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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joe Concha
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January 16 - January 20, 2023
Vice President Kamala Harris and climate czar John Kerry also joined the call and were wearing masks, while most other world leaders were maskless. Because those leaders don’t feel this perpetual need to virtue-signal.
The way he wears a mask like a fashion accessory, signaling his seriousness to the base, even as he seems to dismiss the actual science of aerosol transmission, shows that this is not a serious blue-collar guy trying to fix a problem.
But even though this is all cynicism, right down to the bone, Biden still uses COVID as a rhetorical crutch to distract from the rest of his administration’s dumpster-fire policies.
This would be the playbook for Biden throughout the first fourteen months of his presidency: Be seen with a mask. Alone with the first lady on a Delaware beach? Wear a mask. Walking alone on the White House lawn? Wear a mask.
Surely the media was going to put aside its overwhelming bias in calling out Obama and other Democratic elites for their COVID hypocrisy, right?
Let’s unpack this: Well, for starters, this was an indoor party. The Times kept insisting it was outdoors. And when exactly did COVID not spread to those who are sophisticated?
Final score: Obama gets a pass while Trump gets spanked from the alleged “paper of record.”
We’ve seen this all too often now over the past year: Our so-called leaders—in the most pious fashion in interviews and at press conferences—declaring that we all need to do our part to slow the spread, mask up, and avoid large gatherings during this pandemic . . . only to turn around and not follow their own rules in applying the Rules for thee, but not for Ds (as in Democrats) mantra.
Also, twenty-four hours after announcing the renewed mask mandate, Bowser officiated a wedding at a five-star hotel before hitting the dance floor. Without a mask, of course.
This pathetic movie played out in other Democratic-led cities and states across the country. Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom dined indoors with twelve people without a mask in pre-vaccine 2020 at a ritzy restaurant in wine country. In 2021, the same governor pulled his kids out of summer camp over its mask policy. Democratic California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi had her hair done indoors in San Francisco in pre-vaccine 2020—then blamed the salon owner for setting her up through some kind of a Jedi mind trick compelling her to go. “As it turns out, it was a setup. So I take
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The hubris of these example-setters is incredible.
Do these people think we’re this stupid?
According to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, trips to the emergency room shot up by 22 percent for potential suicides for kids aged twelve to seventeen in the summer of 2020 compared to the same season in 2019. Things got worse in the winter of 2020 compared to 2019, with visits for the same reason up nearly 40 percent.
More important, how have Biden and the Dems performed on defeating COVID, which they promised they would do? This was supposed to be the relatively easier part, considering what they were handed: multiple vaccines, effective therapeutics, and a year to study the virus (and public sentiment) after it was thrust upon the country the previous March.
Case numbers shattered records. But how could this be? Candidate Joe Biden, the guy who promised to cure cancer, said he had a plan to shut down and control the virus.
As we all know now, vaccine mandates were never about science or health or safety. The Canadian truck convoy protest over vaccine mandates in Ottawa in early 2022 was a prime example, when Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau portrayed those protesters as fascists.
The protests themselves, unlike the mostly peaceful riots of 2020 in the U.S., were peaceful. Buildings weren’t burned to the ground. Police officers weren’t attacked. And no, there weren’t armies of Nazis running around Ottawa.
This is not about science. It’s about political science.
Threatening to arrest members of the free press covering protests is a great look, right?
Despite what you may have read or seen in the media about Trump supporters leading the charge on resisting the vaccine, that hesitancy is actually highest among the Black community. In October 2021, at the time Irving shared his perspective before the start of the season, only about 40 percent of the Black population was vaccinated. For context, more than 70 percent of the Asian population and 50 percent of the white population were vaccinated at the time.
Can you believe this? Irving is allowed to sit in the stands not wearing a mask. He can touch his teammates or talk to people in the stands at close range while maskless. But going on the court and playing was deemed a health risk. Players obviously aren’t masked out there, but the officiating crew is. Yep. Makes total sense.
Oh, and here’s the best part: If a visiting player from another state is unvaccinated, the rules in New York say it’s perfectly fine that he plays. Because, you know, science!
But in the ultimate insult, the new mayor did not extend that “courtesy” to first responders and medical workers, who only put their lives on the line throughout the pandemic before getting canned.
“My body, my choice” suddenly didn’t apply.
Here’s the bottom line: Without COVID, Joe Biden isn’t president. It provided an excuse for him to avoid campaigning, for him not to be exposed to those in the press who cared to do their job correctly. COVID was the dominant issue in the 2020 campaign, and Biden exploited it to the fullest by ap...
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Going into 2020, Donald Trump had achieved the two basic things that matter in a first-term presidency: Our economy was strong and we were largely at peace. People wer...
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Put Trump’s rhetoric and mean tweets aside, because in a normal, non-COVID circumstance, Biden would have actually been required to articulate an argument across the country and in face-to-face interviews that his economic policy (spend more!) and border policy (open it up!) and education policy (teachers unions know better than parents!) and foreign policy positions (see: Mush) would make America a better place than Trump already had achieved.
But COVID did come, thanks to the Chinese. Something else that came was inflation, largely thanks to reckless spending. And with inflation came the comparisons to Jimmy Carter for Joe Biden. That isn’t a good thing.
