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In freezing US, Biden seeks to cool down politics – BBC News

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President Joe Biden participates in a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Reuters

Travelling with Donald Trump versus ridin’ with Joe Biden. Compare and contrast.

Look, Air Force One hasn’t changed with the presidency. It is still that elegant timepiece that came out of the 1970s. Elegant and all that, but dated as anything.

There is one priceless bit of swag that you get on Air Force One – the little box of M&Ms with the presidential seal on one side, and the signature of the president on the other.

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Now, I know you’re already feeling sorry for me, but, the Biden ones aren’t ready yet. That means I have (as we say here) deplaned swagless (as no one says anywhere else).

So everything is exactly the same as the Trump era – except in one important respect. The TVs in the press cabin are now on CNN, not on Fox News.

One of the understated aspects of the peaceful transfer of power is the ability to change the channel on Air Force One.

After all, we were on our way to a CNN Town Hall, the president’s first official outing since his inauguration a month ago.

The town hall shows the extent to which Covid-19 is dominating everything. The big announcement from President Biden is that the US would have 600 million doses of coronavirus vaccine by July, meaning that jabs would be available to every American.

Biden also corrected something stated by his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, on getting kids back to school.

“There was a mistake in the communication,” he told the CNN Town Hall audience. He wouldn’t box himself in absolutely, but said he hoped to have kindergarten to 8th grade pupils back in the classroom within the first 100 days of his presidency.

I’m guessing that must have been an uncomfortable moment for Psaki. But Biden has made that part of his shtick: if we make a mistake, we’ll own up to it.

There is an easy charm to Biden. He asked one questioner to come and see him after the town hall to talk to him. When a mother and her young daughter asked a question, he was engaging and empathetic.

President Joe Biden participates in a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Reuters

Less convincing was his response to a small business owner who was worried about the impact of a $15 per hour minimum wage. He waffled about it generating growth, echoing what many economists say. But I’m guessing the man – who owned a woodworking business – would not have been overly impressed. It was a blah, blah, blah politician’s answer, that was painfully short of detail.

But there was one subject he didn’t want to talk about: Donald Trump.

“For four years, all that’s been in the news has been ‘Trump’. The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people,” Biden said.

It was a neat soundbite.

He told another questioner that he was bored of being asked about Trump. In freezing cold Milwaukee, where the snow was thick on the ground, Biden was on a mission to lower the political temperature, especially after the storming of the Capitol on 6 January.

President Joe Biden arrives at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Reuters

When the host, Anderson Cooper, invited the president to agree with the verdict of House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that Republican senators who voted to acquit were cowards he demurred. He didn’t want to get into name-calling.

And there was a big difference in the language deployed. Trump loved a wedge issue. He would always aim to appeal to his base; often alienating people on the other side. Biden is trying to unite.

Take this response: “Every cop when they get up in the morning and put on that shield has a right to expect to go home to their family that night. Conversely, every kid walking across the street wearing a hoodie is not a member of a gang.”

The Biden presidency is setting out very different policy priorities – on Covid, on immigration reform, on re-opening America to refugees.

But it is also deploying a different more soothing language than that of its predecessor.

In the UK, former Conservative Home Secretary, William Whitelaw famously accused Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson of going around the country “stirring up apathy”.

That would be slightly unfair to Biden. But he wouldn’t object to being seen as the president of balm.

“I literally pray that I have the capacity to do for the country what you all deserve,” Biden said.

Somehow, I can’t imagine Trump saying that.

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BOJ's Rate Hike May Have Ripple Effect on Bonds, Businesses and Politics – Bloomberg

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The Bank of Japan finally ended an eight-year experiment with negative interest rates that has left more than $4 trillion in funds hunting for higher returns abroad. What comes next threatens to shake up money flows in Japan and across the world.

One of the biggest questions is what happens to that big ball of money stashed overseas in assets including US government bonds, European power stations and Singapore equities. So far, markets have taken Japan’s first interest-rate hike since 2007 in stride, as the yield differential still remains wide with other major economies. The yen even weakened slightly, with traders citing the BOJ’s promise to keep conditions accommodative as a sign there won’t be rapid tightening ahead. But the longer term effect is less certain.

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Former PQ minister turns back on politics, records jazz album

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A former minister with the Parti Québécois (PQ) says his time in politics is over, and he’s ready to focus on his first love: the arts.

“People have to remember that I was dealing with the arts for 30 years before I went into politics,” Maka Kotto tells CTV News a day before boarding a flight to his native Cameroon for a music festival. “After 14 years in politics, I felt that I did what I had to do. And so, I decided to get back to my old practices.”

Kotto represented the PQ in the riding of Bourget from 2008 to 2018 and was also the culture minister in Pauline Marois’ short-lived government.

In addition to his time in provincial politics, Kotto represented the Bloc Québécois from 2004 to 2008 in the Canadian House of Commons — the party’s first Black member of Parliament.

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“It drained my energy and I lost contact with my family, with my friends. When I was inside, I didn’t realize that,” he said. “My mother went to the other side in 2018 and I couldn’t say good-bye… I wrote a song about that.”

Kotto says his mother’s death was a moment that notably marked him.

“This was very awful. Until now, I still suffer for that,” he said. “You see, when you’re investing in politics, you have many, many sacrifices that you’re facing.”

Closing the political door and turning his attention back to music and acting was an effortless decision for the 62-year-old.

“This was much, much more, easier than politics,” he said.

Kotto says he remembers his father not liking the idea of him getting involved in the arts as a child — he wanted him to “be a good student.”

“The last time I sang, I was between 16 or 17 years old,” he recalls. “That was in college, at the boarding school church. It was a French Jesuit boarding school in Cameroon.”

When asked what’s scarier: putting out a jazz album or working in politics, Kotto doesn’t miss a beat.

“Oh, politics is scary because you don’t have fun in politics. You have problems every day, every night, every morning and you have to solve real problems,” he said. “When you’re singing, it’s a passion…The only goal you have to reach is to share what you feel.”

Kotto says he worked for about six months on his album, collaborating with the likes of Antoine Gratton, Taurey Butler and the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal (ONJ).

“We have a lot of fun. That was the goal, and I hope that everybody listening to this album will have the same fun as the one we had in studio,” he said.

A few words he uses to describe his music: fun, love and friendship.

The release of Kotto’s first album is scheduled for the winter of 2024.

 

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

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Trump campaign defends his ‘bloodbath’ warning. Hear what political strategists think

The Trump campaign is saying that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump was referring only to the US auto industry when he warned of a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t elected. Republican strategist Alice Stewart and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona debate what he meant.

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