Tag: Joe Biden

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general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

Wannabe Dictator

Joe Biden, dictator

The question posed in boffo episode four of Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter show is whether Joe Biden is a wannabe dictator, as asserted by a chyron that Fox News displayed for 27 seconds on the day his administration arrested Donald Trump: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” (Fox News hastened to apologize to the world and to fire the producer who so incontinently chyronized.)

Carlson spends a couple of minutes discussing absurd reactions to the brief-lived caption. But most of his satirical 13-minute monologue is about whether President Biden qualifies for dictator-hood.

Carlson suggests that you have to do much more than jail political rivals to qualify.

Dictators enrich themselves and their families, taking bribes or kickbacks from businesses or other dictators.

In a dictatorship, it’s no longer possible to fight the injustice of the system. If people “gather in large numbers to protest the rule of the dictator, they’ll be arrested by state security services even years after the fact.”

In a dictatorship, you can’t even complain from your home; unauthorized opinions on the Internet must be censored.

In a dictatorship, major mental or physical lapses by the Dear Leader would be routinely covered up by a compliant media.

A dictator would say your kids belong to him. But Joe Biden says your kids belong to all of us; we have joint custody.

It’s a litany that could be extended, and Tucker Carlson does so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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He Is the Eggman

Joe Biden, age

Humpty Dumpty was a good egg. 

Well, that’s what we tend to think, but the original nursery rhyme doesn’t specify an eggman (goo goo g’joob) at all. And says nothing about his character. 

All the rhyme says? He had a great fall, and the king’s forces — masculine and equine — couldn’t make him whole.

This was brought to mind with yet another pratfall by President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., along with yet another stream of journalistic puffery trying to make the octogenarian seem like a good egg — and the falls insignificant.

That was the general tenor of Adele Suliman’s Washington Post article, “Biden isn’t the only politician to fall: Why we can’t look away,” last Friday. Ms. Suliman provides a history of stumbling pols, which she relates to Biden’s most recent tumble, at the Air Force Academy after his commencement speech.

But it’s the New York Times that went all out, with four authors explaining our shared Biden moment: “The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world.”

Yet, also, Biden’s “a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.”

The article has been roundly ridiculed, but the problem is, if anything, underplayed. 

Now is not the time to be worrying about an eggman president.

It’s our eggshell republic that should be on our minds.

Goo goo g’joob.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Internet controversy national politics & policies social media

Dys Glitch

dys, dystopia, dysphonia, Joe Biden, Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, twitter

After some technical glitches in livestreaming Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s announcement of his presidential run, the snide tweets poured in.

“‘This link works,’ Biden posted on his Twitter account,” The Epoch Times attempted to regale us, “sharing a link to a donation page for his campaign as the DeSantis team and Twitter owner Elon Musk struggled to resolve the glitches plaguing their scheduled Twitter Spaces interview.” 

But the worst was also from The Biden — nobody believes that Joe himself is in charge of his own Twitter account — in which a few “positions” of DeSantis received mockery, leading popular YouTuber/Rumblist Viva Frei to respond with “Is this really the best you could piece together? You couldn’t fragment the sentences more if you tried. Pathetic.”

And that’s really where we’re at. Newscasters and the Twitterati made much of the Twitter Space glitch, but not even Donald Trump, Jr., with his hashtag “#DeSaster,” did much more than weakly echo his father’s heyday on Twitter.

This is not 2016. 

Everybody seems tired.

There are a number of challengers, already, in the running to oust feeble Joe Biden. Donald Trump himself, of course, and now Ron DeSantis, whom we are told runs a distant second to the former president. Neither man seems likely to reach beyond the conservative half of the electorate. Only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a Democrat, offers much “newness,” and he’s afflicted by a hard-to-listen-to cracked voice: spasmodic dysphonia, “a specific form of an involuntary movement disorder called dystonia that affects only the voice box.”

Metaphor for the race so far? There’s a lot of “dys” in the tone of our times, but it’s just not very profound. If the future weren’t at stake, one wouldn’t even bring it up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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deficits and debt international affairs national politics & policies too much government

Debt for Pakistani Trans

Pakistani transgender youth, American debt

Thirty-two trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money we don’t have.

I checked the U.S. Debt Clock last night. The federal government was, at that time, $200 billion shy of owing that amount, $32 trillion.

It’s such a big number that it doesn’t seem real.

Maybe that’s why politicians ignore it. And keep spending, adding to it.

