Folk Singers 'Biden From Mayo Song' Sparks Fury in US

[Ladybbird]

Trump Talks Blarney While Biden Builds Irish Coalition

IrishCentral 21 MAR 2020



US President Donald Trump and Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden both ramped up their efforts to secure the Irish-American vote on St. Patrick's Day ahead of the general election in November.


St. Patrick's Day parades may have been canceled all across America and the official reception in the White House may have been nixed for the first time since its inception, but that didn't stop America's two leading politicians from trying to win the Irish vote.





Trump's campaign launched "Irish Americans for Trump" on Ireland's national holiday, which is described as “a coalition to commemorate Irish-American contributions to our economy, military and history."

The coalition aims to bring the Irish-American community together in support of the incumbent US president.

Trump also recently appointed Mick Mulvaney, his former Chief of Staff, as special envoy to Northern Ireland and the coalition referenced this, saying that “Irish Americans across the country understand the importance of keeping President Donald Trump in the White House.”

Irish-American Trump supporters could also buy a host of Irish merchandise on the official Trump campaign website, including a green and gold "Keep America Great" baseball hat, an "Irish Americans for Trump" t-shirt, and a set of two "Trump Luck of the Irish" shot glasses with Trump's name stamped inside a shamrock.





Biden, meanwhile, held a conference call for Irish Americans across America to mark the unusually quiet St. Patrick's Day.


The former vice president, who frequently references his Irish heritage, has already won the endorsements of some high-profile Irish-Americans.

Former US Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O'Malley, philanthropist Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, and current and former Irish-American congress members such as Brendan Boyle and Chris Dodd have coalesced behind Biden.

On Tuesday, John McCarthy, the Biden Campaign's national political director, was joined by senior members of the Biden team to speak about the importance of Irish values in American politics at present.

[Ladybbird]

Meet The Irish Pol Who is The Most Powerful Person in Joe Biden’s Campaign

Former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd will lead the selection-making process for Biden's running mate.

Irish Central, 9 AUG 2020.





Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have been long-time friends.



The most powerful man in Joe Biden’s campaign for the White House is former senate colleague and fellow Irish Catholic Chris Dodd. His leadership position will delight the Irish American lobby who have long learned to trust him.

The former Connecticut senator, 76, is “first among equals” says The New York Times in a lengthy profile which points out Dodd is considered the key figure in choosing Biden’s Vice Presidential pick.

Dodd has always had very close ties to Biden and the Times relates an incident where Biden, then VP, left an Oval Office meeting with President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel because he was late for a trade conference that Dodd, by then a movie industry lobbyist, was hosting.

The vice president said he bid the chancellor farewell.

“Angela Merkel looked at me like, ‘What in the hell is he talking about?’”

Biden noted the “rumours,” dating to their time as legislative peers, that Mr. Dodd “controlled” him despite Mr. Biden’s Senate seniority.

“I’ve given new life to those rumours,” he joked.

Now Biden has given Dodd the lead in the most important decision the campaign will make, choosing a vice president nominee

The Times notes that the choice "is about comfort and trust for Mr. Biden, his friends and allies say: Mr. Dodd, a fellow septuagenarian Irish Catholic from the Northeast, has known Mr. Biden for decades and is intimately familiar with the capital’s corridors of power."

Some younger Democratic figures believe the Dodd move looks hopelessly dated. “The 1980s called,” tweeted Jess O’Connell, a former top adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, “and wants Sen. Dodd back.”

Biden seems unconcerned. He once called Mr. Dodd his “single best friend” in Congress.

In a statement, a Biden campaign spokesman, Andrew Bates, said the former vice president was “deeply grateful for Sen. Dodd’s friendship and his contributions to the selection process, alongside his incredibly talented colleagues.”

Dodd was elected to the senate in 1980 and served five terms. He remained one of the closest US politicians on Irish issues and was vital in securing a visa for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to come to the US in 1994.

His farewell party in 2010 was held in the Irish Embassy in Washington with about thirty close friends including Biden.

Dodd also maintained a residence in the West of Ireland in Roundstone, County Galway with ten acres attached and was a frequent visitor there.

Like Biden, he had a failed run at the White House in 2008, an experience that drew the two men together even more. Intense loyalty to each other has been a hallmark of the Biden/Dodd relationship.

“He’s one of the rare politicians who not only expects loyalty but returns it,” said Marla Romash, his press secretary in the 1980s

In recent years Dodd has been Hollywood’s man in Washington getting paid $25 million for work done over six and a half years.

The Times notes: “His return to the political fore this year was both unexpected and unsurprising to former colleagues, given the presumptive Democratic nominee...Mr. Dodd is viewed by many in the party as a kind of first among equals.”


Read More: Over 1,000 Irish Americans sign up for Joe Biden virtual Irish rally

[Tarfoot]

Joe Biden chose PHONY KAMALA HARRIS AS VP

[Ladybbird]

By Choosing Kamala Harris, Joe Biden Just Torpedoed Trump's Top Election Tactic

Trump blasts Biden’s VP pick, Kamala Harris, as ‘meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful’ senator

Joe Biden says he's "proud" to have Kamala Harris as his partner for his presidential campaign.

