When your Senate candidate suffers a debilitating stroke, to such an extent that he can’t communicate coherently, what do you do? Well, if you’re Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself), you pretend that this devastating setback isn’t really devastating, that somehow Pennsylvania voters won’t notice, or won’t care, that John Fetterman is like the monster in Young Frankenstein: “He’s got a rotten brain!”
The sunk-costs fallacy describes a tendency to devote ever more resources to a lost cause rather than simply take the loss. And for Fetterman’s media boosters, some of whom sunk so much reputational capital into the idea that the Senate candidate was up to the job, Tuesday night’s debate was a big loss. But rather than concede that fact, their crusade continued with the fury of an addict chasing a high.
If you look at the situation Democrats are facing, it makes sense that they’re desperate to salvage their investments in Fetterman. There were three states — Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania — where Democrats believed they had a reasonable chance to flip a Senate seat from “R” to “D,” thus countering their likely losses elsewhere, in order to sustain Chuck Schumer’s razor-thin majority. But Ron Johnson appears to have weathered the storm in Wisconsin, and Tim Ryan has flopped in Ohio, leaving Pennsylvania as the Last Best Hope for Schumer.
The contest to fill the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey seemed winnable, in part because Democrats felt that the Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz was unqualified, damaged by a bruising GOP primary, and tainted by the endorsement of Donald Trump. Fetterman had a certain sort of “Regular Guy” persona that might appeal to some blue-collar voters who had gone for Trump, and so Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into his campaign. But then, four days before the May primary, Fetterman’s campaign announced that he had suffered a stroke, reportedly caused by a heart problem that Fetterman had not previously disclosed. Exactly when the stroke happened, I’m not sure, but it was announced the Friday (May 13) before the primary on Tuesday (May 17), and the way the media reported it, you would have thought that they were interviewing Fetterman, when in fact they were quoting press statements issued by the campaign:
Fetterman says his wife Gisele spotted the symptoms and got him to the hospital where they removed the clot, reversed the stroke, and got his heart under control. Fetterman says doctors believe he didn’t “suffer any cognitive damage” and that he’s “feeling much better.” . . .
“I’m well on my way to a full recovery. So I have a lot to be thankful for. They’re keeping me here for now for observation, but I should be out of here sometime soon. The doctors have assured me that I’ll be able to get back on the trail, but first I need to take a minute, get some rest, and recover. There’s so much at stake in this race, and I’m going to be ready for the hard fight ahead.”
See? “Fetterman says” — but to whom did he say these things? These weren’t actual quotes from an interview with Fetterman, who was undergoing surgery at a hospital at the time he allegedly “said” all this.
The media deliberately misled the public about the severity of Fetterman’s condition, which so damaged his capacity for speech that, if he’s not capable of forming coherent sentences now, after months of recovery, he sure as hell was in no shape to be giving these glib quotes to the media in May, when he was at death’s door.
There must be a word for this — ah, yes, “disinformation,” they call it.
So the media, by acting as stenographers for Fetterman’s campaign, were engaged in a cover-up, an attempt to conceal the true gravity of the candidate’s condition. And then when they couldn’t hide it anymore — when the televised debate showed everybody that Fetterman’s basically a walking vegetable — they went into denial mode, trying to pretend that he didn’t really do so bad, all things considered. Ironically, even Chuck Schumer seems to be living inside that bubble:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was caught on a hot mic telling President Biden Thursday that Democrats are “in danger” in at least one Senate race and admitting that the party is “going downhill” in the closely-watched Georgia contest.
“That seat, we’re, we’re in danger in that seat,” Schumer could be heard telling the president on the tarmac at Syracuse Hancock International Airport. It’s unclear to which seat Schumer was referring.
“But you know, it looks like the debate didn’t hurt too much in Pennsylvania as of today, so that’s good … basically, we’re picking up steam in Nevada,” Schumer continued, referencing Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman’s poor showing in his first and only debate with GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Biden could be seen crossing his fingers as Schumer delivered his assessment that Fetterman’s debate performance didn’t end his chances. The president exchanged some words with Schumer as well but it was unclear what he was saying.
Seconds later, Schumer updated Biden on the state of play in the Peach State, where the latest average of polls from RealClearPolitics shows Republican Herschel Walker leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock by 0.6 percentage points. “The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker,” a shocked-sounding Schumer told the president.
