The Real President Joe Biden Is Starting to Come Out, It Seems

We hoped he'd be stronger.  We hoped he'd be stronger than this, especially this early. It's not a complete surprise but that doesn't mean it's not a disappointment. Here's the first.

Biden's refusal to go big on student loan relief is one of his first big stumbles as president

He, President Biden, insists he can't pardon $50,000 of student higher education debt. He says he can, constitutionally, pardon $10,000 in debt but not $50,000.  

What??

I'm pretty sure if the Constitution says you can forgive 10, you can forgive 50.

Number two. First he does and says this.

Biden says $15 minimum wage won't survive Covid relief talks

Then he backtracks yesterday.

President Biden reiterates his support for a $15 minimum wage

Mr. President, sir, I have to tell you, that first statement weakens you and weakens your position on this issue as far as the Republicans are concerned. You get that, right?

And finally, third today.

Under Biden, Justice Department presses fight against Omarosa

A new brief takes an aggressive stance against outspoken Trump critic Omarosa Manigault Newman in a financial disclosure flap.

Check this story out.

The Biden Justice Department is showing no sign of letting up in a two-year-old legal fight against a former White House aide who became an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump.

While the Justice Department has sought to pause or drop a number of high-profile court battles due to the change in administration, government lawyers are pressing on aggressively with a lawsuit claiming that Omarosa Manigault Newman failed to file a required financial disclosure following her attention-grabbing firing in December 2017.

Manigault Newman has described the suit as a vendetta aimed at her for turning on Trump, calling him a racist and making revealing disclosures about the former president and his top aides. She also wrote a tell-all book, “Unhinged,” which chronicles her dealings with Trump as a contestant on “The Apprentice” and later as his most prominent African American White House aide.

In a new brief filed in federal court in Washington just before midnight Thursday, the Justice Department forcefully defended its position in the case, even tangling with Manigault Newman over the contentious circumstances of her dismissal by then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.

“She…made no attempt to file any Termination Report before September 2019, more than a year and a half after it was due and after this litigation was commenced,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “Then, following that submission—in which only half the required fields were even filled out—Defendant made no effort for over a year to correct her submission, despite being promptly advised of its deficiencies…She remains out of compliance with [the Ethics in Government Act] to this day.”

The suit asks U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon to impose a civil penalty of $61,585 on Manigault Newman for willfully refusing to file the financial disclosure. Such suits are rare. Disputes over financial disclosures are typically resolved by an employee updating the forms and, in some instances, incurring a small penalty.

Manigault Newman’s main defense in the case has been that — after her acrimonious departure from the White House — Trump aides refused to return her personal effects, including financial records she needed to complete the required exit report. She also asserts that she is a whistleblower on government wrongdoing and that the lawsuit amounts to illegal retaliation for that.

After her dismissal, Manigault Newman released audio recordings she secretly made of a tense conversation with Kelly held in the highly-secure White House Situation Room — as well as a recording of another conversation where Trump implausibly asserted he was unaware Kelly planned to fire her.

In the audio, Kelly encourages Manigault Newman to go quietly so she “can go on without any kind of difficulty relative to her reputation.” It later emerged that Kelly said Manigault Newman had abused the White House car service. She contends that was a pretext for firing her.

While the new Justice Department brief argues that statement by Kelly was not a threat and maintains that she was fired for “misuse of government resources,” government lawyers also contend those disputes are irrelevant to the ongoing suit.

“Notwithstanding Defendant’s unfounded references to ‘threats’ at the time of her termination, the merits of Defendant’s termination from the White House are not at issue in this case,” the attorneys wrote...

So here's the deal. It looks as though, certainly seems as though, this lawsuit should be thrown out, on its own merits, for starters. It seems clear this is vengeance from the previous President and his administration.

You'd think it would be a no-brainer, right?

But here's the thing. From what I've read, now-President Biden wants to make sure no one in his administration does anything remotely similar to him once he's out of office so he and his administration want the lawsuit to go forward.

