Saturday, February 15, 2020

It's over but Joe doesn't know it

This:

 Former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead shrank in his firewall state of South Carolina, though he still holds an 8-point edge, according to an East Carolina University (ECU) poll released Friday.
Biden gets the support of 28 percent of likely South Carolina primary voters, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 20 percent and businessman Tom Steyer with 14 percent. No other candidate breaks double digits in the poll ahead of the Feb. 29 primary in the Palmetto State.


And this:

His message is uninspiring. His ground game is flawed. After Iowa and New Hampshire, they’re no longer convinced he can beat Donald Trump.
Interviews with two dozen South Carolina lawmakers, consultants and voters here suggests there are deep cracks in Joe Biden’s firewall state, where his campaign expects to turn his misfortunes around with a robust victory that highlights his broad-based support — particularly among African Americans.
[. . .]
In a state where African Americans cast 61 percent of the primary vote in 2016, a February Quinnipiac poll showed Biden's support among African-Americans at 27 percent — a 22-point slip from before the Iowa caucus. While almost no one is willing to predict a Biden defeat here, many point to worrisome signs about the state of his campaign. 
 

Joe Biden and his firewall are breaking.


If only someone had seen this coming . . .  Oh, wait, C.I. did.  She repeatedly said, for months, if Mr. Biden lost Iowa, he would see support peal away in South Carolina.  If he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, he would see a lot of support peal away.  And C.I. said he would lose New Hampshire.  She predicted he would lose Iowa based on the polling mid-January.  But she knew he would lose New Hampshire because she was on the ground there.

It is really over for Mr. Biden.  Peter Lucas (BOSTON HERALD) notes:

 Joe Biden, a lifelong politician and vice president under Barack Obama, is the aging NFL backup quarterback destined to never fill the starting role. He may become a president of something one day, but not of the United States.
He stumbled in Iowa and fumbled in New Hampshire, ending up punching down on Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who wants to turn the country into South Bend, Ind.
What a state! Instead of laughing at his “lying dog-faced pony soldier” joke with the young woman asking a question, people laughed at him.



As Mike said earlier this week, "Joe needs to learn to read the room."






This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

 
Friday, February 14, 2020.  Another day, another series of embarrassments for Joe Biden.



Starting in the US where the biggest train wreck remains Joe Biden.  The former vice president continues his campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination and renders the rest of America rubber neckers.  Yesterday, it was ABC's THE VIEW.


  1.  20 hours ago
. reacts to Rush Limbaugh questioning Pete Buttigieg’s electability because of his sexuality: “Pete and I are competitors, but this guy has honor, he has courage, he’s smart as hell.”
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78 replies243 retweets1,039 likes
 
 



I'm honestly surprised that they posted the clip.

It's not cute for Joe.  And it's not cute for them.  THE DAILY BEAST had already called this moment out.


 3 hours ago
"'We get it, we understand,' Goldberg said as the other co-hosts laughed nervously. Did they really?" writes
13 replies4 retweets14 likes
 
 



Joe stops himself in the midst of the homophobia and it's not funny and it's not cute.  But, hear him America, there are gays he likes. It reminds me so much of his remarks -- labeled racist in real time -- about "clean, articulate" Barack.  And shame on THE VIEW for their "we get it, we understand."


You're like Sara Gilbert, you ladies only know how to rip off and steal.  Barbara Walters created that program, not Whoopi Goldberg.  It's a program every network and syndication rip off.  Yet even when Barbara was healthy, 'the ladies' of THE VIEW were pushing her to the curb.

Over at THE DAILY MAIL, Ariel Zibler offers these bullet points on Joe's appearance on the show:

  • Former vice president appeared on The View on Thursday alongside his wife, Jill 
  • He defended son Hunter as a 'good' guy who 'has done nothing but good things' 
  • Hunter Biden agreed to pay child support to Lunden Roberts, a DC-area stripper 
  • Roberts gave birth a child out of wedlock which paternity tests say is Hunter's
  • Hunter Biden was named to board of Ukrainian gas firm when his father was VP
  • Trump and GOP are demanding investigations into alleged corruption by Bidens 
  • Joe Biden expressed regret over Senator Lindsey Graham's insistence on probes
  • Biden said he still considers Graham a 'friend' despite his position on Hunter 




Hunter's done nothing but good things?

