But Is It Too Little Too Late?

Democrats are scurrying. Not the rank and file Dems that are your neighbors. I’m talking about the do-nothing Democrats (when they do something, it’s usually the wrong thing!) in Congress. Realizing they are less than two months away from midterm elections that still don’t bode well for their party, Democrats in the House and Senate are trying desperately to do SOMETHING before November 8th.

But it ain’t gonna be easy.

See, in order to get Joe Manchin on his side for the big trillion dollar budget busting spending bill Congress passed (I think they called it “Inflation Reduction”?) Chuckles Schumer had to agree to a side deal. That was that the fossil fuel industry was going to get some sweetheart deals going forward. Of course, that is included as part of the federal budget bill that has yet to pass Congress. But that throws a wrinkle into the whole process because people like Lizzy Warren and Bernie Sanders are totally against the deal. Worse yet, there are 70 Democrats in the House that say they won’t vote for the budget if Manchin’s deal is included. They don’t have a 70 vote margin! It won’t even pass the House!

So, what happens if Manchin gets screwed and the federal budget doesn’t pass because they don’t have 50 Democrats to vote for it (without Sanders and Warren)? Does Manchin get fed up and join the Republicans (which would give them a majority and totally throw the last month into chaos)? It would be interesting.

But Democrats can’t afford to be blamed for a government shutdown at the end of this month. That would put the brakes on any “wins” they think they’ve had this past summer.

That is the most pressing issue Dems face leading up to the midterms, but they want more. They want a “Defense of Marriage” act that basically codifies what has already been passed as a federal law. Interestingly enough, Congress is worried because of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling by the Supreme Court that ended the federal law with abortion rights. The reasoning here is that it’s a states-rights issue and that states can decide whether or not same sex marriage is legal in their state. But the difference is huge. One is a procedure. The other is a “binding contract” between two parties. I don’t know how you could be recognized in California as a married couple, but not in Ohio (which is the case). A lot of states don’t recognize same sex marriage today, some even have it in their state’s constitution that it’s banned!

The House is still considering a “robust public safety package”. It’s basically a walk-back of the Democrats’ “defund the police” movement. It was supposed to go for a vote in July, but Nancy Pelosi didn’t have the votes (and still doesn’t).

Then there is the ubiquitous assault weapons ban that keeps rearing it’s ugly head. Doubtful that will even come up before the midterms.

Dems are hoping that they can do something besides pass a federal budget bill before the midterms. However that could very well be too little too late. Most people seem to already have made up their minds. Only the independents are making up theirs now, and that’s what causing the races around the country to be tightening. The big question is, will it be enough?

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Here’s What’s Tops On GOP Agenda Once They Win The House

It’s got nothing to do with gasoline prices. It isn’t going to fix the supply chain problem that continues to plague America. It’s not getting tough with the Chinese or the Russians. And it doesn’t have a thing to do with the southern border, the economic recession that we are in, or the fact that there is an ever-increasing problem with crime in this country.

It has to do with “The I-Word”.

Dozens of Republicans currently sitting in the House of Representatives have been shoving proposals Nancy Pelosi’s way trying to get the House to do an up or down vote on impeachment of the president. Led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has submitted four of the impeachment requests, Republicans are already making plans for how they plan to deal with Biden next year should the GOP win the midterms and take over the House.

And they would be dead wrong to pursue that path.

It’s primarily the same path Democrats took against Donald Trump in 2019, and then again after he left office in 2021. It’s more of a vindictive move that tells the impeached party to shove it where the sun don’t shine. It does nothing for America. And if you look at who’s standing behind Biden, ready to fill in at a moment’s notice, it’s not necessarily a move in the right direction.

So, let’s say the GOP takes the House, as predicted. Let’s say they move ahead with impeachment. What then? There is no way unless there is a major turn around with the Senate that the GOP is going to control enough seats to actually convict Biden, even if he is impeached. So, the whole thing becomes a giant waste of time…the kind of time suck that the GOP has been screaming about Democrats using since 2019. There is no way Biden gets convicted and ousted, so why even try?

