Tag: joe biden

Biden Close To Approving Cluster Bombs, Banned In 120 Countries, For Ukraine

President Biden is said to be close to approving controversial cluster munitions for Ukraine. CNN on Friday cites administration sources to say he is “strongly considering” approval of the transfer. 

“Officials told CNN that a final decision is expected soon from the White House, and that if approved, the weapons could be included in a new military aid package to Ukraine as soon as next month,” the report says.

“These would undoubtedly have a significant battlefield impact,” a US official said to the outlet. CNN further acknowledges that “Cluster munitions, which the US has stockpiled in large numbers since phasing them out in 2016, could help fill that gap, officials said.”

The White House would likely receive significant support from bipartisan lawmakers in Congress, given that’s precisely where the initiative to supply Kiev with cluster munitions originated. 

In March a Republican letter to the president chastised the White House’s “reluctance to provide Ukraine the right type and amount of long-range fires and maneuver capability to create.”

That particular letter had been signed by influential, high-level GOP Congress members, including: Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike Rogers the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

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Biden Admin Stiffing COVID Vaccine-Injured Americans Over Medical Claims

In April 2021, Adele Fox received a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Within a few hours, the 60-year-old resident of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, started feeling shooting pains in her legs, arms, and neck. The pain didn’t abate over the next few days. Instead, it got worse and was accompanied by nausea and debilitating fatigue.  

Within a few weeks, neurologists affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital diagnosed her with several serious conditions they say were a result of her COVID-19 vaccine, including small-fiber neuropathy (which causes a painful tingling in the extremities) and Sjögren’s Syndrome (which leaves patients pained and fatigued, and in extreme cases, can damage internal organs).  

This shot, which was supposed to get Fox back to normal, instead left her with diminished ability to work and enjoy life. Persistent physical therapy and experimental treatments she’s taken since have done little to alleviate her symptoms.  

“I used to do so much, and now it’s a struggle,” she says. “Sometimes you just get down.” 

With her medical bills mounting and her condition not improving, Fox sought compensation for her damaged health. Federal liability protections prevent the vaccine-injured from directly suing vaccine manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson. Instead, claimants have to go to the federal government for compensation.  

But as Fox would soon learn, the government has two starkly different injury programs for vaccines. One operates like a civil court with a neutral judge, lawyers on both sides, and a guaranteed right of appeal. In recent decades, it has approved about 75% of claims and pays out hundreds of millions of dollars per year.  

The other, which handles COVID-19 vaccines, has rejected almost every claim brought to it, awarding less than $10,000 since the pandemic. And in a nation nearly numb to the pandemic’s toll and its scandals, the program is adding seething frustration atop lasting injury to Fox and people like her in a little reported aftermath to the government’s much criticized performance on vaccines – ranging from erratic booster advice to broad-brush vaccine mandates that cost people their jobs. 

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White House Edits Out Troublesome Reporter From Press Briefing

The White House seems to have edited out footage of Today News Africa reporter Simon Ateba confronting Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Monday with a series of comments that prompted her to threaten to end the briefing altogether.

Ateba again accused Jean-Pierre of refusing to call on him for any questions for months, after the Press Sceretary had claimed that the Biden Administration is “committed to freedom of the press.”

“You’ve been discriminating against me for the past nine months,” Ateba charged, much to the chagrin of the other reporters at the briefing.

“Stop. How is she discriminating?” another reporter intervened, to which Ateba responded “She called on you, she gave you a few questions. Please, allow me to do my job and ask my question.”

Jean-Pierre tried to ignore Ateba and go to aq different reporter for a question, but he refused to be passed over.

Jean-Pierre then stated “If this continues, we’re gonna end the press briefing. If this continues – you’re being incredibly rude. You’re being incredibly rude. You’re talking over your colleagues.”

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White House Routinely Edits Transcripts Of Biden’s Speeches To Make Him Look Coherent

President Joe Biden is a self-described gaffe machine, but you wouldn’t always know that by reading the official White House transcripts of his speeches and remarks.

Sometimes, the transcript throws in a [sic] when Biden misspeaks. Other times, the stenographer adds a bracketed correction to Biden’s error. And every once in a while, the White House just cuts out Biden’s bizarre word salads altogether.

Here’s a slew of examples from official transcripts just this month, found on the Whitehouse.gov website.

“Last summer, I had the honor of bestowing the Presidential Meda- — Medal of Freemon [sic] — Freedom on distinguished Americans …” (June 16, 2023).

