Biden Rails Against "Enemies of Democracy"
President Biden made his closing argument to voters in a largely unwatched TV broadcast. He warned that "failure to vote Democrat means siding with the enemies of our democracy. It's right there on your ballot. Candidates with a 'D' after their names are friends of democracy. Candidates with an 'R' after their names are rebelling against our democracy."
As proof of the veracity of his contention, Biden cited the 2 am attack on Paul Pelosi by MAGA extremist David DePape, calling it "emblematic of the type of political violence instigated against democracy by Donald Trump. The brazen nature of this assault was demonstrated by the fact that DePape waited until the police were present before he hit Paul in the head with a hammer. This is the type of lawlessness spawned by incessant Republican resistance to the unity I have been striving to achieve."
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel described Biden's speech as "desperate and dishonest. If anything, the attack on Paul Pelosi illustrates why Democrats' soft on crime policies are inspiring voters to opt for change. It took the breach of a residence with top-of-the-line security alarms and cameras to gain the attention of a Democrat Party that has been actively ignoring the surge in attacks on ordinary citizens enabled by their policies that let dangerous people go free without posting bail."
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended her boss, saying "comparing the rapes, stabbings, and shootings of unimportant people to the nearly fatal hammering of the 82-year-old husband of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is shameful. Our society can easily survive the losses inflicted on people who are not vital to the successful functioning of our democracy. The President is confident that voters will be able to make this distinction and reelect the Democrats that are vital to preserving our democracy."
Sen. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) observed that "to Biden, 'democracy' means one thing: Democrats having complete power." Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Az) contended that "the President's notion of what constitutes democracy looks an awful lot like tyranny to any sane person."
Voters Don't Understand Midterm Stakes
Former secretary of state and loser in 2016 presidential election Hillary Clinton worries that "that Americans may not really understand what is at stake in the midterm elections. They may not grasp that it could mean the end of our democracy if Republicans retake the House and Senate. Just the other day historian Michael Beschloss warned that if Republicans win our democracy will be lost, our children will be arrested and killed by a brutal authoritarian regime."
"Republicans try to scare voters by harping on rising inflation and surging crime as reasons to oust Democrats from power," Clinton asserted. "We can survive rising costs of living. The government can impose price controls and rationing to ensure that everyone can be fed. As for crime, most are committed against private persons and do not threaten our democracy. The only crime we need to worry about is that Democrats will be replaced by Republicans in key offices up for a vote."
"The President has tried to remind us that getting this election right will take time," Clinton said. "Winners and losers might not be able to be declared on election night. Voters need to be patient enough to wait until the President can certify the results. Once that occurs all questions must cease and everyone accept the outcome. Any who refuse need to be silenced. That is the only way we can preserve the unity that Democrats have been working so hard to attain for this country."
In related news, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed out that "a lack of unity is something that our adversaries seek to exploit. It is the responsibility of government to stamp out false narratives and anti-government sentiment at home so we can present a united front to our enemies both abroad and at home. Obviously, step one of our effort to achieve national security must be to ensure that democracy triumphs at the ballot box next week. Ideally, we will someday reach a point where all are for democracy and none are against democracy. When Democrats receive 99% of the votes we will know we have arrived at this ideal."
Biden Takes Credit for Coming Boost in Social Security
This week, the White House touted the anticipated January boost in Social Security payments--the biggest in the past ten years--as being due to President Biden's leadership. CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale pointed out that "the size of Social Security checks is linked, by law, to inflation. This year's increase is unusually big because the inflation rate is unusually big."
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that "contentions that legislation granting automatic benefit adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index that was signed into by former President Richard Nixon in 1972 should not get all the credit. It was the Inflation Reduction Act championed by the President and enacted by Congress that accelerated the rate of inflation that was primarily responsible for the size of the increase in Social Security checks that retirees will begin getting next year."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) called the Democrats' achievement "a hollow triumph. The inflation in food and energy prices--two critical necessities--has been higher than the Consumer Price Index increase upon which Social Security checks are based. Perhaps the President's suggestion that consumers can switch to off-brand bran flakes will moderate some of the food price increases, but how will they cope with heating bills that are projected to rise by 28% for natural gas and 27% for oil? Should voters really reward Democrats for engineering such a calamity?"