Indeed, things are “going downhill in Georgia,” but Schumer’s claim that “the debate didn’t hurt” Fetterman must be considered merely a repetition of the “spin” coming out of the media.
Look at that headline. Notice something strange? I call your attention to the phrase “Fetterman Supporters.” Who are these people? And while we’re at it — “Undecided Voters,” really? After watching that idiot (who was already an idiot, even before suffering a debilitating neurological trauma) babble incoherently on national TV, who could possibly still be “undecided” about whether Fetterman is fit for office?
This is what blind partisanship does to people. No matter who the Democrats nominate for any important office, that person is going to get 80% of the vote in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton got 83% of the vote in Philadelphia and, while we’re on the topic of brain-damaged imbeciles, Joe Biden got 81% of the vote in Philadelphia. And because Philadelphia accounts for about 11% of the statewide vote in Pennsylvania, this lopsided 4-to-1 Democrat majority in Philadelphia almost always results in Democrats winning every statewide election in Pennsylvania.
In the 2018 midterms, about 5 million votes were cast in Pennsylvania. If the same number of votes are cast in this year’s election, and Fetterman gets at least 40% of the vote — which he certainly will — that will mean that 2 million citizens of Pennsylvania watched that debate, saw with their own two eyes the unmistakable evidence that Fetterman is mentally damaged, and voted for him anyway! Which tells you that Fetterman is far from alone in being mentally damaged. Nearly half the people in Pennsylvania are also suffering from neurological defects.
They’re called “Democrats.”
I have noticed that all those insisting that Fetterman won last night's debate are not tweeting clips of Fetterman from last night's debate.
There was a debate Monday in the Ohio Senate race, which isn’t really a race, because Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is going to lose, badly. The only suspense is the exact size of J.D. Vance’s winning margin.
Let’s be clear about one basic fact: Ohio is a Republican state.
There was a time, as recently as 2012, when the general popularity of Barack Obama (and the general unpopularity of Mitt Romney) made it seem that Ohio was a “swing” state. That time is now over, and it’s been over for long enough that the national media can no longer deny it.
In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Ohio by an eight-point margin (51% to 43%, about 450,000 votes) and pundits were shocked. Obama had carried Ohio twice, by a three-point margin in 2012 against Romney, and by more than four points against John McCain in 2008. Even during the otherwise successful GOP election years of 2000 and 2004, Ohio had been “too close to call” late into Election Night both years, with Bush squeaking past Al Gore by a margin of about 160,000 voters in 2000 and edging John Kerry by less than 120,000 votes in 2004. Yet here was the endlessly “controversial” Trump not only beating Hillary in Ohio, but beating her by the biggest margin in recent history.
Part of the shock for the liberal media in 2016 was that polls in Ohio (like everywhere else) had so completely failed in their predictive capacity. As late as the Sunday before Election Day 2016, the Columbus Dispatch poll had Hillary leading 48% to 47%, and this was not even the worst Ohio poll in 2016. A month before the election, Monmouth had Hillary leading Trump by 2 points, and the CBS/YouGov poll had Hillary up by 4 points.
I repeat: Trump beat Hillary in Ohio by 8 points in 2016, and you might think such gross polling blunders might have caused pollsters to correct their methodology over the next four years. If you thought so, however, you would be wrong, because the pollster blew Ohio even worse in 2020!
Well do I remember being at my mother-in-law’s house in rural Ohio in late October 2020, in a county where Trump signs proliferated and there was scarcely a Biden sign to be seen, and trying to reconcile what I was seeing with my own eyes with the poll numbers I kept seeing:
Anyone can look at the results from 2016 and see that Trump racked up majorities of 2 to 1 or more in this part of Ohio — 72 percent in Morrow County, 71 percent in Crawford County, 67 percent in Knox County, 66 percent in Richland County, 64 percent in Marion County. In fact, Trump won 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties four years ago, defeating Hillary Clinton by an eight-point margin statewide.
If you believe the polls, Joe Biden is neck-and-neck with Trump in Ohio. Three recent polls (New York Times, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen) showed Biden with a one-point lead, and the current RealClearPolitics average of Ohio polls has Trump ahead with a margin of less than 1 percentage point. But nobody believes the polls, especially when the numbers are starkly contradicted by on-the-ground evidence like the proliferation of roadside Trump signs. . . .
