Tag: Uniparty

How Stupid is the Evil Party and How Evil is the Stupid Party?

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Many people describe the Democrats and the Republicans combined as the Uni-Party.  Essentially it is alleged that because the main business of all congressional office holders is to make as much money as possible off of peddling their influence that there really isn’t much difference between the goals or actions of either.  As an example, is the support in both the House and the Senate for the Ukraine War.  It would be impossible to prove that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was any less enthusiastic than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to send another hundred billion dollars to Ukraine.  Or look at the Democrats and Republicans who sit on subcommittees overseeing the FDA.  I’m sure that lobbyists from Pfizer know each of them by first name and routinely wine and dine them while informing them which bills need to be passed and who at the FDA is giving them grief about their latest “wonder drug.”

So, there is a lot of truth in this characterization.  But there is still a fierce rivalry between the two parties for control of the Congress.  After all, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader have enormous power to set the agenda in their respective legislative bodies.  The Speaker especially has complete control to block any bill from ever seeing the light of day in the House.  And if for no other reason than to acquire this power the two parties are constantly at war to overtake each other in the number of seats they control.

So, the question I think about is how badly do the Democrats have to screw up before the Republicans recognize the situation as more momentous than just allowing them to steal more than the Democrats.  Put another way, if the country became so disgusted with the multiple crises that Joe Biden’s crime family has sparked that they gave the Republicans very large majorities in both the House and Senate would the Congress have the patriotism or at least the common sense to use the opportunity to try and save the country from the impending crash landing that we are surely headed for?  Or would they just use the opportunity to steal more stuff as fast as possible before the end?

I believe there is a little bit of hope out there.  Recently we saw the Republicans in the House of Representatives sack the Speaker of the House; an unheard-of thing.  And there have been grumblings against Mitch McConnell in the Senate.  Now granted, the Senate is a lot more bought and sold than the House.  Even if McConnell were replaced as Leader by someone who hadn’t yet reached his two hundredth birthday it would still be one of McConnell’s cronies.  But maybe the same forces that got rid of Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney are working to build a more representative party out of the Stupid Party.

I think given enough time we could get enough somewhat honest people into the Congress to begin changing the direction of the laws in this country.  The real question, the only crucial question is whether we will do that before we run out of time and the whole mad house collapses and crumbles to dust.

Will the Democrats get bounced by the voters?  Will the Republicans seize the moment to fix things?  What do you think?

Legitimacy

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I was listening to a dissident right pundit recently.  It was about the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.  A lot of it had to do with the process the Republican Party uses to vet its members.  Basically, it was said that it selects for those who will follow the orders of the leadership and by extension align with the policies that the donors want supported.  So, for Republicans that means providing legislation that helps for example, pharmaceutical and defense companies.  But it also includes the banks and Wall Street and any other power centers that have lobbyists that Republicans are paid by.

And I can see how a lot of that is true.  Guys like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell are wholly owned subsidiaries of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and never saw a war they couldn’t get behind.  And during the recent COVID madness Pfizer was spreading all those billions it made on vaccines among the Democrats and Republicans like it was candy corn at Halloween.  So, I can see the point being made by the dissidents.  The system is rigged to keep out anyone but the kind of people who perpetuate its mercenary function.  And with such people the chance of the will of the constituents being honored is non-existent.  So, I grant that.

But then how do we recognize and support the people who somehow manage to sneak through this vetting and could be part of the solution?  Look at Donald Trump.  Trump crashed the Republican presidential primary.  He gutted Jeb Bush and disrupted Hillary Clinton’s coronation when everyone knew it was “her turn.”  Sure, he was hamstrung by Democrats and Republicans and most forcefully by the Deep State but I deny that he didn’t try as best he knew to accomplish the items on his agenda.  To claim he was just another bought and sold member of the Uniparty doing the bidding of Black Rock and the CIA seems completely false.  I don’t claim that he had immense success in reforming the federal government.  What I do claim is that he was a legitimate representative of the people who voted him into office.  He authentically wanted to fulfill the promises he made during his campaign.  He had legitimacy.

So the trick is figuring out who are the other bona fide conservatives who are willing to help us win the battles that we so badly need won.  Let’s start with Mike Johnson.  I heard the arguments about how Johnson was a part of the machine that produces “Christian” lawmakers.  But when I look at the cases that he was involved in and the laws that he fought for I see a very socially conservative record.