Even if he is ousted, by some miracle of God, that leaves K-baby Harris in charge. Do you want to talk about going from the frying pan into the fire? This is a woman that hasn’t been able to handle one single assignment she’s been given over 21 months and succeed. She’s failed at every conceivable turn. So, why would we give up Biden, and the opportunity to run against him, or at the very least use him as the foil in the runup to the presidential elections? He is the guy that got us into this mess, and if you take him out of the equation, you lose the ability to use that.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the others that want Biden impeached need to realize they need to think with their heads, and not with their hearts in this case. To do otherwise is not only wrong, it’s just plain stupid.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Manchin’s Big Got

Joe Manchin caved on the one-third of a trillion dollar spending spree that the Democrats got earlier this month. It took literally months of negotiations between Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuckles Schumer and Manchin to reach the deal. And so, you have to ask yourself, what did Manchin get for caving? :Politicians don’t just change positions overnight. They usually get something either right then and there, or up the road in exchange for their vote.

Manchin got something up the road.

Joe Manchin got the president and the leaders in the House and Senate to agree that they would pass a bill by October 1st, and Biden would sign it into law by then, that eased environmental reviews on fossil fuel drilling. Manchin got something for his West Virginia coal miners, except he never said anything about it.

Well, it’s out there now. And it has a lot of Democrats upset.

Arizona Representative, Raul Grijalva has sent a letter to his colleagues stating that the part of the budget bill that talks about easing environmental review should be stripped out of the House version, and discussed individually so as to get “accountability” from everyone. But that’s not the deal Pelosi signed on to. She said that this would pass her House by the end of the fiscal year. And the only major piece of legislation that Congress has to deal with between now and the end of September is the budget for fiscal 2023. That’s where Manchin’s payback is located.

So, will Grijalva and his minions thwart the budget and shut down the government? Highly doubtful. He has been in Congress almost 20 years. He understands what it means to be the ones shutting down the federal government less than two months from a midterm election. But if Democrats don’t go along with the budget bill as written, it doesn’t pass. If it strips out Manchin’s “get” for caving on the Inflation Reduction Act, you stand the chance of Manchin never voting with Democrats again, which could very well squash anything getting through the Senate.

Grijalva’s office refuses to confirm how many representatives are backing his proposal to strip out the Manchin deal. But if more than 5 more climb on board (and there are at least five members of the Whackjob Five, AOC’s group), then the budget bill doesn’t pass. And they don’t have much time to do it. The Senate gets back to work on September 6th, and the House reconvenes on the 13th. That’s not a lot of time for Congress to do anything.

At least we know Joe Manchin isn’t slipping. If you’re going to sell out your values and your ethics, you need to make sure you get SOMETHING! Right?

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Liz Cheyney’s Political Death

It all comes to an end for Liz Cheyney in Wyoming today. The daughter of former Vice President, Dick Cheyney has a huge uphill battle on her hand if she wants to continue with a fourth term in Congress next year. She is currently trailing Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary by some 28 points, with Hageman receiving almost 55% of the GOP primary vote. A different poll taken two weeks earlier had the gap at 22 points.

So, how did Cheyney get into this mess?
She did it basically with one simple vote and her steadfastness to that ideology since. She was one of ten Republicans that voted for impeachment after Donald Trump had left office. Of those ten, four decided not to run for reelection, three have lost their primaries (a rarity for an incumbent), and two won their primaries and will face the general election in November. Cheyney is the tenth and final Congressman to face voters after voting for impeachment of Trump on January 13, 2021.

It hasn’t been an easy road for the Wyoming Congressman. She got censored earlier for her vote to impeach Donald Trump surrounding the whole January 6th affair, and she was one of two Republicans hand-picked by Nancy Pelosi to sit on the January 6th Committee. She has seemed much more like a Democrat than a Republican while on that stage.