“And I’m pleased we’re also joined by x-pay [sic] — xBk, a small venue in Des Moines, Iowa, that’s going be using all upfront pricing for its hundred events at — a year as well …” (June 15, 2023).

“Let me tell you, the Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion to comat [sic] — combat climate change …” (June 14, 2023).

“We made clear — they made clear that we’d rather th- — they’d rather threaten the default of the U.S. economy than cut or get rid of, for example, $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to oil companies who made $200 million [sic] last year — billion. I said ‘million.’ Billion dollars last year …” (June 14, 2023).

“… transgester [sic] Americans — transgender Americans serving in the United States military …” (June 10, 2023)

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Hunter Biden’s 7% Solution: Using Addiction To Excuse Corruption

Below is my column in the Messenger on the use of Hunter Biden’s addiction as the final line of defense to corruption allegations. This week, President Joe Biden is continuing to deny that he had any knowledge of his son’s business dealing despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In the meantime, pundits are insisting that this is really not a story of millions of dollars being sent to the Biden family from foreign sources or the direct use of Joe Biden to shake down (apparently successfully) a Chinese officials with ties to foreign intelligence. Rather, it is now portrayed as “a story of a father’s love for his son.” In other words, it is just like “On Golden Pond” if the father and child were working together to extract millions in actual gold from the pond. Here is the column:

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1890 story, The Sign of the Four, there is a scene in which Sherlock Holmes prepares to give himself an injection of cocaine in front of a curious Dr. Watson. Holmes explained: “It is cocaine, a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it?” Watson wisely demurred — but the 7% solution has not lost its appeal to others as a diversion.

Last year, I wrote a column suggesting that there was a notable shift among Biden associates and some media figures in addressing the Hunter Biden scandal. In the wake of the release of new evidence of Hunter Biden’s alleged influence-peddling efforts, the Biden team has fully retreated to what I called the “Seven-Percent Solution” to the scandal.

In 2022, I wrote:

“The president and the press have been shifting to a new defense. As the father recently insisted of his son, ‘He fought an addiction problem. He overcame it. He wrote about it.’

“The family and the media have been cultivating the angle for months as they anticipated possible criminal charges. … With possible criminal conduct exposed, all that’s left is the addiction defense.”

One of the most vocal with this recent rollout was former U.S. senator Claire McCaskill (D.-Mo.), who became irate on MSNBC and declared that “Everybody needs to back off!” because Hunter was an addict and “suffering from these diseases.”

Of course, such suffering did not prevent him from allegedly shaking down foreign figures for millions of dollars in exchange for access to his father.

The Biden defense team invoked much the same explanation when confronted with a story about a WhatsApp message that purportedly showed Hunter threatening a Chinese businessman with ties to China’s Communist Party if he did not send Biden millions of dollars. He repeatedly referenced the fact that his father was sitting next to him, and suggested his father would be involved in the threatened response if the money was not transferred.

According to testimony made public last week, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee in May: “[W]e obtained a July 30th, 2017, WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, where Hunter Biden wrote: ‘I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.’”

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Joe Biden jokes about having ‘sold a lot of state secrets’ amid alleged Ukrainian bribery scandal

On Friday, President Biden joked that he “sold a lot of state secrets” during a meeting with Prime Minister Modi of the Republic of India, whose comments were made as Biden is actively being accused of taking an illegal bribe from a Ukrainian official. 

President Biden started off the meeting, which included White House senior officials and technology company CEOs, joking to Prime Minister Modi about “sharing” a lot of “very important things.”

“Okay.  We — I was just thanking the — anyway, I started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things that we shared,” Biden said to Modi.

The meeting focused on the United States’ relationship with India and how the two nations are working together to develop and design new technology, which will include combined-efforts from American astronauts, Indian astronauts, entrepreneurs, scientists, and students.

President Biden announced that the US is “launching a new program between India and America” in which the two countries will innovate new technology that will tackle so-called “climate change.”

“It’s about exploring the universe.  It’s about lifting people out of poverty; curing cancer and other serious diseases; preventing pandemics; and giving our citizens — all our citizens real opportunity,” Biden said during the meeting.

“So my message today is really simple: We’ve got to keep it up, and we have to make sure we aim even higher,” Biden added.

