HOW IS PRESIDENT BIDEN GOVERNING?

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INTRODUCTION

Joe Biden has been president for over three years so it’s far past the time to assess how he’s doing.  America is doing very poorly in almost every metric and it appears to be almost entirely the Biden Administration’s fault. Biden’s approval polls reflect this, though you would never know it if you only watch Main Stream Media. How did the President destroy the economy, raise inflation, make illegal immigration out of control, mess up our departure from Iraq, weaken the military,  etc., in three years?

While Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate, he governed as a far-left radical.  In addition, President Biden appears to have  diminished mental capacity with other Biden far-left officials and friends actually formulating the policies Biden is implementing.  These are my speculations as to why the Biden Administration has failed at every single endeavor it has engaged in.  If there are any Biden policies or actions you believe have been successful, then your sources of news have been corrupted (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, etc.).  Let’s examine some of President Biden’s policies.

BODY 

I believe the following issues are the most important to the public: 1) The Economy, 2) Energy Independence, 3) Illegal Immigration/Border Security, 4) Crime, 5) Covid, 6) The Military, 7) Ukraine-Russia, 8) Afghanistan.

1.THE ECONOMY:  To adequately examine the economy, let’s look at a) inflation, b) employment, and  c) GDP (gross domestic product).  Trillions of dollars of unnecessary spending that was requested by the Biden Administration, and approved by the Democrat Congress caused this unprecedented inflation.

a) Inflation hits the poor hardest.  In April ’22, it was 8.3%, though it’s lower now  (in 2020, under Trump, 1.4% inflation).  The cause began with the $1.9 Trillion “2021 American Rescue Plan”.

b) Employment appears to currently be doing well with unemployment at under 4%.  This was expected because of the “V-shaped Recovery” that President Trump enabled with his “across-the-board” tax rate cuts for everyone.

c) Gross Domestic Product (or GDP) measures the total cost of all goods and services produced by the United States.  It actually decreased in the first two quarters of 2022 which traditionally meant  the U.S. was/is in a recession (in 2020, under Trump, GDP growth was 6.5%).

2. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: On the day he was inaugurated as President, Joe Biden began his war on fossil fuels that he promised during his presidential campaign. He immediately shut down the Keystone and Dakota pipelines and the permitting of oil and gas exploration and drilling on Federal lands.  He discouraged financial institutions from loaning money to oil and gas companies and significantly raised fees for existing oil and gas leases on Federal lands.  He’s now stopped very large  oil and gas leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences of all of the aforementioned is the price of gas significantly increasing in price as well as the 6,000 products made from oil significantly increasing in price.  Most consumer products are trucked to their destination so their prices have also necessarily vastly increased because of the cost of fuel that transports them.

3. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION-BORDER SECURITY: 2020 Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, promised “open borders” if elected President, as did all of the other primary election Democrat candidates.  Since being elected, illegal immigration has vastly increased to over 200,000/month and was expected to triple if Title 42 is ever lifted (it didn’t) Most of the illegals are young single men, some of whom (the “got-aways”) carry backpacks containing Fentanyl and other illegal drugs in order to pay the cartels their $4,000-$8,000 fee to cross the U.S. southern border.  Moreover, there are a number of criminals intermingled with non-criminals…human trafficking is also rampant.

4. CRIME:  The Democrat-supported “Defund the Police” movement that coincided with the 574 riots that took place in the summer of 2020, destroyed countless small businesses, including many black-owned businesses.  Even V.P. Kamala Harris got involved by raising money to bail out rioters. The January 6 protest in the U.S. now appears to have been directed by a FBI-collaborator (Ray Epps) and arranged by the Democratic Party.  Democrat District Attorneys in Democrat-run cities are not prosecuting many classes of misdemeanors resulting in crime increasing exponentially in those cities.  Moreover, the-illegal the protests around Supreme Court justices over the then-draft Roe vs. Wade Alito opinion, were not investigated by the US Department of Justice nor condemned by the Biden Administration.  All of the aforementioned leads me to ask the obvious question, “why is the Democrat Party soft on crime,” and why isn’t the Department of Justice doing its job?

5. COVID: Response to Covid by the Federal and most State governments were a combination of incompetence, anti-science, and political malfeasance The victims of this chaos was the American public, many of whom lost their lives, their livelihoods, or their health and well-being.  Unnecessary lockdowns of the economy hurt many State and localities, and mandatory vaccinations resulted in many people being unnecessarily fired, including from some critical jobs and the military.  Moreover, CDC (centers for Disease Control) officials were not transparent in their decisions, nor did they recognize the obvious, like the superiority of the natural immunity acquired when one caught the virus.  Consequently, a one-year pandemic has lasted years!  Why did States and the Federal government do what they did?

