FMJRA 2.0: Breakthrough!

Posted on | March 17, 2025 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Breakthrough!

This was a good week to be a Senators fan. First we took two out of three from the Cardinals, losing only to Bob Gibson (and getting Carl Morton suspended for saying the Magic Words to Umpire Merriweather) and then we did the same to the visiting Tribe, who had swept us in our previous series. We also got Blue Moon Odom his first win in relief of Joe Coleman, who had given up two dingers to the Tribe and almost loaded the bases in the sixth before we called Odom in. Two innings later, Randy Hundley hit a sac fly to left scoring Nate Colbert, and Bob Johnson came in to nail down the save and the game in the ninth. Unfortunately we weren’t as lucky in the final game, where Spaceman Lee imploded early and Dave Sells blew the save and the game in the top of the 10th. Still, a 4-2 week has us tied with the Twins in third, four behind Pete’s Brewers and four games ahead of Oakland, who we’ll face on Tuesday. We’ll see if the bats stay hot and the rest of the bullpen holds up.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Happy days are here again!

Chuck Chickens Out: No Schumer Shutdown, CR Will (Barely) Pass Senate
The First Street Journal
American Free News Network
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Return to Mediocrity
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

The ‘Investigative Journalist’ Grift and the Dangerous ‘Viral’ Style of Ian Carroll
The Daley Gator
The Political Hat
357 Magnum
EBL

Rule 5 Sunday: South American Cowgirl
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.11.25
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In The Mailbox: 03.12.25 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
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Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner: So I Guess I’m a San Francisco 49ers Fan Now
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357 Magnum
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.13.25 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
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In The Mailbox: 03.13.25 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
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In The Mailbox 03.14.25
357 Magnum
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending March 14:

EBL (10)
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The Worst Pundits EVER!

Posted on | March 16, 2025 | Comments Off on The Worst Pundits EVER!

How could I have missed this? An opportunity for an easy dunk on the Lincoln Project? But in the aftermath of the 2024 election, there was just so much schadenfreude fodder that somehow this escaped my notice until today, when the YouTube algorithm directed me to a Canadian YouTuber’s LOL finger-pointing festival, and I knew immediately that I had to share this with y’all. So here’s the setup:

Saturday, November 2 — three days before the election, and the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson records a podcast segment featuring his colleagues Stuart Stevens, Jeff Timmer and Trygve Olson. All of them declare with ironclad certainty that Kamala Harris is going to run the table in the “battleground” States and stomp Donald Trump into tiny orange smithereens. The fun begins when Wilson introduces his guests as “three of the most brilliant minds in American politics.” He starts with Olson, who says he’s spent the past week in Wisconsin where Harris “is on a trajectory” to win the state by a wider margin than Joe Biden did in 2020 (she lost Wisconsin by 30,000 votes). Then he cuts to Stu Stevens predicting that Harris will win nationwide by “about the same margin that Obama won in [his 2012 reelection campaign], like 3.9.” (LOL!) Next it’s Timmer’s turn and he describes himself as “fairly bullish.” Timmer then refers to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, saying he’s been digging “down into the minutiae of the numbers” — poll numbers, presumably — as indicating “everything points toward a Harris win in all three of those states.” Wrong, wrong, and wrong! Not content to be batting 0-for-3 on those battlegrounds, Timmer goes on to speak confidently of “when [not if] Trump loses North Carolina,” before suggesting Trump might even lose Florida, because of what he foresees as a possibility that “the bottom drops out of Trump’s support.”

Now, I have merely shared a few quotes from the first three minutes of this pre-election Very Special Episode of the Lincoln Project podcast and my friends — they go on for a full half-hour this way!

Grab some popcorn, you’re going love it!

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Category: Election, Video

Making Sense of Democrat Disarray and the Future of the MAGA Revolution

Posted on | March 16, 2025 | Comments Off on Making Sense of Democrat Disarray and the Future of the MAGA Revolution

We have had a pleasant couple of days laughing at the misery of the Democratic Party. After Chuck Schumer abandoned his threat of a government shutdown, grassroots Democrats erupted in fury at what they saw as Schumer’s “betrayal” of the anti-Trump cause:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued Schumer’s “almost unthinkable” move caused a “deep sense of outrage and betrayal” across the Dems’ ideological spectrum — and pointedly didn’t rule out a primary challenge against him.