Meanwhile, in a less publicized government program program probing human population reduction options, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lab in Bethesda, Maryland is performing research that would create a more deadly strain of the monkeypox virus. The project is aiming for a lab-generated virus that is 1,000 times more lethal than the strain currently circulating in humans. Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biology expert at Rutgers University, called this research "unacceptably risky and likely to result in the spread of this disease beyond the current at-risk populations to the general population."
Biden Creating Jobs
In a bid to mute GOP criticism of President Biden's economic policies, Cecilia Elena Rouse, Chairperson of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that "the production of new regulations since he took office is up by more than 45% over the level attained by Trump after his four years in office. The new 4,429 rules added since January 20, 2021 created new paperwork that has created jobs that otherwise would not have existed." She went on to "compare this with the fact that many of Trump's new rules actually eliminated unnecessary regulations and, thus, reduced job opportunities for file clerks and lawyers."
"On top of this, President Biden's decree to award up to $20,000 in debt relief checks to students to help them pay off part of their debt will inject more spending into the economy," Rouse said. "The website Intelligent.com found that the top spending plans for student loan relief checks included: Vacations (46%), Dining out (46%), Smartphones (44%), Investing in stocks (43%), Gifts (42%), Gaming systems (36%), Weddings (30%), Drugs/Alcohol (28%), Gambling (27%)."
Interestingly, the website survey noted that "73% of the respondents thought it would be wrong to spend this money on non-essentials." A respondent planning on doing just that pointed out "well, it was wrong for the President to bypass Congress to give us this money. My $20,000 'sin' is tiny compared to his billion dollar 'sin.'"
Rouse contended that "transferring money from the hands of greedy taxpayers to the hands of needy students cannot fairly be described as a sin. The core of progressive economic policy is to divert resources from selfish uses so they can be more productively used to promote social goals. Given that college graduates are far more politically progressive than the taxpayers our policies are dispossessing, both justice and growth will be served."
"This approach will be continued after the election when the President implements a windfall profit tax on energy producers and uses this money to subsidize the electricity purchased by those who vote for democracy in the upcoming election," Rouse added. "I advise taking a selfie of you and your ballot to use as proof of your entitlement to these subsidies."
Cheney's Legacy
Defeated for reelection in the primary and leading GOP figurehead on the Star Chamber-style House of Representatives persecution of the January 6 "insurrectionists,"Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo), is making a bid to trash the country on her way out.
Her first order of business was to condemn any efforts to lessen US involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war by calling Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's suggestion that a GOP majority might not continue military aid to Ukraine "disgraceful. Democracy must be better armed than tyranny." Inasmuch as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed all opposition parties in Ukraine it is not clear that either side in the conflict can rightfully claim to be a democracy.
Now, she is hitting the campaign trail to stump for "Democrats who will help save our democracy from enemies within." First to get Cheney's endorsement was Rep. Elissa Slotkin (Mich) "who's strong support for the war in Ukraine can't be matched by her GOP opponent Tom Barrett. Big donors have given her a substantial $9.3 million campaign chest compared to Barrett's measly $2.5 million. My endorsement should help her win in this 'toss up' race."
Cheney has also endorsed former 2020 presidential contender Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) for the open Senate seat "because he has vowed to confront and kill the MAGA movement. His opponent JD Vance was endorsed by Trump and has expressed suspicions about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Also, in this time of looming nuclear war our country must be united behind one leader. That leader is Joe Biden. Ryan can be relied upon to give his unwavering support to the President. Vance cannot be relied upon. His willingness to question the 2020 election shows that he might well question the decision to go to war with Russia. If there's one thing that my father, who was Vice-President under Bush, taught me it is that we must always oppose Russia no matter what the cost."
A Call for Pandemic Amnesty
Brown University Professor Emily Oster wrote an article for The Atlantic magazine suggesting that "those of us who made mistakes during the pandemic should be forgiven and granted amnesty." Among the admitted "mistakes" were exaggerating the severity of the disease, the lockdowns of businesses and schools, the censoring of dissenting opinions about policies and treatments dealing with covid, coercing people to get vaccinated, and abuse of emergency powers.
Oster claims "ignorance led to honest mistakes." However, there is plenty of evidence indicating that conscious deception drove many of actions of key decision makers in the pharmaceutical corporations, health authorities, and political figures. For instance, we now know that clinical trials for the vaccines did not follow sound scientific procedures, we heard Dr. Anthony Fauci admit lying about the effectiveness of masks, we know that viable treatments for the virus were suppressed in order to clear the way for emergency use approval of the inadequately tested vaccines, we now know that the vaccines are neither safe nor effective.
