Archive for the ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Category

This morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor to accomplish 2 things. First, he wanted to get Democrats to agree to passing positive legislation like National Defense Authorization Act and ratifying the USMCA trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada. Sen. McConnell’s ‘other’ goal this morning was to shame Democrats, starting with Nancy Pelosi, for their obsession with impeachment.

We want to pass the USMCA and the 176,000 new American jobs it would create. But Speaker Pelosi continues to block it. The far left objects to their passing anything the president likes. We want to pass a conference report for the NDAA, critical legislation for our national defense. Congress has passed a bipartisan NDAA every single year since 1961. But now it’s another casualty of the impeachment obsession. House Democrats steamrolled Republicans in order to pass a wholly partisan bill. I believe this may be the first time ever that either chamber has passed a purely partisan NDAA. Now they’re stalling the conference committee and jeopardizing the whole process.

And we want to pass the defense funding bill that our Democratic colleagues have now filibustered twice, so that our servicemembers and commanders get what they need. Back in the summer, the Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and the Senate all signed onto an agreement with President Trump. A bicameral, bipartisan agreement. Everybody signed it.

We brokered this deal to make sure the appropriations process did not get bogged down with bickering over other policy issues. All sides agreed to keep poison pills out so that government funding could move forward. But just a few months later, our Democratic colleagues are now insisting on the exact kinds of poison pills they foreswore.

Good faith negotiations are in short supply, especially from the Democrats’ side. It’s apparent that that’s the problem since both sides reached an agreement this summer. Senate Republicans have stuck to that agreement. Democrats haven’t.

In short, my friends in Democratic leadership smelled an opportunity to pick a political fight. Our servicemembers need their funding. American workers and small businesses need their new trade deal. Our armed forces need the authorizing legislation that has been a bipartisan slam-dunk every year for almost sixty years.

It’s apparent that Pelosi isn’t interested in bipartisanship. She’s as partisan as Adam Schiff, AOC + 3 or Chuck Schumer. That’s why she needs to get bounced from the Speaker’s office. Pelosi’s Democrats consistently put partisanship over patriotism.

Sen. McConnell is right about this:

We cannot cease all legislation just because Democrats would rather fight with this president. We won’t neglect the business of the American people just because a House committee is holding some public hearing. If they are going to keep plowing ahead with their impeachment obsession, they cannot abdicate their basic governing responsibilities at the same time.

Here’s the video of Sen. McConnell’s speech:

After tonight’s debate, the pundits’ consensus was that, thanks to impeachment, the race would essentially remain a 2-way race between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. After the debate, though, that conventional wisdom appears to have gotten shattered. The oldest candidate in the race suddenly became the most appealing choice to young people:

At least three members of the “Squad” of far-left freshman members of Congress will reportedly endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. Fox News has learned that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., will appear with Sanders on Saturday in Queens, N.Y., at a “Bernie’s Back” rally designed to generate excitement for the senator’s campaign following his recent heart procedure. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., will also endorse the candidate, Fox News confirmed.

In addition, CNN reported that Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., will endorse Sanders as well. It was not immediately clear if Omar and Tlaib will appear at the same Sanders event.

This will be fascinating to watch. First, will this change the trajectory for Elizabeth Warren, who has been climbing since late summer? Next, will this stop Bernie’s recent slide and reposition him firmly amongst the frontrunners? Third, does this essentially end the race for the second-tier candidates?

The endorsements would be a significant blow to the campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who like Sanders has been representing the party’s progressive wing. Word of the endorsements also followed Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Ohio, where Warren was under attack from multiple candidates after rising in the polls in recent weeks.

This is a potentially big moment from the standpoint of attracting young voters. It also denies Sen. Warren a big victory. Bernie can now point to this as proof that the heart attack didn’t stop him from being a force. How many points this will be worth in the next round of polling is unknowable but there’s little doubt that his post-heart attack slide just stopped.

Whether that’ll catapult him in Iowa or New Hampshire remains to be seen, too. What isn’t disputable is whether Saturday’s official endorsement will breathe new life into Bernie’s campaign. It certainly will.

The other thing that this sets up is a situation that tests whether the socialist wing of the Democratic Party is big enough to defeat the not-quite-as-crazy wing of the Democrat Party.