Irish Central, 11 AUG 2020.






President Trump welcomed Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., to the presidential race by blasting her as “extraordinarily nasty” and one of the “most liberal” members of the Senate.

The comments came during a White House briefing Tuesday afternoon shortly after former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, announced the selection of Harris as his running mate.

Asked during the briefing for his thoughts about Biden’s pick, Trump began his attack on Harris by airing a litany of policy grievances.

“She is a person that’s told many many stories that weren’t true. She’s very big into raising taxes, she wants to slash funds for our military, at a level that nobody can even believe,” Trump said of Harris.

Trump went on to suggest that Harris would hurt Biden in swing states because she opposed fracking, a technique used to obtain gas and oil from shale rock. Harris has called for a halt to fracking.

“She’s against petroleum products. I mean, how do you do that and go into Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or Oklahoma, the great state of Texas,” Trump said, adding, “Fracking is a big deal.”

He described Harris, who has supported universal health care, as being “in favor of socialized medicine.”

“You’re going to lose your doctors. You’re going to lose your plans,” Trump said.

During her unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris came out in favor of Medicare for all, but said her plan would in fact keep private insurers.

Trump claimed he had hoped Biden would select Harris.

“She was my number one draft pick and we’ll see how she works out,” he said. “She did very very poorly in the primaries.”





Trump also said Harris was “extraordinarily nasty” to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when she questioned him during his confirmation hearings in 2018. “I won’t forget that soon,” Trump said.

The Biden campaign and Harris’s team did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump noted Harris, who ran for president this year, sparred with Biden during a debate in the Democratic primary. “She was very disrespectful to Joe Biden,” Trump said. “It’s hard to pick somebody that’s that disrespectful.”

Trump went on to describe Harris as being “horrible” to Biden, and also deployed his favourite insult for the former vice president: “Sleepy Joe.”








MORE:
Trump claims he would have beaten George Washington in election while bragging about non-existent...

[Tarfoot]

Joe Biden Just Torpedoed Trump's Top Election Tactic



Naaaah, not a chance.....

[Ladybbird]

In This Dystopian World, Kamala Harris Sails Above The Presidential Bar

Harris reflects something we take for granted in this circling of the drain we call politics in the Trump era: she looks and sounds presidential because she is

The Guardian UK/BBC News •12 Aug 2020

What is Mike Pence? When the painted smile fades and the glazed eyes begin to focus on reality, is there an honest penny in him?

For the next three months, the core question of whether Pence has any core is the only real target for America’s history-making vice-presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

As much as the Trump campaign wants to scare the bejesus out of its old, white base with terrifying tales about Krazy Kamala, her own policy positions don’t really matter. Like every other veep candidate, Harris doesn’t deliver a voter bloc or state. She doesn’t displace the top of the ticket because veeps never do.

All that matters is one debate night, in Salt Lake City, in early October. And even that night will be quickly overshadowed by the second presidential debate a week later.

How can the summer’s biggest political story – except for the pandemic, recession and racial justice protests – be so easily dismissed? To understand that dynamic, you need look no further than Joe Biden and Pence.

Back in 2008, Barack Obama’s pick of Biden as his running mate was everything Harris is today: a counterweight to everything he wasn’t. Biden offered some older, whiter balance to the first African American nominee for president.

He also undercut Obama’s main claim to that nomination: opposing the war in Iraq. Biden had voted for the invasion, even as he turned into a sharp critic of the war like every other Democrat.

How did Obama overcome his policy differences with Biden on the campaign trail? He didn’t need to.

There was some chemistry between the Obamas and the Bidens on the day they walked out on stage in Springfield, Illinois, near the old state capitol. But more often that not, the chemistry story was overblown: Obama was a disciplined speaker where Biden was not. Obama chose not to wait his turn; Biden had spent his career waiting for his turn.

Obama was the main choice, while Biden played a supporting role. Nobody voted for Barack Obama because of Joe Biden.

Fast-forward eight years, and somehow the cosmos threw up Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Setting aside the strong possibility that nobody else was desperate enough to take the job, Pence represented a thin crust of establishment respectability on the molten lava of anti-immigrant, white supremacist, pro-Russian, self-enrichment they call Trump’s populism.

Pence undercuts so much of what passes for Trump’s politics. He built his career as a Christian conservative and fiscal hawk leading the House Republican study committee, becoming an anti-abortion, budget-cutting governor of Indiana. Somehow he signed up to play the role of cardboard cutout to a thrice-married president who paid off a porn star and blew open the federal deficit well before the pandemic struck.

[Pence's] biblically-sized differences with Trump did nothing to change perceptions of the presidential nominee

His biblically-sized differences with Trump did nothing to change perceptions of the presidential nominee. They did, however, raise serious questions about whether the exceptionally principled Pence had any principles whatsoever.

