ALERT What to expect in the first days of the Biden Democracy

[marsh]

China Demands Biden Return U.S. to Iran Nuclear Deal

Chinese Foreign Minister: "The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions."

legalinsurrection.com

China Demands Biden Return U.S. to Iran Nuclear Deal

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal Wednesday, December 23, 2020 at 8:00am
Chinese Foreign Minister: “The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions.”

Communist China on Monday demanded the United States to return to the Iran nuclear deal and end all sanctions placed on Tehran under President Donald Trump’s watch once Joe Biden moves into the White House.

“The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions, and the US should also scrap all sanctions imposed on Iran, other third-party entities and individuals,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a video conference with other four signatories of the 2015 nuclear accord.

The Chinese foreign minister’s undiplomatic and stern tone underlines China’s belief in a ‘reset‘ in bilateral relations with a Biden-run administration. According to Chinese media reports, Beijing opened backchannel talks with figures close to the Biden team last month and wants a rollback on the tough policy course pursued by President Donald Trump.
The Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported the Chinese foreign minister’s remarks:

China called on the United States on Monday to return to the Iran nuclear deal without conditions and to lift all US sanctions against Iran and related entities.

“The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions, and the US should also scrap all sanctions imposed on Iran, other third-party entities and individuals,” said Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during a video conference hosted by the European Union and attended by foreign ministers from Russia, Iran, Britain, France and Germany – the other signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that US President Donald Trump exited in 2018.

China is not alone, expecting the U.S. to reenter the Obama-Kerry deal once the Democrats take the White House. Foreign ministers from Germany, Iran, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom ‘welcomed’ the prospect of Biden bringing Washington back into the fold of the deal disavowed by President Trump in May 2018.

“A joint statement released by [German Foreign Minister Heiko] Maas and the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Russia and the UK acknowledged their desire to see the treaty upheld and greeted the prospects of a US return to it under incoming President-elect Joe Biden as ‘positive,'” Germany’s state-run DW News reported Monday.

“With Joe Biden on board, all parties to the nuclear deal want to bring it back to life,” the German broadcaster noted in a separate article last week.

The European Union has also joined the diplomatic push to get the U.S. to back the nuclear deal without any preconditions. European powers, mainly Germany, France, and the UK, had lined up huge investments in the oil-rich country before the Trump administration snapped back sanctions on the regime two years ago.

British newspaper The Guardian reported the European push to revive the Iran deal:

EU foreign ministers have agreed not to set fresh preconditions on a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, believing Tehran and Washington should be able to come back into full compliance with the agreement without at this stage needing to accept to extend or strengthen it.

The step removes one of the potential roadblocks to Iran coming back into compliance with the existing deal, so long as the US lifts its sanctions and complies with UN resolutions. (…)

The opposition to setting fresh preconditions came as foreign ministers that are signatories to the deal – France, Germany, the UK, Iran, China and Russia – convened for the first time in a year and welcomed a possible US return to the deal it unilaterally left in 2018. (…)

One senior EU diplomat said: “Everyone around the table agreed on the need to preserve the deal and to convince the US that it is much better to go back to the deal the way it is and without preconditions and without saying yes we want to add something more. If we want Iran to go back to full compliance then we have to bring the economic rewards that we promised. Today the trade between the European states and Iran is lower than it was before the deal.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration shows no signs of letting down on its tough policies towards Communist China or Shia-Islamist Iran.

The U.S. has increasingly tightened economic sanctions against Iran, the world’s biggest state-sponsor of terrorism. Last month, a joint CIA-Mossad operation eliminated Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, hiding near Tehran.

Last week, the White House added leading Chinese companies to the growing list of entities blacklisted for their ties to the Chinese military.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department hit Chinese regime officials with fresh visa restrictions on the grounds of Human rights abuse. Millions of Chinese are languishing in the Communist regime’s forced labor camps.

“China’s authoritarian rulers impose draconian restrictions on the Chinese people’s freedoms of expression, religion or belief, association, and the right to peaceful assembly. The United States has been clear that perpetrators of human rights abuses like these are not welcome in our country,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Monday.

VIDEO: Pompeo urges world leaders to hold China, Iran accountable

View: https://youtu.be/TnYyARibBug
3:52 min

 

[northern watch]

Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran

BY TYLER DURDEN
ZERO HEDGE
THURSDAY, DEC 24, 2020 - 15:40

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

According to a report from Axios, Israel used a recent visit from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to pass messages about Iran to the incoming Biden administration.

Israel opposes Joe Biden’s plan to work with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal but has yet to open formal contacts with Biden’s team. Milley could stay in his position beyond the transition period, so the Israelis see him as a potential conduit.




An unnamed Israeli official told Axios that Israel expressed its opposition to Biden rejoining the nuclear deal to Milley while the general visited the country last week. "We stressed that the starting point of any talks with Iran is much better for the US today than it was in 2013. What is needed now is to be tough in order to get a better deal," the Israeli official said.

“We wanted to make our case to the new administration on Iran through someone who is still going to be in the room when Biden assumes office and is going to play a substantive role in any policy review that will take place," the official added.

Israel’s stance on the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, is a non-starter for negotiations with Iran. Tehran has made it clear that they have no interest in talks before the US provides sanctions relief. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that Iran will quickly come into compliance with the JCPOA if the US lifts sanctions.

The Israelis also told Milley that Biden should be more open to relationships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite human rights concerns. The Israelis hope Biden continues the normalization deals started by the Trump administration.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states are also opposed to Biden’s plan to revive the JCPOA. The Gulf states are hoping to be involved in future negotiations between Iran and the US. Iran is in favor of dialogue with its neighbors but believe the US should stay out of regional talks.

Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran | ZeroHedge

 

[marsh]

The Risk of John Kerry Following His Own China Policy

Any progress on climate change will be lost if the frame is one of a grand bargain with Beijing.

www.theatlantic.com

The Risk of John Kerry Following His Own China Policy
Any progress on climate change will be lost if the frame is one of a grand bargain with Beijing.

DECEMBER 22, 2020
Thomas Wright
Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

DENIS / REA / REDUX
Competition with China will likely be the most difficult foreign-policy issue that President-elect Joe Biden will face. What he decides to lead with and the precise mix of areas in which he engages and confronts Beijing are critically important. This is why Biden’s choice of John Kerry as a special presidential envoy on climate change might create a problem for the incoming president on China policy.

Biden appointed Kerry, an old friend and trusted ally who came within a hair’s breadth of being elected president in 2004, and empowered him with an expansive mandate on an issue that touches virtually every other area in domestic and foreign policy. This appointment also gives him membership on the cabinet and the National Security Council, and authorization to use a military aircraft for his diplomacy. However, Biden does not yet appear to have defined the limits of Kerry’s role and explained how it will be integrated into the broader strategy. This has some of Biden’s other advisers worried.

According to three people familiar with Kerry’s thinking, Kerry believes that cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China. Kerry thinks the U.S. president should use his political capital to press Beijing on this subject. Yes, the United States should stand firm when it disagrees with Beijing, as he believes it did during his tenure as secretary of state, but everything else, including geopolitical competition with China, is of secondary importance to this overarching threat. As he put it in an interview with ProPublica before the election, “China is about to bring 21 gigawatts of coal fired power online. India is poised to do slightly less, but similarly huge amounts. That’s going to kill us. That’s going to kill the efforts to deal with climate.” For Kerry, a deal with China is the key.

Beijing is well aware of Kerry’s stance; he communicated it at the 2020 Munich Security Conference (well before Biden was the nominee). And China has already begun to lay the groundwork for a reset in its relationship with the U.S. Last week, in remarks to the Asia Society, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for a return to cooperation and argued that the tensions between the two countries came down to American misunderstandings about China. This followed an op-ed calling for cooperative competition by Fu Ying, a Chinese diplomat who seeks to shape Western discourse about China but is personally distrusted by Biden’s Asia advisers for breaking an agreement on withdrawal from disputed areas in the South China Sea in 2012. Beijing is also on a charm offensive on climate change. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would be carbon neutral by 2060.

Some of Biden’s foreign-policy advisers believe that these seemingly benign overtures from Beijing basically call on the U.S. to accept the provocative actions by China that led to the increase in tensions in the first place. The rhetoric provides no reason to think that Beijing will modify its behavior—on the South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, trade, or the development of new military capabilities that threaten American interests. All the talk of a reset is an attempt to influence the early internal debates within the Biden administration and to strengthen those individuals who want a return to cooperative engagement with China.

Kerry is indefatigable, even monomaniacal, in everything he does. The stories of his boundless energy and his confidence in his own ability to bend history are notorious among former officials who served with him in Barack Obama’s administration. As secretary of state, he did not easily take direction from the White House and often went with his gut instinct on what was needed to advance his own policy priorities—then a Middle East peace process that most of his colleagues believed was doomed to fail. For instance, he repeatedly linked Egypt policy to the peace process in ways that contradicted the Obama administration’s position on the importance of democracy and human rights in that country.

Kerry’s instinct could well be to hop on a plane on January 21 and fly to Beijing with a plea for the two countries to put climate at the centerpiece of their relationship. The Chinese will likely agree and in the subsequent months create the impression that a relaxation of tensions on other matters would be necessary if they are to deliver on their promises. Kerry, who sees all of these issues as linked, would then put himself at the heart of reconciling the conflicting goals and demand changes in U.S. policy to support his efforts.

The Chinese might welcome this negotiation, even though they might not intend for it to lead anywhere. Even if it does, it might create commitments that they can easily ignore. For Beijing, the advantage is that climate-change negotiations will dilute America’s ability to compete strategically, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. I spoke with several Biden-Harris advisers, on condition of anonymity so they could speak freely, who expressed real concern over how this will play out. A former Obama administration official told me, “China’s diplomacy is a constant search for leverage, and Kerry will deliver a load of it in a wheelbarrow right to their front door every day.”

