Tag: congress critters

Fingers Crossed Again

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Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Bernie Sanders, even Donald Trump.  Look at all these old decrepit people who supposedly run our country.  Shouldn’t we institute some age limits?  And we can grandfather anyone who was already in government before the law passed.  But come on!  This is ridiculous.  I mean, even if Mitch McConnell is technically alive, he’s as pathetic as Feinstein when her “handlers” had to push the voting button for her on the floor of the Senate.  Everyone has seen the video clips of when he “froze up” during an impromptu interview inside the Capitol.  He looked like an animatronic figure in Disneyland glitching on its program.  It was absurd.

Now I know it’s hard to get good people to run for Congress.  Competent people would rather work for a living but something has to be done to raise the level of these people.  Even a lot of the young ones are morons.  I mean, I know I’m just venting here.  To fix all of this will take the concerted effort of a lot of smart people who prefer to work in the private sector because it pays better and is much more interesting but if our republic is going to survive as something more than just the plaything of oligarchs and demagogues something will have to be done to bring competence and accountability to Washington.

I think the first thing that we’ll have to demand is that anyone who serves in Congress will have to forego trading in the stocks of companies whose business is affected by government policy.  That’s a minimum.  Pelosi has already made a mockery out of legal insider trading to such a degree that the law forbidding it should have her name attached to it.

But I will confess I have no idea how we’re going to fix all this.  The lobbyists run Washington and trying to remove their influence would probably get a bunch of people killed trying to do it.  But it has to be done if things are ever going to improve.  The last time large scale reform was tried was during FDR’s administration.  Now a lot of what he did was awful.  He was practically a communist himself.  But he was trying to help poor people during a terrible business collapse.  So, we don’t need a communist.  We need someone with a mandate and a supermajority in Congress to start fixing a lot of dysfunctional policies.

Unfortunately, there is just as much chance that the next populist president will be more in the shape of a Mamdani as a Trump.  So, things may get a lot worse instead of better.  But even though I’m starting to get ancient, somehow, I have the feeling that within my lifetime things may come to a head.  We’ve been vacillating back and forth between Left and Right.  For better or worse I think something happens and the country will break one way or the other.  Fingers crossed it breaks our way.

Building Ramps and Singing Spirituals

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So, where are we today?

Eric Swalwell, the Democrat congressman who was running for governor of California has dropped out of the race and resigned from Congress after allegations of date rape and sexual assault have been levelled against him by four separate women.  Ah, the Democrats the party of feminism.  Amazing how these things only happen when they want someone to drop out of a race and he refuses.  Up until now Swalwell was best known for his vehement attacks on Donald Trump and for an incident where during an interview on an MSNBC television show he farted so loudly that microphone picked it up magnificently.  Eric we hardly knew ye.  Farewell!

So, the peace talks between the Trump administration and the Iranians have broken down so Trump has said he will take over the Straits of Hormuz.  Now, how dangerous is this situation?  I can’t even imagine something not going terribly wrong.  So, Trump is going to try and break the Iranians by cutting off all their oil money by blocking the tankers heading for China.  This is a hardcore tactic.  I guess it could work.  I’m sure we’ll know pretty soon how this is going to end up.  Good luck Mr. Trump.  You will need it.

Trump is in a war of words with the Pope.  Well, this one’s easy.  I’ll back Trump.  The last couple of popes don’t seem to be infallible.  I’m not sure they were even Christians.  More like the kind of atheists they turn into bishops in some of the trendy denominations.  But I don’t think Trump should waste his time fighting with him.  It’s a waste of time.

Well, we’ve reached the warm weather here this week.  Today and tomorrow will both break the eighty-degree mark and I’ve turned off the house’s heating system for the summer.  Of course, if the weather gods go berserk and send us one last Polar Express that will have to be reckoned with but we think we’ve paid enough for oil this year.  And today I saw a good-sized butterfly fluttering around in the air.  And since the forsythia and the daffodils are both exploding in yellow bloom, I guess it makes sense for some insect to be pollinating them.  And finally, the raspberry leaves have burst from the ground all over the patch where I cut down the canes in March.  From what I can see this will be an even better sized crop than last year’s excellent results.  I’d say that the 10-10-10 fertilizer worked exactly as recommended.