Still, nobody voted for Donald Trump because of Mike Pence.

Which brings us to the forthcoming Harris-Pence struggle for definition. Above all else, Harris reflects something we may stupidly take for granted in this circling of the drain we call politics in the era of Donald Trump.

Through her own accomplishments, she meets the only standard relevant to a veep pick: she looks and sounds presidential because she is. In this dystopian world, Harris sails above the presidential bar that has been lowered to jackboot level by an old man who admires neo-Nazis and autocrats in equal measure.

A former district attorney and attorney general, Harris has navigated law and politics while Trump has evaded both. It’s no coincidence that her Senate grilling of Trump’s attorneys general have gone viral.

For Democrats, Harris is a return to the Obama vision of America: diverse and driven by social justice. “Her own life story is one that I and so many others can see in ourselves,” Obama said in a statement on Tuesday. “A story that says that no matter where you come from, what you look like, how you worship, or who you love, there’s a place for you here.”

For Republicans like Mike Pence, however, she represents the power behind the throne. Even though candidate Harris clashed personally and politically with Biden, somehow she is really pulling the strings.

“As you all know, Joe Biden and the Democratic party have been overtaken by the radical left,” Pence said at a Trump campaign event in Arizona on Tuesday. “So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine and abortion on demand, it’s no surprise that he chose Senator Harris.”

But it is, in fact, a surprise that Biden chose Harris. The conventional wisdom was that Harris was too ambitious; that her attacks were too personal in the primaries; that Biden was too concerned about internal rivalries to pick the California senator.

Surely there were safer picks than the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, who went to high school in Canada and graduated from Howard University?

There surely were governors and senators who could have faced a smaller tsunami of disinformation, conspiracy theories and plain old racism on a social media feed near you.

During the endless pre-game analysis of Biden’s decision, it was often said that he needed to find his own Biden. Like Obama in the Great Recession, Biden needed a partner in the White House, ready to do the work that the boss will be too busy to handle.

But Biden didn’t choose another Biden. He chose another Obama: someone who represents the future of a country of immigrants, with deep roots in the hard work of righting America’s wrongs.

Biden and his team have suggested he’s a transitional figure in Democratic politics, and that’s sensible for someone who could well be sworn in as president at the age of 78.

To be sure, Harris struggled with that transition in her own presidential campaign: was she a former prosecutor or a Bernie Sanders-style supporter of Medicare for All?

After four years as vice-president, we still may not know the answer to the question of whether Harris is a centrist or not. But in less than three months, we will know the answer to the question of what future American voters want for themselves and their country.

Why Kamala Harris is a Historic VP Pick for Joe Biden

[Ladybbird]

Originally Posted by Tarfoot

Joe Biden Just Torpedoed Trump's Top Election Tactic


Naaaah, not a chance.....

You sound like a family member of mine who thinks he is wonderful..

Ah well all folk cant be as intelligent as us IRISH..

[Tarfoot]

Ahhh Biden just chose Kamala because her hair smelled the best.....

[Ladybbird]

Trump Stokes Birther Conspiracy Theory About Kamala Harris

President Donald Trump says he has "heard" Democratic candidate Kamala Harris "doesn't qualify" to serve as US vice-president, amplifying a fringe legal theory critics decry as racist.

BBC News, 14 AUG 2020.


She was born in the US to a Jamaican father and Indian mother in Oakland, California, on 20 October 1964.

As such, she is eligible to serve as president or vice-president.

For years, Mr Trump promoted a false "birther" theory that ex-President Barack Obama was not born in the US.

Ms Harris, a California senator, was named on Tuesday as the first woman of colour to serve as running mate on a main-party US presidential ticket.

She is deputy to Democratic White House candidate Joe Biden, who will challenge Mr Trump, a Republican, in November's general election.

"The VP has the same eligibility requirements as the president," Juliet Sorensen, a law professor at Northwestern University, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

"Kamala Harris, she has to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years.

She is. That's really the end of the inquiry."


What Did Trump Say?

After a conservative law professor questioned Ms Harris' eligibility based on her parents' immigration status at the time of her birth, Mr Trump was asked about the argument at a press conference on Thursday.

The president said: "I just heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements and by the way the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer.

"I have no idea if that's right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice-president.

"But that's a very serious, you're saying that, they're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country."






The reporter replied there was no question that Ms Harris was born in the US, simply that her parents might not have been permanent US residents at the time.

Earlier on Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser, Jenna Ellis, reposted a tweet from the head of conservative group Judicial Watch, Tim Fitton.

n that tweet, Mr Fitton questioned whether Ms Harris was "ineligible to be vice-president under the US constitution's 'citizenship clause'".

He also shared the opinion piece published in Newsweek magazine by John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in California, that Mr Trump was asked about.

What is The Law Professor's Argument?

Prof Eastman cites Article II of the US Constitution's wording that "no person except a natural born citizen… shall be eligible to the office of president".

