Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Scott McKay at the American Spectator Gives an Exercise in Realty about the House, Senate and the “Big Beautiful Bill”

Posted: May 26, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, politics
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As I’m not writing regularly anymore it’s not often that I read a piece and think: “I wish I wrote that.”

But Scott McKay’s piece at the American Spectator (via Hotair headlines) certainly fits the bill.

You see it’s all about the reality of the math.

It’s irritating to have to bring this up, but the Republicans have a 220-215 majority in the House and a 53-47 majority in the Senate which isn’t really 53 votes given that Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and a few others seem to do everything they can to torpedo the conservative agenda. For the most part, they’re ineffective in that respect, because none of them are all that willing to be the one vote that kills a bill or a nomination. They know there will be consequences for that, and they don’t have the courage to face those.

Nevertheless, that 53? It plays like 51. And the 220 plays like 215; luckily, 215 was all the Big Beautiful Bill needed on Thursday morning.

You have the number of votes that you have. Then there is the reality of the the filibuster:

Mike Johnson couldn’t send a clean, stripped-down budget bill through the House, though that would have been easier, and the budget aspects of the bill might have been better. Know why? Because codifying Trump’s agenda through legislation in 2025 means everything has to be attached to a must-pass bill.

As in, budget reconciliation.

You have to force the agenda through an omnibus bill if you want to pass it, because Democrats will reflexively filibuster everything the rules allow them to.

There is zero chance of passing a bill in the senate that requires more than 50 votes and JD Vance. Which means it has to be done in a single bill.

And then there is a reality:

The point is that while this thing could have been quite a bit leaner from a budget perspective, assuming it gets through the Senate and Trump signs it, Congress will have then codified the bulk of Trump’s agenda by the middle of the summer and there won’t be all that much to do for the rest of the year other than to shrink the federal government.

Which isn’t a bad place to be in.

And if you can’t understand why Vought would be so sanguine about the bill even though it doesn’t seem to be very aggressive in chopping down on federal spending, this is likely why.

Some of this is speculative, I’ll grant. But again, this is an ongoing process. And we are dealing in the world of what is possible with the Congress we have.

Within that world, this is a win. Sure, it’s probably not a beautiful win. It’s a 50-yard field goal with one second left to eke out a victory, and the team didn’t cover the spread.

But in the end it will be codified into law and let me remind you of something I said 15 years ago during the Scott Brown special election back in 2010:

…in an attempt to stop Obamacare. In a broadcast by 73wire with Stacy McCain and Ali Akbar (Brown’s new media guy) we talked about the healthcare bill and there was an interesting exchange. I stressed how important this election was because it was necessary to stop obamacare BEFORE it was passed prompting the following:

Ali: “And if it does pass, we will repeal it!”

DaTechGuy: “No we won’t.”

It was very telling that Ali (who is a really smart young man) didn’t argue the point with me and changed the subject.

It was six long years before there was a chance to get rid of Obamacare, and when that chance came John McCain with the applause of every Democrat in the Senate cast the vote to save it.

There is a lot that COULD have been in that big beautiful bill if we had more votes to spare in the House or the Senate but there is plenty IN that bill that the left loathes and that we have wanted to get done for a while.

Once those things are law it will be tough for Democrats to get the votes to repeal them. They’ll need the house and the senate and a President ready to sign and they’ll need majorities where even Democrats in swing districts will go along and you remember what happened last time swing dems did so.

Thus came the Stupak Amendment and the fig leaf he provided while proving disastrous to him and his followers was a Godsend to others as he said later:

“I had a number of members who thanked us after because they could vote no.”

But Stupak fig leaf would quickly wither. His seat and 62 others for democrats would not survive election day and even more shocking to the left the New GOP majority would remain even after the re-election of President Obama

I think putting the dems in this position is a good idea.

Just Because We Lied to You About What You Saw With Your Own Eyes on Joe Biden Doesn’t Mean You Should Believe Your Own Eyes on South Africa Says MSM

Posted: May 21, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, media, politics
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Donald Trump decided to present the president of South Africa, with the entire press corps in the room the evidence of the danger to white farmers in South Africa:

This was actually confirmed as as issue by a SA official at the Oval Office today, but hey are you going to believe your own eyes or CNN?

Trump played the video in front of the guy. Every single network was there, and yet every single network denied what they say.

The irony? All of this took place 24 hours after the Biden health story where the media talked about how they missed a story right in front of their eyes.

Why anyone trusts them is beyond me, but I suspect is bubble reinforcement because once people decide they were wrong they have to see themselves in the light of truth, and that’s just too much for most leftist’s these days.

How Bad Was Kamala? The Left Preferred Playing Weekend at Joey’s for a year to Her in the White House leading the party

Posted: May 16, 2025 by datechguy in election 2024, politics
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There are two critical stories concerning the fitness of Joe Biden for the presidency that are both critical and being almost completely ignored.

The first is a question that some people like Dwayne Patterson are asking: Who was in charge during the Biden years?

I don’t frankly care if the Beltway media takes me seriously or not. I know what I know. I saw what I saw daily in Biden media appearances, seldom though they were. I heard what I heard. And I can safely say that after 30 years in this business, I have never experienced Beltway media as in the tank as they were. The Trump effect can be seen in trillions so far in foreign investments coming into the United States. The Trump effect also has caused a lot of reporters to throw objectivity out the window because they view Trump as an existential threat. 

