In 1980 Robert De Niro starred in the box office hit and critically acclaimed Raging Bull.  In 1998 the film critic website Rotten Tomatoes reviewed the movie.

The review’s first sentence proclaims “The film is a complex portrait of a man consumed by his rage, jealousy, and paranoia.”

The film grossed 23.4 million box office bucks.  That’s roughly the same cost of taking a family to the cinema today, but we digress.

It’s odd that a movie is reviewed 18 years after it debuted.   It’s also odd that the now 80-year-old actor took his unfettered rage, perhaps jealousy, and certain paranoia to the streets of New York yesterday.

He arrived wearing an N95 mask, but quickly dispatched it as he must have sensed everyone within social distance guidelines was as healthy as he is.  We digress again.

With the cameras rolling across the street from the latest Trump trial, De Niro stuck to his script until he didn’t.

After calling Trump a clown, he bellowed, “I love this city. I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city but the country, and eventually he can destroy the world.”

“I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait — maybe I do mean to scare you,” De Niro continued. “If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections — forget about it. That’s over; that’s done. If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave.”

Sounds ominous.

This was a planned event by the Biden campaign who previously ensured that they were keeping their distance from Trump’s trials to avoid the appearance that they were in any way politically motivated.

This ended that.

A top Biden adviser said they weren’t there to talk about the trial but rather to exploit the large media focus on the legal proceedings.

Isn’t the omnipresent media available for any president to “exploit?”  All Biden needs to do is call for a presser anytime and anywhere and the exploitation can begin.

“We’re not here today because of what’s going on over there,” Biden campaign communication director Michael Tyler told reporters, gesturing toward the courthouse. “We’re here today because you all are here.”

Truer words were always spoken.

Trump may be a clown, but the Biden/De Niro move was a circus outside a court filled with jesters.

And the Trump campaign shot back.  Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, called the Biden campaign “desperate and failing” and “pathetic” and said its event outside the trial was “a full-blown concession that this trial is a witch hunt that comes from the top.”

This “witch hunt” trial goes to the jury deliberation phase today.  Can Trump “the Clown” avert a verdict that will stop the show before the next three rings are placed under the tent? That one is the Mar A Lago classified documents case.  Or, will Fani and her lover boy try to get the tour to stop back in Atlanta?

A guilty verdict could put the man with orange hair in an orange jumpsuit.

It could also ensure his return to the White House.

If that happens De Niro said he was moving to Mars.

That’s better than Uranus.

 

 

As Donald Trump tries to stay out of jail, Prez Biden is burning up the campaign trail.

Monday, the White House issued nine corrections to his speech to the NAACP delivered Sunday.  This was only a day after he lit up like Sherman and nearly burned down Atlanta while speaking at HBCU Morehouse College.

“When I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic and what happened was, Barack said to me, ‘Go to Detroit! Help fix it,’” Biden said in the first minute he was at the podium.

We have questions. Did someone write this for him?  Doubtful.  Did he decide to ad-lib this?  Probable.

We have more questions.  Does he believe what he said?  Does he know what he said?  If you asked him today, would he remember what he said?

There was no COVID until years after Biden left the VP position.  And, Barack didn’t ask him to go to Detroit to fix COVID, though the way Biden spit out the two consecutive sentences you could infer that.

In the middle of COVID Biden would have been teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.  Or, at least he would tell you that he was.

He was likely bragging about a trip there to address the struggling auto industry way back when.

Speaking of way back when, are you old enough to remember when the fair and balanced press referred to Biden’s consistent foot-in-the-mouth problems as an “occasional gaffe?”

These lies are now coming faster than the climate crisis.  So is everything else for that matter, but we digress.

Whether Joe is in charge or is a prop isn’t worth the debate.  And, with the way they’re watered down the Presidential Debate makes it not worth it either.  But, you can see why they will as this circus now performs daily.

Meanwhile.

Yesterday, Biden asked for bids on 100 million barrels of US strategic oil by May 28 to be released by June 15th.  It’s time to hold down the price of July 4th car travel.  Capitalism meets government manipulation.  Buying a few votes never hurts.

Also yesterday we learned that the US will spend 9k this year per illegal alien to house, transport, and feed him.  This is the same that the US spends per Medicare patient per year from your previously taxed income.  From your pocket to theirs, national debt be dammed.   Buying a few future votes never hurts.

Only Biden’s doctor knows how doctored up he will be to continue this farce.

Close your eyes and picture Biden’s mental and physical health in, say 2027.

