WE ALL HEARD HIM: 20 MILLION JOBLESS, AND AMNESTY FOR 40 MILLION ILLEGALS IS AT HAND.
Biden’s First Hundred Days: A Failing Report Card
I anticipated the Biden presidency with great trepidation. On the campaign trail—or at least in the primary and presidential debates, as he really didn’t campaign in the usual sense—he appeared to be weak, mentally and physically, an ideal Trojan horse for the leftist radicals in his party to smuggle in their preferred policies. He pandered to their dreams of open borders and a Green New Deal, and he repeated their mantra that the U.S. was plagued by “systemic racism,” a term undefined and incapable of being defined in any way recognizable as racist. He jumped on his party’s identity politics bandwagon. And, of course, he told quite consequential and provable lies—such as that Donald Trump had praised Nazis in Charlottesville, or that he, Biden, knew nothing of Hunter’s business dealings in the Ukraine and China, much less that he himself was involved in the China deals.
Still, we were told that Biden was a moderate, a unifier, a bipartisan compromiser. He was just good-old, backslapping, women-hugging Joe, an old-time professional pol who might occasionally have a strained relationship with the truth—a couple of bouts of plagiarism, perhaps, but generally just a harmless fabulist—but surely not an ideological or a calculating, mean-spirited liar. There was hope that the Biden we saw vying for the presidency would be different from the Biden we would see having won the presidency.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case. If anything, Biden as president has been worse than Biden as candidate. Here is his first one hundred days report card.
First, the good grade (though the only one). Biden’s team has managed the vaccine rollout fairly effectively, building on the foundation the Trump administration laid. He deserves credit for that, though he would deserve more had he expressed some gratitude for the near-miraculous success of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed in producing vaccines in a matter of months.
Thanking Trump, whom most of his party reviles, would have shown some class; but I guess presidents thanking the good works of their predecessors in the opposing party, or at least not heaping scorn on those predecessors, is an act of presidential class that disappeared after George W. Bush.
Now for the failing grades. Biden has taken the poison of identity politics to an extreme. Almost every presidential appointment has been made based on the appointee’s race, ethnicity, sex, or sexuality, not the appointee’s being the most highly qualified for the position. He has reinstated the Critical Race Theory inspired, and thus racist, ideological training in the federal government. (CRT divides humanity into oppressor races and oppressed races and revives the wicked ancient notion of blood guilt.) He signed a law that gives loan forgiveness to Black farmers but not White farmers.
Biden has abetted the vicious lie that there is an epidemic of police violence against Blacks, leading most Blacks and many Whites to believe that Blacks are more likely to die at the hands of the police than in automobile accidents, whereas the facts show that the latter is ten times more likely than the former, and that police killings are statistically quite rare and show no racial skew. And Biden continues publicly to indict the U.S. as plagued by systemic racism and White supremacy, despite offering no bill of particulars to back up that indictment (because there are no such particulars).
Relatedly, Biden has encouraged military leaders, who always want to know the path for career advancement, to cease trying to make the military the most muscular fighting machine and instead to make it woke. We now see the sex norming of fitness standards, the mandate to “diversify” the officer corps, and the purging of those with “extremist” (pro-Trump?) beliefs. A military has only one role—to win wars. But the Biden administration is willing to have the military turn its focus from that role and pursue an ideological agenda, even if that agenda will lead to cohesion-destroying sexual tensions and rivalries in combat units and the exclusion of those with excellent combat abilities.
Then there’s Biden’s disaster on the southern border. Biden’s stopping border wall construction and his restrictions on deportations have created a humanitarian crisis for the thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border in response to Biden’s welcome mat. They currently huddle together in temporary shelters, a high percentage infected with COVID, many of whom will be released to infect citizens.
Biden’s border policies have been a bonanza for the Mexican cartels, both financially and in terms of sexual exploitation of female migrants. Moreover, because the crisis of the unaccompanied minors has drawn border patrol agents away from policing the border, and because of the gaps left when Biden halted border-wall construction, the cartels now can easily smuggle in drugs, gang members, sex offenders, and potential terrorists.
There are other failing marks on Biden’s first report card. He continues to call Georgia’s voting law “Jim Crow 2.0” and lies about its content. Apparently, requiring a photo ID is racist because Blacks just don’t know how to get one. Of course, as is frequently pointed out, one needs such an ID to do almost everything. Indeed, one needs such an ID to get the COVID vaccine. So, is the Biden administration trying to suppress Black vaccinations? If requiring a photo ID is racist, then Biden’s vaccination program stands indicted.