If you were to take away the whole impeachment thing, and her chastising Trump after he left office, and let her run, I believe you’d see an entirely different result than the polling that has been done lately. Up until her slamming Trump, she most likely would not have been primaried, and most likely would have maintained her seat. But she felt it more important to give her judgement of the situation than to either back her president, or to keep quiet on the issue. The other member of the January 6th Committee that was a hand-picked Republican was Adam Kinzinger. He chose not to run for reelection after his poling results found he’d not win.

I have to say that except for maybe leaving the US Capitol as folks such as Al Franken had to leave, under a cloud of scandal and sexual abuse, I would have to believe that losing in a primary when you want to retain your seat has to be the most embarrassing thing for either a Representative or a sitting Senator. Liz Cheyney apparently doesn’t care about that. She just wants to slam Donald Trump for his time in office. And the funny thing is, she has no real proof, as do any of us, that he actually did anything illegal, immoral, or even fattening!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Liberals Don’t Understand Dobbs v. Jackson Ruling

I get it that liberals and women who wanted to end pregnancies early was upset with the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling by the Supreme Court this past week. I mean, who could not see this one coming. The actual decision was leaked a month ago. And I know that as divisive as abortion is as a topic, one side was going to be utterly unhinged when it came out. But there was one thing that actually shocked me in the aftermath.

Democrats and liberals just don’t seem to understand the ruling.

How many times have you heard Nancy Pelosi, or AOC, or some other person in Congress….the very people that MAKE the friggin’ laws come out and say they have to “codify Roe v. Wade into law”. Even Joe Biden, with his half-century of public service in Washington, DC said he’d be in favor of it. In fact, Biden went so far as to waffle once again on getting rid of the Senate filibuster “in this case only” to allow the Senate to pass a law codifying Roe with only 50 votes (plus the Vice President’s tie-breaking vote). But all of the caterwauling is for naught.

SCOTUS didn’t say that abortion was illegal. They never made that claim. And so, it’s not a situation that Congress can come in and “codify” it with a law. Here’s where they went wrong.

Had the Supreme Court said that Roe was flawed because it’s unconstitutional because a law wasn’t passed in Congress (like they did with the EPA ruling that followed on Thursday last week), that would be an easy fix. Then the House and Senate could pass a law, Biden could sign it, and it would be nice and legal. But that’s not the issue here.

The issue that apparently no one on the left wants to grasp is, the Supreme Court said it wasn’t unconstitutional to make abortion legal. It was unconstitutional for the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to make abortion legal. That was a power not given to the federal government. Then the whole thing becomes a states’ rights issue. And if the states want to decide to make abortion legal, or legal with limitations, or illegal altogether, they have that power. And if the federal government wants to pass a law codifying Roe into law, they’re going to find themselves back in front of SCOTUS once again, probably in the fall, trying to explain how they didn’t dance around the states’ rights issue.

If I can get this one figured out, with no law degree, never attending a law class in my life, and only using a half-addled brain to read the Constitution, are you telling me that the people that have been elected to be the leaders of this country can’t figure this one out as well? It brought th whole states’ rights issue to the forefront, and that was probably the one thing the left didn’t want to have to deal with. Because there is no way around that argument. They cannot make abortion legal nationally without a Constitutional Amendment. By the way, the last Constitutional Amendment passed in May of 1992. And it’s only happened a total of 17 times (outside the Bill of Rights).

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Dobbs v. Jackson did one thing. It brought th

There Are NO Leaders Here!

If you want to take a look at what’s bugging America, just log on to Real Clear Politics. They have a listing of the “political leaders” job approval numbers and it’s rather dismal.

Yes, it’s no surprise to anybody that Joe Biden continues to fall. The only surprise is how low a point he’s falling to. Pretty soon, these polls will start listing his approval numbers by listing the names of people still supporting him. It’s that bad. His numbers range from a high of 43% approval and 51% disapproval in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, which traditionally is one of the more liberal polls out there, to a low of 35% approval and 56% disapproval in the latest Quinnipiac poll. Rasmussen’s latest poll has him at a 60% disapproval rating. His average, according to Real Clear Politics is now sitting at 38.9%, the lowest in history.

