Is Jared Kushner another Hunter Biden? Recent reports indicate that Kushner may have eerie similarities to Biden. Kushner is accused of accepting a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia six months after leaving the White House, this being a way, it was suggested, for Crown Prince Mohammed to exert influence on U.S. foreign policy if Trump returns to the Oval Office after the November election. I had given a link to that article in this post initially, but I just tried it and was taken to the wrong site, so I’ve tried another. This one is similar, click here for more information.
The New York Times reportedly broke the story a few days ago, saying that 99 percent of Kushner’s investment fund’s money came from foreign sources. The Times also reported Kushner is working on developing hotels in the Balkans, specifically in Serbia and Albania, and noted that the firm has taken money from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (My memory on this isn’t perfect, but I seem to recall that the New York Times was silent about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the last election.)
This will be short, but I wanted to highlight the irony (there may be a better descriptive word) that a son, and a son-in-law, of our two heavily-flawed candidates (if you haven’t seen my evaluation of each, click here for Trump, and here for Biden) for the highest office in our land, seem to have been involved in slimy international business deals. Is Jared Kushner another Hunter Biden? What will we learn next?
Hunter Biden’s laptop and NPR. I understand Uri Berliner’s story has hit TV Land, but my Samsung is misbehaving, so I haven’t seen any of that. I have, however, been looking back and trying to put the Berliner story in context with other past events. One part of Berliner’s article I didn’t mention yesterday was his take on NPR’s response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Here’s what Mr. Berliner wrote:
In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Hunter owned it
But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.
The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.
Letter to the rescue
Clearly, the laptop news could have derailed Biden’s election, but the letter mentioned above proved to be powerful. Here are intriguing details I’ve discovered about that letter from “dozens of former and current intelligence officials.” The letter was signed in October 2020, by 51 ex-national security officials, who wrote that Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Among the signers were former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, and former Obama DNI James Clapper.
What happened next?
“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” screamed a Politico headline on Oct. 19, 2020.
More tidbits
I’ve also learned what prompted that deceptive, but pivotal, letter. Here’s the story. About one year ago (April, 2023), Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, that Anthony Blinken (then-Biden campaign senior adviser, now-Secretary of State) was “the impetus” for the above letter implying that Hunter Biden’s laptop story was disinformation. (See original document here.)
In his testimony, Mr. Morell said, “There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue (which, of course, they had not a shred of evidence for); and, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.”
Key question
And why did he want to help Biden? “Because I wanted him to win the election.”
And it worked. Joe Biden, in a presidential debate and an interview, used the letter to declare definitively that the laptop story was “disinformation from the Russians,” “a bunch of garbage,” a “Russian plan” and a “smear campaign.” Clearly, he knew better.
President Joe Biden
I am not a Trump backer in any way, but honestly I find him to be no worse than Biden. I have lamented our horrible choices in earlier posts, see here, and here, giving Trump a D- (see here) and Biden a preliminary F (see here).
Basically, this election pits one champion prevaricator against another equally talented liar. The obvious question is whom to vote against. Both of them? Somehow all of this leads me to a depressing conclusion. If Biden wins in November, the mass media, including NPR, will sigh with relief and champion whatever Biden does, be it continuing to mess up our Southern border, blunder in the Middle East, stoke inflation, or whatever. If Trump wins, he undoubtedly will face an onslaught of attacks from Capitol insiders, federal bureaucrats, and the mainstream press. Any suggestions?
Stay tuned. Next, I will look at NPR’s coverage of Covid-19, and after that on its take on DEI.
An insider’s view of NPR’s leftist politics was published yesterday. Here’s a tidbit from the article on leftist NPR. (Actually, it doesn’t much surprise me.) In 2021, among those working in editorial positions at NPR, 87 were registered Democrats and none was a registered Republican. Yep, not a single one. Hmm. Is it possible that such a skewed political distribution could influence the content this group puts on the air?
I learned about NPR’s heavily-tilted editorial staff from an amazing article by Uri Berliner. Mr. Berliner is an award-winning business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years. He freely admits that he twice voted against Trump, and that he has leftest credentials, but clearly he also is a journalist who believes in honest reporting. As a guy who took several journal courses at the University of Wisconsin many years ago, I enthusiastically salute him. Thank you, Uri Berliner!
At NPR for 25 years
Berliner’s article, titled, I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust, reveals he’s a brave man. I don’t imagine his exposé of NPR’s strong tilt has been overlooked by folks who work there. His article was published yesterday in The Free Press, but I found it at another source (see here).
