It's called governing. Biden's list of Wins!

Because of the mainstream media's constant Biden bashing over every little manufactured Republican criticism, voters don't know how well things are going. Wonder no more. The Biden administration put out a "memo" detailing every accomplishment. Maybe Biden should have a rally instead? 

Again, these are all well-thought-out actions, called governing. Here's the list after just 11 months:

In spite of unprecedented crises and opposition from Congressional Republicans, the President and Congressional Democrats got an enormous amount done for the American people in 2021. 

Following the Science to Beat Back the Pandemic: The Administration stood up a historic COVID-19 vaccination program – funded by the American Rescue Plan - that’s gotten 490 million shots in arms, and saved 1.1 million American lives and prevented 10.3 million hospitalizations. 

• Fully Vaccinated: At this time last year: less than 1% of Americans were fully vaccinated. Today: More than 71% of American adults are fully vaccinated. 

• First Shot: At the start of the year: just one-third of adults were eager to get vaccinated. Today, 85% of adults have had their first shot. 

• Schools Open: When POTUS and VPOTUS took office, only 46% of schools were open. Today, 99% of schools are open.   *Historic Economic Growth and Americans Back to Work: The President and Congressional Democrats acted quickly to *pass the American Rescue Plan (ARP), jump starting our economic recovery. And, they worked across the aisle to *pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to rebuild roads and bridges, replace lead pipes, and create millions of good-paying jobs. 

• Unemployment Rate: The economy added nearly six million jobs this year – the most of any first-year president in history. When POTUS took office, the unemployment was 6.3%. Today it’s 4.2%. Before the American Plan, the US was not projected to reach 4.2% unemployment until 2025. 

• Unemployment Claims: The average number of Americans filing for unemployment over the last four weeks is at its lowest level since 1969. When POTUS took office, over 18 million were receiving unemployment benefits. Today, only 2 million are. 

• Child Poverty: Because of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and historic economy recovery, child poverty was cut in half. • Disposable Income: Americans on average have about $100 more in their pockets each month than they did last year, after accounting for inflation. 

• GDP: Without the ARP, Moody’s estimates 2021 growth at 2.9%. After ARP: On pace for growth of 5-6 percent – best since 1984. U.S. was only G7 country to surpass pre- pandemic output by Q2 2021 and keep growing. No other G7 country had reached pre- pandemic output by end of 3Q 2021. 

• Leisure & Hospitality Jobs: In final 3 months of Trump administration, on average 170,000 leisure/hospitality jobs were lost per month. Under President Biden, close to 2.5 million leisure and hospitality jobs (~250K a month) were added. 

• Long Term Unemployed: In the last 5 months of the Trump administration, 2.4 million Americans became long-term unemployed. In President Biden’s first 10 months, long- term unemployment fell by 1.8 million – the greatest drop in long-term unemployment in US history. 

• State and Local Jobs: In the final five months of the Trump administration, 229,000 state and local jobs were lost. In the first 10 months of the Biden administration, 330,000 state and local jobs were added.

What's so "Free Market" about the Republicans failed fossil fueled Energy theories...

Republicans continue to ignore free market forces, and with no voter blowback. 

Major Automakers Promise Total EV Conversion: While I was watching an ad supported CW Channel app rerun of "Superman and Lois," I was stunned by the two competing auto ads, one by GM and the other Ford, that promised a 15 year changeover to all electric vehicles. 

GM’s announcement … to eliminate tailpipe emissions from all its new light-duty vehicles by 2035.  GM’s U-turn seems to be in part because the market has forced its hand. Two giant auto markets — China and California — have committed to 100 percent EV by 2035.

That's how the free market works. 

Utilities Go Green Too: All state utility companies are planning a near complete conversions to free fuel like wind and solar by 2050. 