All of this would put the rest of Biden’s team in an impossible position. Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Lloyd Austin—the incoming secretary of state, national security adviser, and defense secretary, respectively—along with other administration principals, might find themselves making doctrinal statements on China policy that are then contradicted by what is happening in Kerry’s press conferences in Beijing. Kerry’s diplomacy might also greatly complicate the legislative agenda on climate. Biden already has a Herculean task in convincing the Senate to act on climate change, but he could potentially make progress where climate initiatives are framed as competitive with China. However, any progress will be lost if the frame is one of a grand bargain with Beijing.

In the development of a new strategy, two aspects of the relationship between climate change and competition with China are particularly important. The first concerns the role of climate in America’s China policy. A small minority of people believe, as Kerry does, that the U.S. should elevate climate in the overall relationship and be willing to make concessions on other issues to secure action by Beijing. The vast majority, including almost everyone on the Biden team except for Kerry, reject this view and believe that cooperation on climate should be compartmentalized and largely protected from the rest of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. This group then splits on how much competition they think is required, but they agree on the dangers of linkage—it could give Beijing an incentive to withhold cooperation on climate unless it receives concessions on other issues.

The second aspect is that the race to mitigate climate change will also become its own area of competition between the United States and China. This is brilliantly described from a European perspective by Janka Oertel, Jennifer Tollmann, and Byford Tsang in a new report for the European Council on Foreign Relations. They argue that “the hurdles to cooperation” with China on climate “are becoming higher” but that it “can be in Europe’s interest—if the EU sets clear red lines and benchmarks.” They warn that “decision-makers must not underestimate the highly competitive aspects of how China is changing its energy production and consumption” and that this “competitive dimension in climate diplomacy will become more dominant.”

For instance, Europe (and the U.S.) will be competing with China for a technological edge on innovations to produce a carbon-neutral economy and for access to raw materials (magnets, batteries, high-performance ceramics, and LEDs, among others). In some of these areas, the United States and Europe are at risk of dependence on China, so the answer lies in ensuring that the free world is more self-reliant when it comes to the decades-long effort to develop clean technology.

Biden needs to make clear as early as possible that he supports the notion that cooperation on climate change must be separated from the rest of the relationship so progress can continue regardless of other differences between the United States and China. If he does not give this guidance, it will allow Kerry to assume that he has permission to pursue his own path. Biden should then lay down crystal-clear guidelines for how his administration will engage directly with China and what subjects Kerry will be permitted to discuss with Beijing. Blinken and Sullivan should talk about the competitive aspects of climate policy to ensure that this issue is not neglected. Most importantly, Biden needs a control mechanism, such as giving Chief of Staff Ron Klain authority to enforce these guidelines.

The White House also needs an empowered senior official in the White House with the authority and ability to define U.S. strategy toward Asia. Described as an “Asia czar,” this position could easily fit within the existing National Security Council structure. This is important because Austin does not have a natural background on Asia and maritime issues. This official will likely not have Kerry’s stature and resources, so it will not be a solution to the problem in and of itself. But it will help.

Kerry’s first stop should not be Beijing. He should go to the European Union and listen to what Europeans have learned about the difficulties of engaging China on climate and how it is becoming a zone of competition. He should negotiate with the EU and the U.K. a common agenda for COP26, the major climate-change summit that will take place in London in November 2021. The allies can then go to China together later in the spring and negotiate the agenda from a position of unified strength.

These steps will ultimately help Kerry and help him focus his energies more effectively. He has the stature and ability to redefine America’s climate diplomacy, which the country sorely needs, but he will succeed only if his role is integrated into a broader strategy and doesn’t contradict or undermine it. Otherwise, the allure of a grand bargain with China will be a siren song that will only result in these valiant efforts ending in ruin.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ma7MtcZfvY
4:05 min
National security requires Biden to break pledge on illegal immigration: DeVore
•Dec 26, 2020


Fox News

Former California State Assembly member Chuck DeVore weighs in on ‘Fox and Friends Weekend.’

 

[et2]

Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran

BY TYLER DURDEN
ZERO HEDGE
THURSDAY, DEC 24, 2020 - 15:40

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

According to a report from Axios, Israel used a recent visit from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to pass messages about Iran to the incoming Biden administration.

Israel opposes Joe Biden’s plan to work with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal but has yet to open formal contacts with Biden’s team. Milley could stay in his position beyond the transition period, so the Israelis see him as a potential conduit.




An unnamed Israeli official told Axios that Israel expressed its opposition to Biden rejoining the nuclear deal to Milley while the general visited the country last week. "We stressed that the starting point of any talks with Iran is much better for the US today than it was in 2013. What is needed now is to be tough in order to get a better deal," the Israeli official said.

“We wanted to make our case to the new administration on Iran through someone who is still going to be in the room when Biden assumes office and is going to play a substantive role in any policy review that will take place," the official added.

Israel’s stance on the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, is a non-starter for negotiations with Iran. Tehran has made it clear that they have no interest in talks before the US provides sanctions relief. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that Iran will quickly come into compliance with the JCPOA if the US lifts sanctions.

The Israelis also told Milley that Biden should be more open to relationships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite human rights concerns. The Israelis hope Biden continues the normalization deals started by the Trump administration.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf states are also opposed to Biden’s plan to revive the JCPOA. The Gulf states are hoping to be involved in future negotiations between Iran and the US. Iran is in favor of dialogue with its neighbors but believe the US should stay out of regional talks.

Israel Using Gen. Milley To Pass Messages To Biden On Iran | ZeroHedge

Mark Miley ... can’t be trusted.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

"I'm Going To Get In Trouble For Saying This": Biden "Unlikely" To Cancel $50K In Student Loan Debt

SATURDAY, DEC 26, 2020 - 11:10
President-Elect Joe Biden has been under pressure from the far Left within his party to cancel all student debt as one of his first acts in office after January 20. For example earlier this month a proposed Schumer-Warren plan demanded immediate student debt forgiveness of $50,000 for each and every borrower (with the exception of course for all who've previously dutifully paid off their debt).

They are demanding he do this via a sweeping executive order, with some progressives going so far as to push for a total debt forgiveness by a mere "flick of the pen". By middle of this week Biden belatedly addressed the growing controversy head-on in an interview with The Washington Post which no doubt added fuel to the fire of Progressive outrage.

Biden said, "I’m going to get in trouble for saying this . . . it’s arguable that the president may have the executive power to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt... Well, I think that’s pretty questionable. I’m unsure of that. I’d be unlikely to do that."

So there it is: there won't be a belated Christmas gift of more "free money" the far Left demands, though he has signaled he'll stick by his more modest plan to forgive a smaller amount of up to $10,000.

All of this follows a separate plan by House Democrats which came on the heels of the aforementioned Schumer-Warren plan, as Forbes reviews:

"Last week, Rep. Ayanna Pressley and other House Democrats introduced a resolution calling on Biden to cancel $50,000 in federal student loan debt for every borrower using executive authority. Senate Democrats, led by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, had introduced a similar resolution earlier in the year.

A diverse coalition of 237 civil rights and consumer protection organizations, including the NAACP and several national labor unions, sent a letter to Biden in November, urging him to use executive authority to cancel federal student debt when he assumes office in January."

This pressure has built for Biden to go further after he's fairly consistently said on the campaign trail that he won't go past $10,000. It's not enough say the advocates of $50K or also total debt cancellation, despite that Biden's plan according to some common estimates would result in a whopping $1.7 trillion outstanding student loan debt being wiped out among 16 million people, which is about a third of all borrowers.

"President Biden can undo this debt — can forgive $50,000 of [student] debt — the first day he becomes president," Schumer said earlier this month. "You don't need Congress. All you need is the flick of a pen."

But as a reminder, the significant legal challenges that trying doing such through mere executive order in the first place notwithstanding, the reality as a recent in-depth Goldman Sachs study of the issue found is that even substantial student debt relief of the kind the left-wing of the party wants would have miniscule to only small effect on GDP.

"Most student debt—and the vast majority of debt with a large balance—is held by households with a graduate or professional degree that have high earnings potential and are less likely to be resource constrained," Goldman found.

The analysis from Goldman's economics team calculated that even substantial debt relief "would only have a small effect on GDP", specifically, forgiving federal student loans up to $10k would add less than 0.1% to the level of GDP starting in 2021, and cumulatively add only $0.43 in real GDP for each $1 of forgiven debt over the next 10 years.

A more generous debt relief program that forgives federal loan balances up to $50k would provide a slightly bigger boost to GDP, but would have a smaller per-dollar impact.



Or put another way, contrary to their fantasy land vision that somehow this would lift up low-income and struggling families, progressives would actually be funding the upper middle class ironically enough.

 

[marsh]

Exiled Uyghur leader 'deeply concerned' Biden will abandon Trump support for persecuted Muslims

Prime Minster of East Turkistan Government-in-Exile fears Biden might adopt the "same position as the Obama administration, which is a position of just silence."

justthenews.com

Exiled Uyghur leader 'deeply concerned' Biden will abandon Trump support for persecuted Muslims

Prime Minster of East Turkistan Government-in-Exile fears Biden might adopt the "same position as the Obama administration, which is a position of just silence."

Video on website 1:50 min

By Carrie Sheffield
Updated: December 26, 2020 - 10:14am

The exiled prime minister of the persecuted Uyghur Muslim minority in China says he is worried that an incoming Biden administration will be less aggressive in pushing back against the Chinese government for its human rights abuses than the Trump administration has been.

"We're deeply concerned that they might reverse the policies that the Trump administration has done, and that they might take the same position as the Obama administration, which is a position of just silence," Salih Hudayar, the prime minister of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, told "Just the News AM" television program on Monday.

Hudayar noted that the Biden team had made an announcement during the 2020 presidential election saying that Joe Biden recognized the treatment of the Uyghurs as a genocide. The Chinese Communist Party has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in reeducation camps.

"However, since the election process, now that it's about to transition, they have been largely silent," Hudayar said. "In fact, Newsweek has reached out to them, even we reached out to them, and they haven't reached back out to us."

