In probably the least surprising development in the Presidential race, Joe Biden has made his announcement that he is going to be a candidate. He made the announcement through a video that he released today. You can watch it below.

Of course, President Trump had his own thoughts about Biden joining in. He Tweeted nice and early this morning:

Initial polls look a little scary for Trump. As of now, Biden is shown to be 8 points ahead of Trump if the election were to take place today. Biden is a moderate Democrat and I think that could be embraced by a lot of Democrats and Independents.

He also has a lot of experience. He’s been a senator from 1973 through 2009 and served as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served as Vice President under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. He has run for President, and lost, in 1988 and 2008.

He comes across as a regular guy which has always made him popular with blue collar workers and he is very popular with the unions.

But, with that being said, he definitely has some challenges. And that might be why he doesn’t make it past the primaries.

First off, Joe Biden can’t seem to get out of his own way whenever he runs for anything. He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and will say some of the most insensitive, crude and just stupid things. Watch a little video on some of his more prolific gaffes:

He’s been making stupid statements since he got into politics and I find it hard to believe that he will stop over the next couple of years. This is going to lead to a lot of apologies. Heck, it’s even started before he even joined the race. He has already apologized for his stance on the Anita Hill testimony against Clarence Thomas, about his support for the crime bill in 1994 and for his creepy conduct around women (more on that in a second). But he also had to apologize for just saying that Mike Pence was a “decent guy”.

I have a hard believing that all this stuff isn’t going to dog him throughout his campaign. The Washington Examiner has a great article about Biden’s “apology tour” over the last few months. I posted the link below. All those gaffes are going to be used against him by all his opponents, both Republican and Democrat. And his apologies are going to get old.

The other challenge is going to be his #MeToo gaffes. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Joe Biden has a history of getting too cozy with people. He’s been like this for years and this is nothing new. Take a look at the video below:

Listen, I don’t think he is a sexual predator or harasser. I just think he’s a touchy-feely guy. I am too. But I have learned to change with the times. He hasn’t. And this is going to be a problem. He doesn’t understand about the new rules that men have to follow in society. He shouldn’t feel bad about it. I don’t think anybody knows about the new rules because they change so often. There is no standard for behavior anymore. But he problem is that, in his apology for this, he had to admit he did not understand and he had to change with the times. This may not be something the Left will tolerate. Watch his apology video below:

Another problem Biden has is that he is not squeaky clean. He has a checkered past. He lied about his standing at law school. He said he was at the top of his class when, in reality, he was at the bottom. He actually had to end his 1988 Presidential bid because he plagiarized a speech. I don’t think the law school thing is a big deal but the plagiarism could be a bit of a problem. But he has much bigger problems than that.

In April of 2014, Biden went to the Ukraine for a negotiation of some kind. After he left, that very same month, his son was named to the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. No wait, it gets better. Money was being funneled to his son’s company. Ukraine started investigating the transactions and Creepy Uncle Joe came to the rescue. He went to Ukraine and threatened to pull $1 billion in U.S. loans to Ukraine. The investigating Ukrainian prosecutor was fired. How do we know any of this is true? Because Biden admitted it in 2016. Don’t believe me? Watch this:

Oops. That is definitely going to come up during this election cycle.

Finally, Biden’s biggest challenge is going to be from the Left. Joe Biden is a moderate. He is going to remain a moderate. I believe he does not embrace all that crazy stuff the Left wing socialists are peddling. He has 45 years of past records that are going to show this. And the Left knows it. Here’s a Tweet sent out by Justice Democrats reminding people of Biden’s past record.

The question will be: What is he going to say? What is he going to do? Is he going to try to bring some sanity to the Democratic party and stay moderate, trying to explain his positions or is he going to move further Left to satisfy the crazy and loud Left by adopting these same crazy positions? If he decides to do the latter, it will look disingenuous and his run will be a short one.

Listen, I thought the video was good. The same platform as every other person running, but good. His point that this country is not what the Trump administration is about is right on. Trump has moral and ethical issues. He’s crude and brash. And he doesn’t seem all that smart. That’s not what the United States is about. That’s why he’s a very unpopular President. Also, adding all of the stock video of the history of the United States was very effective. It showed the the United States was and is a great country. It was a really good video.

But it also showed some things that will not work and may hurt him. The video never said anything about how he was going to fix the country. Nothing about why people should vote for him. And this is ungood for what people care about. If Biden is going to ride on the Trump-sucks-so-go-with-me platform, he’s not getting through the primary.

He’s an old, straight, moderate, white guy. He doesn’t have a chance. As Ben Shapiro said, “Today is going to be his best day.” But, gosh, wouldn’t watching a Presidential debate between Trump and Biden be pure comedy?

References:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/joe-bidens-apology-tour

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived

The Mueller report was released on Thursday and I have been struggling with how to present this. Guess what? I give up. I read the thing. Just finished tonight (Saturday) and don’t think a lot of it. At first I was going to actually go through the bloody thing line by line and give my opinion.

Guess what? That’s been done by everyone and a lot better than I could ever do. Ben Shapiro looks at it from a legal perspective and it all makes sense. Dan Bongino looks at it from the “deep state” perspective. That may sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I have read his book and listen to his podcast and he has yet to be wrong. I suspect he’s not going to be wrong about what’s coming. Finally, the news media, depending on the channel, gives the listener whatever he wants to here (sorry, my litereature degree taught me to use “he” when no gender is defined on the subject).

I just can’t live up to that because I already have my opinions, which I think you want to hear, and my analysis would be limited to what I am interested in. So I’m going to give out the basics about the report, the arguements, the media reaction and my opinion will be left to the end. So here we go.

The Report

I have read all 480 pages of the report. I did not read the footnotes (I learned that was a mistake) but I read the body. The report is broken up into two volumes. The first addresses collusion or conspiracy. This section addresses the Russians attempts at influencing the elections through social media and hacking, their work with Wikileaks and Julian Assange. It also addresses the “crimes” of Paul Manafort, George Popadopoulos and Michael Flynn.

This was not the most exciting part of the report. It was interesting. It showed that Robert Mueller really did investigate this. One learned how the Russians hacked the DNC computers and how they propagated the information. But that’s about it. Their social media infiltration seemed very flimsey. It looked like they barely tried. Spending a $100K in advertisements and posting 86,000 memes doesn’t seem to me like a lot of effort. It just wasn’t that interesting. But there was one thing that 194 pages made clear: there was not collusion or conspiracy.

OK, that’s awesome. Our President isn’t a Russian agent (or so you’d think).

The second volume of the report dealt with obstruction by Donald Trump. This was part of the report where Donald Trump may face a few issues. Apparently there were several instances when Trump told his advisors to do things that would really change the direction of the investigation. It was mentioned in the report that a lot of the demands were ignored by the advisors to no interfere in the investigation and were done because Trump was angry at being investigated. It was even pointed out that Trump said, “F***, this is going to be the end of my Presidency (sic)”. This is going to be important later.

I have to admit, I did not think any of this was obstruction. Especially because there was no crime. But it does look like he was trying to make things difficult for the Mueller probe to do its job. For me, this looks like he was trying to interfere with the probe. Even if there was no crime, could Trump still be legally obstructing the investigation?

Luckily, I’m not a lawyer. Mueller did not reach a conclusion. He said that he did not find any evidence of obstruction but he could not exonerate the President of obstruction. Ugh!

The report is very easy to read and the redactions were minimal. I don’t think I lost a lot because of the redactions. The one thing I would need to do is actually read the footnotes. Mueller really showed his bias in the footnotes. Not for what he said but for what he did not say.

What’s Going on Legally?

As far as Trump being a Russian agent, something that the media has been living on for the last two years, that’s done. He did not collude or conspire. That’s over. No reason to talk about it anymore. Trump has been exonerated. Period.

Obstruction, that’s a different story.

I always thought there needed to be a crime for someone to obstruct. It didn’t make sense that he was guilty of obstructing a crime that didn’t happen. But the law doesn’t always make sense. Now I’m not going to quote laws or anything. I’m not a lawyer. Listen to Ben Shapiro’s podcast on April 19th and he’ll give you the laws. And he’ll explain the scope of the laws in ways I cannot. What I mean by that is there are several different definitions of obstruction. Apparently, Bob Mueller used the most liberal definition of obstruction (we’ll get into that later or just listen to Ben Shapiro’s podcast.

Here is the definition according to 18 U.S.C. § 1503:

…an act that “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.”

The big word here is “corruptly.” That word means that Trump had to have some intent to obstruct the investigation because he was guilty. That’s what it means. Let me say that again: Trump obstructed because, and only because, he was guilty of conspiracy with Russia.

This is where stuff gets really muddy. Trump was pissed off. His presidency was in peril over a long investigation. He did not feel it was fair because he was innocent. He told people to do things that would have stalled or halted the investigation. None of his orders were followed for fear that there might be another Saturday Night Massacre (a term used during the Nixon administration’s Watergate debacle).

Though nothing happened and Bob Mueller was able to continue his investigation, were Trump’s ignored orders still evidence he obstructed?

Mueller concluded his second volume by saying there was not enough evidence to conclude that Trump obstructed justice but there was enough evidence that Mueller could not exonerate him. This leaves a big question. Did Trump obstruct or not. We have no answers.

