By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 7/05/2020

Joe Biden is clearly not well.
 
Republican commentators everywhere are perhaps too decent to come out and state the obvious; that it looks as though Joe has dementia. President Trump is putting the case too kindly when he refers to the former Vice President as “Sleepy Joe.”

Joe’s interviews are almost too painful to behold – he stammers and squints into camera, then when he does get on a roll he can’t articulate a coherent sentence and often makes remarks that just don’t make any sense. He literally and frequently speaks nonsense that is beyond the pale of the normal nonsense Dems like to trot out, it’s gibberish consistent with cognitive degeneration.

Considering Democrats like to sermonise that their candidate must be the voice of civility and reason in order to counteract President Trump’s “combative tone,” Biden remains a very odd choice to uphold those particular virtues.

“You’re a lying, dog-faced, pony soldier!” he fumed at a female questioner in a meet and greet on the campaign trail during the primaries. 

To a man who challenged him on his son Hunter’s corrupt dealings with gas company Burisma in Ukraine, Biden spat, “Get your words straight Jack,” and challenged the guy to a push-up contest. As the questioner said when he sat down, “I’m not voting for you,” Biden responded with, “I knew you’re weren’t man, you think I thought you’d vote for me? You’re too old to vote for me.”  The man appeared to be around 65 years old. Biden is 77.

Yet another questioner, a union auto worker, in response to a genuine query about gun control received this reply from Biden: “You’re full of shit! Let’s take this outside.”

Confusing Vermont with New Hampshire, telling folks he’s running for the senate instead of the presidency, encouraging families to, “play the radio, make sure the television… excuse me, the record player is on at night,” talking about “choosing truth over facts,” confusing Angela Merkel with the late Margaret Thatcher, and in one of the oddest yarns a statesman could indulge in during a 2017 speech at a public pool in Delaware, which had been renamed in his honour, Biden ranted:

“I’ve got hairy legs that turn that.. that.. that..that turn.. that turn blonde in the sun and the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again, and look at it.  So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap and I’ve loved kids jumping on my lap.”

During Super Tuesday when Biden was addressing the large crowd, he grabbed his wife’s hand and announced: “By the way, this is my little sister, Valerie.”

Biden cannot be trusted to speak to a camera without handlers, such as his wife Jill, sitting beside him in the role of a helicopter parent. When he is allowed near a microphone on his own, disaster follows – as in his recent attempt to quote the most fundamental, beautiful and defining words of America’s foundational document, the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…

Joes’s butchered version? 
 
“We hold these truths to be self a..evident, that all men and women created… by the… go… you know the thing!”

No wonder Bernie Sanders is still holding on to his delegates before the Democratic National Convention. It must be galling for him to know that once again he has been sidelined – first to make way for the mendacious loser Hillary Clinton in 2016, and now to a man two years his junior exhibiting the symptoms of dementia. 

Is this really the best that Democrats can do?

Sadly for them, yes it is. The Democratic primaries yielded the largest field of contenders ever seen and they all lost to an under-performing Biden. Now more than ever, whoever is chosen to be Biden’s running mate for Veep is of great importance, since that person will be a strategic choice to replace Biden as President in the unlikely event that he should win come November.
 
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke tradition and ran for a third and then fourth presidential term – the only president to ever serve more than two terms in office, his fourth election of 1944 saw Harry S Truman become VP. With his health in significant decline, many knew that FDR would be unlikely to survive the duration of a fourth term. He was, for the last time, inaugurated in Jan 1945 and was dead by April. Truman became President. 

Right now, Democrats scheme and plot the future election knowing full well that Biden’s mental elevator is no longer reaching his top floor. The disgraceful thing about this deceitful debacle is that they act as if Americans cannot see what is going on with Biden. They always seem to fall prey to the assumption that the average citizen is more foolish than they are. 

With Senile Joe now facing allegations of a crude sexual assault upon the private parts of one Tara Reade, he is taking quite a different line toward his accuser than he took when Brett Kavanaugh had to face charges from Christine Blasey Ford during the appointment hearings to make it onto the Supreme Court in September of 2018. Without any corroborating facts for Blasey Ford’s claims, Biden’s position was that Blasey Ford “should be believed.”

Biden now conveniently thinks that facts matter and need to be corroborated. Tara Reade claims that she filed a report about her sexual assault and that report will be stored with his senate files in the national archives, or possibly at the University of Delaware which holds some 1800 boxes of files on Biden’s senatorial career. 