Again, because it makes sense not to have to ship, store, and control fossil fuel waste, the free market sees wind and solar as an absolute no-brainer: 

All of Wisconsin's investor-owned utilities are aiming to reduce their carbon emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050, and are on track to reducing emissions 40% by 2026, according to the PSC's latest draft energy assessment … Along with the companies' carbon reduction goals, Alliant Energy is planning to build out 1,000 MW of solar by 2023. Additional projects from WEC Energy Group and Madison Gas & Electric "will, collectively, make WI one of the largest solar producers east of the Rockies."

Supply Siders don't care about Consumer Driven Markets: Republican ideologues love big oil so much, they will say and do anything. Case in point, the Democratic bill HR 803 protecting public lands in the West. Republican heads exploded. 

Sitting down? Amazingly, Republicans slipped in a mind boggling and embarrassing amendment that actually assumed there would not be "three decades" worth of future innovation and progress:

BLOCKING BIDEN ENERGY ORDERS: The House defeated a Republican bid to prevent HR 803 from becoming law until after President Biden has rescinded executive orders aimed at transforming the U.S. energy economy from one based on fossil fuels to clean energy over the next three decades. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment. Voting yes: Steil, Fitzgerald, Grothman, Tiffany, Gallagher.

Just to be clear; Wisconsin's Republican representatives wanted to impossibly preserve the U.S.'s fossil fuel dependence for the next 30 years. 

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, and Tom Tiffany were all once in the Wisconsin legislature pushing this same kind of job killing thinking for decades. As blogger James Rowen of Political Environment recently wrote:

Though how ironic would it be if the (EV Foxconn) project created the very type of energy-efficient vehicles which the previous Republican administration had discouraged with a $75 annual registration upcharge - a move that dovetailed with Walker's long and wider attack on renewable energy that undercut solar power development and delayed wind farms.

Biden's latest ad showing how Trump destroyed an economy!

Here's a new and powerful Joe Biden campaign ad that I really like. Having said that, I still think Biden should be the other public face advising the country on just how it can slow the virus and get the economy back on track. Call it good practice before he has to debate the Cheetos president:

The Biden unchained for comeback...

The Joe Biden appeal...

A Final word on the “Biden Rule,” by Vice President Joe Biden, and GOP wants another Judge Bork!!

Context, that’s what it’s all about.

"So now I hear all this talk about the ‘Biden Rule,’” the vice president said at the Georgetown University Law Center. “It’s frankly ridiculous. There is no 'Biden Rule.' It doesn’t exist.”

He a while to come out and correct Republicans, but Biden finally found the time.

He said there is “only one rule I ever followed on the Judiciary Committee, that was the Constitution’s clear rule of advice and consent.”

Biden defended his record during his years as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, painting Republicans’ Supreme Court blockade as a desperate gambit that “could lead to a genuine constitutional crisis.”

During his time as chairman or ranking member of the Judiciary panel, Biden said, all eight high court nominees received a hearing and a floor vote. 

“Every nominee, including Justice [Anthony] Kennedy — in an election year— got an up-or-down vote,” he said. “Not much of the time. Not most of the time. Every single time.”

Leaving a seat vacant creates the possibility of a 4-4 tie in consequential cases, which leaves a lower court’s decision in place. That could result in a “patchwork Constitution” where laws are unevenly applied throughout the country, Biden said, and in turn “deepen the gulf between the haves and have-nots. The meaning and extent of your federal constitutional rights — freedom of speech, freedom to follow the teachings of your faith or to determine what constitutes teaching of your faith, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure — all could depend on where you happen to live,” he said. I think most people in this country would call that unfair and unacceptable.”

For comparison, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what's behind the Republican resentment toward Democratic nominees for the Supreme Court. For Republicans, Judge Robert Bork was the best justice they never had, thanks to the Democrats.

As Franken and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) swiftly pointed out, Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by a bipartisan 58-42 vote in 1987, received both a vote and a hearing. Nevertheless, Hatch maintained that this vote was a turning point in the politics of Supreme Court nominations. Bork, Hatch claimed, was “one of the greatest legal minds we’ve had,” and Bork’s rejection was the beginning of the cycle of escalating efforts by both parties to keep the other party’s nominees off the Supreme Court, according to Hatch.

