Governing is so haaaard…

With Congress still deeply polarized following former President Donald Trump’s acrimonious exit, and with dangerous variants of the coronavirus circulating in the US, the President signaled a new sense of urgency Friday about the need to get his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package passed — even if he is not able to bring Republicans along.

Yikes. I expect that come Congress Critters are looking at that too.

In Rasmussen Reports’ first Presidential Daily Tracking Poll of likely voters, the new Democratic president starts at 48% approving and 45% disapproving.

 

Notably, he is underwater with women (46% approve, 48% disapprove) and whites (43% approve, 51% disapprove).

 

Rasmussen’s daily survey number is an average of the last three days.

 

By comparison, Biden’s approval is ho-hum compared to former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, said the polling data.

 

Trump opened with a 56% approval rating. Just 44% disapproved. It was one of his highest ratings of his four years.

 

Obama started at 67% approval, 32% disapprove, which is also one of his highest ratings.

I haven’t been paying too close attention – busy with living and all that… but is this the first official “C’mon man!” of the Biden presidency?

But when challenged by a reporter who suggested the target might be too low, he snapped back: “When I announced it you all said that it’s not possible. Come on. Give me a break, man.”

On the issue itself, Biden is taking an entirely national approach to the Covid health concern instead of a federal one. I expect that will be his approach on most issues. The centralization of power and money in faraway Washington continues apace.

Meanwhile, his goals are not exactly revolutionary.

She said the Trump administration was provided 36 million doses and pushed out 17 million shots, or about 500,000 per day.

‘What we are proposing is to double that to about 1 million shots per day. We have outlined this goal and objective in coordination and consultation with our health and medical experts,’ she said.

While her numbers add up, what they don’t show is that the prior administration was already on a trajectory to boost the number of shots closer to the 1 million number, with shots per day jumping over 800,000 in the last five days before the inauguration, as more vaccine came online and as states and hospitals stepped up their efforts.

If the past week’s average trajectory were maintained, total vaccination would reach just short of 97 million in the 100 days since vaccines began on December 21, which is 31 days before Biden’s 100 million target.

FYI:

Biden also plans on asking the Education Department to extend the federal hiatus on student loan payments and interest on federal student loans, rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and undoing the Trump administration’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.

Biden also will issue a mask mandate on federal property and interstate travel and extend a pause on evictions and foreclosures.

I’m curious how they will implement and enforce an interstate mask mandate. The airlines are already enforcing mask wearing, so this really only applies to people driving between states. Will federal agents staff the border to enforce compliance? How long is the mandate in effect? For example, if I drive from Appleton to Des Moines, do I have to wear a mask the whole way because I cross a boarder? Or do I just have to wear it when actually crossing the border?

Oh, and Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Whatever. His story on this has changed so many times that who knows what the truth is?

“In my view,” Biden told CNN, “there was one option there that was remaining: you could have done one more very low flight … spying down on the site” – a compound in Abbottabad – “to determine whether this was Bin Laden, because again, there was no certainty.

“ … And so I looked around the table, I said, ‘I didn’t think we had this many economists in the room. On the one hand, the other hand.’ I said, ‘Mr President,’ to give him space, I said, ‘I think you should wait.’ And do one more pass.’ Knowing that if you made the lower pass, they might observe it and he’d flee.”

Again echoing Obama, Biden said he and the president had a subsequent private discussion in which he advised the president to follow his instinct.

No.

“Just 100 days to mask, not forever. 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction,” Biden told Tapper during his first joint interview with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris since winning the election. The full interview will air at 9 p.m. ET.

The elderly are fragile. And, of course, the obligatory opaqueness we have come to expect from Biden.

Initially, Dr Kevin O’Connor said Biden ‘sustained a sprain of his right foot’ and that there was ‘no obvious fracture’.

But a subsequent CT scan ‘confirmed hairline (small) fractures of President-elect Biden’s lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones, which are in the mid-foot,’ according to a statement from O’Connor.

‘It is anticipated that he will likely require a walking boot for several weeks,’ O’Conner added.

Biden’s office said he was taken to the doctor ‘out of an abundance of caution’.

Reporters covering the president-elect were not afforded the opportunity to see Biden enter the doctor’s office, despite multiple requests.

Images showed Biden’s motorcade arriving to the Delaware Orthopaedic Specialists office on Sunday afternoon and leaving Sunday night.

 

It looks like mostly retreads and lackeys. On the bright side, there don’t appear to be any overt communists yet. Perhaps the Bernie wing of the Democratic Party is to be frustrated yet again.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden on Monday tapped Obama-era officials for top national security and economic roles, signaling a stark shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” policies that disparaged international alliances and favored deregulation and tax cuts.

The picks include former Secretary of State John Kerry to take the lead on combating climate change. Biden is also expected to choose Janet Yellen, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama to lead the Federal Reserve, as the first woman to become treasury secretary.

Biden’s emerging Cabinet marks a return to a more traditional approach to governing, relying on veteran policymakers with deep expertise and strong relationships in Washington and global capitals. And with a roster that includes multiple women and people of color — some of whom are breaking historic barriers in their posts — Biden is fulfilling his campaign promise to lead a team that reflects the diversity of America.