The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile, which is not recognized by the Chinese government, claims to represent over a million Uyghurs in exile and between 35 and 40 million people in the Xinjiang Chinese province. It was organized in 2004, and Hudayar was elected as its fourth prime minister.

Hudayar said part of the reticence on the part of Biden could be that his son, Hunter Biden, has been invested in a Chinese company that was involved in the mass surveillance of Uyghurs. Media outlets like the Wall Street Journal have confirmed that Hunter Biden invested in a Chinese tech startup called Megvii. Megvii and tech giant Huawei have reportedly tested a facial recognition system that could be used to detect Uighurs.

"We've raised that concern [about Hunter Biden] numerous times before, but this round, we just were talking about them to follow up on their promise of recognizing the genocide, to speak out, to urge Congress to pass the Forced Labor Prevention Act, which has been stuck in the Senate," Hudayar said. "And we haven't gotten a response, Newsweek hasn't gotten a response, either."

"The American audience needs to know that what's happening to the Uyghurs is nothing less than a genocide," Hudayar said. "The Chinese government in recent years has locked up millions of people in concentration camps and prisons and using them as slave labor, to [work] as slaves and on cotton fields, to [work] in factories producing products that are then sent here to the United States for consumption by the American consumers."

Hudayar praised the Trump administration for spotlighting the Uyghurs' plight beginning in 2017. Prior to that "many people never heard of the Uyghurs," he said. "President Trump and the administration have been raising the issue nationally and internationally. And because of Secretary Pompeo's outspokenness, people know who the Uyghurs are."

However, the publicity hasn't translated into better outcomes for the Uyghurs, according to Hudayar.

"This [publicity] obviously has angered China, but things have not gotten any better," Hudayar said. "In fact recently, just yesterday the Chinese government announced that it's going to continue its policies to 'fight against terrorism,' to push back against Uyghurs, saying that the Chinese government is not doing anything wrong, and it's just trying to ensure political stability."

 

[marsh]

Here's what Biden is promising to do to curb emissions in his first days in office

President-elect Joe Biden is promising to start implementing on day one the most aggressive policies to curb emissions of any administration.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

Here's what Biden is promising to do to curb emissions in his first days in office

by Abby Smith, Energy and Environment Reporter |

| December 26, 2020 06:38 AM

President-elect Joe Biden is promising to start implementing on day one the most aggressive policies to curb emissions of any administration.

His administration is poised to get started quickly. Biden is bringing in a team of climate policymaking veterans, former Obama Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and former Secretary of State John Kerry, to run his White House climate shop.

He has also been laying the groundwork for months to set an “all of government” strategy to curb greenhouse gas emissions sharply. Environmentalists and those close to Biden’s team expect the president-elect will seek to codify his overall agenda in his first days, maybe even in his first few hours on the job.

“I’m just hoping to hear on day one, or very, very early, signals about an urgent agenda to address neglected pollution problems, including, of course, climate change,” said David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean energy program.

Biden has no shortage of ideas at his disposal, too. On the campaign trail, and even more since his election, climate advocates, clean energy companies, and environmental groups have offered Biden’s team an overflow of policy blueprints, laying out in granular detail how each agency, not just the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department, can combat climate change.

In addition, climate activists will be clamoring for immediate and aggressive action from Biden, citing the urgency of addressing rising global emissions and a need to repair the environmental damage they say the Trump administration has caused.

“We need to meet this moment with the urgency it demands as we would during any national emergency,” Biden said Dec. 19, introducing his climate and energy Cabinet nominees and appointments.

Biden expects to be able to do a lot to start reducing emissions in his first days in office. And while his administration likely won’t complete any major emissions mandates in its first 100 days, as the regulatory process can take many months, the list goes beyond rejoining the Paris climate agreement — the day one climate action Biden has been the most vocal about.

Here’s what to expect from Biden on climate change in his first days in office, based on a review of his climate plans:

Executive orders
Perhaps the biggest action to watch for: Biden is promising on his first day to sign executive orders “with unprecedented reach that go well beyond” what the Obama administration set out to achieve.

Those executive orders, environmentalists say, will be critical to sending a signal to government agencies that climate change is a priority.

It’s expected Biden could seek to, through executive order, set the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and a carbon-free power sector by 2035. Biden has also pledged to set a goal for the U.S. to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, as well as establish targets to increase reforestation and expand renewable energy on federal lands.
Biden is also likely to task specific federal agencies with beginning work to rewrite Trump-era environmental rollbacks, set stricter emissions mandates, limit fossil fuel production, and ramp up clean energy generation.

Top of the list for the EPA, for example, would be to set requirements for oil and gas facilities to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, said Conrad Schneider, advocacy director at the Clean Air Task Force. Biden could also direct the EPA to rewrite carbon emissions limits for power plants that the Trump administration weakened, he said.

Biden has also pledged to direct the EPA and Transportation Department to set stricter fuel economy standards for passenger cars and to restore California’s ability to set its own tailpipe greenhouse gas limits.

In addition, any day one executive order could be the first place Biden directs the Interior Department to restrict fossil fuel development on public lands. Biden has promised to bar new federal leasing for oil and gas on federal lands and waters.

Other actions Biden has promised in his climate plan for which directives could appear in a day one executive order:

• Directing the federal government to purchase more clean energy, electric cars, and other low-carbon technologies.
• Ordering the Energy Department to set tighter energy efficiency standards for appliances and buildings.
• Requiring that federal permitting of infrastructure, energy, and other projects assess the effects they would have on greenhouse gas emissions.
• Directing financial agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to require public companies to disclose the risks they face from climate change and how much greenhouse gases they emit.

International efforts
Biden has said repeatedly he will begin the process to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on his first day, after which the U.S. could be a formal member again after a 30-day waiting period.
However, he has pledged to take several other steps in his first 100 days internationally:

• Convene a world summit with the leaders of major emitting countries to call on them to make more aggressive pledges to slash greenhouse gases.
• “Lock in” emissions mandates consistent with global agreements to cut greenhouse gases from the shipping and aviation sectors.
• “Embrace” a global deal to limit climate-warming coolants known as hydrofluorocarbons, which could avoid 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming if governments meet their targets.

What about Congress?
Much of what Biden is promising in his first days in office he is hoping to do through executive action alone. Nevertheless, his climate plan does include working with Congress.

Biden pledged to “demand” Congress pass legislation in the first year of his term that sets enforceable emissions targets for no later than 2025, makes “historic” investments in clean energy and climate change research, and spurs “rapid deployment” of clean energy across the country.

What pull Biden has with Congress, however, will depend on how the Georgia Senate runoff elections shake out in early January. If Republicans retain control of the Senate, Biden is likely constrained to less aggressive clean energy spending measures, along the lines of the innovation measure Congress passed this month as part of a year-end spending package funding low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and advanced nuclear power.

And even if Democrats win both seats, Biden will still face narrow partisan margins, signaling an uphill battle for the aggressive climate legislation that he is proposing.

 

[marsh]

Dumb, Woke and Indoctrinated Kids…

Biden’s choice to run the Dept. of Education looks like another real winner: Joe Biden’s choice to head up the Education Department is the Connecticut commissioner of education who pl…

www.citizenfreepress.com

Dumb, Woke and Indoctrinated Kids…
Posted by Kane on December 26, 2020 11:39 am

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1341801577942814720

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1341801577942814720
5:18 min

Biden’s choice to run the Dept. of Education looks like another real winner:

Joe Biden’s choice to head up the Education Department is the Connecticut commissioner of education who played a key role in developing a statewide minority-studies course that analyzes “how race, power, and privilege influence group access to citizenship, civil rights, and economic power.”

Miguel Cardona based the curriculum on “critical race theory,” which claims America is systemically racist. The choice has pleased left-wing education advocacy groups and teachers’ unions.

 

[Dozdoats]

Might as well be the Department of Indoctrination.

 

[marsh]

Joe Biden Tells Trump to Sign COVID Bill and Send Money to Foreign Nations | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Handlers for Beijing Biden released a statement on Saturday demanding President Trump sign the COVID relief bill and give money to foreign friends and foes.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Joe Biden Tells Trump to Sign COVID Bill and Send Money to Foreign Nations

By Jim Hoft
Published December 26, 2020 at 6:42pm

Handlers for Beijing Biden released a statement on Saturday demanding President Trump sign the COVID relief bill and give money to foreign friends and foes.

President Trump vetoed the bill after Congress only allotted $600 per American but gave away money to Venezuela, Central America and numerous other countries and American organizations.

Via News Nemo:

Days after President Donald Trump suggested that he would not likely sign a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package unless it increased individual direct payments to $2,000, President-elect Joe Biden issued a searing statement condemning his soon-to-be predecessor for his “abdication of responsibility.”

“It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” he said in a statement.

Listing the ramifications of not signing the bill, including the end of an eviction moratorium, a lack of small business and individual relief and funding for vaccine distribution, Biden said the bill is “critical” and “needs to be signed into law now.”

 

[marsh]

Washington Post Warns Joe Biden: 'Pandemonium at the Border'

The Washington Post has joined the chorus of Joe Biden's supporters who are warning him not to create "pandemonium" at the border.

www.breitbart.com

Washington Post Warns Joe Biden: ‘Pandemonium at the Border’

767

Drew Angerer/Getty Images
NEIL MUNRO26 Dec 20201,000

The Washington Post has joined the chorus of Joe Biden’s supporters who are warning him not to implement his campaign trail promise to recklessly dismantle President Donald Trump’s hard-earned, pr0-American border reforms.

Biden “must also avoid triggering a new humanitarian crisis at the Mexican border featuring unauthorized Central Americans and Mexicans streaming north,” the Post’s editorial board said in a column on December 24.

The statement continued:

Any sudden move to abolish [Trump’s] policy without an orderly system to replace it could be read as a green light that would invite more migrants than the U.S. bureaucracy can process. Nor is it reasonable to swiftly revoke the emergency public health order authorizing the summary expulsion of unauthorized migrants at the border, based on the pandemic’s threat.

