Biden Just Said He’s Willing To Go To War With Iran, Mainstream Yawns
By Jake Johnson | Common Dreams | July 14, 2022
U.S. President Joe Biden said in an interview aired Wednesday that he would be willing to go to war with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, a position that drew condemnation from advocacy groups and foreign policy analysts who questioned the moral, strategic, and legal bases for such a stance.
Biden also reiterated in the sit-down interview with Israeli broadcaster N12 that he is committed to keeping the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, even if it means sinking the prospects of a deal to revive the nuclear accord that former President Donald Trump violated in 2018.
While acknowledging that Trump’s decision to abandon the seven-country deal was a “gigantic mistake,” Biden said he would not delist the IRGC to advance nuclear talks that have hit a wall in recent weeks.
Biden offered a one-word answer—”yes”—when asked whether he would keep the IRGC on the terror list “even if that means that kills the deal.”
The U.S. president went on to say that he’s prepared to use military force “as a last resort” to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly said it is not pursuing a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear energy program is designed for peaceful domestic purposes.
Peace organizations were outraged by the president’s interview, noting that the terror designation is largely symbolic while the nuclear deal was a substantive diplomatic achievement that lifted devastating economic sanctions in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program.
“Let’s be clear: Congress has not authorized—and the American people overwhelmingly do not support—the use of force against Iran,” said the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “If the president is committed to preventing nuclear proliferation, he should return to the nuclear deal and prioritize diplomacy. War is not the answer.”
Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), responded that “it makes absolutely zero sense that he won’t delist the IRGC to prevent an Iranian nuke but would launch a war to prevent an Iranian nuke.”
The president’s remarks came days after his administration announced new sanctions targeting Iranian firms and individuals, a move seen as further evidence that Biden remains wedded to the failed “maximum pressure” campaign that his predecessor launched, imperiling any remaining hopes of a breakthrough in the stalled nuclear talks.
“Astonishing to see the president say he is willing to throw away the diplomatic progress his team has made and invite war with Iran over pointless partisan symbolism,” said progressive advocacy group Win Without War.
Biden: ‘You need not be a Jew to be Zionist’
MEMO | July 14, 2022
Speaking after his arrival in Israel yesterday, US President Joe Biden lauded the “ancient land” he’d arrived in and stressed “you need not be a Jew to be Zionist.” Biden was welcomed at the airport by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, his deputy Naftali Bennett and President Isaac Herzog, according to the Times of Israel.
Repeating past comments he’s made about Israel, he said: “You need not be a Jew to be Zionist.”
“This is my tenth visit, and every chance I have to return to this ancient land is a blessing because the connection between the American people and Israeli people is deep,” Biden said.
“It is bone deep, and generation after generation that connection grows as we invest in each other and dream together.”
Lapid, for his part, described Biden’s visit as historic as “it expresses the unbreakable bond between our two countries.”
The Israeli premier called Biden “one of the best friends Israel has ever known,” and referred to the US president calling himself a Zionist in the past.
Biden will visit the West Bank as part of his tour where he will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
New Ukraine aid package announced by Samantha Power
Samizdat | July 12, 2022
The US announced on Tuesday that it will send an additional $1.7 billion in funding to Ukraine, in a bid to help President Volodymyr Zelensky pay public sector-employees. US President Joe Biden has previously told Americans that they would have to sacrifice their quality of life to prop up Kiev.
The aid package, which was announced by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was described as “direct budgetary aid” to “ensure the Ukrainian government can continue operating.” It is the second such tranche of aid announced by USAID in less than two weeks, bringing the agency’s total spending on Ukraine to date to $4 billion.
Zelensky has previously claimed that his government needed $5 billion per month to remain functional and to pay the salaries of government employees – including soldiers, teachers and healthcare workers.
“The United States is rushing in with financial support to help the government keep the lights on, provide essential services to innocent citizens and pay the health care workers who are providing lifesaving support on the frontlines,” USAID administrator Samantha Power said in a statement.
News of the latest cash transfer to Ukraine comes after US President Joe Biden on Friday announced a $400 million package of military aid to Kiev, the 15th since Russia launched its military operation in February. In total, the US has allocated more than $55 billion worth of military and economic aid to Ukraine since February.
