Brianland

 

First of all, he’s an Irish leprechaun, and I’m very pro Irish leprechaun.

Second — he’s also an empath . . . as opposed to a sociopath.

As he likes to say in his Irish way — “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

He’s smart, hard working, Gets Things Done, and is a kind human being.

I love the way he teamed up once again with Nancy Pelosi — who have been serving in the Capitol since 1973 and ’87 respectively — and who together presided over the most progressive and productive Congressional term in decades in a House that had dwindled to just a 3 seat margin of error by the end of 2022.

Together, along with Chuck Schumer in the Senate, they passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that included:

— the biggest infrastructure package for roads & bridges since Eisenhower put in the interstate highway system in the 1950s.  Driving around America last year I saw more roadwork going on than I’ve ever seen in my life;

— the biggest investment in passenger rail in 50 years — $16 billion, which, besides trying to catch us up to the rest of the world, created 100,000 jobs;

— the most impactful gun reform legislation since the assault weapons ban in 1993;

— brought high-speed internet to rural states — including those that voted against him by 2 to 1 — but he did it because it’s the right thing to do;

— the largest water infrastructure investment in the nation’s history including replacing all the remaining lead pipes;

— replacing old school buses with new American-made electric buses;

— began implementation of a network of high-speed Electric Vehicle chargers along all the major highways across America.
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I love that on his first day in office, January 20th, 2021, he signed the order to have the U.S. rejoin both the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization after Twitler insanely withdrew U.S. participation from both.

I love that he keeps bringing the national governance discussion back to trump and the MAGA extremists’ attempts to deny election results.

I love that he pardoned everyone who had a federal conviction for marijuana possession and urged all governors to follow suit.

I love that he said he would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — and then did it.

I love how he’s the first sitting president in history to stand on a picket line, and Kamala is the first Vice President to ever visit an abortion clinic.

I love how he remained bullish on his former administration’s Obamacare program and reduced uninsured Americans by another 4 million people.  There’s now more people signed up for it than there ever has been before.

I love that his Inflation Reduction Act includes penalties for pharmaceutical companies if they raise prices more than the rate of inflation, and that Medicare can finally start negotiating for lower drug prices, including antibiotics, chemo drugs and blood thinners.

And that in the same Act he capped insulin costs for Medicare recipients at $35 per month, and he got the nation’s largest insulin provider, Eli Lilly, to drop the cost for everyone by 70%.

I love how his policies and these two majors Acts mentioned have created 800,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector alone and kept unemployment in the 3.5-7% range, the lowest in over 50 years.

I love that he picked 22-year-old Amanda Gorman to deliver “The Hill We Climb” to the nation at his first inauguration.

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I love how he partnered with Barack Obama during his Vice Presidency and how they became a real team and true friends.

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And just as a fun little aside — I love this difference between the Obama/Biden years and the vacuous black-hearted black hole that followed . . .

. . . and this somehow neglects to mention Bob Dylan, Yolanda Adams, The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Mellencamp and Natalie Cole who all performed at The White House Celebration of Music From The Civil Rights Movement in February 2010.

And speaking of music, I love how he’s instructed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to target the hidden & exorbitant fees charged by TicketMonster for concert tickets.  I’ve never heard any other president or candidate even bring up the subject, let alone instruct the FTC to investigate and put an end to it.

And in yet another example of Biden fighting for the regular person, he’s taken on banks’ $40 overdraft fees that only hit poor people when they’re the most vulnerable.  No other President in my lifetime has gone after this type of institutional “exploitation” (Biden’s word for it) of taking advantage of the little guy.

I love that he tried to cancel student loan debt — until the Supreme Court shot it down — and then immediately formed the Student Loan Relief Committee to work with the Department of Education to create a more targeted relief program — still being hashed out but expected to become a reality in 2024.

I love how he makes regular personal calls to regular people who’ve had tragedy befall them. 

I love how he picked a smart qualified Black woman to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and that appointed the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.

I love that the Inflation Reduction Act contains the biggest climate change reductions in history and has been applauded by scientists the world over. 

I love that under his & Nancy & Chuck’s guidance America has had the strongest post-Covid recovery of any G7 nation.

I love that he’s so pro NATO and has global relationships spanning decades and rebuilt alliances that the prior illiterate sociopath tried to destroy.

I love that he, along with Nancy and Hakeem Jeffries, have united the Democrat’s Congressional caucus.
Fun fact: Hakeem Jeffries has received more votes for House Leader than any person in history.  It’s because the House had to take 15 votes to finally get McCarthy into the job, and then the half-a-dozen afterwards that eventually led to Mike Johnson, but in all of them Democrats were united behind Hakeem, and because there were so many different votes taken, he has the distinction of receiving the most votes for Leader of any person in Congressional history.