But poor Joe isn’t the only politician in DC to receive low marks. Kamala Harris’ average approval rating is sitting at 30%. Nancy Pelosi is at 33.8%. Chuckles Schumer is at 30%. Soon-to-be Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy is at 28%, and at the bottom is Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell at 25%.

It’s obvious that America doesn’t think that highly of the various political leaders of either party. And while that’s terrible news for Democrats who basically have control of the legislative and executive branches of government, there doesn’t seem to be much support for the leaders of the Republican party in either house of Congress either.

So the question is why?

Basically I think it’s because of a couple of reasons. First of all, the country is in miserable shape. That can be laid squarely at the feet of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats that are controlling Congress now. When you have the highest gas prices on record, inflation running higher than it has in 40 years due to the over-printing of money, and a border crisis that the administration and Congress have both declined to do anything about, it’s bad. Now we throw onto that pile a baby formula shortage, a siracha shortage (wait…it’s coming!), and supply chain issues that have beguiled Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg. Add rising street crime in major cities, and it’s no wonder people are begging for a change in leadership. Even Democrats are screaming that they want someone other than Joe Biden running as their candidate in 2024.

It all comes down to what I would call an infectious partisanship. Democrats don’t want to work with Republicans. They are more interested in making the Republicans look bad any way possible, that they forget about doing “America’s business” of running the country. Just look at the latest/greatest committee hearings going on. The January 6th special committee is garnering all of the mainstream media attention right now. They are doing their darndest to make sure that Donald Trump is wounded as severely as possible prior to his announcing his candidacy for the 2024 election.

Democrats realize that they have to do all of this now because it’s becoming painfully obvious to even the most casual observer that the midterms are going to be a red wave like we haven’t seen in decades. And they have resigned themselves to the fact they will lose Congress, so they need to get this stuff accomplished right now! After January, they won’t be able to control committees to hold Donald Trump liable for anything. The only problem with their theory is that people have a short memory and we’re over two years away from Trump actually getting votes in a presidential election (should he even decide to run). That will be two years of Republican rule in Congress, and the Democrats only real spokesperson will be Joe Biden, who American has already given up on.

There is not doubt there needs to be changes in DC. The federal government is broken. It needs to not just be fixed. It needs to be over-hauled and returned to what the Founding Fathers intended it to be. If we don’t do that, we languish with nothing getting done and the country slipping away, just as England, France, and Spain did centuries ago.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Thursday’s Jan 6th Hearings? A Ratings Flop

Now, you’re going to hear that the made for television congressional hearings on the whole January 6th protest were a winner. Don’t believe it for a minute. The made up event in prime time TV was shown on a total of eight different channels. Basically, unless you were streaming something, or had on HBO or Showtime or some paid channel, you had to watch, or read a book, or do as my wife and did, and shampoo each other’s hair.

In reality, there were just over 10 million Americans tuned in to at least five minutes of the hearings on Thursday night. That would equate to about 3% of America tuning in. Now, let’s just pick up something else for comparison, shall we? CBS aired two game shows, “Let’s Make A Deal” and “The Price Is Right” on Wednesday night, the day before. Those two shows garnered 6 1/2 million Americans watching…all on one channel. Also on Wednesday, ABC had on Game 3 of the NBA Finals. That had 5.5 million people tuned in.

But you’re hearing what a wonderful show this was and it showed the American people exactly what Congress is doing to make sure that “insurrection” never happens again. According to a survey done by The Hill/Harris, 54% of Americans felt that the reason the hearings were done were to score political points. What’s interesting is that 54% also said they no longer blame Donald Trump for the Capitol protests.

If you jump into that survey a little deeper, only 79% of Democrats felt that the hearings are “independently trying to get to the bottom of what happened”. Meanwhile 21% of Democrats, and 55% of Republicans, and 55% of Independent voters think it’s Kabuki theater.

Thus, the low ratings. America basically took the night off from TV Thursday.