What was churning around in that conservative activist legal mind? 

Hatch does have a point. Republicans have long viewed Bork as a fallen martyr,
Judge Bork’s opponents made a weighty case against his nomination in 1987 ... Bork had a long history of criticizing progressive Supreme Court decisions. Bork opposed the doctrine of one person/one vote, which eliminated malapportionment of state legislatures that gave rural votes far more representation than urban voters. He criticized decisions striking down racial covenants in housing and those banning voter literacy tests. He attacked a decision invalidating poll taxes. And he opposed Supreme Court decisions saying that the Constitution forbids the government from discriminating against women — arguing instead that “the Equal Protection Clause probably should be kept to things like race and ethnicity.”

Yes, what a great legal mind?

Bork’s most well-known statement, however, most likely came from a 1963 article he published in the New Republic, which opposed federal bans on race discrimination by businesses. The principle behind such laws, Bork argued, “is that if I find your behavior ugly by my standards, moral or aesthetic, and if you prove stubborn about adopting my view of the situation, I am justified in having the state coerce you into more righteous paths. That is itself a principle of unsurpassed ugliness.” (Bork later repudiated this statement — although he did not repudiate many of his other previously expressed views.)

Doh! Conservatives Bash Biden for plan to Retire on his Government Benefits Package!

Under the heading "You can't make this stuff up," Republicans are apparently saying, "Yes you can."

He's a freeloader. Vice president Joe Biden now expects to live the life of ease by soaking taxpayers when he retires. He's now bragging how the benefits he received as an elected government official will help in in retirement:

Not the Onion!!!

“I have no savings account, but I have a great pension and a great salary,” Biden told the crowd at the White House Summit on Working Families.

Not quite a member of the millionaires club, but heck, why didn't he plan ahead?

However, Biden’s poor financial planning means that taxpayers will have to foot the bill for his retirement.

Maybe, just maybe, that was Biden's "financial plan" all along?

Still, it looks like Biden is going to swim against the tide of Republican career politicians giving up their government pensions and health care guarantees too. What, they haven't?

Well then I expect the Free Beacon will follow up the Biden story with other government trough feeders like Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner etc..

The moral of the story: Those nasty pensions and employee benefits drain resources from employers. Only moral wealthy people with lots of socked away money deserve comfortable retirements.

Biden on Parks and Recreation.

I really liked this scene from a show I don't watch. Opposing Views:

Vice President Joe Biden finally made it to prime time Thursday night as he made a cameo on the NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation."

Joe Biden on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Biden's a little too deadpan, but it works.

If the early-90s video archives are to be believed, vice president Joe Biden has been a champion of PBS for years: In 1993, he made a cameo appearance on the service's "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" a geography show for kids. 

Biden exposes Republican Weakness; Nothing to Backup Empty Policy.

Joe Biden didn't just own the VP debate against Paul Ryan, but he showed how easy it is to debate and discredit Republicans in mid-speech. Make no mistake, what Biden did was set the template for every other Democrat in the country to follow.  It's time to stop the conservative spin machine's disingenuous arguments and phony talking points before they have a chance to take root. When I have filled in on Sly in the Morning, I've stopped guests and callers in mid sentence just to clarify each blatant lie or false premise.

Republicans would like us to get distracted from noticing this important way to stop their propaganda. In the debates format, it didn't hurt to have an actual reporter familiar with the issues to hold both candidates facts to the fire.

The following clips are two of my favorites, among many. First, Ed Schultz presents his case in very much the same way I would have;



This is just an uninterupted section of the debate that I could watch over and over...

Ryan/Romney Play Victim Card to Manipulate Conservative Voters on Libya.