Mr. Berliner provides a historical view: For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
Leftist NPR
By 2011, the audience was tilted a bit left, but it still bore a resemblance to America at large, Mr. Berliner writes. (26% of listeners described them as conservative, 23% as middle of the road, and 37% as liberal.)
By 2023, the picture was completely different, he writes. (only 11% of listeners described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, as opposed to 21% middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal.)
Honest reporting
Mr. Berliner is forthright: An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America. That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.
This NPR editor and reporter goes on to give specifics on three issues in which his organization strayed from classic journalism reporting, the first being coverage of the 2020 election. (I insert part of that below.) The other two issues he writes about were the origin of the Covid virus, and DEI. In today’s post, I will focus on what Mr. Berliner said about NPR’s coverage of the 2020 election. The following six paragraphs are taken verbatim from his article.
Donald Trump, the target
Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
A favorite NPR guest
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports. (Shiff was also shifty, and a frequent dissembler.)
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
Journalist’s lament
It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.
What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.
My personal comments
Politics has been one of my recurring themes on this blog. As a matter of fact, my two initial posts, both published on October 28, 2020, were on politics; in one of them (see here), I considered the obvious leanings of certain media outlets, including PBS but not leftist NPR. Because I have also opined several times on the origin of the Covid virus, as well as DEI, I plan to follow up on Mr. Berliner’s article in the upcoming days, posting more on his report of NPR’s handling of those topics.
This is a convenient place for me to add a little nudge and inform you that all of my 110 essays posted on this blog are still available to readers. If you have a curiosity to see what I’ve scolded, or praised, or puzzled over, just slip over to the categories listed nearby, choose a topic, and see whether you agree, or disagree, with me.
News flash!!!!
As to be expected, NPR has responded today. I just skimmed the article now, but you may want to see how the media titan defended itself (to see one article click here).
Here is another example of discriminatory DEI. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post (see here), the effects of DEI have simply changed one form of discrimination to another. I now offer a case where the discrimination was so blatant that the courts have stepped in and reversed an outrageous situation.
Today’s Wall Street Journal (1 April 2024, and no, this is not an April Fool’s joke) lays out the details in an editorial headed: You Can’t Fire Only the White Guys (see that here). The editorial demonstrates that illegal discrimination is still illegal discrimination even if a corporate HR department calls it equity and inclusion. Details are provided on a federal appeals court recent opinion that upheld a jury verdict for a hospital executive who argued he was fired simply because he was a white male amid a workforce diversity onslaught.
Fired abruptly
The man, David Duvall, had spent five years as a senior vice-president at Novant Health, a large North Carolina medical group, when he suddenly was fired, even though there was “no record of any documented criticism of his performance or reasons for his termination.” The firing shocked his colleagues, and his duties were taken over by two women, one black and one white. And when his permanent replacement was hired, all three finalists were black women.
Evidence indicated that Novant was “deeply interested” in the demographic makeup of its workforce, and its Diversity and Inclusion Executive Committee recommended “a 3-4% increase in black leaders over the next three years.” (I would bet there was no mention of expertise, rather simply the color of skin of those to be hired, and thus clearly discriminatory.)
Why?
So, what did Novant Health tell Mr. Duvall when he was fired? The company told him they were “going in a different direction.” Indeed they were, to another form of discrimination. Yet months later, his old boss spoke to a corporate recruiter and said he’d be happy to hire Mr. Duvall again. (I would bet that his old boss didn’t check with the DEI folks.)
After the verdict for Mr. Duvall, Novant released a statement that read in part, “We continue to believe having a workforce that reflects the communities we serve allows us to provide the personalized care our patients need to reach their best possible health.”
Discriminatory DEI
That statement, of course, reflects one of the two opposing views on DEI, but to me it simply tries to justify the substitution of one obvious discrimination for another. Why not hire employees based on their accomplishments and their talents, rather than on the color of their skin? Why not hire the best and most capable personnel available, regardless of skin color? That would be the best way to allow their patients “to reach their best possible health.”
I have the impression that some justify the use of DEI “to right old wrongs.” But to me this too is misguided. There have been generational shifts. Those discriminated against today are not the discriminators of earlier times. For some reason, that reminds me of a cartoon I saw somewhere decades ago; I think it was in the New Yorker. An older white man was sitting in an easy chair looking up at a young black man and saying, “Two hundred years? Why I’m not nearly that old.”
