To hell with Malarkey, we gotta stop this BS and Joe’s the one to do it. (via Wikipedia)

There was a crisis in America even before the shroud of the coronavirus fell upon us. But now, nearly eight months after COVID-19 seized the globe, it has never been more clear how grossly inadequate and incompetent our current leadership is and why Joseph R. Biden must take the helm come January.

Donald Trump defames, defaces, and debauches the office of the president almost daily. His government is little better than an incompetent La Cosa Nostra ripoff. We are a crueler, poorer, sicker and weaker nation with him. With Biden we can stronger, healthier, fairer and kinder.

Upon election, many feared his administration would usher in a parade of biblical horrors from plagues to polychromatic horsemen. Little did we know that would prove so true, many all at once in the final year of his term.

None were inevitable. Our nation’s pathetic response to the virus and the inept leadership left us vulnerable. It has made America the only first-world nation so horribly ill-prepared. Even as other nations see their numbers spike, their body counts from the virus remain far lower than ours.

This blog does not oppose reopening. Yet, the states that Trump’s gubernatorial barnacles lead have often engaged in slipshod and thoughtless reopenings that exacerbate viral load nationwide. Compounded with virtually no national testing strategy, we constantly risk new restrictions. They may be necessary to save lives but they cost us terribly in mental health.

It did not have to be this way. Yet, it is because Trump’s single-minded focus on banalities like the stock market and superficial measures of the economy neutered federal health officials who might have done better. Others were locked in petty spats with other officials. Such governmental wrestling may entertain President Nero, but America is burning and her people are dying.

Before the virus, we had other infections. Decisions centered on whatever whetted Trump’s appetite at the moment. We saw this in his heartless child-separation policy at our borders. For the first time ever, the US has a refugee camp at its doorstep.

Not helping. (via wikipedia)

Trump has stoked every racial flare-up he could from the tiki torches of Charlottesville to gassing Lafayette Park in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. People rose and demanded change and justice, but all Trump can do is whine that he receives no credit for pre-COVID minority unemployment. What good is that when you live at a higher risk of summary execution?

This stands part from the environment he has cultivated that has led to shootings at synagogues, bombs sent to media outlets, and harassment of Muslims, LGBTQ people and minorities.

No swamp has drained. Trump only fashioned a trough for him and his porcine friends—or whatever parasites that reserve a block of rooms at the flagging Trump International Hotel in Washington. For a strongman, he grovels before two-bit dictators. That saps us of the capital abroad we need to make trade fairer for workers, protect the environment and promote peace.

Then there is our planet. The Eco-Villains in Captain Planet might blush at the indifference and cruelty Trump has unleashed on our natural world. That includes everything from attempting to gut the Endangered Species Act to energy and water efficiency programs. We understand his colonic eruptions may be too much for the average water-saving toilet, but are two flushes such a struggle that we must waste water nationally?

His assault on the climate tops the list, though. His efforts to halt the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are many. Trump’s administration has harassed car companies that want to do the right thing and opposed projects that would reduce car trips. He blames western states for fires in forests his federal government manages. The earth is a ticking time bomb and he is shortening the fuse.

No more. We need Joe Biden to step into the breach.

If you still believe, after the debates and the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal’s debunking of recent allegations, that Biden is senile or corrupt you must pause and look into the mirror off of which you are snorting this drivel. Look past your media diet and your prejudices and you will see.

Joe Biden in 1973 as a freshman senator not long after his wife & daughter died in a car crash. (via wikipedia)

Biden will be your president as much as any American’s. Few men in politics have lived through grief and loss so publicly and powerfully. We believe he wants every American to have a pathway to happiness. The only reason to oppose him is if you think somebody else should not. Empathy and compassion have always been America’s most powerful forces, not her balled fist and certainly not the member-waving Trump habitually, if flaccidly, executes.

That commitment to people underpins everything about Biden. He know there is no weakness in recognizing mistakes. He has committed to reforming criminal justice laws he once helped pass, enticing states to do the same and welcoming and listening to Americans of all stripes in the cross hairs of hate.

Most importantly, Biden is committed to the climate. He is dispensing with the food fight over the Green New Deal. Rather, the focus in his climate policy is on the emissions that threaten Earth. That is the right approach. Could his proposal be more ambitious? Certainly and we would support any effort to toughen up any climate bill he would sign. However, this, returning to the Paris Accord and making “environmental” in the EPA’s name not a sick joke are crucial to arresting the impending climate catastrophe.

That same eye to science will guide Biden on the coronavirus coupled with the will and the brains to use government to respond effectively. It is naïve to assume a nation as large as ours could replicate New Zealand’s success before a vaccine arrives. However, there is no reason we could not have a masterful testing regime that can lock down problem areas and relief to feed our people, support our businesses and keep as much open as is safely possible.

Trump will have gifted Biden something, though. He has once again shown Republicans only care about the deficit if it can enrich the already rich. While this blog supports responsible budgeting of operating expenses in flush times—i.e. not now—capital expenses can be financed with debt.

World War II may have ended the Depression. However, it was the public projects of the New Deal that facilitated the country’s growth in the succeeding years. We will need that investment in our people to lift them up from the moral and economic squalor of the last four years and the downward tumble that began long before.

It is time to end this administration which can protect nobody but itself. (via wikipedia)

Above all else, Biden’s election will break the anti-democratic—note the small d—push Trump and his Republican allies have pursued. We are nothing if our democracy shuts people out and our laws reduced to nothing but the president’s whim. Your wealth and your security are never assured in a nation that takes that turn. It is ironic that Trump appeals to those who fear tyranny so much when he does so much himself to accelerate the civil jack-booting they claim to fear.

We will need new laws to restrain a future Trump, but first this one must be extricated from office.

This blog did not endorse former Vice-President Biden in the primary. We worried that he may be too willing to succumb to nostalgia of cooperation with Republicans. But the GOP’s decision to shove Amy Coney Barrett and her caprice masquerading as law down our throats has touched a nerve. Make no mistake, Biden’s proposed commission to reform the courts could come to nothing, but that we are even talking about court reform or ending the filibuster is massive and overdue.

If scowls and humorless, unironic self-pity make America great again, fine, vote for Trump. But if you think we are better than that, if you think we deserve to be better for everybody—or at least that we should be trying—then the choice could not be more clear.

Via mail, via early vote or on November 3, vote Joe Biden.

Joe Biden for president. (via Twitter/@JoeBiden)