It never ceases to amaze me how many people are shocked at the acts of the Biden Administration concerning Israel, particularly folks like Jonah Goldberg (a nice guy in person) and friends.
It appears that the folks who could have made a difference but decided to let the steal of the last election slide presumed that the goal of said steal was simply to remove Donald Trump which they were completely on board with. They now appear shocked SHOCKED that said folks had an actual agenda they wanted to push and are using said power to do so.
You mean to say if you let a bunch of bought and paid for crooks have power they might just use it? Amazing!
Apparently the shock SHOCK of Joe Biden deciding to suspend arms to Israel over attempting to destroy a group of terrorists who tired to annihilate them and still hold Israeli (and American) hostages is too much for some US senators.
of the Democratic senators running for reelection, most are staying mum, including those running in swing states. They include, at the time of publishing, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, Montana’s Jon Tester, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, and Nevada’s Jacky Rosen. Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin—who is running to replace the state’s outgoing senator, Debbie Stabenow—has also remained silent, as have her fellow House colleagues running for Senate seats, Rubén Gallego of Arizona and David Trone of Maryland.
Oddly enough those who are shocked into silence are almost exclusively running in either red or swing states. Senators from deep blue states like Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut where even supporting the slaughter of Jews can’t hurt a democrat have no problem praising the move.
Unexpectedly of course.
One person who is incapable of being shocked into silence is James Carville who at 80 is just as loud as he has ever been. However while he is not silent he is in fact shocked.
He is shocked that nothing the Democrats seem to do in this campaign is working against Trump:
James Carville is frustrated that Trump is 'more ahead than he's ever been', and that Democrat tactics are 'not working': "It's going the wrong way. It's not working.Everything we're that throwing is spaghetti at a wall, and none of it is sticking, me included. We gotta try to… pic.twitter.com/OAMsDA37Ng
What you might note in this tirade is no mention of Biden’s policies or the overreaching of the left or the abandonment of Israel or the Economy that’s tanking faster than the Chicago White Sox. He might take a lesson from this old piece written on the day of the Scott Brown vs Martha Coakley election so many years ago: (My comment) in bold underline
If Brown wins today in Massachusetts, we’re going to hear all kinds of explanations. Misplaced voter anger is already being invoked. Coakley ran a horrible campaign. The incumbent party is unpopular when times are bad. It snowed. Or it didn’t. Whatever. The simplest explanation is that a majority of the citizens of Massachusetts oppose ObamaCare. Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they don’t realize how great it will be. (HA! DTG) But if Brown wins, the simplest explanation is that the most important issue, health care, was decisive. The voters don’t like ObamaCare and this is their chance to say so.
The actual performance of this administration or the state of the country is not relevant to Mr. Carville. It’s all about the game. He’s a salesman one might even say a master salesman and his product is Democrats any democrats no matter what they do, no matter what they say and after decades of selling a crappy product to a gullible public he is shocked SHOCKED that there doesn’t seem to be enough marks falling for the pitch.
So let me get this straight:
Bill Maher does an excellent eight minute monologue on the media covering irrelevant things for the sake of clicks and agenda:
And then leads the overtime segment of that very same with a story about a Virginia school district that had renamed two schools named after confederates restoring the original names.
Because on a weekend when Joe Biden is withholding military aid to Israel to the point where even Jonah Goldberg’s friends are done with him there is no issue bigger that needs to be addressed than a school named after Stonewall Jackson who died in 1863.
I can’t contain my degree of shock that he might just be another self serving liberal after all.
Finally I laughed aloud when I saw this story out on the Daily Wire:
Speaking on the support that RFK Jr. enjoys from some on the political right, Penn said: “I think that it will drop in half if Republicans learn the views, right now they don’t know these things.”
“And there’s a group of Republicans that don’t like anybody and he’s now the alternative to the alternative,” he continued. “So he’s got some votes, but I agree with you, he would lose a lot of Republican votes if this screen that you’re putting up there really got out and got broadcast.”
