A Little Something To Read About Status Quo Joe Before-- Or After-- Today's Debate

I wonder how many people will tune into today's Democratic primary debate to see what kind of gaffes-- and lies-- come out of Biden's mouth... and whether his facelift droops or a part part falls off him. Yesterday, as people were getting ready, the Franklin Pierce-Boston Herald poll came out with some especially bad new for old Status Quo Joe. New Hampshire, the first state with a primary and the first state where polls mean anything (since caucus states are not reliably pollable), showed considerable downward momentum for Biden. Likely primary voters:

• Bernie- 29%
• Status Quo Joe- 21%
• Elizabeth Warren- 17%
• Kamala- 6%
• Andrew Yang- 5%
• Mayo Pete- 4%

Yesterday, Brent Scher, reporting for the Washington Free Beacon-- not the most reliable of sources, but one the GOP turns to for information (and in this case there's an original transcript to confirm his reporting), wrote that then-Senator Biden "sought out Russian president Vladimir Putin before the 2003 invasion of Iraq to propose a deal in which Russia would be given the oil profits from the war if they entered alongside the United States. Biden told of his attempt at "creative diplomacy" during a July 2004 event at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library... Biden said during the event that he, along with a Republican senator he chose not to name, asked for a meeting with Putin and proposed a deal where all proceeds from seized Iraqi oil would initially go to cash-strapped Russia. Biden viewed it as an offer Putin wouldn't be able to refuse and was disappointed the Bush administration didn't consider it."




Biden is utterly unfit to be president of the United States-- maybe not as unfit as Trump, but still unfit. Speaking of which, Alex Kotch reported more extensively on the corrupt relations Biden has maintained with liquified natural gas pioneer Cheniere Energy.

At Wednesday’s CNN Climate Town Hall, former Vice President Joe Biden got an awkward question from an audience member. Why was Biden, the Democratic presidential contender who pledged to refuse campaign contributions from oil and gas executives, attending a fundraiser hosted by the co-founder of a liquefied natural gas company?

Biden claimed that Andrew Goldman, the co-founder of Western LNG and a former Biden adviser who is co-hosting a fundraiser for Biden today, is not a fossil fuel executive. Later in the town hall, Biden told CNN host Anderson Cooper that he didn’t realize that Goldman is involved in the natural gas industry.

Regardless of what Biden knew, his ties to Goldman bring into focus his significant connections to the much larger liquefied natural gas firm Cheniere Energy. Goldman’s fellow Western LNG co-founder, CEO Davis Thames, was previously senior vice president and chief financial officer of Cheniere Energy, a company that paid Biden’s current climate adviser more than a million dollars to serve on its board until 2018. And a former Biden adviser lobbied for the company.

Cheniere, which is based in Houston and took in $2.8 billion in revenue in 2018, “pioneered the development of LNG exports from the “Lower 48” of the United States at its Sabine Pass LNG terminal,” according to a Western LNG press release. The company is currently developing a natural gas facility in Western Canada, intended to supply gas to Asia.

  Exporting natural gas from North America, a practice that the Obama administration dramatically accelerated, facilitates the global consumption of fossil fuels and increases methane emissions, which contribute significantly to climate change. When Biden was vice president, his administration oversaw the biggest natural gas production expansion in U.S. history and lifted the crude oil export ban for the first time in 40 years. President Trump is continuing Obama’s exports policies and helped cement a 2017 deal for Cheniere to export billions of dollars worth of natural gas to China.

Accepting funds from Golden doesn’t technically break Biden’s No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, since Golden is not listed as an executive in the firm’s SEC filings—but the company is privately owned and has never filed with the SEC. Doing so breaks the “spirit” of the pledge, said Oil Change USA Strategic Communications Director David Turnbull in a statement Wednesday night.

“We defined the pledge’s rule to make it simple for candidates to commit to and follow, not to provide loopholes to continue raising funds from fossil fuel-adjacent sources,” said Turnbull. “We hope all candidates who sign the pledge truly endorse its goal of ridding our politics of the influence of the fossil fuel industry.”

...Goldman’s close business relationship with the former chief financial officer of Cheniere Energy has yet to be scrutinized. Thames made a huge amount of money from Cheniere, including $31.8 million from 2012 to 2014, per a 2015 SEC filing.

When Biden entered the 2020 race, he picked Heather Zichal, a former Obama official who made nearly $1.1 million as a member of Cheniere’s board of directors from 2014 to 2018, as his climate adviser. Zichal nearly overlapped with Goldman at Cheniere; Goldman left the company in March 2014, and Zichal joined its board in June 2014.

...Biden has a third connection to Cheniere Energy. Former Cheniere lobbyist and vice president Ankit Desai was Biden’s political director for nine months in 2005, according to an archived version of his LinkedIn page. Desai was a vice president at Cheniere from 2013-17, meaning Zichal was on the board for three of those years. In April 2012, when Zichal was Obama’s top energy and climate adviser, Cheniere Energy became the first company to obtain a permit from the administration to export liquefied natural gas. Zichal met with Desai, then-Cheniere CEO Charif Souki, and another Cheniere executive in early 2013 before leaving and joining the Cheniere board. Desai and Zichal previously worked together on former Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Desai is now a federal lobbyist and adviser to the CEO of Texas-based Tellurian, another liquefied natural gas company. He is also a regular Democratic Party donor, having most recently contributed $500 to the Democratic National Committee in December 2018.

...The former vice president’s family has also been involved in the natural gas industry. His son, Hunter, made roughly $50,000 per month from his seat on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which he held from spring 2014 to April 2019.

In May, Zichal suggested that Biden would pursue a “middle ground” climate policy, something the campaign walked back after criticism. Biden’s climate plan received a B+ rating from Greenpeace, putting his policy in sixth place among current presidential contenders. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has the best plan, earning an A rating, according to Greenpeace.

The climate change activist group Sunrise Movement called on Biden to cancel today’s fundraiser.

“We know how this works: Fossil fuel millionaires drive us towards an uninhabitable future, then host fundraisers and advise candidates to take their advice on policy,” Sunrise Movement Communications Director Stephen O’Hanlon told Sludge in an email. “That corruption got us into the crisis our world faces today. And that corruption needs to end if we’re going to have any chance at securing a livable future.

“How can young people trust Biden to take on the oil and gas lobby if he is getting advice and campaign contributions from the people who are driving us towards an uninhabitable future? If Biden wants to be taken seriously on climate change and earn the support of young people, he needs to cancel tonight’s fundraiser and cut ties with advisers with deep connections to the fossil fuel lobby.”

Biden ignored Sunrise's request and went ahead with the fundraiser. Biden is corrupt, not as corrupt as Trump, but corrupt. Watch him celebrate his own corruption: