Joe Awards Some Medals

Joe Biden seems to corrupt, if not destroy, everything he touches. However, with the recent announcement of Presidential Medal of Freedom awardees he might have done some good.

I don’t care for the Medal of Freedom program. The basic concept is good, to recognize “an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavor. However, the execution thereof has become somewhat comical.

Take a look at some of the past awardees. Barack Obama awarded 118 medals, more than any other president, and to such “notables” as Jean Kennedy Smith and Angela Merkel, who has reminded the world that while you can take the girl out of East Germany you can’t take East Germany out of the girl. There was also one for Marlo Thomas, no doubt for having to put up with Phil Donahue for all those years. The real shrieker was the one for Joe Biden. In fairness, there were some strange ones for Republicans as well. Can anyone give a reason for Trump picking Devin Nunes?

So, what was originally a good idea, to recognize truly exceptional people who have had an extraordinary impact on the country and the world, has now come perilously close to something between a political gesture and a participation trophy.

So let’s turn to Joe Biden and his prior picks.

Gabby Giffords? She’s a nice person, but it seems she was recognized for wanting to restrict people’s Constitutional rights (regarding firearms). Meg Rapinoe? The woman soccer player who, only after she retired, supported including trans-identifying men in women’s sports? Jim Clyburn. Nice guy, wish him well, but his only meritorious contribution was rescuing Biden’s flailing 2020 presidential campaign by endorsing him in South Carolina.

I should also add that if I needed someone to negotiate my next pay package I want Clyburn to do it. In exchange for that single endorsement in 2020 he managed to not only get a medal, but also gifted the country with Justice Ketanji Jackson and Kamala Harris.

Well, now Biden has come up with a fresh list of awardees; more accurately it’s his staff making the picks, and they seem to be having a “can you top this” competition to see who can get Biden to do the most embarrassing thing.

Take a look at the list. Lionel Messi? What is so special or significant to America about an Argentinian playing soccer? Bill Nye? The Science Guy? There is Denzel Washington who is a two-time recipient, one of only three people to be so honored. I love Denzel, but why is he that special?

There are others: social activists for causes favorable to Democrat core constituencies, people to cock a snook at Trump such as RFK, Mitt Romney’s father, and Ash Carter. As even the NY Times recognizes, the picks were largely about rewarding Team Democrat. George Romney was nice guy, but the reason he was picked was because son Mitt voted twice to convict Trump.

Then there are the jaw-droppers, Hillary Clinton and George Soros.

Hillary has left a trail of corruption and sleaze through American politics from Arkansas in the 1970s, through the slush fund known as the Clinton Foundation, to her private e-mail server, and finally her instigating what was then the biggest scandal in American political history, the Russian Collusion Hoax. What exactly has she done, besides all of that corruption and otherwise gliding on her husband’s name, that is meritorious?

Then there is George Soros.

Soros is the Democrats’ money man, contributing more than $175 million to Democrats during the 2022 midterms and another $60 million for 2024. His Open Society Foundation has funded destructive causes from helping to elect progressive DAs who unleashed a crime wave on American cities, to the suppression of free speech in the US and elsewhere.

How does that contribute to freedom?

Oh, by the way, Soros made a nice chunk of change in currency speculation through his shorting the British pound that wrecked the Bank of England in 1992, and juicing the 1997 Asian financial crisis. I thought hurting ordinary people to make a profit was a bad thing.

So perhaps, for once, Biden might have done some good here. The list is so ridiculous and politically self-serving that it might be the straw that breaks the back of the whole “Presidential Medal of Freedom” racket.

However, rather than just shutting down the whole operation, Trump should try to reform it by engaging in some game theory payback and propose a list with enough troll-level names to make the Left shriek.

Possible Trump awardees?

1) Presidents Javier Milei of Argentina and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador
2) Thomas Sowell
3) John Boyd
4) Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger for the Twitter Files
5) Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr.
6) Elon Musk
7) Bill Ackman and Peter Thiel
8) Pierre Poilievre and Kemi Badenoch
9) Ashley Babbitt, Daniel Penny, and Kyle Rittenhouse
10) Nicholas Sandmann
11) Scott Presler
12) Mark Steyn

And for making college football fun again…. Cam Skattebo.