Then there’s the XL pipeline’s cancellation, a completely irrational act. Canceling it cost thousands of people jobs. And what does it accomplish? The oil from Canada will still come in, but now it will come in by the less safe and more polluting truck and rail. Jobs lost, and nothing gained.
Indeed, the Biden climate policy, in general, is irrational. Biden would have the country endure enormous costs for almost no gain in reducing the world’s total output of greenhouse gases, particularly since China and India are the major contributors to that output. Moreover, if Biden were serious about this, he would opt for clean nuclear power and natural gas rather than the unreliable eyesores of wind farms and solar panels.
Biden has rescinded the due process rules the Trump administration prescribed for handling sexual assaults on college campuses. The Obama administration’s rules were widely criticized for being one-sided and unfair to those accused. Even a large portion of the liberal Harvard law faculty voiced that criticism. Apparently, true due process is not a Biden value.
Biden has signed and endorsed policies that spend money like drunken sailors—except that drunken sailors cannot print money. The idea that one can print money at a pace that outstrips the production of goods and services without devaluing that money and causing inflation—a cruel tax on those on fixed incomes—seems to be a Biden verity.
Biden’s foreign policy report card is still incomplete. Will he be tough on Iran and China? Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Finally, where are the promised moderation, bipartisanship, and unity? And where is his past support of the filibuster? My surmise is that Biden—or perhaps his handlers, who may be running the presidency—never intended these things. That’s another failing grade, perhaps the most important one.
Biden’s One Hundred Days of Hubris
Column: Presidents who misremember history are doomed to repeat it
President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress underscored this administration's left turn. The speech was a laundry list of progressive priorities in domestic, foreign, and social policy with a price tag, when you add in the American Rescue Plan, of some $6 trillion. Biden's delivery, heavy with improvisation, only slightly enlivened a prosaic and unoriginal text. Biden repeated lines from both Bill "the power of our example" Clinton and Barack "the arc of the moral universe" Obama. But it wasn't just the words themselves that made me think of Biden's most recent Democratic predecessors. The scope of his plans, increasing government's role in just about every aspect of American life, also brought to mind the Democrats who tried to govern as liberals after campaigning as moderates.
I’m old enough to recall the last president who vanquished Reaganism. Obama spoke of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America," and came to Washington in 2009 with the aim of changing the trajectory of the country just as Ronald Reagan had done three decades earlier. Shortly before his one hundredth day in office, he delivered a speech at Georgetown University where he promised to lay a "new foundation" for the country. His friends in the media hailed him as the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "Barack Obama is bringing back the era of big government," historian Matthew Dallek and journalist Samuel Loewenberg announced in the New York Daily News.
We know how that turned out. The GOP captured the House in 2010. By the time Obama left office, Republicans had full control of Washington and were dominant in the states. Reaganism survived. And now, 12 years later, the cycle is repeating. This time it’s President Biden who is likened to FDR. It’s Biden who is said to have interred the idea of limited government. It’s Biden who is marking his first 100 days in office with plans to spend trillions on infrastructure, green energy, health care, and elder and child care. The political setbacks of the Obama years didn’t temper Biden’s ambitions. They intensified his desire to leverage narrow congressional majorities into sweeping expansions of the welfare state.
Why does Biden think he can avoid Obama’s fate? Like a good lawyer, he has a theory of the case. It goes like this: Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama spent enough money to ensure a strong economic recovery. They didn't emphasize jobs above all else. Their caution was responsible for Democratic losses in the midterm elections. And all it takes is GOP control of one chamber of Congress to spoil a liberal revival. By opening the floodgates of federal spending, Biden hopes to deepen and extend the post-coronavirus economic boom. Growth and full employment will prevent a Republican takeover. And a second Progressive Era will begin.
The problem with this theory is its selective misreading of history. It wasn’t just the economy that sank the Democrats in 1994 and 2010. It was independent voters who turned against presidents who campaigned as moderates but governed as liberals. Nor did rising unemployment stop Republicans from picking up seats in 2002. And an economic boom didn’t save the House GOP in 2018. In every case, assessments of the president—among independent voters in particular—mattered more than dollars and cents. By committing himself to the idea that massive spending will safeguard the Democratic Congress, Biden may be inadvertently guaranteeing the partisan overreach that has doomed past majorities.
