I watched the whole Biden press conference yesterday so that you didn't have to and
just want to talk through a couple of things with it and sort of my
sense of what's going to happen, which frankly, it seems like it's going
to shift day to day. So I guess the first thing, My first
big takeaway from the press conference was the tension of it all. Biden was
late showing up to this NATO thing where he was going to introduce President Zelenski
from Ukraine, and then, in that very non difficult task of introducing Zelensky
to all these NATO people, he referred to him as President Putin, which
you'd have to think of all the mistaken names that he could use for Vladimir
Zelensky, Vladimir Putin would be the absolute worst one. So he was running
late for that, and then he runs late for this press conference that was
scheduled. It was like over, it was like super duper late, and
people were starting to like openly speculate, is he not going to show up?
What's going on? Is he not going to show up? What's going
on? So he finally shows up, and let me just sort of describe
the structure of it. He starts out with prepared remarks and then he opens
himself up to take what turned out to be about eleven questions, including follow
up questions. So he starts by delivering these prepared remarks with a teleprompter.
And I thought, and now, granted we're grading all of this on a
curve, okay, I'm watching it with my expectations just basement low. And
I thought his initial prepared remark, because he did a decent job, he
seemed kind of vigorous. Thought, oh, he's actually handling this pretty well.
But then he gets off the teleprompter, and the whole energy changes.
The minute he gets off the teleprompter, the whole energy changes. He gets
asked his first question is about Kamala Harris's competence to run the country, and
he then proceeds to say, I wouldn't have picked Donald Trump to be my
vice president if I didn't think she could do the job, and he screws
up the names he calls. He refers to Kamala Harris as Donald Trump,
and everyone in the room other than him notices the mistake and kind of gasps.
He does not notice it, does not correct it. He did correct
it when he screwed up Zelenski's name and called him Putin. But he completely
doesn't notice it, and it's all that anyone's thinking and talking about for the
entire rest of the press conference. Now he then gets into he gets asked
other questions, and there are a lot of Democrats who try to who are
There's some Democrats anyway who are trying to argue he did so well for the
rest of it, other than you know, referring to his vice president by
the name of his chief political opponent. He did so well. During the
rest of the press conference, he didn't do so well. He got into
clearly kind of stump speech material. And I know a little bit of this
feeling. I do enough public speaking and next tembraneous talking where I kind of
know I have certain topics that I've talked about enough times, whether it be
on the radio or in speeches or things like that, where if I get
into my groove, I can just talk about it. And that's clearly what
Biden was kind of doing. His answers were usually wandering and meandering. It
was kind of him just sort of spitting out everything he kind of knew about
topic X, Y or z whether it was really responsive to a question or
not, and very long winded answers with no obvious sort of like mental clock
for him to realize, boy, I've been going on. I've been going
on a really long time with this. He clearly doesn't have that anymore.
And he talks so slowly now you can tell he's just old. It's not
even really a question of like dementia or stuff like. He's just old.
And I've heard a lot of the theories or arguments about whether it maybe he
has Parkinson, and that's kind of convincing, but I think just more than
an he's just old. Like it's just the natural decline of your physical and
cognitive abilities that happens over time, and it only ends one way. So
he didn't have any other huge gaffs, though a lot of the things he
was saying just seemed kind of implausible. He clearly wasn't really being responsive to
a lot of the questions. He was just going on and on and on.
He had all these criticisms for Israel without simultaneously a lot of criticism for
Hamas, which a lot of sort of pro Israel people pointed out. He
I mean, he was just he was very boring. Honestly, it was
incredibly boring. At a certain point, you realize, like, is he
He's talking and talking and talking, and a part of me was almost wondering
if he was just sort of filibustering a little like this, This press conference
is only going to go for a certain amount of time. If every answer
he gives is like ten minutes long, maybe he can limit this press conference
from being, you know, a twenty question free for all. He can
limit it to maybe like eleven questions total. So I don't know if that
was part of his strategy, if there was any strategy, but that's what
happened is I think the total number of questions probably got reduced. It seems
like maybe the total number of questions would be reduced because just how long he
took to answer everything, And some of the questions were real dumb questions,
like one guy from AFP. Some foreign reporters said, what do you have?
