Category: Senate

California Democrats: Why Do They Hate Women and Black People So Much?

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Perhaps readers will recall the identity-politics argument Democrats offered during the Obama era: “Vote for us, or you’re racist!” Then in 2016, with Hillary Clinton as their candidate, the Democrats’ argument became, “Vote for us or you’re sexist!” But now we look at the California Senate primary, where both progressive “rising star” Katie Porter and long-term congresswoman Barbara Lee were on the ballot, and instead, California Democrats chose white male Adam Schiff. NBC News:

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey will advance to the general election in the hotly contested California Senate race, NBC News projects.
That means Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, who also ran for the seat, will be shut out of the general election. The progressives will also vacate their House seats at the end of the term.
Under California’s rules, the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.
In the final stretch of the race, the battle grew ugly between Schiff and Porter, the top-polling Democrats in the race. Schiff cultivated his national profile by battling former President Donald Trump as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Porter, a populist who flipped a former GOP-held district in 2018, ran on a platform of taking on corporate power and addressing working class economic needs like the cost of child care.
Schiff, who led in many polls in the run-up to the contest, has sought to lock out Porter by running ads elevating Garvey in the hope that he will be his opponent in the fall. Schiff’s Democrats are favored to win the general election in the solidly blue state.
By facing Garvey, Schiff will avoid a contentious and expensive intraparty fight this fall. Garvey has run a bare-bones campaign.

In fact, Garvey barely campaigned at all. He’s a famous former baseball star of the Los Angeles Dodgers and if, somehow between now and November, California voters decide to kick their addiction to electing Democrats, Garvey would be a non-controversial alternative.

Meanwhile, the question remains, why have Democrats suddenly abandoned the identity-politics formula that they used as a weapon to attack Republicans? If, given the choice, Democrats in California prefer the white male Schiff over the black female Barbara Lee by more than a four-to-one margin, what does that tell us? I’d say it tells us Democrats are a bunch of lying hypocrites. But we already knew that.



 

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House Passes Spending Bill After Democrat (Allegedly) Pulls Fire Alarm

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It’s always “allegedly” with these people:

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) allegedly pulled a fire alarm in the United States Capitol complex moments before the House was scheduled to vote on a bill preventing a government shutdown, according to the House Administration Committee.
U.S. Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee, which oversees House operations and Capitol security, are investigating. . . .
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) gave a long filibuster speech minutes later as Democrats attempted to delay the vote on a 45-day extension of government funding. The bill eventually passed by a large margin after the incident.
Rep. Jim Banks is among those calling for Bowman’s arrest, tweeting the possibility that Bowman’s actions could be part of a conspiracy among Democrats.

J6 protesters were sentenced to years in federal prison for “interrupting official proceedings,” and yet a Democrat thinks he can pull a fire alarm to stop a congressional vote. “Allegedly,” I hasten to add. Before the House overwhelmingly passed its bill, 335-91, Mitch McConnell had already announced that Senate Republicans would vote for the House version, rather than the garbage “compromise” bill that Chuck Schumer wanted the Senate to pass instead. So this looks like a win — even though my podcast partner John Hoge is ready for a shutdown at his contracting job (building space robots for NASA). We’ll see . . .



 

Mark Lamb for U.S. Senate: The Candidate the Left Fears the Most

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Sometimes politics is easy, and Republican voters in Arizona have a no-brainer in next year’s U.S. Senate race against “independent” Kyrsten Sinema. The Democrats are going to pick one of the various “progressive” kooks in their clown-car primary, and Sinema will run for re-election as an independent, creating a dream scenario for Republicans, who will probably need just 40% of the vote to win in the resulting three-way race. The candidate for Arizona Republicans is obviously Mark Lamb:

Sheriff Mark Lamb is a husband, father, grandfather, and God-fearing patriot. Lamb has served as Sheriff of Pinal County since 2017. Lamb serves on the frontlines at the Southern Border, fighting the criminal cartels to prevent the flow of deadly fentanyl and human trafficking. In 2020, Sheriff Lamb took a courageous stand against COVID lockdowns, as well as mask and vaccine mandates, ensuring that his people lived free, businesses remained open, and children stayed in school. Through this steadfast dedication to liberty, Lamb earned the nickname “America’s Sheriff”.
Now, Lamb is determined to take his fight to the U.S. Senate. Our Constitutional rights are under attack, the timeless values of our Republic are eroding, and America’s standing on the world stage has been imperiled by the failed leadership of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Lamb will fight to secure the border, stand up for Law and Order, protect the Second Amendment, bring fiscal sanity to Washington, and restore American strength on the world stage. Sheriff Mark Lamb is the conservative fighter Arizona needs to defend our values of God, family, and freedom.