Trump should be finished with his court cases by then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back then the hits kept on coming for Brittney Spears.  One of her smashes was “Oops! I Did it Again!”

Back then plagiarism turned lies kept on coming for Joe Biden.  One of his smashes was when told us he conducted an Amtrak train on numerous trips.  Oops!

Brittney stopped making new music years ago.  Biden continues to cook up one whopper after another.  You’d think he works for 20$ minimum wage at Burger King.

But Wednesday’s falsehood has to be his Billboard no. 1 greatest hit.

On the campaign trail in Pittsburgh across the state from Scranton where he grew up in an Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican neighborhood and attended black churches, Biden addressed some more staged enthusiasts.

“And my uncle, they called him – Ambrose, they called him Bosie… and he became an Army Air Corps before the Air Force came along, he flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones,” Biden remarked.  “And he got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals – for real – in that part of the New Guinea.”

They call his “for real” squeal a tell at the poker table.   I have nothing in my hand.

US official investigations concluded old Ambrose, er, Bosie was shot down well out in the ocean.

Karine Pepe Jean Claude Le Pew Van Dame Eiffel Pierre, the first ever female black lesbian press secretary, tried to deflect on Thursday.  She said Biden “simply expressed how ‘incredibly proud’ he was of his uncle’s service in uniform.”

We wonder if he was equally proud of his service out of uniform.  We digress.

Do cannibals eat at Burger King?  No one else does.  We digress again.

There’s a bit of humor in all of this.

There’s more than a bit of sadness too.

And, most of all, this 81-year-old serial liar is our President.  And, he might be again.

It’s would hard to watch Brittney warbling her golden oldies in some smoke-filled room near the slot machines in a Minot, ND casino when she’s 81.

One is reminded of Jeb Bush’s request, “Please clap.”

 

 

 

 

President Biden was multitasking yesterday.

That unto itself is a rarity.   After all, there’s only so much time in his four-day workweek.

He was taking a victory lap on student debt loan forgiveness that he calls cancellation.  At the same time, he was stumping in Wisconsin for votes in the critical 2024 swing state.

He likes to personalize things.  While addressing debt and college, Biden said, “I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college, and watch my dad struggle to help me get there.”

Let’s unpack this pack of falsehoods.

First student loan debt isn’t cancelled.  Its obligation for repayment is transferred from the borrower who agreed to repay(the student) to the citizens of the US who now have to repay.    Instead of cancellation, we should call it more of the same- another pile of debt to stack on top of a mounting debt obligation.

Also, Biden wasn’t the first in his family to attend college.  How do we know?   One of the reasons we know it’s a lie is because Biden has bragged several times in the recent past about how his grandfather played college football.

Another reason why we know is because he told the same fib way back in 1987.   That is when The New York Times caught Biden making the same two contrary claims.

He was making his first run for president that year.  Yes, the “big guy” first ran for the big job nearly 40 years ago.   The NYT employed actual journalists back then.

The nearly 40-year-old article stated, “Mr. Biden had said he was the ‘first in his family ever to go to university.’ Mr. Biden said today, ‘There are Finnegans, my mother’s family, that went to college.’”  It goes on to intimate that several falsehoods drove him out of that failed campaign.

You know that old saying, “If, at first, you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”

How about when the supposed youthful Amtrack conductor aged to the point of reminding us, “We’ve reduced the deficit by 40 million, trillion, 80 billion, pick a number, come on man, you know, no joke.”

It is a joke, except it isn’t funny.

The oldest President has at least a 50/50 chance of adding to his age record with a second term as President.

And, with yesterday’s CPI number, is it safe to assume inflation isn’t under control?  And, therefore, is it safe to assume that interest rates aren’t coming down anytime soon?  Bidenomics.

That leads us to sharply increased borrowing costs, which leads us deeper into debt.  Bidenomics.

What would George Washington have said through his wooden teeth about all of this?  It might have started with “Father, I cannot tell a lie…”

Maybe we should ask Biden what Washington said.

Surely met George during the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

No joke.

 

 

The question is a simple one.  The answer is not.

Can the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, become the 47th President of the United States?

In 2016 it helped that he wore down a tired, old opponent who represented the swamp.  In 2020 an old, tired opponent who represents the swamp beat him. Now The Donald needs to unseat the man who unseated him.

And, Trump doesn’t like to lose.  In his mind, he never has.

The polls had it wrong in 2016.  The silent majority favored the outsider.  In 2024, the polls that constantly enter your medium of choice seem to favor Trump again.