Back on March 27, 2006, I wrote this post. That’s when I coined the phrase Agenda Media. By definition, the Agenda Media is interested in furthering the Democrats’ leftist agenda. The Agenda Media isn’t interested in spreading the truth. If the Agenda Media had a mission statement, I’m betting that it would say that acquiring, then maintaining, power for Democrats is their mission. That’s a shameful mission.

Kim Strassel’s new book, titled Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America is essentially about the Agenda Media. The truth is that the Resist movement couldn’t exist without the Agenda Media’s help. Ms. Strassel writes:

Last week The Washington Post revealed the alarming news that House Democrats were considering having their anonymous “whistleblower” testify from a remote location, and in disguise. Just as shocking as the details of this plan was the justification the Post ladled on this Democratic effort to hide impeachment information from the public.

It explained, high up in the story, that the cloak-and-dagger approach was merely Democrats expressing “distrust of their GOP colleagues, whom they see as fully invested in defending a president who has attacked the whistleblower’s credibility and demanded absolute loyalty from Republicans.”

This year, House Minority Leader McCarthy coined a phrase that said “Democrats hate President Trump more than they love America. That’d sound extreme if you haven’t paid attention to the Democrats’ actions. If you’ve paid attention to the Democrats’ actions, Leader McCarthy’s cliché is legitimate.

It’d be wrong to call Pelosi’s Democrats a domestic terrorist organization but I wouldn’t be that far off. Since President Trump’s election, Democrats have voted virtually unanimously against prosperity and against giving President Trump some political victories. Let’s not forget that every Democrat in DC voted against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that’s been the heart of this incredible economic performance.

Let’s remember that every Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against confirming Justice Kavanaugh. In fact, those Democrats did everything imaginable to destroy Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation and Justice Kavanaugh’s family. It isn’t surprising that every Democrat voted against Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The Resist Movement is spearheaded by the Agenda Media. The truth is that the Agenda Media is significantly to the left of traditional Democrats. That doesn’t mean that today’s Democrats are moderates. They definitely aren’t. The AOC wing of the Democratic Party is the biggest wing of the Party. They’re also the craziest part of the Party. Check out this interview:

Notice that Leslie Marshall cites polls favoring impeachment rather than defending the secrecy with which House Democrats are conducting their sham impeachment proceedings. Marshall didn’t attempt to defend Pelosi’s or Schiff’s indefensible actions.

That’s changed in the age of Trump. The press has embraced its bias, joined the Resistance and declared its allegiance to one side of a partisan war. It now openly declares those who offer any fair defense of this administration as Trump “enablers.” It writes off those who question the FBI or Department of Justice actions in 2016 as “conspiracy” theorists. It acts as willing scribes for Democrats and former Obama officials; peddles evidence-free accusations; sources stories from people with clear political axes to grind; and closes its eyes to clear evidence of government abuse.

It’s time for truth-loving Republicans and independents to shove the NYTimes, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post off a non-literal cliff. They’re propagandists. They aren’t real journalists.

There are some serious fights amongst House Democrats. According to the Intercept, Rep. Cheri Bustos, the chair of the DCCC, “counted as many 111 primaries for her incumbent members, a higher-than-normal number as the Democratic Party struggled with the leftward trajectory of their new coalition, which is less white, more educated and youthful.”

In this article, we are told about incumbent Mike Doyle, who has represented the district since fist winning election in 1994. According to his primary opponent, Jerry Dickinson, Doyle isn’t liberal enough:

Twenty-plus years is a long time in office. Look at the record. Is Doyle liberal enough to lead what is a safe, strongly Democratic district? The answer is no. Think about the safe blue districts all across the United States, whose representatives take on the liberal mantle, who are loud. They are leaders. They stick their neck out on the issues that really, really do matter to liberals. That should be happening here. This is a post-industrial liberal enclave, which actually makes it in a unique position to actually be the leader on all major issues.

The Democrats’ spinmeisters have consistently told us that Democrats could investigate and legislate. Then Democrats like Jessica Tarlov have insisted that there are lots of Democrat moderates. Based on what’s just been reported, there are more AOC progressives than there are ‘Tarlov moderates’.

Republicans are dealing with retirements, most of which are from solid red districts. Will Hurd seems to be the exception to that pattern. If AOC Democrats have gotten into the circular firing squad business, that could help Republicans retake the House.

Because Democrats cried wolf 250 times too many, nobody’s buying the Democrats’ line that the transcript is President Trump’s doomsday:

They especially don’t buy the things that Adam Schiff has said. Why would anyone trust the guy who said that he had evidence that President Trump colluded with Russia. Remember this golden oldie?