He also points out that the 14th Amendment to the constitution says "all persons born… in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens".

Prof Eastman's argument, which he claims is also being made by other "commentators", hinges on the idea that Ms Harris may not have been subject to US jurisdiction if her parents were, for example, on student visas at the time of their daughter's birth in California.

"Her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized US citizen at the time of Harris' birth in 1964. That, according to these commentators, makes her not a 'natural born citizen' - and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and, hence, ineligible for the office of the vice president."

In 2010, Prof Eastman ran to be the Republican candidate for California attorney general. He lost to Steve Cooley, who went on to be defeated by Ms Harris, the Democratic candidate, in the general election.

Following furious backlash to the Newsweek op-ed, its editor-in-chief Nancy Cooper stood by the decision to publish, arguing on Thursday that Prof Eastman's article had "nothing to do with racist birtherism" and was instead "focusing on a long-standing, somewhat arcane legal debate".

What Do Other Constitutional Experts say?

Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told CBS News, the BBC's US partner, that Prof Eastman's argument about Ms Harris' eligibility was "truly silly".

He wrote in an email: "Under section 1 of the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen.

"The Supreme Court has held this since the 1890s. Kamala Harris was born in the United States."

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University and frequent critic of President Trump, called Prof Eastman's argument "garbage" and "racist birtherism redux".

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, told AP: "Let's just be honest about what it is: It's just a racist trope we trot out when we have a candidate of colour whose parents were not citizens."

How Did Trump Fuel The Obama 'Birther' Theory?

Back in 2011, Mr Trump began stoking right-wing theories that President Obama might have been born in Kenya.

Even when Mr Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate in April that year showing he was born in Hawaii, Mr Trump continued to claim it was a "fraud".

During a September 2016 press conference, Mr Trump, then the Republican White House candidate, was asked about the matter.

He sought to take credit for dispelling doubts over Mr Obama's eligibility, telling reporters: "I finished it. President Obama was born in the United States. Period."

Mr Trump also argued in 2016 that his Republican rival Ted Cruz was not eligible to run for president because he was born in Canada to a US citizen mother and a Cuban-born father.

[Ladybbird]

Does Kamala Harris Have Irish Roots? It's Complicated

Kamala Harris' link to Co Antrim-born Hamilton Brown, who was a slave owner in Jamaica, are tenuous at best according to both PolitiFact and Snopes.

Irish Central, 18 AUG 2020.




Does Kamala Harris, the newly minted VP choice on the Biden ticket, have Irish heritage?


It is complicated.

Harris' mother Shyamala immigrated to the US from India in 1959 and her father, Donald J. Harris, arrived in the US from Jamaica in 1963. It is on Harris' father side that a distant link to Ireland may be present.

In 2018, Harris’ father said in an essay that he is the descendant of Hamilton Brown, an Irish man who enslaved people in Jamaica in the early 1800s.

PolitiFact, the fact-checking site, states that “records and online genealogy archives suggest Harris’ great-great-great-grandfather (Antrim-born Hamilton Brown) was a slaveholder. But there’s also evidence that Harris is descended from people who were enslaved.”

Kamala Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, wrote in 2018: "My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown’s Town) and to my maternal grandmother Miss Iris (née Iris Finegan, farmer and educator, from Aenon Town and Inverness, ancestry unknown to me).."

Iris Finigan (also known as Beryl Finigan) was not Irish; Finigan was her second husband’s name.


Who was Hamilton Brown?

Hamilton Brown (1776-1843) was born in Co Antrim and went on to become a British sugar planter and slave owner in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, which he represented in the House of Assembly of Jamaica for 22 years. He gave his name to Hamilton Town in the parish of St Ann, now Brown's Town, which he founded.

He was a dedicated slave owner who told Henry Whitley, a Quaker abolitionist, that he greatly supported slavery and slaves were better off than the poor in Britain.

Whitley witnessed the brutal treatment of slaves in Jamaica and found Brown was one of the most outspoken proponents of the evil trade.

Snopes.com, another fact-checking site, reports that “Whiteley saw slaves, some girls as young as 12 years old, flogged between 40 and 50 times with a horsewhip, for supposed misconduct as trivial as over-sleeping or not meeting their assigned work targets. In one case, a man was whipped 39 times despite not having committed any discernible 'offense.'"

Whiteley’s found that the conditions of life for slaves in Jamaica could not have been further from the outlandish claims made by Brown and his fellow colonial settlers.

Snopes notes that Christiana Brown is the link to Hamilton Brown and Kamala Harris. Slave rape was very common and children of such unions are very hard to track.

Snopes notes that A “Hamilton Brown Jnr.” (likely the Antrim slave owner) had a daughter named Mary Melvina Brown, born to an unnamed woman, and baptized on June 4, 1839.