In 2003 he wrote an amicus brief in front of the Supreme Court for Lawrence v. Texas which struck down the Texas sodomy laws. And in 2004 he defended Louisiana’s law defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.  To me this sounds like someone whose priorities are in line with my own.  And after the 2020 election Johnson voted to overturn the presidential election results.  That doesn’t sound like someone who just follows the Uniparty to get along.

The only way I think I’ll be able to tell if Johnson is a legitimate conservative legislature is if as Speaker of the House, he shows a willingness to resist the very mercenary and illegitimate behaviors that were mentioned in the dissident essay I was discussing earlier.  For instance, Joe Biden asked for a hundred billion dollars of aid that would mostly go to Ukraine but had Israel getting about ten billion.  Instead of passing such a bill Johnson got a bill passed that just gave the ten billion to Israel.  The sympathy that Israel had among Republicans after the Gaza terrorist attack ensured that such a bill would be passed.  Refusing to tack on a Ukraine payment that is an order of magnitude larger seems what I would expect of someone who is practical and smart.

I’m willing to see what Mike Johnson achieves.  That’s how I’ll decide if he’s for real.  That doesn’t seem idealistic.  It seems pragmatic.

FISA Reauthorization – The Real Test of the House

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Want to know whether Republicans have any legitimacy as a conservative entity?  The FISA  program expires on December 31, 2023.  Just wait to see if they reauthorize it or not.  The FBI has been documented by the Inspector General for the Justice Department to have abused this program systematically.

“On April 27, Inspector General Michael Horowitz gave a statement before the committee that stressed the need for “transparency and oversight” to avoid or mitigate the repetition of “mistakes, errors, and abuses.” Horowitz explained that factual accuracy when showing probable cause was a pervasive problem among bureau agents before 2021.”

The abuses of the FISA court during the Russia-gate actions proved that partisan elements in the FBI and the Justice Department routinely abused the FISA process at will.

Why would the Republican House renew it?  The only reason possible would be cowardice.  They fear that if they allow it to lapse the Deep State will allow a foreign government to launch an attack on the US homeland and then blame the Congress for the attack.  But if that’s the case then nothing will ever get fixed in our system and the intelligence agencies will have free rein to spy on us and persecute anyone that speaks against them.  From my point of view, this reauthorization deadline is the acid test of whether there is any hope of ever reining these people in.

Put it on your calendar and on January 1st see whether our conservative warriors stood their ground or caved in.  I’m dying to know.  And if they fail it just confirms what all of the “conspiracy theorists” have been saying all along, that the FBI controls the Congress and not vice versa.

Mark the date.

 

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 22FEB2023 – A Pattern of Deception

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Figuring out that the “Of the people, by the people, for the people” talk was an entire charade and farce is not an overnight realization for most of us. It is a process that takes place as one notices a pattern of deception that began centuries ago.

A few examples: Woodrow Wilson campaigning for president in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Less than a month after inauguration, American boys were stepping foot on French soil to add more bodies and carnage in a useless conflict, one that would be continued by their sons a little more than 20 years later.

Iraq part 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, China…the list is long of foreign entanglements that did nothing but drain blood and treasure from the nation. Not much needs to be added to explain the insanity of attempting to nation-build in a land of warring tribes and secular violence. Democracy? In Iraq or Afghanistan? How delusional does one have to be to believe in that?

More current is the gay marriage push that, while failing in 37 out of 39 state referendums, (including California-Prop 8) somehow ended up becoming the law of the land when it was decided by 9 unelected tribal elders (SCOTUS) that somewhere in the Constitution the framers accidentally left out the gays. (It should also be noted that many Americans were fine with legal protections such as civil unions, acknowledging one’s life partner, etc. But no, they had to have the ‘marriage’ label.)

Closer to home is the never-ending California state ballot propositions that are voted on, only to be stripped or watered down of their intentions once under judicial review. It is important to note that American citizens never wanted mass immigration to dilute the culture and Western world way of life. No, it was decided for them by the ruling class a long time ago.

The differences between political factions are nil. Rs pretend to be the loyal opposition while Ds appear to have lost their minds over DEI and wokeness ideology. We are not voting our way out of this, nor was there really a chance to do that for quite a while now. The goal now is to survive the coming collapse and hopefully build from the ashes.

Although, with intellectual giants at our country’s helm, we may not have much left to build from once everything settles. If Biden going to the Ukraine and Poland to basically have a measuring contest between Russia and China is the best we got, then it is not a good outlook for the future.

