UPDATE December 25, 2022:
#211: AOC proves she is the perfect role model for House and Senate Republicans.
Before Republicans failed to deliver their red wave, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) presented conservative voters with his Commitment to America. I don’t know how many Americans read this Pledge to America retread or were even aware of its existence. Either way, the message didn’t push the GOP over the finish line in the Senate and barely secured the House.
Was this a message issue or an integrity issue? According to the Washington Examiner, 9 House and 18 Senate Republicans just sided with Democrats to pass their $1.7 trillion omnibus spending spree.554 Among other things, the pork and overwhelming endorsement of Biden’s open border policies in the bill made no difference.
Was it the earmarks they wanted, or did these GOP lawmakers including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) simply not have the integrity of stalwart progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
The Hill reports that AOC stuck to her progressive guns and refused to support the bill in large part because of funding for DHS and ICE555 which, the last time I checked, doesn’t seem to have deterred Biden’s illegal immigrant invasion and the disaster waiting for Title 42 to breathe its last.
You might ask why this is any different from what the 27 Republicans did? Ocasio-Cortez went hard left. Her views are so extreme even this progressive spending behemoth could not incorporate her radical agenda. Had Republicans adopted the same approach, not one of these sellouts would have sided with Democrats.
McCarthy promised “A Government That’s Accountable” in exchange for our midterm votes. He vowed to curb wasteful government spending and yet 27 Republicans including 9 members of his House voted for what Democrats wanted instead of standing up for a strong conservative agenda.
Assuming Republicans make McCarthy the speaker and don’t begin their new House majority by showing America that they can’t even agree on a leader, the party has a lot of promises to live up to. Hearings, investigations, oversight, and accountability are attention-getting bullet points, but we still haven’t heard how any of this gets across the finish line with a Democrat majority Senate.
Before we go there, Republicans finally have a role model to follow in AOC. If they just do what she did when the omnibus bill came up for a vote, perhaps the American people who put their trust in the party still have a chance.
Hypocrisy update December 31, 2022:
#212: Unhappy Lori Lightfoot tells the truth about what illegals are good for.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s characteristically unhappy face filled my TV screen last night. I don’t know if this woman ever smiles. It’s not a difficult expression to learn. You don’t even have to mean it. Assuming there are people who like the mayor – and that’s a gigantic assumption – maybe one of them can teach her.
Anyway, the reason for Lightfoot’s chagrin this time was Chicago’s migrant crisis. According to an interview on WGN News,556 the mayor is unhappy with buses of illegals coming to her city despite Chicago hanging out the sanctuary welcome mat. We hear a lot of whining and moaning from Democrats when we ask them to stand up for their values and share the pain from their party’s sanctuary policies with border states. Now it’s destitute Chicago’s turn. Someone has to pay for the city’s sanctuary bluff.
The Illinois Department of Human Services offers a vast menu of support services for illegals backed by a promise from Governor JB Pritzker:
Every family, every child, every human being deserves to feel safe and secure in the place they call home. I am committed to making sure that value defines what it means to live in Illinois.557
The agency also mentions that Venezuelan nationals are headed our way effective October 12, 2022 and that they can expect:
a temporary period of parole for up to 2 years for urgent humanitarian reasons and significant public benefit.558
Pritzker is wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most Illinoisans. He is not impacted by the consequences of his state’s sanctuary policies any more than he has anything to fear when the pro-criminal, no cash bail SAFE-T Act kicks in with the New Year. This is how things work in Democratland. It’s the same self-serving state of mind that justifies hiring private security while demanding police protection for the masses be defunded or convinces bureaucrats that they must fly by private jet while the rest of us suffer from the cost of their progressive climate hoax and spend Christmas at the airport.
It was pretty obvious from the mayor’s pleading that “significant public benefit” means cold, hard cash: $53.5 million, according to the letter published by WGN. The hordes of illegals lured here by the Biden administration are not the rocket scientists and brilliant physicians we were promised back in the Obama days. It will take a lot of money to care for people that Lightfoot points out are “entirely dependent on city services and support.”559
Dependence is expensive, whether it means housing the homeless, sending government checks to Americans who don’t want to work, or paying for the care and feeding of illegals who have no right to be here despite the Democrat Party’s open invitation.
I have a very difficult time picturing Lightfoot, Pritzker, or Joe Biden, for that matter, dining with a family of just-arrived Venezuelans unless it’s part of a phony photo-op at a social service agency. Lightfoot’s plea for cash makes it obvious what illegals are good for. They are useful for social service spending, health care spending, education spending, first responder spending, and all manner of oppressive costs to dump on taxpayers so left-wing hacks like the mayor, Illinois’ governor, and our president can parade their values when it comes time to run for reelection.
In Lightfoot’s case, that time is just two months away. She can wail and moan about illegals until the clock strikes midnight tonight. At midnight the SAFE-T Act takes over. I’m willing to bet she’s going to have a much larger headache than a busload of illegals to deal with in the New Year.
January 3, 2023:
#213: Mitch McConnell will join President Biden for White House victory tour.
