THE LIAR-IN-CHIEF (PART 1)

Different professions seem to entail different levels of dishonesty. Used car salesman have historically been at the top of the list. They range from puffers—those who exaggerate the quality of the vehicles they sell—to less benign frauds who fill carburetors with sawdust. Politicians fall into the category of the former more often than the latter. There is always a range of exaggerations and while they may tell you the upside of their viewpoint, they leave out the downside, say, taxes you pay for a great sounding social program, etc. There are a few politicians whose prevarications rise to the level of Hall of Fame status.  The nominal Commander in Chief of the United States, Joe Biden, has successfully reached the pinnacle of his profession and deserves special recognition for a host of lies perpetrated over the course of his 50-year career. Sadly, it must be said, that the lies have paid off handsomely with professional success.

Glib commenters might say, “Well, all politicians lie.” And leave it at that. But that is like saying all tennis players hit balls outside the line. That is true, but there is a difference between Serena Williams and your local soccer mom who plays tennis with hubby a few times a year. You might even say Conservatism Bittersweet has its own bias and that this critical review is a matter of political differences. Biden’s current approval rating currently at 33% suggests that the observations have been noted by all sorts of Americans.

What truly marks the occasion is the usually obsequious Washington Post[1] which has awarded Biden their highest derogatory liars award, the Pinocchio. In fact, they have given the maximum possible, four Pinocchio’s to Biden for a host of virtue signaling stories made out of whole cloth. Although his stories have long been derided in conservative circles, Biden’s low rating has allowed a crack of honesty to shine through the edges of the Post’s blinders. Biden’s claim in a story he has told for years, that he was arrested as a teenager while attending a civil rights rally can’t be supported by any known facts. The Post’s fact-checker pointed out, “too many elements of his claim didn’t add up.”

Biden also claims an arrest at the age of 21 for trespassing at the Capitol and another arrest in South Africa while supporting Nelson Mandela. Biden now has admitted that the latter story is untrue. He has also made claims of exceptional scholastic performance. Among his claims, is finishing in the top half of his law school class. A lie. He graduated from the University of Delaware with a “C” average and 506th out of a class of 688 while majoring in history and political science. He claimed he earned three degrees, but has only the two. He also claimed to be on full scholarship at Syracuse Law School. Again, false. He was given a half scholarship based on need and graduated 76 out of a class of 85. His claim that he was awarded the Outstanding Student of the Political Science Department Award, is also a lie. During his campaign, he admitted that he lied on these points of his academic record.

Lest you think he is a one-dimensional liar, Biden’s academic record also shows that he was disciplined for plagiarism, having borrowed liberally from Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey, and Neil Kinnock in a law school paper.

Some other Biden claims are more difficult to assess due to the passage of time. He claims to have given a welcoming speech to his graduating class, which the valedictorian of the class could not remember. Biden also claimed to have left a lunch counter when a Black friend was denied service. Again, the witness had no recollection of the event.

Biden has told these stories for years so they cannot be attributed to the cognitive decline he is currently experiencing. The stories have been a mainstay of his persona as a public figure for years. The trouble for Biden is that as a presidential candidate he received a level of scrutiny that far surpassed what he received from the Delaware press as a senator. He projects an affable demeanor in public and the attitude of many people is, well, that is just old Joe. But that makes them enablers as Biden rose in the political ranks. To paraphrase a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln “You can fool some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

For some people, the end justifies the means. Justice Clarence Thomas in his 2007 memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, recounts the telephone call he received from Joe Biden the head of the Judiciary Committee that confirmed him for the Supreme Court:

 

He [Biden] had decided to oppose me . . .

“That’s fine,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether I ‘m confirmed or not. But I entered this process with a good name. and I want to have it at the end.”

“Judge, I know you don’t believe me,” he [Biden] replied, “but if any of these last two matters come up, I will be your biggest defender.” (The other matter to which he was referring was the leak of my draft opinion.) [And the Anita Hill allegations.]

He was right about one thing: I didn’t believe him. Neither did Virginia [Thomas’s wife]. As he reassured me of his goodwill, she grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer, opened her mouth wide, stuck out her tongue as far as she could, and pretended to gag herself.