All these other countries in Europe are terrified if you don't win the election.
What can you tell them? If Donald Trump wins the election, which
is such a softball, would a complete waste of time question? Now,
I guess the thing though, that sort of struck me. Was while I
was bored for a lot of it, there was still this tension that I
just don't know that he can survive because of his obvious age, because of
the obvious disaster that the debate was, which he referred to as my stupid
mistake at the debate. It wasn't a mistake at the debate. That's how
he referred to his debate performance as a stupid mistake. No, a stupid
mistake is leaving the popcorn in the microwave. To a stupid mistake is you
know, heating up a bowl of macaroni and cheese, but you left the
spoon in the bowl of mac and cheese and now there's a fire. That's
a mistake. There was nothing that was a mistake about his debate performance.
He's just bad. He just wasn't He was just clearly senile. That's not
a mistake. It's not a whoopsie day. It's not like his shoelaces were
untied. But since his debate performance, there's just going to be this intense
scrutiny of everything he does, and every gap he makes is just gonna be
another piece of evidence of Yeah, this guy isn't with it, And so
I had the sense the whole time watching it of like it was almost like
I was watching an extremely delicate brain surgery or something where any mistake, any
slip up by the surgeon would result in disaster. Like people were framing it
that way at the start of this thing that Biden's whole political career was hinging
could be hinging on this press conference. And I think that's the thing that's
kind of I think is unsustainable for the Democrats, is that every single thing
Biden does in public where he doesn't have a teleprompter is going to be a
make it or break it moment. At any minute, Biden could say or
do something or have an appearance that results in catastrophe for him. And that
was my I guess that was my big takeaway the whole time was I'm sitting
there like at any I'm I'm like on the edge of my seat for this
man who is I don't think anyone's been on the edge of their seat to
listen to Joe Biden talk ever in his life. I mean, the guy
has been a blowhard from day one, since he was running for president nineteen
eighty seven, since he was running for Senate in nineteen seventy six. Like
he is not a particularly insightful man. He is not a particularly intelligent man.
He is not a particularly inspiring man. He's he was the most one
of the more mediocre politicians in Washington who always thought of himself as something great
and has now gotten to this position of being a president of the United States.
I've just and but here I am on the edge of my seat.
Why because I could see a disaster happening any minute, and I still think
there's a distinct possibility of him having to drop out. Why well, if
the donors refuse to give, if they're big money donors, refuse to fund
a campaign that they where they don't see a path to victory, if they
are like this candidate Joe Biden is senile and we will not fund his campaign,
then that's the disaster scenario. I mean, at a certain point,
Ben Biden has to go. Okay, I mean presidential campaigns like this,
they're hauling in something like two hundred million dollars per month until the election,
and they got to be spending that much. They need money coming in because
they got a lot of money going out. And if Biden. If the
donors sort of universally shut off that faucet valve, that's that's the problem.
And that's sort of what as ridiculous as it is that George Clooney has become
a major voice in all of this. George Clooney the worst batman ever.
I shouldn't be mean to George Clay. My wife and I actually love all
the Oceans movie, Oceans eleven, Oceans, twelve Ocean things. We love
all those movies. So I find it hard to despise George Clooney too much,
even though he's a big fat liberal. But what Clooney's op ed to
the New York Times where he said, yeah, Biden looked about this bad
at the Biden looked about this bad at the fundraiser I threw for him with
Obama, He's got to step down. Clooney's saying that is sort of representative
of the donor class. I mean, that's the class that Clooney's tied in
with. So that's a huge problem for Biden. Now, I my last
takeaway before I maybe shift away a little bit from the press conference yesterday.