“Gee, Stacy, what caused you to endorse this candidate?”

The answer: Research. Because of his frequent appearances on Live PD, I was already familiar with Sheriff Lamb, but it was while researching a completely unrelated topic that I came across this story:

Talk about a backhanded endorsement! Left-wing writer Matt Shuham has exactly one job at HuffPo, doing smear-jobs on Republicans, and if he’s attacking Lamb as “far right,” what more do you need to know?

He’s repeatedly referred to immigration at the southern border as an “invasion” and called for labeling drug cartels as terrorist groups “just like we did to ISIS.” As sheriff, he refused to enforce anti-COVID measures in his county — even saying at one anti-vaccine rally, “We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.” He also teamed up with True the Vote, the conspiracy-theory-driven group that spent years fundraising on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Lamb blamed the mob in D.C. on Democrats, and on the Supreme Court not “hearing our voices.”
Lamb may still find willing ears in Arizona’s electorate, and his presence in the Senate would swing the relatively moderate caucus, at least compared to their House counterparts, sharply to the right. . . .

(Please, please, stop begging! I endorse him 100%!)

During an interview last October with Jack Posobiec — a far-right media personality who the Southern Poverty Law Center noted months prior had “extensive ties to white supremacists” — Lamb echoed the so-called “Great Replacement” theory, or the racist idea that Democrats are attempting to “replace” Americans (typically portrayed as white Americans) with immigrants. . . .

(Now you’re making me want to donate to his campaign.)

“He is very much both a mouthpiece for, and a creation of, the far-right movement in Arizona and nationally,” [left-wing activist Devin] Burghart said.

With endorsements like that, how can I resist?

MARK LAMB FOR U.S. SENATE
Because we want to see Democrats with their
heads exploding like that scene in ‘Scanners’


 

CNN’s Idée Fixe

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Every hour this morning, CNN has featured this story:

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama on Monday doubled down on his comments on White nationalism, saying it was an “opinion” that White nationalists are racist.
During an interview on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” Tuberville repeatedly defended his previous comments. When Collins stated the definition of a White nationalist is someone who believes that the White race is superior to other races, Tuberville said, “Well, that’s some people’s opinion.”
When asked what his opinion was, Tuberville said, “My opinion of a White nationalist, if someone wants to call them White nationalist, to me is an American.”
Speaking on an individual level, Tuberville added, “If people think a White nationalist is a racist, I agree with that.”
Tuberville previously faced backlash regarding comments made originally in an interview with a local Alabama radio station when he was asked if he believes White nationalists should be allowed in the military and responded, “I call them Americans.”
In May, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had called on the Alabama senator to denounce White nationalism as “un-American,” and stop his hold on military nominations, CNN previously reported.
Tuberville told CNN Monday night that when lawmakers are in the minority party in the Senate, “the only power we have is to put a hold on something.”
Asked by Collins whether he knows better than seven former defense secretaries who penned a letter in May arguing the hold was “harming military readiness and risks damaging US national security,” Tuberville said: “They were nominated, they weren’t elected. I was elected to represent the people of Alabama in this country.”

Why is CNN smearing Tuberville this way? Because after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, the Biden administration decided that the Pentagon should help pregnant women in the military get abortions. In response to that policy, Tuberville since February has put a “hold” on military promotions (the Senate must approve all promotions of officers, under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution). The Biden administration refuses to yield, and therefore what CNN calls Tuberville’s “blockade” has continued. In service of their mission as Democratic Party propaganda operatives, therefore, CNN is trying to hang the “white nationalist” tag on Tuberville. Did I mention that CNN’s ratings are lower than Paw Patrol? And they still can’t figure out why.



 

Brain-Damaged John Fetterman Gets ‘Democrat Helper’ Served by CBS News

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The best way to understand how liberal media bias operates is to think of it as a heavy wind, blowing into the faces of Republicans — at least a 10-point disadvantage from this hostile headwind — while providing Democrats with an equally powerful tailwind. Everything Republicans do is made to seem wrong and scandalous, while everything Democrats do is noble and courageous. There are occasions when this is so obvious that it’s like the media are serving up Democrat Helper™ — a steaming dish of one-sided bias. Just add a Democrat politician and stir.

Matt Margolis calls attention to how CBS Sunday Morning anchor Jane Pauley did this in her recent interview with John Fetterman, the Democrat who was “elected” U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania despite suffering traumatic brain damage from a stroke shortly before the Democratic primary last May. Shortly after he was inaugurated in January, it became apparent that Fetterman was incapable of fulfilling the duties of his office, and in February his staff came up with the genius idea of concealing the senator’s cognitive incapacity by having him admitted to Walter Reed for treatment of depression. Does anyone seriously believe that Fetterman’s biggest problem is a mood disorder?