 

 

 

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/09/22/biden-academic-claims-inaccurate/932eaeed-9071-47a1-aeac-c94a51b668e1/

FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE

The perverse world of Left-wing politics has degraded even the one area of purported objectivity—science. Confirmation of this view was made when Microsoft News revealed that scientists withheld their opinion that the Covid-19 virus originated in a lab because they felt that supporting President Trump would associate them with racism.

Alina Chan and 18 other scientists published a letter in the journal Science demanding a thorough study of the origin of the virus. The Chinese government has insisted that the origin of the virus was the result of animal-to-animal contact. The Trump administration believed that the origin was the Wuhan lab in Wuhan China, which is associated with the Chinese Army. Part of the lab’s known mission was gain of function research. Gain of function research has to do with making a virus more virulent, hence the Chinese army’s interest in the lab.  This lab is the only known one of its kind in China and successfully making a virus more potent made the Covid-19 a biological weapon.

President Trump repeatedly accused the Wuhan lab of either carelessly handling the virus or outright using it as a biological weapon. The later point seems to be unlikely because the Chinese killed some of its researchers and population at the outset of the pandemic which ensued. But like Leftist in the United States, they saw no reason to let a good crisis go to waste. So, instead of containing the disease in Wuhan alone, the Chinese released visiting non-Chinese back to their homes around the world as their stays ended. For China itself, they stopped flights out of Wuhan for other Chinese cities, thus contaminating the entire world, and minimizing the damage in China.

Getting back to Alina Chan and her cohorts, it turns out, according to Microsoft News and their source that: the “Researchers said the scientific evidence remained relatively unchanged but noted that “the context and circumstances of the origin debate have changed, NBC reported. One of the most notable changes in the “context” of the debate, according to Chan, was Trump’s departure from the White House.

Chan told NBC that some scientists had apprehensions about publicly discussing the lab leak possibility out of concern that their statements would be manipulated to suggest they were endorsing “racist” language about COVID’s origins in China — an apparent reference to Trump’s use of the phrase “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese Virus.”

‘At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn’t want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins,’ Chan said in the interview.’

The left constantly told the big lie—that Trump was a racist. If you repeat a lie often enough, some people will believe it regardless of the lack of evidence to that effect. By designating the disease the Wuhan virus or Chinese virus, Trump was merely describing its source, which was clear even in the early stages of the pandemic. There was no difference in that than there was 102 years earlier when describing the Spanish flu in 1918 by its assumed source. The true context of this was the death of George Floyd which launched the left-wing protests which have led to the loss of life and billions of dollars in destruction in American cities run by—guess who—leftists. Those leftists have now found a new demon in the police as a part of the hate they have spread to divide the United States. The topic of demonizing the police is for another day.

If this story wasn’t telling enough, the rest of the story has been mostly uncovered by a Conservative investigation into the underlying facts of the pandemic. The once unknown and now infamously discredited Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) knew of the likelihood of the Chinese lab release of the virus and its work on gain of function research. He knew about it because he helped pay for it with U.S. taxpayer dollars. In addition to his confusing, inconsistent advice on how to handle the pandemic he was simultaneously concealing his involvement in in the Wuhan lab itself. Notably, the U.S. government decided to contribute to the labs gain of function research, which was considered unethical and illegal in the United States.  This was the medical equivalent of outsourcing torture of terrorists to friendly allies whose ethics did not prohibit the practice.

Instead of giving Americans different versions of whether and when to wear masks, or originally advising President Trump that the virus was likely the equivalent of the annual flu and other fallacious assertions, he should have simply said, “I don’t know.” But the ego of a bureaucratic leader who does not treat patients took hold, and his advice proved devastatingly wrong, especially in advocating in favor of lockdowns. Even the World Health Organization—a Chinese tool itself—now says this is not the way to fight the pandemic of 2020.

A recent study by Dr. Stephen Smith as well as older studies validated President Trumps assertion and that of scientists in the early stages of the pandemic that the commonly used (and inexpensive) drug, Hydroxychloroquine, improved outcomes against Covid-19. The hate-Trump and deny him any sort of victory at any cost press dominated the debate by opposing the drug and cost many lives. The politicization of this drug and the indifference to it by Dr. Fauci and left-wing pundits does not speak well of journalists and bureaucrats.