Back in the US, inflation has reached a 40-year-high and motorists are paying more for gasoline than ever before. Pressed on these economic concerns last month, Biden told reporters that Americans will pay high prices at home “as long as it takes, so Russia cannot defeat Ukraine.” Likewise, Biden’s economic adviser, Brain Deese, told CNN earlier this month that the US has to “stand firm” and endure soaring costs for the sake of the “liberal world order.”
While a bill providing some $40 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine passed Congress in May with bipartisan support, some Republicans and conservative pundits have begun to push back against the Biden administration’s open checkbook for Kiev.
The Administrative State Moves To Show Who’s Boss On Energy Policy
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 08, 2022
Last Thursday, June 30, the Supreme Court issued its decision in West Virginia v. EPA, holding that, absent a further explicit statute from the Congress, the EPA did not have the authority to orchestrate its planned fundamental restructuring of the electric power generation sector of the economy. More generally, the Supreme Court stated that in cases involving “major questions,” including regulations that affect large portions of the economy, the government must demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” to support a sweeping effort to regulate.
Do you think that such a Supreme Court decision might cause the various regulatory bureaucracies to slow down and reconsider a little before plowing ahead with other dubious plans for fundamental economic restructurings? That’s not how these bureaucracies work. And such is most particularly the case with regard to regulators of the energy sector, sometimes known as “climate change” arena, where the bureaucrats are burning with a righteous religious fervor that they believe entitles them to cast the evil sinners into the fires of hell.
And thus, contemporaneous with the Supreme Court’s decision, several agencies promptly doubled down on efforts to strangle the oil and gas industries with regulatory restrictions, essentially daring the courts or anyone else to stop them. Thousands of pages of statutes give them thousands of arguments to claim they have the “clear congressional authorization,” any one of which arguments might stick. They are now out to show who’s boss.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan wasted no time in getting a statement out on the afternoon of June 30. Excerpt:
[W]e are committed to using the full scope of EPA’s authorities to protect communities and reduce the pollution that is driving climate change. . . . EPA will move forward with lawfully setting and implementing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm.
In other words, we will just have to find other ways to implement the restrictions that we want to implement. The very next day, July 1, David Blackmon at Forbes reported that “EPA Targets Permian Basin, Widening Biden’s War On Oil And Gas.” The Permian Basin is currently the most productive oil and gas region in the United States, providing about 40% of the oil production and 15% of the gas of the entire country. The Permian Basin is also the site of about 40% of the nation’s active drilling rigs. And so it seems that EPA is gearing up to declare the Permian Basin a so-called “non-attainment area” with respect to ozone. Blackmon:
[T]he Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced [this week that] it may soon issue a ruling declaring that vast parts of the Permian Basin are in “non-attainment” status under the agency’s ozone regulations. If such a declaration is made, it will constitute a direct governmental assault on what is by far America’s most active and productive oil-producing region and its second most-productive natural gas area.
What would be the effect of such a declaration on current and future U.S. domestic oil and gas production? Blackmon again:
Placing the Permian Basin in non-attainment status would force a significant reduction in the region’s rig count, severely limiting the domestic industry’s efforts to increase U.S. oil production at a time when the global oil market is already severely under-supplied.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott promptly called on the Biden Administration to back off, saying that an EPA “non-attainment declaration “could interfere in the production of oil in Texas which could lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump by reducing production, increase the cost of that production, or do both.” But Blackmon notes that the plan comes from an office headed by a Biden-appointed anti-fossil-fuel activist, and thus is likely a core element of the administration’s program:
Mr. Biden appointed Joe Goffman, another of the many anti-fossil fuel activists that now hold senior posts at his various agencies, to head up EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation on an acting basis. That appointment might have been made with this specific policy action in mind.
Meanwhile, over at the Interior Department, July 1 was also the day for issuance of a statutorily-mandated five-year off-shore oil and gas leasing plan. Nicholas Groom at Reuters has a summary here. The bottom line is, we’re going to completely shut down leasing off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but maybe we’ll allow a little in the Gulf of Mexico or the Cook Inlet (Alaska). The number of auctions over the five-year period will be in the range of “zero to eleven,” and supposedly we’ll take public input as to which way to go. But Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement left no doubt as to where she wants and expects this to come out:
“From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy,” Haaland said in a statement. “Today, we put forward an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing. The time for the public to weigh in on our future is now.”
