Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

Festivals with Steve Aoki headlining aren't raves, Keyes.

Like if that guy showed up to a rave in Philly, he'd have his ass beaten to a pulp

Our city has a councillor who’s one of those guys. “I love progress so much I will vote against every progressive policy unless it costs $0”

Accurately describes my mother's slight brain worms, which have dissipated slowly as my father has gotten her on the side of labor over the years.

why not just a t shirt that says "MY DAD'S A VP AT AT&T"

HATE THE POOR LOVE WEED MARGINALLY LESS RACIST THAN MY PARENTS

biden finally becomes important enough to warrant his own thread, 15 years after this thread began

7,047 Previous Biden Posts Can’t Be Wrong

Joe Biden: I will fight coronavirus by shoveling money at private health insurance companies.https://t.co/8mKr0fnNcW pic.twitter.com/CqlKttxf2O

— Medicare for All (@AllOnMedicare) November 8, 2020

Who would thunk it

I'm feeling a little....infuriated at reading this tonight as I learn in the last hour that a good friend, an employee of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, declared he was HIV+ and alive thanks to the "many, many problems" with the Affordable Care Act.

(Alfred, if you want to expand, please do, but I'm not pressing you - that quote isn't from either version of the NPR story or from this thread, so it seems like you might be quoting your friend? but it doesn't seem to jibe with the rhetoric I'm inferring in your post.)

((That aside, it remains frustrating that Biden sees the pandemic as an opportunity to necessarily end-run around many bureaucratic and $-wasteful elements of the ACA, while insisting on preserving those elements. The ACA/Romneycare was a sincere improvement on the system as it stood, but was shaped by "bipartisan compromise," and indeed remains compromised. Biden sees that effective response to a public health crisis is impeded by the ACA, and therefore its rules must be bent. Universal healthcare is already preferred by the people of the US, and the pandemic would provide an opportunity to at least make the case for it. Maybe the Georgia runoff and McConnell will end up making it impossible to take steps toward a better system, but two months of explaining how it will save lives for less money - while thousands of people continue to die - would go a long way toward encouraging voters to call their local reps and write to their senators.))

as fun as it is for me to utilize ACA subsidies as a tax planning strategy for myself, most people really don't like dealing with the stress of "what if I have to pay back the subsidy" and getting the 1095-A form and then some people do have to pay back thousands of dollars in subsidy if they are on an ACA plan where they have to pay some of it, however, people who end up on state equivalents of Medicaid don't have to repay anything, even if they "shouldn't have been on Medicaid" because their income increased, but people who "shouldn't have been on" the plans with a partial subsidy have to repay the amount of subsidy it turns out months later they made too much to receive and it's just ... the system needs to be simpler.

Asked how he can work with Republicans if they won’t even acknowledge he won, Biden says, “They will. They will.”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 10, 2020

the system needs to be simpler.

simplest would be single-payer, but we don't have the right Congress for that, yet. god knows what they'll do when Biden tries to implement Medicare at age 60.

Joe Biden: there's nothing wrong with the police, an institution I have described as entirely rotten and poisonous throughout, that more money can't fix!

Louisville Metro Police: concealed at least 738,000 records documenting the sexual abuse of Explorer Scouts by two officers — then lied that the FBI had the records in order to keep the files from the public, then deleted them.

Joe Biden, soon: these children who spoke out about being sexually abused by an official police grooming program should be shot in the leg.

just so relieved to have an actual president again.

Biden's transition team includes executives from Lyft, Airbnb, Amazon, Capital One, Booz Allen, Uber, Visa, JPMorgan, Google/Sidewalk Labs, and a mutant sea of former spies, extra-judicial murder advocates and lobbyists.

a Sidewalk Labs guy turning up in the Biden transition team is hilarious and perfect

Metaphorical rather than literal failsons I guess

Man and I thought those jobs were going to college student unions leaders.

what "jobs"? these people are volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts

also volunteering: the Executive Director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, appointed to the Biden-Harris transition team for Veterans Affairs.

in response, an open letter has been published detailing Marston’s lack of experience in improving the lives of veterans, and arguing that her cooperation and unwillingness to stop collaboration with law enforcement, as well as the CARE/CARE+ programs’ continued sweeping of local encampments and policing the “sitting, sleeping, eating, and possessing personal belongings in public space,” should disqualify a candidate to serve within Veteran’s Affairs on the national level.

“Under Marston’s leadership, unhoused veterans in Los Angeles have been subject to criminalization, inhumane sweeps and displacement, and a severe lack of resources,” one of the authors told KNOCK.LA.

Well, we can't let investors see that kind of thing, sic. Are you against smart development solutions?

can't we just leave the screenwriter of Point Break to come up with solutions to Los Angeles homelessness?

Joe Biden:

Donald Trump is the problem with our immigration policy. He's using family separation as a weapon against desperate people seeking safety and a better life.