That’s when Rep. Schiff, (D-Calif.), had this exchange with Chuck Todd:

SCHIFF: All I can tell you is, reviewing the evidence that I have, I don’t think you can conclude that at all. Far from it.
Chuck Todd: But you admit that all you have right now is a circumstantial case.
Schiff: Actually, no, Chuck. I can tell you that the case is more than that and I can’t go into the particulars but there is more than circumstantial evidence.
TODD: You have seen direct evidence of collusion?
SCHIFF: I don’t want to go into specifics but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation…

That proof never materialized. Most of Schiff’s statements turned out to be false. Schiff has been peddling this foolishness since President Trump’s inauguration.

This past Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi said that Democrats were officially launching an impeachment inquiry. That’s BS. Until they take a vote on the House floor, the Democrats’ investigation remains unofficial. That speech was nothing but a PR stunt. The bad news for Democrats is that the particulars aren’t that important to people like AOC, Al Green and Maxine Waters.

They’ll demand an impeachment vote. Pelosi was hoping to save her majority by protecting her vulnerable freshmen with this past Tuesday’s PR stunt. AOC isn’t about playing things safe. She’s a my-way-or-the-highway type. She won’t hesitate in running Ms. Pelosi over.

That’s the definition of the Democrats impeachment dilemma.

It’s safe to say that Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House in name only. This afternoon, Ms. Pelosi all but officially admitted that the woman in charge of running the House is a 29-year-old former bartender. The façade is gone. The results won’t be pretty a year from November. Democrats will get shellacked and then some. When Ms. Pelosi stepped up to the microphone, she announced that the House was starting official impeachment proceedings.

At that point, Ms. Pelosi intentionally lied. Official impeachment proceedings can’t start until there’s a vote on the House floor that authorizes those proceedings. Until Ms. Pelosi subjects those 31 Democrats representing districts that President Trump won by substantial margins to voting for starting impeachment hearings, from a legal standpoint, nothing has changed. We still don’t have an official impeachment proceeding.

From a PR standpoint, it’s a big deal because the Speaker-in-name-only has said the magic I-word. That’s a big deal to her out-of-control Far Left Wing but it won’t be enough once they realize this was Ms. Pelosi’s last-ditch attempt to save her Speakership. Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement that highlights what Pelosi’s announcement means. Here’s the key paragraph:

“Speaker Pelosi’s much-publicized efforts to restrain her far-left conference have finally crumbled. House Democrats cannot help themselves. Instead of working together across party lines on legislation to help American families and strengthen our nation, they will descend even deeper into their obsession with relitigating 2016.

By semi-starting the impeachment proceedings Tuesday, Pelosi has guaranteed to give the House Chairmanship gavels back to the Republicans in January, 2021. Here’s Pelosi’s speech:

Despite what she said, impeachment doesn’t start until there’s a vote of the whole House authorizing an impeachment investigation. Ms. Pelosi hasn’t (and won’t) do that unless her back’s against the wall. That might well happen now that AOC has taken over the House Democrat Caucus.

While campaigning, then-Candidate Trump would say that Americans would get tired of all the winning if they elected him. As the 2020 election nears, Victor Davis Hanson has written this article that’s appropriately titled “Trumped Out?” I’m not. Give me 4 more years of this. I’m loving it.

Hanson is apparently loving it, too:

The August jobs report “unexpectedly” reminds us that never have so many Americans been at work. The 3.7 percent unemployment rate continues to be the lowest peacetime unemployment figure in 50 years. Black and Hispanic unemployment remain at record lows. Workers’ wages continue to rise. Talk of recession is belied by low interest, low inflation, low unemployment and a strong stock market. The result is that millions of Americans enjoy far better lives than they had in 2016.

If President Trump isn’t re-elected, what will happen? Here’s Hanson’s opinion into that:

When we look to alternatives, all we seem to hear is multi-trillion-dollar hare-brained schemes from radical progressives and socialists masquerading as Democrats at a time of record national debt. The Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free healthcare for illegal aliens, reparations, the abolition of $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, and free tuition for all—are the stuff of fantasies and either would have to be repudiated by any of the Democratic nominees who actually was elected, or would destroy an already indebted nation.