There is a 90 day period for public comment. You can be sure that environmental activist groups will flood the zone with thousands of comments to support the approach of the “zero” option of ceasing all further off-shore leases.
Other agencies were eerily silent in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision. Notable among those were the SEC and the Federal Reserve, both of which have recently ventured into adding “climate change” to their missions with only the most questionable of statutory support. Neither has given any indication of an intention to slow down.
And then on July 2, President Biden issued his now-famous tweet blaming the rising price of gas at the pump on gas station owners:
My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.
A bureaucracy-wide campaign is ongoing under this guy’s direction to suppress oil and gas production in any way they can think of, and yet he has the gall to blame high prices on “companies running gas stations,” the majority of which are small independent businesses. At this point Biden has become malicious.
Joe Biden and Other Politicians, not Coronavirus, Caused Children’s Educations to Suffer
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 7, 2022
President Joe Biden declared Tuesday at Twitter: “Due to the pandemic, kids are behind in math and reading.” This is yet another example of politicians’ blame shifting we have seen throughout the coronavirus scare. Kids in America have fallen behind in their educations during the coronavirus scare, but not because of coronavirus. They have fallen behind because of coronavirus crackdown actions supported by Biden and many other politicians in the name of protecting students, teachers, and staff at schools from coronavirus that did not improve safety but did interfere with students’ ability to learn.
Since early on in the coronavirus scare it was known that children tended to be in miniscule danger from serious sickness or death from coronavirus. It was also known that, at schools, teachers and other adults tended not to get coronavirus from students. Yet, most American politicians with control over education policy did not say that “for the children” schools would be kept open and continue operating normally, something that was done in other countries and a few places in America without problems. Instead, as politicians are apt to do, they used the “for the children” plea as an excuse to wreak havoc. They shut down schools, then replaced them to some extent with dysfunctional attempts at virtual education, and ultimately reopened the schools in an absurd and menacing manner.
Many schools, when they finally reopened, had all kinds of mandates that made the schools insufferable. The mandates, while failing to protect people from coronavirus, did carry health dangers of their own. Mask mandates, obsessive disinfecting of surfaces at schools and even of children’s hands, enforcement of “social distancing,” the presence of ubiquitous plastic barriers separating people, coronavirus testing, and pressure or even mandates for students to take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots were among the nasty changes confronting students at their “new normal” schools. Students found themselves trudging through a real life version of a dystopian novel.
No wonder students’ learning suffered through the coronavirus scare. Learning was not high on the priority list of many politicians rushing to exercise their new powers. And, due to government pressure and bad choices by people in charge, the situation was similarly awful at many private schools as at government schools.
Fortunately, this dark cloud of politicians harming student’s educations in the name of countering coronavirus does have a silver lining, though only for a small subset of students. “Enough is enough,” decided some parents along the way of witnessing the school closures, the dysfunctional virtual learning efforts implemented to replace regular school, and the dystopian “new normal” schools that ultimately came into being. These parents took their children’s educations into their own hands, moving their children to homeschooling. The result is that many more children now than before the coronavirus scare are free from the politicians’ harmful meddling, whether undertaken in the name of protecting children from phantom coronavirus danger or accomplishing other objectives at variance with advancing the math and reading skills Biden mentioned at Twitter. It is a safe bet that most of these new homeschooling parents will do a much better job than the schools they left behind at making sure their children’s educations serve their children’s needs and interests.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute
‘Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?’ Asks Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Member
By Susan C. Olmstead | The Defender | July 5, 2022
A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) editorial board member Monday called into question the motives behind the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to extend Emergency Use Authorization of Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines to toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old, writing that the decision was motivated by politics and pressure rather than science.
In her WSJ opinion piece — “Why the Rush for Toddler Vaccines?” — Allysia Finley wrote:
“The FDA standard for approving vaccines in otherwise healthy people, especially children, is supposed to be higher than for drugs that treat the sick.
“But the FDA conspicuously lowered its standards to approve COVID vaccines for toddlers. Why?”
