Biden vs. Kamala?, Congresswoman "Invents" Story of Sniper Fire, Amazon Warehouse Workers Vote Against Unionization (The Five for 11/16/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Just a couple of notes before we begin.
A. My first ebook, The Blue Collar Guide to Effortless Output, will release on Black Friday, along with the first Blue Collar Philosophy crewneck. Sweatshirts will ship in early December. If you find this content valuable, picking up an ebook/merch is one of the best ways to support.
B. As a reminder, I also started a Blue Collar Philosophy Substack which covers all things digital marketing and brand growth. If you’re a person who has a business, product or idea to get out to the world, you should subscribe now.
Tomorrow, I’ll be publishing an interview around DIY PR, with a young farmer from Nebraska who recently hosted a reporter from one of Britain’s largest papers.
You can DIY your own PR…but you have to know what you’re doing, or you could be badly burned. Subscribe to the Blue Collar Philosophy Substack, and look for that at noon CST tomorrow.
Now, let’s get into the news.
[one]
A scathing new report based on interviews from over 30 Harris staffers claims that President Biden and VP Harris are barely functional working relationship.
Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff -- deciding there simply isn't time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.
The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers -- who spoke extensively to CNN -- reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden's team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.
She's a heartbeat away from the presidency now. She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he's pledged to do publicly and privately. Or she'll be a critical validator in three years for a President trying to get the country to reelect him to serve until he's 86.
Observations:
A. This clip of Harris and Biden battling over Biden’s record around bussing and education certainly shows the pair going hard at each other and (this is subjective) appear to take the verbal blows more personally than professionally. So it’s very possible the duo…have never gotten along well. Similar rumors swirled around Obama and Biden and Trump and Pence, respectively. But those rumors never elevated to the level of CNN’s report about the Biden/Harris tensions.
B. After being named Biden’s VP candidate, Stephen Colbert asked Harris about the pair’s history of discord ahead of the general election vs. Trump/Pence.
In the debate, you landed some haymakers. His teeth were like chicklets all over the stage, and now I believe you that you’re fully supportive of him. How does that transition go? How do you go from being such a passionate opponent on such bedrock principals for you, and now you guys seem to be pals.
Harris: “[Laughing] It was a debate.”
The now infamous moment does show how awkward Harris often is in front of the camera. Colbert asked a serious question, and Harris simply broke out into odd cackling while running through a rambling answer that kept looping back to “it was a debate.”
C. As far as the next few years for the Democratic party goes…the big question is “now what?” According to stats website FiveThirtyEight, Biden is losing support with all groups of Americans. Between the negative polls and the President’s age (assuming he runs for re-election, the POTUS will be campaigning for a second term at 82 years old), the Democratic party may be looking for a new name at the top of the ticket in the 2024 election.
Unless Harris’ conflicts with Biden somehow make her more popular in the polls, the VP is likely to be quite unpopular in a Democratic primary. Harris dropped out of the 2020 primary ahead of the vote in her home state of California, due (we can assume) to the fact that she had fallen to single-digit support with Democratic primary voters and didn’t want to face an embarrassing defeat in her home state.
D. Whatever happens in 2024, I wouldn’t place a bet on seeing a second Biden/Harris ticket.
[two]
This…is a strange (and tragic) story.
Iraqi refugees who were brought into Belarus may have been set up as political pawns by Belarus President Lukashenko, who allegedly plans to send them into other nations in Europe as revenge for recent sanctions against Belarus.
Iraq is responding by trying to bring them back home.
Iraq has announced evacuation plans for its citizens stranded in Belarus on Thursday amid mounting calls to address the migrants' plight.
Hundreds of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, have gathered on the border this week in hopes of crossing into European Union member Poland and claiming asylum. Belarus says some 2,000 people are living at the camp on the border, sheltering in tents and burning wood from local forests to keep warm and blocked by Polish guards behind a razor-wire fence.
The West accuses Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of luring the migrants to Belarus to send them across the border in revenge for sanctions imposed last year after a heavy crackdown on the opposition.
Dozens of special flights are departing from Middle Eastern countries to Minsk every week, and Belarus has designated special tour operators to process visa applications for citizens of Iraq and Syria.
As someone who grew up in a pretty refugee community (and extended family), I thought about how bad the U.S. would have to be to send my own family and neighbors fleeing back to Laos, where they had first fled to avoid starvation and death…which means the plight of these people is truly hopeless.
This kind of insanity is nothing new for President Lukashenko, who has a history of allegedly persecuting citizens who speak out against his regime.