We’re still waiting for Camera Girl’s pond liner to arrive from Home Depot.  It’s two days late and somehow “delayed” less than thirty miles away.  What can I say, Home Depot is not Amazon, that’s for sure.  When it arrives, I’ll bring out the shovel, pick, giant pry bar and wheel barrow.  I’m hoping there’s no ledge where she wants it to sit.  But knowing what I do about this property there will be a few monster-sized boulders below the surface.  Well, I’m sure there’s at least a few drops of ancient Egyptian blood in my Mediterranean ancestry so I’ll bone up on ramp building and practice singing spirituals.  Happy Wednesday!

Fat Tuesday

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Well, let’s see.  Today is Mardi Gras.  Interestingly, it is celebrated in Dunwich but with a local twist.  Because the Great Old Ones are devout Roman Catholics (go figure) they forego eating humans during the entirety of Lent so tonight they have a wild party where they make an enormous cauldron of jambalaya (5,000 gallons) and garnish it with any local elected officials they can find within the town limits.  So, for that reason I’m currently hiding in an abandoned fallout shelter with the Elder Sign emblazoned on the bolted hatch.  Above me I can hear the screams of the Dunwich Town Clerk, Treasurer and Tax Collector as they’re paraded down Bourbon Street on the way to dinner.  Well, nobody likes them anyway.  They voted to increase taxes and wouldn’t let us put up that Trump sign behind the Town Hall so boo hoo!

It’s kind of boring down here.  All I have is an internet connection, a dart board and ten thousand sugar cubes.  I’m trying to build a pyramid with them but it looks kind of crooked.  It really adds to my respect for those Egyptians.  First off, I now see why they didn’t use sugar as a building material.  After all, the slaves building the pyramid might be tempted to lick one of the blocks surreptitiously.  Multiply that by a billion licks and now you’re looking at real issues.  I’m guessing type 2 diabetes would have been rampant, so there’s that.  It really makes you think.

But now Donald Trump is starting his speech.  He’s speaking to a joint session of Congress and the Democrats are all holding what look like ping pong paddles with catchy slogans like “Trump Sucks” and “Pelosi is Still Hot” emblazoned on them.  After a particularly provocative anecdote about how ugly Chuck Schumer’s wife is up jumps Billy Dee Williams and threatens Trump with a golden handled cane.

Trump jumps down from the podium and joins Billy Dee in a spirited fencing match.  I believe he borrowed an umbrella from Speaker Johnson.  Luckily for everyone involved the Sergeant at Arms trips Billy Dee from behind and put him in a full nelson hold before giving him the bum’s rush.  After taking a few bows, Trump returned to the lectern and continues his remarks on his photos from his trip to Las Vegas with Mitch McConnell.  Riveting stuff.

Oh wait, I made all that stuff up in my head.

Actually, Trump’s address was quite effective.  He gave a long list of the frivolous causes that DOGE discovered that have wasted literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money.  One of the funniest revelations was of the age of some of the social security recipients.  I guess the most egregious was a man who was reportedly 350 years old.  Now this was just one case.  There were also actual millions of social security beneficiaries that were over 120 years of age.  Think of that.

He described the atrocities that illegal aliens have caused to our people; the murders and rapes and the fact that he has now closed off the border and is deporting illegals at a record pace.  Trump reported that the military with the aid of the Pakistani government have recently apprehended the leader of the group responsible for the suicide bombing of American troops during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  And he reiterated how incompetently Biden managed that withdrawal.

He announced his intent to end the Ukrainian war and revealed that Zelensky has sent him a message saying he is now ready to get involved in peace talks and also wants to sign the rare earth metals contract.

Trump highlighted the steps he’s taking to lower energy costs.  And he highlighted all of the failures of the Biden administration.  It was a very long list.

All in all, it was an entertaining talk.  The impression is of a President confident in his ability to make America great again.  The Democrats on the other hand appeared to be a bunch of petulant children.  Interesting.

Another Day in Paradise, Sort Of

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Slapping together a post late at night is a recipe for incoherence.  But that’s my claim to fame.  Fame?

Well, here we are again my old nemesis.  What shall we talk about?

I read a little about the continuing adventures of the Republican House representatives trying to select a new Speaker.  They tried another one of the establishment guys, Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the majority whip.  Trump posted, “Voting for a globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!”  Well, that’s that.