Biden doesn’t give enough credit to the record of his Democratic predecessors. The unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in January 1993 when Bill Clinton was inaugurated. By November 1994, it had fallen to 5.6 percent. Meanwhile, the economy grew by 4 percent in the third quarter of 1994. Nevertheless, the Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 40 years and the Senate for the first time in 8 years. Why? Because Republicans won independents 56 percent to 44 percent. Voters who had backed Ross Perot in 1992 swung to the GOP. Voters’ top priority in the exit poll wasn’t jobs. It was crime. And the failure of Clinton’s unpopular health plan didn’t help.
The 2010 midterm had similar results. The economy, while nothing to brag about, was nonetheless improving. Unemployment had been falling since October 2009. Growth, though anemic, had also returned. Republicans gained 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate because independents rejected President Obama’s governance. They backed Republicans 56 percent to 37 percent—an 8-point swing against a president they had supported in 2008. Why? Part of the reason was the economy. But the Affordable Care Act was also significant. Health care was voters’ second priority in the exit poll. A 48 percent plurality called for Obamacare’s repeal.
Biden’s theory also omits the contrary examples of recent Republican presidents. In November 2002 the unemployment rate was higher, and growth lower, than in November 2000. But the GOP had a good year anyway thanks to President Bush’s high post-9/11 approval ratings and a tough but effective campaign on national security.
The 2018 midterm is further proof that campaign results are not a direct function of economic performance. Democrats won control of the House despite full employment and sustained growth. Independents, who had narrowly backed President Trump in 2016, turned against him and voted for Democratic candidates by a 12-point margin. No mystery why: A 38-percent plurality of voters said they were voting to oppose Trump, whose strong disapproval rating was at an incredible 46 percent in the exit poll. Health care ranked as the top issue, with voters recoiling at the prospect of an Obamacare replacement that failed to cover preexisting conditions.
Not only do the data show that the economy is less important to the midterms than many assume, they are also a reminder that the first hundred days do not define a presidency. The fate of a president and his party depends more on his ability to maintain popularity and on his performance during unanticipated crises. While Biden’s approval ratings continue to be positive and his disapproval low, there are some warning signs: His approval among independents ranges between the mid- to high-50s, and a majority of voters disapproves of his handling of migration along the southern border. Focused on his grand plans for the economy, Biden might dismiss voter concerns over immigration, crime, and inflation until it is too late.
Sure, Biden might avoid making Barack Obama’s mistakes. But he has plenty of time to make mistakes of his own.
Through the border crisis, which really isn’t a crisis for Democrats. The surge of illegals entering the country is a means to an end. America is to be forever changed -- transformed by new underclass populations that have no loyalty to the American experience, who are fresh shock troops that can help “deconstruct” local communities, and who will be paid off with taxpayer-funded government largesse.
The Democratic Party is Now America’s Extremist Party
Millions of Americans know. Daily, others are coming to grips with the reality. But fear pervades the nation, so many people stay quiet. They stay quiet hoping destruction isn’t visited upon them.
Time to end the fear. Here’s the ugly fact that must be confronted: The Democratic Party is now an extremist organ waging a fierce cold civil war to seize power and eviscerate America as founded and upend and erase its exceptional culture.
The party is saturated with Marxist sensibilities, ideas, and motivations. Marxism is alien and hostile. It’s fundamentally anti-American. Its worldview, strategies, and tactics are furnished in an endless stream by radical leftist academics, who have dominated our colleges and universities for decades now.
But the Democrats' destination isn’t necessarily a Marxist state, not in its purest form. It could be corporatism or fascism or variations. Let’s hope we thwart Democrats’ aspirations so we never know.
As of the 2020 elections, Democrats have abandoned the middle ground. They’ve been moving steadily left throughout the 2000s. The Republican and Democrat parties traditionally sought to govern from the middle, a little right or a little left. But the middle has ceased to serve the Democrats’ aims.
In fact, Democrats see themselves as engaged in a civil war with one-party rule as the goal. No? Read Democrat apologists Peter Leyden’s and Ruy Teixeira’s article, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War.” For Leyden and Teixeira, it’s a zero-sum game.
From Medium, January 19, 2018:
The best way to understand politics in America today is to reframe it as closer to civil war. Just the phrase “civil war” is harsh, and many people may cringe. It brings up images of guns and death, the bodies of Union and Confederate soldiers.