That doesn’t sound attractive. That’s what would likely happen with a Democrat president. Democrats control the House. The woman who really runs the House is so radical that she thinks this isn’t radical enough. I’m not talking about Nancy Pelosi. I’m talking about AOC. This is what awaits us if AOC ever assumes total control:

But these are not normal times. There is (for now) no longer a Democratic Party. Instead, it is a revolutionary Jacobin movement that believes socialism is our salvation, that identity politics is our creed, that gun confiscation is our duty, that the abrupt end of fossil fuels is coming very soon, that open borders is our new demography, and that the archetypical unmarried, childless, urban hipster is our model woke citizen.

Over my dead body. President Trump has had quite the effect on otherwise timid Republicans. Check out the ‘Trump effect’ on Lindsey Graham:

It’s important that traditional-thinking people decimate today’s AOC Democrats. They’re despicable. They’re the antithesis of fair-minded. Today’s AOC Democrats don’t see the United States as the greatest protector of human rights or civil rights. Check out what Robert Francis O’Rourke thinks of your right to protect your family:

Prof. Hanson is a historian by trade. When he makes statements about history, I pay attention. That’s why I paid attention to this statement:

I cannot remember a moment in U.S. history when a presidential candidate conspired with the intelligence community of the lame-duck administration of the same party to destroy a presidential rival.

Robert Mueller forever discredited the idea of a special counsel, given his unprofessionalism, bias, and apparent incompetence that ate up 22 months of the Trump presidency. Even in the crude post-1960s, we have never seen anything like the current assassination rhetoric of Hollywood celebrities and the boasts of doing bodily harm to the president by his political opponents.

That’s what AOC’s Democratic Party is about. They’re mostly interested in trampling anyone, whether it’s a Republican, a Democrat who isn’t sufficiently woke or an apolitical person, who doesn’t march in lockstep with them. I don’t agree with each of President Trump’s tweets. I certainly disagreed with his idea of bringing the Taliban to Camp David. But I’ve literally thanked God that he’s our president. I thank God because he’s a fighter. As Prof. Hanson said, “After all that, the strange thing is not that Trump can be occasionally wearisome, but that he is even still breathing.”

Democrats are constantly complaining about Republicans suppressing the vote. Stacey Abrams isn’t the latest in a long line of Democrat complainers on the subject. AOC is the latest in that line. AOC is calling for the abolition of the Electoral College, insisting that the system is “racist.”

First, the Electoral College won’t be abolished because it would require a bunch of small states to ratify a constitutional amendment that’d render their states politically irrelevant. That’s just one of the reasons the Electoral College won’t be abolished. The other reason it won’t happen is because the odds of the constitutional amendment getting that far are tinier than slim. To send a constitutional amendment to the states for ratification, the amendment must 290 votes in the House, then get 67 votes in the Senate. That’s provided that the wording in both amendments is identical. If there’s any differences, those would have to be ironed out before proceeding to the ratification phase.

Talk about microscopic odds.

Ultimately, though, what Democrats are proposing is the ultimate disenfranchisement of voters. States like Kansas, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Iowa, Idaho, Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire, to name a few, would become politically irrelevant. With campaign finances being finite, why waste money courting voters in Montana, Iowa, the Dakotas and Maine? Further, abolishing the Electoral College would mean candidates wouldn’t have to think about multiple demographic groups. Democrats could focus on East and Left Coast elitists and ignore the blue collar voters in the Rust Belt. How does that maintain the United States of America?

It’s worth noting that we have a federal government, not a national government. The federal government didn’t exist until the states created it. Democrats won’t admit that they want all power centered in Washington, DC but that’s the truth of it. The Founding Fathers, whom I consider to be the greatest collection of leaders in one place in the history of humankind, wanted the government’s power decentralized. The Tenth Amendment even went so far as to say that the responsibilities not given to the federal government by the Constitution were reserved to the states and (gasp!) the people.

Frankly, why would I trust AOC’s ramblings over the thoughtfulness of Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Washington and Madison? Rather than trusting her, Id rather instruct her to read this so she’d understand how to prevent tyranny. I’d also recommend she debate Dana Perino. Perino would slice and dice her into hundreds of tiny pieces if she just did this:

I agree with Tucker when he said that he has “no doubt” that Dana Perino would defeat any debater who accepted Dana’s challenge to debate the merits of the Electoral College. Further, I agree with Tucker’s statement that Democrats like AOC don’t want to debate the substantive issues. Democrats like AOC prefer labeling things racist, thereby eliminating the need for debate.