Leaving his wife and kids to shack up with his brother's widow.  Hunter's life is a carny sideshow and Joe keeps pretending otherwise.  He left his wife and kids.  And then he couldn't even be faithful to the widow.  He was cheating on her -- which is how he ended up fathering a child with Lunden Roberts.  He destroyed his kids' family and for what reason?  It clearly wasn't love for the widow.

The whole Biden family is a carny sideshow.  Daniel GOlden, Chuck Neubauer and Matthew Malone (PROPUBLICA) report:
Jim Biden was in a bind. An investor had put up $1 million to help Jim and his nephew Hunter buy a hedge fund. Then it turned out that the fund’s assets were worth less than the Bidens had thought. Now the investor wanted its money back.
It was December 2006, not long before Jim’s older brother and Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator, would announce his second campaign for president.
Jim and Hunter Biden got a loan from a bank founded by one of Joe’s political backers — William Oldaker, an attorney for the senator’s presidential campaign and Hunter’s partner at a Washington law and lobbying firm.

Oldaker had strong ties to Joe Biden’s political operation, and at the time, the bank, WashingtonFirst, had nearly half a million dollars in deposits from a Joe Biden political committee Oldaker had helped set up.
But WashingtonFirst was less than three years old, and a $1 million loan was large for its size. The bank required that loans be well secured by borrowers’ assets. Jim Biden put up his house in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, as collateral, but he already had $1.5 million in three mortgages against the property, then roughly valued at just over $1.1 million. Hunter offered as security his recently purchased Washington home, for which he had borrowed almost the entire purchase price. Oldaker did not return phone calls, and a source close to Jim and Sara Biden said all of their loans were properly secured.
It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

These transactions illuminate the well-synchronized tango that the Biden brothers have danced for half a century. They have pursued overlapping careers — one a presidential aspirant with an expansive network of well-heeled Democratic donors; the other an entrepreneur who helped his brother raise political money and cultivated the same network to help finance his own business deals.
Jim Biden, 70, has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.


That's the opening to the long report of corruption and debt left in the Bidens wake.  A long history of unethical trading on Joe Biden's name -- with Joe cooperating.   That's what his brothers do, that's what Hunter did.  Mark Caputo (POLITICO) reports most Americans don't share Joe's innocent view of Hunter:
A majority of voters believe it was inappropriate for Joe Biden’s son to work for a Ukrainian gas company while his father led U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the country, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
The Biden-Ukraine affair ultimately led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Voters were split 47-47 percent on whether it was appropriate for the Senate last week to acquit Trump, the poll shows. 

In contrast, 52 percent of voters believe it was inappropriate for Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to take the job with the firm Burisma, while 18 percent said it was appropriate. Fifty-seven percent said it was a scandal while 19 percent said it wasn’t. 


Any pile up or wreck is going to attract onlookers and Joe has.  Ben Cohn and Ben Feuerherd (NEW YORK POST) report:


A handful of protesters chided Joe Biden as he walked out of a Manhattan fundraiser on Thursday, urging the one-time Democratic frontrunner to drop out of the 2020 presidential race.
About half a dozen protesters from New York Communities for Change yelled at Biden as he was leaving the Wayfarer restaurant on West 57th Street near Sixth Avenue soon after 8 p.m.
“Drop out Joe! Drop out Joe!” they chanted as he walked to a waiting car.
“Skip Nevada! Skip South Carolina! Go home early!” one of the demonstrators yelled.

“We’re here to mark the death of Joe Biden’s campaign. This is what happens when you stand up for policies that are regressive. We coined Wall Street Pete and now we’re doing the same to Joe,” Alice Nascimento of Communities for Change said.


Here are some Tweets from the group who held the protest.