There was one point at the end where Biden is trying to give an answer
about you know, someone asked him, you know you've acknowledged limitations. How
can you continue to say you can do the job if you've acknowledged that you
have certain physical limitations. Biden then says, no, no, no,
I don't have any limitations, and then proceeds to talk about his limitations,
which basically involve, hey, let's start events earlier. It's just like,
well, why do you need to start events earlier. That's a huge concession
that, yes, you are limited. I just need to PRAI myself,
praise myself. And at the end of his answer, he says, by
my staff, they always add things, they always add things. At the
end, gonna catch hell from my wife about that. And it was a
very weird It was almost like he was talking to himself like ruefully, like
like ruefully talking. What does he mean He's gonna catch hell from his wife
because of all the stuff late at night that his staff adds on to his
schedule. You know, because he's president of the United States, he's got
important stuff that needs to get dealt with sometimes at eight o'clock at night.
I'm gonna catch hell from my wife for this. I was that is so,
I mean, so it sort of seemed like he was sort of throwing
his staff under the bus, which clearly someone had coached him don't do that,
because he made a big point of that in his Stephanopolis interview after a
bunch of pressed leak that he was furious at his staff for his bad debate
to performance. And it sounds like he's acknowledging. I mean, it's almost
like he's acknowledging all these sort of whispers and rumors and suppositions that people make.
That is Jill Biden like really driving the bus here. Like you would
think that a concerned spouse would want her ailing husband, her ailing and obviously
aging husband, to take a step back, but she clearly does not.
All Right, when we return, I want to talk about an interesting for
Biden, an interesting analog, the story of Bo Biden and his continuing to
campaign for governor of Delaware even though he had a serious cancer diagnosis. Next
on the John Girardi Show, Let's go back in history and talk about a
sort of forgotten piece of Biden family history. Let's go back to twenty fourteen.
Now, in twenty fourteen, President Biden's son Bo Biden announced that he
was going to run for governor of Delaware. He announced this in twenty fourteen.
The election would be in twenty sixteen. He announced this, but then
kind of disappeared in twenty fourteen, wasn't seen making a lot of public appearances,
even though he had sort of announced, Hey, I'm planning to run
for governor. And obviously, if Joe Biden's son is wanting to run for
governor of Delaware, that's a big deal. Biden was the vice president at
the time. Biden was a legend in Delaware politics. He had been a
Senator representing Delaware for thirty six years or something before he became the vice president.
That's a significant thing. And Bo had an impressive background military veteran,
you know, seemingly not as much of a screw up as his brother Hunter.
So Bo announces in twenty fourteen that he wants to run for governor,
but then he kind of disappears from public life, and a lot of people
were sort of puzzle like, where is he. The Biden camp insisted that
this lack of appearances was not serious. He was actually ramping up his work
and what was happening. Well, Bo had been diagnosed with very serious cancer
and was dealing with it, and the Biden folks did not tell anyone this
man who announced that he's running for governor and it's twenty fifteen, a year
before the governor's election. They didn't even concede that he was seeking medical attention
until two weeks before he died in twenty fifteen. So there's stories going back
from February of twenty fourteen where basically people were asking about his Bo's health.
No one's saying anything, claims that he had a clean bill of health.
In twenty fourteen, he gets hospitalized and he declined all these interview requests about
his health and his political future. He was telling people, no, no,
no, I'm good. I got lucky. Then after Bo's death,
the Biden's revealed he had glile blastoma, a cancer with a five year survival
rate of seven percent and an average survival time of twelve to eighteen months after
diagnosis, and that he likely was diagnosed no later than twenty thirteen. In
twenty seventeen, Joe Biden went on the view and he's talking with Megan McCain
and it's this kind of weepy interview because Biden's talking about his son Bo,
and Megan is talking about her dad, John McCain, who had passed away,
and Biden had been friendly with John McCain. They had been in the
Senate together forever. And this is, honestly this kind of interviews stuff.
