The Bidens, Burisma and Bad Vibes. The Biden Scandal Widens.

The circumstances of the Burisma payments to Hunter Biden for no apparent reason together with his father's strange boasting in public about using U.S. foreign aid money to force the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor smelled to high heaven. But the lack of direct evidence linking the two parts of this picture, together with the disinterest of the major media, made it easy enough for the senior Mr. Biden to deny any knowledge of his son's activities and to claim, without any particular details, that the matter had been investigated and debunked.

The story excited much interest in conservative circles and the keen interest of the President but up to now has played little part in the fury of arguments in the election campaign. In fact, the impeachment of the President by the Democrats was based largely on his requesting the help of the newly elected Ukrainian president in investigating the matter. Neither the accusers nor the defenders seemed to pay much attention to the issue of whether the President's inquiries were appropriate considering the potential seriousness of the charges. During the presidential debate Mr. Trump tried to resurrect the issue, over the objections of the moderator, and was roundly criticized, by many liberals in particular, for stooping so low as to attack his contender's family.

There now appears new evidence that the suspicions were true, and that Mr. Biden's actions while he was Vice President were even more corrupt than previously suspected. A treasure trove of Hunter Biden's emails have surfaced which, if true, indicate that Mr. Biden was providing access to himself to foreign entities, including Ukraine, Russia and China, and was adjusting U.S. policy in exchange for large money payments to his son and possibly directly to himself.

Thus far the major news media have tried to ignore the story and the social media have actively suppressed discussion of it. However, these allegations come not from a supermarket tabloid or an inconsequential conservative website but from major news sources which have the resources to investigate and reputations at serious risk if they get it wrong. They have been cautious about making claims about the veracity of these allegations and very transparent about their sources, but Mr. Tucker Carlson last night claimed that there is now incontrovertible evidence that the emails in question are truly those of Hunter Biden and accurately document his activities.

How important is all of this? Well let's put it this way. Although I am a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, had evidence been uncovered that he indeed had an arrangement with Mr. Putin to provide election help in exchange for money payment or favorable U.S. policy, I would have had no alternative than to accept the Democrat's calls for impeachment or resignation.

The event is reminiscent of the situation of Richard Nixon whose deception was uncovered and pursued by two tenacious Washington Post reporters. The position of Mr. Nixon, who had won the election of 1972 in a landslide victory, was slowly but surely eroded by the steady accumulation of evidence to the point where he lost the support of the public and thereby his political supporters and was forced to resign. Mr. Nixon's offense was arguably much less serious than that of which Mr. Biden is accused.

What happens next? It's hard to imagine that if the allegations are proved to be true that Mr. Biden could remain viable as either a candidate or an elected President. But a significant number of individuals have already voted, and others will soon follow suit. With the final election day only two weeks away the Democrats and their media allies may try to put off discussion as long as possible in the hopes that the findings will influence a small enough portion of the electorate that Mr. Biden will be elected. After that, if the story lives on and intensifies, he can be sacrificed but the Executive branch will now be in Democrat hands which seems clearly to be their real interest rather than any particular devotion to their candidate.

Can they pull it off? We'll see. News travels dramatically faster in our digital age than it did in the 1970's. Even the attempt of the Silicon Valley social media to suppress the new findings seemed to serve only to bring them more to the public's attention. It took the news media several months to bring down Mr. Nixon, but it will surely be an item on tomorrow's Sunday news shows. Furthermore, somewhere very soon the major media will find it untenable not to take up the matter and Mr. Biden is going to have to be asked for an explanation. Surely the matter will come up in the second Presidential debate, assuming there is one, if not from the moderator, at least by Mr. Trump. His supporters are hopeful that his frustration with the forces allied against him, including perhaps the moderator, will not stimulate intemperate remarks but that he will be calm and factual and allow Mr. Biden to cook his own goose.

 

 

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The Election and the Economy

It makes my head spin to hear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris blame our present economic downturn on the President rather than to our response to the virus which has crashed economies the world over. Could anyone really be gullible enough to accept that argument? Old Joe is famous for his whoppers, but I think only the most rabid Trump hater would have his eyes and ears covered enough to believe that one. Unless you were asleep like Rip Van Winkle you would recall that pre-virus the economy was roaring with GDP over 3%, burgeoning stock values,  increases in manufacturing, full employment especially for minorities, increasing wages and stable prices, and energy independence. All this was based on Trumpian policies of decreasing regulations and taxes, making better trade deals and yes, the so-called "tax break for the rich" cutting the corporate tax rate to competitive levels to incentivize large companies to return home.