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Media Use Failed Russia ‘Coup’ To Knock Bombshell Biden Scandal Off The Front Page 

Last Thursday, House Republicans released two explosive testimonies from IRS whistleblowers that, if true, further suggest President Joe Biden sold his political power for profit from our enemies abroad via his son Hunter’s business dealings. Moreover, they allege the Department of Justice has done everything in its power to for years protect the Bidens, even to the point of massively interfering in an American election.

This story is huge — bigger than Monica Lewinsky and Watergate combined. If confirmed, it means that the sitting President of the United States is potentially compromised by our nation’s adversaries, and the intelligence apparatus are enabling his corruption. We have no choice but to tear it down.

Yet you wouldn’t know any of that from the headlines this weekend. Sunday’s premiere, front-page stories in each of America’s biggest newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post — were all about the quick and unsuccessful “coup” in Russia. Mentions of the Biden scandal were scant. The New York Times’ only featured Biden scandal article, titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga,” reads like satire, dismissing all the mounting allegations against the president and even praising him as a “model of … love and support” for people with drug-addicted family members.

It’s pretty interesting that almost immediately after the publication of the IRS whistleblower testimonies, the White House and State Department began sounding alarm bells over a “coup” that was over almost as soon as it started. Naturally, the corporate media was grateful to be handed a distraction story on a silver platter. The short-lived mutiny has not only dominated the headlines this weekend but was also granted wall-to-wall coverage on every major TV news channel. CNN, in particular, has really taken advantage of the Russia “coup,” using it as an opportunity to extol Biden for his “mastery of foreign policy.”

None of this is to say that this alleged attempted coup against the Kremlin isn’t newsworthy. The story has its place in the “world news” section. However, a foreign uprising that may or may not impact a war America has no business participating in should not be commanding the front pages for days on end, especially when we have far bigger fish to fry.

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Biden Admin Says Its COVID Spending for Schools Will Boost Test Scores. Districts Used the Funds for Staff Bonuses.

Decades-low eighth-grade reading and math scores are no reason to be discouraged, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday, because the Biden administration’s “historic” COVID-era school spending is poised to turn the tide. In many districts, a large portion of those funds have already been spent on lucrative staff bonuses.

A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising “positive results” in student achievement, arguing that the “historic investments and resources” provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would “reverse the damage.” In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

In North Carolina, for example, the Wake County Public School System from March 2020 to April 2023 spent 78.5 percent of its total pandemic relief funding on salaries and employee benefits, according to the district. Chicago Public Schools—a district where union teachers repeatedly refused to return to the classroom during COVID—similarly spent 77 percent of its pandemic money on staff bonuses, salaries, and benefits. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the state’s comptroller found that a district funneled nearly $28,000 to one administrator alone. And in Nebraska, Lincoln Public Schools attempted to use COVID relief dollars to issue across-the-board teacher bonuses, but the state’s Department of Education said no.

The use of so-called emergency COVID funds to pay for five-figure staff bonuses reflects the stark divide between Republicans and Democrats on education policy. Democrats generally balk at school choice, shooting down taxpayer funding for charter schools in favor of additional public school spending. For Republicans, that spending is already at an all-time high with little to show for it and showcases the need to pursue alternative options rather than funneling more money to powerful teachers’ unions working to pay out their members.

“It turns out the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money that was ‘direly needed to safely reopen schools and improve infrastructure’ was a lie,” Nicki Neily, founder and president of parental rights group Parents Defending Education, said in response to districts’ using federal COVID funds to pay for staff bonuses. “The same teachers’ unions that kept schools closed are now misusing the taxpayers’ money to smooth things over with their growingly dissatisfied members through bonuses and raises. What a slap in the face to families.”

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.

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The Biden family’s long history of skirting the law, sweetheart deals

Hunter Biden’s slap-on-the-wrist plea deal after failing to pay taxes on millions of dollars in income, and a felony gun charge he won’t be prosecuted for, follows a long history of Biden family members running afoul of the law — and skating.

Hunter Biden, 53, could have faced felonies for both his tax charges — and a multitude of other crimes evidenced on his abandoned laptop.

Instead, he pled guilty to just two misdemeanor tax offenses, virtually guaranteeing he will not see the inside of a jail cell.

“The Biden family are beginning to make the Medicis look like small-time operators,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.

“That fact that it took over five years to even secure a plea on a couple of small misdemeanors is a testament to a family that has leveraged Joe Biden public positions into a fortune of foreign influence peddling.”

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