The incoming president will nominate longtime adviser Antony Blinken to be secretary of state, lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas to be homeland security secretary and Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be ambassador to the United Nations. Avril Haines, a former deputy director of the CIA, will be nominated as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that post.

Heh

But make no mistake: now that Biden’s won the election, he owes this country real racial justice reform.

He must start with the most obvious steps: executive orders that address the immediate need for federal remedies to protect Black and Brown citizens from police brutality; appointing a special prosecutor to investigate both criminal and civil rights violations in the Floyd, Taylor, Blake, Cole and Anderson cases. More broadly, Biden must recognize that poverty and racism are pandemics in their own right, each of which has been exacerbated by Covid-19. Beginning to remedy them will require not just an emergency economic stabilization package, but a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions for the next 12 months, and a prioritization of funding for the communities of color hit hardest by the virus.

These demands are not coming from Kenosha alone, but from all across the country, where the Black Lives Matter movement – the largest social uprising in our nation’s history – has inspired a new generation of voters and activists. So while racial justice leaders may have helped Biden take back the White House, come January 2021, we’ll be reminding him exactly who got him there.

Ouch. It’s going to be a long four months before Harris takes over if he wins.

‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden was caught napping twice during a rally in Michigan on Saturday, missing his cue to appear on stage and then forgetting his mask as he walked off it.

The 77-year-old was speaking at a rally in Flint alongside Barack Obama when he suffered the ‘senior moments’, just the latest in a series of gaffes that have dogged his presidential run.

The first came as Obama had just finished warming up for his old Vice President, and tried to welcome him to the stage by shouting: ‘My friend, the next President of the United State of America, Joe Biden!’

But Biden was nowhere to be seen, prompting Obama to shout for him again.

Eventually Biden emerged, jogging over to the stage from a nearby school building as Obama tried to get the crowd – who were confined to their cars as a Covid precaution – fired up, shouting: ‘Honk if you’re ready!’

During the rally itself, Biden also appeared to stumble over the word ‘healthcare’ while lining up a shot against the latest member of the Supreme Court – a Trump nominee – Amy Coney Barrett.

‘Donald Trump thinks health care is a privilege, Barack and I think it’s a right to have badakathcare,’ he said.

He fumbled again at the end of the rally, as Obama returned to the stage wearing a facemask and the two waved to the crowd before going off together.

Biden – who was wearing a mask as he emerged – appeared to forget he wasn’t wearing one as he departed.

Obama stopped him at the top of the stage steps and said a few words to him, after which he jogged back to the podium in search of the face covering.

After about 20 second of fumbling, Biden eventually found the face covering in his pocket and put it back in place.

Fact.

People in the securities and investment industry will finish the 2020 election cycle contributing over $74 million to back Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, a much larger sum than what President Donald Trump raised from Wall Street, according to new data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The sum includes contributions that began in 2019 and continued through the first two weeks of October to Biden’s joint fundraising committees and outside super PACs backing his run. Former Goldman Sachs President Harvey Schwartz gave $100,000 this month to the Biden Action Fund, a joint fundraising committee for the campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties.

Biden also received a ton of financial support from leaders on Wall Street in the third quarter. Going into the final two weeks of the election, Biden, the DNC and their joint fundraising committees had over $330 million on hand. That’s $110 million more than for Trump, the Republican National Committee and their joint committees. Biden’s campaign is on track to raise $1 billion in the six days until Election Day.

He certainly has shown to be willing to sell American policy to the highest bidder.

Um…

Speaking at an ‘I Will Vote’ virtual concert, Biden said: ‘Not because I’m running, but because who I’m running against, this is the most consequential election in a long, long, long time. The character of the country, in my view, is literally on the ballot. What kind of country we’re gonna be? Four more years of George, um, George…’

His wife Jill could be seen repeatedly muttering the word ‘Trump’ under her breath as he stumbled to remember the name of the president – ironically enough, a question often put to concussion patients in hospital to check if they’re cognitive functions are working properly.

A vacant-looking Biden hesitated then added: ‘Gonna to find ourselves in a position where, if Trump gets elected, we’re going to be in a different world.’

The fact that Biden briefly thought he was running against George W. Bush, whose presidency ended eleven years ago – and I have to assume he meant that George, not Dubya’s late father President George H.W. Bush, or it really is time for another urgent cognitive test – was a toe-curling mistake, and one that will be seized on by Republicans desperate to portray Biden as a man suffering from the onset of senility.

Especially as it came just two days after Biden said during a campaign video: ‘We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.’

It is looking more and more like the Bidens were conducting a very traditional corruption shakedown scheme.

Tony Bobulinski issued a statement on Wednesday saying that he personally witnessed Biden discuss business deals with his son, Hunter, contradicting claims by the former vice president.

‘I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business.

Bobulinski claimed that the Chinese were pursuing the deal as a ‘political or influence investment’ and that Hunter Biden was ‘using the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese.’

He said in his statement that he ‘took steps to prevent that from happening.’

Bobulinski also said in his statement that he was one of the recipients of the email from one of Hunter Biden’s business partners which  involved a deal with a Chinese energy firm in May 2017 which promised a 10 per cent cut for a person known as ‘the big guy.’

Bobulinski claimed in his statement that ‘the big guy’ is Joe Biden.