6. THE MILITARY: China is in the process of surpassing the U.S. military.  Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is very close in size to the United States and therefore China has the money to spend on its military for China to become a superpower like the U.S.  Fortunately it’s still  behind in nuclear weapons.  Russia does have a large nuclear arsenal to match the U.S.  It also has, unlike the U.S., many small tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, which Ukraine may eventually see. Recently, it has demonstrated its hypersonic missiles which are so fast and travel so close to the ground that they can’t be shot down.

While our adversaries are getting stronger, the U.S. military’s budget was increased only enough to keep up with inflation.  Also, U.S. military leadership is emphasizing teaching CRT (critical race theory) to all of our troops.  Our military has also fired soldiers that refused to be vaccinated. Why?

7. UKRAINE-RUSSIA:  Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with the expectation of defeating Ukraine in a few days.  That was years ago and Ukraine is still fighting and holding its own against Russia, using mostly American weapons.  To date the U.S. has given many billions to Ukraine, all of the money being given is borrowed and will add to U.S. inflation.  Meanwhile, the Ukraine-Russia war probably could have been avoided had President Biden started arming Ukraine when Russia started moving troops to its border with Ukraine, and if he refused Ukraine membership into NATO (instead of signing an agreement to support Ukraine).  Why?

8. AFGHANISTAN:  Unilaterally (with no consultation with other world leaders), President Biden changed the U.S. departure date from Afghanistan to August 31, 2021. as well as not adhering to the Trump policy of making the departure “conditions-based.”  He also made the departure site the Kabul airport and asked the Taliban to oversee the departure of all civilians.  Consequently, 13 American soldiers were killed, over 100 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans that helped us were left stranded in Afghanistan, many of whom were eventually assassinated.  Moreover, $85 billion in U.S. military equipment was abandoned in Afghanistan.  Ultimately, this fiasco led to Russia and China to be emboldened and to become more aggressive with Ukraine and Taiwan.  Was this simply incompetence?

9. Israel-Hamas-Iran:  President Biden and his Administration is getting the U.S. closer and closer to war with Iran though this, of course, is not his intention. His and Obama’s  attempts to bribe/coerce Iran into behave peacefully has not worked.  President Trump’s policies toward Iran did work: enforcing strong sanctions, keeping oil prices very low by producing as much oil as the U.S. was capable of, etc.

Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 attack is exactly what’s needed…don’t play with terrorists, destroy them or defang them. However, the U.S. might prevent Israel from finishing the job of destroying Hamas.

As long as Joe Biden is president, the U.S. is extreme danger of being attacked from within or from without.

CLOSING 

President Biden is on course to become our very worst president, by far.  The nine areas I looked at above are simply a small part of his actions that are destroying the U.S.  It’s understandable given his reliance on the far-left in the Democrat Party for guidance.  He will probably remain President for another year, so it’s anyone’s guess how bad the U.S. will be by then.  I blame Mainstream Media for this debacle because none of this would have been possible had it done its job covering the news rather than covering up any news that made the Biden presidential campaign and then its Administration look bad.

ISRAEL AND PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST (audio interview)

Daniel Mariaschin, Executive Vice-President, B’nai B’rith International

In light of the terrorist Iranian proxy, Hamas, killing 1400 Israelis and taking over 200 people hostage on October 7, 2023, I decided to air again one of my still-timely interviews with insightful Daniel Mariaschin, Executive Vice-president of B’nai B’rith International (25-minute audio of interview follows at the bottom of this introduction…click on the blue “play” button) because Israel and the Middle East are still in conflict with no end in sight and Mr. Mariaschin held the position, skills and experiences that enabled him to have keen insight and perception into the issues surrounding this ongoing tragedy.

While I interviewed Mr. Mariaschin years ago, almost everything we discussed is relevant to the situation today and therefore is still valuable.   At the time of my interview, Daniel Mariaschin had been working for B’nai B’rith for 24 years but had worked in the Jewish community in Jewish organizations for an additional 15 years, for a total of 39 years.  He holds an undergraduate degree in history from Columbia University and a graduate degree in Jewish studies from Brandeis University.  Mr. Mariaschin was born in the New York-New Jersey area and grew up in New Hampshire.  At the time of my interview, he was the Executive Vice President of B’nai B’rith International and the Director of B’nai B’rith’s Center for Human Rights and Public Policy.

The interview focuses on Israel and peace in the Middle East.  Because of his experience in foreign affairs, national defense, Israel, and articles he’s written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Chicago Tribune, the  Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and others, he has demonstrated that he knows what he’s talking about.

In the interview, Mr. Mariaschin discusses many aspects of:

  1. Israel and the Middle East, including insights into Hamas.
  2. The  prospects for peace
  3. The growing Iranian threat including its nuclear reactor in Bushere
  4. The “ground zero” mosque, life in Israel
  5. The book on Israel, Start-up Nation,
  6. The origins and mission of B’nai B’rith, and more.