A repeat of my conclusions from yesterday
1. DEI is a form of discrimination that, by its very nature, can only lower the quality of whatever type of organization is involved, be it educational, scientific, governmental, or economic.
2. Racial discrimination has been rampant in the past, but simply changing the race or races to be discriminated against (through Affirmative Action and discriminatory DEI) does nothing to assuage the pains of past wrongs; rather, it simply embraces a new form discrimination.
3. Most black children today continue to receive inferior early educations, and thus many fall behind. This clearly is where the problem lies. Give these children the education they deserve, and they will effortlessly compete with other races. I submit this as the path to become a truly colorblind country, and to provide liberty and justice for all.
Two opposing views on DEI. Which do you favor? A couple of days ago, I read two newspaper articles on DEI, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in USA Today (the latter was originally published in the Louisville Courier Journal). The opinions of the writers are crystal clear from the titles of their articles.
First Article
Professor Kevin Jon Williams wrote Why I’m Saying No to NIH’s Racial Preferences. (Dr. Williams is a physician, a professor of cardiovascular sciences at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm). Dr. Williams’s article made me thankful that my dependence on research grants from the National Institutes of Health ended decades ago when I closed that phase of my life. How things have changed at the NIH since then! I learned from this article that the NIH now has a little DEI box to check. Dr. Williams objects to that. Here is what he writes about his upcoming NIH grant application:
My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.
Here are other pertinent excerpts of his article:
The NIH’s recent announcement commands applicants “to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from underrepresented groups for participation in the study team.”
I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity. (Dr. Williams, through his father, is part Bantu, a major ethnolinguistic grouping in West, Central and Southern Africa.)
My Opinion
I am firmly in Dr. Williams’s camp. NIH should fund the best research proposals, and not simply provide monies partly based on the race of the applicants. That approach likely squeezes out funding for some of the best scientific approaches. Beyond that, it is tinged with racism. The goal of NIH should be achieve scientific advancement, not to meddle in affirmative action.
Second Article
Professor Ricky L. Jones wrote Colleges exploit Black athletes for March Madness. It’s time to boycott anti-DEI universities, (Dr. Jones is a professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville.)
Dr. Jones is a proponent of DEI. He begins by quoting an article by University of Southern California Professor Shaun Harper, and writing, “He rightfully points out that Black people represent a disproportionate percentage of college student-athletes who populate the high-revenue sports of basketball and football at predominantly white institutions, both nationwide and in states that are against diversity.”
Magically, deceptive anti-DEI advocates and politicians never bring this up. Why? Maybe because these Black boys make white-controlled athletic conferences, universities, coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, television networks and others insane amounts of money.
Another obvious fact
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to point out to Dr. Jones that he too fails to bring up an obvious fact, namely that the only place that DEI had never taken hold in most universities is in their athletic teams. If DEI were applied to college basketball, football, track, and other sports, two outcomes would be inevitable. Outcome 1: the quality of any given college sport would decline (as would professional sports if DEI invaded there as well), and Outcome 2: fewer black athletes would receive scholarships. Neither of these would appeal to me, nor, I assume, would they to Dr. Jones.
I also think that Dr. Jones would agree with me on another issue, that being the obvious fact that black children in this country receive overall an inferior education in their early school years when compared with white children. The solution for that, in my opinion, is to improve their early schooling. I’ve discussed this point elsewhere (see here).
Dr. Jones raises points we need to be aware of, but I believe much of his article is more of a ranting screed rather than a thoughtful analysis of our current situation. Here are two more paragraphs from his article.
Be clear, student-athletes will lose if they are left to stand alone – and they will in most cases as many fearful Black administrators, faculty and staff have muzzled themselves on PWI campuses (predominantly white institutions). The ball players are completely unprepared for the assaults of white supremacy. They are too young and largely anesthetized by flawed education and socialization.
Like most miseducated, misled and cowed Black people, they cannot adjust when debates dive into history, political ideology and structural marginalization – or outright ignore core grievances and alter the discussions altogether.
My Opinion
I believe that college athletic programs should recruit the best student-athletes available, and yes, they more likely will be Black than white (to use Dr. Jones capitalization preferences). By the same token, I believe that college student admissions, and equally important, college faculty appointments, should also be based on the best applicants available. In blunt terms, that means that the decision should be colorblind, that applicant’s race should not enter into the decision. The vital element should be ability and past performance. Unfortunately that often is not the case in present-day academia.