In seeking to emphasize his claim that Vance does not support exceptions on abortion, Ryan engaged in a particular display of fear-mongering when it comes to the tragedy of rape victims and complications in pregnancy as part of “the chaos that we’re having now.”
Ryan went on to claim that “we read at least a couple of articles every week, of young people, underage girls who have been raped, or women who have had, uh, significant problems with their pregnancy, not be able to get help in the state. They gotta go to Indiana, they gotta go to Illinois, and that’s not good enough for JD Vance, he supports a national abortion ban, in which he wants women to have to get a passport and have to go to Canada.” The congressman then called for “some moderation on this issue” before painting his opponent as an “extremist,” something he would do throughout the night. . . .
Where [Vance] really hit back against Ryan, though, was by reminding that the alleged criminal in the case of a 10-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant as a result, was here illegally.
“But let’s talk about that case,” Vance mentioned. “Because why was a 10-year-old girl raped in our community, raped in our state in the first place? The thing the media and Congressman Ryan, they talk about this all the time, the thing they never mention is that poor girl was raped by an illegal alien, somebody that should’ve never been in this state in the first place.” Vance then turned towards Ryan to decry how “you voted so many times against border wall funding, so many times for amnesty, Tim. If you had done your job, she’d never have been raped in the first place.” As the buzzer rang to call time, Vance called on Ryan to “do your job on border security, don’t lecture me on positions I don’t actually have.”
"You voted so many times against border wall funding…If you had done your job, she would have never been raped in the first place. Do your job on border security, don't lecture me about opinions I don't actually have." #OHSenDebatepic.twitter.com/MzDLevzKeI
Vance’s demeanor throughout that debate exuded calm strength, whereas Ryan looked weak and desperate, but then at the end of the Townhall article I caught this:
What part of “the polls are all bullshit” do I have to explain here?
Ohioans, who voted against Joe Biden by an eight-point margin, have had to suffer through ruinous inflation and other disastrous consequences of Biden’s policies, and don’t you think they’re pissed off about it? Don’t you think Ohio voters are smart enough to see through Ryan’s phony “moderate” stance? And yet what are these poll numbers?
Well, guess what, boys and girls? That’s right — in October 2020, Sienna College did an Ohio poll for the New York Times and had Biden winning 45% to 44%. So if we consider that they missed by nine points in 2020, and they’ve got Ryan leading by three now, then Vance should win by six points. Except I think he’ll win by a much wider margin than that. The big question about Ohio is whether Vance will win by 10 points or more.
Certainly, Ryan deserves to lose by that much. Democrats seem to think the abortion issue is going to deliver them a midterm miracle, but unless they can somehow prove that J.D. Vance paid for Herschel Walker’s girlfriend’s abortion — c’mon, Democrats are really desperate — I don’t think Republicans need to sweat Ohio this year. Or 2024, either.
One of the great liberal myths of our age is the belief that America’s prisons are full of Wrongly Convicted Black Men. Even in cases where the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, liberals view Systemic Racism is an all-purpose excuse, so that even if he’s caught red-handed and confesses his guilt, no black man is ever really guilty of criminal wrongdoing. In this warped view, every black inmate in America’s prisons is a Victim of Oppression, and therefore — following this Liberal Logic™ to its inescapable conclusion — it is wrong for any black person ever to be arrested, prosecuted or incarcerated. The influence of what we may call the Myth of Universal Black Innocence is obvious in the policies pursued by left-wing district attorneys like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Alvin Bragg in New York and George Gascón in LA, as well as in Democrat-controlled states such as Illinois and California that have enacted “reform” policies to turn dangerous criminals loose on the streets.
Democrat soft-on-crime policies also result in lenient treatment of white criminals who get turned loose and become repeat offenders, but that is incidental to the political objective of such policies, which are advocated as a measure of “racial justice” with the intent of ending so-called “mass incarceration” of black criminals. But I digress . . .