What the story of Fauci and Chan tell us about our age is not flattering either. Now we know that science is not free of politics or outside influence. We have learned that what we are told is science, is not always true Even proven science takes many years to validate. What we must learn from Chan and Fauci, or perhaps re-learn, is that the truth is preferable to lies and self-deception, that hate has unintended repercussions, and that evil done in the name of good is still evil.

 

TILT THE BOARD AND RUN OVER THE LITTLE GUY

California, Oregon and the State of Washington (also known as the Left Coast) are known as left-wing elitist bastions controlled by one-party Democratic majorities. They have sold their futuristic world-based electorates on climate scares, imminent environmental disasters, abortion restrictions, government compassion and other modern slogans granting passage to the favorable future. But they are the Democrats, the party of compassion—that is until you encroach on the turf of the moneyed class. Then it becomes the party of the rich.

 

Proof of this lies in a National Review article by Michael Gibson who reports that “San Francisco has virtually banned new housing. It forbids apartments of all shapes and sizes, limits the number of units per property, caps the number of small “shoebox” units to a few hundred and has outlawed building anything higher than 40 feet in 80 percent of the city.” He goes on to say: “The medium price for a one-bedroom rental is the highest in the nation, at $3700 per month. To buy a single-family home, a starter home with flaking and rotting surfaces, a family needs $1.5 million on average and had better be paying cash. The cost to construct a single new apartment unit is over $700,000 nearly triple what it was a decade ago.”

San Francisco has robbed its citizenry of the means to live in their own city. Teachers, police, and other emergency personnel can’t afford to live in the city they protect. Through environmental and historical preservation rules and regulations, the city has made it nearly impossible to build new shelter. The city government accommodates this arrangement. The canary in the coal mine is African Americans. Their population has gone from 13 percent in 1970 to 5 percent today. When did the Democrats become the party of racism? Perhaps a little affirmative action is due our friends in the cable car city.

 

In another article in National Review, Kevin D. Williamson describes how Aspen, Colorado has become a play center for “billionaires and baristas.” Millionaires need not apply. You haven’t got what it takes to break into this elite spot unless you own something really big or important—a football team, a large dotcom corporation will do nicely. Another legal monopoly insulates the moneyed class from the rest of society. The baristas are regarded as a needed exception to the rule. Lesser mortals need not apply.

 

Portland, Oregon is undergoing a similar transition to an elitist playground. What it is becoming is the result of spillage from some of California’s lesser lights who have left the Bay area for cheaper, more politically neutral territory, not unlike the homey places some of them grew up. Portland has the virtue of being an incipient San Francisco. In an effort to trump the agents of change, the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, placed the territorial designation intended by the Trump Administration as an “Opportunity Zone” on some of the most valuable property in Oregon. The purpose of the opportunity zones was to help develop impoverished and blighted inner cities by making tax concessions to developers in the area who were least likely to need any help. She placed the opportunity smack dab in the middle of the most prosperous growth area in downtown Portland. No doubt, this was intended as a smackdown of Trump Administration Populism, despised by the ruling class, and also the effect was to give impetus to cheaper construction of expensive properties, many of which would have happened anyway. Other than spiting Trump, a part of the motivation for the curious designation was the Governors desire to benefit the city’s client construction companies, which in turn rewards the city with “affordable housing.” Cheap housing is not possible in much of the downtown environment, so the Federal advantages cover some of the extra cost of the affordable housing. Affordable housing is in the eye of the beholder though, and for sure, affordable in the swank area does not even enter into the conversation of the homeless lying in tents in the street below. Another strategy redistributes the poor to the better-off  outlying area of town so they reap the benefits of suburban life and learn from the example of middle class Portlanders. It is a condescending approach to social engineering that will fail as the affordable homes become less affordable over time.