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) plans to help President Biden kick off his 2023 victory tour during a presidential trip to the senator’s state tomorrow:
When asked why it was significant to include the GOP Senate leader during his Kentucky visit, Biden responded:
We’ve been friends a long time. I don’t — everybody is talking about how significant it is. It has nothing to do about our relationship. It’s always been (inaudible). It’s a giant bridge, man. It’s a lot of money. It’s important.560
Yes, $1.6 billion* is a lot of money for Kentucky. McConnell took credit for helping Democrats pass the infrastructure legislation that funded this investment:
Sen. McConnell helped secure the funding for today’s grant announcement by supporting last year’s bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and shepherding the bill through the Senate. The legislation authorized a historic investment in our nation’s infrastructure and provides robust resources to states to fund major bridge projects specifically.561
Boasting the benefits of the legislation also provides robust support for a president pushing the success of his very expensive economic plan:
To kick off 2023, the President, Vice President, and Senior Administration Officials will blanket the country to highlight how the President’s economic plan – including his success bringing Republicans, Independents, and Democrats together to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – is growing our economy from the bottom up and middle out.562
Considering McConnell’s support to help pass the pork and earmark-laden $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, it’s appropriate to include him as an honorary Senior Administration Official.
The White House boasted this Republican collusion with Democrats with a list of media articles promoting Biden’s achievements. The press release mentions McConnell seven times. Can you imagine Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi joining Donald Trump or any Republican to celebrate a legislative win? I can’t, either. It is something that could never happen.
With the exception of the president’s myriad failures and his party’s massive spending initiatives, the biggest political news last year was the cataclysmic failure of the Republican midterm Red Wave to materialize. Colluding with the White House and helping with Biden’s likely reelection campaign is not going to advance the GOP’s interests, though it may serve McConnell’s.
As we start 2023 Democrats still control the Senate. House Republicans are busy fighting over who the speaker should be, as if the nation needs more evidence that the party is not only divided, but ideologically unsure of itself. All Republicans need to do is imitate their opponents, but even this lesson is lost on a GOP that seems no more cognizant of the shaky ground under its feet than Joe Biden is of his whereabouts.
Members of Biden’s party wisely knew to avoid him during their midterm campaigns and they would never cross party lines to support a Republican. We can only hope that the day will come when Republicans tire of becoming the party of losers forced to make excuses for their election losses. From today’s performance by a GOP House determined to show the nation that it can’t even agree on a speaker to McConnell’s decision to back Biden’s lavish self-congratulations, it’s obvious that day is still very far away.
*This update originally reported a cost of $16 billion for the bridge. The correct figure is $1.6 billion. We have corrected and regret the error.
Hypocrisy update January 8, 2023:
#214: this is how Jeffries and his Democrats refuse to put American values over autocracy.
Four words stood out in Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) Friday night appeal to House Democrats who find themselves in the unaccustomed position of being the minority party. Their new leader vowed twice that Democrats put “American values over autocracy.” Jeffries is a bright man, but I think he meant to say American values over authoritarianism. Autocracy defines Joe Biden’s efforts at one-man dictatorial rule. Democrats resort to authoritarian policies to impose whatever values they think will bring in the most donor support.
I suspect there is a very good reason Jeffries focused on autocracy. Autocracy has a sinister appeal to the left. WWII Germany is always lurking in the shadows. As we learned during the Trump presidency, Democrats like nothing better than to compare Nazism to Republicans.
It won’t be easy for Democrats to adjust to their new second-best status, so we should expect their attacks to be vile, false, vindictive, frequent, and wholly unjustified. These are angry, hateful, power-hungry people. Losing power won’t make their dispositions any better.
For now, let’s indulge Jeffries and have a quick look at how his party puts American values over autocracy. In no particular order:
Democrats locked down their cities and closed businesses and schools, denying Americans an income and their children an education during the COVID pandemic.
Democrats denied Americans a sovereign border, flooded communities with illegals, and denied any recourse to stop this government-sanctioned invasion of our country.
Democrats at the state level passed laws to force Americans to buy electric cars.
Democrats imposed authoritarian vaccine mandates that denied Americans the right to choose that they defend for the purpose of killing babies.
Twitter email files show that Democrats, the Biden administration, and the FBI colluded with tech companies and the media to censor information and deny Americans their First Amendment rights and blacklist voices that contradicted left-wing orthodoxy and propaganda.
Democrats demanded that we deny voters the right to decide the abortion issue despite a Supreme Court ruling that returned power to the people.
Democrats demanded that we pass anti-Second Amendment legislation to control specific types of firearms while they turned their backs on the mass killing in the cities they control that have nothing to do with assault weapons or high capacity magazines.
Democrats used taxpayer money to hire 87,000 IRS agents to investigate the American people, presumably to stuff the party’s federal coffers with the proceeds.
House Democrats used the January 6th riot to stage a nationally televised, wholly partisan Kangaroo Court with a pre-determined outcome to prevent Donald Trump from running for president despite massive support for his candidacy from conservative voters.
Did I miss anything? Let me know and I’ll add it to our list.
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Boy, Civil Candor you sure called it the way it is. All screwed up! It is hard to see how supposedly intelligent men and women can destroy a country without even trying. All the President and Congress has to do is disagree with each other, pass some stupid legislation and then tell the taxpayers that it is all for their own good and that of the country. Talk about the rise and fall of a country, the US under this administration, will beat all previous records in getting the job done quickly..
Supposedly intelligent …
Good lord…what a load of garbage. Thanks so much for bringing me to this garbage site, Google! ?
Thanks, Nunya. If it incited you enough to take the time to make a comment, I’ll take that as a compliment.