I haven’t paid much attention to the Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, or any other Senate campaign, for that matter, because it seems to me that (a) the GOP has a near-certain chance to take back the House majority in the midterms, and (b) winning the Senate would merely be the cherry on top of that result. Also, I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s endorsement of Doctor Oz in the Pennsylvania GOP primary, not because of anything particular against Doctor Oz, but just because I would have preferred a candidate with a more typical background, rather than a celebrity with no political record. The more I’ve learned about the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania, however, the more obvious it seems that conservatives have a duty to rally behind Doctor Oz. Because the Democrat, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is a very dangerous person, and would certainly be defeated if Pennsylvania voters were fully informed about him.
A few recent headlines about an important controversy:
This is an important controversy, as I say, because it highlights both Fetterman’s policy toward crime and justice issues, as well as his judgment and honest (or lack thereof). The two convicted murderers Fetterman hired on his campaign staff are Lee and Dennis Horton.
Convicted felons Lee and Dennis Horton
Notice the liberal media seek to suggest that the Horton brothers were “wrongfully convicted,” or that, because they were “granted clemency,” somehow their guilt is in doubt. In fact, there is no doubt at all, and it is neither “misleading” nor a “smear” for Oz to call attention to this situation, which speaks volumes about Fetterman’s worldview.
Despite repeated appeals, no court has overturned the convictions of Lee and Dennis Horton, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone to believe that they were “wrongfully convicted.” The most recent court ruling points out that the only new “evidence” Lee Horton offered in seeking PCRA relief was a handwritten note by one of the police investigators, previously not included as part of discovery during the proceedings, which could not possibly have affected the outcome of his original trial. But what about this “clemency”? And what about the original crime for which the Hortons were convicted?
The evidence adduced at trial established that on May 31, 1993, [Lee Horton], his brother Dennis Horton (“Dennis”), and a coconspirator Robert Leaf (“Leaf”) robbed Filito’s Bar located at 5th and Hunting Park Avenue. During the course of the robbery, Dennis, who was brandishing a rifle, shot Samuel Alemo multiple times. He later died from his gunshot wounds. Dennis also shot Luz Archella and her daughter Luz Martinez, injuring both. After leaving the bar, the three men fled in a blue automobile. A passerby was able to supply a description of the vehicle and a partial license plate number. A radio call was sent out, which included a description of the three assailants, their vehicle, and the last four digits of the license plate. A police officer observed the vehicle a short time later only a mile from the crime scene and placed [Horton] and his companions under arrest. Police recovered a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle from the backseat of the car as well as a black pellet gun under the front passenger seat. Ballistics testing identified the rifle as the same weapon used during the robbery at Filito’s. [Horton], Dennis, and Leaf were taken to the hospital where Martinez and her daughter, as well as another bar patron Miguel DeJesus, identified them as the robbers. . . .
The evidence shows that [Horton] entered the bar with Leaf and Dennis, who were both armed. [Lee Horton] took money from a bar patron while Leaf held a gun to the patron’s head. [Horton] remained present when Dennis opened fire on two other bar patrons and murdered Alemo. He then fled the bar together with Leaf and Dennis, and was arrested with them a short time later. . . . Regardless who opened fire, [Horton] remains liable as an accomplice for any resulting deaths as well as any other crimes committed that night at Filito’s bar during the robbery.
This is the law in most states on capital murder: If you participate in a crime, such as a robbery, that results in someone being killed, you can be charged with murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger, and even if the person who got killed was one of your accomplices. One reason the law is this way is because, when two or more perpetrators are involved in a crime that ends in homicide, it can be difficult to determine which of the criminals did the fatal deed. If Moe, Larry and Curly decide to rob a bank, and a teller gets shot to death in the process, cops may not be able to figure out which one of the Three Stooges pulled the trigger, and Moe might be pointing the finger at Curly or Larry, both of whom insist that it was really Moe that did the killing; however, insofar as all three were involved in the robbery-turned-murder, all of them are equally liable under the capital murder law. Interestingly, in the Horton brothers’ case, while Dennis and Lee were both convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, their accomplice Ryan Leaf was convicted of third-degree murder and only sentenced to “a term of years,” eventually being released in 2008. Nobody knows where Ryan Leaf is now, but the fact that he had already gotten out of prison was widely cited last year as an argument for releasing the Horton brothers. Among other things, such an argument seeks to void the findings of the jury and the judgment of the prosecutors, who were certainly more familiar with the facts of the case in 1993 than any of the liberal journalists or “activist” types running their mouths about the case in 2022. Regardless of why Leaf was sentenced to less time than the Horton brothers, no reasonable person would find this a reason to believe the Hortons were “wrongfully convicted” or that their life sentences were unjust. A man was killed and two women were wounded in this robbery, and unless you’re the kind of liberal idiot that thinks it’s OK to let murderers go with a slap on the wrist, life in prison is an entirely justifiable sentence in such a case.
