The Country News Break - February 7th, 2024
The Country News Break - February 7th, 2024
None of the Above
The Game is Made Up and the Points Don’t Matter
With the results having been assured after just three percent of the contest completed, our illustrious Presidential Primary campaign continues to set new lows, making a farce of the idea that these are democratic elections and that the people get to vote to decide the nominees for the two major parties.
After a rescheduled South Carolina Democratic primary last week got a measly 4% turnout rate, Joe Biden was breathlessly declared the winner after debating zero candidates and making two short campaign stops there. He won 95% of that 4%, and it was spun to mean Joe Biden is on a comeback with Black voters. Nothing says the people demand your reelection than a DNC-rigged schedule that turns out 4% of your voters to express their enthusiasm for your candidacy.
Not to be outdone in the “I wish this was fake news” department, The Republicans have so bungled Nevada that there are two contests this cycle, one meaningless primary and one caucus for the actual delegates. Nevada has for a long time allowed voters to select “None of These Candidates” and in a result that only SNL writers will enjoy, none of the above won in a stunning landslide, with 65% of the vote. The only candidate still pretending to run for the Republican nomination not named Trump only received 30% of that vote. Trump was not on the ballot.
Nikki Haley, we hardly knew you. I can’t imagine even billionaire donors would waste another nickel on your campaign, but perhaps you’ve earned a cabinet post in the Trump Administration.
These primaries have become “Whose Line Is It Anyway” where the game is made up and the points don’t matter. In such a game, party elites, insiders and rich donors win and the demos - the common people - invariably lose. What a country.
The End of the Capitol Grille Legislative Process?
Yesterday, the House was in session to vote on the impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas and the standalone Israel aid package the Speaker has recommended. Both votes went down as Nos, and the inside Washington press went apoplectic.
Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News described the results this way:
I've seen a lot of embarrassing days for different House Republican leadership teams. This one is pretty high on the list. They lost a vote to impeach Mayorkas. And then they lost a vote to send $17.6 billion to Israel. They didn't need to vote on the israel bill today. They knew it would fail. They chose to.
Johnathan Martin of Politico responded to Sherman with this:
Mile wide opening for Biden - these guys can't even run a two-car funeral and you wanna put them back in charge?
And to claims that the whole process was rigged from the start:
yes, 17-dimensional chess: humiliate james lankford, lose a vote to impeach mayorkas plus a damn suspension vote on funding israel drawn up just that way in the back of cap grille, it can now be revealed
Cap Grille being the Capitol Grille where shady back room deals are cut between members of Congress. I am simply amazed at the extent to which these journalists wish a return to the sort of Congress run by Nancy Pelosi, where strong armed tactics expect complete fealty from all party members and all legislation is pre-passed through her tactics before being allowed to the floor.
We’ve lost something vital - the process whereby the people’s representatives suggest legislation and are allowed to vote up or down on these issues - without games and gimmicks - that are important to the demos, the common people. The type of reporting by Sherman and Martin shown here reinforces the process of Congressional leaders making back room deals that buy votes with paybacks and favors. In order to save face in the press, the expectation is that leaders must do these back room deals, creating incentives to fix votes. These journalists thrive in such an environment because it enables them to scoop stories in the same way - back room deals to leak back room deals to sell newspapers and clicks. They don’t do any investigation any more, just report on leaks from their cronies in government. If there’s no crooked back room Capitol Grille meetings, there’s no scoops for Sherman and Martin. It reminds me of Upton Sinclair, who said:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
I am skeptical the moves by the Speaker signal a change for the better in Washington - where votes are cast based upon the policies in the bill and not on back room deals. But a boy can dream.
Prediction: Joe Biden Will Never Agree to a Debate
I’m sorry for the old man, but there is no political consultant in the world that would allow President Biden to show up to debate on a stage for ninety minutes. It would be the end of his Presidency. See here:
If such a debate were to happen, the two questions would be: 1) will President Trump shut up long enough to allow this to happen in real time, and 2) will the moderator attempt to assist President Biden in such a scenario (as happened in this video). With no help, how long do you think the President would have searched for the word “Hamas?” Just yesterday he claimed to have met with a French President who had been dead for 25 years at the time of their meeting. I am sorry, we can no longer trust a man with such mental frailties; his shortcomings are the proximal reason for the wayward drift of our foreign policy, our economy and our country over the past three years.
Rewriting History
Much hay has been made in left-leaning circles and news outlets that Republicans are entirely to blame for the debacle which was the $118B Senate “Border Bill” which should actually be named the “Largest Foreign Aid Package in the History of the United States that Includes Some Lukewarm Immigration Reform and Does Nothing to Secure the Border.” Only 17% of the proposed funds go to Immigration, and most of that money is aimed as processing more illegal crossers faster. It was always dead on arrival.
In the Monday morning quarterbacking though, there’s an attempt to blame Republicans for the fiasco. And one of those claims is utterly false - that Republicans in the House requested to attach Border Security to the monstrosity. I got into a little scrap on X with Josh Rogin of the Washington Post on this issue. There is no truth to this claim. President Biden gave a national address requesting this bill after his trip to Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7th. He subsequently sent his request to Congress that included language and $11B for “Border Security.” Josh then claimed that Speaker McCarthy requested this, but he didn't. Speaker McCarthy was removed from that office on October 3rd - four days before the Hamas attack. There was no Speaker - Republican or otherwise - when President Biden made the request to Congress. It was always a cynical move to both attempt to take the border crisis issue away from Republicans in the fall election and/or to force Congress to vote for the unpopular, unwise funding of Ukraine in exchange for the Administration ending their dereliction of duty at our southern border.