All spending that seems fishy contributes to that debt. But so, alas,does spending that a majority of Americans may want. When you are over-spending, all spending contributes to the red ink.

Still, to witness elected government officials throw money around with reckless abandon is especially irksome. Consider all the taxes that pay for that debt, continually as well as eventually. And the misdirected investments that get derailed from productive activity just to fund that debt.

Today’s example of idiotic spending? A mere $500,000. Half a million bucks. Chump change — next to the trillions on budget lines.

So this half-a-million is slotted to go to Pakistan.

To train Pakistanis to speak, read and write in English.

But the kicker’s in the headline, courtesy of The Epoch Times: “Biden Earmarks $500,000 for Transgender Youth, Other Groups in Pakistan.” The blurb makes the obvious point I wish to drive home: “Biden ‘hell-bent on spending money we don’t have,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman’s office.”

Biden’s prodigality will provide “intensive professional development courses for Pakistani transgender youth.”

The old saw about such foreign aid runs, “Don’t we have transgender youth in this country to help?”

But better to join Rep. Norman and point to the debt clock. And shake our heads.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Biden Brazenness Against Religion

Joe Biden, Christians, Christianity, religion

April is the cruelest month, wrote T.S. Eliot, but he wasn’t referring to the Biden Administration’s ramped-up war on Christianity.

Mid-month, the administration barred Catholic priests of the Holy Name College Friary from providing “pastoral care” to servemembers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The government contract had been granted, instead, to Mack Global LLC, which the archdiocese characterizes as “a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract.”

Not convinced that this Daily Signal story amounts to “a war on Christianity”?

Well, try The Epoch Times. In “Christians Say Government Targets Them Because They Oppose Left-Wing Agenda,” Kevin Stocklin lists a number of federal government policies that favor left-wing politics over the social and political activism of Catholics and other Christians. 

Abortion activists, pro- and anti-, do occasionally engage in what might plausibly be called “terrorist” activities, but the FBI appears avid in hounding pro-life protesters, yet uninterested in doing any actual work to curb the string of “violent attacks, including assaults and firebombings, against pro-life individuals and institutions.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)’s “subpoena to the FBI earlier this month demanding information on its alleged program to surveil Catholics for ‘signs of radicalization,’” spurred Stocklin’s reporting about the government’s increasing conflict with Christianity.

Why see traditional Christians as enemies of the State? Because they are.

Potentially, at least.

In part, simply because those who worship God see a worshipful attitude towards the State as something akin to idolatry. And apparently vice versa. But sociologists such as Robert Nisbet regard religion as a countervailing power against ever-growing government.

If you are looking for a jealous god, the modern total State fills the bill.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Why We Fight

Biden, war, draft

A recent Senate hearing addressed a big problem facing America’s All-Volunteer Force (AVF): recruitment. 

The Army fell 25 percent short of its 2022 goal; the Air Force is 10 percent below; the Navy met its target for enlisted folks but not officers; and the Marines hit their mark but said “never before” has it been so challenging.

“The Pentagon has attributed its difficulties to a variety of factors,” reports The Washington Post, “including the nation’s low unemployment rate, school closings during the coronavirus pandemic that limited recruiters’ access to high school students and faculty, and a shifting culture in which more teens gravitate to jobs with work-life balance.”

As The Post paraphrased Army Undersecretary Gabe O. Camarillo, “the most significant barriers to service [include] fears of death or injury, suffering psychological harm, and leaving behind friends and family.” 

Indeed, what with possibility of overseas deployment and combat, the job of soldier certainly does not score well in the “work-life balance” category. While a sense of mission — and the country’s need — has helped spark interest in the past, that need has been blurred by a long string of misguided military adventures in recent decades.  

Sure, President Joe has repeatedly promised American military force in defense of Taiwan against repeated Chinese threats to invade.* But do young Americans perceive this as anything to them? Has the wokeness mission, stressed by the administration and the Pentagon and interrogated during the Senate hearings, occluded the more traditional sense of mission upon which the AVF has relied?

It’s time for Mr. Biden to speak to the people on the military’s core mission — including his promises, and those of other politicians. Asking them to keep his word. 

Plus, a personal presidential request might add an element of responsibility and accountability from the commander-in-chief to the soldiers recruited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access election law national politics & policies

Alien National Capital

Joe Biden, democracy, voting, illegal immigrants

While the 58th anniversary of the Selma, Alabama, Bloody Sunday seemed an apt occasion to address the right of all citizens to participate democratically in their government, leaving the job to President Joe Biden was . . . awkward. He said nothing of consequence.