America today is nowhere near that level of conflict or at risk of such violence. However, America today does exhibit some of the core elements that move a society from what normally is the process of working out political differences toward the slippery slope of civil war. We’ve seen it in many societies in many previous historical eras, including what happened in the United States in 1860.
Leyden’s and Teixeira’s ideal: California, which they laud as a one-party state and a model for the nation. California, which achieved Democrat control by importing illegals, driving out middle- and working-class Californians with oppressive taxes and high costs for everything -- notably housing and energy -- and universal balloting, which is ripe for abuses and fraud. Homelessness and crime are endemic in the once Golden State.
Pick up a copy of the Communist Manifesto to understand the Democrats’ playbook. It’s a short read. What’s a critical prerequisite for Marx’s and Engel’s communist utopia? Destruction. The old order must be ripped up from its roots. Opposition must be mercilessly crushed.
What have we witnessed from Trump’s candidacy in 2015 forward?
An unremitting four-year assault on Trump and his presidency. Ceaseless attempts to subvert his administration through the weaponized use of law, from Robert Mueller to two sham impeachments.
Last year, though draconian shutdowns -- particularly harsh in blue states; ask Michiganders -- with accompanying trampling of constitutional rights. Imposition of masks to exact subservience. The destruction of small businesses and jobs. Restrictions on church attendance, while strip clubs, abortion mills, and pot emporiums thrived. Much of this permitted to undermine the Trump presidency and scuttle Trump’s chances at reelection. And the clear election fixes in key battleground states to ensure that Trump lost.
Passivity toward or encouragement of violence and riots in blue cities in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Licenses granted to expressly militant, anti-American groups, BLM and Antifa, in Democrat jurisdictions to incite violence and cause mayhem. Calls to defund or even abolish police. The general collapse of law and order in blue cities, Portland being an ongoing example.
Through the intensifying, caustic narrative that the United States suffers from “systemic racism.” Through the emerging calls for remedies, namely, reverse racism and reparations -- retributions all -- for the unpardonable sin of being born white – at least, nonaffluent, nonprogressive white. 800,000 casualties in a hot civil war to end Democrat-backed slavery and a civil rights movement to end Democrat-imposed apartheid (Jim Crow), of no account.
All lives no longer matter to Democrats, who have found a new expression for virulent racism, which is their legacy.
Through the border crisis, which really isn’t a crisis for Democrats. The surge of illegals entering the country is a means to an end. America is to be forever changed -- transformed by new underclass populations that have no loyalty to the American experience, who are fresh shock troops that can help “deconstruct” local communities, and who will be paid off with taxpayer-funded government largesse.
Through the Biden administration’s government by executive orders -- orders via fiat to impose elements of the Democrats’ statist agenda. And that agenda?
Let’s highlight H.R. 1 (elections “reform”), which is flagrantly anti honest elections, brazenly designed to lock in Democrats’ control of the federal government in perpetuity. Then let’s go to the Green New Deal, which would drain away the nation’s economic lifeblood by attacking the conventional energy industry. Radical environmentalism is a cult among Democrats. Read daily the New York Times. It catalogues its side’s zealotry, a zealotry that alone would collapse the nation if given free rein.
What about the less known but disastrous aim of urbanizing the suburbs? Why should cities alone suffer under Democrat rule?
Then there’s Big Tech’s and Corporate America’s bold collusion with Democrats. No idealism is involved. Perhaps some fear, but it’s mostly cold calculation. It’s about money and power and corporate brass believing that siding with Democrats is the ticket to more of both.
Be it Microsoft or Twitter or Coca Cola or Delta or Major League Baseball, the line isn’t just blurring between the public and private sectors, it’s being erased. Attacks on 1st Amendment rights and fair elections and cancel culture are coordinated, informally for now. Are social credit scores for individuals -- a behavior control tool -- far off?
The amalgam of a political party, government, and large corporations should chill liberty-loving Americans to their bones.
Capping things off, Democrats are on the frontlines in the long war on American culture, mores, and values. Democrats are exhibiting an emboldened contempt for what most Americans hold dear: family, faith, and flag. Militant atheism -- unbridled hate for God and religion -- grows unabashedly among Democrats.
Paul Kengor, in his excellent study of Karl Marx (The Devil and Karl Marx), cited the late Bishop Fulton Sheen, who quoted Marx: “Communism begins where atheism begins.”