The fact is that those responsible for inflicting damage during the pandemic show neither signs of remorse nor a willingness to cease inflicting further damage. Just this past week, President Biden urged all Americans to get more vaccine injections, saying "if you get them you're protected, and if you don't, you're putting yourself and other people at unnecessary risk." The President's push for more of the same ineffective covid vaccines came on the heels of new studies (one from Switzerland, one from Thailand, and one from Australia) indicating that all recipients of the mRNA vaccines suffered some heart damage--some experienced a little heart damage and others much more.
Green Initiatives Flounder
It turns out that efforts to recycle plastic are a waste of time and energy. The environmental advocacy group Greenpeace issued a report showing that "mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste has largely failed and will always fail because plastic waste is: (1) extremely difficult to collect, (2) virtually impossible to sort for recycling, (3) environmentally harmful to reprocess, (4) often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and (5) not economical to recycle."
Lisa Ramsden, a senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace USA and one of the authors of the report, said "most plastic is not being recycled in the United States. American households produced about 51 million tons of plastic last year, and only 2.4 million of those tons were actually recycled. The plastics that households are collecting and sending to be recycled are mostly just sitting in recycling facilities across the country not being recycled. They're being incinerated or sent to landfills instead." Washing the plastics before putting them into recycle bins probably has a net negative consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the hot water used is mostly heated by burning coal.
Given the dismal results of recycling plastics, Greenpeace is now lobbying for a total ban on disposable plastic. The prognosis for this option are not good. The banning of plastic bags in supermarkets in some states has added carbon to the atmosphere by shifting to the use of paper bags and cloth tote bags that require more energy to manufacture and transport. The paper and cloth bags take up more space in landfills and generate more greenhouse emissions as they decompose. The cloth tote bags aren't reused nearly often enough to offset their initial carbon footprint, and they're breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses because they're rarely washed properly.
On another front, wind energy may actually contribute to more global warming. A study by ArcVera Renewables shows that the wind turbines inhibit precipitation in their area and increase the temperature. Both can lead to a drought. The overturning of natural temperature layers in the vicinity of the wind farms studied causes higher average temperatures and lower soil moisture. So, rather than being an aid to combating global warming, wind power may be helping accelerate it. The minimal and unreliable contributions to meeting energy demand offered by wind turbines don't appear to be offset by any environmental benefits. Nevertheless, President Biden Biden just announced that he will be closing coal plants in order to fund more wind and solar power sites.
Democrat Lunacy in NY
At 5:30 am on Thursday, Nov 4, a homeless man with 25 prior arrests, including two for sex crimes, assaulted, stripped, raped and robbed a woman who was jogging along Manhattan's West Side Highway. The suspected rapist was arrested at the Port Authority Bus Terminal after trying to use her credit card. Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor, mentioned this crime as an example of the surging crime that has followed the Democrat-championed "reform" that allows repeat offenders to be released without having to post bail. Leftist hecklers accused him of "politicizing crime to promote his campaign."
"How can we combat crime if we aren't allowed to mention it?" Zeldin asked. "At our debate Gov. Hochul asked me 'why are you so concerned about crime?' Trying to keep our citizens safe from criminals is one of the most important functions of government. How can a person aspire to be elected governor and not be concerned about crime?"
"In New York City rapes are up 11% over last year," Zeldin said. "Assaults are up 14%. Robberies are up 32%. I think the honest people of this state are concerned. They don't want to be sucker punched for fun by some malcontent. They don't want to be pushed in front of a train by a homicidal maniac. They don't want to be stabbed, bludgeoned, or shot. I want to do all I can to help make the state and its biggest city as safe as is humanly possible. That's why I'm running for governor. My question is why is Kathy Hochul running?"
A spokesperson for the Hochul campaign said "Kathy is running to build a better, fairer, more inclusive version of what she calls the New York Dream. She will create a New Era for New York by embarking on a bold, far-reaching policy agenda that restores New Yorkers' trust in government. First and foremost, this must begin with defeating the enemies of our democracy like Lee Zeldin. President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have all endorsed Kathy's campaign because she is the most qualified person for this job."