However, the Post’s editorial board is not worried about fellow Americans’ wages and rents, communities, and schools.

Instead, Jeff Bezos’s employees are worried that border pandemonium could damage Biden’s broader agenda of extracting more workers and consumers from poor foreign countries for his domestic allies on Wall Street. The board wrote, “Make no mistake. … Any hope of building public support for a legislative overhaul of the immigration system, let alone bipartisan backing in Congress, would be blown to pieces by fresh images of pandemonium at the border.”

The Post has outlined that “legislative overhaul” agenda in prior editorials. On November 27, for example, the Post’s board described its mass migration wish list for Biden:

He can increase refugee admissions relatively quickly. … He can immediately stop work on Mr. Trump’s wasteful wall at the southern border. … He can ensure the renewal of work permits and end the threat of deportation for dreamers, and grant reprieves to hundreds of thousands of migrants whose temporary protected status Mr. Trump tried to remove.

It went on to state:

It will take longer to undo the hundreds of rule changes the Trump administration used to neuter legal immigration programs. … As for a pathway to citizenship for more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants, that will require legislation — a daunting prospect as long as Republicans control the Senate.

The Post’s solution for Biden’s dilemma is the same that Biden has offered — to convert a disorderly rush of illegal migrants into an orderly, legal rush of legal immigrants. The editorial board advised Americans on December 24 that “a patient, systematic overhaul of procedures is the best course for the post-pandemic future.”

The vast majority of Americans — including Democrats — want cheap-labor migration stopped so Americans can first compete for the jobs, wages, and economic security in a national labor market that is their birthright.

But the nation’s economic elite — and their progressive allies — favor immigration because it transfers wealth from wage earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals, corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine labor rights, and even get many progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities:

 

[marsh]

Martel: World Prepares for Return of Obama-Era Chaos Under Biden

Joe Biden has made clear in his staffing plans and public remarks that he intends to return the world to its state under Obama.

www.breitbart.com

Martel: World Prepares for Return of Obama-Era Chaos Under Biden
29,451

Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images
FRANCES MARTEL25 Dec 20209,066

President-elect Joe Biden has made clear in his staffing plans and public remarks that he intends to return America to many of the foreign policy positions championed by his former boss, President Barack Obama.

While American mainstream media has largely cheered this – and glowered at President Donald Trump for defending his achievements by making regression more difficult under Biden – many of America’s allies, and some of its foes, around the world are making moves suggesting they expect a full return to the state of global affairs in 2016.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy was defined by the tension between the president’s message, repeated routinely over the years, that America’s involvement in geopolitics made the world worse, and his regular, violent interventions abroad. His apologetic words – “America has shown arrogance” to its neighbors, “We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect” – clashed dramatically with his routine drone strikes on civilian targets, the invasion of Libya, and the widespread arming of Syrian “rebels” that ended up handing those weapons to jihadists.

The approach produced widespread death and chaos, perhaps most emblematically in the eruption of the “Arab Spring” a decade ago. What began as a reaction to a Tunisian merchant setting himself on fire resulted in the election (and violent removal) of a Muslim Brotherhood extremist in Egypt, open-air slave auctions in Libya, and the bloody rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Closer to home, communist and socialist dictators used Obama’s carte blanche to violently repress citizens. Venezuelan protests beginning in 2014 against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro resulted in thousands of casualties, including the deaths of many children at the hands of state security. In Cuba, the Castro regime took advantage of a windfall in tourism profits following Obama’s “thaw” policy – despite the fact that U.S. tourism to Cuba remains technically illegal – to commit about 10,000 politically-motivated arrests in 2016.

Under Obama, American enemies like China, Russia (which annexed a giant chunk of Ukraine with impunity), and Iran expanded their global influence. Allies that could have played a role in mitigating the advance of American rivals were told to “share the neighborhood” or otherwise snubbed. Taken by surprise during Obama’s term, it appears that at least Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan, and India are preparing for a third Obama term.

Saudi Arabia – Iran’s biggest geopolitical rival – took no time following Biden’s electoral victory to declare that, if Biden’s policies result in Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, Riyadh would immediately launch its own nuclear program.

A Saudi nuclear weapons program, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said in November, was “definitely an option” under Biden. Al-Jubeir had made similar remarks in the past.

“If Iran acquires nuclear capability we will do everything we can to do the same,” al-Jubeir said in 2018, shortly after Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Riyadh has accompanied its tough talk with action. A report in Al-Monitor, a pan-Mideast outlet, this week detailed that Saudi officials have begun mending fences with Qatar and Turkey – both increasingly strained relationships due to Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign to become the leader of the Muslim world, in the latter case, and due to close ties with Iran, in the former. Under Trump, the Saudi government felt it could rely on Washington for support against extremist governments in the region, a luxury it cannot expect to have during Biden’s term, just as it did not with Obama.

Iranian officials appear to agree with the tacit concern that Saudi Arabia has exhibited about the return of the Democrats to the White House.

“I have no doubt that the heroic national resistance of Iran is going to compel the future U.S. government to bow … and the sanctions will be broken,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proclaimed last week. “We are very happy to see Trump leave.”

In Asia, Japan – which has longstanding territorial disputes with China and no official military, only a “self-defense force” – prepared for the incoming Biden administration by passing the largest defense budget in its history on Monday. Japan will spend $51.6 billion on defense spending in 2021. Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, specified that the money will go to combatting “security challenges posed by China.”

Not waiting for the Biden administration to support Japan in any dispute with China, Japanese officials also deployed diplomatic tactics to protect its sovereign territory. In late November, Tokyo welcomed Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for high-level discussions, the first of their kind under new Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide. Illegal Chinese fishing expeditions in Japanese waters – increasingly common there and around the world – were high on the list of issues discussed.

Taiwan, another nation regularly under Chinese military threat, has also revealed plans to expand its military capacity in the next year. Taipei announced the construction of indigenous submarines in late November.

“We are letting the world see Taiwan’s strong will to defend its sovereignty,” President Tsai Ing-wen said at an event to inaugurate the construction of the vessels. Tsai is the first Taiwanese president since the era of President Jimmy Carter to engage in a vocal conversation with an American president after Trump accepted a phone call from her congratulating him on his 2016 victory.

On China’s western border, the government of India has indicated it will increase preparation for hostilities after the first gunshots were fired across the border in 45 years this summer.

Indian news outlets reported last month that the government had purchased at least 20,000 cold weather suits for its Himalayan troops from the U.S. government. Asian News International (ANI) cited an unnamed source in the Indian government stating that, in addition to the suits, New Delhi had purchased “a number of assault rifles for the special forces as well as the SiGSauer assault rifles for the infantry troops.” India’s rules of engagement did not allow firearms on the border until this June.

China appears to also be preparing for future conflict with India, potentially expecting Indian officials to change their strategies after the departure of President Trump, who maintained close relations with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dictator Xi Jinping replaced the head of China’s Western Theater Command, the wing of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) responsible for the Indian border, this weekend, removing Gen. Zhao Zongqi. Under Zhao, Chinese troops suffered an embarrassing defeat against Indian troops in a bloody melee in India’s Ladakh region, where PLA troops were reportedly present illegally.

Reports from mainstream American outlets indicate that President Trump is working to enhance the permanence of his foreign policy achievements as the clock winds down on his term, potentially preventing a Biden-era Arab spring or Crimean colonization. Or, as CNN derisively termed it, failing to recall the state of the world the last time Biden was in the White House, Trump’s team is hoping to “set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.” Many of America’s allies may be hoping to see Trump succeed, but few appear to be waiting to find out if he does.

 

[packyderms_wife]

"I'm Going To Get In Trouble For Saying This": Biden "Unlikely" To Cancel $50K In Student Loan Debt

Of course he can't they gave that money to Pakistan for gender studies and so women could have checking accounts.

 

[raven]

i think an investment in fallout shelters would be profitable . . . in the short term . . . very short term

 

[Dozdoats]

President Biden can undo this debt

ALL FRN$ based debts - AND ASSETS - will be going away when the FRN$ dies.

 

[et2]

All hell breaks loose.

 

[marsh]

Biden's Choice For Education Secretary Mandated Critical Race Theory for High Schools

Joe Biden's choice to head up the Education Department is the Connecticut commissioner of education.

pjmedia.com

Biden's Choice For Education Secretary Mandated Critical Race Theory for High Schools

BY RICK MORAN DEC 23, 2020 12:00 PM ET

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Joe Biden’s choice to head up the Education Department is the Connecticut commissioner of education who played a key role in developing a statewide minority-studies course that analyzes “how race, power, and privilege influence group access to citizenship, civil rights, and economic power.”

Miguel Cardona based the curriculum on “critical race theory,” which claims America is systemically racist. The choice has pleased left-wing education advocacy groups and teachers’ unions.

Washington Free Beacon:

Hearing Youth Voices, a left-wing activist group that works to integrate “political education and theory” into public schools, helped develop the curriculum with Cardona. Hearing Youth Voices hosts a slew of diversity training sessions, including one that claims “capitalism is at the root of white supremacy, patriarchy, police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline and so much more.” Other training courses call for police abolition and refer to Israel as a police state.

What possible educational value is there for a student to receive “political education”? If it was an education about politics, that would be fine. But we all know whose politics are going to be taught and which are “good” and whose will be portrayed as “bad.”

That’s not “education.” It’s brainwashing.

The Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective was also involved in finalizing the curriculum’s instructional materials. Following a review of the course’s syllabus, the group said the curriculum helps students engage in “anti-racist leadership.”

Cardona has long been a proponent of integrating identity politics into public education. In a press release for Connecticut governor Ned Lamont (D.), Cardona said that “identities matter” in the context of a child’s education success, “especially when 27 percent of our students identify as Hispanic or Latino and 13 percent identify as Black or African-American…. [M]ore inclusive, culturally relevant content in classrooms leads to greater student engagement and better outcomes for all.”