Here is the video
WATCH: Mark Penn on RKF Jr's base of support:
"I think that it will drop in half if Republicans learn the views, right now they don't know these things. And there's a group of Republicans that don't like anybody and he's now the alternative to the alternative. So he's got votes… pic.twitter.com/TjDhUXimaf
So let me get this straight, Republican votes are going to be shocked SHOCKED that a President Candidate:
Whose Father was AG in a Democrat administration and ran for President as a Democrat
Whose uncle was a Democrat congressman, Senator and President
Whose other Uncle was a Democrat senator for 40+ years
Who has been a democrat all his life
And who initially attempted to run for the Democrat nomination
Might have a bunch of opinions that are completely consistent with the Democrat party?
My degree of surprise can’t be understated!
Let me tell you something Mr. Penn, any republican who votes for RFK doesn’t care what his opinions are. They just want to be able tell their republican friends at GOP events they didn’t vote for Biden and tell their celebrity friends at events attended by all the “right” people that they didn’t vote for Trump.
Fifteen years ago this week this blog started as the Tech blog for HiWired the company I was working for and wrote the blog for went away. It was going to be the platform where I could talk about subjects that I couldn’t touch on the work blog.
Ironically that seemingly innocent decision has next to my marriage been one of the biggest pivots in my life.
Funny isn’t it
At the time this blog was started Obama had just been elected but not sworn in. I had a good job in my field, financial security and was about as secure as a person could be.
Within a year I was unemployed and unemployable in my field, and the blog that was going to be a pastime became a full time platform to write about things while I tried to find work during the Obama years.
It’s is 14 years later and my full time job which began as a temp position during the final year of Obama still doesn’t pay what I was making before Obama was sworn in and that’s unadjusted for inflation. Four years of Trump was not enough to counter 11 years of Biden and Obama.
The irony of course is all that extra time to write, read and blog led me to the great conflict between Little Green Footballs who I had read for a long time back when Charles Johnson was still sane and the person whose actions would have the greatest effect on my life since the birth of my final son. Robert Stacy McCain.
The conflict between Johnson and McCain can best be followed on Stacy’s old blog herehere and here and it was because of that conflict that I contacted Mr. McCain to hear his side of the story:
The story of the phone call that followed is here.
In the end I became of one that group of conservative commentators banned by Charles but my association with Mr. McCain would lead to amazing things.
When the Scott Brown thing was going on, Stacy shook his tip jar to get the funds to come here and cover it. Still not having found a job I had no funds to offer but DaWife consented to letting Stacy stay here to cover the story and I became his driver.
Programming and engineering deal with reality and it was during that week that I learned the difference between commenting from afar and covering something in person.
One of the best posts I ever wrote was done at this time. Boston Berkshires and ‘Bama, the close:
She was a 50 something Coakley volunteer. As I greeted her she sat down in front of Au Bon Pain tired from her exertions and dismayed by the Brown supporters all around where she sat. She had been sent out because of fire regulations, I couldn’t see why she couldn’t be somehow accommodated. I discovered she had come to Massachusetts 15 years ago from her native state of Maryland and cheered the liberal policies that she so believed in that the state seemingly embraced. I asked her finally why she thought a state that had voted 69% for Kennedy and had so convincingly selected Martha Coakley in the primary could change so quickly?
She had her answer.
“The Brown people are a bunch of Redneck Teabaggers.” she proclaimed. “Massachusetts is Boston on one side, the Berkshires on the other with Alabama smack in the middle.” She said this with a bitterness and a contempt that she presumed I had shared since I was standing with the Coakley crowd for nearly my entire time.
At this moment Robert Stacy McCain emerged from Au Bon Pain with the coffee that is the Gasoline of his engine I wished her well and excused myself knowing that my experience of 46 years in that middle of her adopted state would be no match for the comfortably bigoted fiction with which she consoled herself, even if I was inclined to be so un-gallant as to try
The campaign cumulated with my first official set of press credentials when Stacy, Dan Riehl and myself entered the Scott Brown victory party, each of us wearing one of my fedoras
That’s where I met Ace of Spades, Pam Gellar, Roxeanne De Luca Carl Cameron and got my first condescending reaction from a member of the MSM but most importantly it’s where I learned this about the press:
While most of the reporter types were busy talking to themselves, I was interviewing the waitstaff. Why? Because they were the only voters in the room! I talked to more than a dozen of them and got great information on all kinds of things. It speaks volumes that a room full of reporters didn’t think of doing this.
