The Biden saga is about more than just Biden, and more than just corruption, even.
Even if Joe Biden were guilty of unethical or illegal conduct while in office; or were now in a position where he could be blackmailed as a president either because of his own misdeeds or Hunter’s…
…millions of Democrat voters would either not know because of DNC-driven media blackouts on the story; or if they did find out, would either not mind, and even kind of admire Biden for his chicanery, or else instantly dismiss the story as “right wing propaganda”—meaning that between the transformation of media outlets into propaganda organs for the Democratic Party, voter indifference/amorality, and voter gullibility, it would be as if those misdeeds had never happened.
In addition, the likely refusal of the FBI and Department of Justice to go after the Bidens—just as they have refused to go after the Clintons and a host of other clearly guilty malfeasants—would also help render the misdeeds effectively non-existent, even if they constituted the rankest bribery and a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
And what this all amounts to is just one more indication, among many others too numerous to mention in this article, that the world’s greatest democracy is in far deeper trouble than even most conservatives recognize; that’s true even if Trump wins. If your press is so outrageously partisan and screwed up, that even your publicly-funded national broadcaster, NPR, can refuse with impunity to report on what must be one of the biggest political stories of the year, if not the decade, and almost all other outlets join in the obfuscation and distortion, then you don’t have anything better than Brezhnev-era Pravda. You don’t have “reporting”. You have propaganda—mythmaking—lying—in service to a partisan quest for power. And by the way…how long until Fox falls? It could be next week, next month, any time. And when it does fall…then what?
The point is: You can’t have a functioning democracy unless the citizens first care about facts, and then, have access to those facts. Even then, democracy is fragile. Even in the best circumstances, where everyone’s conscientious and the facts are known, people come to different conclusions, or get things wrong.
So…are the Bidens corrupt?
My First Answer: I’m going to go with yes, yes, and yes. I don’t think they’re All-Star Thespians. Hunter’s been running around for years selling lobbying access to his father, who has at times changed American foreign policy in response, and who has repeatedly enabled and covered for his son’s shenanigans, if he has not profited from those deals himself in the end. If that’s not corruption, nothing is.
My Deeper Answer: Yes, the bad news is they’re corrupt, but the worse news is, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Half the country either doesn’t know about the corruption, doesn’t mind, or wouldn’t mind even if they did know; a mendacious, unaccountable media is covering for the Bidens; and federal law enforcement can’t be trusted to hold the Bidens accountable anymore.
And that’s a story about the country more than about Joe Biden. He’s corrupt, but the country itself is breaking, and breaking ever more deeply. That’s the real story here, and I hope it has a happy ending.
It might, or it mightn’t. Problem is, such happy endings are always dearly bought, paid for in blood, treasure, and misery.
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And, I woke up feeling SO good!
Yeah, if I think about it, I get really down. For now, and until after Nov. 3, I’m making a conscious effort to ignore all that – just cannot get bogged down in it at this time.
But, yes, we do have to deal with it, and do so in a way that keeps the truth flowing. We need to work on building alliances between blogger/video producers, to give people alternatives to the mainstream media. We need to consciously promote others in our network, to extend our reach.
I wouldn’t focus on the revenue stream, at this time. It would be nice to be able to cover expenses, but it’s more important to keep from dependence on that money – when they can threaten your livelihood, they’ve GOT you.
It’s happened to more than a few in the Alt-media. They’ve gotten spoiled by the adulation and cash. Eventually, they start doing the media equivalent of shaving points.
But, yes, the real work is after the election. We need to make a full-court press, from the local shitheads to those a$$holes in NGOs. We need to scrutinize the funding/reporting, and trip them up in an IRS violation or two. Or many.
They’re vulnerable. That’s why Trump needs to bring in some guys who understand what an audit is, and go after them – hard. The goal is to take away their ability to profit from nonprofit status. That’ll undercut them enough to give us some breathing room. After that, massive fines for not following the rules for nonprofits. Make it a losing proposition to set up a nonprofit to shelter money to swing elections and control government.
The Clinton Foundation sent so little of their donations out to “charity” (ie their overhead was so vastly higher than any real charity) that they were just begging to be audited. Of course, that would require an honest government to do that.
Sigh.
We have a LOT of work to do if Trump wins, which he should absent Fraud.
If Trump loses it is Ironbear shoot our way out time.
Biden is of course, guilty as hell. The Media complex is nothing more than a corrupt cover up and propaganda arm of the communist USA party, otherwise known as the democrat’s.
There are two many of us freedom and liberty lovers that work hard and conduct their lives honestly for this to end well.
Trump was a start, it’s up to us to finish it.
It has gotten to the point where I think the Democrat party is just the political arm of the media. Figuring out which is tail and which is dog is impossible at this point — they are one social-political caste, all inter-related by blood and marriage like the old inbred royalty of Europe.
They are both arms of
the same Master. That is why they seem so lockstep.
[…] America in trouble […]
There is so much corruption there seems to be almost no one in DC who isn’t corrupt.
The Stock Market has fallen 2000 points this week over no news at all. It’s down about 3500 points in two weeks, also on almost no news, ok earnings, and ok economic reports.
Tomorrow we get GDP numbers that should top 20%.
My guess is Soros et al are shorting the hell out of things and the Economic Report will be tanked (to be revised upwards massively after the Election) and massively “disappoint, causing a 10% drop.