The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons meets four times a year to consider the ever-growing pile of applications for a pardon or a commutation submitted by inmates at state prisons across the Commonwealth. There are five people on the board: the lieutenant governor, the state attorney general (Josh Shapiro), and three other members with relevant expertise picked by the governor and approved by the state Senate. Votes on cases involving death sentences and life imprisonment must be unanimous; otherwise, recommendations for a pardon/commutation (the conferring of which ultimately lies with the governor) are denied.
With Fetterman at the helm, the board has been wading through the huge backlog of applications at a determined clip. Shocked and shaken by the overwhelming majority of elderly Black faces among the 5,400 inmates currently serving life sentences in Pennsylvania’s state prisons, Fetterman has made it his mission to shift the emphasis from cruelty to compassion. “We’re making it all about second chances, about redemption and forgiveness and completing the circle,” he says. “People think the face of life in prison is Hannibal Lecter, but sometimes it’s the face of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption.”
This is from a May 2021 Philadelphia magazine profile and, sweet holy jeebus, are you kidding me with this Shawshank Redemption crap? I mean, really? Hollywood dramas are the basis of your decision-making as chairman of the state Board of Pardons? But wait, there’s more from the Philadelphia magazine profile:
Two people Fetterman deemed worthy of a second chance are Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers from North Philadelphia who, until their release in February, had served 27 years of life sentences as accessories to a murder they maintain they had no part in. In one of the many cruel ironies of the U.S. justice system, the man who confessed to committing the murder was released in 2008.
This is how laziness functions as a servant to bias in journalism. Any reporter diligent enough to look up the court records on the case against the Horton brothers could see that this tale is false. According to witnesses and victims (to say nothing of the jury’s verdict and the various courts that repeatedly rejected Lee Horton’s appeals), it was not Ryan Leaf, but Dennis Horton who shot the three victims. The reporter who wrote this feature profile about Fetterman simply repeats what he was told by the Hortons, without having bothered to check the facts for himself. There is no “cruel irony” to why the Hortons were still behind bars; they were both guilty, but never once have they acknowledged their guilt. Returning to the Philadelphia profile:
By all accounts, the Horton brothers were model prisoners, counseling fellow inmates struggling with incarceration, teaching yoga, convincing their peers to act in and build props for productions of plays they wrote about atonement and restorative justice.
Two wardens and assorted deputies, not to mention the state secretary of corrections, advocated for their release at a Board of Pardons hearing in December of 2020. When it came time to vote on the Horton brothers’ request for a commutation, Fetterman wept openly as the other board members voted “yes”; when his turn came, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. AG Josh Shapiro, who’s locked horns with Fetterman in the past over whom to let out and whom to keep in, answered for him: “I’m a yes, and I think the lieutenant governor is a yes as well,” he said over Zoom. The Horton brothers were watching all of this go down from the warden’s office at SCI Chester, where they were incarcerated.
“This is a man who supported us with everything he had in him; he was all in, emotionally, physically,” Dennis Horton told me back in April, just a few weeks after he and his brother were released from prison. “He gave what he had to help free us from the clutches of a life sentence.” “He saved our lives, because life in Pennsylvania means you die in prison — they call it ‘death by incarceration,’” said Lee. “When he broke down, I was taken aback, because you don’t expect a guy that big to be that emotional.”
“Especially with all those tattoos on him,” Dennis chimed in. Since their release, the Horton brothers have been hired by Fetterman’s U.S. Senate campaign to coordinate voter outreach in Philadelphia.
Perhaps “outreach” to the family of their victims? See, that’s the magician’s trick in this kind of story, where liberal journalists portray criminals as victims, while — abracadbra! — making the real victims disappear. But they should never be forgotten:
The victim’s brother, Reinaldo Alamo, 62, said he opposes clemency for the Hortons. “They took a human life, and they don’t deserve to be out in society,” he said. . . .