On MSNBC, a network which has constantly led a charge of armchair psychologising over President Trump’s mental unfitness to run the country, Mika Brzezinski respectfully interviewed Biden for five minutes about the Tara Reade sexual assault claims. That five minutes of trying to sound coherent about something this important was clearly a challenge for Biden:

Mika:
Are you absolutely certain.. are you absolutely positive there is no record of any complaint by Tara Reade against you?

Biden:
I am absolutely positive that no one that I’m aware of ever was been made aware of any complaint a formal complaint made by or a complaint made by Tara Reade at the time that it allegedly happened 27 years ago or until, the… I announced for pres…  or well I’m guessing was April or May of this year… I know of no-one who was aware that any complaint was made.

Mika:
Do you agree with the reporting that those records [University of Delaware’s] were supposed to be revealed to the public and then they were resealed for a longer period of time until after you leave public life – and if you agree that that’s what happened, why did that happen? 

Biden responded that they were sealed because they contained private conversations between himself and other heads of state in other countries while he was serving as VP to Barack Obama. He said they did not want those conversations to be used as fodder against him on the campaign trail while he runs for president. 

I have no idea whether Tara Reade’s claims are true or not, sexual assault charges are sadly now just par for the course of any man’s journey into high office. But I do believe that if the assault did happen, Biden’s failure to recall the event is probably truthful, not because he’s necessarily telling the truth, but because his brain seems to be full of dark, spacious holes.
 
Observe that former president Mr. Obama only came out to endorse Biden for president three weeks ago when President Trump goaded him to do so after he wondered out loud in front of the press pool why Obama had not yet given Joe his blessing, “He knows something that you don’t know… I think I know, but you don’t know.”

Within a few days Mr. Obama endorsed his former VP’s run, offering up these words about Biden’s leadership qualities:

“The kind of leadership that’s guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace — that kind of leadership doesn’t just belong in our state capitols and mayors offices. It belongs in the White House.” 

The former president still excels at spinning pretentious poppycock, but what held him back from endorsing Biden before President Trump’s public and timely goading?
​
I think most of us know the answer to that: it’s Biden’s slide into senility.  

By Maree Guenole
​
5 May 2020

Jacinda Ardern 
Winston Peters 
Simon Bridges 
David Seymour 
​
By email 


Re: Computational Governance and Sars-Cov-2/Covid19 measures
 
Dear Messieurs and Madam, 
​
I am writing to assert my non consent to the all of government approach to the measures for the disease Covid19 and the liberty that the Crown is taking with matters constitutional on the grounds it is protecting public health. 

The debacle now unfolding before the country is emerging as a once in a century series of ill-informed and poor decision making on the basis of computer modelling, therefore not reality, so flawed and implausible it must be classed as science fiction. Fiction because one would need to suspend reality in order to believe that any of the modelled outcomes could occur. 

The scenario the government continues to promulgate and amplify through its monopoly of media is fear of the unknown, and an artificial construct of the future to coach people into the belief they must modify their behaviour to mitigate an unknown danger. This sounds close to a definition of paranoia, but apparently government believes I should be convinced by this insane way of thinking. 

The appearance of Shaun Hendy from the Centre for Research Excellence at University of Auckland on television a few days ago is best designated as melodrama. I understand Mr Hendy has ability in the field of mathematics and physics but the suggestion that he is fearful of New Zealand society being released from quarantine / house arrest / lock up is ridiculous and not based in reality, like his modelling of disease infection. For TVNZ to give airtime to his views is more state sponsored psychological nudging and hideous abuse of trust. 

While we must be aware of the dangers associated with disease there is no need to promote fear as a way of life. So it is quite absurd to see articles like that produced by Alexander Gillespie in national media suggesting that somehow the country is on some kind of war footing, and hence that it is reasonable to remove our constitutional rights and liberties for an invisible enemy. Was this some kind of alumni favour that was called in? 

This administration is attempting to instigate a system of computational governance for which there is no mandate including a surveillance system which has no basis in our free society. Our society already has enough surreptitious surveillance without adding a further layer for which the people will be forced to pay for by further excise and reduction of services for the benefit of technology providers and no reasonable dividend to people. Furthermore the integration of police into decision making as to the conduct of New Zealanders means that this government has introduced a system of martial law to the country.
 