What I didn’t realize at the time is that it wasn’t a question of them thinking of doing it, it was that their narratives were already written. But what I also didn’t know is this tendency to talk to normal people would be the basis for the event that made this more than a one off.
Once upon a time nearly a decade ago in a New England State where Republicans never won national office and whose senior member of congress was considered the liberal Lion of the Senate even though he had run away and left a young lady to die (but nobody talked about that until years after his death because to do so might hurt Democrats) there was a state senator in a Republican district. He was a nice guy a soldier who had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters. His seat was pretty secure and while he would have liked to have advanced further, the nature of the state made it unlikely he would ever be more than a state senator.
One day the Senator died and there was a special election to fill that seat and the Democrat managed to get into internal squabbles and nominated a candidate even worse than Hillary Clinton. At the same time Democrats were trying to push through Obamacare and that Senate Seat turned out to be the 60th seat which would allow Democrats to break a filibuster and get any bill that the Democrats in the house and senate could agree on passed.
Well to everybody’s surprise thanks to the special election, the bad democrat nominee and the unpopularity of Obamacare the GOP candidate a state senator nobody had heard of by the name of Scott Brown won the special election and became a US Senator.
While he was a good US Senator and had time even for those who disagreed with him during his re-election campaign his consultant told him that the only way to win re-election, even though he was one of the most popular pols in the state was to run away from the activists who had showed up to vote for him. So he did so doing his best to compromise on issues dear to those tea party activists and when election day came he lost to a Harvard Senator who pretended to be an Indian.
After narrowly losing re-election and getting his pick for GOP chair rammed though the state convention he decided not to run in a 2nd special election made open by the new Senior Senator replacing Hillary Clinton in the Obama Cabinet even though his pick for state chair was picked specifically to help him win.
Instead he began considering running for Senate in New Hampshire. He thought that his combination of being a “moderate” on social issues would be a good fit for election in the granite state but in addition to his positions on abortion that troubled many activists he took a soft line on Guns being open to gun control measures.
Gun rights activists in the state took notice and even before he announced his candidacy protested his appearances in the state and a blogger who covered the protester (who outnumbered those viewing the speech) in the freezing cold noted:
If you are drawing 300 people standing out in the cold on Dec 19th to protest Scott Brown how many are going to show up when the weather is warmer and they don’t have to stomp down the snow to make room for people to stand.
And that very year when a gun control measure came up for a vote in the state the overwhelmingly Democrat legislature voted against it and the blogger in question noted:
I’m confused:
Didn’t Democrats take the NH in an incredible landslide in 2012 winning over 110 seats from the majority republicans?
Didn’t everyone tell us the state was turning blue permanently and Senators like Kelly Ayotte were doomed unless they changed their tune on guns?
Didn’t Scott Brown himself come to NH and ignore a pro-gun rally of 300 people in the ice and snow emphasizing his support for gun restrictions.
I mean it’s one thing for Wendy Davis to flip on guns but Texas is about as far from NH as you can get, how do you get a totally lopsided victory for the pro 2A forces drawing over 60 democrats to their cause in a state in NE that we are told is turning blue.
The explanation will sound familiar to anyone who read the blog yesterday and saw the votes switch at the last minute.
A source in the state tells me NH Democrats wanted to pass this bill but with an election year that is looking poor they needed members of the house willing to bite the bullet & risk their seats.
Nominating Brown takes the gun issue off the table that the GOP should be able to beat the Democrats over the head with and will put Kelly Ayotte who voted on the right side of the bill on the spot two years before her re-election campaign.