The curriculum includes readings about Black Lives Matter and “resistance” movements of other minorities. Where do they come up with this stuff?

An “expert review panel,” which was filled with educators who support critical race theory being taught in the classroom, had input on the curriculum. One reviewer, Glenn Singleton, founded an organization that teaches students that individualism, competition, politeness, the scientific method, planning for the future, and the nuclear family are “aspects and assumptions of white culture.” Stefanie Wager, another member of the review panel and president of the National Council for the Social Studies, said social studies should be used to combat racism.

The future world portrayed in Idiocracy is going to look like geniuses compared to how kids are being educated today. The “scientific method” is racist? There goes our technological future — at least in the U.S. No foreign country in their right mind would teach that the scientific method is a means of oppression. Our great-grandkids will be sweeping the floors of factories owned by the Chinese and Indians.

If these were all elective courses for older high school kids, I wouldn’t object. Kids should be exposed to all kinds of thinking and all viewpoints in order to get a well-rounded, complete education. But forcing children to sit through this propaganda goes beyond what could possibly be considered “education” and becomes “programming.”

 

[marsh]

Biden's Foreign Policy Appears to Rely on Policy of Negotiating With Tyrants

More leading from behind

redstate.com

Biden's Foreign Policy Appears to Rely on Policy of Negotiating With Tyrants

By Sarah Lee | Dec 27, 2020 6:30 PM ET

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
A Biden administration, it’s been reported, will seek to change U.S. relations with Venezuela and its despotic leader Nicolas Maduro, preferring to seek “free and fair elections” and “offering sanctions relief in return” rather than continue with the Trump administration’s promise to only negotiate a Maduro surrender.

Interesting choice by the ostensible American President-elect since the Venezuelan head of state tweeted out, the day after Christmas, praise for one of the worst mass murderers in human history, China’s Mao Zedong, while indicating his affinity for the leadership of the current Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping.



Translated, the text reads: “I celebrate 127 years of the birth of the Great Helmsman of the People’s Republic of China. To speak of Mao Zedong is to connect with the greatness and strategic genius of a giant of humanity. Greetings to President Xi Jinping and the Chinese people who follow his legacy of unity and freedom.”

So…that’s what we have to look forward to, America. Attempts to find ways to work with a guy who celebrates the man who starved millions to death and who even the Washington Post tacitly admitted was a really bad guy by publishing a 2016 column penned by George Mason University’s Ilya Somin entitled, “Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world.” And it was prescient.

Who was the biggest mass murderer in the history of the world? Most people probably assume that the answer is Adolf Hitler, architect of the Holocaust. Others might guess Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may indeed have managed to kill even more innocent people than Hitler did, many of them as part of a terror famine that likely took more lives than the Holocaust. But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people – easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.
…
[O]ur continuing historical blind spot about the crimes of Mao and other communist rulers, leads us to underestimate the horrors of such policies, and makes it more likely that they might be revived in the future. The horrendous history of China, the USSR, and their imitators, should have permanently discredited socialism as completely as fascism was discredited by the Nazis. But it has not – so far – fully done so.

Just recently, the socialist government of Venezuela imposed forced labor on much of its population. Yet most of the media coverage of this injustice fails to note the connection to socialism, or that the policy has parallels in the history of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and other similar regimes. One analysis even claims that the real problem is not so much “socialism qua socialism,” but rather Venezuela’s “particular brand of socialism, which fuses bad economic ideas with a distinctive brand of strongman bullying,” and is prone to authoritarianism and “mismanagement.” The author simply ignores the fact that “strongman bullying” and “mismanagement” are typical of socialist states around the world. The Scandinavian nations – sometimes cited as examples of successful socialism- are not actually socialist at all, because they do not feature government ownership of the means of production, and in many ways have freer markets than most other western nations.

Biden, it would appear, would like to step back into the shoes of his former running mate, Barack Obama, and get on board with the whole “citizen of the world” thing. And, as with any social group one is trying to wiggle their way into, expressing the right (or, in this case, left) opinions and associating oneself with the popular people are paramount to success.

Never mind that, as international human rights attorney Hillel Neuer points out, Xi is following in the bloody footsteps of Mao. He’s still having a place saved for him on the UN Human Rights Council.


And never mind that the U.S. State Department, in the time it has left under the Trump administration, is weighing whether or not to officially declare what Xi is doing as genocide.
Biden apparently wants to develop a “trade” policy that focuses on easily manipulated reports of “good behavior” rather than through goods and services that are easier to track via economic health or dearth.

This “leading from behind” mentality was frightening enough in the eight years of the Obama administration. Now, following the COVID crisis and very real questions about the integrity of U.S. systems (election and otherwise), it’s downright horrifying. The U.S. may not survive it intact.

 

[marsh]

Biden Flees Podium without Answering Questions After Delivering Remarks in Delaware (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

78-year-old Joe Biden on Monday delivered remarks from Wilmington, aware.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Biden Flees Podium without Answering Questions After Delivering Remarks in Delaware (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published December 28, 2020 at 4:00pm

78-year-old Joe Biden on Monday delivered remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.

Livestream of Biden’s remarks had only 4,500 viewers but we’re expected to believe he got more than 81 million votes in the 2020 election.

Biden bashed President Trump as he read from the teleprompter.

“We’re going to have to regain the trust and confidence of a world that has begun to find ways to work around us or work without us,” Biden said. “We have to be able to innovate, to reimagine our defenses against growing threats in new realms.”

“We’re going to work purposefully, diligently and responsibly to roll back Trump’s restrictions starting on day one,” Biden said of Trump’s immigration policies.

Joe Biden fled the podium after his short speech in order to avoid answering questions about his son Hunter’s pay-to-play schemes with China, Russia and Ukraine.

Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation over his business dealings in China and Joe Biden gets away with calling the allegations “Russian disinformation.”

WATCH:

View: https://youtu.be/hyJbOGLfsIQ
14:40 min

 

[marsh]

Biden Goes Full Green New Deal Tyrant: Carbon Emissions Threaten "the Very Existence of our Planet" (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

78-year-old Joe Biden on Monday delivered remarks from Wilmington, aware.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Biden Goes Full Green New Deal Tyrant: Carbon Emissions Threaten “the Very Existence of our Planet” (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila
Published December 28, 2020 at 5:08pm

78-year-old Joe Biden on Monday delivered remarks from Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden trashed President Trump and vowed to unwind Trump’s policies on day one (if he’s sworn into office).

Joe Biden went full Green New Deal tyrant and said carbon emissions threaten “the very existence of our planet.”

WATCH:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1343674092768137217

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1343674092768137217
1:09 min

Joe Biden fled the podium on Monday and refused to answer any questions from reporters.
Last week Biden said climate change is an “existential crisis” and asserted we need a “unified national response” to combat climate change just like we did with Covid-19.

[COMMENT: TECHNIQUE - use fear to get cooperation in shutting down individual freedom, the economy and centralizing control. Rinse, repeat. ]

 

[marsh]

Biden Says Trump Pentagon Stalling Transition, Posing Risks

President-elect Joe Biden said Monday that Donald Trump's appointees at the Pentagon were stalling on the transition and warned that the United States faces security risks as a result.After he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were briefed by their transition teams on...

www.newsmax.com

Biden Says Trump Pentagon Stalling Transition, Posing Risks

(Getty)
Monday, 28 December 2020 04:17 PM

President-elect Joe Biden said Monday that Donald Trump's appointees at the Pentagon were stalling on the transition and warned that the United States faces security risks as a result.
After he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were briefed by their transition teams on national security, Biden said that political appointees at the Pentagon as well as the Office of Management and Budget had put up "roadblocks."

"Right now, we just aren't getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security area(s)," Biden said after the briefing.
"It is nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility."

Biden said he was seeking a "clear picture" from the outgoing administration on the force posture of US troops around the world.

"We need full visibility into the budget planning underway at the Defense Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit," Biden said.

Trump has refused to concede the November 3 election, which Biden won by some seven million votes and by 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College. The president has made unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud.

The Trump administration has drawn concern by shaking up the leadership of the Pentagon since the election including firing defense secretary Mark Esper, who had distanced himself from the president's use of force against unarmed anti-racism demonstrators earlier this year.
Trump's new acting defense secretary, Chris Miller, has said that the outgoing administration had agreed with Biden's people to pause briefings for the holiday season, an assertion that the incoming team called untrue.

Trump's last-minute installation of loyalists at the Pentagon comes amid high tensions with Iran, which Trump blamed for a rocket attack on the US Embassy in Iraq ahead of the January anniversary of the US killing in Baghdad of a top Iranian general.


_______________________________________________________
Interesting internet rumor from Fecebook

 

[marsh]

Biden Building Team to Aggressively Implement Waves of Job-Killing Regulations

During his 2016 campaign, then-GOP nominee Donald Trump promised he would cut federal regulations to the greatest extent possible. In a sign […] More

trendingpolitics.com

Biden Building Team to Aggressively Implement Waves of Job-Killing Regulations

Follow Jonathan Davis
Posted December 28, 2020 in Politics , Source: thehill,

During his 2016 campaign, then-GOP nominee Donald Trump promised he would cut federal regulations to the greatest extent possible.

In a sign of things to come – specifically, that Donald Trump, as president, would keep his promises – one of his first official acts was an executive order directing federal agencies to cut two regulations for every new one implemented.

As president, Trump continued to attack and dismantle what has become a fourth branch of government, the unaccountable federal bureaucracy. In May, he signed an order directing new, deeper regulatory cuts in order to spur economic growth as quickly as possible amid the still-worsening COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, it appears, all of the president’s efforts are going to be for naught – that is, if he can’t find a way to remain in office for a second term that he deserves, earned, and, he believes, has had taken from him.

The Hill has more details:
President-elect Joe Biden is building a team of seasoned government professionals who can help him embark on an aggressive regulatory agenda once he takes office.