Now it starts to get complicated, as Snopes notes. “Mary Melvina later married a different Hamilton Brown. By him, she gave birth to several children, including Mabel Melvina (born 1879, died 1935); Edwin Hamilton (born 1877, died 1932); and Gilbert Charles Clement (born 1875, died 1948). "

But Snopes hit a dead end:

“We have not yet found a record of a Christiana Brown being born to Mary Melvina Brown. Such a record would establish a link between Donald Harris’s paternal grandmother Christiana and the Antrim slave owner Hamilton Brown. As a result of this absence, we are issuing a rating of 'unproven,' until such evidence emerges.”


So the Irish link remains likely but unproven -not that I think the Irish should celebrate it if proven true.

By her very success, Kamala Harris gives the lie to the vicious slave owner Hamilton Brown from Ireland that slaves and their offspring were only good for bondage and being worked to death.

The one fact we do know is that Kamala Harris’ father says he’s a descendant of Hamilton Brown

It will be up to genealogists, now that Kamala is on the presidential ticket, to tease out the truth of her Jamaican background. Alas, it appears her Irish ancestry if it exists, may have come from raping an enslaved person.

[Ladybbird]

Joe Biden is Ready to Change America - I Know, I Worked With Him

Martin O’Malley is former governor of Maryland and a presidential contender.

Irish Central, 2 NOV 2020.





“If you’ve been watching television lately, you’ve now seen the Biden Ad. It concludes — “Joe Biden — he brings everyone to the table to get things done.”

Change the name of the office and the candidate, and the ad could well be the ad of a young candidate for mayor. But it Is an ad for President of the United States. And it is the opposite of what we’ve seen in four years of the oxymoron we sometimes call the Trump Administration.

It’s also the early morning song of a whole new way of governing. A new way that Joe Biden — for all of his years of experience — is already a leader in bringing forward.

I know, because I’ve seen Joe Biden in action.

This new way of governing isn’t about dominance. It’s about collaboration. It’s about sharing the latest emerging truth of what’s happening where. It’s about using modern technology to model, measure, map, and drive performance in ways all can see.

Openness. Transparency. Trust. The ability for everyone to see what’s happening where — and when — so we can all do something about it.

In the face of this Pandemic, we have already heard a new language of cooperation rising up around the world. “We are all in this together,... Individual actions affect the whole,... Together we can bend the curve.” This Covid vocabulary is also the vernacular of a new way of governing — a new way that Biden knows well. But the effectiveness of this new way of governing — it’s ability to deliver better results — depends not so much on command and control, as it does on shared understanding.

I grant you, the practice of this new way of governing is still very new. And its examples are still more the exception than the norm. In fact, the scarcity of effective democratic responses to the Covid pandemic makes many of us wonder if democracy even works anymore. As the insightful Fareed Zakaria observes, “Covid has become a stress test for governments all around the world — and there aren’t many governments that are passing the test...”

But there is a better way forward. And it is the way Joe Biden “operated” as Vice President when he was put in charge of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

As one of those governors who worked with Joe Biden week in and week out to implement the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, I was witness to and beneficiary of his talent, his vision, and his effectiveness as a collaborative leader.

As I hear Biden commit to convening a War Cabinet to combat Covid, and when I hear Biden talk about bringing people together to get things done on climate, I know exactly what he means. I know because I was there at his side when he took charge of making the Recovery and Reinvestment Act work.

At the time, it seemed the whole world was predicting failure, waste, fraud and abuse. Instead, Joe Biden delivered for people. And he delivered with a degree of openness and transparency never before achieved on the face of this planet.

Using geographic information systems and the power of the Internet, he made it possible for Americans to see — for the very first time, real-time, on an interactive map — exactly where those precious federal dollars were being invested in their own state, own county, own zip codes.

Whether it was shovel ready transportation projects, clean water projects, extended unemployment benefits for people who were unemployed, or keeping teachers on the job in our classrooms, every Governor and every American Citizen could actually see where every dollar was going in real-time.

The Technology that made it possible — geographic information systems and the Internet — had been around for years. But never before had a person with Executive power brought them together as a common platform: a common platform for everyone to see, for everyone to know, for everyone to be held accountable — accountable for delivering actions that delivered better results. And by “everyone to see”, I do not mean only the Governors of the Fifty United States and Territories; by “everyone” I mean, by every Citizen of the United States.

This is the new way of governing that Joe Biden will use to combat Covid and get all of our people back to work. It is the new way of governing he will use to reverse global warming by moving America to 100% Renewable Energy by 2050.

Model, measure, and map. Set benchmarks, milestones, and deadlines. Bring people together to get things done. Lift up the leaders. Find better ways to make it work. Better ways to build back better.

We are Americans. We need not be the victims of history or bad leadership.

We make our own events.

Our concern is today and tomorrow.

And the life-giving business of the United States of America is a better tomorrow for all of our kids.

Vote for Joe Biden.

[Ladybbird]

Overseas Voting Could Swing Presidential Election in Bidens' Favour

The chairperson of Democrats Abroad Ireland discusses the impact of overseas voting in the 2020 US presidential election.