And, the ones that examine the sitting President Biden conclude that he is an unpopular President that a majority feel is too old or unfit, or both to serve again.  And, boy does he sit a lot, especially when he visits the Delaware beaches each frequent three day weekend.  But, we digress.

Fox News, which used to be fair and balanced, trots out poll after poll showing Biden’s age a factor, the border is the biggest issue, inflation is a close second, his approval rating is lower than Jimmy Carter’s, the world is on fire, etc., and ad nauseam.

It’s over.  It’s a Trump landslide.  Except it isn’t.  It isn’t over, and it won’t be a landslide.

As an example of the hyperbole, more Michigan folks voted for Trump last evening in the Republican primary than all of the Democratic choices (Biden, some tool, and undecided) combined.

In Dearborn, where Biden hasn’t exactly endeared himself to the large Arab American and Muslim communities with his support of Israel, “undecided” beat Biden by 56 to 40 percent.  But, that doesn’t mean that they will show up in 8 months and vote for Trump, does it?

Remember, every vote counts.

A deeper dive will tell you that every vote doesn’t count.   Forty-something states are already decided barring something big changing the voting landscape.

And, when it gets down to the two, the DNC and Biden will launch a multifaceted negative campaign bigger than the daily one they preach now.  In November you have to count the folks that will never vote for Trump.  Are they the 2024 silent majority?

No current poll can accurately predict how many will hold their nose and vote for Biden because they can’t hold their nose and vote for Trump.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona, and maybe Colorado will decide the race.  And it will be a small subset of the voters therein.

Forty-something percent of the voters in those states will vote for Trump.  Forty-something percent of the voters in those states will vote for Biden.  That will leave about 12 percent of the citizens who vote in a handful of states to decide the final electoral college tally.

Trump didn’t want to turn in his bike at the end of the rental term.  Biden falls off of his regularly.

Trump took his classified documents and went home.  Biden already had his.

Trump is headed to the border tomorrow.  Biden is headed to the border tomorrow.

This could get interesting if it wasn’t already.

 

 

 

Thanks to Al Gore and Bluehost, our beloved website is running again after a nine-day buzz-killing journey into the IT NeverAgainLands.

To catch up we offer a much-needed Q and A.

Q.  Why is 97% of all gun violence in the blue counties and 97% of all gun ownership in the red counties?

A.  You know why.  The government knows why.

Q. Why was Ghislane Maxwell sentenced to jail for 20 years for sex trafficking minors to apparently no one?

A.  See the answer just above.

Q.  How did the “harsh” sanctions that the US imposed on Russia right after the Ukraine invasion harm them?

A.  They didn’t.  Biden promised a harsher round today.  Putin must be shaking in his Russian snow boots right about now.

Q. Why is it a crime when Trump takes out a loan and pays it back with interest it’s a crime, but when students don’t it isn’t.

A.  It buys votes.  It is a transfer of obligation from the student to the government.  That means you pay.  No biggie, just add 138 bil to 35 tril.

Q.  Why does Biden and a willing press call the student debt handout a “cancel of a loan?”

A.  See the answer just above.

Q.  Why does Senator Chuck Schumer say “Ted Cruz is the one who wants to do nothing on the border?”

A. It’s the blame game at its finest.  I blame you for what I do.  Many “low information voters,” as Rush used to call them, know no better.

Q.  Why does the IRS have paragraphs on its website that remind people that if they have income from stolen property or illegal activities they must report its FMV?

A. It’s the IRS.

Q.  Why don’t we have term limits for Congress?

Short A.  It takes away their power trip and money train.

Long A.  It must be approved by two-thirds of the members of both the House and Senate, and if ratified by three-fourths of the States, will limit United States Senators to two full, consecutive terms (12 years) and Members of the House of Representatives to six full, consecutive terms (12 years).  Can you see 2/3rds of those fine folks voting to limit themselves?

Q.  Per Biden, “Two million Americans live without running water, and tens of millions lack access to safe water.”  How can a man who has been a Senator since 1972, a VP for eight, and a Prez for three say that with a clear conscience?

A.  Have you seen him try to walk up stairs lately?

Q.  What do you say when you run out of questions?

A.  Have a good weekend.

 

If you like reading BBR, please pass it along to others who may as well today.  Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday we asked why.  Then, later yesterday we found out what.

That’s how DC works(if you call it that).  Remember Obamacare?  Old Nancy P. taught us that if you want to find out what’s in the bill you can read it after it’s passed.  Transparency be damned.