Biden will face a divided Senate when he takes office that could be controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) depending on the outcome of two Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia.

This will make moving legislation difficult, and will almost certainly force Biden to lean on executive actions and regulatory work — both to accomplish his own agenda and dismantle President Trump’s.

Translation: It doesn’t make a hill of beans’ worth of difference how much good decimating needless and repetitive regulations did for our country; because Trump implemented them, they must be done away with, period.

“There is not an area of our life that regulation doesn’t touch and when progress in Congress is stifled because of gridlock or partisan differences, president after president has turned to regulation, and Biden will be no different,” Stuart Shapiro, a Rutgers University professor who worked in the Office of Management and Budget under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told The Hill.

So – who are these big government sycophants who plan to re-hamper our economy?

They include Gina McCarthy, who imposed tons of rules as head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack “Never Met a Reg I Didn’t Like” Obama. She is essentially being given carte blanche over the creation of new rules because she’s going to be Biden’s ‘domestic climate czar’ – and since everything we do ‘causes climate change,’ everything we do must be regulated (i.e. limited, taxed, banned, etc.).

"There’s also Xavier Becerra, who as California’s attorney general led the fight against Trump’s rollbacks to ObamaCare and if confirmed will head the Department of Health and Human Services," The Hill reported (and none of us ever need health care, right?).

"Michael Regan, Biden’s pick to helm the Environmental Protection Agency, has served as the top environmental regulator for the state of North Carolina for four years and also worked at EPA on its air quality program under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush," the outlet continued.

If 2022 seems a long way off, 2024 seems like forever.

 

[marsh]

Expecting Biden Presidency, Dems Plan To Increase Abortions by Ending Hyde Amendment

Uh oh...

thefederalistpapers.org

Expecting a Joe Biden Presidency, Democrats Plan To Rapidly Increase Abortions by Ending Hyde Amendment

By Samantha Chang, The Western Journal
Published December 28, 2020 at 2:49pm

Democrats are working to ramp up taxpayer-funded abortions if Joe Biden gets installed as president.

Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who’s set to chair the House Appropriations Committee in January, vowed to eliminate the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortions.

“This is the last year,” DeLauro said at a Dec. 8 hearing of the House Appropriations Committee.
She insisted that the government should pay for the murders of unborn babies and that not doing so is “discriminatory” to minorities.

“The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory policy,” she said.

“For more than 40 years, [the Hyde Amendment] has been routinely extended every year as a legislative rider, but the time has come in this current moment to reckon with the norm, with the status quo, view it through the lens of how it impacts communities of color … More than half, 58 percent, of the women affected by the Hyde Amendment are women of color.”

DeLauro further claimed that promoting easy, free access to abortions empowers women.
“Now is the time to empower all women to make deeply personal life decisions without politicians inserting themselves into the doctor’s office,” she said.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he will fight to block the Democrats’ efforts to scrap Hyde.

“The Republican caucus would resist it,” Shelby told NBC News. “We’ve had the Hyde Amendment a long time.

“And I think it’s pretty clearly embedded in the fabric of our legislation. I support the Hyde Amendment.”

Conservative author and commentator Candace Owens has repeatedly slammed Democrats for cavalierly using the race card to champion mass abortions.

“Murdering 800 black babies every single day is now considered ‘healthcare,'” she tweeted.


Owens has also repeatedly pointed out that leftists who mindlessly screech “black lives matter!” hypocritically ignore that more blacks are murdered by abortion every year than are killed by “racist” white cops.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1103283138774458369

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1103283138774458369
1:25 min



Biden has pledged to appoint pro-abortion politicians to major positions in his administration if he gets installed in the White House. But as a senator, he opposed abortion for decades and supported the Hyde Amendment.

However, Biden opportunistically flip-flopped in 2019 during the Democratic primary race in a bid to pander to the vocal, left-wing faction of his party.

He now endorses eliminating the Hyde Amendment and making taxpayer-funded abortion available on-demand and convenient.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Biden's Brave New (Woke) World

WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 19:00
Authored (satirically) by Titania McGrath via TheCritic.co.uk,

Before 2020, the world was a bleak dystopia overrun by Nazis. It never ceased to amaze me how many Nazis I would encounter on a daily basis once I had decided that everyone but me was a Nazi.


Thankfully, 2020 came along and changed everything.

This was the year that intersectional identity politics went mainstream, and there is no going back. The gender-neutral genie is out of the bottle, and xe is fabulous.

There were uprisings against systemic injustice, statues of straight white males were torn down, and Ben and Jerry’s reminded their customers how racist they all were in order to encourage them to buy more of their New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.

This was all made possible because Covid-19 refused to spread during our mass protests, which just goes to show that even pathogens have gone woke.

The world finally accepted that there are more than 400 genders, and that all of these have been persecuted throughout history. Even the ones we invented last week.

Intersectional feminism triumphed over transphobia. All of a sudden, major companies were using phrases such as “menstruators”, “vulva owners” and “people with a cervix”. All of which is far more respectful to women: or, as I like to call them, bipedal gestation units.

We are now living in a post-BLM world, where Critical Race Theory has been received as the hallowed truth that shall guide us towards salvation. At last, we are amplifying voices of colour that have been historically marginalised. (Except for the ones who don’t agree with defunding the police or dismantling capitalism, who are just white-adjacent scumbags that are best ignored.)

Best of all, Joe Biden triumphed over that malevolent incubus Donald Trump. Already Biden has discovered a vaccine for Covid-19, which explains why he spent most of his election campaign in a basement.

As we move into 2021, Biden’s brave message resounds throughout our new woke empire. It is time for healing. It is time for hope. Above all, it is time for unity.


So let’s make a list of everyone who voted the wrong way and deal with them as soon as possible.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

The Threat of Authoritarianism In The U.S. Is Very Real, And Has Nothing To Do With Trump: Greenwald

WEDNESDAY, DEC 30, 2020 - 19:40
Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

(L-R): Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY,TOBIAS SCHWARZ,ANGELA WEISS,MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.

A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.



Virtually every prediction expressed by those who pushed this doomsday narrative of Trump as a rising dictator — usually with great profit for themselves — never materialized. While Trump radically escalated bombing campaigns he inherited from Bush and Obama, he started no new wars. When his policies were declared by courts to be unconstitutional, he either revised them to comport with judicial requirements (as in the case of his “Muslim ban”) or withdrew them (as in the case of diverting Pentagon funds to build his wall). No journalists were jailed for criticizing or reporting negatively on Trump, let alone killed, as was endlessly predicted and sometimes even implied. Bashing Trump was far more likely to yield best-selling books, social media stardom and new contracts as cable news “analysts” than interment in gulags or state reprisals. There were no Proud Boy insurrections or right-wing militias waging civil war in U.S. cities. Boastful and bizarre tweets aside, Trump’s administration was far more a continuation of the U.S. political tradition than a radical departure from it.

The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.

The Trump administration was by no means free of authoritarianism: his Justice Department prosecuted journalists’ sources; his White House often refused basic transparency; War on Terror and immigration detentions continued without due process. But that is largely because, as I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late 2016, the U.S. Government itself is authoritarian after decades of bipartisan expansion of executive powers justified by a posture of endless war. With rare exception, the lawless and power-abusing acts over the last four years were ones that inhere in the U.S. Government and long preceded Trump, not ones invented by him. To the extent Trump was an authoritarian, he was one in the way that all U.S. presidents have been since the War on Terror began and, more accurately, since the start of the Cold War and advent of the permanent national security state.

The single most revealing episode exposing this narrative fraud was when journalists and political careerists, including former Obama aides, erupted in outrage on social media upon seeing a photo of immigrant children in cages at the border — only to discover that the photo was not from a Trump concentration camp but an Obama-era detention facility (they were unaccompanied children, not ones separated from their families, but “kids in cages” are “kids in cages” from a moral perspective). And tellingly, the single most actually authoritarian Trump-era event is one that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media: namely, the decision to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws (but that, too, is an extension of the unprecedented war on journalism unleashed by the Obama DOJ).



The last gasp for those clinging to the Trump-as-dictator fantasy (which was really hope masquerading as concern, since putting yourself on the front lines, bravely fighting domestic fascism, is more exciting and self-glorifying, not to mention more profitable, than the dreary, mediocre work of railing against an ordinary and largely weak one-term president) was the hysterical warning that Trump was mounting a coup in order to stay in office. Trump’s terrifying “coup” consisted of a series of failed court challenges based on claims of widespread voter fraud — virtually inevitable with new COVID-based voting rules never previously used — and lame attempts to persuade state officials to overturn certified vote totals. There was never a moment when it appeared even remotely plausible that it would succeed, let alone that he could secure the backing of the institutions he would need to do so, particularly senior military leaders.

Whether Trump secretly harbored despotic ambitions is both unknowable and irrelevant. If he did, he never exhibited the slightest ability to carry them out or orchestrate a sustained commitment to executing a democracy-subverting plot. And the most powerful U.S. institutions — the intelligence community and military brass, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the corporate media — opposed and subverted him from the start. In sum, U.S. democracy, in whatever form it existed when Trump ascended to the presidency, will endure more or less unchanged once he leaves office on January 20, 2021.


Part 1 of 2

 

[marsh]

Part 2 of 2

Whether the U.S. was a democracy in any meaningful sense prior to Trump had been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. A much-discussed 2014 study concluded that economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of such a small number of U.S. corporate giants and mega-billionaires, and that this concentration in economic power has ushered in virtually unchallengeable political power in their hands and virtually none in anyone else’s, that the U.S. more resembles oligarchy than anything else:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

The U.S. Founders most certainly did not envision or desire absolute economic egalitarianism, but many, probably most, feared — long before lobbyists and candidate dependence on corporate SuperPACs — that economic inequality could become so severe, wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, that it would contaminate the political realm, where those vast wealth disparities would be replicated, rendering political rights and legal equality illusory.

But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.
The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story:

The combined wealth of the world's super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (€8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017.