Finley started her piece with a quote from President Biden, which praised the FDA’s recommendation: “This is a very historic milestone. The United States is now the first country in the world to offer safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.”
She responded, writing, “In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective.”
She continued:
“The rushed FDA action was based on extremely weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency.
“The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation.”
“Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach,” she wrote, listing many reasons for caution in vaccinating young children against COVID-19, including:
- Children are at low risk of dying from COVID-19: Only 209 kids between 6 months and 4 years old have died from COVID-19 — about 0.02% of all virus deaths in the U.S. About half as many toddlers were hospitalized with COVID-19 between October 2020 and September 2021 as were hospitalized with the flu during the previous winter.
- The two children in Pfizer’s trial who got sickest with COVID-19 also tested positive for other viruses. It’s possible that many hospitalizations attributed to COVID-19 this winter were instigated or exacerbated by other viruses.
- The FDA authorized vaccines for toddlers based on a comparison of the antibodies they generated to the original Wuhan variant with those in young adults who had received two doses. But two doses offer little if any protection against Omicron infection in adults, and even protection against hospitalization is only around 40% to 60%.
- Vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with COVID-19 than those who received a placebo. Most children who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated.
“FDA granted the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for toddlers an emergency-use authorization allowing the agency to expedite access for products that ‘prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions,’” wrote Finley.
“While adult COVID vaccines clearly met this standard in late 2020, the toddler vaccines don’t.”
As to why the FDA “rushed” and “bent its standards,” Finley suggested, “perhaps [the FDA] felt pressure from the White House as well as anxious parents.”
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha repeatedly told parents that he expected vaccines for toddlers would be available in June, she wrote.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Foreign Policy Fail: Biden’s Sanctions are a Windfall For Russia!
By Ron Paul | July 4, 2022
It’s easy to see why, according to a new Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans said they do not want Joe Biden to run for re-election. As Americans face record gas prices and the highest inflation in 40 years, President Biden admits he could not care less. His Administration is committed to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Americans just need to suck it up.
Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. “As long as it takes,” replied the president without hesitation.
“Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,” added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. “The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia,” he said in the same press conference.
But Biden has a big problem: Americans do not believe him. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, only eleven percent of Americans believe Biden’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for high prices.
When it comes to disdain for the average American hurt by higher prices, there is more than enough in the Biden Administration to go around.
Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, “What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?”
His answer? “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”
Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the “liberal world order,” how many would say “that sounds like a great idea”?
President Biden’s attempts to bring down gasoline prices are bound to fail because he does not understand the problem. He can beg the Saudis to pump more oil, he can even threaten the US oil companies as he did in a Tweet yesterday. He can buy and sell from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an attempt to give the impression that prices are lowering. None of it will work.
The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.
According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.
As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, “Biden is of course our agent.”
Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession… or worse.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
Covid shots for little kids are DOA
The fawning media coverage notwithstanding, uptake has been pitifully low
By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | July 2, 2022
Despite a massive media and government pressure campaign, American parents are overwhelmingly rejecting Covid vaccines for their young children.
About one week after the shots became available, barely 1 percent of children under 5 have received mRNA jabs for Covid, data from several states show.
Ohio:
Even in California, among the bluest states, only about 2 percent of kids under 5 have been jabbed.
Demand is likely to be near zero going forward. The recent history of Covid shots shows that the increasingly tiny minority of mRNA fanatics get themselves or their children jabbed or boosted quickly after regulators okay new doses. So pent-up desire for new shots is likely nonexistent.
As usual, elite media outlets have largely refused to acknowledge this reality, instead running endless articles that seek to normalize and encourage the shots.
(CNN gonna CNN:)
But at this point many parents have seen and experienced the side effects of the vaccines for themselves. They also know firsthand that the shots do little if anything to stop Omicron infections (though they may not be aware how terrible the data truly are). And they know that Covid is a minuscule risk for children who are not already seriously ill, and that most kids have already been exposed.
(All the Sesame Street ads in the world can’t change reality. Congrats, Elmo. You’re in the 1 percent. Cute Band-Aid, though.)
But as it becomes clear just how few little kids have gotten the shots, any future media and public health pressure campaigns will look embarrassingly out-of-touch.