And the “what” or “whats” in the Senate bipartisan proposed Border Bill revealed throughout the day caused opposition to be loud and swift.

It was so swift that Mitch McConnell (or Benedict Arnold if you prefer), who sent Senator James Lankford(OK) to hammer it out from the Republican side, fed him to the lions by day’s end. Mitch stuck his finger in the DC breeze and felt political carnage was at his fingertip.  By late afternoon he was calling for an out loud “NO” vote in the Senate.

Matt Gaetz piled on tweeting “If Senator Lankford had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state would be in Mexico right now.”

Donald Trump sledgehammered, “This is a Democrat trap. It’s a trap for Republicans, it’s one of the dumbest bills I’ve ever seen.”

Senator Josh Hawley said, “McConnell is one of the most corrupt politicians to ever walk the face of the earth!!!”  By this AM he is said to be calling for a vote for McConnell’s removal.

Geez.  What’s everyone so up in arms about?  In short-everything.  Simply put, the bill legalizes illegal immigration.

There are provisions in place to stem the tide.  But a deeper dive into the details provides all of those dreaded loopholes (like cutting razor wire) for illegal migrants to continue to enter unabated.

One little detail states that the daily count of what would now be allowable illegal entry would exclude any person(s) from a noncontiguous country.  If they aren’t Mexicans, they don’t count against the 5k daily max that can be imposed.

Another states that the President would have the unilateral power to suspend the bill’s enforcement anytime should he deem to do so as necessary.

They snuck 10 billion in aid to the Palestinians and promised 400 million to Non-Governmental Organizations(NGOs) like the Red Cross to assist in this humanitarian (ahem) effort.  What’s a bill in DC without a full serving of pork?

The posturing from the Democrats was swift.  Chuck Schumer said that history was watching us today.   Biden said that a standalone Israel relief bill of $17.6 in aid will get vetoed if it reaches his desk.   If we get no border bill you’ll get no Ukraine or Israel money.

In 2021 the Dems said the border was under control.  Same with 2022 and 2023.  Now it’s a crisis that coincides with a political election in November.

Mitch McConnell is a Ukraine hawk.  Joe Biden is an open-border hawk.

Stated differently, you have a guy who cannot finish sentences at a podium attempting to scratch the back of a guy who can’t finish sentences at the biggest podium of all.

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the rest of the play?

 

 

 

While campaigning never really ends, the rhetoric for the general election this November began ramping up last week as 2023 turned to 2024.

President Biden returned from 17 days worth of back-to-back vacations just long enough to remind us that “Donald Trump is a real threat to our Democracy.”  Then he retreated to Delaware for the weekend.

The marketing geniuses that sold the Biden camp on “Bidenomics” thought it better to attack the presumptive opponent than to continue to yell down the well about the current state of the American economy.  Smart.

If you don’t vote for me, America as you know it will end.  More than a few old crotchety folks might welcome that.

The Donald responded by saying effectively, and effectively saying, “What else can he say, he can’t run on his accomplishments.”

You can expect to hear more, and more, and more about how bad Trump is.  Never forget J6.  Remember that he refuses to accept elections.  Remember that he was twice impeached.

Forget for a moment that Nikki Haley polls way better v Biden than Trump does.  Nikki has to win the semifinal to get to the finals.  She’s a big underdog in the semis.

If it is Trump v Biden, Trump would be well served to listen to those who would want him to stay above the bare-knuckle personal attacks and simply compare his four years to Biden’s.

It’s the old “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” spiel.  And, since he’s been there and done that he could ask,” Are you better off now than you were five, six, seven, and eight years ago when I was in office?” as well.

The big picture is very clear and the subject matter is very dear.  The big three of the economy, the border, and foreign policy all tilt heavily Trump’s way in any poll taken.

People vote with their wallets.  Bidenomics gets smashed in polling.  Inflation in the grocery stores and interest rates at the bank are the kill shots.  Under Trump, they were quite tame regardless of why.

People overwhelmingly disagree with the sieve that the southern border has become.  Trump wanted and still wants to build the wall and deport the illegal migrants.

Unrest across the ponds to our east and west was mostly quiet from 2016 to 2020.  Now?  Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Taiwan, China, Palestine, and Israel are shouting at each other.

The contrasts are crystal clear.

So, who’s a bigger threat to our democracy?  Is it election-denier Trump?  Or is it incompetent and incoherent Biden?

It’s there for the taking if Trump stays on message and out of the mud.

Will he?  Will his ego let him?

Can he?  Will the courts let him?

The election is less than 10 months from today.

Buckle up.