25JAN2023 – Shoveling Various Things

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So, I’ve been under a form of coercion for the last three days.  Between shoveling snow and shoveling paperwork I’ve been buried alive.  Now I’ve been reading the news and opinion for the last few days and thinking about what might be interesting.  There are developments on both sides of the Ukraine war and there are interesting developments in Kevin McCarthy locating his backbone but I just haven’t had any time to contemplate, cogitate, and rhapsodize on these themes.

Instead, I’ve been concentrating on just what awful people inhabit the cesspool that is the Uniparty.  Schiff, Swalwell and Schumer.  And that’s just the esses.  The bees, ems and the pees are no better.  It’s a whole alphabet full of sleazebags, crumb-bums and crooks.  But at some point, during my second day of shoveling I wasn’t too cold from the weather or too hot from the exertion and I was feeling curiously relaxed by the rhythm of throwing the snow over my shoulder that I started thinking about the bright side of our present situation.

For one thing McCarthy said categorically that Schiff and Swalwell were disqualified from being on the Intelligence committee because they were, respectively, a documented liar about classified information and a purchaser of sexual favors from Chinese spies.  And I thought, “Hey that’s right, McCarthy said these two guys are scumbags and he wasn’t afraid of hurting their feelings like that RINO Paul Ryan would have been.  He just said it as a matter of fact.  That’s kind of fun.

And he’s going to try to keep Ilhan Omar off a committee too.  He’ll have to whip his whole party to make it happen but he’ll probably succeed because she’s a lousy human being and probably almost no one likes her anyway.  And that’s kind of fun too.

And McCarthy looks like he’s going to at least try to negotiate with the White House on some kind of budget deal.  Sure, he may cave and go along with the continuing resolution on the obscenely bloated so-called budget because all the media outlets are screeching every hour on the hour that the sky is falling because we won’t be able to send out the welfare checks to the illegal aliens.  But at the least he won’t just roll over and add another $100 billion for Ukraine as far as I can see.  And he won’t ban guns by calling them assault weapons so that’s pretty good too.

And then I heard that Mike Pence found classified documents in his fanny pack or his nap room and I started to laugh.  Now Mike Pence is a threat to our democracy.  Who’s next, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger?  Should they rifle through Grant’s Tomb to see if there were any Civil War secret weapons that might end up in Russian hands?  Our Deep State have beclowned themselves in the last few months.  Sure, they’re a metastatic cancer on the lifeblood of our republic but they’re also the Keystone Cops.  Certainly, they destroy the lives of many innocent Americans but they’re also pathetic losers.  And it’s almost certain that they’ve already sown the seeds of their own destruction.

Any society that descends down the path of surveillance state eventually implodes from loss of legitimacy.  Eventually everyone pretends to believe the lies but no one actually does.  And one day pretend loyalty won’t be enough to save the state from a catastrophe and after that you get the Soviet Union and East Germany and Romania in the 1990’s.  And if they’re not careful they’ll end up with what Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu got, a kangaroo court like they gave their victims and a firing squad.

So, there’s no big news this week.  Just little stuff.  But I must be in a good mood because I had all these pleasant thoughts while shoveling.  Well, exercise is good for you.  Maybe it’s good for the soul too.

The Power of No

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It never occurred to me that maybe the anti-McCarthy coup might actually have a chance to succeed but what if they did dig their heels in for a few weeks?  Maybe the rest of the House Republicans might start wondering if maybe there were a few more candidates that almost everyone could easily agree on.

It’s so pleasant to dream about what might happen if our elected “leaders” somehow developed backbone and started acting like leaders.  Of course, in reality most of them are either completely useless or worse.  They vary from hacks and grifters to actual sociopaths.  But maybe there are a few that want to do the right thing.  And if they show some resolve and take advantage of a rare situation where the actions of a few can impact a whole institution like the present situation in the House, then maybe something unexpected and positive might result.

Just for the sake of argument, suppose after a couple of weeks of yelling at each other behind closed doors, it occurs to some of the more moderate representatives that a more productive way of solving this problem would be asking each member to provide a list of names that they absolutely would refuse to vote for.  Taking everybody’s lists, they could then add up the negatives and disqualify anyone who had more than four no-votes against it.  Whoever is left would constitute a pool of names that had the potential to be approved.  Then after a couple of test ballots using that pool of names as the source, they could pretty quickly come up with the four or five names with the largest support and begin to do some horse trading to see who could become the Speaker.