Let us stipulate that a stroke as severe as the one Fetterman suffered could damage every aspect of his neurological function, including mood regulation. But the real problem — the reason Fetterman should resign, to allow Pennsylvania to have functional representation in the Senate — is that his cognitive abilities (which perhaps were never stellar) have been so impaired as to leave him unable even to speak coherently or process information. And what CBS did to conceal this was to carefully edit Paulie’s interview with Fetterman, using an obvious trick: Two cameras were used in the interview, one with a tight close-up of Fetterman, and the second with a wider shot, and whenever Fetterman speaks, they cut between the two shots, as if this is being done to add visual interest to the interview, rather than to edit out moments of babbling incoherence.

 

There is never any segment during the interview where Fetterman is shown speaking in a single shot for more than five or 10 seconds consecutively. And if you watch carefully, these interview excerpts constitute a fairly small share of the 10-minute piece, much of which is filled with Paulie narrating a tale of Fetterman’s “struggle,” intended to frame this as the saga of a hero courageously overcoming misfortune.

As much as anyone might lament Fetterman’s misfortune, however, it is certainly not evident that he has overcome the brain damage he suffered from his stroke last year, and Jane Paulie’s interview cannot be regarded as an honest depiction of Fetterman’s current condition. The CBS segment is propaganda, the whole point of which is to help Democrats maintain the fiction that Fetterman is capable of functioning as a U.S. Senator, so that they can avoid the risk and expense of a special election to fill the seat, if Fetterman were compelled to resign.



 

 

If Fetterman Is Brain Dead, Maybe They Should Hook Him Up to Jumper Cables?

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Before I get to the context of the headline, first the news:

The office Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., released an update on Monday regarding his health after the Democratic Senator checked himself into a hospital for clinical depression earlier this month.
Fetterman’s communications director Joe Calvello said the Democratic senator was “doing well” and working with doctors as he “remains on the path to recovery.”
“He is visiting with staff and family daily, and his staff are keeping him updated on Senate business and news,” Calvello said in a statement.

So they say, but when was the last time they allowed anyone to actually see Fetterman? He has been unable to perform his Senate duties for weeks, so that Pennsylvanians effectively have half the Senate representation to which they are entitled. Pennsylvanians are starting to notice this, and one county GOP chairman took to Facebook on Monday to demand that Fetterman make a public appearance:

Because of the now confirmed lies that were told during the 2022 general election regarding the health of Senator John Fetterman, as well as the threats made against a journalist who interviewed him, the Washington County Republican Party refuses to take assurances from the Office of the Senator or Democrat operatives that Fetterman is able to carry out his duties as Senator. As such, we call upon Senator Fetterman to appear on camera to show us he is alive and well, and if he is unable to do so, we call upon our elected Representatives in Washington, Senator Casey and Congressman Reschenthaler, to intervene immediately.
Ultimately, if Fetterman is unable or unwilling to carry out his duties as a United States Senator, then we ask for his resignation and call for a special election to be held this year; no more lies or games.

What may have provoked this controversy was a weekend tweet from conservative talk-radio host John Cardillo:

Being told that Fetterman is essentially brain dead and it’s being hidden because keeping him in office until August 18th avoids a special election which Republicans would most certainly win.
This must be investigated.

A U.S. Senator is “essentially brain dead“?

Certainly this would be newsworthy, if true, and given that the public hasn’t actually seen Fetterman in weeks, how do we know if it’s true or not? Therefore, the burden is on Democrats to disprove this claim, and a mere statement claiming that Fetterman “remains on the path to recovery” won’t suffice. If, as his spokesman claims, Fetterman “is visiting with staff and family daily,” staying “updated on Senate business,” etc., then shouldn’t he able to make a brief public appearance, say a few words in front of the cameras, just to reassure Pennsylvanians that he is healthy? What are Democrats trying to hide?

The brilliance of Cardillo’s tweet about Fetterman being “brain dead” is that its very outrageousness requires a response. The wilder the rumor, the easier it should be to disprove, right? And so if Democrats fail to disprove it, people will naturally start to suspect maybe it is true.