Again, I will stress that the place where many Black students are slighted is in their early years of education. That is where racial differences come into play, and this is where action is desperately needed. How that goal can be achieved is open to interpretation, but I would suggest that Dr. Jones, Black Lives Matter, and all fair-minded groups, focus their attention on that problem. Having said that, readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of governmental intervention. President Johnson’s war on poverty, much of it still in play some six decades after its inception, has done little to influence poverty, and essentially nothing to improve early Black education.
Regarding the specific effects of using DEI in faculty employment and advancement, I submit that it has produced negative results. One prime recent bit of evidence is the case of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned early this year over furor of her handling of on-campus antisemitism, along with lingering charges of her plagiarism. Nevertheless, she remains on campus as a professor, earning nearly $900,000 annually.
What puzzles me is how she got the job in the first place. According to various media sources, she has been accused of more than 40 instances of plagiarism in her academic work, apparently starting with her thesis (see example above). I cannot imagine someone with her history (or anyone of any race) ascending to the presidency of Harvard without a strong whiff of DEI in that person’s corner.
According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Dr. Gay, before becoming Harvard’s president, expanded diversity bureaucracies and chilled free speech on that campus by creating new DEI positions and creating a task force that recommended portraits of white men be taken down (see here).
Damaged Harvard brand
Clearly, her plagiarism has damaged Harvard’s brand, first of all for elevating a person with suspect credentials to its presidency, and second because Harvard is strict about student plagiarism. To illustrate, here are two excerpts from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources:
“It is expected that all homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers, theses, and examinations and any other work submitted for academic credit will be the student’s own. Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources. The term “sources” includes not only primary and secondary material published in print or online, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited fully. . . .
Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College.”
Consequences
The above rules do have consequences. For example, during the 2020-2021 school year (the latest year I found), Harvard forced 27 students to withdraw from the college, a number of them for plagiarism. It is difficult for me to understand why Harvard students are being forced to withdraw from their college for not distinguishing “their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources,” while a Harvard professor, who clearly has not distinguished her words from others, continues to hold her position and collect nearly $900,000 per year.
Is Diversity necessarily positive?
This is a key question, but one must first ask, diversity of what? If one speaks of diversity of opinion, I would say it is absolutely positive, especially in higher education (where sadly it is lacking, and leaning heavily leftist and woke). On the other hand, if one speaks of genetic diversity, one might pause to consider the deep conflicts that develop between individuals of different ideologies, such as those favoring either Israelis or Palestinians, Russians or Ukrainians, Chinese or Taiwanese, Hutu or Tutsi tribes, or choose your own example. I think it is obvious that combining individuals with differing preexisting biases would be unlikely to produce an especially harmonious unit.
My Personal Conclusions
1. DEI is a form of discrimination that, by its very nature, can only lower the quality of whatever type of organization is involved, be it educational, scientific, governmental, or economic.
2. Racial discrimination has been rampant in the past, but simply changing the race or races to be discriminated against (through Affirmative Action and DEI effects on new generations) does nothing to assuage the pains of past wrongs; rather, it simply embraces a new form discrimination.
3. Most black children today continue to receive inferior early educations, and thus many fall behind. This clearly is where the problem lies. Give these children the education they deserve, and they will effortlessly compete with other races. I submit this as the path to become a truly colorblind country, and to provide liberty and justice for all.
Evidence that Covid arose in a Wuhan laboratory continues to accumulate. As readers here may recall, I have argued several times that the deadly Covid-19 virus (more specifically known as SARS-CoV-2 ) most likely was developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (See here, here, here, and here for those posts). My opinion was further validated last week by Nicholas Wade, former science editor of the New YorkTimes, who reported that recently released information “makes a formidable case that the virus is the product of laboratory synthesis, not of nature.” (see that here).
Now take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then mull over Mr. Wade’s second paragraph. “This startling fact will probably take some time to sink into the national consciousness, given the mainstream media’s sustained inability to report the issue objectively. Editors have failed to think beyond the extreme politicization that requires liberals to oppose the lab-leak hypothesis. Science journalists are too beholden to their sources to suspect that virologists would lie to them about the extent of their profession’s responsibility for a catastrophic pandemic.”
