Joe Biden Appears to Forget What Office He's Running for (Again) During Victory Speech

In a choice between senility or socialism, Democrat primary voters appear to be falling in line behind the former. I guess that's a good thing. But, questions about Joe Biden cognitive decline have been raised for a long time now, and it's hard to understand how the Democratic Party settled on Crazy Joe as their safe choice for runnig against Donald Trump.

In the past few weeks alone, we've seen Joe Biden forget where he is, what he's running for, who his wife and sister are, Barack Obama's name, and the words to the Declaration of Independence. The gaffes just keep piling up.

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume believes that Biden is  "is losing his memory and is getting senile," and he is certainly not alone in that assessment.

On Tuesday night, Biden won big once again, but there was a moment during his victory speech that was concerning.

“These are all people been working like the devil to try to get us elected as the, uh…so I want to thank you,” he said. Did Biden forget what office he's running for... again? It sure looks that way.

Joe Biden: "These are all people been working like the devil to try to get us elected as the, uh, so I want to thank you" Did Biden again forget which office he is running for???

Last month he told a group of people that he was running for the U.S. Senate

How does one watch this and not be concerned? Especially when you consider the other recent gaffes that call into question Biden's cognitive health.

Worse yet, there was a another moment when Biden appeared to slur his speech while saying "education."

This is the guy Democrats are likely gonna have run against President Trump. Good luck with that.

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'Moderate' Joe Biden has moved way to the left

by Jeff Jacoby

FOR MUCH of the past year, the broad storyline of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign has been that Democrats are united in a fierce determination to oust President Trump, but divided over how best to do so. To the "progressive" camp, the Trump presidency represents a crisis that can be halted and reversed only with the boldest, most sweeping changes in US policy. The "moderate" camp, by contrast, believes that the only way to beat Trump is with a candidate who can appeal to more than just hardcore Democrats — who can reach independents and even some centrist Republicans with a program that eschews radical excess, appeals to the sober mainstream, and holds out the promise, in a famous phrase from American presidential history, of a return to normalcy.

The nomination battle has effectively come down to a two-man race: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders occupies the progressive lane, and former Vice President Joe Biden is running in the moderate lane. No one doubts Sanders's leftist credentials. But is Biden really a moderate?

To hear some leftists tell it, Biden is not only moderate, but intolerably so. When, at one progressive conference, he was described as seeking "middle ground" on climate policy, Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was contemptuous: "I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act come back today and say we need a middle-of-the-road approach to save our lives."

Biden may seem hopelessly accommodationist to those on the Democratic Party's leftmost fringe. But in reality, he is running on a platform far more progressive — i.e., far less moderate — than any Democratic presidential nominee in history.

One of Biden's foremost selling points is the eight years he spent as vice president in the last Democratic administration. In St. Louis over the weekend, he spooneristically proclaimed himself an "O'Biden-Bama Democrat." If Biden wins the nomination, he can count on robust support from Obama, perhaps the most beloved figure within the Democratic Party today.

Yet on issue after issue, Biden has veered sharply from Obama's path.

On health insurance, for example, Obama rejected a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act and repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining private coverage. But Biden favors a public option open to everyone, including the majority of Americans with employer-sponsored health coverage.

Biden supports government-funded health care even for unauthoritzed immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing. He supports a sharp increase in US refugee admissions, and a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. When Obama ran for the White House in 2008, by contrast, it was as an enforcement-first hardliner. He cracked down so hard on those who crossed the border illegally, he was known for much of his presidency as the "deporter-in-chief."

No Democratic presidential nominee ever endorsed anything like the radical Green New Deal, with its price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars and its goal of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels. But Biden does. No Democratic nominee ever called for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. But Biden does. The former vice president has moved emphatically leftward on abortion, on the death penalty, on free trade. By any understanding of "moderate" as that term was used when Obama or Bill Clinton was president, Biden is no moderate.

What Biden is today is what he has always been: a liberal Democrat. But as his party has shifted left in a hyperpolarized era, Biden has shifted with it. Many of the positions he takes that are described as centrist today, observed Axios in January, "would have been liberal dreams during the Bill Clinton years and still out of reach in the Obama era." On policy, Biden is a moderate primarily in the sense that he embraces positions that most Democrats no longer fight over.

All of which means that even if Biden wins the Democratic nomination, progressive Democrats will have reason to rejoice. Their party's standard-bearer will be someone whose platform skews further to the left than any major party platform in US history. Sanders may not end up on the November ballot, but it will unmistakably reflect his influence. For he and his band of progressives have pushed their party to the left with such success that even the "moderate" in the race would be the most liberal Democrat ever nominated for president.