Irish Central, 5 NOV 2020.



Overseas voting could have played a huge role in Joe Biden's success in several swing states that are believed to be key to the 2020 presidential election, according to the chair of Democrats Abroad Ireland.

Carija Ihus, Chair of Democrats Abroad Ireland, said that more than 1.8 million overseas Americans have voted in this year's election, almost double the tally of the 2016 election, and that it has been having a crucial role in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

President Donald Trump led in many pivotal states by a seemingly insurmountable lead on the night of November 3 thanks to a huge number of in-person Republican voters on election day, but Joe Biden has overtaken the President in several states thanks to mail-in ballots and absentee voting.

Biden is now on the brink of winning the presidency and owes a good deal to American citizens overseas, who have been voting and campaigning like never before, Ihus said.

In Michigan, for example, where Joe Biden clawed away at a significant Trump lead to eventually win the state, overseas voters appear to have played a huge role in turning the state blue.

Over 30,000 Americans living in just one region of Canada, for instance, have voted in Michigan in this year's election, something that almost certainly aided the Democrats caused if recent overseas trends are considered.

Ihus said that trends in recent US elections show that around 85% of overseas voters tend to lean Democrat, with about 10% leaning independent and just 3% leaning Republican.

If that trend was indeed repeated in 2020, then overseas voting almost certainly gave the Biden Campaign the necessary push to overtake Trump in Michigan.

And overseas voters could yet play a part in the nail-biting race in Pennsylvania, which could ultimately decide the entire election.

President Trump held a lead of about 700,000 votes on Wednesday night in Pennsylvania, but that lead has again been cut significantly due to mail-in ballots and absentee voting and his lead now stands at just 140,000 votes.

Ihus said that Pennsylvania was one of four US states that saw the highest numbers of overseas voters, proving yet again that overseas votes could become increasingly pivotal in deciding the presidential race.

"I've been saying for the last two weeks that we're cautiously optimistic. We have a lot of good numbers that have turned out from foreign countries. We've had 210% more requests for ballots in Ireland than in 2016 and more than double the amount of voters from overseas," Ihus told IrishCentral.

As Trump loses ground in several key swing states, his campaign has filed contentious lawsuits to challenge the extension of ballot deadlines in Pennsylvania and to segregate late absentee ballots in Georgia.

The President has also frequently tweeted phrases like "stop the count" since Tuesday's election in an apparent attempt to question the integrity of the mail-in ballot system.

However, Ihus, who represents a community of American citizens that rely almost exclusively on mail-in ballots, said that the President's attempts to challenge and discredit absentee ballots and mail-in voting was simply "throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks".

"He said for a week that he doesn't trust it and he's gone to the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania to shorten the length of time that votes can be accepted. He's doing similar in Georgia by trying to get them to count fewer ballots and he's saying he's going to sue for a recount in Wisconsin and Michigan as well.

"It's one of those things where it's very frustrating but it's not unexpected. It just feels like he's throwing anything at the wall to see if it sticks to try and retain power."

The Democrats Abroad Ireland Chair said that she didn't believe that a member of the Democrat Party would launch similar campaigns to discredit mail-in voting but that they would more than likely accept the result.

"If it were a Democrat and they were in the same shoes maybe they would be doing the same thing, but I don't think Democrats would be calling for the counting to be stopped because we don't like the results.

"Our main goal is that if you want to vote, we want you to vote. We don't care what party you want to vote for, we don't care what candidates you want to vote for. Our job is to make sure that you get registered and that you get your ballot and that you are able to vote. Sure, we want you to vote Democrat, but ultimately that's your choice."

Ihus believes that the chances of successful voter fraud are very low and that voter suppression or repression is much more commonplace in the United States.

She said that some mail-in ballots had been thrown out because they had not been packaged correctly, while others had been discarded because they had not been signed by a witness.

However, she said that it would be difficult for an elderly person living on their own and cocooning during the COVID-19 pandemic to procure a witness without risking their own health.

"Voter fraud is historically very, very low, but he [Trump] and the Republicans like to say that it's a lot higher than what it is.

"We've only had a handful of cases of voter fraud in 240 years of elections in the United States. We are much more likely to have voter repression, suppression, or disenfranchisement than we are to actually have a voter go and vote twice."

Ihus said that, ultimately, every single vote should be counted in the US election.

"It's not up to the President or Joe Biden as the opposing candidate to decide who is victorious. It is up to the American people to decide and they deserve to have their voices counted."

[Ladybbird]

President-Elect Joe Bidens' Irish Roots - From Fleeing Famine Ireland to Winning The White House

Joe Biden’s Irish Hometown Hails New US President-Elect

President-elect Joe Biden's rich Irish ancestry helped lead him to the White House.

Irish Central, 9 NOV 2020.





Joe Biden has deep ties with the Mayo town of Ballina. Hundreds of people in Joe Biden's ancestral Irish home gathered on Saturday to celebrate his victory in the 2020 presidential election.