By eliminating the Electoral College, Democrats are proposing the biggest disenfranchisement of voters in US history. That’s shameful. It needs to stop immediately.

Saying that the Democrats have a candidate crisis this presidential election cycle is understatement. It isn’t just about the Democrats’ candidates, though that’s part of their problem. Part of their problem is that they’ve alienated their traditional base. Specifically, Democrats alienated blue collar workers and industrial unions. It’s more than interesting that Democrats have pushed aside unions like the UAW, Teamsters and United Mine Workers.

In this LTE, Rob Braun wrote “Middle America feels as if no one on the coast is taking their views and opinions seriously. The coastal liberal elites don’t want to hear that they aren’t happy with the moral and social re-engineering they promote. Or, calling Middle America bigots because they adhere to traditional sexual standards. And more importantly, the elites haven’t done a very good job at convincing middle America that their experiment in social and moral re-engineering is the best way of structuring a healthy and functional society.”

That’s certainly a significant part of why Democrats are pushing aside people of faith and rural America. When President Obama demonized people living in “small towns in Pennsylvania”, he criticized these people, saying that it isn’t “surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

That’s an invitation for rural voters to abandon Democrats. That’s what those voters did in 2016. President Trump capitalized on the situation, promising these voters that his policies would revive rural America’s economy. President Trump has delivered on that promise. Remember President Obama mocking then-Candidate Trump about promising to improve the US economy? I remember it because of this:

Longtime Democrat operative Mark Jaede responded to Braun:

It seems that the author thinks the Democratic Party should throw LGBT people and people of color under the bus in order to win votes from socially conservative rural white people.

I disagree. We won’t win by pandering to anti-gay people. We won’t win by dismissing the struggle against racism as “identity politics.” We won’t win by concerning ourselves with how many counties have GOP majorities. We will win by fielding a candidate who can offer Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina a reason to turn out and vote.

As long as Joe Biden promises to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, as long as Bernie promises to spend $16,300,000,000,000 on his version of AOC’s Green New Deal, as long as the entire Democrat field promises to decriminalize illegal immigration and give illegal immigrants free health care, Democrats will continue losing those states cited by Prof. Jaede, with the possible exception of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

One of the links in TakeAction Minnesota’s weekly newsletter was to this article on Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal proposal. According to Kenza Hadj-Moussa, TakeAction Minnesota’s Communications Director, “Bernie Sanders rolled out a climate plan today that seems designed to terrify fossil fuel executives. And we love it.” Bernie’s plan is beyond utterly unrealistic. It’s frightening that a top Democrat presidential candidate could be this stupid. Unfortunately, Bernie’s that stupid and then some:

There are novel, meaty policy proposals that make Sanders’s proposal stand out from an already ambitious field: a cash-for-clunkers and financial assistance program to scale up electric vehicle usage, and plans to boost public transit ridership 65 percent by 2030; a requirement that the Congressional Budget Office work with the Environmental Protection Agency to give new legislation a “climate score,” like the budget scores it currently doles out; and abiding by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to ensure the free, prior, and informed consent by Indigenous peoples.

TakeAction Minnesota is part of the DFL’s labyrinth of activist outlets. TAM thinks that boosting transit ridership 65% within 10 years is achievable. No sane person thinks that. TAM, aka TakeAction Minnesota, thinks that giving Native American tribes veto power over fossil fuel projects is a fantastic thing. TAM thinks that ending “fossil fuels imports and exports” is a great idea. What type of idiot thinks that’s smart economically? These guys:

Sanders outlines an expansive system, building on the resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey in April, that would generate publicly owned clean energy and 20 million new jobs.

First, it’s insulting that they think there’s that many net new jobs to be created through the Democrats’ Green New Deal. If TAM thinks that, then they’re using illegal drugs. Either that or they’re that stupid. Next, anyone that thinks that there isn’t tons of corruption within the environmental activist community is kidding themselves. (Think Solyndra, etc.)

It’s clear that the DFL is attached to the Democrat fringe. Today’s Democrat Party has virtually nothing to do with Bill Clinton’s Democrat Party. In Detroit, presidential candidate after Democrat presidential candidate criticized President Obama’s signature accomplishment, Obamacare. Now Tina Smith wants to pretend that she’s a moderate or a centrist? I don’t think so.

As I’ve said before, a moderate Democrat is one campaigning for office. Once they’re elected, Democrats suddenly start talking about their mandate, etc.