This is where Joe Biden set sort of planted the seeds for his twenty twenty
presidential run, because he comes off in this as you know, here's Megan
McCain crying about her dad and he's crying about his son. He comes off
as very you know, sort of approachable, but he talks about it in
this clip, and gosh, he looks so much younger in twenty seventeen than
he does today. He's talking in this clip about Bo continuing to run for
governor of Delaware through his illness as if it's this very inspiring story. And
I think at the time in twenty seventeen, when there were no sort of
stakes attached to it and it was sort of water under the bridge at that
point, everyone was sort of oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
nice, how inspiring he continued to run for governor when he had cancer.
But a lot of stuff has happened since that. Well, now we've got
Joe Biden as President of the United States and his health failing or at the
very least he's aging, And for me, my assessment of this just personally
has changed. Okay, So my dad, as many of you listened to
the show, my dad, doctor Joji, already passed away back in March.
He had been diagnosed with bladder cancer about three years ago, and in
March of twenty twenty three he had a procedure where we learned previously unbeknownst to
all of us, that my dad's cancer had spread very aggressively to a bunch
of other parts of his body, and the cancer was such that it hadn't
appeared in any scans or any blood tests or anything like that. So it
was this huge shock to our family in March of twenty twenty three when we
learned that my dad had this, you know, very aggressive cancer and that
his you know, five year prognot was about as bad as bo Biden's was,
and my dad would proceed to only live for one more year after we
learned that. So we learned that in March of twenty twenty three, and
he passed away in March of twenty twenty four. And I just think seeing
my dad and the and obviously, you know, brain cancer is different from
bladder cancer that my dad was dealing with. But I mean my dad retired
from work right after that. I mean, he realized he couldn't continue working
consistently. You know, he would come into Vali. So my dad was
a surgeon of Valley Children's Hospital. You know, he would come to Valley
Children's for presentations or things like that and stuff educational stuff for the residents.
But he didn't. He stopped having a consistent schedule of sorty. He officially
retired. And I just think like if my mom had encouraged or forced or
God forbid forced him to keep working after that, I would have said,
I would have been, Mom, are you insane? And it makes me
wonder, like what is with the Biden family. They kept encouraging both seemingly.
Did they keep encouraging bo to keep going on with a governor's campaign when
he knew he was gonna die of cancer. They keep encouraging Joe to run
for president when it's clear he's failing at the very least, Maybe just say
I'm going to be a one term president and that's it. And even in
the press, conference. He talked about that he gave these very implausible reasons
for why he decided he wouldn't be a transitional president, which is what he
had said during the campaign, which some thought in the in the twenty twenty
campaign, he had said something about maybe wanting to be a transitional president,
which a lot of people thought was a signal of I'm only to serve for
one term. And his explanation for why that change just seemed implausible. Well,
I've got to finish the job. I've got it, and it all
seemed focused on him. He's the best one to finish the job, which
is just that just doesn't It just seemed so implausible. Anyway, the bo
Biden health thing seems like a very odd, weird parallel when we return no
to another Clovis unified bond next on the John Gerardi Show. I feel like
one of my callings as a commentator on local politics is to be an apostle
against bond measures. I think this is one of my I want this to
be my calling card in local politics is consistent advocacy against the very concept of
the bond measure. The bond measure as a vehicle of government funding. It
is the absolute favorite. It's it's something that California loves in spite of the
fact that at a statewide level, our bond plus pension debt is at something
astronomical like one point six trillion dollars over time that we have to pay off
in bond and pension debt that we owe. But especially at the local level,
in the local scene, President Unified, Clovis, Unified, Central,
Unified. School districts love bond measures. They love bond measures, and school
districts always have kind of an upper hand in getting bond measures past. They
you know, they have the apparatus of the school not totally at their disposal,
but you know, kind of there are ways that you can can utilize
the infrastructure of a school to help promote a bond measure in a way of
a whole school district, and how many parents send their kids to the public
school district within the school district's boundaries most of the parents do. There are
ways that they can utilize the infrastructure of a school district in order to promote
the passage of a bond. And it's always something that's going to be appealing
to local developers and builders and construction companies. They like big government construction contracts
that they can hop onto. So all of these business interests tend to align
towards bond measures and promoting bond measures. Now, what is a bond?