Now the question that needs to be answered is can they agree on anyone as Speaker?  Maybe not.  It’s possible that the establishment would rather cause a government shutdown rather than allow someone outside of their club from controlling the purse strings in Washington.  At this point I think I’m okay with a government shutdown.  Sure, it would probably mean chaos and possibly bankruptcy for me personally but I think it might not be a bad way of getting the attention of the people running this madhouse.  Eventually the establishment Republicans will cut a deal with the Democrats and make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker.  And that’s fine.  It will demonstrate to the world that the Uniparty is a living, breathing reality.  But I have to admire the rebels in the Trump wing of the House Republicans for sticking by their guns and slapping the RINOs around like they’re doing.  It’s great theater.

It looks like mostly everybody admits that unless Donald Trump is forced off the primary ballot, he will win the nomination.  And once he’s in the general election he’s definitely going to get a crapload of votes.  Not to say fraud couldn’t beat him.  We know from sad experience it could.  But regardless of Trump’s towering lead in the primaries there are several candidates who want to stay in the race in case chicanery takes Trump off the ballot.  I’m guessing DeSantis and Haley are in it for the long haul.  I’m not sure anyone else has enough money coming in to stay in long term.  It’s just a little more than a year before that election but it will feel like forever, especially as the country falls apart around us on multiple fronts.  But it will be interesting.

And speaking of interesting, in a horrific way, the two hot wars continue unabated.  Israel is probing Gaza to see where the hostages are hidden and trying to figure out how to wound Hamas critically without losing hundreds, if not thousands of IDF lives.

And the Ukraine war grinds on.  The majority of the Ukrainian “spring” offensive is over and the Russians have taken to the offense.  The latest front is the fortified city of Avdiivka which the Russians have begun to encircle.  Today they managed to overrun, at very great cost, the high ground northwest of the city called Terrikon.  With the loss of this high ground the Ukrainians will be forced to move their artillery much farther west and north of the present positions and that will finally put an end to the artillery bombardment of Donetsk City which has been a humanitarian problem for the Russian Donbas since the beginning of hostilities in 2014.  But all indications are that conquering Avdiivka will be a slow painful grind for the Russian army in the same way as the Bakhmut campaign was earlier this year, but smaller.  I guess the wars will drag on for months and years but maybe there’s a chance we can put an end to the tens of billions of dollars that Biden keeps shoveling into Zelensky’s (and his own) off-shore accounts.  Well, we’ll see.

I won’t talk about the economy.  It’s too gruesome to dwell on.  We’re all being sent to the cleaners and we’ll all be a little poorer by and by but that’s just par for the course.  Of course, if Joe gets his $100 billion dollars for Ukraine maybe we’ll be a lot poorer and a lot sooner.  But leave that be for now.

So that’s my quick synopsis of where we are right now.  Everybody, do your best to hang in there.  Tomorrow belongs to the people with endurance.  Let that be us.

Now That McCarthy’s Been Removed, Should Trump Be Speaker?

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So who will be the next Speaker?  I remember someone saying that the Speaker doesn’t have to be in the House.  Well, how about if they elect him Speaker?  Who knows, maybe there’s an immunity for the Speaker not being tried in Court while in office like for the President.

Anyway it would be a hoot to listen to the howling from the Democrats and the RINOs.

Come on congressmen, do the right thing.

Steel, Lead or Silly Putty

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This week has been a crazy mish-mash of unexpected occurrences.  Extra work, surprise meetings, a pleasant event on the website, some additional weather-related work around the homestead and a couple of unexpected appointments.  Nothing bad but enough interruptions to my schedule to put me off my game.  Complain, moan groan.  But the show must go on.  So, here’s hoping I get my act together going forward.

I love Dopey Joe’s vow to veto any legislation that comes to his desk.  The stupidity of that statement truly reflects the reality of his intellect and the intellect of his voters.  The Democrats control the Senate.  Any legislation that comes to his desk for signature has to be approved by the Senate.  So, if the Republican House gets the Democrat Senate to agree on a bill, then Biden will automatically veto it?  Either he’s a moron, which is true, or he believes his voters are morons, which is also true.  Come to think of it, he’s remaining true to himself and his voters.  Gosh, he’s a paragon of integrity.  He’s the moron’s moron!