Don't get me wrong. We knew what we were getting with Joe Biden, to be sure. And I/we don't think he is or ever was or was going to be perfect in this role as President---and he's a HUGE, huge improvement over the previous occupant of the White House, to state the necessary and obvious but...  Geez   Let's be a bit tougher, Joe and a bit more consistent.

Could you? Would you work on that?

Please?

More. Another, too, sadly.

'A Clear Back-Track': Rights Groups Warn New Biden Guidelines Not Enough to Curb ICE Abuses

This President Attacks Our Own Government

Breaking today, this afternoon:

Supreme Court grants Trump administration request to end Census count

Not done there, this, too.

Fauci says Trump campaign is 'harassing' him with unauthorized ad

And that's only two.

This is a President who has openly attacked our 

--US Postal Service

--Social Security

--Medicare

--Medicaid

--Military

--Census

--Department of Justice

--FBI

Tell me again why he should be reelected?

86 45

BYEDON

Americans Need to Know What Just Happened In and To Our Justice System

Yes, every adult American needs to know and be fully aware just what, exactly, took place in and to our justice system yesterday. It starts here.

The Justice Department has dropped Michael Flynn’s case

It seems Attorney General William Barr had up to now guilty Michael Flynn freed from his guilty convictions.

Michael Flynn was formally found guilty in our courts, in our justice system and this administration just overturned that finding.

Everyone needs to know, remember, keep in mind that Michael Flynn plead guilty---twice---formally, officially, in a court of law to lying to the FBI. Perjury. One of the worst offenses, short of murder, one can be found guilty.

Now this.

Pardoning Flynn would have looked bad. Dropping the charges is far worse.

The Trump administration’s Justice Department is undermining the rule of law.

For months, President Trump has suggested that he might pardon retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. But now Trump won’t have to worry about it: Attorney General William P. Barr filed a motion Thursday asking the federal court overseeing Flynn’s case to dismiss the charges.

If he is successful, Barr will save Trump from the political fallout of pardoning a former close aide, while still clearing Flynn. A pardon might have seemed to be the ultimate perversion of justice — but Barr’s maneuver is actually much, much worse.

Flynn lied to the FBI in early 2017 about a conversation he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when Flynn was a member of the Trump transition team. Flynn’s conversation involved mollifying Russia immediately after the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian spies and imposed sanctions as punishment for its interference in the 2016 election. When interviewed by the FBI about his conversation with Kislyak, Flynn lied, despite knowing — as he undoubtedly would, as the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency — that doing so was a crime.

The fact that he would lie to the FBI, which is charged with protecting the country’s national security, raised the concern that he might be compromised by a foreign power — a concern that Barr’s current motion to the court claims that the FBI should have ignored. In fact, Barr’s motion to the court echoes the request Trump made to the bureau’s then-director, James B. Comey, in February 2017, when he asked Comey to “see [his] way clear to letting Flynn go” — a request that landed Trump in the middle of an investigation into obstruction of justice...

William Barr's Dropping of Michael Flynn Case Is Corrupt

'Transparently Corrupt': Barr Lets Flynn Off Scot-Free 

'My God,' Says US Senator After William Barr Deploys 'History Is Written by the Winners' Trope

"The head of the American justice system now saying publicly that there is no good or bad except what the strongest want," said another critic. "The definition of autocracy."

And today, now, it seems this President Trump is even honestly making things worse for himself by---wait for it---shooting off his mouth. Further. Check this out.

Trump: 'I learned a lot from Richard Nixon'

Trump says he 'learned a lot from Richard Nixon,' including not to tape his conversations and 'don't fire people'

During a Friday morning phone interview on Fox News' morning show, "Fox and Friends," President Donald Trump said he's studied history and "learned a lot from Richard Nixon," while reflecting on the federal investigation into his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia.

The president said one of his key lessons came from Nixon, who resigned in 1974 while facing almost-certain impeachment after directing the criminal Watergate break-in. Taped conversations illustrating Nixon's involvement in the criminal conspiracy and his attempts to cover up the wrongdoing by firing top aides helped seal his fate. 