 

Sadly, the egalitarian spirit which once limited the elites to their closely held property has been lost. Now the monopolistic tendency reinvents itself as a modern version of the serfdom of the Middle Ages in which a large castle surrounded by a moat separates the producers from the users. Human behavior remains the same. Uniting with those with whom you have something in common and separating from the “other” is a common value of wealthy elites. They might make the argument that it is genetics, but why bother. They have it and you don’t. Some separation is a quality of the huddling effect our ancient ancestors felt when they were small in number, couldn’t explain much about their environment, and heard the growling of sharp-toothed carnivores off in the distance during the night. The fear of the unknown has been translated into its modern equivalent.

 

The nature of huddling is also a power move. It gives the appearance of elevating the one in charge at the expense of the obedient servant. To the elite, it gives the false impression of security. But security is an illusion. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Actually, you can’t. The legal exclusion of the larger piece of society as determined by power and wealth through legal means, will only put the revolution off so long.

 

For most people, living in San Francisco does not have great value. Average citizens make themselves happy or unhappy, wherever they are. But the use of legal means to determine a narrowing of the human race, is fundamentally undemocratic. It is a spreading disease of bad faith. The social contract is a myth, but we live together in a common desire for peace. There is a struggle going on. Rules still apply, but only barely. The practice of not enforcing laws as a matter of acquiring political mileage is another step backward. Those who profess opposition to exclusion are often the leaders of the most exclusive clubs. In Los Angeles, the golden triangle of Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, and Bel Air lie well above the day to day events of the common folk in the smog filled low lands. But here is a lesson. You must look the part and act the part. Just ask Charles Belk. A black man with upright A-credentials as an upstanding citizen was humiliated and arrested while walking black in Beverly Hills. Officers on the scene identified him as the perp in a Citibank robbery. He matched the description of the thief—a tall, bald black man. Turns out there are more than a few of those in LA. However, none of the others were handy, so Mr. Belk became the catch of the day.

 

The quintessential modern mote is found in the State of Washington. Bill Gates and a host of Microsoft digital cowboys have come to rest behind the safety of Lake Washington. Reputedly, Gates has drilled a hole for access to the grounded earth through the hills backstopping his estate. Mountains and water are visual proof of the landed plutocrats running a portion of the left coast not generally accessible to the public.

 

The holy alliance between elitist Democrats and America’s version of the landed gentry is an ever-expanding growth opportunity for two parasites feeding off each other in an unholy symbiotic arrangement that marginalizes everyone else. It is as if the plutocrats where ahead in the game, dumped the board, and announced, “I win.”

THEY HAVE NO ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION

Recently, the Kennedy avatar known as Beto O’Rourke, who is still running for President of the United States was asked a simple question by a man in the audience. “I was born September 8, 1989,” he stated, “and I want to know if you think on September 7, 1989, my life had no value.”

A somewhat befuddled O’Rourke answered that he did think that the young man’s life had value and then proceeded to tell the man that his mother would have had the right to kill him if she had so chosen. While it is true, that left-wing Democrats have no problems with the numerous internal contradictions of their thoughts, this one seemed particularly stark considering the subject of abortion has been around for a long time.

Recently a news story broke concerning the abortionist, Ulrich Klopfer, who stored the remains of 2,246 babies he had killed in utero. Klopfer, deceased on September 3rd of this year, shocked the conscience of many when it was revealed he had retained the remains of the children he had killed.

One wonders what it is in the barbaric mind of the executioners that allows such carnage. Most of us will never see an abortion, or the tiny body parts torn away and flushed down the toilet, or caste aside as medical waste, or in the case of Klopfer, bagged as a curiosity. Humanity cries out for a better answer to the moral misjudgment that allows abortion to happen.

The religious devotion to this point of view takes on a life of its own for Democrats because it is tied to the left-wing view of the women’s equality debate. Equality is a slippery slope [see September CB]. In order to have equality (with men) you must kill your child. That frees the would-be mother to pursue career goals, personal desires, and a trouble-free life. That little romantic encounter with that fellow, what’s-his-name at the party, shouldn’t hold you back from becoming CEO of Giant Corporation of America. Babies are as disposable in the left-wing world as a tissue. Even more so, if you claim poverty. You can get it paid for by a third party—the tissue costs money.