Here is the thrust of the recently released information evaluated by Mr. Wade. In 2018, a group led by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina applied to the Pentagon for $14 million grant to alter bat viruses that possibly might jump to humans, and then immunize bats so they wouldn’t infect soldiers in the region. They proposed to increase the viruses’ infectivity by inserting into them a genetic element known as a furin cleavage site.
They also proposed in that grant application to assemble SARS-like viruses from six sections of lab-synthesized DNA, including in their budget a cost estimate for purchase of the BsmBI restriction enzyme which apparently is required for such assembly. In 2022, without knowing these details, three biologists proposed that if SARS-CoV 2 had been generated in a lab by a standard method, it would have been assembled from six sections of lab-synthesized DNA with the help of biological agent BsmBI. (Hmm, does that sound familiar?) Furthermore, on analyzing the virus’s structure, the biologists found evidence for the seams between sections and other distinctive marks of the assembly process, causing a molecular biologist at Rutgers University to say the genetic evidence raises “to the level of a smoking gun” that the virus was manufactured. Oh, importantly, Covid-19 also has a furin cleavage site.
Peter Daszak (president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the enterprise that funneled substantial funds from the National Institutes of Health to the Wuhan Institute of Virology) was known to favor laboratory work in Wuhan even though that virus laboratory had a lesser level of safety (BLS2) than his collaborator’s laboratory in North Carolina (BSL3) See here for a breakdown of laboratory security differences. Daszak is also the man who drafted the Lancet’s medical journal letter that was signed by a group of virologists who claimed that Covid-19 had developed naturally. (See more on that story here).
Here is how Nicholas Wade ends his recent article: “Chinese officials have demanded that the U.S. ‘stop defaming China’ by raising the possibility of a lab leak. One piece is missing from the puzzle— the identity of the parent viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 was derived. The Chinese authorities have rigorously suppressed all information about the viruses being kept in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the documentary and scientific evidence already assembled seems sufficient to understand the genesis of the pandemic that killed millions.”
Do you agree with that conclusion? Covid has changed our world. I submit that we now have convincing evidence that Covid arose in a Wuhan laboratory, and at least part of that work likely was funded by our National Institutes of Health.
The mess at our southern border is, without any shred of doubt, attributable to the gaggle of Incompetents in our nation’s Capitol. The nincompoops in Washington D.C., namely our Congressmen, Senators, and especially our president, are the enablers of this fiasco.
My most recent furor over our broken border was triggered by the newspaper column I read last night. I’ll reproduce parts of it in red below so you can evaluate the man’s arguments, which align with my own. The column began as follows:
“Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the . . . illegals among us.
The columnist acknowledged what most of us feel, namely that no one of goodwill wants to see illegals suffer. Then he brought up the obvious: each time we legalize illegals (as of course we have done), we thereby create an incentive for more folks to slip into our country illegally. He documented this by pointing to the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform law of 1986. That law allowed some three million illegals then living here to get permanent residencies here. But, the columnist said, there were far more illegals inside our country as he tapped his keyboard, evaluating the mess at our southern border.
He offered a strong recommendation, an option we all know about: “Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won’t do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols. . . .”
“Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don’t tell me this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that’s a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that’s sovereignty. . . . Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn’t have to be. It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle.
“This is no time for mushy compromise,” he wrote near the end of his column. And indeed it was not; nor is it now. Let me explain. This is not a recent column. It was written nearly two decades ago. First A Wall –Then Amnesty appeared in the April 7. 2006, edition of the Washington Post. For reference, George W. Bush was president at the time. Yet now, the wound at our southern border is festering with greater urgency than it was when Charles Krauthammer’s column was written. The mess at our southern borders continues.
Question of the day: What is the current crowd in Washington doing about it?
FYI: The column I quoted from was republished on page 169 in this collection of Krauthammer’s columns (See reviews of that book here).
NOTICE: As I mentioned in my previous post (way back at the beginning of this year, by far my longest pause since I started this blog) I planned to be absent for a while. The immediate cause was my temporary frustration over losing key additions to my post evaluating Joe Biden (see that here), but I also had other compelling reasons. I had been dawdling over a couple of major projects that needed to be finished. Since then, I’ve made some progress on those (but alas, they are not yet completed). I think I understand why I’ve been a laggard. The reason seems obvious. Having logged over 92 years on this planet, I still resolutely step to the beat of my drummer, but his rhythm has slowed, his beat grown fainter. Yet I am thankful that he marches on.
Please read housekeeping note at end of this post!