Attempts to locate Leaf and witnesses from the 1993 trial were unsuccessful. To Reinaldo Alamo, it was and remains an open-and-shut case, given the brothers were caught with the weapon an hour after the murder. He won’t be speaking at the hearing, but submitted a letter noting his opposition.
“When I heard this it put me in a state of depression,” Alamo said of the commutation hearing. “To think of … the turmoil they caused my family, the pain and suffering that it did to my mother.”
John Fetterman doesn’t care about the suffering of crime victims.
That’s what this controversy is really about. Democrats have become the pro-criminal party, advocating policies that ensure violence criminals are turned loose to commit more crimes, and Democrats like John Fetterman are absolutely indifferent to the impact that these policies have on innocent law-abiding citizens. You must be some kind of racist if you think murderers should be sentenced to life in prison, and even if your own brother gets killed by these monsters, well, tough luck!
Whether or not Republicans win a Senate majority in November, and without regard to what we may otherwise think of Doctor Oz’s candidacy, it seems to me that conservatives have an obligation to do everything in our power to stop John Fetterman from being elected.
This week’s Judiciary Committee hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson were eye-opening in a lot of ways. Sen. Marsha Blackburn — whom I’ve considered a 2024 presidential contender for a long time — managed to embarrass Jackson with a very simple question:
Blackburn: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Jackson: “Can I provide a definition?” Blackburn: “Mhmm, yeah.” Jackson: “No, I can’t.” Blackburn: “You can’t?” Jackson: “Not in this context — I’m not a biologist.”
The “not in this context” part has been somewhat overlooked in the general point-and-laugh reaction to her “not a biologist” reply. As someone said, I’m not a veterinarian, but I know what a dog is. Nevertheless, as Byron York notes, the “context” is important because Blackburn prefaced her question by referencing the 1996 Supreme Court case of U.S. vs. Virginia, which declared that the all-male status of Virginia Military Institute was unconstitutional on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. It so happens that I believe that case was wrongly decided — a legal travesty, as the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment obviously had no such intent at the time the amendment was ratified.
In the hands of ideologues, the Fourteenth Amendment becomes an omnivorous predator that swallows whole the rest of the Constitution, like a great white shark gobbling up baby seals in shallow water. If you want to know how we got to the point that Will “Lia” Thomas is NCAA women’s swim champion, you can look back to U.S. v. Virginia as a milestone on the road to this madness of “equality.”
Anyone who directly opposes the radical egalitarian agenda can expect to be smeared as a “racist,” etc., as I remarked earlier this week (see “The Problem With ‘Equality’”), and it is therefore scarcely surprising to hear Democrats attacking Marsha Blackburn (“Can we just go set Marsha Blackburn on fire?”). Neither should we be surprised that academic “gender experts” rushed to defend Jackson.
Cited as “experts” by USA Today were Rebecca Jordan-Young, “a scientist and gender studies scholar at Barnard College,” Sarah Richardson, “a Harvard scholar, historian and philosopher of biology,” Juliet Williams, “a professor of gender studies at UCLA who specializes in gender and the law,” and Kate Mason, “a gender studies professor at Wheaton College who studies social inequality.”
The prestige of their positions as professors is thus thrown into the balance on Jackson’s side, and we are supposed to be so awed by this display of academic prestige that our critical faculties simply cease to function and we mutely accept the assertion that only “experts” are qualified to tell the difference between male and female. This consensus of academic “experts,” however, is an artifact of the ideological conformity that prevails in our nation’s education system which, in turn, is enforced through federal Title IX authority. Any university employee who expressed skepticism toward contemporary “gender theory” would face severe career repercussions, and might even become unemployable in academia. An ambitious young scholar is not going to find many opportunities to publish research that doesn’t support the prevailing gender theory narrative, so the artificial consensus of “experts” is maintained by the simple mechanism of silencing (or excluding from membership in the professorial guild) any would-be dissenters.
This regime of conformity has been enforced with increasing rigidity for the past three decades. Back in the late 1980s and early ’90s, there were still university professors who were outspoken in opposition to the ideology of radical egalitarianism, but those dissenters have retired, and the growing conformity of the academic system has prevented them from being replaced by like-minded scholars. Meanwhile, the fanatical beliefs that once were shocking when expressed by elite university professors (e.g., Judith Butler at Cal-Berkeley) have trickled down and become pervasive among nearly all college-educated young people. This is why, for example, you have elementary school teachers promoting LGBTQ ideology and telling them to keep it secret from their parents.