This is repugnant. The supine slide into a police state seems to have been achieved with little or no fanfare, based on a spurious computer modelling of an apocalypse that has not come to pass. And neither is it reasonable to assert that the measures somehow mitigated the virulence of the virus. Now that the worst has passed, the lock up of society is being repurposed to suit the crisis managers to remake society in the image of their ideals, including marketing and selling the electorate on all of society surveillance and the notion that the extreme changes demanded of the country are somehow reasonable and sustainable. If those that wish to remain shut away for the foreseeable future continue to do so then that is their choice. 

The rest of society must needs return to living to mitigate the aftermath of a created shit storm that has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands as a result of inexperienced and unreasonable thinking.

The role of police, a separated power of state to which the people consent by our constitutional customs, traditions and values, is to uphold the law of this country. They are not a tool to deploy against the people for political purpose. The same applies to our military.

Furthermore the dissembling by the commissioner of police about the lawfulness of officers standing at impromptu road blocks demonstrates we currently have a lawless society whereby the rules are being made up as the government and its employees go along. The situation is plainly a sham of governance.
 
The failure of the cabinet to maintain and execute publicly notified planning for situations such as this Sars-Cov-2 means that there is another agenda at work. Furthermore the advice from institution staff of Otago and Auckland which created panic decisions is best described as theatre and pantomime when hospitals around the country are idle. Just for reference I know for a fact that Auckland Hospital is operating at less than capacity after two separate family members visited for health issues during the period of national house arrest, both non-covid related. By the time one had left they had been tested four (4) times for Covid19, which turned up ‘negative’ in each instance. How reasonable is this? 

Government is capitalising on fear mongering propaganda, wasting precious resources of the country on a behaviour modification exercise drill. It’s quite obvious, going by behaviours in the house of representatives, that there is no remorse for these mistakes and more money will be thrown at the issue in a futile attempt to mitigate the irrational decision making begun in March 2020.
 
I reference the honourable member for Tamaki, and his recent comment that when the decision maker becomes more important than the decisions we have a problem. The beatification of politicians is in my view the mark of a regime that derives its authority from a cult of personality. 

Complicit state media, removed from the reality of everyday people that fail to question and scrutinise the decisions of such a leadership can be classified as no more than public relations agencies. So the financial bung or funding by state to prop up an obviously failed business model is an incentive to continue soft power influencing public to accept the removal of rights for safety and security, when there can be no such guarantee from death or other unknown danger.
 
Governments in the western tradition are instituted among the people to secure rights. However when they become destructive to these endowed inalienable and natural rights, it is the right of the people to demand the government’s removal. My letter today is to ask the government to either remove the restrictions on the people of New Zealand, or otherwise to remove themselves from office if they will no longer uphold our lawful rights in respect of the constitution of New Zealand.

This charade at protecting public health has gone on long enough. Mr Bloomfield the Director General of Health would also do well to resign, he is a disgrace to the public service. Furthermore universities in New Zealand would do well to disassociate themselves from the Gates Foundation, when one of its founders is now shamelessly undertaking self-promotion on international broadcasters like the BBC as some kind of ‘health expert’. The probability of this being possible is like me suggesting I am an astronaut, wishful thinking. Mr Gates seems to be in the situation of having more money than sense, and perhaps needs to get back to coding which according to rumour he has some skill in. His kind of humanitarianism makes an oxymoron of the word, and the Gates Foundation’s work in India and in Africa is deplorable and grotesque.
 
The economy is an extremely complex part of our society. The crude bailout package, including printing money, will not save the crucial parts of the supply chain and once broken it will take a long time to reassemble, including capital investment and expertise. The real economy is plummeting and dying. How any official can assert that the New Zealand economy is operating at 75% capacity is deluded. How is that possible when our tourism industry is destroyed? How is that possible when unemployment is expected to rise from 4% to 13.5%, from 111,000 to 371,000 people?
 
Just for reference wage subsidies are meaningless when business owners have no cash flows, the only thing this will do is to delay the inevitable foreclosure of multitudes of small businesses around the nation who will have no ability to continue to operate with no or low demand for their services, not to mention the antisocial behaviour modification/social engineering measures being instituted by government in order to operate, which will impact the viability of businesses to operate profitably. It would appear that either ministers are so enveloped in their ideological ideas of equality, diversity and inclusion they can’t see the wood for the trees or they are simply incompetent. Is it both? 