Joe Biden’s presidential grade so far? A grim F is what he deserves. This is doubly tragic, because Biden seems determined to run again in the 2024 presidential election, and his likely opponent will be Donald Trump, whose presidential escapades prompted me, as regular readers of this blog may recall, to grade his White House performance as a D- (see that post here).
If you’re a Biden supporter (or a Trump supporter, or none of either), please read on. Consider the present situation for a moment. Our country seems doomed to have a gloomy election next year, specifically a race between an angry, bumbling D- and a dense, blundering F? Imagine how you will feel with these two geriatrics lurching breathlessly around the country, each struggling to reach the finish line in November.
Having already assessed Mr. Trump’s presidential performance, I’ll now explain why I believe Mr. Biden deserves his ignominious F. I begin by acknowledging that I’m stunned that his most recent approval ratings hover around 35%. How, I wonder, can a third of our populous approve of his performance? Certainly party loyalty is strong in certain individuals, but I can’t fathom how even his strongest backers refuse to acknowledge his mental decline. Even last spring a Washington Post/ABC poll, 63% of over 1,000 voting-age respondents believed Mr Biden was not sharp enough to serve effectively as leader of the free world (See here), and his blunders have continued since then. All one has to do is watch a few TV clips to see he’s cognitively impaired. (I refuse to lay his weakened cerebration and uncertain balance entirely on his age; I’m a full decade older than he is, yet I don’t stumble around like he does. Nor do I mumble as much.)
Setting aside his mental and physical lapses, I believe that three main reasons account for his low popularity. These are the 1, the economy, 2, the border crisis, and 3, a string of suspicious family financial dealings. One could extend the evidence each of these into a long chapter, but I’ll just touch on some highlights each one.
1: The Economy
Earlier in his administration, Biden went big on spending, submitting an unprecedented $6 trillion budget, this compared to Trump’s proposed budget of $4.8 trillion in the last year of his term. Biden’s goal purportedly was a way to thing green and to spend our way to prosperity. How did it work out? Well, inflation took off, but not wages. What happened to the average hourly earnings of all private workers? Here’s the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As the Wall Street Journal explained, there was a 3.16% drop in real earnings for the average worker across the 29 months of the Biden presidency as of mid-2023.
You probably have heard a variation of the old line: Statistics don’t lie, but liars often use statistics. This seems to be especially true in our nation’s capitol. Here’s how Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted “Bidenomics” in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal just before Christmas. In her piece, she said, “wages have risen more than prices since 2019,” thus implying that Biden’s plan had benefited workers.
Can you spot the misdirection in her statement? Well, former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Phil Gramm, and Prof. Donald Boudreaux did.
In a letter to the editor of the WSJ earlier this week they wrote, “The problem with this claim is that President Biden wasn’t in office a single day in 2019—or in 2020. From the beginning of 2019 to the end of 2020, with Donald Trump still in the White House, real weekly earnings rose by $69 (or 6.2%) and annual median income rose by $3,592. But from the beginning of the Biden administration to the third quarter of 2023, the last quarter for which we have data, real weekly earnings fell by more than $25 (or 2.1%), pushing real annual median income down by $1,306. Oh, and they added: “Maybe Bidenomics works only when Mr. Biden isn’t President.”
2, The Border Crisis
Photo from BBC News
This is a big one.
Here’s what CNN reported last Friday: Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border this month, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN. Over the course of the month, authorities dealt with more than 10,000 migrants crossing daily until more recently, when the numbers began to drop.
This onslaught wasn’t particularly worrisome for so called sanctuary cities; these large cities are almost uniformly under control of Democrats. (According to the Washington Post, sanctuary cities are communities with policies that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal authorities’ efforts to deport immigrants. For the past few decades, “U.S. sanctuary city policies have been chiefly about welcoming immigrants . . .)
How times have changed! In the past few years, the burden of rampant illegal migration was felt mostly by the southern border states and Florida. That is no longer true. Migrants now are being shipped northward by a stream of buses, most notably from Texas by order of Governor Greg Abbott.
Effects ofillegal migration on northern cities
Chicago
“Chicago’s migrant crisis spirals out of control: City spent nearly $1 million on failed camp before pulling the plug – as officials now IMPOUND buses bringing migrants to the city from Texas on Gov. Greg Abbott’s orders”Headline from UK Daily Mail. Subheadings: * * *The city spent over $985,000 on the shuttered migrant camp at Brighton Park * * * There are currently more than 13,000 migrants staying in Chicago’s shelter system and the city has spent more than 250M handing the crisis this year. (The full article in the Daily Mail [12/15/2023] is well worth reading. See it here.)