"I learned a lot from Richard Nixon. Don't fire people," Trump said.

"Only the best people..."

Remember that?

Thanks, Republicans.

God help us all.

God forgive and help us all.

Additional link:

Bill Barr Tests Negative for Integrity

(Scathing) Quotes of the Day on Donald Trump -- From a Long Time Republican

Fantastic, spot on writing today on this President and what he's doing to us, all of us, the Presidency and nation from the New York Times.

The Full-Spectrum Corruption 

of Donald Trump

Just a few---of the best--quotes.

First up, just the byline alone:

Everyone and everything he touches rots.

Going on from there.

A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president. Some of the men who have been elected president have been unscrupulous in certain areas — infidelity, lying, dirty tricks, financial misdeeds — but we’ve never before had the full-spectrum corruption we see in the life of Donald Trump...

...the moral indictment against Mr. Trump is obvious and overwhelming. Corruption has been evident in Mr. Trump’s private and public life, in how he has treated his wives, in his business dealings and scams, in his pathological lying and cruelty, in his bullying and shamelessness, in his conspiracy-mongering and appeals to the darkest impulses of Americans. (Senator Bob Corker, a Republican, refers to the president’s race-based comments as a “base stimulator.”) Mr. Trump’s corruptions are ingrained, the result of a lifetime of habits. It was delusional to think he would change for the better once he became president...

In any case, the Republican Party’s as-yet unbreakable attachment to Mr. Trump is coming at quite a cost. There is the rank hypocrisy, the squandered ability to venerate public character or criticize Democrats who lack it, and the damage to the white Evangelical movement, which has for the most part enthusiastically rallied to Mr. Trump and as a result has been largely discredited. There is also likely to be an electoral price to pay in November.

But the greatest damage is being done to our civic culture and our politics. Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are right now the chief emblem of corruption and cynicism in American political life, of an ethic of might makes right. Dehumanizing others is fashionable and truth is relative. (“Truth isn’t truth,” in the infamous words of Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.) They are stripping politics of its high purpose and nobility....

A warning to my Republican friends: The worst is yet to come. Thanks to the work of Robert Mueller — a distinguished public servant, not the leader of a “group of Angry Democrat Thugs” — we are going to discover deeper and deeper layers to Mr. Trump’s corruption. When we do, I expect Mr. Trump will unravel further as he feels more cornered, more desperate, more enraged; his behavior will become ever more erratic, disordered and crazed.

And the source.

By Peter Wehner
Mr. Wehner served in the previous three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.

Notes, Facts, Recent Developments On This Presidential Administration

The following are just some of the most recent developments emanating from this Presidential Administration. Source: Wake Up To Politics

--The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.

--The Senate Judiciary Committee released more than 2,500 of pages of testimony and documents related to the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between top Trump campaign officials (Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort) and Russians. Trump Jr. told the panel that he had been expecting the Russians to provide "potential information about an opponent" in the meeting, which was set up after he received an email promising dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

So with that, right there, the Trump family, the Trump campaign to have Donald J Trump, was willing to turn to a self-sworn enemy of the United States in order for him to become President.

If that's not treason, ladies and gentlemen, nothing else is.

--In a new financial disclosure form, President Trump formally acknowledged reimbursing his longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, for an October 2016 $130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.

Proving the President did, in fact, lie when he said, publicly, on the record, on Air Force One, that he had no knowledge of any payment to Stormy Daniels.

--The Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) detailing payments Michael Cohen received from AT&T, pharmaceutical company Novartis, and a firm tied to a Russian oligarch were leaked by a law enforcement official who became considered after other reports went missing, the official told the New Yorker. 

But wait.  It gets better.

The official said that two reports documenting even larger transactions flowing into Cohen's accounts suddenly disappeared from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) database, a rare occurrence, driving him to leak the third report.