It was the fall of 2021. Joe Biden was polling in the 30s among independents and dropping quickly. His handling of the U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan would mark the beginning of the end of his presidency, at least in terms of being trusted as a competent leader by a majority of the American people.
So what was in this bill? Well, apparently building back better includes: $79 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to expand tax enforcement (because voters love more IRS in their lives) $3 billion for a tree-planting program that increases “tree equity” $1 billion for an “electric vehicle charging equity program” $7.5 billion for the launch of the “Civilian Climate Corps” $7 billion to the U.S. Postal Service to convert all their vehicles to electric power $45 billion for free community college $110 billion for universal prekindergarten learning
Remember, this bill came on top of the $2 trillion “COVID relief” bill passed earlier in his presidency in March 2021, which included many items that didn’t have anything to do with, you know . . . COVID. Here are a few items from that disaster.
“Of the funds appropriated under title III of the Act that are made available for assistance for Pakistan, not less than $15,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs and not less than $10,000,000 shall be made available for gender programs.” You read that correctly. $10 million. For gender programs. In Pakistan. 2. Funds for “Resource Study of Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot.” That riot occurred in (checks notes . . .) 1908. 3. “Statement of Policy Regarding the Succession or Reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.” Big hitter, the Lama. We’ll just leave that one there. 4. A commission
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In the case of Build Back Better, it might as well have been called Built Back Broke, because this was, just like COVID relief, the Porky Pig of spending bills.
But our Democratic leaders—especially the president—insisted it wouldn’t cost almost all taxpayers one penny. Biden and his allies also insisted that BBB would actually reduce the deficit while lowering inflation, which is totally how basic economics and math work, right?
So when the president tried to sell this thing the way tobacco executives once tried to sell the country back in the 1990s that nicotine isn’t addictive, he decided to improvise in quite possibly the creepiest, most insulting way possible. “We talk about price tags,” Biden said to reporters in September 2021 as he leaned forward into the microphone with his eyes wide. “It is a zero price tag on the debt,” he claimed while speaking in a loud whisper that could only be compared to that ghost in The Amityville Horror telling a terrified family to “GET OUT.” “We’re paying—we’re going to pay for
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What’s so bad about it? For one thing, it’s just a bizarrely weird tic. But for another, it feels patronizing, faux-authentic. “I’m letting you in on a secret,” Biden implies, before explaining why he’s right about everything and we don’t need to ask questions about it. The government knows ...
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If you ever needed that last crumb of confirmation that the media is hopelessly biased, this was a very big one. Jen Psaki shared that condescending attitude when she was asked about how increased government spending will lower inflation.
Here, in a 2018 PBS interview, is AOC’s take on why unemployment was so low under President Trump. “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” Got that? If an individual works two jobs, he or she counts as two people, thereby lowering the overall unemployment number. Yep. Let’s listen to her.
“I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’” Biden moped in a speech in 2021 as Build Back Better was struggling to gain Manchin’s or Sinema’s support. “Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House, and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.” Not surprisingly, this is not true. According to FiveThirtyEight.com, Manchin and Sinema had voted with Biden’s position 100 percent of the time to that point. For context, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have each
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It was Pelosi who said this, however, and therefore the outrage machine from the press was turned off as a result. This is the same person who said in 2010 regarding another massive stimulus bill under Obama-Biden: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
But Manchin and Sinema continued to stand firm despite shameful bullying tactics by members of the party of tolerance. Exhibit A of this behavior occurred when activists harassed and filmed Sinema while she was using a bathroom at Arizona State University, where she teaches a course. Filming someone in a bathroom in Arizona is a Class 5 felony, but here’s the way one Bloomberg reporter described the harassment on Twitter:
“Protesters followed Senator Sinema into the bathroom at Arizona State University to confront her on Build Back Better and immigration” And check out the passive framing from other outlets: Daily Beast: “Senator Kyrsten Sinema locks herself in bathroom to avoid young activists on ASU campus” ...
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This kind of rhetoric comes from people like Jones despite what happened not too long ago during a congressional baseball practice outside of Washington, DC, when a progressive maniac opened fire on Republican lawmakers in 2018, wounding five, including Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA), who barely survived.
It is absolutely certain that Jones would never advocate this kind of behavior if say, pro-life advocates followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into a bathroom at New York University and harassed her.
No, Mr. President. Chasing a lawmaker into the ladies’ room with a camera and recording her is not “part of the process.”
But imagine a different world. A world where politicians wanted to achieve real change—in other words, a world where they had the humility to seek bipartisan support.
It’s completely ridiculous and is why the president and Congress poll so poorly with the American people: They can’t get the simplest shit done to help save lives.
Build Back Better would ultimately fail despite the efforts of Biden, Pelosi, and the press to push it over the finish line. In 2021 and 2022, Democrats controlled the House. They essentially controlled the Senate. Its nominee got more votes than anyone in U.S. history. Yet they still couldn’t pass their most prized agenda.
I distinctly recall learning that if you flood the system with trillions of dollars in additional spending, it could lead to higher inflation.
Government spending is reducing the national debt? Fascinating. Every rule of economics had been turned upside down. What should you do if you get into debt, folks? Run down