We need to defeat Donald Trump. #DemDebate

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 1, 2019

also Joe Biden: appoints Cecilia Muñoz to his transition team, who as a top adviser to Obama on immigration affairs, defended family separation to PBS.

Ahhh. Feel that return to normalcy? Such a relief.

(Perhaps this person has been quietly lobbying Biden behind the scenes, for most of the last nine years, to be placed in an advisory position where she can campaign against the law, instead of one where she defends the law, and he is thrilled to now be able to answer this call.)

It's so cool, living in a oligarchic necro-state of exclusion that so many people seem to think still bears resemblance to a democracy!

Ahhh. Feel that return to normalcy? Such a relief.

Joe Biden:

This morning, parents all across the West — already worried about their kids being indoors because of COVID-19 — are now also waking up worried about their kids being outside.

We need a president who takes climate change seriously.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 15, 2020

Also Joe Biden: appoints Rep. Cedric Richmond, as a reward for being national co-chair to his presidential campaign, to lead the White House Office of Public Engagement, where he is “expected to serve as a liaison with the business community and climate change activists.”

Richmond's hiring was lauded by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, the most senior Black Democrat in the House and one of Biden's key allies during the 2020 campaign. "I think everybody knows I've been pushing him for this administration forever," Clyburn said. "I think it's very good for both the administration and him."

Daily Poster:

During his 10 years in Congress, Richmond has received roughly $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry — the 5th highest total among House Democrats. That includes corporate political action committee donations of $50,000 from Entergy, an electric and natural gas utility; $40,000 from ExxonMobil; and $10,000 apiece from oil companies Chevron, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy.

Richmond has raked in that money while representing a congressional district that is home to 7 of the 10 most air-polluted census tracts in the country.

Richmond has repeatedly broken with his party on major climate and environmental votes. During the climate crisis that has battered his home state of Louisiana, Richmond has joined with Republicans to vote to increase fossil fuel exports and promote pipeline development. He also voted against Democratic legislation to place pollution limits on fracking — and he voted for GOP legislation to limit the Obama administration’s authority to more stringently regulate the practice.

At least we don’t have to worry about him poaching Jay Inslee then!

author David Sirota

Richmond is an evil fuck, a perfect example of someone who will gladly let people die just to crow about bringing jobs to an area.

Nothing says Liberal Boomer Restoration like hiring the Chieftains for the inauguration.

https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/joe-biden-irish-band-chieftains-inauguration?fbclid=IwAR0vlhuZCumMUD9S1MUl796Rx6sVXFbjl5ZkJZJ7vIzSEw7fTZI0daoJaG8#.X7StviDKDFR.facebook

Biden is Irish FYI

IRish eyes are bidening

He'll be staying clear of Van Morrison, though, who'll be playing at Trump's anti-inaugeration.

Oh I know he's Irish. It just feels very on the nose, demographically.

Does he own an Enya CD y/n

Fun fact: his name was originally J. O'Biden

pretty sure you're not allowed to be President unless you're American, someone should let Trump know the election is invalid

Who’s more American, the Teutonic Scot or the Irishman?

The moment when @NickBryantNY asked @JoeBiden for a quick word.

He replied with a smile, “The BBC? I’m Irish.” #PresidentElect #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/gjsLCxmlLq

— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) November 7, 2020

guys have you heard? joe biden is irish

pretty kewl

love identities they are so human

― Wayne Grotski (symsymsym), Thursday, November 19, 2020 6:29 AM (fourteen minutes ago)

I don't know if you've met white Americans, but I regret to inform you that Joseph Biden Jr. is not the first of them to assume that having an ancestor born in Country X ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY YEARS AGO, who migrated to the US at age ten, confers upon them both ethnicity and citizenship of X.

to be fair to Biden, that was only one hundred and two years before he was born, so it feels more recent to him

I mean, it truly is insane to think that electing a Catholic to the presidency was 'radical' 60 years ago, or that my grandmother never liked her daughter-in-law (my mom) because she came from an immigrant Polish Catholic family. But that's the reality that a lot of these old people grew up in, and sadly, it seems to be the one that they still live in.

pretty common for people of joe biden's age to have grown up in areas where there were still delineated immigrant communities/areas. he probably did attend the "irish" catholic schools and church. i'm sure saying "i'm irish" can actually be traced back to something real in his experience. it probably means nothing to most people younger than 55 now. in this context, "i'm irish" was a joke. i'll grant you that it's definitely a joke for old ass americans.

Scranton-on-Shannon

My mother-in-law comes from a Polish neighborhood in Oil City Pa.. Most people of her grandparents' generation died in Poland; most people of her parents' generation were born in Poland and spoke only Polish. Most people of her generation were bilingual, and interpreted for their parents as necessary. They went to different schools from their English-speaking peers, shopped in different stores, and got Polish-language newspapers.

There are shop signs in that neighborhood that are still in Polish (as there are still in, for example, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.)

I won't necessarily say that's the same thing as Biden's jokey aside, but we sometimes forget how entrenched immigrant identities are in some ostensibly American communities.