Meanwhile, though exact numbers are unknown, “roughly one in five small businesses have closed,” AP notes, adding: “restaurants, bars, beauty shops and other retailers that involve face-to-face contact have been hardest hit at a time when Americans are trying to keep distance from one another.”

Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants which are thriving, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S. A Brookings Institution study this week — entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” — found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers.”

These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.

Those must disgusted by this outcome should not be socialists but capitalists: this is a classic merger of state and corporate power —- also known as a hallmark of fascism in its most formal expression — that abuses state interference in markets to consolidate and centralize authority in a small handful of actors in order to disempower everyone else. Those trends were already quite visible prior to Trump and the onset of the pandemic, but have accelerated beyond anyone’s dreams in the wake of mass lockdowns, shutdowns, prolonged isolation and corporate welfare thinly disguised as legislative “relief.”

What makes this most menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — are now classic monopolies. That the wealth of their primary owners and executives — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai — has skyrocketed during the pandemic is well-covered, but far more significant is the unprecedented power these companies exert over the dissemination of information and conduct of political debates, to say nothing of the immense data they possess about our lives by virtue of online surveillance.

Stay-at-home orders, lockdowns and social isolation have meant that we rely on Silicon Valley companies to conduct basic life functions more than ever before. We order online from Amazon rather than shop; we conduct meetings online rather than meet in offices; we use Google constantly to navigate and communicate; we rely on social media more than ever to receive information about the world. And exactly as a weakened population’s dependence on them has increased to unprecedented levels, their wealth and power has reached all new heights, as has their willingness to control and censor information and debate.

That Facebook, Google and Twitter are exerting more and more control over our political expression is hardly contestable. What is most remarkable, and alarming, is that they are not so much grabbing these powers as having them foisted on them, by a public — composed primarily of corporate media outlets and U.S. establishment liberals — who believe that the primary problem of social media is not excessive censorship but insufficient censorship. As Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Mark Zuckerberg when four Silicon Valley CEOs appeared before the Senate in October: "The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they're taking too many posts down. The issue is that they're leaving too many dangerous posts up."

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1321490281896812545

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1321490281896812545
1:19 min

As I told the online program Rising this week when asked what the worst media failings of 2020 are, I continue to view the brute censorship by Facebook of incriminating reporting about Joe Biden in the weeks before the election as one of the most significant, and menacing, political events of the last several years. That this censorship was announced by a Facebook corporate spokesman who had spent his career previously as a Democratic Party apparatchik provided the perfect symbolic expression of this evolving danger.

These tech companies are more powerful than ever, not only because of their newly amassed wealth at a time when the population is suffering, but also because they overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party candidate about to assume the presidency. Predictably, they are being rewarded with numerous key positions in his transition team and the same will ultimately be true of the new administration.

The Biden/Harris administration clearly intends to do a great deal for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley is well-positioned to do a great deal for them in return, starting with their immense power over the flow of information and debate.



The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism. They view those who oppose them and reject their pieties not as adversaries to be engaged but as enemies, domestic terrorists, bigots, extremists and violence-inciters to be fired, censored, and silenced. And they have on their side — beyond the bulk of the corporate media, and the intelligence community, and Wall Street — an unprecedentedly powerful consortium of tech monopolies willing and able to exert greater control over a population that has rarely, if ever, been so divided, drained, deprived and anemic.

All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very wrong about the real source of that danger.

 

[marsh]

Joe Biden's HIV Policy Would Disproportionately Expose Black Americans to the Killer Disease » The National Pulse+

In an apparent attempt to pander to the hardline LGBT+ lobby, Joe Biden’s campaign website pledges to loosen legislation which would likely lead to an explosion in HIV cases in Black communities across America. Biden’s campaign website explicitly states that he intends to decriminalize exposure...

thenationalpulse.com

Joe Biden’s HIV Policy Would Disproportionately Expose Black Americans To The Killer Disease

• DECEMBER 30, 2020
• STAFF WRITER

In an apparent attempt to pander to the hardline LGBT+ lobby, Joe Biden’s campaign website pledges to loosen legislation which would likely lead to an explosion in HIV cases in Black communities across America.

Biden’s campaign website explicitly states that he intends to decriminalize exposure and transmission of HIV, a disease that disproportionately affects Black Americans and a policy that would doubtlessly create a new wave of transmission and deaths in America’s black communities.

Per the Centers for Disease Control: “Blacks/African Americans account for a higher proportion of new HIV diagnoses and people with HIV, compared to other races/ethnicities. In 2018, blacks/African Americans accounted for 13% of the US population but 42% of the 37,832 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependent areas.”

The Biden campaign’s rationale appears to be to reduce “discrimination and stigma towards people with HIV/AIDS,” but those most likely to suffer are America’s Black communities and specifically, Black women, who accounted for 6 in 10 new HIV infections among women in 2016.

BIDEN’S WEBSITE, AS OF DEC 30, 2020

The proposal states a Biden-Harris administration would:

Decriminalize HIV exposure and transmission laws. In 2018, 26 states in America had HIV exposure criminal laws. These laws perpetuate discrimination and stigma towards people with HIV/AIDS, and there is simply no “scientific basis” for them. As President, Biden will support legislation like the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act, which promotes best practice recommendations for states.

The REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act is sponsored by far-left California Congresswoman Barbara Lee. It specifically takes aim at state-by-state laws that require sexual partners to declare their HIV positive status to their sexual partners.

The same policy page on the Biden website encourages transgender conversion for schoolchildren, but at the same time seeks to ban gay conversion therapy for homosexuals seeking to change their sexual preference.

The Democratic Party also venerates Margaret Sanger, whose Planned Parenthood organization explicitly began as an anti-Black reproduction organization — a history Planned Parenthood has even admitted.

 

[marsh]

GOP Rep. Buck: 'It's Payback Time' for the Incoming Biden Administration to Big Tech

Tuesday on FNC's "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) warned Big Tech was making inroads into the incoming Biden administration, which he said could have policy repercussions given the tech companies spent big on the 2020 election cycle. | Clips

www.breitbart.com

GOP Rep. Buck: ‘It’s Payback Time’ for the Incoming Biden Administration to Big Tech
137

JEFF POOR29 Dec 2020264

Tuesday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) warned Big Tech was making inroads into the incoming Biden administration, which he said could have policy repercussions given the tech companies spent big on the 2020 election cycle.

Buck called it “payback time.”

“No doubt about it, and it’s not surprising,” he replied. “You see where the vice presidential pick was from and the support that she had during her career, and then you see the money that flowed into the Biden campaign, and it’s payback time. It’s time that the Biden administration make sure that Google, Amazon and the others are taken care of. And they’ll do it by placing personnel in key positions, as well as continuing the flow of money back and forth.”

The Colorado lawmaker also referenced the Hunter Biden story’s suppression by online platforms operated by Big Tech companies to bolster his point.

“It all comes back to the fact that Google and Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Twitter are monopolies, and they enjoy monopoly status,” Buck added. “They crush their opposition, and they are protected now by the Biden administration, and it’s very concerning because they control the flow of information in this country. And perfect case in point is The New York Post article about Hunter Biden, that was suppressed so that it would not affect the election, and when the truth is suppressed, this country really should be concerned about the monopolies that we’re dealing with.”

 

[NoDandy]

What to expect in the first days of the Biden Democracy

Simple answer = and loads more

 

[marsh]

Bipartisan group in Congress could sink Biden's choice to lead Pentagon

"I think there's a chance that we get a lot of Democrats to come our way," said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.).

justthenews.com

Bipartisan group in Congress could sink Biden's choice to lead Pentagon

"I think there's a chance that we get a lot of Democrats to come our way," said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.).
Image

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden (L) announces U.S. Army (retired) General Lloyd Austin (R) as his choice to be Secretary of the Department of Defense at the Queen Theater December 09, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
By Carrie Sheffield
Updated: December 30, 2020 - 11:45pm

A bipartisan group in Congress could deliver a stinging rebuke to Joe Biden and sink his choice to lead the Pentagon, according to both congressional Republicans and Democrats.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), a former active duty Marine, said he opposes giving Biden's nominee, retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, a waiver to a law barring recently-retired military officers from serving as defense secretary. U.S. law requires at least a seven-year waiting period, but Austin only retired in 2016. The first exception since Gen. George Marshall was confirmed in 1950 was for retired Gen. James Mattis, nominated by President Trump in 2017.

"I think there's a chance that we get a lot of Democrats to come our way," Gallagher told "Just the News A.M." on Tuesday. "[T]he overwhelming majority of Democrats back in 2017, did not support the waiver for Secretary Mattis, so I think they're going to have to explain why they suddenly support the waiver for General Austin right now."

Noting that Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that Congress should not do this "more than once in a generation," Gallagher said, "now we're considering doing it within the span of four years, and I do think that that will undermine the norm of civilian control of the military."

Gallagher pointed out that Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a fellow Marine and an influential member of the House Armed Services Committee, said on Dec. 23 he would not vote to grant the waiver to Austin. And on Monday, Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) reportedly told MSNBC that he was worried that Congress might not grant a waiver for Austin.

"We've had several Republicans come out and say even though they supported the waiver for Mattis, they won't support the waiver for Lloyd Austin," Smith said, according to The New York Post. "I think that's questionable. There have also been Democrats who have raised those concerns. The Biden administration and Gen. Austin, they're going to have to work to get the waiver."

The lesson Gallagher drew from the Mattis experiment is that habits of command and obedience forged in the military don't necessarily translate well to the messy, endless bureaucratic skirmishing within the Beltway's civilian corridors of power.

"I think as General Mattis' experience reveals, the skill set necessary to be a successful combatant commander or general officer is not necessarily the same skill set that one needs to be a successful secretary of defense," he said.

"It's going to require someone who's comfortable with advocacy, someone who is comfortable with engaging in debates, not only with Congress, but also within the executive branch, within the White House," Gallagher continued. "And that's not something that general officers are necessarily trained to do; they're trained to sort of salute, carry out the mission and not engage in that fray. And so I just think we need to be mindful of what we've learned from the recent experience."