A summary of the last year of the investigation of this President and his election campaign:

In the past year, Mueller has...brought 75 criminal charges against 19 people — including President Trump's former national security adviser, former campaign chairman, and two other former campaign aides — and three companies, racking up five guilty pleas and one sentence, according to CNN.

Additionally and finally here, for today, from the last 24 hours:

Trump on immigrants: 'These aren't people. 

These are animals.'

In Rebuke of Trump, 

Tillerson Says Lies 

Are a Threat to Democracy

The Very Dangerous President Who's Trying To Bamboozle You, America

I don't think most people realize how dangerous this President is.

Besides watching a great deal of Fox TV (it's not "news") and then responding to it all, he is also, according to news reports and this from Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics today:

"Trump has reportedly been musing about firing Rosenstein lately, which would give him more control over the Russia probe. According to CNN, the White House is preparing an effort to undermine Rosenstein's credibility, instructing allies to highlight potential areas of conflict that would preclude the Deputy Attorney General from overseeing the investigation.

--- The meeting comes as Trump's outside allies have increased calls for Rosenstein and Mueller to be fired. CBS News' Jacqueline Alemany: 'A source tells me that Trump called yesterday and asked source to go on TV to call for Trump to fire Mueller.'"

So understand, everyone, Americans. This President is trying to undermine an investigation into his own possible wrongdoings, illegalities, by having his own people go on television news programs to call for he, himself, to fire the man overseeing the investigation of him.

He's trying to flim-flam you, America.

And that's just one of the ways in which he's dangerous, presently.

Oh, and according to that same source, this President also has zero, zilch, nothing whatever on his official business/work schedule/calendar today other than an 11:45 am intelligence briefing.

I'm busier than that and I'm not leading the entire nation.

As if that's not bad enough, by itself, for the foreseeable future, as former FBI Director James Comey tours on his new book, expect this President to become increasingly unhinged.

Comey paints unsparing portrait of Trump 

in devastating tell-all book

I would love, love to get good news out of this administration.

What we do wrong in government

We, as a nation, went through the Great Depression, sure, as we all know.

And with the collapse of the stock market back in 1929, there were examinations of what was done wrong and then we made laws to make sure we didn't do that again.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

So now we've experienced the worst collapse and decline of our economy since that Great Depression, some 80 years ago and what do we do?

Nearly nothing.

Since our economy collapsed, mostly due to banks, the banking industry and the big banks, in particular (read: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc.), there hasn't been one new law put in place--or put back in place--since.

It's only just now, this week, that we're examining what happened and finding out who did what, when, where and to whom.

Some of it we've known for a long time but this Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's role is an important one--and long overdue.

One of the worst things that was done was this: "...Wall Street's biggest investment banks bought many of the $2 trillion in home mortgages issued to shaky borrowers, converted them to high-yield bonds and sold the bonds to investors including pension funds, insurers and foreign banks. Many of the securities have since defaulted, and investors have lost billions of dollars.

Goldman Sachs even admitted improper actions in the sales of securities, for pity's sake, earlier today.

This was all nightmare enough but then they had to add credit default swaps to this list.

Instead of truly having and buying insurance, for which there are regulations and rules, these companies bought these "swaps", which weren't regulated, as a substitute for true, real, backed insurance.

Only the swaps weren't backed.

There was nothing behind them.

With these 2 details alone--and there was a lot more done blatantly wrong --is it any wonder our banking system and so, our economy, collapsed?

So the thing that's wrong now is that 1) nothing has changed yet, from when these large banks took us all for a ride, so to speak, to all of our peril, for which we are now paying and have to pay and will have to pay, into the future and 2) unlike after the Great Depression, we're letting the banks and their lobbyists and their money into our government, to tell us what should happen with THEIR regulations.

Does this make any sense?

And the answer is, of course not.

80 years ago, we had enough sense to correct our problems and to keep the proverbial fox out of the chicken coops.

We don't seem that smart this time around.

We don't seem to have learned that you don't let the person who made the mess in the first place make the rules for the future in order to avoid future collapses and problems.

That's not very bright, on our part.