Residents of Ballina in County Mayo, with Biden's Irish cousins to the fore, popped bottles of champagne after all major US networks called the race for Biden on Saturday afternoon.




As is true in the case of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, and now Joe Biden, the Irish Famine had the untold impact of creating a US president by sending their forefathers to America.


Bidens' folks, who came to America trailing broken dreams and heartache, likely never dreamed that over a century later, their descendant would be elected President of the United States of America.

All eight of Joe Biden's great-great-grandparents on his mother Catherine Eugenia 'Jean' Finnegan's side were born in Ireland during the first half of the 19th century, and on his father Joseph R. Biden Sr.'s side, two great-grandparents were also born in Ireland.

On May 31, 1849, Owen Finnegan, Biden's great-great-grandfather from the remote Cooney Peninsula in Co Louth, arrived in New York aboard the ship Brothers, fleeing the last of the Famine. As was often the custom, he came before the rest of his family. A shoemaker by trade, he procured employment, and a year later, he sent for his family.

His wife Jane (nee Boyle) immigrated with her and Owen's children (including Biden’s great-grandfather, James) almost a year later on May 15, 1850, on a ship named the Marchioness of Bute, according to genealogist Megan Smolneyak, who has traced the lineage for the Biden family.

Members of the Finnegan family went North to upstate New York picking apples and working with farmers. James Finnegan joined them for a time before heading west, ending up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, home to the Molly Maguires, a "secret society" of Irish immigrant miners who fought for workers' rights against the mine bosses.

The mine bosses sent in the Pinkerton detective agency to break the union. Pinkerton planted a spy, an Irishman called James McParland, in their midst. His testimony was enough to send twenty of the Mollys to the gallows in one of the largest mass hanging by the US government in its history.

Rumored to be a member of the Molly Maguires was Biden's great-grandfather Edward Francis Blewitt, a native of Lousiana whose parents Patrick and Catherine (nee Scanlon) Blewitt were from Ballina, Co Mayo.

Blewitt was a major Irish American figure in Scranton. Not only did he win the election to the state senate, but he was also named Chairman of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in 1897 and was the co-founder of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Scranton in 1908.

When campaigning alongside Barack Obama in 2008, Biden said at an event for the United Mine Workers in Virginia: “I hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pa.

“It’s nice to be back in coal country. … It’s a different accent [in Southwest Virginia] … but it’s the same deal. We were taught that our faith and our family was the only really important thing, and our faith and our family informed everything we did.”

Of his great-grandfather Blewitt's rumored ties to the Molly Maguires, Biden said: “He went out of his way to prove that he wasn’t, and we were all praying that he was."

In 1879, Blewitt married Mary Ellen Stanton, a native of Scranton, and together they had four children, including Geraldine Catherine Blewitt, who went on to marry James Finnegan's son Ambrose Finnegan.

In 1917, Geraldine and Ambrose gave birth to Catherine 'Jean' Eugenia Finnegan, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr's mother.

Grandpop Ambrose had a huge political influence over young Joey, the future president of the United States.

After mass on Sundays, the clan would gather and men would breakaway into one room and engage in robust political discussions about the merits of Harry Truman over Adlai Stevenson. There was no talk of Republicans, the class divide was too great. Irish Catholics didn’t dare to think that way.

Grandpop Ambrose gave Joe the benefit of a lifetime of experience dealing with the Democratic Party and instilled in young Joey the virtues of the working man.

No doubt that Ambrose Finnegan would have recognized in Donald Trump the stereotype of the wealthy and uncaring rich businessmen he had excoriated to young Joey.

In fact, he even had a term for how the rich dealt with the lowly Irish in the mines and elsewhere. He called it the “Silk Stocking Screw." He would have had his Irish antenna distinctly up when listening and seeing Trump in action - action that will come to a decisive end in January when Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America.

In 2016, Joe Biden told RTE: "My grandfather and grandmother Finnegan, all my mother’s brothers, and my father told us about the courage and commitment it took for our relatives to emigrate from Ireland – in the midst of tragedy to distant shores, where they didn’t know what awaited them. It took great courage."

That courage, as it turns out, paid off.

[Ladybbird]

America is Broken – Can Biden and Harris Put it Back Together?

The US is riven with stark inequalities, rising white supremacist terror and large numbers who believe the election was stolen. The new administration faces a truly daunting challenge

TRUMP exits having cleaved his party in two

Joe Biden / Executive orders will reverse Trump on climate, Iran, Covid and more

The Guardian UK / Irish Central, 17 JAN 2021.









In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.

Biden must find words for a wounded nation in inauguration like no other

But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.

Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.

“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the
enemy. This must end”.

The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.

Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.

Can Biden even hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.

“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.

“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”

The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.

The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.

In an early sign that he wants to be seen to act decisively, Biden on Thursday outlined $1.9tn in emergency relief, called the American Rescue Plan, including $400bn to deliver 100m vaccines in his first 100 days. The plan also directs more than $1tn to Americans through individual economic stimulus payments of $1,400 and increased unemployment benefits. It proposes more than doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour alongside other measure to alleviate child poverty.