What I find to be fascinating is the inconsistencies the Democrats are throwing at this. Let’s compare the 475 riots or so that Black Lives Matter held in over 140 cities across the country, in which there were no hearings. Over 36 people lost their lives in those riots. There were over 1,000 police officers injured. Well over 100 federal buildings were damaged, looted, or burned, causing over $8 billion in damages.

On January 6th, there were a total of four deaths. The Capitol sustained $1.4 million in damages. It was over in several hours. Of the four deaths, two were by heart attacks, and one Capitol Police Officer was killed.

Somehow, I don’t think the two are on equal footing.

I would ask that Nancy Pelosi personally pay the eight stations that carried her fiasco of a hearing for the airtime she used, since it could never be considered anything more than a political broadcast. At the very least, and according to very rudimentary calculations, that should be worth about $2.75 million. Don’t worry…Nancy can afford it!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

If Nancy Pelosi Went Up Against God…Who Do You Think Would Win?

Well, it actually has kinda, sorta happened. Pelosi’s Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco, has sent Pelosi a letter…the second letter in a little over a month, in which he basically has said that she is no longer welcome in Communion. And it’s all due to her stance on abortion.

That would seemingly put Pelosi between a rock and a hard place.

I mean, who wants to go up against an Archbishop in the Catholic Church? Pelosi has long called herself “a devout Catholic”, but yet has steadfastly supported a woman’s right to choose abortion to end a pregnancy. In a letter to Pelosi dated April 7th, Archbishop Cordileone said to either repudiate advocacy for abortion rights or to refrain from referring to her Catholic faith in public or else he would have no choice but to bar her from being admitted communion.

This past Thursday, Cordileone sent a second letter that kind of dropped an atomic bomb on the Speaker of the House. “As you have not publically repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come. Therefore, in light of my responsibility as the Archbishop of San Francisco to be ‘concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care’ (Code of Canon Law, can. 383, §1), by means of this communication I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publically repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.”

So, Pelosi is no longer allowed to receive Communion unless and until she changes her position on abortion. She has long stood by her position stating, “I believe that God has given us a free will to honor our responsibilities.” 

Pelosi’s office was asked to comment on the Archbishop’s letter and they have refused to do so. It’s really the same problem Joe Biden is facing as well. He swears that he is personally against abortion, but the out for Catholics is that they don’t want to intercede in a difficult decision between a woman and her doctor. That has long been the pro-choice Catholic’s reasoning. And, it’s been pretty much what Pelosi has stood by in her tenure.

I frankly don’t think for a minute that this will bother Pelosi. I’m going to do something I don’t really like to do, but Democrats typically put politics ahead of religion. Not ALL Democrats mind you. I’ve known some that have been faithful to the church first, and to their party second. But it seems that there are a lot of liberal Catholics who fall under the same umbrella as Biden and Pelosi.

In the end, who am I to judge? I think there is someone much greater than I that already has that job coming up in the future. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that meeting!

Carry on world, you’re dismissed!

Eating Their Own

I’ve always felt that since the Democrat party was “one giant tent” that had a lot of people in it that had a million differing ideas of what should be done first, that eventually it would have to collapse. Not everyone could agree on doing things the same way all the time. Someone would want to push their ideas to the front of the line, and that would upset everyone.

It’s happening.

If you take a look, starting on day one when Joe Biden took office, the left has been fighting with itself far more than they’ve been fighting with the Republicans. AOC and the Whackjob Five have basically had Nancy Pelosi in a headlock since the term began. In the Senate, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema can’t seem to get on board with the progressives of the party, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And Chuck Schumer is sitting there wondering what to do about it as he polishes his forehead.

On his first day in office, Biden cancelled the Keystone XL Pipeline project, much to the chagrin of union bosses all over the country. These were the same union bosses that were pushing for Biden’s election over Donald Trump, and on his first day in office, this is how he repaid them!