Someone may want to tell the Biden Administration: the less said about the pathetic decision to make these shots available for kids under 5, the better.
Oh, wait, too late.
Uncle Joe wins again!
US Supreme Court Limits Use of Clean Air Act in Major Blow to WH’s Climate Change Policy
Samizdat – 30.06.2022
The reduction of emissions, decrease in the use of fossil fuels and development of effective green energy sources are among the top priorities of Biden’s declared Build Back Better agenda. The latter already suffered a major blow last year when part of the legislation that was supposed to fund climate policies failed to pass Congress.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency interpreted the Clean Air Act – the country’s main anti-air pollution law that allows the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions – too broadly, and ordered to limit its use. Six justices deemed “conservative” supported the decision, while three “liberal” justices opposed it.
The court specifically ruled that the EPA does not have the authority to limit emissions from power plants using the Clean Air Act.
The decision comes as a response to an appeal by 19 states, coal companies and power plants to prevent the EPA from abusing broad authority to regulate emissions. They asked the US Supreme Court to allow them greater flexibility in phasing out emissions-intensive plants, namely coal ones so that they could provide services reliably.
The ruling might undermine Joe Biden’s planned efforts to propose mandatory emission reductions at power plants in the US by the end of the year. It is supposed to be the first step in the POTUS’ broader plan to have the country’s power generation emissions-free in 13 years.
The idea of regulating power plant emissions dates back to the Obama administration and its plans to pass the Clean Power Plan that would have explicitly given the government the tools to retire emissions-intensive coal plans. The act was effectively blocked by a 5-4 US Supreme Court decision in 2016 and shelved for good under the Donald Trump administration.
Regardless of the Democrats’ efforts, the US power plant emissions have actually already sunk below the levels that should have been achieved only by 2030 under Obama’s original plan. They were achieved thanks to closures of the very same coal plants driven by market mechanisms [fracked gas].
Biden’s Ukraine Policies, Democratic Party’s Intolerance Help Drive Voter Exodus
Samizdat – 29.06.2022
President Joe Biden’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine, concerns over his mental stability, and liberal intolerance could be among the reasons why over one million Democrats switched allegiances and joined the Republican Party in the past year, some analysts believe.
According to data collected by AP, more than one million Democrats have registered as Republicans during the course of the past twelve months, most notably in highly-populated suburbs, where presidential and national congressional elections are usually decided. AP in its report published on Monday said the switch also encompassed agricultural regions, poor inner cities, and small towns.
The Democratic voter mass defections coincide with Biden’s approval ratings sinking to historical lows as inflation runs at all-time highs with mid-term elections looming in November.
Meanwhile, the White House’s policies toward the conflict in Ukraine are also becoming less popular. A poll released on Tuesday by Morning Consult Global shows American support for sanctions against Russia is steadily declining – largely because of rising energy costs.
“Workers and seniors are ravaged by an inflationary curse sparked by an inept war against the fossil fuel industry,” political analyst and former hedge fund manager, Charles Ortel, said when asked about the Democratic voter exodus.
The Democratic voter defections and low approval ratings, he added, could indicate Biden administration efforts to rally patriotism around his “tough” policies against Russia over Ukraine have failed.
Political commentator and historian Dan Lazare believes the fact voters are switching parties is less an endorsement of the Republican Party than a loss of confidence in Democrats, especially in their handling of the Ukraine crisis and the related rise in gas prices.
“Skyrocketing gas prices are the gift that keeps on giving – for the Republicans, that is. The war in Ukraine is turning into a Democratic nightmare as Russia continues to reap real battlefield gains,” Lazare said. “So, what Democrat wouldn’t lose faith given a record like that?”
Ortel said history suggests that citizens reluctantly support foreign conflicts even when leaders provide compelling evidence that the causes are justified. Not to mention, US efforts that started under the Clinton administration to push NATO eastward have never been explained nor have potential costs and complaints by the Russian side, Ortel said.
“No sane actor wants perpetual conflict,” Ortel explained. “And no American would tolerate parallel expansion into Mexico or Canada by Russia.”
Other Drivers of Discontent
Ortel also attributed the voter surge away from the Democrats to the party’s “intolerant” attitude, including toward those who oppose the administration’s Ukraine policies. The Democratic Party used to be a group that embraced cooperation and was tolerant of perspectives that competed with liberal or progressive views. However, in recent years that has changed, Ortel said.