 

Mr. Biden has been heard to make the claim that all this abrupt economic progress was actually based on policies put in place by the previous administration, another big Biden whopper. Obama-Biden took over in a housing bust recession which typically would be expected to swing back fairly dramatically but instead the recovery was anemic. Mr. Obama explained that the time of American dominance in manufacturing with lots of blue-collar jobs was over and mocked Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign for lacking a magic wand to bring them back.

 

Despite this record Mr. Biden loudly proclaims in his incessant ads that it is he who will have us buy American and save manufacturing as if he had completely missed, or maybe forgotten, what had transpired after he and Mr. Obama left office. In fact, despite his proclamations, almost everything he plans to do will surely sink our ship from the economic standpoint. He intends to repeal the Trump tax cuts, increase the corporate tax rate to previous excessive levels, resume environmental regulations and put a lid on American energy production with the Green New Deal. He wants to have the federal government provide our every need without considering that the government takes funding for all these grand enterprises from those of us hard at work in the far more efficient and productive private sector.

 

Besides that, he appears to be enamored of the lockdown approach to control of the virus, the very strategy that has depressed the economy to start with. He doesn't see that he can't have things both ways. His theatrical political speeches, and flashy smile are not enough to lock down businesses and have them survive at the same time. He promises to get us virus treatments and vaccines. What? He hasn't heard of Operation Warp Speed and the unheard of progress it has so far made in developing these things.

 

The President has promised a V-shaped economic return and that appears to be happening. Whether you love or hate his personality, sensible voters will hopefully understand that his longstanding experience in dealing with the difficult problems of the business world make him just the right man for our time.

 

 

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Biden Says Trump Responsible for Covid19 Deaths

The major news media are fond of fact-checking Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden, not so much. So, I'm going to do a little for them.

 

Mr. Biden, in last night's debate held Mr. Trump responsible for the deaths of thousands by virtue of his management of the coronavirus epidemic. According to Biden, Trump should have known in February, before the administration's lockdown guidelines were made public in March,  what would be the eventual outcome, and instead he played it down.

 

To be sure, on Feb. 9 Mr. Trump noted there were thousands of deaths annually from influenza as compared to, as of that date, a total of 15 cases with no deaths, all in foreign travelers,. The first case of local community transmission was not to occur until 2/26 and the first recorded death on 2/29.

 

But at the same time was Mr. Trump taking the problem seriously? Well, before the above comment,  between 1/29 and 1/31 Mr. Trump had assembled his Coronavirus Task Force, had started the first of numerous conference calls with all the governors with the purpose of producing an action plan for the outbreak and had declared a public health emergency and imposed a ban on flights from China. Mr. Biden's response to that final measure, which even seemed drastic to me at the time, was to accuse Mr. Trump of "hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering."  He said pretty close to the same thing after Mr. Trump also restricted flights from Europe on 3/12. And his Democrat colleagues were no more prescient, with Mrs. Pelosi urging people to visit and congregate in San Francisco's Chinatown on 2/24, and on 3/2 Mr. DiBlasio making the same case  to visit NYC, where at the time there was only one known case.

 

Mr. Biden contends that Mr. Trump had special access to the official information and so should have known better. But is that true? Here are some public statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President's chief medical advisor from the CDC:

 

On 1/21 Dr Fauci in an interview with Newsmax noted that, although we had to take it seriously the infection "is not a major threat for the people of the United States. And this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about."   On 2/17 in an Interview with USA Today Dr. Fauci explained that the risk of coronavirus in USA is "minuscule" and that "Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask."   On 2/28 Dr. Fauci wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that "the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza or a pandemic influenza". On the next day in an interview on the Today Show he said in reference to community spread that "right now, at this moment, there is no need to change anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis."   Then on 3/9 Dr. Fauci told reporters that young, healthy people can go on a cruise if they'd like. "If you are a healthy young person, there is no reason if you want to go on a cruise ship, go on a cruise ship."

 

This is not to denigrate Dr. Fauci, who spoke with the evidence he had available. By the last date I mentioned there were a total of 84 cases and 2 deaths in the whole country. However, I do criticize Mr. Biden a bit since he knew what was going to happen and said nothing to Dr. Fauci to warn him.

 

 

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