The current regime of home detention as a health measure is draconian, unreasonable and appears to be without limit based on ‘the science’ as the public is repeatedly told. Apparently there is no room for dissent. The Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet is obtuse to not understand that actions attempting to correct the opinions of members of the public that dare to question the leadership of the Prime Minister are outside of reasonable.
 
I suggest they are no longer fit to be employed in public service. Their focus on the semantics of statistics and the position of our country in relation to others demonstrates they have lost sight of reasonable objectives for this quarantine in an attempt to prop up failed strategy. The current presentations of government that there is some kind of patriotic rationale to comply with the dictates of government are not reason to enact compliance. This is a ruse to remove legacy systems of our democracy and society in education, health, justice, privacy and the economy using a strategy of hijack, ambush and speed.
 
The notion that the democratic model is limiting on innovation is spin doctoring, first raised in the 19th century by men like JP Morgan. Pretending that the democratic process is too slow is an excuse to implement unpalatable ideas during crisis. Consensus building is required under our constitutional model, else there is an abuse of power being enacted here by politicians and officials with visions of a future that has deconstructed our cultural heritage to which the public have not agreed by any discussion, referendum or vote. 

Moreover the tactical deployment of an army of social media activists against any reasonable criticism of this government suggests that some in this country believe we live in a one party state, a patently dangerous notion. 

Questioning the current direction of travel of this government sets off an hysterical wave of character assassination and a virtual pile on by a mob of what can best be described as unhinged acolytes of the Labour party or propagandised citizens terrified by the state and its machinery.
 
The government needs reminding democratic governance is a product of human imagination and the public weal, it is not the prerogative of the state to remove it. This is our social contract, an historic and cultural intangible good that belongs to each and every member of the society. Our most pressing issue to hand is the imposition of a computational governance model that has no place in our society, and in fact this attempt to foist such a model on the public now requires regulatory vision and creativity to prevent epistemic injustice arising as a result of information technocrats deployment of their networks and systems with a view to undermining our democratic processes and values for the private benefit of select individuals and their enrichment. 

Which brings me to the communication style of this government which is well down the rabbit hole of cultist authoritarianism coupled to a communitarian style of organising, so that there is no tactic or strategy which will not be utilised to achieve unstated objectives for which there is no mandate. The constant and unmitigated stream of narrative which insists on talking to adults as children is not only insulting and sanctimonious but appears to be the new abnormal, to which the unstated inference is we must now adjust ourselves to this.
 
Ours is a trust based society. What we appear to have now is a plague of corruption whereby ‘the science’, a model based on assumptions and fiction, is being deployed against New Zealand society. The tools of government at present appear best described as a hammer and every problem a nail.
 
I see many of my countrymen and women wearing masks and gloves on the basis of propaganda put about by people like Michael Baker. His advice, amplified by media, to people regarding wearing of masks is so egregious and dangerous he should be removed from any responsibility of advising on public health, as for those people that follow it there will be an inevitable spike in illness (Mr Gates pandemic 2?) due to oxygen deprivation which will cause rises in cortisol in the body and as a result make those persons more susceptible to disease, not less.

Human biology is by necessity a viral system, we cannot exist without viruses and bacteria. Our natural bacterial flora is reduced by measures like mask wearing and gloves. The immune system is built by exposure to viruses and bacteria, to which we develop an immune response. This is part of the everyday life of humans via touch and ingestion. Intracellular toxic excretions inevitably contain fragments of RNA and DNA, these are microscopic in nature. So the suggestion that masks, usually only worn to contain the sputum and respiratory excretions of medical personnel during situations requiring sterile fields, can be protection from infection RNA/DNA fragments so infinitesimally small is akin to suggesting someone wear chainmail for disease protection. It does not matter what kind of mask it is, it is blatant propaganda by this mendacious man. In fact any mask long term will be less than useless, and Michael Baker should be pilloried for his ludicrous suggestions.
 
Any notion that science is the ultimate determiner of reality in this situation is abusive and a denial of the fact that humans are rational creatures.
 