  1.  12 hours ago
We found at his 250 person Wall Street fundraiser. We had a message: DROP OUT JOE! You don’t have to do this Joe. You can skip Nevada. You can skip South Carolina. And go straight home to Deleware.
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0:20
43 replies136 retweets536 likes
 
 
 13 hours ago
A moving eulogy on ’s 2020 campaign.
7 replies24 retweets59 likes
 
 
 13 hours ago
They called the cops on our memorial service for ’s campaign.
2 replies10 retweets32 likes
 
 
 13 hours ago
We made it to ’s Wall Street fundraiser and brought a coffin to mourn the death of Biden’s campaign. They wouldn’t let us in, but we held a service in the lobby.
15 replies64 retweets172 likes
 
 
 14 hours ago
On our way to Biden’s Wall Street fundraiser to mourn the death of his 2020 campaign.
6 retweets20 likes
 
 

Meanwhile in Iraq, goon squad leader Moqtada al-Sadr's planning to bus in supporters from Sadr City and Basra to downtown Baghdad for a quick little prance around -- billed as a million man march -- and then have them dart back home.  They're going to pretend it's an action.  No word yet on whether Moqtada plans to dart over from Iran and, if he should stop hiding, what sort of lovely caftan he plans to wear.  No one carries off a moo moo quite like Motada and they are so forgiving of a figure that tends to put on stress-eating pounds.  
He did this before and, thing is, Moqtada -- who's all about the boys -- is now attacking women who participate in these type of events. But his 'million' 'man' prance last time wouldn't have been as big as it was if it weren't for the women who participated.  Maybe that's why he Tweeted that even icky girls can participate?
Fortunately, no one takes goon squad leader Moqtada seriously anymore.
Women turned out in record numbers on Thursday to join the protests.  DEUTSCHE WELLE reports:

Thursday's rally came in response to criticism by the cleric, politician, and former militant leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who last weekend slammed what he perceived as "immorality" at the months-long anti-government protests in Iraq. Al-Sadr initially supported the anti-corruption movement, but recently shifted his position after his preferred candidate for prime minister received establishment backing. He has since sent out conflicting messages to his supporters concerning the rallies.
On Saturday, al-Sadr said it was immoral for men and women to mix at sit-in protest areas and said protesters were using drugs and alcohol. Gender separation was also recommended in the 18-point code of conduct the cleric issued on Sunday.
On Thursday, ahead of the protests, he again slammed the protests as being rife with "nudity, promiscuity, drunkenness, immorality, debauchery ... and non-believers." He also said Iraq must not turn into the US city of Chicago, which he cited as an example of loose morals.
The statements posted on Twitter quickly became a subject of ridicule on social media.
AP notes:

On Thursday, women protesters waved Iraqi flags and banners in English and Arabic, chanting slogans condemning a recent security crackdown against demonstrators.
Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of Parliament’s Saeroon bloc, issued an 18-point code of conduct Sunday for protesters in which he cautioned against the mixing of men and women at sit-in areas.
In response on Thursday, women flooded the streets of Baghdad and the southern city of Nasiriyah.
“Whoever accuses women of being weak doesn’t understand Iraq,” said protester Baan Jaafar, 35. “We will continue to defend our rights through demonstrations and participate in the decision to build a new Iraq after the demonstrations.”
  1.  17 hours ago
Iraqi women march against the likes of Moqtada Al-Sadr and against the backward system that has tried oppress and shun them for centuries. دومج حره و اصيله يالعراقيه
7 retweets16 likes
 
 
 21 hours ago
A million women marched today in as part of the ongoing protests against corruption in the country. The march came as a response against calls by Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr's for protests to be segregated.
3 retweets6 likes
 
 
 23 hours ago
After the demonstrators refused him, and the crimes of his criminal militia exposed the blue hats and his subordination to the militant Moqtada Al-Sadr, he describes the demonstrators as immorality, immorality, atheism and homosexuality and vows to defend religious val
 
1 like
 
 
ALJAZEERA quotes a man who supports Moqtada stating, "We are a religious country, and Muqtada al-Sadr refuses such contact with women."
Oh, that explains no children despite Moqtada -- bachelor prince that he is -- entering into that arranged marriage back in the mid-90s.  Well Moqtada may have been forced to take a wife but, good to know, that he "refuses such contact with women."  And to think, some of us just thought he had poor swimmers.  
The following sites updated:










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