It is almost certain that the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. If Joe Manchin won’t vote against her, that more or less guarantees her seat on the court. But we have learned something valuable about the beliefs of those who would rule over us.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has been slammed for claiming the $3.5 budget reconciliation packages “costs zero dollars.”
On Monday, the president said once again that the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill as well as reconciliation are both somehow paid for.
Hours later, during her daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made a similar point when pressed on whether the president admitted the bill didn’t cost zero when he said it would be less than he initially proposed.
“What we’re talking about is how much the top line investments are — which are all paid for,” Psaki said, referencing the $3.5 price tag. “So therefore, it costs zero, no matter what the cost or size of the top line investments are, we have ways to pay for it.”
Psaki added that the plan will be paid for by asking corporations and people of the highest incomes to “cover the cost of these necessary investments” through higher tax rates.
When asked one more time if the reconciliation budget costs zero dollars, Psaki admitted “the plan costs nothing for the American people who make less than $400,000.”
“Necessary investments” = a flaming dumpster full of socialist crap.
The speech that Biden read from his TelePrompter today was a gigantic stack of lies, which could not deceive anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of congressional procedure and the federal budget. Biden (or rather, his speechwriters) insisted that Republicans are to blame for Congress failing to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, Democrats could do this without a single GOP vote, using the same “reconciliation process” they’re trying to use to ram their $3.5 trillion — excuse me, I actually meant to say, zero dollar — spending package through Congress.
Mitch McConnell has made this clear, and he’s got the Republican Senate caucus lined up in solidarity, so that even the weakest RINOs aren’t flinching in the face of criticism from Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and all their media henchpeople. Cocaine Mitch to Sleepy Joe:
“Dear President Biden:
“For many years, our working relationship has been defined not only by our strong disagreements, but also by mutual transparency and respectful candor. I write in that spirit to express concern that our nation is sleepwalking toward significant and avoidable danger because of confusion and inaction from the Speaker of the House and the Senate Democratic Leader concerning basic governing duties.
“Since mid-July, Republicans have clearly stated that Democrats will need to raise the debt limit on their own. All year, your party has chosen to pursue staggering, “transformational” spending through unprecedented use of the party-line reconciliation process. Democrats inherited bipartisan trends from COVID relief to appropriations but have chosen to govern alone. Even now, with Americans already facing painful inflation, Democrats are preparing another staggering taxing and spending spree without any Republican input or support.
“Bipartisanship is not a light switch that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer may flip on to borrow money and flip off to spend it. Republicans’ position is simple. We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.
“As you and I know from shared Senate experience, this is not unusual. The debt limit is often a partisan vote during times of unified government. In 2003, 2004, and 2006, Mr. President, you joined Senate Democrats in opposing debt limit increases and made Republicans do it ourselves. You explained on the Senate floor that your ‘no’ votes did not mean you wanted the majority to let the country default, but rather that the President’s party had to take responsibility for a policy agenda which you opposed. Your view then is our view now.
“There is one difference between then and now: Leader Schumer requested and won new powers to repeatedly reuse the fast-track, party-line reconciliation process. As a result, Senate Democrats do not need Republican cooperation in any shape or form to do their job. Democrats do not need our consent to set a vote at 51 instead of 60. Nonpartisan experts confirm that Senate Democrats have every necessary tool to pass a standalone debt limit increase through reconciliation and enough time to do it before late October. As I have warned for months, this is the path they will need to take.
“Congressional Democrats have wasted weeks complaining that this relatively brief process would inconvenience their floor schedules. Mr. President, as you know as a Senate veteran, that is not an excuse; it is just a complaint. Republicans will not build Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer a shortcut around procedural hurdles they can clear on their own so they have a more convenient path to jam us with a partisan taxing and spending spree.
“Mr. President, I have relayed this reality to your Democratic lieutenants for two and a half months. My concern for our country is that Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have done nothing. Either the Democratic leaders simply cannot govern or they would rather play chicken with the U.S. economy than accept reality.
“Your Democratic majorities have no plan of their own to avoid default. On Thursday, we narrowly avoided a shutdown by a few hours because Senate Democrats wasted weeks on theatrics before accepting reality. The American people cannot afford the same rudderless drift toward danger with respect to the full faith and credit of our nation.
