Constitution and the rule of law (who might those be?).

But if he takes a licking on Tuesday, aides said, he will own it and move ahead. In a life of falling and getting back up, it would be one more stumble, not the end.

What would it mean for Joe Biden to “own” the Democrats’ defeat in some House, Senate, and Gubernatorial races? Surely he would not admit doubt in the Rainbow Flag religion. Would he unforgive everyone’s student loans? Would he say that some abortion care for pregnant people is not reproductive health care?

Circling back to the headline, does it make sense to characterized Joe Biden’s life as one of remarkable struggle? If so, why couldn’t he have used his white male privilege to avoid that struggle?

Full post, including comments

Stock market performance since Joe Biden took office

by philg

I wonder if the Democrats are going to lose even some of their elite support in this week’s election (or maybe we should say “last week’s election” because so many people voted early?). Elites own stock and the S&P 500 is down nearly 2% in nominal terms compared to January 20, 2021 (closed at 3,799; compare to 3,771 today). We don’t have official CPI numbers for October yet, but this is down more than 15% if adjusted by official CPI. If we adjust for inflation in the prices of goods and services that elites buy, e.g., houses, cars, travel, etc., the S&P 500 is down 20-25%.

Democrats have been running the White House, the House, and the Senate. Unless they can claim that a reduction in abortion care for pregnant people at reproductive health centers has resulted in the losses suffered by investors, it will be tough to blame those losses on Republicans.

Speaking of early voting, here’s an epic line in Austin, Texas:

The city of Austin and Travis County, which is essentially the same group of people, is overwhelmingly Democrat (72% Biden and 27% Trump in 2020). Every elected official in Travis County seems to be a Democrat (to the point that most run unopposed by any Republican). Democrats say that Republicans are guilty of voter suppression by making it difficult to vote, but how can Republicans be responsible for the long lines and inconvenience in Austin/Travis County?

(This is not to say that Democrats are incompetent everywhere. I early-voted by biking over to the Abacoa “honors” campus of Florida Atlantic University (next to Scripps and Max Planck) and, thanks to the Democrats who run Palm Beach County, was voting within about 2 minutes after parking the bike. Then it was time for a Cuban sandwich at an outdoor table at the nearby cluster of restaurants in our fake downtown (shops, restaurants, bars, mini golf, escape room; no trash, pit bulls, unhoused people, pit bull poop, sidewalk tents, and the rest of the features that make California cities so vibrant and exciting).)

Full post, including comments