Well the NH party apparatus didn’t listen to those voter and that advice and nominated Scott Brown as their candidate in the US Senate and in a year where GOP senators won all across the country Scott Brown was the exception losing his election and ironically giving the Democrats the extra vote they needed to save Obamacare and Planned Parenthood funding during the early days of the Trump presidency and the former state senator from Massachusetts never held public office again.
Why am I telling the GOP this tale, because of this headline at Drudge:
REPUBLICANS COALESCE AROUND GUN CONTROL
Which links to a NYT story saying that the GOP is considering supporting new gun control laws:
Gun violence has been one of the most divisive and intractable issues in Washington, and even gun control advocates conceded that getting the House bill through the Senate would be a heavy lift. Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, said Monday that he was reviving his background checks bill, which fell to a filibuster in 2013, and that he intended to press Mr. McConnell to bring it up if Republicans were convinced they had the votes.
“I think we need Manchin-Toomey,” Mr. Toomey said, referring to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, his co-sponsor. “I think it’s overdue. This is a common-sense, very broadly supported measure that would fully respect the rights of law-abiding citizens, fully respect the Second Amendment.”
This has been the siren song of Democrats anxious to disarm their political foes for 40 years and every time the GOP members fall for this nonsense pushed by the left and the MSM it costs them elections, which is exactly why the left is so anxious for the GOP to go along with it.
I urge the GOP not to fall for this nonsense and leave them with this tweet…:
Just a reminder to #gop members of congress you might be saying: "Given the current situation we are willing to consider gun control measures"
but #gop voters in your districts and states are hearing you say:
and this warning. If you manage to win a primary when you run on gun control don’t expect 2nd amendment voters to turn up for you in the general election.
…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.
Well Scott won, but the democrats realizing that the only chance to get the bill passed now was for the house to pass the version that had already gone through the senate did so avoiding both a conference and the chance of a filibuster.
So the repeal bill is now coming up and we will find out who was right. I think Ali knows the its very hard to repeal a law once passed. He knows businesses and government have already adjusted their plans based on it. A lot of favors were done for a lot of people in that bill and those lobbyists who had those favors inserted want them preserved. Most importantly as a rule it’s easier to stop something than to do something in congress. A determined minority and frustrate the majority every time.
Yet there are real reasons to think he might be right. The left and the media are declaring that effort dead and phony but are doing their best to discourage this vote. If my original thought was right why would they bother? After all the senate is still a majority democratic institution. Very little chance on any change there is there?
The dirty little secret is until the house passes this bill the senate doesn’t have to even pretend to care, but once it IS passed than it is before the Senate. There are quite a few democratic senators who are in a tough spot. They either ran against Obamacare (WV) live in states where it is unpopular (MO) or face uphill reelection fights (Va). The retirement announcement of Kent Conrad in ND actually hurts the repeal effort because he can now vote to preserve it while the democrat who does run in his state can claim opposition.
However there is another factor involved. Every single democratic senator was the deciding vote to the passage of Obamacare this means that every vulnerable senator on the democratic side has that vote hanging around their neck. Those senators desperate to retain their seats and the power and privileges thereof will not want to run on Obamacare. A repeal vote would give them a chance to vote against it saying they’ve “reconsidered”.
Harry Reid might, in order to increase the chance of holding his senate majority allow a vote. If a democrat filibuster blocks it then vulnerable dems can clam they voted against said filibuster and if he allows it to reach the floor he can either “Fishbait Miller” the vote (let the three most vulnerable dems vote against it) or allow it to pass and let the president veto it.
This is the position that the White House least wants to be in. The president casting a very prominent vote to preserve a law that he pushed for against popular opinion. This would be a great gift to Republicans going into 2012 and represents (along with the rising price of gas and oil and high unemployment) the best chance for this president to lose re-election.
This is the importance of the house vote. It turns 2012 into a referendum on Obamacare. The closer these actions come to election day 2012 the worse the situation gets for democrats. The second best move for them would be to allow a Senate vote ASAP and get this whole thing over with early. The best option for democrats? That I’m not saying until the day after the presidential election.
Obamacare will not be repealed before the 2012 election but this vote might be the first step to insuring its repeal with a new person in the White House.
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