New York City
And things are really getting dicey in New York City. The cost of sheltering migrants in the Big Apple could run to about $12 billion by summer of 2025 if the flow of migrants continues apace with current numbers, this according to Politico (see story here). Apparently more than 160,000 migrants have entered New York City since the spring of 2022. See an up-to-date New York Daily News story (1 Jan 2024) here. * * * * * I could go on, but you get the point.
3. A String of Suspicious Financial Dealings
Housekeeping note:
I have decided to take a break from blogging. Why? Yesterday, when working on this article, I mistakenly clicked on “publish” instead of “preview,” so you received an unbaked loaf of my bread. Major frustration #1. Today, I spent three hours cleaning things up, adding Denver to Chicago and New York regarding the illegal migrant crisis. I tuned up the entire article, much improving it and adding interesting details, none of which you will ever see. Why? When my post was finally ready to go, I moved to another part of my “backdoor,” where I work on my blog. and when I came back to my new draft, all of the careful changes and additions I had made were gone, unable to be retrieved. That was major frustration #2. Am I going to take time to repeat those three hours? Not a chance!
I’m cruising (or maybe crashing) into 92 in a few days, and I’d prefer to do that without a bundle of frustrations. So, I’m taking a break of at least a month, maybe more. Writerken.com will remain open, so I’d love to have you browse through what I’ve written here, over 100 articles are available on topics such as politics, classical medical experiments, information on aging, health, travel, literature, culture, and whatnot.
I’m re-posting Donald Trump’s Final Grade (it appeared here nearly three years ago) for four important reasons:
1) Odds are high that Trump will again be the Republican candidate for our presidency.
2) If he does become a candidate, he will face a cacophony of denunciation from the mainstream media.
3) The flood of denunciation will almost certainly effect his ability to perform well (see below for explanation of this).
4) For comparison, I plan to write soon about Joe Biden’s less-than-stellar performance to date.
Here is my original post:
A number of articles I’ve seen, along with opinions from certain syndicated columnists, make the case that the Covid-19 pandemic defeated Donald Trump. I have trouble swallowing that. The virus clearly shifted some votes, but I would argue that Donald Trump knocked himself right out of the Oval Office.
The reason seems obvious. Trump never learned to be presidential. He spent his four years in office squabbling. He flooded his nights with ridiculous tweets, and in daylight threw his abrasive jabs and roundhouse rants at practically everyone. In the end, enough of those blows turned around and smacked him solidly on the jaw, putting him down for the count.
I suppose one might argue that his bluster was caused by the press, the majority of which pummeled him at every turn, putting him on the defensive, but I don’t buy that either. He had shown plenty of nastiness even as a candidate while skirmishing with others for the Republican nomination.
I think he won the first time because he was the outsider itching to drain the Washington swamp and yank some federal tentacles off our backs. That sounded good to me, as it apparently still does to most citizens. As I wrote in my Washington’s Swamp post, in December only 15% of us approved of the work of our Washington legislators.
Not that it matters to anyone else, but I give Trump a D- for his term. In my system, he avoided a flat out failing grade because he accomplished some things I believe have been good for our country. But he sits tightly wedged near the bottom of the presidential barrel because he was often an embarrassment while in office.
URGENT NOTE: If you’re among the 85% of us disappointed with our congressional crowd, and if you know anyone capable of draining gigantic swamps, someone reasonably stable and fortified with stamina galore, give that person a nudge toward greatness.
End of original post. Now some updated thoughts:
It is now clear that Trump’s presidency was thrown violently off course by the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative. If you don’t know the origin of the narrative, it was funded by the Clinton campaign and it was trumpeted loudly by the New York Times, the Washington Post, many other left-leaning big city newspapers. Ironically, the Times and the Post even won Pulitzer Prizes for their stories touting the fake Steele dossier that ignited the fuss. The collusion narrative was also frequently highlighted on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and MSNBC. But emerging facts, especially those in the Durham report (See here) turned that narrative around.
Here are a summary of the factual story, as revealed by a few paragraphs taken from a more reliable CNN report (The Steele dossier: A reckoning, written in November 2021). Read it carefully. There are some bombshells in it.