But back in 2020, candidate Biden said this: “In order to be able to vote, it’s important that you be a U.S. citizen.” That’s consequential.

In 2021, however, when the New York City Council extended suffrage to foreign nationals living legally in the Big Apple, against the will of the majority of New Yorkers, I don’t recall hearing even the slightest peep from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now the wackos in Washington, D.C., have enacted a non-citizen voting measure that goes further. It allows Russian nationals working for Mr. Putin at their embassy in our nation’s capital to vote on city candidates and ballot issues and welcomes onto Washington’s voter rolls Chinese citizens here promoting Xi Jinping and the interests of his genocidal regime. 

The District of Columbia’s ordinance extends the franchise even to people here illegally, allowing anyone from anywhere in the world able to avoid deportation to cast a ballot. Legally.

Thankfully, House Joint Resolution 24, which seeks to block the D.C. non-citizen voting ordinance passed the U.S. House last month, garnering support from every Republican present as well as roughly one in five Democrats. Action now moves to the Senate. 

“After years of lamenting so-called ‘foreign interference’ in our elections,” argues Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), “every single Democrat ought to join in invalidating this insane policy.”

But will they? 

Congressional Democrats might claim that their support for local control in D.C. excuses them for allowing this non-citizen voting measure to become law. But it’s not even a fig-leaf after Biden declared he would sign the congressional Republicans’ repeal of another D.C. council enactment, a controversial crime “reform” law, which District officials then hurriedly withdrew to placate nervous national Dems.

Talk about awkward!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: Biden certainly has a cavernous credibility gap on election integrity. After he attacked Republicans as “un-American” and the 2021 election reform legislation enacted in Georgia as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century,” the Peach State saw “record breaking turnout” in last year’s election. Sadly, much of the media merely ignored reality; CBS News headlined one report, “Effect of Georgia’s voting law unclear, despite high turnout.”

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What He Says and What He Means

Joe Biden, lies

A handy reference chart.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Getting Guns to Good Guys

China, Taiwan

No sooner had President Biden shared his somewhat soothing takeaway from a three-hour meeting with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping — Joe doesn’t think there is an “imminent” threat of China invading Taiwan — then here comes a report that Russian missiles have killed two people.

Not in Ukraine, where Russia is “arguably” at war, but in neighboring Poland, a NATO country.

I’ve repeatedly suggested we review all the military alliances and commitments our politicians and diplomats have entered into . . . “on our behalf.” But there comes a time (and it seems fast approaching) when it is too late for review and the U.S. will have to stand up and meet the commitments it has made.

While I have little doubt in the current generation of volunteer soldiers, I cannot say that about my generation of generals and politicians and bureaucrats. “We cannot manufacture and produce weapon systems fast enough,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) told Full Measure host Sharyl Attkisson.

Pointing to $3 billion in U.S. arms sales to threatened Taiwan, McCaul complained that it has been “three years and we haven’t delivered one of these weapon systems into Taiwan. . . . Remember, in Taiwan, they actually have purchased these weapons.” 

One step to fix this mess is the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 (S.4428), which would allow the U.S. to transfer significant weaponry, “essentially to do for Taipei what is being done for Kyiv — but before the bullets start flying.”

Our best opportunity to keep Chinese guns silent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

Partisan Police State Tactics

FBI

We must take the initiative to change things if we don’t like the way things are. If you’re a congressman, this means — sometimes, at least — investigating horrific conduct.

The September 23rd raid of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck’s home should evoke bipartisan dismay. But only Republicans seem to be looking into the FBI’s recent arrest of Houck and the ludicrously heavy-handed tactics used to apprehend him.

In 2021, Houck had pushed a pro-abortion activist away from his son, whom the activist had been harassing, in front of a clinic. Houck’s action was allegedly a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The alleged victim sued.

Last summer, the case was dismissed on a local level. But that determination was blithely ignored by our ideologically compromised FBI, which sent dozens of agents to swoop down on Houck and terrorize his family.

U.S. Representatives Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, both Republicans, sent a letter asking for documents related to the raid and arrest.

According to the letter: “Several recent actions by the department reinforce the conclusion that the Justice Department is using its federal law-enforcement authority as a weapon against the administration’s political opponents….

“We write to conduct oversight of your authorization of a dawn raid of the home of a pro-life leader, in front of his wife and seven children, when he had offered to voluntarily cooperate with authorities.”

Such a letter requesting accountability is only a bare beginning, however. If we want to prevent a partisan police state, there is much more to be done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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