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Supreme Court Allows Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program to Stay in Place

The nation’s highest court on Wednesday ruled that the White House’s "Remain in Mexico" program, also known as Migrant Protection Protocols, can remain effective for the entire southern border while a legal challenge continues on. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Supreme Court delivered a win for the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, blocking a federal court injunction that would have limited a program that requires asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico.

The nation’s highest court on Wednesday ruled that the White House’s “Remain in Mexico” program, also known as Migrant Protection Protocols, can remain effective for the entire southern border while a legal challenge continues on. The decision allows the administration to continue fully implementing an initiative that, it contends, has monumentally helped control the border crisis.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in March declared that it would block the Migrant Protection Protocols in Arizona and California—two states within its jurisdiction—on March 12 unless the Supreme Court weighed in.

The Supreme Court justices did intervene with just one day left, granting the administration’s application for a stay.

The White House immediately celebrated the ruling.

“We are gratified that the Supreme Court granted a stay, which prevents a district court injunction from impairing the security of our borders and the integrity of our immigration system,” a Department of Justice spokesperson said Wednesday.

“The Migrant Protection Protocols, implemented pursuant to express authority granted by Congress decades ago, have been critical to restoring the government’s ability to manage the Southwest border and to work cooperatively with the Mexican government to address illegal immigration,” the spokesperson continued.

Remain in Mexico, which was launched in January 2019, has become President Donald Trump’s most effective tool at controlling the U.S immigration crisis. The program requires most non-Mexican nationals who claim asylum at the U.S. southern border to wait in Mexico for the entirety of their court proceedings.

Since its inception, Migrant Protection Protocols has sent around 60,000 asylum-seekers across the border to wait in Mexico, mostly eliminating the possibility for them to be released into the interior of the U.S.

The decision on Wednesday marks the latest back-and-forth between the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals—which has proven hostile to Trump’s immigration agenda—blocked the Remain in Mexico program for the entire southern border in February. However, the court immediately suspended that order after the Trump administration filed an emergency motion requesting a stay.

The appeals court then declared this month it would block it in Arizona and California, but the nation’s highest court—once again—put a stop to that order Wednesday.

However, the legality of the program itself has not been ruled on by the Supreme Court. The order on Wednesday simply allows it to remain in place as the legal challenge against it runs through the court system.

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British Budget 2020 summary

The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a range of policies to support business, bolster the NHS and prepare for Britain's long-term future

Addressing the coronavirus crisis, he said that this British parliament had a great tradition of rising above party in times of peril: he was sure that the House and the country were ready to act “in the national interest”. We would, he said, get through this together. The British people were worried but not daunted. This was well said and all the more effective for being obviously true.

Then he got to the substance of the Government’s plan for coping with the economic effects of the pestilence – even while making it clear that this was not going to be an excuse for putting all the Government’s election promises on indefinite hold. This was clever too. A plague Budget would have looked like an excuse for a cop-out on the difficult future and it would have added to the alarming sense of national emergency.

So first there were the measures to mitigate the damage of the virus and the Government’s own advice to stay at home. These were serious. The first priority had to be the protection of small businesses which were most likely to go under. The immediate problems for them were the new Government edict that they must pay statutory sick pay from the first day of  any enforced absence by staff. The cost of that, he announced, would be directly met by the Government: the Treasury would refund employers 14 days of sick pay for their self-isolating staff. For the self-employed and those in the gig economy whose livelihoods would simply vanish if they were forced to stay at home, there was help too.

The minimum income base for Universal Credit would be suspended and payment of the benefit would be accelerated. There was an even more stupendous development for the owners of small high street businesses whose business rates would be suspended for the duration of the present emergency. There would also be loans – a new Business Interruption Loan Scheme – for those damaged by loss of customer demand. Between them, these measures could save a good many small enterprises and family firms.

Of course there was to be more money for the NHS and for research into the virus itself. But perhaps of more immediate effect for the availability of treatment to patients was the reform of the pensions tax taper. By increasing the threshold, the Chancellor said, he would be taking 98 per cent of consultants and GPs out of the taper altogether. This should have a quite miraculous effect on the imminent retirement plans of so many senior doctors and thus provide a significant improvement in the staffing levels of primary care services.

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IN BRIEF

FOR THE RECORD: Here's why coronavirus stats are fake news (CNSNews.com)

VULNERABLE OLD MEN: Next Democrat debate to be held without an audience (CBS News)

ACRIMONY: Saudi Arabia throws down gauntlet to Russia, raises crude oil supply to record high (The Daily Wire)

SEEMS LEGIT: Hunter Biden to skip deposition in paternity case, citing coronavirus and pregnant wife (Washington Examiner)

"A REAL LEADER": President Trump endorses Tommy Tuberville over Jeff Sessions in Alabama Senate runoff (National Review)

POLICY: ObamaCare at 10: A massive failure (Issues & Insights)

POLICY: Why social-justice investing is a load of politicized hypocrisy (The Federalist)

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