I’m very anxious to see just how far the House will go to fix the budget problems.  If they were very serious, they would write a real budget bill with realistic additions and subtractions that the Democrats would hate but could live with.  Then they could dig in their heels and only respond if the Senate provided a counter proposal that they in turn could respond to.  In other words, restore the former procedure whereby an actual budget was legislated.  And as I said they could delete most of the crap that the Democrats have filled the current budget with.  And they can write in laws to prevent things like the COVID lockdowns from happening again.  That would be a revelation.

Sure, during the lead up to such an event the media slimeballs would be keeping up an hourly drum beat on all the people of color and LGBTQ people who were, possibly, dying in the streets because a budget wasn’t in place.  People like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell would be on the steps of the Senate weeping and flagellating themselves over the white guilt they felt over this outrageous cruelty to the most vulnerable among us.  Think of the children!

But if McCarthy and his people could just hold together their majority, eventually Dementia Joe and Chuck Schumer would come begging with hat in hand to get the budget done.  And then we could eliminate this monthly ritual of approving the non-budget that we’ve been living with since Obama and finally get some measure of fiscal responsibility happening again.  One thing they should demand is that the budget of the FBI should be reduced by twenty percent and everyone working there also take a twenty percent pay reduction to begin the process of pulling their teeth.  Sure, there would be an enormous noise and some of our congressmen would mysteriously die but that’s not too high a price to pay for making things better.  At least not to my mind.

So, let’s just see what kind of spine Kevin McCarthy has discovered.  Is it steel, lead or silly putty.  Hopefully we’ll find out soon.

And We Keep Getting Richer but We Can’t Get Our Picture

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A photog’s work is never done.  Today one of the many hats I had to wear was Camera Girl’s chauffer.  It seems her car had to go in the shop for a couple of grand worth of maintenance and repairs.  So, I followed her to the garage and drove her home.  Then at the end of the day, the reverse trip.  I mean, what does she think I am, an Uber driver?    And then there was this and that and the other thing and before you know it my whole day, twenty-four precious hours are gone, gone for good!  Well, c’est la guerre.

I was reading a “Rolling Stone” article about the Republican House planning a series of investigations and how unhinged they all were.  Mercy sakes, why would anyone investigate the federal government’s response to COVID?  I mean why would locking down the whole country and forcing experimental drugs into the whole population be grounds for inquiry.  Seems perfectly normal to me.

In addition, this unhappy “journalist caterwauled about investigations into the Disinformation Governance Board, Eric Swalwell’s Chinese Spy, the FBI chasing parents at School Board meetings, the government hiring 87,000 IRS agents and the fed’s collusion with Big Tech to censor conservatives.  I mean I just felt so bad for the feds.  How awful to accuse them of unconstitutional overreach.  Really it was just good old American overachievement.

I really feel this writer’s pain.  She knows how hard it was for the January 6th investigation to get anyone to listen to their hearings and realizes it was because of how boring they were.  Whereas with the Hunter Biden laptop filled to overflowing with videos of hookers and crack smoking it will be impossible to keep it from streaming everywhere.  It’s just too unjust for the evil Republicans to have all this good stuff to work with.  There should be some kind of equity, inclusion and diversity.  Maybe some of the footage can be doctored to include Republicans in the crack house scenes with Hunter.  Maybe for the sake of diversity some of the hookers can be switched out for adults instead of the actual underage sex workers.  And for equity’s sake maybe the “big guy” could be Donald Trump this time.  Isn’t reality so unfair?

You know, it’s funny.  Back in the 1960s and 70s people used to read the Rolling Stone to be entertained.  They’d read about Led Zeppelin, or Queen and find out whether the new album was coming out and whether it was any good.  I’m trying to imagine who reads it now and why.  The lefties reading it back then would have been horrified if the writers were defending some government program forcing people to be injected with drugs they didn’t want.  Or imagine trying to defend the FBI silencing free speech.

Well, the good news is that probably no one reads it at all anymore.  Think about it, I may be the only actual human to have read that drivel.  Millions of bots clicked on the link but I’m the only idiot who slogged through that crap.  Well, my takeaway is that the House Republicans are giving me my money’s worth.  Outraging Rolling Stone writers and embarrassing deep state fascists is the only worthwhile occupation for politicians.  I take that back.  They can also prevent Congress from appropriating any more money.  Now that is worthwhile.

Groovy man.