Biden has said the plan is only an interim measure and that more money will come. But even the present proposal will be too much for most Republicans in Congress and the bill will provide an early test of how far they are prepared to cooperate or if they will pursue the same obstructionist strategy deployed against Obama.

Biden has the advantage of control but only by a slim margin in the House of Representatives and by relying on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote in the Senate. A lack of votes for the full package may force Biden to scale back his proposals but with them the incoming president put down a marker.

The pandemic has helped lay the ground for bold policies by once again exposing deep economic inequalities and the precarious financial position of large numbers of Americans. But Biden will have to tread carefully over key legislation pushed by the left of his party, particularly the green new deal which is hugely popular among some Democrats but reviled in parts of the country.

Some Democrats think a relatively easy path would be a major spending bill to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, such as dangerously old bridges and dams, as well as new projects like high-speed rail. It would not only offer a vehicle to address some environmental issues but provide jobs and investment in some of the most neglected parts of the country.

“An infrastructure bill might include a lot of clean energy but it would not be mistaken for the green new deal. It’s a good compromise that’s actually conceivably possible,” said Franklin.

“I think infrastructure, of all the issues we deal with, it’s one that most easily resonates with working people, whether it’s construction work or highways, or water mains or electrical utilities. The irony is Trump talked a lot about infrastructure but never put forward a bill, when his own party probably would have thought it was pretty good.”

Another challenge for Biden is to develop policies to address a sense of abandonment felt in mostly white rust belt and midwestern rural communities that were once solidly Democrat while also addressing racial inequality and discrimination.

“Biden talked about blue collar workers in his background, the people he grew up with,” said Franklin. “I thought that was an attempt to reach that disaffected blue collar, but not theneo-nazi Klan racist segment of the population. He tried to speak directly to those folks in a way that many see the Democratic party more generally is failing to do.”

Kuhn said Biden should go further: “If he’s talking about common cause, he can push back against this fashionable notion in the United States that these families living pay cheque to pay cheque, that their struggle through life is actually a ‘privilege’ because they are white. Clearly, some portion of the American right feel that their frustrations don’t matter, because they happen also be white. ”

Lilliana Mason, a professor of politics and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity disagrees. She sees communities that provided bedrock support for Trump’s white nationalism and questions whether Biden will find backing even for programmes that help them.

“There’s this increasing inequality which has created this kind of rural white Republican identity that’s based on white rural people feeling condescended to and that no one really listens to their needs,” she said. “But there’s also this resentment that their tax dollars go to the cities and to black people. They don’t want their tax dollars to help other people, meaning black people, even while it helps them.”

But the new president remains cautious about how police reform will be read in the rest of the country. He told civil rights leaders that the cry to “defund the police” after Floyd’s death was misunderstood and damaging to the Democratic party, particularly candidates for Congress and in state races. Organisers in the rural midwest said the slogan, and the violence around some protests, was a major reason Trump’s vote went up in November, even in swing counties twice won by Obama.

“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said last month according to an audio recording of a meeting published by the Intercept.

He promised that there will be significant changes to the police but said how they are framed is important in winning broader public support. Franklin said there is a path that could unite not divide Americans.

“When you ask about defund the police, it’s about 20% that favour of that. But when you talk about reform the police and hold police accountable, it’s like 70% or 80% in favour. Policing is very high on everybody’s list.”

Biden will remain under pressure from black voters who were instrumental in his defeat of Trump, turning out in large numbers in midwestern cities to offset the white rural vote. They will want to know that their concerns are not just being heard but addressed, and that police reforms run deep as a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to racial reconciliation.

[Ladybbird]

Irish Folk Singers' Biden From Mayo Song' Sparks Right-Wing Fury in US

Fearghal Kenneally penned "Biden from Mayo" as a bit of fun but soon faced a wave of right-wing conspiracy theories.

Irish Central, 15 APR 2021.







When Irish folk singer Fearghal Kenneally wrote a song about Joe Biden's presidential election victory for a bit of fun, he hoped to generate a bit of a buzz in Ireland and maybe earn a few summertime gigs in the United States. He didn't expect to generate a tirade of right-wing conspiracy theories and vitriolic abuse from Irish-Americans.

Kenneally penned "Biden from Mayo" after making a bet with one of his friends prior to the US presidential election last November. Kenneally, who believed that Biden would win the election, told his friend that he would write a song about him if he won the presidency, while his friend said he would write a song if Donald Trump won re-election.

"There were no political angles to this. It was just a joke and a bit of craic," Kenneally told IrishCentral.

Kenneally encountered numerous claims that Joe Biden stole November's election and encountered dozens of comments that made libelous accusations against the President.

Kenneally thought about taking the song down but instead decided to highlight the abuse in Irish-American publication

BIDEN may be only a few years older than TRUMP....BUT with age .... comes wisedom...NOT GREED