Disturbing portion of his speech on 5/28:

I sometimes get criticized for saying what I deeply believe, having done this for the bulk of my life. We’re in a battle between democracies and autocracies. The more complicated the world becomes the more difficult is for democracies to come together and reach consensus.

President Joe Biden: (38:41)
I’ve spent more time with President Xi of China than any world leader has, for 24 hours of private meetings with him, with just an interpreter. 17,000 miles traveling with him in China and here. He firmly believes that China, before the year 3035, is going to own America, because autocracies can make quick decisions.

President Joe Biden: (39:12)
But America is unique. Of all nations in the world, we’re the only nation organized based on an idea. Every other nation you can define by their ethnicity, their geography, their religion, except America.

President Joe Biden: (39:38)
America is born out of an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, et cetera.

President Joe Biden: (39:57)
None of you get your rights from your government. You get your rights merely because you are a child of God. The government is there to protect those God given rights. No other government has been based on that notion.

President Joe Biden: (40:19)
No one can defeat us except us. It’s an idea that generation of patriots have fought and died for and defended.


The complete speech is here:https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/joe-biden-jill-biden-memorial-day-weekend-speech-transcript-hampton-virginia

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
It must be hell on sign language interpreters, trying to keep up with him.

Does any conservative watch dogs fact check them?

Joe is such an inspiration!

Kamala is on a roll too. She made a stupid Marine joke during her US Naval Academy commencement speech that she cackled at uncontrollably, while the audience groaned. She also doesn't seem to comprehend that solar panels & wind turbines usually need batteries for energy storage.
https://www.foxnews.com/politi...demy-graduation-joke

Biden Budget Said to Assume Capital-Gains Tax Rate Increase Started in Late April

WASHINGTON—President Biden’s expected $6 trillion budget assumes that his proposed capital-gains tax rate increase took effect in late April, meaning that it would already be too late for high-income investors to realize gains at the lower tax rates if Congress agrees, according to two people familiar with the proposal.

Mr. Biden’s plan would raise the top tax rate on capital gains to 43.4% from 23.8% for households with income over $1 million. He would also change the tax rules for unrealized capital gains held until death.

The effective date for the capital-gains tax rate increase would be tied to Mr. Biden’s announcement of the tax increase as part of his American Families Plan, which includes an expanded child tax credit and funding for preschool and community college. He detailed the plan April 28, and the budget will be released Friday. White House representatives didn’t immediately comment.

Congress must still approve any rate changes and retroactive effective dates, and there is already wariness about the full capital-gains tax plan building among some congressional Democrats.

Some, such as Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), have said they want to maintain a lower tax rate for capital gains than for ordinary income. And lawmakers from farm states, including Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) and Rep. Cindy Axne (D., Iowa) have objected to the changes on capital gains at death.

The leaders of the six biggest U.S. banks, testifying to Congress Thursday, each warned that a retroactive change to the capital-gains tax would spook small businesses and investors, likely causing economic damage.

“Anything that is retroactive creates extra anxiety and extra uncertainty, and that would just slow down economic activity,” said David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “So I think retroactivity is something to be very, very cautious about. And I do think a chilling of investment activity through a higher capital-gains tax is something to also think through carefully.”

The administration has generally been trying to avoid imposing retroactive tax increases, and many of its proposals would take effect in 2022. But capital gains are different, because the rate increase is so significant, and because taxpayers have so much control over when they report income.

A White House official previously said that the effective date would be designed with Congress to prevent taxpayers from taking advantage of any gap before the tax increase started.

Retroactive tax increases have occurred before and courts generally give Congress leeway to exercise its taxing powers.

“I just think retroactive tax policy is terrible policy,” said Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.). “People have made plans and relied on current law and current policy and you can’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”

‘I just think retroactive tax policy is terrible policy’— Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.)
The rationale for retroactivity is that there is a long history of taxpayers accelerating capital gains before tax increases take effect. Capital-gains realizations jumped 60% in 1986 and 40% in 2012 before tax increases took effect, according to the Tax Policy Center, a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

Capital gains are concentrated among very-high-income households, and Mr. Biden has focused on them as a way to raise money for his plans and to combat income inequality.

The rate increase and the changes to the treatment of gains at death are tied together.

