It’s What You Ask

Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton ran last Tuesday’s mid-day-ish presser, and she was asked about polling indicating that President Joe Biden (D) routinely gets low approval ratings regarding his handling of our economy and how a then-upcoming speech would impact those ratings. Dalton replied with this:

Well, what I would say is that the president’s economic policies are incredibly popular. When you ask people what they think about investing in our roads, bridges, and airports, what you—when you ask people what they think about educating and empowering workers, when you ask people about how they feel about reshoring, manufacturing jobs, and investing in America, those things are incredibly popular.

Well, of course they are. What American isn’t enthusiastically in favor of motherhood and apple pie? What us Americans aren’t happy about is Biden’s actual performance in doing anything toward achieving those starry-eyed goals. The President’s men carefully do not ask about Biden’s execution; they ask only about those popular intentions, and then they claim that because everyone loves their mother, everything is hunky dory.

This is the cynicism of the Biden White House.

Joe Biden and the Press

Simon Ateba is a Cameroonian journalist representing Today News Africa in the White House Press Corps. During the daily mid-day-ish press briefings, President Joe Biden’s (D) Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre routinely clashes with him, essentially telling him to shut up and sit down when she’s not ignoring him altogether.

Then came last Monday’s live stream of the day’s presser—and a lively exchange between Ateba and Jeanne-Pierre was excised from the stream. Completely stripped out. Censored.

The deleted portion was restored only after Fox News Digital asked the press secretary’s office how that worked.  “The White House” claimed the deletion was caused by a technical glitch. Apparently, no one in Jean-Pierre’s office monitors the feed to ensure a livestream upload goes smoothly. Or at least that’s the implication from the claim, since surely any such glitch would have been corrected in real time, had anyone been paying attention.

Former President Donald Trump (R) didn’t even treat CNN‘s deliberately combative, constantly interrupting Jim Acosta so shabbily, for all that he so frequently argued with Acosta.

Again I ask: of what is Biden so terrified that he won’t even let his Press Secretary engage with a journalist like Ateba?

Plausible Deniability?

Whistleblowers are telling Congress that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was actively blocked from pursuing his investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax evasion and influence peddling machinations, including being denied permission to pursue the IRS’ tax concerns and being denied permission to bring serious (or any) charges against Hunter Biden in other jurisdictions than Delaware. These claims directly contradict Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prior sworn Congressional testimony that Weiss would have a free and unrestricted hand in his investigations.

Matthew Whitaker, Acting Attorney General under former-President Donald Trump, suggests that Garland might actually have had no knowledge of the obstruction coming from his office:

I also know how the Department of Justice works and Merrick Garland is being kept in the dark by a lot of this.
He’s not communicating with these US attorneys in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia who are doing his dirty work.

And

The Deputy Attorney General, who has day-to-day oversight of those offices, certainly is trying to keep things out of Garland’s office. And not only would I bring those US attorneys in front of Congress after they bring the six witnesses, I would also bring the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the tax division who would have had to approved or be involved in these cases.

Whitaker is being generous. These deputies trying to set up a case of plausible deniability for Garland. They’re failing at that.

Garland is an active participant in this obstruction by his deputies, if only by his continued allowing the obstruction to occur. Garland also assuredly knows of the obstruction at least since the publicity of the whistleblowers’ claims has become so widespread, and he’s still done nothing about it.

There is no plausible deniability here; Garland has constructive knowledge of the obstruction, and he has had all along: even if he doesn’t watch TV or read print news, these deputies work directly for him, Of course he knows what they’re doing, and he knows it in real time.

Merrick Garland must go. But House time and resources shouldn’t be wasted on impeachment when there aren’t the votes in the Senate for a serious trial, much less legitimate chance for a conviction. Instead, Congress and Congressmen must effectively impeach this person by widely and loudly publishing his many peccadilloes—most blatantly, for instance, investigating mothers protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and allowing his FBI to “investigate” traditional Catholics as “right wingers”—and by deleting from the appropriate appropriations bill all funding for the office of Attorney General as long as he’s the AG.

Biden’s Pick to Run the CDC

With the current CDC honcho leaving the position at the end of the week, President Joe Biden (D) has picked Mandy Cohen, ex-North Carolina Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to run the agency. This is the woman who, while in the NC government,

  • acceded to Anthony Fauci’s words and directions unquestioningly throughout the Wuhan Virus Situation
  • idolized Fauci with a mask featuring his image
  • imposed harsh restrictions that disrupted everyday life with no medical—or any other—benefit
  • bragged about enforcing mass shutdowns

Nominees to the CDC Directorship aren’t subject to Senate Advice and Consent, so Biden can just appoint her.

However.

The Congress can have an impact on her appointment: the House can decline, through the appropriate appropriations bill, to fund the position of CDC Director and the Immediate Office of the Director, with the latter’s 10 Offices and Chief of Staff, until a suitable Director is appointed. The House can decline to fund the CDC as a whole. The Senate can pass the House’s bill and send the relevant appropriations bill to the President.

All that would take is the political will of the Republican majority in the House along with unified Senate Republicans in conjunction with the House declining to pass any sort of budget item via reconciliation.

What are Biden and Austin Up To?

US military retirees living in Turkey are about to lose access to the US base at Incirlik and to all other American bases in the country. The loss will take effect 1 October of this year. Among other things, this will mean our veterans will lose access to

  • base commissaries, which sell American groceries
  • Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores—Base Exchanges—which3 sell American goods
  • US post office services, including PO Boxes through which our veterans
    • receive and send back their absentee ballots for American elections
    • receive American medicines

The commander of the US presence on Incirlik, USAF Colonel Calvin Powell, has said the ban is related to a changing Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Turkey, but this is hard to credit. Similar bans are being contemplated at US presences around the world: Aviano Air Base in Italy and the US presences in the Philippines, for instance.

Hence my question: what are SecDef Lloyd Austin and President Joe Biden (D) up to now?