“Particularly under the Obama-Biden Administration, tolerance for other viewpoints was replaced with a ‘take-no-prisoners’ approach towards any challengers,” Ortel said.
To make matters worse, the analyst added, Biden administration officials propagate theories and slogans claiming they are succeeding “when even unschooled citizens see clearly that Biden and his team are rapidly wrecking the American economy and what remains of America’s standing abroad.”
Other drivers of voters fleeing the Democratic Party are the questions surrounding the commander-in-chief’s mental stability in light of nonstop gaffes and concerns over Vice President Kamala Harris’s capabilities, Ortel said.
“Joe Biden is clearly not playing with mental faculties intact nor is Kamala Harris fit to replace him,” Ortel said.
Lazare has pointed to Biden’s dismal domestic policy record as another culprit.
“Joe Biden is The Incredible Shrinking President: His one significant success, the $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief bill that passed in February 2021, has roundly backfired by giving inflation a significant boost. Everything else has meanwhile flopped,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lazare added, voting reform is dead in the water, student debt relief is stalled, and there is a dispiriting deadlock over gun control in the wake of mass shootings.
Although the midterm congressional elections were still four months away, all signs already pointed to a historic catastrophe for the Democrats, Lazare warned.
“Predicting an election that’s still four months away is risky business. But given that Biden’s poll numbers are still sinking – the last is just 36%! – and given that inflation is accelerating, I don’t see how the midterms can be anything less than a Democratic debacle,” Lazare said.
Biden predicts ‘second pandemic’
Samizdat – June 22, 2022
The US needs more money to plan for “the second pandemic,” President Joe Biden said during a press briefing on Tuesday, as he praised his government’s efforts to ensure children under five can get Covid-19 vaccines.
Biden also hailed as “a very historic milestone” that the US has become the first country in the world to offer “safe and effective” Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as six months old.
When asked about how long the administration could keep up the new vaccine campaign, Biden suggested that the current budget would be enough to “get through at least this year” but stressed that “we do need more money.”
He went on to insist that he needed even more money for an unspecified “second pandemic.” “We need more money to plan for the second pandemic. There’s going to be another pandemic,” the president warned, without going into detail about what this new wave might entail.
Biden also took the opportunity to take a swipe at his predecessor, implying that Donald Trump’s lack of preparation increased the impact of the Covid pandemic. “We have to think ahead. That’s not something the last outfit did very well and that’s something we’ve been doing fairly well. That’s why we need the money,” surmised Biden.
Some health experts and agencies such as the World Health Organization have also warned of the likelihood of future pandemics. The WHO had previously announced that it plans to confirm a global pandemic treaty at the 2024 World Health Assembly, which it hopes will help “set out the objectives and fundamental principles in order to structure the necessary collective action to fight pandemics.”
The agreement, which heavily focuses on increased surveillance, vaccinations and “restoring trust in the international health system,” would legally bind its members under international law, superseding regulations of individual countries in an effort to get all nations to act as one in the face of a future outbreak.
Israel snubs Biden request to halt actions that could embarrass the US President
MEMO | June 16, 2022
US President, Joe Biden, sought assurance from Israel that no action is taken in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem that could create tensions ahead of his controversial visit next month to the Apartheid State. Biden’s team made the request to the Israelis in what seems to be an attempt by the White House to avoid repeating the embarrassment Biden suffered over a decade ago when he visited the territory as Vice President under the administration of Barack Obama.
During the 2010 visit, Biden vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security. The Israelis returned the favour by humiliating the then vice President with an announcement to build 1,600 new Jewish only houses, in illegal settlements, in occupied East Jerusalem. Biden condemned the move as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.” A statement by the White House condemned “the substance and timing of the announcement.”
Barbara Leaf, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, and her deputy for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Hady Amr, are laying the groundwork for Biden’s visit scheduled for 13-15 July. Leaf asked Israel to halt actions like home demolitions, evictions of Palestinians and decisions on settlement building, as well as decrease Israeli military operations in the West Bank until after Biden’s visit, officials told Axios.