This reminded me of one of the late Republican operative Lee Atwater’s most legendary moves. In 1980, Democratic state Sen. Tom Turnipseed ran for a South Carolina congressional seat, challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Floyd Spence. In media interviews, Turnipseed had previously disclosed getting electroshock treatments for depression when he was teenager. Working for the Spence campaign, Atwater was accused of “planting” questions with reporters about this, and when confronted with the accusation, Atwater’s reply was that he would not respond to allegations made by someone who had been “hooked up to jumper cables.” Some people were outraged by this comment, but it was a memorable sound bite — the phrase stuck in people’s minds — and Atwater kept repeating it until, on Election Day, Spence beat Turnipseed by a double-digit margin, 56%-44%. This is how you win elections.

Calling Fetterman “brain dead” may be an exaggeration, but the phrase is memorable, and if, as Fetterman’s spokesman claims, the Senator is “on the path to recovery,” why shouldn’t they be willing to demonstrate this by having Fetterman appear at a press conference? Also, while we’re asking questions, perhaps Fetterman’s spokesman can explain why the Senator’s wife took their kids and left the country.



 

 

The Next California Disaster

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Rep. Barbara Lee (left); Rep. Katie Porter

If it’s not earthquakes, it’s pandemics. If it’s not droughts, it’s floods. But if there aren’t any natural disasters in California, there’s always the political variety in the Democrat-controlled state, and rumblings of a new Democrat-inflicted catastrophe can be heard now that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is rumored to be retiring, leaving the seat up for grabs in 2024. Some background from Wikipedia:

In August 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. After they won the general election, [California Secretary of State Alex] Padilla was mentioned as a possible choice as Harris’s successor in the Senate. Governor [Gavin] Newsom had the power to appoint her successor. In December 2020, Newsom announced that he would appoint Padilla to the seat, making him California’s first Hispanic senator and the first male U.S. senator from California since Alan Cranston retired in 1993. . . .
Most Latinos, who are 40% of California’s population, supported Padilla’s appointment, but some black leaders, who wanted another black woman to replace Harris, criticized it. San Francisco Mayor London Breed called Padilla’s appointment “a real blow to the African American community.”

Got that? Hispanics are 40% of California’s population, whereas blacks are less than 7%, but appointing Padilla to the Senate was “a real blow to the African American community” and, of course, Black Lives Matter.

This is the problem with identity politics — everybody competing in the Oppression Olympics thinks they’re entitled to the gold medal. It defies logic to assert that 7% of California’s population has a “right” to 50% of the state’s U.S. Senate seats, but remember logic is white supremacy.

Perhaps not everybody in California is insane enough to buy into the “progressive” worldview, but the lunatics are clearly in the majority, because most of the sane people have already left the state.

So, with Padilla holding one of California’s Senate seats, and Feinstein expected to announce her retirement, third-term Democrat Rep. Katie Porter was the first to throw her hat in the ring:

Now you’re probably wondering, what percentage of the California population is pudgy left-wing white women with bad haircuts? But never mind that, Katie Porter is a “Progressive Rock Star,” a protégé of Elizabeth Warren, and raised $24 million to defend her House seat in 2022. This means that Porter will be able to raise money for her Senate race on a nationwide basis, collecting campaign cash from pudgy left-wing women white women with bad haircuts from coast to coast.

However, don’t expect California’s 7% to cooperate:

Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, a seasoned progressive with more than three decades immersed in California politics, on Wednesday told congressional colleagues she plans to run for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat in 2024.
Lee announced her intentions during a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, receiving a standing ovation, but has not officially confirmed she is running or formed an official Senate committee to start raising money in a race expected to be both costly and intensely competitive.
Lee’s private disclosure comes just a day after Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) launched her campaign to replace Feinstein, 89, who has yet to disclose whether she intends to retire at the end of her term. As one of the most coveted posts in California politics, Feinstein’s Senate seat is widely expected to spur interest from some of the state’s most ambitious and prominent elected leaders.
Lee’s announcement was confirmed by a source close to the congresswoman who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on her political plans. The source cautioned that the congresswoman didn’t announce a Senate campaign — only her intention to run. The news was first reported by Politico.
First elected to Congress in 1998 after nearly a decade in the California Legislature, Lee is a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Did I mention that California Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely expected to launch a 2024 campaign for the White House? So while he’s busy organizing a presidential campaign to save America from another four years of senile Joe Biden, his state’s Democratic Party is heading for an identity politics trainwreck, with the “rock star” fat white woman battling the angry black woman from Oakland in a progressive Armageddon.

You can click here to stock up on popcorn.



 

People Never Ask Me for Advice

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My brother Kirby and I had just finished eating lunch at Primanti Brothers and were enjoying a post-prandial smoke when, for no apparent reason, he brought up the subject of the New England Patriots. But why bring it up? This is obviously a painful topic for me to think about, especially after The Dumbest Play in NFL History.