I love that he has supported Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) from the 1970s through billions of dollars of support in his American Rescue Plan in 2021.

I love that he broke Obama’s record for the most votes ever received for a presidential candidate — 81,283,361.

I love that he’s been the Democratic standard-bearer over these last three years of election victories — including captaining the ship when Democrats prevented a red wave in the 2022 midterms.  And in fact in 2020 Dems won by bigger majorities in crucial swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.  The Dems also picked up a seat in the Senate, and flipped four state legislatures and two governorships — all this in a midterm year when the party in the White House always loses seats.

And that even in the off-year 2023 elections, Dems won the elected Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, held the Virginia House despite more predictions of a red wave, and won Mayoral races in two of the reddest cities in the country, Jacksonville (Florida) and Colorado Springs (Colorado).

And as the former Republican strategist turned Lincoln Project founder Stuart Stevens pointed out, more young people enter the electorate every cycle, who strongly favor Democrats, and more old people (trump supporters) die out.  The more young people who are engaged and registered, the better it is for Democrats and democracy.

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Enter: the Taylor Swift factor.  After she stayed silent during the 2016 election due to the attacks she was receiving from the trump-supporting / trump-like unhinged psychopaths kenye & kardashian, she finally spoke up in 2018 and is encouraging her fan base to be engaged.

Check out this riveting short documentary scene of her making the switch from silent to engaged: 

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In Sept. 2023, one Instagram post she made caused a record-breaking 35,000 new registrations in one day.

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I love how ‘on’ and focused and forceful he’s been since the end of 2023 and how he came out of the gate on fire on the third anniversary of trump’s insurrection.  I love how he’s playing to his passions and his strengths — democracy and fairness and treating people with respect.  Like a top musician on his game, he is in the zone and hitting the notes with conviction and precision.  Check this out if you haven’t . . .

 

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No one can simply be a spectator or third party spoiler in 2024

There’s only one way to end the trump/MAGA nightmare and that’s for there to be an overwhelming win for Democrats over Republicans all across the board in 2024.

In 2016, third party voters were the difference in the swing states that trump won and gave him the presidency, including most prominently in Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania.

People on the left for whom the Democratic nominee was not perfect in their mind in 2016 and didn’t vote for her is how the insane racist sociopath was elected president in the first place.  That cannot happen again — because as you probably know the MAGGOTs have a whole 2025 Project in place set up by unapologetic Neo-Nazis like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and the Insurrection-in-Chief himself — and they know how to make sure there are zero checks on their unbalanced agenda.

Their 2025 plans include invoking the Insurrection Act from day one, allowing the president to deploy the military against civilians.  Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing reelection in 2020 and his fetishization of Putin and other dictators around the world certainly point to him being unwilling to relinquish power after a second term.  As trump himself said in December 2020 when not accepting the results of the election, anything he doesn’t like “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”  

This is a person who threatened the life of his own vice president when he wouldn’t disregard the Constitution to keep trump in office.  This is not theoretical — it is actual.  And his cult of authoritarian flunkies and enablers from Lindsey Graham in the Senate to Elise Stefanik in the House to Stephen Miller in his bunker have already assembled a cabinet of like-minded zealots to assume control the day trump would be sworn for a second term.

Again — this is not theoretical or fear-mongering — it’s being said publicly day after day, year after year, by sitting Senators like J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, Tommy Tuberville, Marsha Blackburn & Rick Scott and House members like Jim Jordan, James Comer, Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Paul Gosar, Scott Perry, Steve Scalise & Andy Biggs, and governors like Greg Abbott and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

This is real and happening. 

And you have to not only vote but be proactively encouraging everyone you know to be engaged and vote for the only person on the ballot who can stop this.
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Furthur Reading —

Yes, voting is essential, but it’s the bare minimum you can do.  Here’s a whole bunch of Things You Can Do Beyond Voting.

Check out my most recent book of political tales and insights — Blissfully Ravaged in Democracy — Adventures in Politics 1980–2020.

Here’s an excerpt from the book about meeting Joe Biden at the event pictured at the top of this story.

In these perilous times when we’re facing losing our democracy itself due to this authoritarian and his cult — it’s imperative that we Vote Blue No Matter Who.

 

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by Brian Hassett

karmacoupon@gmail.com   —  BrianHassett.com

Or here’s my Facebook page if you wanna join in there —

https://www.facebook.com/Brian.Hassett.Canada