Gallagher said that while Austin is "incredibly accomplished" and "a true patriot," he lacks expertise in China. Austin's background has been heavily involved in the Middle East, including serving as the 12th commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which is heavily focused on the Middle East.

"There are plenty of other candidates that Biden could choose from," said Gallagher. "He may want to even look to a Republican, if he's serious about a unity administration. I'm not sure his own party would let him do that, but I think this is just a critical moment, and one of the rare areas of bipartisanship in Congress at a time when the country is very bitterly divided is on the issue of China. Colleagues of mine in Congress, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on the Armed Services Committee, all agree with the basic logic in the national defense strategy and the national security strategy, which suggests that our primary threat is China, and it's not even close, and therefore we need to build our military deterrent in order to reflect that."

 

[auxman]

I am tired of seeing this thread. The title alone is pure conjecture and fantasy, at this point.

 

[marsh]

I am tired of seeing this thread. The title alone is pure conjecture and fantasy, at this point.

Don't read it then. As a veteran of the spotted owl/salmon/water/wildfire-forestry wars, it helps me remember the globalist regulatory stranglehold we suffered under Clinton and Obama, with only a token slow down under Bush. It helps me to appreciate even more the change we saw under Trump - the thousands of regulations rescinded, the breakup of the leftist choke hold over our courts, bringing our soldiers home, the slowing down of the fire hose of immigration, and the economic refocus upon American middle class interests.

The contrast is like a burr under my saddle to keep fighting as the all consuming flames grow closer.

I want to know the face of the enemy.

 

[marsh]

Joe Biden picks ex-Facebook lawyer to be powerful White House staff secretary

President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday announced that former Facebook lawyer Jessica Hertz will serve as his White House staff secretary. The powerful post features constant travel with the preside…

nypost.com

Joe Biden picks ex-Facebook lawyer to be powerful White House staff secretary

By Steven Nelson
December 30, 2020 | 3:43pm | Updated

President-elect Joe BidenJonathan Ernst/Reuters

President-elect Joe Biden on Wednesday announced that former Facebook lawyer Jessica Hertz will serve as his White House staff secretary.

The powerful post features constant travel with the president. Hertz will determine the pace and presentation of paperwork for appointments, regulations and legislation.

Hertz, who worked as Facebook’s associate general counsel for regulatory issues until June, will screen all paperwork that reaches Biden’s desk, including notes from politicians and aides vying for attention.

“Hertz worked as a Director and Associate General Counsel for Facebook’s regulatory team and was a Partner at the law firm Jenner & Block,” the Biden transition office said in a press release.

Hertz’s work history will add intrigue to policy decisions impacting the social media giant.

The 2003 Harvard University graduate worked at Facebook beginning in April 2018. When Biden was vice president, she worked nearly two years, from 2012 to 2014, as his principal deputy counsel, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The Federal Trade Commission and 46 states this month filed antitrust lawsuits that could break up Facebook, and members of both parties in Congress are clamoring to revise or repeal legal protections for social media companies.

Biden says he supports an effort to undo protections for internet companies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives immunity for third-party content. But the details of possible reform are in flux.

Republicans and President Trump pushed to repeal Section 230’s protections after Facebook and Twitter censored The Post’s reporting in October on a Hunter Biden hard drive that appeared to link the then-Democratic presidential candidate to his son’s business relationships in China and Ukraine.

Trump’s current staff secretary is Derek Lyons.

 

[marsh]

Biden Team Disables Chat On Virtual Press Conferences After Reporters Ask Tough Questions | The Daily Wire

www.dailywire.com

Biden Team Disables Chat On Virtual Press Conferences After Reporters Ask Tough Questions
By Emily Zanotti
Dec 31, 2020 DailyWire.com

ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images

Democrat Joe Biden’s White House transition team has reportedly disabled the chat function on their Zoom virtual press conferences after invited journalists began complaining about the group’s lack of transparency.

As the Daily Wire reported last week, reporters were becoming “frustrated” with the Biden team — and Joe Biden himself — because the team appeared to have a slate of favored journalists who were always called up on to ask questions during the team’s virtual press conferences.

The “New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, PBS and Politico” were given the opportunity to ask questions of the team at nearly every press conference, while even mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press were shut out.

“Hey guys, there tons of folks looking to ask questions and since this is being done once a week, could we PLEASE go longer or at least hold more frequent briefings,” a reporter from the Daily Beast said in the chat of a Zoom press conference held last week.

“Any chance you can take a few more questions? There are a lot of folks here with questions,” Zeke Miller from the Associated Press added.

“Is there a point in saying we want to ask questions if you only call on the same small group every week?” another asked.

The system had a direct impact: Biden’s team rarely had to answer an unexpected question, particularly about touchy subjects, like an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into his son Hunter’s finances and foreign dealings. Biden has yet to answer questions on Hunter’s issues in any substantive way, and even then when questioned by late-night television hosts, not network reporters.

His team has a typical statement response to the question: “President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”

After reporters complained in public about the situation, though, the Biden team didn’t take more questions, they simply shut down the chat, according to at least one reporter who was on the most recent virtual press conference Zoom.

“The Biden transition team appears to have disabled the public chat function on its transition zoom calls, a place where I and others had been routinely complaining to them to take more questions,” incoming Politico editor Sam Stein said on Twitter, per Fox News.

Biden’s team did not comment on the situation according to Fox, but the team did say, last month, that they value “transparency” and believe the press’s job is to hold Biden “accountable” during his tenure.

“He also believes, though, that it’s the media’s job to hold him accountable,” a spokesperson said. “He’s there to do the people’s work and he welcomes that relationship. He welcomes their role, the media’s role in our democracy and I think it will be, frankly, the polar opposite of what we’ve seen over the last four years…I think you’ll see a huge change in the culture in the way this White House treats the media.”

 

[auxman]

Don't read it then. As a veteran of the spotted owl/salmon/water/wildfire-forestry wars, it helps me remember the globalist regulatory stranglehold we suffered under Clinton and Obama, with only a token slow down under Bush. It helps me to appreciate even more the change we saw under Trump - the thousands of regulations rescinded, the breakup of the leftist choke hold over our courts, bringing our soldiers home, the slowing down of the fire hose of immigration, and the economic refocus upon American middle class interests.

The contrast is like a burr under my saddle to keep fighting as the all consuming flames grow closer.

I want to know the face of the enemy.

Me too, marsh. I'm just not ready to cross the "Biden is President" bridge...

 

[marsh]

Biden Cabinet picks Yellen paid by Google, Blinken by Facebook, disclosure docs show

Yellen collected over $7 million in speaking fees from 2019 to 2020

justthenews.com

Biden Cabinet picks Yellen paid by Google, Blinken by Facebook, disclosure docs show

Yellen collected over $7 million in speaking fees from 2019 to 2020
Image

Anthony Blinken as deputy secretary of state in 2015
(Ratib Al Safadi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

By Joseph Weber
Updated: January 1, 2021 - 10:47am


Democrat Joe Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, collected over $7 million in speaking fees in 2019 and 2020 from major financial firms such as Citi and Goldman Sachs and tech giants including Google, according to documents made public Thursday.

The disclosure forms were filed by the Biden transition team to the Office of Government Ethics.

The forms in which the banks and firms from which Yellen received the speaking fees are disclosed also show her stating that she intends to "seek written authorization" from ethics officials to "participate personally and substantially" in matters involving them, according to the Associated Press.

Yellen was the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018. President Trump in 2017 did not renew the Obama appointee’s term.

Progressives largely praised Biden’s choice in Yellen, considering her long-time focus on economic inequality. But the disclosure of the top-dollar fees from Wall Street and big business has the potential to diminish her support among some Democrats in the Senate confirmation process, similar to what Hillary Clinton faced from the party’s progressive wing about Wall Street speaking fees when running for president in 2016.

Documents were also made public Thursday for Biden’s choice to be secretary of state, Antony Blinken, whose clients while consulting in the private sector included Bank of America and Facebook, the wire service also reports.

[COMMENT: I once saw a cartoon about making politicians wear shirts like NASCAR that revealed their "sponsors."]

 

[marsh]

White House budget director accuses Biden team of ‘false statements’ about transition

Biden on Monday accused the budget office of putting up “roadblocks” to the transition, but outgoing OMB Director Russ Vought says in a Thursday letter to Biden transition co-chairman T…

nypost.com

White House budget director accuses Biden team of ‘false statements’ about transition

By Steven Nelson
December 31, 2020 | 2:23pm | Updated

The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget is accusing President-elect Joe Biden and his aides of lying about obstruction during the presidential transition — saying that, in fact, there have been 45 meetings since late November.

Biden on Monday accused the budget office of putting up “roadblocks” to the transition, but outgoing OMB Director Russ Vought says in a Thursday letter to Biden transition co-chairman Ted Kaufman that the claim is untrue.

“I am writing to correct several false statements that members of the Biden Transition Team (BTT) are continuing to make regarding the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) cooperation with your team,” Vought writes in a letter seen exclusively by The Post.

“We have taken more than 45 meetings with your staff to discuss specific issues, operational questions, and more. It is appropriate for OMB to share information about ongoing programs so the BTT can use it to develop its own policies. We have provided all information requested from OMB about ongoing programs.”

Sources tell The Post that they surmise the Biden transition office wants to begin calling the shots before Biden takes office on Jan. 20, and that they believe Biden may be accusing OMB of obstruction to lay the groundwork to blame the officials for any bumps after taking office, including with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden and his aides also say Defense Department officials are not cooperating fully.

“We’ve encountered roadblocks from the political leadership in the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget. Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,” Biden said at a Monday press conference in Wilmington, Delaware.

“It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility,” Biden said.

 

[Tristan]

What to expect from a Biden 'Democracy'?

A lot more horsesh*t, a lot less shoveling.

 

[marsh]