Here is one of the ironies of this issue: If you talk to the pro-abortion side, they will say that it is wrong to deny women reproductive healthcare. In what sense is it healthcare to kill a child in the womb? Maybe they mean that healthcare will never be a problem if the child is dead. What if they mean it is reproductive healthcare for the mother? It certainly isn’t “reproductive” anything because the abortionist elimination the product reproduction.

In order to advance the pro-abortion argument, you must deny humanity to the unborn, deny human rights, deny equal protection under the Constitution, deny representation by an attorney who might fight for her or his life, and deny paternity rights to the father of the child. That is a lot of denials, both legal and moral, required to sabotage the life of the unborn. Yet, that was the effect of Roe v Wade, the single legal precedent based on “the right to privacy.” Prior to Roe v Wade, a first-year law student using a broadly stated ill-defined, term such as this would have been laughed out of law school. While the Constitution does embody the right to privacy, it does so by enumerating these rights. The right to be secure in our homes and possession is specified in the IV Amendment to the Constitution. Other rights are granted, but they are specified. A “right to privacy’ does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, and for good reason. Any statement of personal preference can be used as a right to privacy. Countries, like individuals, need boundaries, and that is one thing the Constitution provides.

The idea that a mother can conspire with her doctor to kill her unborn baby is bizarre in the first place. No one else has this privilege. It is a medical fact that a mother is attached to her baby. In rare cases a mother may die (i.e. in an automobile accident) and the baby might be saved. The child is an independent actor as well as dependent on her or his mother for life support in the womb. Who would not try to save the baby? Yet, the people who call themselves pro-choice, give no choice to the unborn.

Finally, let us address the issues raised by the abortion side. A recent conversation went something like this:

“Women have the right to do with their bodies, what they want.”

“Why is that.”

“Women are victims of rape, incest, or their lives may be threatened by the birth itself.”

“Alright, join me in a Constitutional amendment in banning abortions, except for those reasons.”

“Oh, no. a woman has the right to do with her body what she wants.”

Thus, it becomes a tautology; a woman has the right to do with her body what she wants because a woman has the right to do with her body what she wants.

 

Sadly, there is neither logic nor comfort in the answer that allows the most barbaric acts of the current generation to prevail over acts that can only be describe as a crime against humanity. The act of being human contemplates a reverence for life. The death of one person is diminishing to all humanity. The death of millions is more than a statistic, it is a tragedy linked forever to humanity which passes by this issue and says, “I don’t care.”

 

DONALD TRUMP IS A HUMAN BEING

Donald Trump is a human being. Is this a clear and concise enough statement for the left-wing crazies of America to understand. The level of abuse endured by this president has been extraordinary. As Conservatism Bittersweet has recognized before, the Left is right to be unhappy. President Trump has proven them wrong, and nothing is more embarrassing or frustrating than that.

 

America was told by left-wing elites that the steel industry and other industrial businesses were dead. President Trump proved that wrong. Other deceptions or incompetency’s by the Left suggested that America was enjoying maximum prosperity under the heavy regulation and high taxes of the Obama Administration. Instead, the economy bloomed under the leadership of Trump, pursuing an opposite strategy of low regulation (by eliminating two regulations for every new one and giving everyone a tax break.) The Left under President Obama signed the Paris accord which he knew Congress would not approve as a treaty because it required the United States to pay for other countries green initiatives, among other faults. Trump withdrew from the agreement with Iran which had been falsely pitched as a denuclearization of Iran. The Obama Administration also transferred $180 Billion in cash to Iran, thus funding their missile, nuclear, and foreign military programs of these assassins of American and allied troops.

The Leftward narrative asserted that Trump was guilty of abusing children on the U.S. southern border. Never did such accusers mention that the President was left with Obama era laws that made it impossible to deter illegal border crossings into the United States. Trump’s solution is a border wall for much of the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. To pay for the wall, he is going over the veto of house Democrats and Senate filibuster threats. No wonder they are angry. He is finding a solution to a problem they created under the Obama Administration in which illegal immigrants were given unconstitutional legal status (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program). There was only a weak effort to stop human and drug trafficking on the border as Democrats sought further electoral support from grateful illegal aliens or those sympathetic to them. They want to play ruff, but they can’t take it. Democrats in Congress complained that there was no border crisis, that the crisis was manufacture by a racist Trump Administration. More recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated, “We never said there wasn’t a crisis.” Apparently public sentiment was turning the Left’s narrative into an obvious falsehood.