Here’s the question: why don’t we know? After two years and thirty million dollars, Mueller’s best answer is, “I don’t know? You figure it out.” What the f***?!

Let’s get to the conspiracy portion. A lot of things cleared this up for me.

Putting on My Tin Foil Hat

The report had a lot in it that really did not need to be said. It could have been shortened by quite a bit simply by leaving out things that really were irrelevant. Here are a few examples of this.

Trump was not happy that Jeff Sessions recused himself. He told Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself. He had several advisers talk to Sessions about not recusing. When Sessions did recuse himself, Trump tried to get him to un-recuse himself. He did this directly, through social media and with his staff. Sessions never reversed his recusal until he resigned. There are several paragraphs about this. Yes, Sessions recusing himself hurt Trump but this is not illegal and not obstruction. It does make Trump look unethical and kind of weak, but that’s it. Why is this even in the report.

Another example was when Trump told Dan McGahn to tell the Justice Department to fire Mueller. McGahn decided to ignore the order stating that sometimes Trump, “thinks out loud.” At the time, Trump was angry that his presidency was under siege by the investigation. When asked if he relayed the information, McGahn said no and he would resign if he was asked to do so. The message never got relayed to the Justice Department. Again, no obstruction (nothing happened) and no intent to stop the investigation because he was guilty. So why is this even in the report?

But not only do I question what was in the report, I have big questions as to what was not in the report. There was no mention of Christopher Steele, the FISA warrants and Fusion GPS. The Steele Dossier, the document that started the whole investigation, was only mentioned twice in the 480 page report. What? Why not?

Could it be that Russian collusion, which was soundly disproved, was not what Mueller was going for? Is it possible Mueller was hired to protect the FBI and the Hilary Clinton’s bad behavior? The dossier is a killer for Clinton and the FBI.

Clinton paid for the dossier which was assembled by Christopher Steele. Where did Steele get the information? Mostly from Russian spies. You see the problem? It was actually Clinton and the DNC that were colluding with the Russians and the dossier is proof of that.

The FBI is in bigger trouble. Well, certain members and former members are. Christopher Steele got the dossier then leaked it to Yahoo news. When the FBI received it, they used the dossier to get a FISA warrant against Carter Page. The FBI used the leaked Yahoo article as proof that the dossier was valid evidence. And it turned out the dossier was crap. And looks like the FBI was trying to pull a fast one to get a warrant to spy on an American citizen. This is ugly stuff.

So, What Do I Think?

This report is a whole lot of nothing. Something most people thought for a long time. And it only took $25 million dollars to have all our thoughts confirmed.

As far as the collusion, or conspiracy, that was a big zero. Not only did Trump not collude with Russia or Wikileaks, Wikileaks did not even know that they were working with the Russians. When Julian Assange said that he had nothing to do with Trump or the Russians, he meant it. The Russians were so good at hiding their identities that they tricked everybody.

Obstruction seems to be a different story. Though there was no crime, Trump could still obstruct the investigation and be prosecuted. But it is very hard to prove obstruction. Remember: intent matters here. Trump had to have wanted the investigation to end because he was guilty. His intent needs to be proven. Mueller knew he couldn’t prove intent, so he said that. But he also said that he couldn’t prove Trump didn’t try to obstruct.

Listen, Trump is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. He’s brash, self-centered and clumsy with his language. Just looking at his Twitter feed will tell one that he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. He’s also extremely emotional and wants to control everything. But is he the modern day Nixon?

Not at all.

Volume 2 of Mueller’s report was bullshit. He accused Trump of attempting to end his investigation but the investigation never ended. Trump could have fired Mueller at anytime. He can do that. He wanted others to do it. They didn’t. Why? Because he has a good cabinet and they know what is good for him. He was never guilty. He was pissed. Being pissed does not mean he had the intent to end the investigation because he was guilty of a crime. He wanted to end the investigation because it was f-ing up his presidency. Period. That’s not corruption. It’s stupid, but not corrupt.

This is going to keep going. The media is all hot and bothered by the obstruction portion of the report. The radical Democrats want impeachment proceedings started based on the obstruction. Though it is going to be very difficult to prove because they have to prove corrupt intent, a lot want to get it started anyway.

It ain’t over yet.

Donald J. Trump has had a pretty awesome week.

We already talked about the Mueller report being released. And it has been so entertaining. I have never seen the media so confused, Hollywood so apoplectic and the Democrats so shaken. I love it. I think I should spend an entire article on the subject but I’m not ready to do that. That’s because I believe this is going to get a lot more exciting. With Lindsey Graham 2.0 and Cocaine Mitch finally seeming to embrace the President, it looks like all the slimy, back alley deals are going to be brought to light. Combine that with the whole Mueller report being release in a couple of weeks (or however long it takes to make it legal) and that Trump wants to declassify the FISA warrant applications, stuff is going to get really tricky for the Dems.