Anyway, so Kirby was sermonizing on the subject of what Patriots owner Robert Kraft should do — i.e., give Bill Belichick an ultimatum to get rid of Matt Patricia, who is hated by New England fans like God hates sin — until finally I interrupted: “You know why I don’t think in terms of what people should do? Because nobody ever asks for my advice.”

In writing about politics, I try to avoid being one of those dime-a-dozen pundit types who presumes to offer election strategy or policy guidance. If politicians want my advice, they can pay me for it, and as no Republican has offered to hire me to be the right-wing James Carville, it’s safe to assume that any advice I offered — unsolicited, as a voluntary contribution — would be ignored. So what’s the point?

And it’s the same thing with the Patriots. Every sports talk-radio personality in New England is calling for Matt Patricia’s scalp, so what’s the point of adding my voice to this deafening chorus? Like, last night I was watching Greg Bedard and Nick Cattles discussing this disaster, and Nick is talking about a situation where the Patriots had the ball first-and-goal at the Raiders one-yard-line, saying that there were six-year-old children shouting at their TVs: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

Exactly — everybody can see what’s wrong with the Patriots, and they’re shouting it from the rooftops, with no apparent impact on the situation.

Politics is the same way. Like, WTF, Mitch McConnell?

Helping Ukraine is our Number One priority? Are you kidding me with this? As much as I want Ukraine to defeat the Russian invaders, that’s probably not even a Top Five issue for me, in the grand scheme of what the Republican Party needs to prioritize. And I can’t believe the voters of Kentucky — you know, the people who actually elected Mitch McConnell to the Senate — share his sense of priorities. But again, what’s the point of complaining? Ace of Spades, who has a lot more readers than me, has been hammering Mitch McConnell five days a week, and is running out of new ways to say the same basic thing: “Mitch, you bitch.”

The more you care about politics, the harder it becomes to escape feelings of helpless despair, a sense of futility caused by your inability to influence events, because nobody seems to be listening. You understand what Ecclesiates is getting at: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

It’s not just politics and football that cause wise men to decry the carnival of folly to which we bear unwilling witness. Every day, people are ruining their own lives by doing foolish things, which is why I feel compelled to offer my kids advice like, “Heroin is a bad drug. Stay away from heroin.” Or, “Don’t send people pictures of your penis.” Stuff like this should be obvious, and yet there are apparently people who didn’t get the memo, so I feel an obligation to warn my kids against such behavior.

If the world was organized on a basis of what I think people should do (and not do), we certainly wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in. Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed a woman named Camille Keifel who has filed a lawsuit against the people who inflicted a double mastectomy on her as “treatment” for her “gender” problem. And I turned it off because it was too painful to watch, like the last play of the Patriots game.

Young women experiencing “gender” issues don’t solicit my advice on their problems, of course, but just imagine if they did.

“What do you think, Mr. McCain? Should I start injecting myself with testosterone and get my breasts amputated?”

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

Nevertheless, there are licensed medical professionals who think this kind of “treatment” is a splendid solution to “gender” problems, and who are getting paid to butcher confused young people like this, and if you question the wisdom of such procedures, they’ll accuse you of hate.

Thousands of people are being chemically altered and surgically mutilated the way Camille Keifel was, and this is even being done with taxpayer money in some cases, but no one can be allowed to object — Libs of TikTok got banned — because criticizing “gender treatment” is considered dangerous hate speech. But of course, I don’t hate people or wish harm to befall them. Except maybe Matt Patricia, but even in his case, if he got murdered by an enraged Patriots fan, I’d consider that to be . . . unfortunate. Certainly I would never advocate or endorse criminal violence against Matt Patricia, and if a gang of deranged season-ticket holders were to kidnap him, murder him with a chainsaw and grind up his dismembered corpse in a wood chipper, then feed the remains to a pack of hungry pitbulls . . . Well, as I say, this would be unfortunate.

However, the world is not organized according to my preferences, and nobody ever listens to my advice, or else on first-and-goal, Matt Patricia would have called Rhamondre left, and if that didn’t work, he’d have called Rhamondre right on second down, followed by Rhamondre up the middle on third down. If they end up settling for a field goal on fourth down, OK, but I completely agree with that six-year-old kid shouting at his TV: “Give the ball to Rhamondre!”

They don’t ask for my advice, so we’ll keep spending billions on Ukraine, women will keep getting mutilated as “gender treatment,” and the Patriots will keep losing football games until, inevitably, Matt Patricia gets kidnapped by a gang of chainsaw-wielding season-ticket holders.

It’s just so . . . unfortunate.