Currently, people who die with unrealized gains don’t pay any income taxes. Their heirs pay only when they sell assets and only on any gains since the prior owner’s death. That gives people an incentive to hold on to appreciated assets and, without the proposed change to the tax rules at death, the higher tax rate would prompt more people to hold assets until death.
The Biden proposal would apply income taxes to those unrealized gains at death. It would have a $1 million per-person exemption, plus existing exclusions for gains on principal residences. Family-owned farms and businesses would get special rules that would defer their taxes as long as they own and operate the businesses.

Taxing capital gains at death is different from the estate tax, which is based on net worth and currently has an exemption of $11.7 million per person. The administration hasn’t proposed any changes to that tax.

SURE SOUNDS LIKE SOCIALISM TO ME.
LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/b...-started-in-late-apr

Even James Carville knows the DEMs ae over reaching

Democratic strategist James Carville argued that some diversity training “has hit the racket stage.”


“I’m sure I do things in my everyday life that I could do better in terms of that.

But you start out and you say, ‘All right, you sorry white sack of racist shit,’ and then, okay, well, I don’t want to listen to you anymore.

You’ve lost me there. If you start out and you say there are ways that you communicate with people that you don’t realize that there are things that you’re doing that send the wrong signal. I’m all ears.

But — and by the way, this guy Eric Hoffer…said, every movement starts out as a cause, morphs into a business, and ends up a racket. Part of this diversity training stuff, I’m sure, has hit the racket stage.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Diversity training is a racket. Big bucks going to "training" us we are racists

Err, he's only now figured out that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton spent years running rackets? I guess he doesn't make it up to New York City all that often. Well, either that, or it's taken decades for him to feel that he could address (obliquely) the racketeering that's been going on for decades.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
I hate posting this but it appears to be legit.
A "little girl" is referred to in the article but no age given except Joe's 19 year old fantasy. I guess 19 is safe in any jurisdiction. I can't embed the vid --


WATCH: Joe Biden Stops Dead in Middle of Speech and Delivers Creepiest Comment to Little Girl

Can anyone tell us if the sign language interpretation followed Joe’s words?
Was Joe’s creepiness translated as spoken?

This story is about another attempt by Biden and the race hustler professionals to feed the flames of eternal black victimhood.

The "event" to be publicized is about something that happened 100 years ago.

https://www.breitbart.com/ente...ohn-legend-canceled/

A nationally televised event commemorating the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, featuring appearances by Stacey Abrams and singer John Legend, has been canceled just four days before broadcast, with organizers blaming “ unexpected circumstances with entertainers and speakers.”

“Remember & Rise,” which was scheduled for broadcast Monday, was supposed to feature Stacey Abrams delivering a keynote address to a crowd of 6,000 people at the ONEOK Field in Tulsa.

In a statement sent to multiple media outlets, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission didn’t elaborate on the causes of the sudden cancellation.

President Joe Biden is still scheduled to visit Tulsa on Tuesday to commemorate the centenary of the massacre

what might be the "unexpected circumstances" of the sudden cancellation?

CBS News reported that Monday’s broadcast was canceled after a lawyer representing massacre survivors and their heirs made demands that the organizing commission considered unreasonable. The demands reportedly included $1 million each for survivors of the massacre and a non-negotiable $50 million pledge to a fund for survivors and descendants.

how many survivors are there from 1921 ?

How many cities have we seen black and Antifa rioters burn and loot in the last 10 years ?

Will any politician say they love America?

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:

Can anyone tell us if the sign language interpretation followed Joe’s words?
Was Joe’s creepiness translated as spoken?

I've since read the girl is nine.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news...murti-152149910.html

The VP is a disgrace.

more detail on the earlier post about the Tulsa event being canceled

https://www.aol.com/news/tulsa...celed-204357476.html

A cornerstone event of the Tulsa Race Massacre commemoration in Oklahoma was abruptly canceled because lawyers representing survivors and descendants demanded a higher fee for their participation in the event than had been originally agreed upon, a commission official said.

Legal representatives for the three living survivors approached the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission about including them in the "Remember and Rise" occasion in return for $100,000 each and a $2 million seed gift to a reparations coalition fund , state Sen. Kevin Matthews, chairman of the commission, said in a Friday press conference.

The parties agreed to those terms, he said.

At the last minute, the lawyers representing the survivors moved to change the agreement, requesting $1 million for each and $50 million for the fund, said Matthews, who did not take questions.