Obviously, my idea would require that most of the Republican House members were reasonable human beings.  And we already know that’s not true.  I suspect at least half of them are nitwits.  But I’m sure that the more intelligent members of the group could persuade their more cognitively challenged brothers and sisters to follow some simple instructions.  Surely there are three or four Republican representatives who are both competent and haven’t sold their souls to Mephistopheles yet.  Jim Jordan is one name that has come up often.  Maybe there are some others.

The point is the MAGA wing of the party has found a silver lining to the 2022 mid-term meltdown.  Their 20-member coalition can wreck the Uniparty’s party.  Short of the GOP establishment letting a Democrat become Speaker, their backs are to the wall.  And if they did elect a Dem then the whole charade would be exposed and the Uniparty would be truly unmasked for all to see.  And from my point of view that would be almost as good as Jordan getting the Speaker’s gavel.

Now, this is all nonsense.  None of this will happen.  McCarthy will whine and hector the dissidents and they will be threatened by the donors who paid for their campaigns and eventually they’ll vote for good old Kevin.  But for just a day or two they did give me something to cheer about.  Listening to all of those politicians screeching apoplectically about irresponsibility and the storied history of the “People’s House” gave me a good laugh.

And who knows?  Miracles do happen.  Very rarely.  But not never.

03JAN2023 – Observations on Happenings in Washington

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The House Republicans are busy beclowning themselves but I’m happy at least there’s something of a pretense being made of demanding accountability from the leadership.  Making McCarthy sweat a little before he’s coronated Speaker of the House is healthy.  I don’t believe he’ll enact that rule change to allow the Speaker to be voted out based on a single rep motioning for it.  After all, after he’s Speaker he’s untouchable.  Why would he honor a promise he made while he was still just a mere mortal?  I guess the only reason would be because it would be such a clear proof to the electorate of his dishonesty.  But then again, they’ve already embarrassed him.  Maybe all bets are already off.  We’ll see.

My view is that the Republican House should use their majority to hold the line on everything.  They should produce a budget.  If the Senate doesn’t want to bargain then say too bad.  No continuing resolution, no nothing.  Shut down the government and let the Democrats sweat.  It’s their Senate and President.  Let them vilify the House but it’ll be two years before there will be any way to change the power structure.  Even if the American public sweeps them out of office for turning off the endless flow of entitlements the Republican House majority will have done what they were supposed to do, legislate and create a budget for this runaway bureaucracy.  What happens in 2024 is just another page in this fake script we’re trapped in.  At least they will have shown some honesty, which is in very, very short supply.  Let the Democrats have the whole federal government and let them bring this whole charade crashing down around their ears.

Without a brake on the actions of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries we’ll be looking at hyperinflation and double-digit unemployment very soon.  And that’s what the American people voted for last year.  Or at least that’s what the poll results that we saw indicated.  It’s important that they get every last drop of the result they chose.  It should be clear as day what was selected; sky high energy and transportation costs, unreliable infrastructure and dead-end jobs for most of the population.  If that truly is what people want, it’s better for those of us who don’t share that vision to get it through our thick skulls that that is the future.  That way we can look for something better.

And as we head down that road, we’ll be able to at least enjoy the comedy that’s on full display from our elected officials.  An hilarious cavalcade of grifters, congenital idiots and just plain criminals who are busy selling off chunks of their country to the highest bidder.  And it just goes to show that individual honest men are completely defenseless against a government that has transformed itself into an organized crime syndicate.  It’s our version of the Baath Party with a revolving door full of Saddam Husseins switching out every four or eight years.  And who knows maybe even that charade will be dispensed with soon.

But while it holds out, I intend to savor every bit of the bathos and buffoonery.  Let’s hope Dementia Joe gets to finish out his term in January 2029.  By then both he and the country should be about the same; a gelatinous puddle of goo.  How could I ask for more than that?

Kevin McCarthy Struggling to Find Enough Votes to Become Speaker of the House

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Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to assemble the 218 votes he needs to become Speaker of the House in January.  The usual suspects in the GOP establishment are wringing their hands and warning that to resist McCarthy’s accession to the Speaker’s gavel would be madness.  Some representatives who despise McCarthy have floated Steve Scalise’s name.

Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) said, “Steve Scalise is a good friend of mine, but he himself and many others have said they’re supporting McCarthy and will continue to support McCarthy. Again, there is no Plan B here. The plan is to get him elected as speaker. At the end of the day — we could be there two, three days — it doesn’t really matter. The majority of the conference understands that without him, we wouldn’t even be having this debate.”

That may be, but apparently McCarthy is worried and so he is making concessions to his opponents.