The all of government approach at present is to suggest that every person cannot be trusted to make their own judgements over their personal health and that the government will do that en masse for the people. I do not consent. I have my own opinion, logos. My understanding of reality and right to choose how I live has apparently been removed by edict. I do not consent. I am being subjected to the present disproportionate actions of this government suggesting that somehow one needs a degree in microbiology or be an epidemiologist or similar to understand what is happening. This is devoid of any logic or cogent thought. 

On that basis the entire cabinet should immediately leave office. I object to my person, my family, my friends and my fellow New Zealanders being constantly treated as some kind of biohazard by elected and appointed officials and the monopoly resources of the state being deployed against us for the fairy-tale currently being promoted ad nauseam by government.
 
I recommend that all of the current government pull itself together and stop behaving like a bunch of wilting wall flowers. The public has had enough of the lack of courage and creativity deficit in this approach. New Zealanders will not be used for the objectives of international non-profit organisations, institutions or companies, like the corrupt and surplus to requirement W.H.O or the Gates Foundation or its founders business operation, that are without any concern for the welfare of our nation.

If there can be no balanced approach to governance of New Zealand then we have a failed state and it is time for this government to resign and leave office forthwith. I will not consent to tyranny under the guise of public health measures for a disease with such a minuscule ratio of deaths to rate of infection. I will no longer tolerate this government’s incompetent stewardship of the country, you are unfit for the task. Leave now. 


Regards, 
Maree Guenole 

By Olivia Pierson
First published on Insight@theBFD 30/04/2020

The collectivist mindset, whether it be communist, socialist or fascist, has an organising principle and that is self-sacrifice. The individual must sacrifice personal needs and desires for the greater good of the group, the community or the state.
 
This is demanded by force according to the ethics of altruism.

I’ve written before that altruism doesn’t mean voluntarily doing nice things for others, as we all like to do from time to time. Altruism means dutifully self-sacrificing to others as a moral good.

The term “altruism” was coined in the 19th Century by Auguste Comte, the French founder of the philosophical theory known as positivism. To hold society together, Comte believed that people had to live for the sake of others by renouncing their own self-interest. Generosity and good-will had nothing to do with it.
 
We are now all living through exactly what the ethics of altruism require as our liberties and various livelihoods have been forcibly sacrificed on the altar of the COVID-19 “emergency.”

Every day when PM Jacinda Ardern stands on the podium to give an update on the numbers of cases, deaths or recoveries re the virus, she trots out phrases like, “those incredible numbers are down to the sacrifices of every Kiwi.”

Indeed. Sacrifice is the right word because the citizens of New Zealand (and also those of many other countries)  were never given a choice in how to respond to COVID-19 coming in through the borders via air and sea. With the government’s massive lockdown order, many small to medium businesses have already been decimated – even with the stop-gap measures of wage subsidies to retain staff during lockdown.
 
Bars, restaurants, beauty parlours, hairdressers, health practitioners, massage parlours, brothels, retail stores, theatres, cinemas, cleaning services and umpteen other enterprises still have to pay rent, Kiwi-saver, insurances, marketing fees, leases, vehicle payments, power, internet and phones. Many business owners know that even though they’ve managed to retain staff in the immediate short term, they’ll soon be laying them off as they come to terms with exactly how much money their businesses have haemorrhaged.
 
All these livelihoods – and the standard of living they once provided – have been sacrificed in an extreme attempt to stop the virus from spreading in our country.
 
​Yet, as more data is analysed on the actual facts and behaviour of the virus, many experts in the field of infectious diseases are showing us that the disease is far more widespread and contagious than originally thought and the fatality rate much lower – around 0.03% instead of the predicted 2.0 – 4.0%.  Studies coming out of Stanford University and Bakersfield California, along with separate studies from Sweden, Iceland and Germany are all saying the same thing: we have grossly overestimated the fatality rate of the virus and how far it had already spread into the general population with most people being asymptomatic.
 
Deaths from COVID-19 are nearly always associated with elderly people already compromised by one or more serious, underlying health conditions – and obesity is also a major factor. So quarantining our senior citizens and all people with compromised immune systems – and perhaps our fatties too, was the more sensible option, along with strict hygiene such as hand washing and social distancing. But instead, we were ordered into home imprisonment, with something resembling martial law out in our streets, and the destruction of our many small to medium businesses has been put down to collateral damage to bring about some so-called greater good. 
​
This is altruistic sacrifice writ large and it has made experimental, guinea-pig comrades of us all.

If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended: A Primer"