"We could not respond to those demands," he said. "I absolutely want the survivors, the descendants and others that were affected to be financially and emotionally supported, however this is not the way, no matter how hard we try."

Lawyers representing the survivors and descendants did not return requests for comment.

^^^^

And how much did BLM rake in last year? Couldn't kick in a few millie for some survivors? Could have probably negotiated the 50 down to 5 or 10.

Demands? Demands!
[FLASH_VIDEO] [/FLASH_VIDEO]

Appellate Court Strikes Down Racial And Gender Preferences In Biden's COVID Relief Law

https://www.zerohedge.com/mark...ens-covid-relief-law

This judicial ruling about the raging debates over group-based benefits vividly highlights the social, political and culture divisions driving U.S. politics...

A federal appellate court on Thursday invalidated the racial and gender preferences in President Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act as unconstitutional. The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit of Appeals ruled that provisions of that law, designed to grant preferences to minority-owned small-restaurant owners for COVID relief, violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The specific provision struck down was part of the law's $29 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant program for small, privately owned restaurants struggling to meet payroll and rent due to the COVID crisis. The law, which was passed almost entirely by a party-line vote in March, grants priority status to restaurants that have 51% ownership or more composed of specific racial and ethnic groups as well as women. By effectively relegating struggling businesses owned by white males or ethnicities and nationalities excluded from a priority designation “to the back of the line,” the COVID relief program, ruled the court by a 2-1 decision, ran afoul of core constitutional guarantees.

The ruling is not only constitutionally significant in its own right but also vividly reflective of broader societal debates over how race and gender categories ought to be treated when set next to class. The parties to this case as well as the judges involved in the ruling themselves highlight the pervasive conflicts created by race and gender preferences.

The lawsuit was brought by Jake’s Bar and Grill, a restaurant jointly owned by Antonio Vitolo, who is white, and his wife, who is Hispanic. If Vitolo's wife owned more than 50% of the restaurant, then Jake’s Bar and Grill would be eligible to receive priority treatment for a grant, since her ethnicity qualifies as “socially and economically disadvantaged” under the law. But because she only owns 50% — her white husband owns the other half — the restaurant's application cannot be considered until the Small Business Administration (SBA) first processes all applications from restaurants entitled to priority status based on race and gender, as well as veteran status.

The Vitolos’ restaurant, said the court, “has struggled during the pandemic—it closed on weekdays and offered to-go orders on weekends. It lost workers and a considerable amount in sales.” For that reason, they filed their application for a grant under the COVID relief bill on the first day the SBA accepted applications, which was May 1. But under the law, their application could not be considered until the 21-day period reserved for priority businesses elapsed. If all of the allocated grant money were exhausted during that designated 21-day period — as the Vitolos feared — then Jake’s Bar and Grill and other non-minority-owned struggling businesses would receive no relief.

The Vitolos filed a lawsuit against the SBA administrator asking that the race-and-gender-based scheme be enjoined and that, instead, their application be processed without regard to their race. Though the district court judge rejected the request on a variety of procedural and substantive grounds, the three-judge appellate panel yesterday ruled in their favor.

The court ordered the government to cease “using these unconstitutional criteria when processing Antonio Vitolo’s application.” The majority expressed the crux of its ruling simply: “This case is about whether the government can allocate limited coronavirus relief funds based on the race and sex of the applicants. We hold that it cannot."

The appellate judge who wrote the majority opinion is Amul Thapar. He made history when, in 2008, he became the first-ever South Asian judge appointed to the U.S. federal bench after being selected by then-President George W. Bush. The son of immigrants from India, whose father owns a heating and air-conditioning supply business in Toledo, Ohio, Thapar was elevated to the Sixth Circuit in 2017 after first being considered by President Trump for the Supreme Court vacancy ultimately filled by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amul Thapar authored a ruling invalidating the race and gender preferences in President Biden's COVID relief bill, May 27, 2021 (photo: Court of Appeals)

Thapar's ruling contains multiple indirect references to his own ethnicity and race. Among the components of the racial preference scheme that clearly offended his constitutional sensibilities was the seemingly arbitrary classification calculus — what he called a "scattershot approach” — used to determine which groups do and do not qualify as “socially and economically disadvantaged” under SBA regulations. As Judge Thapar put it:

[I]ndividuals who trace their ancestry to Pakistan and India qualify for special treatment. But those from Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq do not. Those from China, Japan, and Hong Kong all qualify. But those from Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco do not.