In order to counter the truth of Trump policies, including a flourishing economy, the Left (including the “Deep State,”) concocted a story asserting that Trump colluded with Russians in what was asserted to be an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign, to win the election. Using false research, actually commissioned by Hillary Clinton, the Left used this threat and Deep State Condoterrie to concoct a story that the President had conspired with the Russians to sabotage the election in Trump’s favor. The level of persecution knew no bounds as the President, his family, and supporters were attacked by 19 attorneys, nine of which had contributed to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Even with the deck stacked, the Deep State Democrats could not come up with a plausible scenario in which President Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat Clinton. The Deep State attorneys produced a report (the Mueller Report to the Attorney General) which exonerated the President on charges of collusion (which is not a crime, go figure) but left a smear on the president in stating that Trump could not be exonerated of obstruction of the investigation. What constitutes obstruction, especially for a sitting president is a matter of legal debate, but Mueller violated a principle of judicial procedure in leaving this taint on the report as it was his duty to either recommend prosecution or not. Instead he left this crumb of personal animus for the Democrats to continue their contrived narrative.

Unable to remove the President by the false collusion narrative, the Democrat Deep Staters have talked impeachment. But Speaker Pelosi sees the political danger in making accusations again that prove to be false. Alienating the moderate voting public is proving to be a dangerous tac.

The collapse of the Mueller investigation narrative has not stopped the Democrats and their long history of abuse of the President. Unable to prove that the president and his supporters colluded with the Russians or obstructed the investigation, they now see impeachment as a demonstration of their emotional state. Some of the older Democrats remember the failure of the Clinton impeachment which did not impede his reelection. The Democrats, whose loyalty to left-wing ideological fantasy’s blinds their judgment to real world practical considerations, continue to heap abuse against the President. , John Brennan he former CIA chief, verbally assaults the President calling him treasonous. He does this though it is Brennan who betrays the values of America’s belief in fair play and the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty. Brennan is thought to have violated the law with leaks, though this has yet to be proven in a court of law. A court Mr. Brennan may see soon as the evidence mounts against him.

The lack of respect for the Office of President tears at the fabric of America and sets a precedent for those who follow. Deep Staters should rethink their politics of abuse. It may come back to bite them some day.

Likewise, the charge of racism leveled by some of the Presidents opponents bespeaks of a monumental lack of judgement. Ironically, some of those hurling the racism charges are among the anti-Semitic cult of extremists that is totally unaware of their own contradictions. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) has a world class hate list, including the President of the United states and an entire nation—Israel. Saying the president is racist even as he designs a better life for minorities through early release of prisoners who have not committed a violent crime, opportunity zones, and improves job chances for the bottom ten percent denies truth through action.

While there are as many contenders for hate-speech champion, the queen of all of them is Maxine Waters whose advocacy for disruptive behavior has been questioned even by a handful of her own fellow Democrats. Remember Maxine, what you can do to others can be done to you. Remember that the use of Executive power by President Obama has led to the use of Executive power by the Trump Administration. The precedents you give are the precedents you will get. You and your fellow Democrats created or supported the policies on immigration that President Trump must deal with today. If families are separated, join in a bi-partisan effort to change the Obama laws. But continue to abuse President Trump. You will get him elected. Someday you may realize the truth of your abusive nature. You said, “God is on our side.” You should be sure of what you say and do because God is on the side of the just and the righteous, not the unjust and the self-righteous. The best bet for you is to conduct yourself with respectful words given your position of responsibility. Harassing those you disagree with and hissing like a snake will not make your case. This advice is needed for the legions of media pundits, Progressive Democrats, and blind followers stuck in the same empty echo chamber. Everyone deserves fairness and you have not given that to President Trump, though he remains and will always be a human being.