Considering it’s only 2,000 people, various EU countries could surely absorb that population and resettle the refugees…but in my opinion, the EU is not nearly as moral, good and true as some in the U.S. would like you to believe.
[three]
As the nation awaits the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, Missouri Congressional Rep Cori Bush dropped a shocking allegation on Twitter.
Bush is a member of the far-left group of congress that has dubbed themselves “The Squad,” including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Presley (MA), Rashida Talib (MI) and Jamal Bowman (NY).
The group are prone to extreme social media statements, including a steady stream of anti-Semitism (Bush, who represents my ethnically Jewish wife and daughter and one of the larger Jewish populations in the nation in Congress, won’t speak to the Jewish press in her district, Omar has been rebuked by her own party and refuses to apologize).
However, crazy tweets aren’t normally “news,” just fodder for endless reaction tweets and YouTube videos as well as think pieces in more traditional media outlets.
But the above statement from Bush is “real news” for several reasons:
A. I live three miles from Fergesun. My neighbor was Mike Brown’s high school teacher. I know several police officers in the area, including those who were on the ground during the riots in 2014—and not one of them has ever told me about “white supremacist snipers.”
B. As a person quite familiar with that area, I can’t even imagine a location where someone (errrr, a group of someones?) could hide out and reign sniper fire into downtown Fergesun…without being noticed. Here’s a screenshot from Google earth. The “hill” areas that look down into the downtown area are blocked from a straight view of the street by mature trees. Logistically, I can’t see how this is possible.
C. If this is true, how is the info just now coming to light seven years after the Ferguson unrest, and how did these “snipers” fly completely under the radar for the better part of a decade at one of the most watched, most filmed, most reported on events in American history?
D. As a “wait for the evidence” person…this is the rare time I’m just going to step out and call this a bald-faced lie. At the time of this writing, the tweet has been out for more than a day, and Bush hasn’t taken it down, despite the fact that the St. Louis Chief of Police denies the possibility of this happening.
E. Defenders of Bush have pointed to the fact that 20 year old Jeffery Williams who was convicted of shooting two police officers during the Ferguson unrest of 2014. Williams claims he shot the officers by accident while returning fire from someone who was shooting at him, but never claimed there were “snipers” or even that his alleged attackers were white supremacists. If there was any evidence of white supemacist snipers…I assume Williams’ lawyers would have leaned hard on that theory.
F. And finally, Kyle Rittenhouse was a white person who shot three other white people. Hundreds of miles from Ferguson. In a completely unrelated incident. The whole thing is one of the most ludicrous statements I’ve ever seen from an elected official, and Bush seems more than comfortable sticking by the lie.
[four]
Seattle’s police shortage due to officer vaccine mandates may have just claimed the life of an innocent man.
Staffing shortages in Seattle, due in part to the city’s vaccine mandate for emergency workers, resulted in a 13-year-old boy watching his father die after he suffered a medical emergency.
Last week, the 13-year-old called 911 to report that his father was having a medical emergency but when Seattle Fire arrived they were told to wait for police before entering and Seattle police took 15 minutes to arrive which delayed the medics who were unable to save the father, according to the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.
The police precinct was reportedly down to two officers and was leaning on non-patrol volunteers to meet minimum staffing levels.
Two veteran medics told radio host Jason Rantz that the death was likely avoidable if emergency crews had gotten to the scene faster and one medic said, "Had it been addressed early, his chance of survival would have been 60%."Additionally, the cautionary note that told first responders to wait for police because the location presented a danger to them was an outdated note and was assigned to a previous tenant.
[five]
And finally, despite public support growing quickly for labor unions (as previously reported on by The Five)…Amazon warehouse workers in New York have voted not to unionize.
The National Labor Relations Board has confirmed that a group of Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York has withdrawn its petition to hold a vote to unionize.
The move comes less than two weeks before the labor board was expected to hold a hearing to determine whether there was sufficient interest to form a union at the Amazon distribution center.
NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado declined to elaborate the reason for the pullback. But she noted workers can refile a petition.
Union organizers had said in late October that it delivered more than 2,000 signed union-support cards to the NLRB's Brooklyn office after launching the effort in April. That's a major step in authorizing a vote that could set up the first union at the nation's largest online retailer.
As part of its petition to hold a vote, organizers must submit signatures from at least 30% of the roughly 5,500 employees who the union says work at four adjoining Amazon facilities that it seeks to represent under collective bargaining.
This is the second unionizing attempt in the past year at Amazon. Workers in Alabama resoundingly defeated an attempt earlier this year, but organizers there are asking federal officials for a do-over. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is leading the effort in Alabama.
Until the next one,
-sth