“The embattled California Republican is offering a congressional rule change that would make it easier to remove a House speaker in exchange for his ascension to the post. McCarthy’s offer would lower the threshold required for a motion to vacate the chair — a parliamentary gambit that forces a vote on retaining the speaker.

“Currently, because of rules change pushed through by Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only a member of the House leadership can offer a motion to vacate. Conservative House Republicans are pushing for that standard to be repealed, allowing any one member to force a vote on the speaker at any time.”

Well, well, well.  Some of the new congressmen don’t want the establishment hack to sell out their constituents.  If you ask me that’s pretty damn good.  It may not accomplish a thing but it restores faith that not every last politician in Washington is a fink.

Look, McCarthy will end up the Speaker and he will cut the usual deals with the Democrats that sell us out and make him a zillionaire.  But the fact that some of the reps are even trying to get some leverage over their future boss is a minor miracle from my point of view.

It at least shows that there’s an awareness of what the voters think of McCarthy and so these reps are at least trying to show that they’ll do more than just stand by and let the Uniparty sell us out according to standard operating procedure.

This is hardly a stunning victory.  It’s not even a feel-good story.  Let’s call this a tiny first step in the right direction.  But it’s a nice sequel to the ejection of Liz Cheney and most of the other Never-Trump impeachment traitors.  Let’s just call it a little creative schadenfreude.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 13AUG2022 – MCCarthy and McConnell

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TomD

If the Republicans prevail in the house and senate in the midterms but McCarthy and McConnell remain as the leaders, just look for more of the same. But if we could somehow get Rand Paul and Jim Jordan, it would be happy dance in the streets time.

Both these guys are fighters, the opposite of the current “leadership”. Have you ever seen more inept “leadership” than offered to us by Paul Ryan and McConnell in 2016-2018? They did nothing at all despite having the House, Senate and Presidency by substantial margins.

The current Dims hold all three branches but the two legislative branches by razor thin margins. Despite which, they are ramming incredibly destructive legislation down our collective throats. And all we have to counter them is the ineffective duo of McCarthy and McConnell?

What Passes for Logic in Academia

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I read an article entitled “Down With Primaries!” by some genius named Kevin D. Vallier who is an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University who wrote a book called “Trust in a Polarized Age.”

This learned scholar wrote the following:

“Most democracies don’t have democratic primaries. By and large, party elites choose candidates, and the people then vote for the parties or the candidates. American democracy, by contrast, relies on popular primaries: Ordinary party members select the candidates, or we have open primaries, in which voters can select candidates from either party.

Why do we do this? American anti-elitism. We see party elites selecting candidates as corrupt backroom dealing. We don’t trust parties to evaluate candidates themselves, to help us make a better democratic choice.

Americans are wrong about this. We should abolish democratic primaries.“

You see the party elites are the ones we should trust to look after our interests.  Think of the last few presidents before Trump and ask yourself how that worked out.  George W. Bush and Barack Obama are the shining examples.

And then he gives examples to “prove” his point:

“Consider some recent illustrations. In 2016, GOP party elders would have blocked Donald Trump from the outset. I’m sure that many people reading this are still happy that Trump broke through as he did. But for most Republicans, and most of the country, this proved to be a bad outcome.

If Republican Party elders had had their way in 2016, Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush would have been the nominee. I have no love for Rubio or Bush: They are too hawkish for my tastes. But Trump damaged the country’s democratic system in ways that Bush or Rubio would not have done. Conversely, had Democratic Party elders not gotten their way four years later, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might have been the nominee in 2020. If a strong left-wing candidate had become president, instead of Biden, most Americans would have regretted it.”

So from the author’s point of view Jeb Bush instead of Donald Trump would have been a win for democracy.  And Joe Biden instead of Bernie Sanders was also democracy in action.  Even though in each choice he is advocating for the less popular candidate.

Finally he sums it up:

“Backroom deals? They’re the stuff of democracies around the world – and of American democracy before the advent of the primary system. We should bring them back.”

It’s amazing what passes for political thought in universities.  So his thesis is that letting the parties give us the choices for president will make it more “democratic.”  Of course, what if the two parties are just two sides of the same coin; heads I win, tails you lose.”  Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle Dee work for the same masters and just act out parts that reinforce the script that we can change the conditions we live under.

Well, I have to assume “Professor” Vallier represents the pragmatic reality based side of academia and is considered a radical by the Bernie Sanders majority at his university.  All that tells me is that subcontracting to BLM to burn down the universities is a noble idea.