My humble, but sincere advice for my friends in media, and I do have dozens of them that are friends, is it’s hard to take them seriously when they won’t admit their failings in coverage of the Biden regency. If you want to regain trust, go where the story goes, not where you want the story to go. And I’m telling you, the story is who was running the country the last four years, and why there was no accountability in government. Why did the 25th Amendment fail as a failsafe apparatus against an obviously incapacitated president? 

I suspect the answer is the government was for sale to the highest bidder and both the Biden family and members of the administration were able to run the Federal Government like Chicago, alternatively or concurrently people with agenda were able to advance them without all that pesky “explaining to voters” stuff.

However for my money while that first question is a critical one it’s the second question that I find most fascinating.

Why didn’t they just use to the 25th amendment at put Kamala Harris in the White House?

Any time after Jan 2023 she would have been eligible for two terms and if she became the first woman president the media would have had a collective organism. All the protection that was given to Biden would have been transferred to her and she would have had time to actually be ready to face Donald Trump, and would have had the power of incumbency and much more time to develop an actual team to run a campaign.

Yet they did not do this.

Why?

There are several possible things. Perhaps they were worried that Harris would want to actually be in charge, perhaps the Biden family threatened to talk about things, perhaps the people who were buying government wanted a freer hand to act, but all of these explanation don’t seem to fly as the media & party apparatus that was willing to prosecute Trump crossing multiple lines were unlikely not to be able to manipulate around such problems.

I think there is a more likely reason, one that nobody wants to admit that while I was writing this piece Ed Morrissey brought up ahead of me:

However, that wouldn’t be the real reason for that reluctance. The real reason is that Kamala Harris is every bit as incompetent as Joe Biden, only for reasons having nothing to do with dementia. [emphasis mine DTG] Harris could not be trusted with the presidency, as voters discovered in 2019 and again in 2024, when in both cycles she couldn’t even be trusted to handle the media, let alone the world. 

If the United States had had a competent Vice President, the Cabinet might have acted to replace a president whose aides and families had isolated for reasons of incompetence. Their lack of action in that crisis is unforgivably cowardly, but also a massive declaration of no confidence in Kamala Harris. And then they stood by while Harris attempted to win office anyway rather than publicly demand an open and democratic process to replace the party’s nominee, compounding their cowardice.

Or to put it simply if the final year of the Biden presidency was the first year of the Harris presidency the prospects for Democrats running for re-election and/or retaining power would be so bad that the actual results of 2024 would have been considered a best case scenario.

Much better to keep the lie up and hope that they could pass Biden off as functional, Democrat donors and media could be counted on playing along because the person who spilled the beans would be blamed for a Trump victory and NOBODY in the media/left would want to be the person responsible for Trump returning to the White House. And if the worst case scenario happened (as indeed it did) Harris could not only be considered separate Joe Biden’s failures but in a short campaign her incompetence could be hidden from the general public and panicked donors desperate to stop Trump would be so relieved that they would open up their wallets which indeed they did.

That is plausible and the most likely conclusion to me but think about that for a second.

If I’m right Kamala Harris is so incompetent that the Democrats and the media thought playing Weekend at Joeys with Biden was a safer option than having her in office running the show.

Simply amazing.

The “We’re there no graves in Egypt?” Republicans

Posted: April 9, 2025 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, politics
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fyi I’m going to be completely offline the next few days so comments won’t get approved before Monday.

I know we live in a time where we are used to instant information and instant action but the reaction of some conservatives over the last few days are making me doubt the sanity of some.

It’s sort of like when a Baseball team wins twenty in a row. It’s a great time and it’s a lot of fun but if after winning 20 in a row you get upset because you don’t repeated win twenty in a row.

Trump has been winning big for a long time in this first 100 days. No president has ever done so much in so little time.

But persuading people who have been ripping you off for decades to make a deal, and to GET a deal in writing that doesn’t happen instantly.

Trump announced his tariffs a few days ago, stocks reacted poorly and people panicked and let the same media who had buffaloed them for years drive them like fools. When Trump stuck to his guns they panicked more BUT not as much as those countries who rapidly figured out that Trump wasn’t bluffing.

The calls poured in dozens of countries anxious to make a deal, with the primary exception of China who immediately retaliated and the EU who claimed retaliation to happen in a week.

Now I don’t have the business experience that Donald Trump has but even I know that it takes more than a day to finalize a deal between two nations and commit it to paper. How many days do you think it takes to do so with 75 or 80 nations. Say 90 days?

The left and the media starting spinning this as Trump caving. When it was obvious that he hadn’t and even worse the stock market soared beyond all it had lost and then some suddenly it was insider trading.

I expect this from the left media and if you don’t expect from the people who lied to you about Biden’s condition for four years you’re a fool.

But if you’re a member of the GOP who has seen the last two and a half months of almost continual success did you really have any business freaking out during this weekend or beyond?

The reaction of conservatives reminds me of the twelve tribe of Israel during the Exodus from Egypt.

Over and over again after they had been delivered from danger they would start their cry: “We’re there no graves in Egypt that you led us out to get slain or starved, or die of thirst etc etc etc.”

When I hear conservatives whine about Trump not being dignified enough, or not winning fast enough, or not continuing an uninterrupted winning streak they sound like those who had seen miracles over and over again and now act if they are entitled to them.

Now there are many who make their living Hitting Trump and getting clicks from it and those folks are going to play the panic for all it’s worth.

But if you’re not one of them, please don’t become one of those “We’re there no graves in Egypt” Republicans?

Keep your head and let the people who spend their lives doing and building things do what they do best.

Remember it’s like the Tom Brady years here in New England. Just because Brady made it look easy to get to the Superbowl year after year didn’t mean it was. He’s just good.

Just because Trump has made it look easy doesn’t mean it is.

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