We Need a New Sideshow

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Having successfully overhauled a few things on the site, I can now concentrate my energies, such as they are, to providing something worth your time reading.  I looked at the news today and there are numerous news and opinion pieces about “Classified Documents.”

There are articles about more documents showing up in various Biden ratholes.  There are accounts by talking heads on both sides about why there is or isn’t a smoking gun in all of this.  There are articles comparing the two special counsel investigations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  They even manage to drag Hillary Clinton’s server back into the discussion.  It’s fascinating!

Well, no it isn’t.  The intel agencies and the Justice Department can find a judge to decide any of these “cases” any way they want to.  How they are spinning these two fantasies is completely out of our control and honestly of no interest to me.  We’ll deal with the fallout.  That might have interesting consequences.  But nervously waiting to see what they’ll charge Trump with is a waste of time.  They’ll use the primary elections as a basis of when or if to indict him.  So, what are we supposed to do about it?  Nothing.

And so, the news just doesn’t seem to be full of interesting things right now.  Of course, it is fun to watch Dopey Joe get slapped around by CNN and MSNBC for a change.  It’s hard for me to tell if they’ve gotten their marching orders on this or whether they’re also confused as to what they should do.  Who knows, maybe Biden isn’t following orders and is being threatened behind the scenes if he doesn’t agree not to run again.  With these people anything is possible.  But interest palls quite quickly.

I guess the only value in this charade is to instruct the general public that our federal masters have long ago stopped pretending that they care what we think.  In one case holding onto classified documents is just a misunderstanding; no harm, no foul.  In the next case it’s a capital crime and then in the third, back to a misunderstanding again.  The lesson is that reality is whatever they say it is.  But for most of us we’ve already seen this show before.

I guess we need a new diversion to keep me from getting bored with the whole thing.  Maybe we can watch to see how the disaster in the Ukraine plays out.  That’s a real-life train wreck in slow-motion and probably a major embarrassment for the globalist project.  They attempted to force Putin into a fait accompli and he turned the tables on them.  He actually believes in his people and their right not to be globalized out of existence.  Unfortunately, it will cost the Ukrainian (and Russian) soldiers dearly.  Hundreds of thousands will die and the Ukraine will be shattered into at least two parts.  But getting into bed with Barack Obama and Joe Biden was a pretty stupid decision on their part and the Ukrainians will learn a very painful lesson about how the world works.  It will also cost us several hundreds of billions of dollars or more.  And if the State Department and the Pentagon are really crazy it might just get us all nuked too.

Another sideshow will be the Republicans in the House.  We’ll get to see how they stack up against the previous generations of Congress Critters.  And this is good news for them.  They’ll have to fail pretty abysmally to be judged in the same league with John Boehner’s or Paul Ryan’s gangs of stooges.  I’ll confess that I have some traces of hope that they might show themselves to be better than expected.  So, there is something to keep us amused there too.

But I find that there’s plenty to keep me busy in the real world.  Family, friends and the doings of my surroundings keep me busy and allow me to positively impact my little world.  Saints be praised, I’m even helping the local Republicans to get things done.  Who knows, with a lot of hard work we might even make our corner of New England just a little less cobalt blue!

But now that I’m done with my site work I’ll have some amusing stuff coming up soon.  Maybe even a few laughs.

So When a Democrat Congressman in New Jersey Switches Parties …

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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/474587-anti-impeachment-democrat-poised-to-switch-parties-reports

Does that mean a Democrat who won a seat in 2018 in a red state in a district that Donald Trump won by thirty points  may be a little nervous about voting for his impeachment.  I guess they have to choose between pissing off Pelosi or being booted out of office by your constituents.  Looking at those choices, changing parties looks like the winning move.

 

The Rising Tide Can Even Float the Boats of Congress Critters in the House

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But, but, Blue Wave!?  Looks like even the worthless denizens of the House may benefit from Kavanaugh’s Carnival in the Senate.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/13/gop_gains_momentum_but_midterm_spending_trails_dems_138342.html

Of course, “Speaker” Ryan is more interested in fund-raising than winning but even that serial loser may be powerless to snatch one last loss out of the jaws of victory.   That’s one bright side to all this.  We’ll have anew leader in the House soon.

I’ve agreed to a marathon telecom over the election night returns.  I’ll also set up a post for the folks here to comment to as the night progresses.  Have to remember to buy some good food for the night.