When it came to light in January 2017, just days before Donald Trump took office, the so-called Steele dossier landed like a bombshell and sent shockwaves around the world with its salacious allegations about Trump and his supposed ties to Russia.
But five years later, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished.
A series of investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources. They also raise serious questions about the political underpinnings of some key explosive claims about Trump by shedding new light on the involvement of some well-connected Democrats in the dossier, and separate efforts to prod the FBI to investigate ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, civil lawsuits in the US and the United Kingdom, and an internal Justice Department review have now fully unspooled the behind-the-scenes role that some Democrats played in this saga. They paid for the research, funneled information to Steele’s sources, and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.
Nearly a year passed before the full truth came out about the financing: The money flowed from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to law firm Perkins Coie, to the research company Fusion GPS, and then ultimately to Steele, who got $168,000.
But Democratic involvement in Steele’s work was much deeper than previously known. Court filings from the Durham inquiry recently revealed that some information in the dossier originated from Charles Dolan, 71, a public relations executive with expertise in Russian affairs who had a decades-long political relationship with the Clinton family. He has not been accused of any crimes.
But that isn’t the end of the story. Obama and Biden knew the truth, as did the Deep State
“In July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan rushed to the White House to brief then-President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, our current president, about alarming new evidence uncovered by American intelligence. The agency had obtained reliable information that “Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians.” (page 81 of the Durham report).
But not only did Obama and Biden know about Hillary’s treachery, so did other top officials who were also secretly briefed. These officials included Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey. This is made clear from some of Brennan’s handwritten notes. Yet, for the next three years all of these high-ranking officials remained silent about the CIA’s findings. How deep can the Washington Swamp (see here) get?
Final questions:
Do you think it possible that the same forces described above would surge again against Donald Trump if he were elected president for a second term? Do you think that Trump would be both vengeful and vindictive during his term? Do you think such a scenario would be good for our country? Are these important questions?
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Biden or Trump? Neither! We need better candidates. Our upcoming primary elections must rid us of this pathetic pair of presidential nominees. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I’ve harped on this topic a number of times earlier (see here, here, and here), but the situation continues to needle me. And I’m not alone. Most citizens feel the same way I do.
According to a recent CNN poll, President Biden has a job approval of only 39% (see here). And 61% of those polled said they disapproved of his performance. Biden’s negativity seems to be related primarily to our inflationary economy, surging crime, international turmoil, and the uncontrolled influx of illegals at our borders.
Ex-president Trump, Biden’s chief competitor, hardly glitters in comparison. Of those polled, only 42% had a favorable view of Mr. Trump, while 54% expressed an unfavorable one. Trump’s record when president likely plays a role in his low rating, but there is no doubt that his labile personality and revengeful nature contribute to his unpopularity. I have lost count of how many of his former allies he has turned against.
More reasons:
Other crucial factors contribute to the unpopularity of these two. Both are oldsters with diminished brain power. Biden leads in this downward mental race in my opinion, with Trump running not far behind. Both are also vindictive, with Trump, I believe, outdistancing his rival in this category. Both know they are unpopular. So, why don’t they give up their selfish goals, drop out of the race, and benefit us all?
It’s worth recalling that Trump holds the record for presidential impeachments, having collected two (half of the four in U.S. history), but Biden may be closing in. It seems likely he will face impeachment early next year regarding the string of foreign payments made to his son, Hunter, and other members of the Biden family (including himself?).
Legal problems as well:
Trump, of course, is also entangled in plenty of legal problems. According to an October report from The Hill (see here) he is defending himself against a total of 91 criminal charges spread among four state and federal criminal indictments. Separately, he is also a party in more than a half-dozen civil lawsuits.
The legal noise is not as loud for our current president, but he and his family are under investigation by the House Oversight Committee for the millions of dollars collected by Biden family members from foreign countries, most of these proceeds having made their way through shell companies.
Final thoughts:
After skimming lightly over a number of each candidates drawbacks, it’s perhaps not surprising that the same CNN poll mentioned above also reported that neither man is viewed as much of a straight shooter; just 42% thought Biden is honest and trustworthy while only 33% felt the same way about Trump.
So, after considering the obvious flaws of each candidate, why should we rush as numbly as lemmings toward yet another contest between these two uninspiring individuals? We undoubtedly could identify hundreds of men or women (or even thousands) far better qualified to lead our country through its cauldron of present-day problems. Let us begin the search! Qualified volunteers will be welcomed.