The racial divisions and ethnic categories imposed on the citizenry for determining which restaurants are eligible for COVID relief are, in his view, as irrational as they are discriminatory. One hypothetical invoked by Judge Thapar illustrated the precise racial discrimination which, in his view, the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection guarantee was created to avoid:

Imagine two childhood friends—one Indian, one Afghan. Both own restaurants, and both have suffered devastating losses during the pandemic. If both apply to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, the Indian applicant will presumptively receive priority consideration over his Afghan friend. Why? Because of his ethnic heritage. It is indeed “a sordid business” to divide “us up by race.” League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 511 (2006) (opinion of Roberts, C.J.). And the government’s attempt to do so here violates the Constitution.

Thapar was referencing the fact that under SBA regulations, a person is deemed “socially and economically disadvantaged” if they are “black, Hispanic, or Native American.” They are deemed presumptively disadvantaged as “Asian Pacific Americans” only “if they have origins from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Republic of Palau), Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Samoa, Macao, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru.” Meanwhile, for a person to qualify as “Subcontinent Asian Americans,” they “must have origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands, or Nepal."

If a person is in one or more of those groups, they are deemed presumptively disadvantaged — and thus entitled to priority grant allocation — unless “someone comes forward” with “credible evidence to the contrary.” But if someone is not in one of those groups — not just if they are white or male but also from any of the countries excluded from the preferred designations — then they can qualify only if they “prove they have experienced racial or ethnic discrimination or cultural bias by a preponderance of the evidence,” a process filled with lengthy delay and red tape.

If they fail to demonstrate this to the satisfaction of the SBA, then they must wait, and perhaps never receive relief. As Judge Thapar put it, “the schedule of racial preferences detailed in the government’s regulation—preferences for Pakistanis but not Afghans; Japanese but not Iraqis; Hispanics but not Middle Easterners—is not supported by any record evidence at all." The law, in his words, is designed for “presumptively sending men from non-favored racial groups (including whites, some Asians, and most Middle Easterners) to the back of the line.”

Thapar, who was joined in the decision by Reagan-appointed Judge Alan Norris, recognized that racial and gender preferences are sometimes constitutionally permissible under Supreme Court jurisprudence, but only if “the government has a compelling interest” in giving some racial and ethnic groups preferential treatment, and only if the preferences are "narrowly tailored,” whereby “the government must show ‘serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives.’”

The court ruled the preference scheme in the COVID relief law constitutionally insufficient for multiple reasons. Among them was the lack of a specific nexus between the discrimination suffered by the favored groups and prior government action. Equally significant, said the court, was the existence of numerous race-neutral alternatives to the problems identified by the government that they are trying to fix: namely, that minority-and-female owned businesses have had greater difficulty obtaining credit or prior COVID relief funds. “The government could,” said the court, “grant priority consideration to all business owners who were unable to obtain needed capital or credit during the pandemic,” rather than only those who are from preferred racial groups. Or the state “could simply grant priority consideration to all small business owners who have not yet received coronavirus relief funds” (emphasis added).

But instead of a targeted effort to assist all American small-restaurant owners who have suffered equally from the pandemic, the law arbitrarily grants priority to some based on racial or gender identity that has no necessary relationship to economic suffering. The law, for instance, favors white women over Middle Eastern men. And it grants priority to ethnic groups that are among the highest earners in the U.S. — including Indian-Americans and specific groups of Asian-Americans — over lower-earning groups including white men and Middle Easterners.



Group-based income levels in the from 2013-15 U.S. Census Bureau data. Data from subsequent years adheres to these trends.

The court explained this irrational approach in the context of striking down the law's gender preference:

The priority system is designed to fast-track applicants hardest hit by the pandemic. Yet under the Act, all women-owned restaurants are prioritized—even if they are not “economically disadvantaged.” Pub. L. No. 117-2, § 5003(c)(3)(A). So whether a given restaurant did better or worse than a male-owned restaurant next door is of no matter—as long as the restaurant is at least 51% women owned and otherwise meets the statutory criteria, it receives priority status. Because the government made no effort to tailor its priority system, we cannot find that the sex-based distinction is “substantially related” to the objective of helping restaurants disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

In sum, divvying up Americans by race and gender and determining who, on that basis, is entitled to benefits and who is not, is something that is constitutionally permissible only in the narrowest and most extreme circumstances. In the view of the court, the race and gender preferences embedded in the COVID relief bill for small-restaurant owners did not come anywhere near that requisite justification. “As today’s case shows once again,” concluded the court, quoting a prior Supreme Court ruling, the ‘way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’”

The dissenting judge, Bernice Donald, is an African-American woman who was first appointed to the federal bench in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, then elevated to the Sixth Circuit in 2011 by President Barack Obama. Her dissenting opinion thoroughly captures the broader political arguments in favor of providing race-and-gender-based preferences.