What is a bond? I think a lot of times people hear about a
bond measure and they don't actually understand what it is. So here's the story
about it. Why am I talking about this? Clovis Unified. Clovis Unified
says it needs a four hundred million dollar bond for high school and other projects.
Here are the details story by Laura Diaz and the Fresno b Clovis voters
might be deciding whether to approve a multi million dollar bond measure to help pay
to finish some construction projects and keep up with maintenance, including bringing district buildings
up to code. District representatives said ongoing construction at new school sites such as
the new Clovis South High might be left undone if the bond measure is listed
in the November ballot but doesn't pass. So this is a four hundred million
dollars bond measure. But what is a bond? Let's explain. A bond
is a loan it is a loan to some municipal or governmental and a school
district, a state, a community college district, et cetera. So,
as with most loans, as with essentially all loans, if it is in
fact a loan rather than a gift, as with all loans, you have
to pay it back, and as with most loans, you have to pay
it back with interest. Now, how does a governmental entity pay back a
loan? Not with its own money. Governmental entities don't have their own money.
They get money from the taxpayers. That's where they get money. And
where for school district bond measures, where does that money come from? It
comes from your property taxes. So your property taxes includes baked into it a
certain percentage that is there to pay off several different iterations of Let's say you
live in within the boundaries of Clovis Unified. For example, if you live
within the boundaries of Clovis Unified, there I think at least two bond measures
that you're paying for still through your property taxes. Why. Well, because
most bond measures have a thirty year repayment schedule with interest. So Clovis Unified
has passed bond measure. You know, maybe they passed one bond measure twenty
years ago. They passed another bond measure in well, they passed one bond
measure in twenty twenty. They passed another bond measure. I think back around
twenty ten or twenty eleven or something like that. And there was probably another
bond measure back in two thousand that were still around two thousand that we're still
paying for because Clovis Unified tends to do this, They tend to do another
bond measure to fund a bunch of stuff every year every ten years or so.
Rather so we just keep paying and paying and paying. And here's the
thing. When you pay back alone with interest, how much do you pay
back? It's a four. So it always gets billed as this is a
four hundred million dollar bond measure for Clovis High for Clovis Unified. Four hundred
million dollars for Clovis Unified. Wow, so wonderful we get four hundred million
dollars spend on updating our schools. Everyone loves schools, right, four hundred
million dollars. If you just vote yes, you just vote yes, and
four hundred million dollars magically falls from the sky. Well, they forget to
tell you what what should be included frankly, in every and in every story
about a bond measure. What should be included is not just the dollar amount
that the school district gets. What should be included in every single story is
how how much interest the taxpayers are going to pay? Because guess what,
with interest rates as high as they are right now, I guarantee you if
it's a four hundred million dollar bond measure, that Close Unified is going to
get four hundred million dollars worth of benefits from the taxpayers are going to have
to pay eight hundred million dollars because that's how interest works. Interest over the
course of thirty years. You're not It's not like Close Unified gets four hundred
million and the taxpayers pay four hundred million. No, it's a loan.