Oh, it’s going to be so exciting.

But, it’s just going to get better. Michael Avennati was arrested for not paying taxes this century and trying to strong-arm twenty million dollars from Nike. What’s better, the FBI have him on tape, not once, but twice trying to extort Nike. So sweet. He’s done. In case you don’t remember, and you might not because he kind of disappeared, Avennati was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the porn star who did unmentionable things with Donald Trump then tried to make a little more money off of him. This guy is an example of what’s wrong with our news media. He was put on such a pedestal (he appeared a few hundred times on CNN and MSNBC) that he decided to run an exploratory committee for a run for president.

I hate this guy. That’s probably too strong a word, but he was a real piece of crap. Anytime he posted something on Twitter, it was stupid and I responded to it. Usually pointing out his hypocrisy. He blocked me. I’m proud of that. Well, I won’t have to worry about being blocked by him on Twitter. He’s going to be breaking big ones into little ones for the next twenty years. Good luck with that!

But it get’s better!

CNN and MSNBC have had their ratings tank! For the last two years, the mainstream cable news have been riding this collusion thing for two years. Well, not that collusion (and obstruction, more on that later) have been debunked, they have nothing to talk about. In fact, they need to find another narrative. And they did. They’re back to health care and the damage Trump could cause by decimating Obamacare. Um, pretty boring stuff. And people have stopped watching.

But Trump’s week got better!

Cocaine Mitch (that’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority leader, decided to have a vote on the Green New Deal. That’s the socialist doctrine that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex veiled as a way to save the Earth and all our lives from climate change. The vote happened and, uh, it didn’t go well for the pretty, stupid and vicious Ocasio-Cortez. The vote went 0-57 with 43 citing present.

She got skunked. And she was pissed. Watching this video. Just a warning though: don’t let her flailing arms reach out of YouTube and smack you:

She wants to yell at the Republicans but no one on her side of the aisle voted for her bill. Heck, there were a handful that voted against it. What’s she pissed off about? Her idea is stupid. It goes completely against what the United States is about. Everyone knows it. And the farting cows are protected for one more year.

Trump also acknowledged, officially, that the Golan Heights in Israel is Israeli territory. I think this is just awesome. We need to support our true allies. And we need an ally in the Middle East. Everyone hates us over there. And Israel is the country that will bring democracy to the Middle East. Because once people see it from other countries, they’ll want it. And they’ll fight for it.

But there’s more!

Mitch McConnel decided to light the left up by forcing a vote on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. This really enraged the Dems. They demanded time for debate but Cocaine Mitch told them that debate was not necessary. So a vote was taken. And the proposal got skunked! The vote was 0-57, all Republicans voted “no,” 43 Dems voted “Present” and 4 Dems voted “No.” Of course, the news media flipped. Many thought the Dems should have “called McConnel’s bluff” and vote for the deal. Of course, these idiots don’t realize that’s what McConnel wants them to do! If Dems vote “no” then the Green New Deal is garbage and the Dems know it. If they vote “Yes,” that will be used by a Republican during the next election.

But, none of that is what made things interesting. It was AOC. She flipped out and railed against Republicans for popping her bubble without a “debate” (as if that would have changed anything). Here it is, but be aware: those flailing arms may smack you right through the computer screen:

So funny. She’s so stupid. Mitch McConnell is such a genius. When she brought up the lack of debate, Cocaine Mitch said he didn’t have any problem with hosting debates. But, they won’t. The idea is stupid and unachievable. In the next ten years, this dumb idea would cost $92 trillion dollars. We’d all be poor and the socialists would control. Then we’d have our “saviors” in the government controlling everything. We’d be Venezuela.

It gets better! Then I’ll be done.

The largest glacier in Greenland, one that has been shrinking for years, is getting bigger. And has been for a few years. I’m sure you haven’t heard about this (it goes against the narrative). But this contradicts all of AOC’s arguments. That doesn’t mean it’s going to keep getting better but this definitely proves that the climate is unpredictable. Of course, if anyone says that, he is accused of being a “climate-denier”.

So, one of the largest glaciers in the world get bigger. Why isn’t that reported? Could it be because it got bigger under Trump’s watch? Could it be that Donald Trump is fixing climate change? No, I don’t believe that either. But it does show how unpredictable climate is. We probably won’t all be dead in twelve years.

It’s been a really good week for the President. Now, it’s time not to gloat too much and get back to the other problems we are facing. That’ll be next week.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/key-greenland-glacier-growing-again-after-shrinking-years-nasa-study-ncna987116

https://www.thenation.com/article/democrats-should-have-called-mcconnells-bluff-and-voted-yes-on-the-green-new-deal/