And it’s been continuing and showing itself outside of the halls of Congress. Uber-leftist Bill Maher blasted former White House Spokesperson, Jen “Circle Back” Psaki when she said she didn’t have an “official position” as to where folks protest. That came in response to a question she was asked if the White House felt that Supreme Court Justices’ homes should be targeted by protesters. Bill Maher went crazy on it.

And of course, the latest example happened earlier this week when Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, and himself a very left of center liberal (and owner of the Washington Post) has been accelerating his war on words against Joe Biden. Bezos is blaming the White House for wanting to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to “stem the inflation spiral”. As Bezos put it, all that’s going to do is increase the rate of inflation even more, and we’re at a 40 year high already! He sounds more like a Reagan Republican than he does a socialist!

I guess you can also add in fight between most liberals who are aghast that Elon Musk is buying Twitter and wants to make sure that Freedom of Speech is the rule of the day. Now, mind you, Musk has admitted that he has “voted for far more Democrats than Republicans” in his voting life, and certainly wouldn’t ever be considered a moderate or a conservative. So, why is the left all upset at him? Because they’re afraid that he’s going to make Twitter more mainstream, and less socialist in thought.

And these are just four examples. There are dozens and dozens. Liberals are in such a big tent that they are going to fight it out amongst themselves to see which topic is something that they should all be fighting for. Gone are the days when the Women’s Libbers and the NOW gang wanted to get the ERA passed with the help of EVERY Democrat. Now, it’s every issue for itself!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Can The Senate Pass Anything?

Of course they can. The problem is the Democrats that run the Senate have learned over the last year that they have been doing it all wrong. I think they’re starting to realize that.

The Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body. They are the part of Congress that doesn’t rush into things. Hence, the filibuster. Hence the fact that it takes so many votes (60) to cut off debate. And the current rulers of the Senate seemed to forget that even when you have the Vice President there breaking tie votes in a 50/50 Senate, you’re going to need to work across the aisle. That’s something the Democrats have been unwilling to do this past 16 months.

They’re learning they need to do that or they are going to continue running into brick walls. The Dems are realizing very quickly they really haven’t done much of anything since taking over with a 50/50 split. Reconciliation is in limbo because most of what the Dems want to pass, immigration reform, election reform, and climate change legislation isn’t going to fly with the folks sitting across the aisle with them. And unlike in the House, where Pelosi can ram it down the Republican’s throats, Chuckles Schumer can’t do that. Or at least it’s starting to look like he’s learning that lesson.

Democrats need to pass what they feel is real legislation with teeth. The bad thing for them is the Republicans have been solidly in opposition because Democrats don’t want to include the GOP in any discussions. And then you’ve got the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema that have come out against a few of the signature Biden bills, and oops. Nothing gets done. They don’t even have the votes to pass the easiest bills by themselves.

Democrats need to learn that they can’t just ram the bills through like they do in the House. They need to negotiate. They need to compromise. They need to realize that what passes in the House isn’t going to pass in the Senate. Either they reach a compromise and get half a loaf, or they’ll go hungry. They haven’t realized this so far, and it’s a little late in the game to want to change strategies. I mean, it’s May! They’ve got about six months before the midterms. And they’ve got all the recesses and holidays ahead of them to force them into a corner.

The question is, can the Democrats convince upwards of 12 Republicans to switch their tune? Of course they can get Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, the three biggest RINO’s in the party to switch. That’s not the problem. With Manchin and Sinema voting with Republicans on a lot of the key issues, where are the other nine votes coming from? The answer is, they ain’t coming unless you compromise and get rid of stuff. You’re going to have to come up with a way to shut down the illegals pouring into the country. You’re going to have to shut down mail-in ballots that magically appear two days after all the votes have been counted. You’re going to have to realize that Green New Deal and climate change legislation is pretty much a non-starter.

And my answer is, I have no faith in the Democrats who have wanted to rule with an iron fist to be able to do any of that. They enjoy swinging the hammer. And it’s going to get them one thing. A seat on the back bench where they can sit quietly or bitch to the heavens that life just isn’t fair. The thing to remember is, they brought it on themselves.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!