His Only Vice

Spending time in a locked and guarded room with books that have apparently never been opened is doing nothing to prevent Joe Biden from making fresh gaffes. In this case, according to alleged newspaper The NY Times, Biden "has likened running-mate evaluation to deciding among calendar models." Which seems like a total objectification of women unless he's actually considering putting Sports Illustrated calendar model Kate Upton on the ticket, in which case he may actually get our vote.

But we think Gropin' Joe was actually being metaphorical, meaning that he's selecting a VP candidate based entirely on superficial appearance and appeal. Which is not surprising, considering Joe rode into office with an arrogant, inexperienced nobody who was, in Biden's words, "the first sort-of-mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean. I mean, that's a storybook, man!" Or a superficial calendar model, right Joe?

Meanwhile, Biden is doing his best to socially-distance himself from the growing Obamagate scandal, going so far as to say that when he was Vice President, he knew "nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn." When it was pointed out that he was in attendance at the infamous Oval Office meeting of January 5, 2017 when Obama and his intelligence officers discussed the plot against Trump's incoming team, Biden corrected himself: "I was aware that there was...that they asked for an investigation, but that's all I know about it and I don't think anything else..."

Which we would find hard to believe if it weren't for the fact that it's so easy to picture Biden staring happily into space during high-level meetings, devoting his every thought to what he might have for lunch.

But other scoundrels were definitely paying attention that dark day. And with the benefit of new information to give us fresh eyes, let's take a look back in time to what we wrote only days after that meeting...

(January 9, 2017)

There are two related stories to discuss today, both on the subject of Intelligence. A word which, needless to say when referring to Washington, refers to "spying" instead of anything remotely like "smartness" or "proper brain function."

Specifically, President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn't consider US intelligence agencies to be 100% reliable, especially when it comes to their consensus accusation that Vladimir Putin interfered with our election by disguising himself with a pair of Groucho glasses, then driving a schoolbus filled with Cossacks to various polling places in key electoral states.

But before Hope n' Change dives into the details of the "Russian hacking" story, let's look at Barack Obama's recent claim of advising Trump - strictly as a professional courtesy - that as President he should always trust the US intelligence community.

"There are going to be times," the miserable stain on the Oval Office said, "where the only way you can make a good decision is if you have confidence that the process is working, and the people that you put in charge are giving you their very best assessments."

Really, Barry? Is that how you've conducted your presidency? Let's review a few fun facts. As president, B. Hussein skipped the majority of his intelligence briefings including the one immediately following the debacle in Benghazi. Barry also had nothing but foreign policy failures, and repeatedly placed the blame on his intelligence agencies.

So why should Trump - or the rest of us - invest our trust in the intelligence agencies who failed to see the rise of Isis? Who missed nuclear weapons development by Iran during our negotiations? Who were unable to connect the dots preceding Putin's many successful aggressions - as well as those of China and North Korea.

These are the intelligence agencies whose keen insights helped bring about nightmare scenarios in Syria, Libya, and pretty much every other country which has mosques. Intelligence agencies which failed to flag September 11th as a potentially meaningful day for terrorists to attack in Benghazi.

Intelligence agencies which, at least according to the administration, found it "no big deal" that Hillary (as freaking Secretary of State) put all of our national secrets on an unguarded personal server just so she could dodge future Freedom of Information Act demands to see documents rightfully belonging to the American people.

All of which brings us back to the "Election hacking" story. The intelligence agencies have now offered up their (ahem) official report on this alleged election-changing, super-sophisticated act of cyber terror, and have found that (cue the shower-stabbing music from "Psycho") Vladimir Putin personally ordered a monumental campaign to undermine our election and put his personal buddy, Donald Trump, into office!

But there's one little problem. While the declassified report is happy to draw this apocalyptic conclusion, it offers virtually no proof. We're asked to accept this poppycock on sheer trust, which would be a lot easier if the Obama administration and intelligence agencies had even an iota of credibility anymore.

But let's look at a couple of important things the report says that we can agree with: there was no hacking or interference with any voting or vote-tallying machines, and the intelligence agencies do not assert that the alleged Russian campaign had any influence on voters or the election. Wow.

It is also noteworthy that the intelligence agencies were able to draw such detailed conclusions considering the DNC failed to cooperate with the investigation, and wouldn't grant the FBI access to their computers. And interestingly, the report fails to note that the sensitive emails eventually released by Wikileaks (again, without direct evidence of Russian involvement) weren't even obtained by "hacking," but rather by a simple "phishing" email sent to John Podesta, in which he revealed that his password (and the key to all of the DNC's documents) was..."password."

The report also states that Putin's evil plan to overthrow our election involved schemes like having Russian newscasts criticize Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump. Which apparently made a huge impact on the many voters whose primary source of information was Russian newscasts.

We could go on and on (and already have!) but our point is this: thanks to the Obama administration our intelligence agencies no longer have a whit of credibility, nor does their preposterously politicized "Russian hacking" report.

Considering 8 years of wall-to-wall failures, it's not surprising that Americans have decided to turn their backs on alleged "Intelligence" in favor of Donald Trump's promise of common sense.