To listen to Mr. Daniel Mariaschin’s interview, please click on the blue or red link  below.

MR. Daniel Mariaschin-Israel Audio

Interview by Mike Russo

ORIGIN OF IRAN’S TERRORIST GOVERNMENT & ITS PROXIES

For additional information about Iran

How did the current terrorist government get control of Iran and become a serious threat to the entire Middle East and the world?  That’s what this post is about, along with how the U.S. inadvertently facilitated this.

The Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi)
came into power in 1954. He was a good friend of the United States.  In 1964 he exiled radical Muslim  extremist, Ayatollah Khomeini.  Widely reported in the news  was that President Jimmy Carter persuaded/coerced the Shah to allow Khomeini to return to Iran.  The Shah complied and Khomeini returned in February 1979.The Shah then came to the United State in October 1979 for cancer treatments.  Shortly thereafter, while the Shah was still in the U.S., Khomeini led a revolution in Iran and overturned the Shah’s pro-western government.

The Khomeini government, as part of its revolution, subsequently held 52 hostages from the U,S. embassy in Iran for 444 days and only released them 30 minutes after President Ronald Reagan assumed office on January 20, 1981.  Iran began its terrorist activities by funding various client terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad.  It also began working on developing nuclear weapons as well as the missies capable of delivering warheads to its hated enemies, Israel (the “Little Satan”) and the United States (the “Big Satan”).

President Obama thought he could delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions and began negotiating with it and signed the “Iran nuclear deal” (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – “JCPOA”) with Iran in 2015, allegedly to delay it from developing a nuclear weapon.  It wasn’t a treaty because the Senate would not ratify it, but the “deal” cost the U.S. $150 billion and probably cost many lives because much of the money was used to fund Iran’s terrorist operations around the world.

When Donald Trump became President, his foreign policy advisors reviewed the deal and deemed it to be worse than worthless for many reasons, including: 1) no restrictions on the development of ballistic missiles, 2) no inspections allowed of military sites, 3) no cessation of proxy wars in the Middle East.  Trump gave Iran an opportunity to revise the agreement, but Iran refused and Trump consequently withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and also imposed sanctions on its sale of oil, keeping it poor and unable to fund any serious terrorist activities through its surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.

When Joe Biden became President, he had negotiations re-started to get the U.S. back into the original agreement.  The new negotiations, however, appeared worse than the first, with Russia negotiating on behalf of the the United States and offering even more billions to Iran, in addition to removing the sanctions imposed by President Trump.  The short expiration dates in the deal remained the same as the original deal even though 7 years had elapsed since that deal was made (2015). In addition, the Biden Administration was eager to enter into the disastrous deal with Iran which says in order to delay its development of a nuclear bomb. However, Iran has cheated and hid some of its nuclear sites under the former deal and continued to develop missiles that could reach the United States.  I believe former president, Trump, had the right idea in keeping Iran poor with sanctions so it could not afford to sponsor many of its terrorist activities around the world nor develop a nuclear bomb or ICBMs.

This absurd “deal” was bad for the United States, Israel, and world peace and thankfully is now dead.  However, Iran can still produce nuclear bombs very quickly and the billions of dollars it made from the U.S. not enforcing the sanctions on its sale of oil has put it financially “back-on-its-feet” and now fully capable of funding large-scale terrorism once again (Iran sold 400,000 barrels/day of oil in 2020, 3 million barrels/day in 2023 and has made $40by-$80 billions of dollars from its sale of that oil, enabling it to fund the vicious 10/7/23 attack by Hamas on 1,400 mostly Israeli citizens).

CONCLUSION

Iran is the chief sponsor of terrorism in many countries.  Giving them billions of dollars facilitates this.  Iran currently sells missile-firing drones to Russia, which is using them in its war against Ukraine.  Moreover, it funds middle-eastern terrorist organizations such as Hamas, which on October 7, 2023, tortured and slaughtered 1,400 Israeli citizens and 32 Americans, as well as 232 hostages.  At government-sponsored rallies in Iran (and even on American college campuses), “Death to America” is chanted.  Iran has missiles capable of reaching its hated enemy, Israel and soon the United States as well.  Most Iranians are good people and many are even pro-western, much different that the fanatical leaders of the Iranian government.  Any funds the U.S. gives to Iran or money that Iran makes from the U.S. not enforcing its oil sanctions, is used to develop missiles that will be used against Israel and the U.S.

On October 18, 2023, President Joseph Biden, during his visit to Israel in the middle of war, just gave a $100,000,000 (one hundred million dollars) for Palestinian humanitarian relief, almost all of it will surely end up in the hands of Hamas who controls Gaza, and will fund terrorist activities in the Middle East. God help Israel, the Palestinians, and the United States!