“It took nearly 200 years for the Supreme Court to firmly establish that our Constitution permits the government to use race-based classifications to remediate past discrimination,” she wrote, but “only seven days for the majority to undermine that longstanding and enduring principle.” Echoing the argument made by those who advocated for such legislative preferences in the first place, Judge Donald insisted that the purportedly race-blind majority opinion ignores systemic realities about how the United States functions and the damages it imposes on specific groups of people:

The majority’s conclusion that Plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief requires us to make several assumptions. The majority’s reasoning suggests we live in a world in which centuries of intentional discrimination and oppression of racial minorities have been eradicated. The majority’s reasoning suggests we live in a world in which the COVID-19 pandemic did not exacerbate the disparities enabled by those centuries of discrimination. The majority’s reasoning suggests that we live in a world in which Congress passed the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (“RRF”) not to aid the nation’s economic recovery, but to arbitrarily provide special treatment to racial minorities and women.

She also argued that the evidence is overwhelming that the racial and gender preferences in the law correspond to those most discriminated against by COVID struggles. Citing the legislative process and the judicial hearing, she said “experts offered evidence showing that minority-owned businesses were more vulnerable to economic distress than businesses owned by white entrepreneurs—they were more likely to operate in retail, accommodation, food services, and personal care services industries, which were hardest hit by government shut-down orders and a decrease in foot traffic.” Beyond that, she said, minority-owned businesses were more likely to be in areas with higher rates of COVID-19 infections.”

Judge Donald seemed to concede that no scheme of racial or gender preferences will perfectly match the realities of the population. Some people who do not suffer as much will receive race-based benefits, while others who suffer more will be denied them. But such schemes, in her view, are nonetheless constitutionally justified given the "broad-based emergency legislation designed to fight business fallout that is uniquely and directly tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Given the one-time emergency nature of this grant, she said, "we must avoid hurried judicial decision-making under such circumstances,” and should grant extra deference to the legislature regarding its assessments of how best to help a struggling population.

Judge Donald's core argument is that racial and gender preferences, even if imperfectly targeted, are justified to cure widespread racial and gender inequalities.

“Entrepreneurs of color have had specific difficulty in accessing business capital,” she said, while “banks require more documentation from minority applicants but approve loans less often or for lower amounts” and “minority entrepreneurs had lower familial and household incomes, decreasing access to private capital.”

But what of the solutions proposed by the majority, which would target people based on need rather than race and gender? Judge Donald conceded that “in normal times, there may be some force to the majority’s position,” but given the need to “act fast,” some imperfections are inevitable. The Congress, she said, is far better positioned than the Court to assess what is best for the nation during an emergency.”

The undercurrents and conflicts driving this case are highly illustrative of broader cultural debates. Indeed, the case captures the core question driving much politics in the U.S. and the West: is it remedial, or bigoted, to continue to divide people based on race and gender and determine their official rights, benefits and preferences based on their membership in demographic groups rather than the realities of their individual lives?

Specific states, such as Oregon, have explicitly set aside millions of dollars in COVID relief funds available only to black residents. Such race-based benefits across the nation have prompted similar litigation and have resulted in many of these funds being frozen pending their outcome (a Mexican-American resident of Oregon who sued the state over the state's black-only relief fund had her case rejected).

This latest appellate ruling — at least when it comes to COVID relief for small-restaurant owners in the Sixth Circuit (parts of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee) — resolves that question in favor of individual treatment and against group-based preferences. But that specific decision is likely to be appealed to the full court and perhaps the Supreme Court and, either way, this specific race and gender debate will continue to rage.

I don't see Italian-Americans on that graph. We must be really low on the totem pole.

(Still probably higher than the Mick's though )

quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
The VP is a disgrace.

This is why we have a "long weekend," you clueless bitch.

This picture says it all.