It has interest. You have to pay the interest on top of the principle,
and over thirty years with interest rates as high as they are right now,
I mean they're interest rates as high as eight percent right now. If
you have for a thirty year loan, if you have an interest rate of
even six percent, you're paying double. Okay, the interest is the same
size is just as great as the principle, you might be paying more an
interest than in principle. And this is why I despise the bond system so
much. It is a It is a sneaky way for politicians to try to
say, Look, it'll just be a tiny little increase, a tiny little
increase in your property taxes, just a tiny fraction of a percentage increase in
your property taxes, and we'll get four hundred million dollars. No, that
tiny increase in my property taxes over the course of thirty years is going to
pay for eight hundred million dollars. So we're gonna spend eight hundred million dollars
to give Clovis Unified four hundred million dollars worth of improvements. That's what we're
doing now. The other thing they try to say is, well, we're
going to structure it in a way that doesn't increase your taxes. And they
say this with a straight face, without any other explanation. No, no,
no, we've structured it. It's not going to increase your taxes at
all. And what they mean is that basically they're just extending out farther the
amount of time that we're paying for bond measure payments in our existing property taxes,
so basically extending the term that we have to keep paying extra in our
property taxes. So that's how they get away with saying, oh, because
I remember hearing ads like this, Oh, vote for this bond measure for
clothes Unified. It'll raise four hundred million dollars and it doesn't raise taxes at
all. I'm like, that's not how money works. Money doesn't just magically
appear out of nowhere. There's no way that four hundred million dollars just magically
appears without someone paying it. And that's what they mean is basically they're just
extending it, whereas before we would just stop paying extra in our property taxes
because some prior ballid initiative bond measures term expired. Basically, they just keep
riding this gravy train forever and just let your complacency with the up. That's
just what property taxes are, yep. That's just what property taxes are here
here in the Clovis areapyep. They just let your complacency do the work for
them and say, well, we're not increasing taxes, yeah, but you're
increasing the duration that we have to keep paying these stupid taxes, the existing
taxes that exist with no letup. So again, when this comes up now,
when we return, and I want to talk about when this comes up,
just remember, a bond is a loan, it's a loon you have
to repay with interest. If it's a four hundred million dollar bond measure,
it means we're taxed eight hundred million dollars to pay for it. When we
return, I want to talk about the phony, baloney reasons for why allegedly
we need this four hundred million dollar bond that's next on the John Girardi Show.
Clovis Unified is already beating the drum for another four hundred million dollar bond
initiative to be put on the ballot this November. And I am continuing my
my campaign, my lifelong crusade against the concept of the bond measure as a
funding mechanism for local government. I think it's an idiotic thing to do.
It's going to cost US eight hundred million dollars in taxes to get four hundred
million dollars worth of benefit. Because that's what a bond is. A bond
is a loan to a municipal entity. It's a loan that the taxpayers have
to pay back with interest, and with interest rates as high as they are
for a loan that's going to have a thirty year term of repayment, we're
probably gonna wind up paying over eight hundred million dollars to get four hundred million
dollars worth of benefit. It's an incredibly inefficient way of funding things, but
it's a thing that school districts like because they can sell it to taxpayers with
a bunch of phony bologny arguments like, oh, it won't increase your taxes
because you're already paying for a bunch of prior stupid bond measures that we already
passed, and we'll just have you continue paying these till Kingdom come rather than
ever letting the terms of prior bond measures just expire so that your property taxes
could actually go down sometime. Fancy that. No, no, no,
we'll just continue to have your property taxes be high. Now here's some of
the reasons why why allegedly do we need a four hundred million dollars bond measure
to help pay to finish According to the Fresno Bee story, to help pay
to finish some construction projects and keep up with maintenance, including bringing district buildings
up to code. District representatives said ongoing construction at new school sites such as
the new Clovis South High might be left undone if the bond measure is listed
in the November ballot but does not pass. And they're talking about Clovis South
High School. So we if we don't pass a four hundred million dollar bond
measure, and this is always what happens, Clovis Unified says, Oh,
if we don't pass this, here's all these things that won't happen, and
they're holding a gun to your head, so you have to vote for this
stupid thing. Ongoing maintenance. Why isn't the normal budget paying for this?
Why isn't normal revenue paying for ongoing maintenance and bringing classroom buildings up to code.
That should just be part of normal maintenance. You shouldn't need to pass
another bond initiative to pay for it. Secondly, to finish construction on Clovis
South, why did we start construction on Clovis South without a sense that we
had the tax pay that we had the tax revenue necessary to finish it.
We just had a bond initiative that passed in twenty twenty. We need to
do another bond measure for close Unified in twenty twenty four. I mean,
for God's sakes, usually Clovis Unified at least as the decency to wait ten
years four years. So no, I refuse to pay for things like this.
If you're starting a new high school, you shouldn't start it until you
know you're gonna have the revenues to pay for it. Absolutely not vote no
on any bond measures. Sick and tired of bond measures. That'll do it
for John Gerardy Show. See you next time on Power Talk