The Israelis have said they are not able to give such assurances, but they will, nevertheless, try their best. According to Axios, senior members of the Israeli team, including Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, told Leaf they will do their best, but explained the domestic political complexities of halting such actions, in addition to what they called the operational needs of the Israeli military in order to stop attacks.
With the trip coming fresh after the Israeli killing of Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, the Americans are fearful of a global outrage coinciding with Biden’s visit to the Apartheid State. “The Biden administration doesn’t want us to create any crisis in the West Bank … They want quiet and calm” for Biden’s visit, a senior Israeli official is reported saying.
Not only is the US team desperate to avoid embarrassment for Biden, they are also putting together a plan to show that the US President is capable of making progress. Israeli, Palestinian and US officials said Leaf, Amr and US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, tried to put together a package of tangible deliverables for the Palestinians to coincide with the Biden visit.
But they did not make significant progress on the package because there are not enough meaningful things the US can give and Israel is not willing to take any steps with political significance that will be enough for the Palestinians, the officials said, according to Axios.
“We need a political horizon. We want to hear President Biden say what his detailed position regarding the two state solution is,” PLO official and adviser to the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Al-Sheikhal-Sheikh, is reported saying. “The US wants the visit to take place in a good atmosphere – different than the one now,” Al-Sheikhal-Sheikh added implying that Washington is more concerned about its image than it is about Israel’s daily human rights violations.
In a blow to the Biden team’s effort to portray the US President as the broker of peace, the PA and Israel rejected their proposal to meet. Palestinian officials stressed that such a meeting should include an Israeli commitment to the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, otherwise, the meeting would be useless.
Featured Video
Chinese jet fuel and the myth of energy independence
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
The Dirty Little Secret behind the “Global Terrorism Index”
The Omission of Israeli Terrorism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
By Karin Brothers | Global Research | December 6, 2014
… The Israeli settlements — all of which are illegal – have been identified as a major impediment to peace. The refusal of a major “global” terrorism report to name the Israeli settlers as one of the groups most responsible for terrorism not only misrepresents a major source of regional violence but exposes the Global Terrorism Index as a propaganda tool that supports a U.S. agenda.
In recent years, governments have been attempting to thwart terrorism by blocking supportive fund-raising. When it comes to Israeli settlements, however, the US and Canada actually encourage fund-raising by giving organizations (such as Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and the Jewish National Fund) financial support in the form of donor tax-deductions.
Charities which provide funds for the Israeli settlements should be regarded as terror-financing organizations. They should not only lose their tax-deductible status, but they should be banned because they support the violation of international humanitarian law. The terror-financing laws that are being strictly enforced for Muslim charities should be applied to Christian and Jewish charities as well. … Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Chinese jet fuel and the myth of energy independence
- Ukraine Sea Drone Fired From Libya Hit Russian Tanker in Mediterranean
- IRGC: Iranian forces launched no attacks during ceasefire hours
- Trump Administration Moves To Automate U.S. Military Draft Registration
- Spain orders reopening of Tehran embassy, condemns Israel’s carpet bombing of Lebanon
- Israel faces ‘unsustainable’ strategic crisis following 40-day war against Iran: Analyst
- Iran restricts Hormuz access to 15 vessels per day under ceasefire terms: Report
- The ‘Opposition Party’ Has Done Nothing to Stop the Iran War and Much to Goad Trump Into Continuing It
- Moscow backs Tehran on status of Lebanon in US-Iran deal
- How UK Regulator Ofcom Quietly Bypassed International Law to Police American Speech
- If Americans Knew
- Amnesty: Urgent – Protect Lebanese civilians from brutal escalation in Israeli attacks
- Is The War Against Iran Over?
- Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing
- Hundreds of Gaza Amputees Stranded in Legal Limbo
- The gallows law: Israel moves toward executing Palestinian children
- Tucker Carlson: The Path to Peace requires ending ‘special alliance’ with Israel
- This is ceasefire? Israel’s biggest massacre yet in Lebanon, another journalist killed in Gaza – Daily Update
- Tucker Carlson on Israel: This Is the Behavior of an Ally? Really?
- Gazans face a triple crisis: severe shortages of water and bread, healthcare in tatters
- NY Times reports how Netanyahu took the US into Iran War
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
Aletho News 