Exploitation of a tragedy. The Benghazi attack was the opportunity of a lifetime for Republicans, who were desperately losing the national security credentials. Of course they lost that when Bin Laden attacked on 9/11, and when they gave up the search for the terrorist leader. But the myth lived on within the lazy media. The Romney campaign needed to trump up something quick.

With the help of the lazy media, who will always appear balanced regardless of the facts, Republicans are again winning the hearts and minds of the low information independents. Paul Ryan, with his cartoonishly forced puppy dog eyes, took a shot at the embassy tragedy during the debate. Here are the budget cuts and comment from Hilary Clinton on those cuts:

The public might just be voting in what is largely a fake, unqualified candidate and VP for the ultimate goal of one party rule. A win is a win. The details back up Joe Biden's comments during the debate: 

NY Times: Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said White House officials were not told about requests for any additional security. “We weren’t told they wanted more security again,” Mr. Biden said.

-Diplomats on the ground sounded increasingly urgent alarms … embassy security officers warned their superiors at the State Department of a worsening threat from Islamic extremists, and requested that the teams of military personnel and State Department security guards who were already on duty be kept in service. The requests were denied, but they were largely focused on extending the tours of security guards at the American Embassy in Tripoli — not at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, 400 miles away. 

-Based on Congressional testimony, those security decisions appear to have been made largely by midlevel State Department security officials, and did not involve Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or her top aides. Patrick F. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “We are not an armed camp ready to fight it out.” “Our people can’t live in bunkers and do their jobs,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday. 

-At American diplomatic facilities overseas, the host nation is primarily responsible for providing security outside the compound’s walls. Inside the compound, the State Department is in charge, relying on a mix of diplomatic security officers, local contract guards and Marines. The Marines are responsible for guarding classified documents, which they are instructed to destroy if there is a breach of the compound. Senior diplomats are protected by diplomatic security officers, not a detachment of Marines, as Mr. Ryan asserted in Thursday night’s debate.

-NY Times: White House spokesperson Jay Carney accused Republicans of hypocrisy for voting against diplomatic security spending, singling out Mr. Ryan. “I find it rich that charges are made about concern over diplomatic security by those who routinely slash funding for diplomatic security to pay for tax cuts,” he said.

-Senior administration officials said Mr. Biden’s answer was accurate because while the embassy in Tripoli requested an extension of duty for 13 military or diplomatic security officers — which the State Department denied — it did not request additional guards for the mission in Benghazi. Moreover, they said, the request did not reach the White House.

Playing the Victim Card (just for good measure): The Romney/Ryan campaign will do anything to “win.”  Playing on the popular conservative notion that they’re being “victimized” again by the mean old liberals, Ryan successfully manipulated voter support for their bold faced lie and conspiracy theory. Ryan even admits responsibility for revving up the anger:

“First they blame a YouTube video and a nonexistent riot,” Mr. Ryan told supporters in Lancaster, Ohio. “Then when the country’s getting upset about it, they blame Romney and Ryan for getting people upset about it.” 

The Leader and the Liar....

Vice President Joe Biden said what Democratic voters, radio talk hosts and MSNBC has been saying for years, and he did it for everyone to hear. No wonder Republicans had nothing but whiny complaints about grins, teeth and disrespect.

Here's a compilation of clips, along with the Democratic Committee's Joe Woodhouse in Wisconsin, who couldn't have put any better:



Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein talk about Ryan's past attempts to destroy Social Security:

Still more Romney/Ryan off message, red meat BS about Joe Biden's "Chains" comment.

While complaining how Obama is avoiding talking about the big issues, Romney and Ryan keep sidetracking everyone with nit picky phony outrage over whatever they can spin or manufacture.

VP Joe Biden's "chains" comment is another in what is becoming a long list of political substance free topics.

Here with all the details and Republican contradictions, is Ed Schultz and Michael Eric Dyson.

"I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it more calmly today. I don’t think these guys understand us,"- Joe Biden

This headline and story so misses the point...