Let’s see what happens.
Of course there is a Teacher Workday next Tue so all the teachers can go uninterrupted and vote Biden. It will enable me to take my son for his first vote. I expect him to vote full GOP from top to bottom. Not because I told him, but because he came to realize what is right. Smart kid.
“Tomorrow we get GDP numbers that should top 20%.”
Big number, 50% more than 20% 🙂 Over 30%
Actual +33.1%
Phew, SO HAPPY to be wrong.
It is an amazing recovery to date. If the Fing “DCD”* governors would open like they should it would be even better.
*Damn Corrupt Democrats
It is amazing the numbers are as good as they are, with several of our largest states still mostly locked down and the Wuhan Flu media fear machine still cranking out FUD 24/7. Immense damage has been done, and is still being done in far too many areas. But President Trump has revived a deeply depressed economy once already, and can do it again if the election is not overwhelmed by fear and fraud.
Perhaps those states don’t really contribute much to our real economy.
34% down and 33% back up still leaves a 12% hole. Plus the first quarter was slightly down too.
We are not out of the woods yet.
PS that’s not actually how it works, those are quarterly numbers annualized. A good guess (since I can’t find the raw numbers) is the 2nd quarter was down 8.5% and we went back up 8.25%.
That still leaves us -1% for the two quarters. The first quarter was also down 1.5%.
So we are looking at 2020 annual GDP -2.5%, a recession.
We shall how the foruth quarter works out but thus far Oct is not exactly gangbusters since much of the country has not eased much since the big openings in Aug and Sep.
Oh, I know. Still, pretty remarkable. If we end up with only a -2.5 contraction for the year I’ll call it good.
2.5% contraction and six trillion more in debt. “Good”.
Sigh.
Rollover is a b!tch.
That’s the key.
We definitely cannot afford more of this.
I’m 67. For at least the last 55 years I’ve been told the national debt was going to sink us.
I believe that thinking is wrong so far. Not that I like it, it will get passed on, eventually, as inflation I suspect.
“Good” given what might have happened…
Like I said Barry,. It’s all fine until one day you need to rollover a ton of principal coming due and there’s no buyers.
Right now we have the Fed soaking up excess issuance.
That either someday triggers massive infaltion or they are swamped and interest rates go through the roof.
We faced that decision in 1978 when Carter was President. In order toa void hyperinfaltion Volcker raised interest rates to 20% mshort term and mortgage rates rose to 12-15%.
The flip side of that is all of a sudden my parents could get positive interest rates on their savings.
Which meant Savings went up and since Savings = Investments then pools of Investment money became available to take over and restructure Coporate.
America.
There have been books written about it so explaining it in a blog post is futile.
The lesson is 1978-1982 Depression and double digit interest rates was necessary to defeat the Socialism.
How able are we to withstanding double digit interest rates and mortgage rates?
I lived through the Carter years. Those years were misery, yet, we were still much better off than 95% of the worlds population.
I’m just saying for all the talk of economic disaster, and I’ve spilled my share of words on the subject, we’re still here and our “poor” are richer that most of the rest of the world.
Yes absolutely good.
I hate these people though.
We were easily hitting 3% this year.
That’s a 5.5% swing and we still have many millions out of work.
Plus interest rates plummeting meant elderly AGAIN have no income from regular savings.
I have to move some into muni bonds for NC to earn some interest this year.
I have an absolute hatred of these people as well. But regardless of all the problems with our economic system, “they” couldn’t sink it. And I hope their attempt to remove Trump is going to be a failure as well.
If both those things are true, Trump reelected and the economy comes back, it says we can take quite a licking and keep on ticking.
I like your optimism.
I hope you are correct.
Meanwhile there are People being hurt.
One in business very close to me.
I know people who have lost quite a bit due to this farce. I’m not going to tell anyone that people have not been affected in a big way, because they have.
To avoid nesting.
To have lived through the Carter years I don’t think anyone understood what was happening, including myself.
The Nixon admin severed the ties with gold which really unanchored inflation. At the same time the Nixon admin pressured the Fed to keep interest rates below inflation. Carter was happy about it until he realized he had a big problem. Inflation was spiraling out of control.
I studied this 15 years later and also after a I read several books by the Salomon economist and bond guru Kaufman, the Volcker biography and several Austrian economist treatises. It was a balanced look at the 70’s monetary situation as gold went from 35 an oz to 800 an oz around 1979-80.
What people didn’t understand, not even Carter, was that we were on the very verge of going Weimar. Carter was told Volcker was a loyal Dem and a good soldier who could “fix” things. Volcker of course was a loyal American First, despite his obvious partisanship later in life.
He ignored interest rate setting and instead focused on money supply growth, which in the the end is always what drives inflation. Not nominal interest rates.
By holding money growth steady that set Interest rates gyrating crazily but in the end as they stabilized they ended up offering people attractive interest rates above inflation to save. Savings = Investment.
Once people stopped chasing gold and hard assets and began normal savings in Bank CDs and US Treasuries again, that fueled a disinflation as money became firmer backed and pools of funds allowed people to invest and squeeze out corporate malinvestment that was made to avoid inflation.
We came very very close to Weimar though.
Had serendipity not chosen Volcker things could have gone much differently.