Unfettered abortion (unmitigated infanticide) is increasingly matter-of-factly championed. And the oddball notion that one’s sex is malleable and chosen is being forced on Americans who know better. Males can claim to be females and access gym showers, restrooms, and compete with -- and often beat -- female athletes in contests.
Tobacco is bad, but pot and illicit drugs are recreational.
In pure Orwellian fashion, language is being perverted to try to dupe us that dishonest elections are fair, illegals are simply noncitizens and migrants, and riots are peaceful protests.
The 2020s is the decade where America’s fate is decided. Will we be free or unfree? A republic or some form of tyranny? Will Democrats win the civil war they’ve started? Or will decent, God-fearing, freedom-loving Americans of every stripe coalesce and vanquish the Democrats and end the greatest threat ever to the nation?
We win this war by first accepting who the Democrats have become and the initiatives they’ve launched to destroy our country. We defeat them, and then we never let this threat rise again.
J. Robert Smith can be found on Parler @JRobertSmith and at Gab, again @JRobertSmith. He also blogs at Flyover.
Joe Biden Touts Massive Amnesty for Illegal Aliens in Address to Congress
During his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Joe Biden touted his massive amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens even as 22.4 million Americans remain jobless or underemployed.
“On day one of my presidency, I kept my commitment and I sent a comprehensive immigration bill to Congress,” Biden said. “If you believe we need a secure border — pass it. If you believe in a pathway to citizenship — pass it.”
“If you actually want to solve the problem — I have sent you a bill, now pass it,” Biden continued.
Biden touted his amnesty plan, which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) admitted last month “doesn’t have support” in Congress, which was introduced in the House and Senate in March. The plan would give amnesty to 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States while doubling legal immigration levels.
Previous analysis of the Biden amnesty revealed the plan would import a foreign-born population nearly the size of California by 2031 as nearly 12 million illegal aliens would have taken advantage of the amnesty provisions by then. Overall, the Biden amnesty would likely bring more than 37.3 million foreign nationals to the U.S.
Biden also urged the U.S. Senate to pass two amnesty plans which passed out of the House last month — one that could provide amnesty to 4.4 million illegal aliens and another that would give green cards to about 2.1 million illegal aliens working on farms.
“Congress needs to pass legislation this year to finally secure protection for the DREAMers — the young people who have only known America as their home,” Biden said.
“And, permanent protections for immigrants on temporary protected status who come from countries beset by man-made and natural-made violence and disaster,” Biden said. “As well as a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers who put food on our tables.”
Senate Democrats would need votes from ten Senate Republicans to pass the two amnesties without changing the Senate rules by using the nuclear option to blow up the filibuster.
As Breitbart News exclusively reported in March, 17 Senate Republicans have publicly said they will not support the two amnesties approved by the House and touted by Biden. Those senators include immigration moderates like Marco Rubio (R-FL), James Lankford (R-OK), and Mike Crapo (R-ID), among others.
The other 33 Senate Republicans have either yet to state clear positions or have not stated publicly their position on the amnesties. Those include conservatives like Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and John Kennedy (R-LA).
Biden touting the amnesties is the latest pressure campaign by the corporate interest, donor class, and political establishment coalition that has for months been lobbying lawmakers to back plans that would add millions of foreign workers to the U.S. labor market to compete for jobs against Americans.
Most recently, former President George W. Bush has done a media tour for his latest pro-migration portraiture book in which he urges lawmakers to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and increase the flow of foreign workers to the U.S. to take blue-collar jobs.
Bush admitted last week that he is working with the Koch brothers’ network of donor class organizations to lobby Congress on an amnesty.
Similarly, giant multinational corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Best Buy, Microsoft, Verizon, Visa, Ikea, Uber, and HP, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have sent letters to members of Congress asking that they back the amnesties.
The Chamber of Commerce called the two amnesties that passed the House “critically important” despite an ongoing unemployment crisis that has lasted for a year since economic lockdowns began.
In recent weeks, a group of Senate Republicans and Democrats have met to negotiate an amnesty plan for potentially millions of illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) suggested last week he would back a stand-alone DACA amnesty.
While discussions of amnesty have continued, the U.S.-Mexico border continues to be inundated with illegal immigration and interior immigration enforcement has been gutted significantly thanks to a series of “sanctuary country” orders by the Biden administration.
Analysis projects that federal immigration officials could encounter 1.2 million illegal aliens at the southern border this year. Likely hundreds of thousands more could successfully enter the U.S., undetected by agents.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here
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