“Mr. President, I respectfully submit that it is time for you to engage directly with congressional Democrats on this matter. Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job.”
The Democrats spent the past week staging a Stalinist show trial in the Senate, which came to a predictable end today, when they failed to get the necessary two-thirds majority for conviction. Our President — you know, the guy who actually won the election — issued this statement:
This has been yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our Country. No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few months ago.
I also want to convey my gratitude to the millions of decent, hardworking, law-abiding, God-and-Country loving citizens who have bravely supported these important principles in these very difficult and challenging times.
Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun. In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!
We have so much work ahead of us, and soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future.
Together there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
We remain one People, one family, one glorious nation under God, and it’s our responsibility to preserve this magnificent inheritance for our children and for generations of Americans to come.
May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.
Here is a fact that should not be forgotten: 61% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen, and a majority of Americans don’t believe anyone should be punished for saying they believe it was stolen. What Democrats were doing in this impeachment was an attempt to criminalize dissent, to make it a “high crime and misdemeanor” for President Trump to say what most Republicans believe. If it’s “inciting insurrection” to say Democrats stole the election for Biden, then they’re going to have to put a lot of us in prison. And they might as well start with me.
One cold evening in 1930, two Midwesterners sat in a third-floor apartment on 52nd Street in New York and dreamed of a warmer climate. Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael had become friends while attending Indiana University together. As they looked out the window in frigid New York, “not liking what we saw,” Gorrell later recalled, he and Carmichael “turned our thoughts to the pleasant Southland”:
Georgia, Georgia,
The whole day through,
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
At the time Carmichael and Gorrell wrote “Georgia on My Mind” in New York, a 15-year-old girl in Albany, Georgia, had just given birth to a baby boy. Aretha Williams named her son Ray Charles Robinson. He developed glaucoma in childhood and went blind at age 7. Ray Charles learned to play piano and by the time he was a teenager, was earning $4 a night playing in a theater in Jacksonville, Florida. Before he was 20, he was making hit records, and in 1960, he recorded “Georgia on My Mind.” It was his distinctive rendering of the song which, in 1979, was declared the official state song of Georgia. It seems “the pleasant Southland” has been on a lot of minds recently:
Democrats will turn America into a one-party country if they win the Senate runoff elections, President Donald Trump said Monday in Dalton, Georgia.
“They’ll make Washington, DC, and other liberal places the 51st, 52nd, 53rd states of the union, guaranteeing the radical left a permanent majority of the U.S. Senate and the House, and the electoral college,” he said at a rally for Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
“It will make it really a one-party country and the party will be the wrong party,” the president continued:
They will pack the Supreme Court with crazed extremists, and I’m not happy with the Supreme Court. They are not stepping up to the plate … They’re not stepping up. How about that? We don’t have … look at the Supreme Court. President of the United States, I want to file suit … and they said, “Sir, you can’t. You really can’t do that.” Why? So, they have legal reasons. Complex legal reasons. It’s wrong. If you’re the president of the United States and you get defrauded out of an election, you should be able to file a suit. But we can’t do that. They say, “Sir, you don’t have standing.”
President Trump said he was winning by a lot and then, “all of a sudden, I was losing by a little tiny bit, just a little.”
We shall soon learn if Democrats can steal another election (or two) in Georgia. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Senate runoff campaign to elect Jon Osoff and Raphael Warnock. My native state has been barraged by wall-to-wall campaign ads and everybody down home has been bombarded by get-out-the-vote messages, so it is impossible for anyone in Georgia not to realize how high the stakes are. A few headlines via Instapundit:
The liberal media, of course, are ignoring any news that may reflect negatively on the Democrats, while hyping up a lot of nonsense about Trump’s phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, but the news probably won’t have much impact on the Senate elections simply because of that multimillion-dollar advertising blitz in the state.
Modern election campaigns are ordeals to be endured, a punishment inflicted on the citizenry, and I pity the Georgians who can’t turn on their TVs without being reminded of this ugly political mess.
Other arms reach out to me. Other eyes smile tenderly. Still, in peaceful dreams, I see The road leads back to you.
Not many peaceful dreams in Georgia lately — more of a nightmare. But one way or another this dreadful election will soon be over, and then perhaps “the pleasant Southland” will be pleasant once more.
