Biden His Time

by with No Comment FeaturedPolitics

Joe Biden appears to be a patient man. You don’t see him on the campaign trail lamenting all the negative aspects of the incumbent. While the pandemic is a significant part of the rationale behind his strategy, there’s another reason for not campaigning: The incumbent is doing it for him. 

Just a few weeks ago, Biden was under some intense scrutiny. The media was eagerly waiting to jump on the next gaffe that was almost guaranteed to happen. It didn’t. Like a magician’s redirection of a rapt audience’s attention, our collective dismay at the current spate of ramblings and vitriol from the person who currently occupies the White House is effectively making Biden’s past bumblings disappear.

Maybe it’s not so surprising that Biden’s potential running mate doesn’t appear to be a factor to many voters, according to a recent Politico poll. Biden is showing impressive leads in polls everywhere. Something to keep in mind: Polls mean nothing. They’re a gauge of voter sentiment at that particular moment, and are no indicator of what will happen in November. We have the evidence of our last election to remind us of that. 

Despite Trump’s efforts, his current attacks at Biden don’t seem to register much at all. They’re rather bland and uninteresting compared to what he’s spewed at other opponents in the past. Biden is far from bullet-proof, but Trump seems to be running out of ammo. He’s more focused on discrediting the scientific community for going against his blatantly uneducated and dangerous claims about our current healthcare crisis than he is on taking full measure of his opponent and addressing his base’s faltering blind faith. As Trump is fond of saying, if someone punches him, he punches right back. Forget the fact that the punches laid on Trump are richly deserved. Any schoolyard bully will cry foul when someone retaliates after constant abuse. It’s high time that the nation wake up to see the bully-in-chief for what he really is.

This distraction of Trump’s own making is serving Biden’s campaign well and is taking smart advantage of the situation. By keeping a low profile, Biden is showing a particular level of cunning that comes only from decades in politics. He knows that voters are becoming wise to Trump’s deadly refusal to acknowledge what the nation is facing, and is allowing the fallout to go its natural course.

Biden is under increasing pressure to show his hand, however. We still don’t know how many VP hopefuls are on the short list, and the self-imposed August 1 deadline to make a choice is fast approaching. What we do know is that odds are favoring a woman of color. That said, I think Biden is looking for a running mate that is happy to stay in the background – much like he was during Obama’s tenure. Will any of his potential picks be satisfied to do so? Hard to say, but women in politics are a tough and vocal bunch. And people of color who have spent years serving the public are equally tough and vocal. Biden will need to choose carefully.

The relationship between Biden and his running mate will need to be strongly based on trust, professionally and personally. This is critical if he is to have a successful campaign – and presidency. The friendship between Obama and Biden seemed genuine, and Biden’s quiet support during those two terms never seemed to waver. Can the same be said of our current democratic hopeful? The relationship between Trump and Pence is a different story, however. One needs only to scratch the surface to see what’s really going on there. But, that’s another story for another time.

This relative silence will soon come to an end, and Biden will have to show his cards. One can be assured, however, that his pick is unlikely to cause too much backlash. As long as Biden chooses well and can keep his unscripted and potentially damaging comments to a minimum, he just may make it to the White House. 

The old saying goes, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” In this particular case, we’ve come to know both devils. To grab from another idiom, I would say that there is definitely a lesser evil here. 

Similar Read: 2016 Is About To Happen Again

COVID-19 And Trump, A Modern Day Nero?

by with No Comment CultureFeaturedPolitics

An email was sent to my employer’s special-interest lists the other day: “Does anyone know where I can find some N95 masks? All of the local stores are sold out.” I was stunned. My company is staffed by some of the most logical, reasonable, critically-thinking people I’ve ever known. People at my own company were panicking about the novel Coronavirus, also called COVID-19. Why?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been a reliable source of unbiased, evidence-based public health information for decades. But, they have been oddly inconsistent in their messaging concerning the coronavirus outbreak – which has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday (3/11/20), and President Trump is largely responsible.

When the virus first entered the country, the White House squabbled over whether to even share what it knew, and what plans, if any, were being made to keep Americans safe. Meanwhile, experts at the CDC were prevented from communicating with state agencies and providing information to the public. So, state and local governments, airlines, and other companies worked to devise their own plans. Conferences were canceled, airlines put new sanitation policies into play, companies began plans for allowing employees to work from home and to provide financial support to hourly workers. We were standing by until February 25th, as President Trump was preparing to return from New Delhi when he was forced into the reality of the situation. Only then did he signal any intent to address the issue.

Americans look to the president to lead them through crises with a calm demeanor, determination, and decisiveness. Trump did not deliver. Instead, he chose to turn every opportunity to provide assurances into a platform for vilifying the media, blaming the democrats, and aggrandizing himself. What vague reassurances he offered were not intended to calm the public as much as to avoid ruffling the stock market’s feathers. It didn’t work. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the threat until late in the game may have actually caused the panic on Wall Street. The business-as-usual attitude may have intended to calm fears, but when the rest of the world is rushing to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus, some might see it as sticking one’s head in the sand, waiting for the threat to pass. Not exactly a model of decisive action.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s view of what we’re facing is out of sync with reality. While Democrats worked toward pushing through an emergency economic package to help those forced to stay away from their paying jobs, Trump pushed for a payroll tax break. Not at all useful, because you have to be paid – which means you have to work – in order to get the benefit. He explained his rationale to Republican senators, “… so taxes don’t go back up before voters decide whether to return him to office.” said, President Trump. The stimulus package that the White House is putting together is reportedly going to cost around $700 billion – on par with the Wall Street bailout of 2008 and the Recovery Act of 2009. This package is aimed at corporations, including the hotel industry, which considering that he still profits from his hotels, creates more evidence of his conflict of interest.

The Trump Administration’s anti-science stance is also reflected in its response to the COVID-19 threat. Over the last 3 years, Trump Republicans have gone out of their way to discredit evidence-based science. Budgets for research and public education were slashed, seriously hobbling the CDC in its efforts to create accurate tests and effective solutions. His willful ignorance of how science works was laid out for all to see at his visit to the CDC on Friday. He failed to grasp the simple concept that drugs cannot be created overnight. Getting medicine from the lab to the drug cabinet takes painstaking research, experimentation with consistent results, and clinical trials. All of which require money… money that Trump took away back in 2017.

Exemplified by ​his own tweet​, Trump is fiddling, while all around him the flames get higher.

Similar Read: The Coronavirus Pandemic Should Be the Jumpstart to a Revolution?

Starving Polar Bears Are Hard to Ignore

by with No Comment CultureFeaturedGlobal

The above image is what a polar bear should look like in their natural habitat. But unfortunately, a photographer witnessed the exact opposite in a recent trip to Baffin Island, which is the largest island in Canada and the fifth largest in the world.

https://youtu.be/hhErgCnHQ9M

Science and climate change shouldn’t be political issues; but apparently, they are very political. Paul Nicklen, a photographer from the conservation group Sea Legacy, recently captured this heart-wrenching video of a starving polar bear seemingly on his last days.

“We stood there crying—filming with tears rolling down our cheeks.” 

Regardless of your politics, this 54-second video is extremely hard to watch. And unless you believe this is a normal lifecycle for a polar bear, it’s hard to deny that climate change is real.

Is it too late to address this issue? And if not, do our leaders have the will needed to propose and implement the drastic changes it would require?

I think it’s important to note that polar bears historically hunt and eat less in the summer due to a number of factors, but this image is extreme, and not normal for most polar bears.

For reference, here’s another shot of what a healthy polar bear should look like…