Unfortunately for AOC’s dreams of running a Democratic primary campaign against Schumer, he won’t be up for election again until 2028, by which time he’ll be 77, and is more likely to retire than to seek a sixth term in the Senate. Three years is a long time in politics, and we can’t predict the future, but how likely is it that Schumer letting this continuing resolution pass in March 2025 will still be an issue in November 2028, even if he did decide to run again?

Democrats are divided and demoralized, and the angriest voices among them are also the loudest. They have lost their way in large measure because the Biden presidency, coming as it did on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots, was built on a foundation of delusion. It was possible, if you were a Democrat, to believe that Biden’s victory was a decisive rejection of everything Donald Trump represented, and that Democrats would never suffer any negative consequences for whatever errors of policy subsequently ensued.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the errors of the Biden era were numerous and quite harmful, and the appearance of the 2020 election as a decisive anti-Trump referendum proved to be an illusion. Once Biden’s cognitive decline became undeniable, and he was forced off the ticket in favor of Kamala Harris, there was a decisive shift in the other direction, yet even then Democrats remained in denial. The media kept hyping up the “joy” of Kamala’s campaign, and the usual suspects produced polls showing Harris leading Trump by four, five, even six points during that August/September period. They wanted to believe . . .

False hope turned to bitter disappointment, and Democrats have still never recovered from the psychological trauma of November 5.

Believing they had forever banished the Trump menace four years earlier, Democrats found themselves in a waking nightmare — Trump didn’t just squeak by with narrow margins in the so-called battleground states, as he had in 2016, but actually won the nationwide popular vote by a margin of 2 million votes. This wrecked their narrative about Trump’s first term, where the “Russian collusion” hoax promoted by Hillary Clinton had fostered the idea that Trump’s presidency was illegitimate. Now the shoe was on the other foot — anyone could compare the vote totals from 2024 with the totals from 2020 and see that some 6 million Democratic votes had mysteriously disappeared. Were they ever real? Did Biden actually win in 2020, or had Democrats stolen that election with their mail-in voting mischief and ballot-harvesting schemes?

Once the election was over, Biden drifted off to Delaware and, if the media tried to avoid making Kamala Harris the scapegoat for Democrats’ defeat, certainly her reputation asa a loser made it difficult for her to be viewed as a potential future party leader. Matt Margolis at PJMedia summarizes the Democrats’ current leaderless condition:

After their humiliating defeat in the government funding battle, a devastating new CNN poll shows the party’s favorability has cratered to an abysmal 29%—the lowest since 1992. The numbers don’t lie; this is a spectacular fall from grace.
The party has hemorrhaged support, suffering a jaw-dropping 20-point collapse in favorability since January 2021, when Joe Biden was inaugurated. . . .
The leadership vacuum is so profound that when asked who leads the Democratic Party, one respondent summed it up perfectly: “No one. That’s the problem.”

Now, take at the chart at the top of this post, from Ballotpedia, and you’ll see that 67% of Democrats in the House of Representatives were elected by margins of 15% or more. Life is easy for a Democrat in a D+15 district. Two-thirds of Hakeem Jeffries’ caucus don’t have to worry about getting reelected, ever. They can stay in Congress until the day they die. It is from the ranks of these Democrats in safe districts that the greatest rage against moderation or compromise will be heard. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez was reelected by a margin of about 38 points — 69% to 31% — and can go as far out to the radical extreme as she wishes without any fear of electoral repercussions. But if she drags the rest of the Democratic caucus with her, that’s going to be a much smaller caucus, because it’s going to be hard for Democrats to compete in “battleground” districts if AOC is calling the shots. Let’s take a closer look at those districts:

Democrats face a problem of simple arithmetic — of the closest districts in the country, more are currently held by Democrats than by Republicans. So if, in the next midterm, each party were to flip half of the other party’s “battleground” districts, the result would be a net gain for Republicans. Of course, we can’t predict what the political climate will be in November 2018, but the Democrats have more members holding onto their House seats by slender margins, compared to Republicans. In fact, Republicans have more “safe” districts than do Democrats, by a significant margin. Even though Speaker Mike Johnson has a very narrow Republican majority, he has more protection against a complete wipeout in the midterms, whereas Democrats risk a net loss of seats, even in a midterm election where the president’s party historically loses congressional seats. If the GOP plays its cards right between now and November 2026, they have an opportunity to deal Democrats another shattering blow like they did last November.

If the “MAGA Revolution” seeks to have a lasting impact, there needs to be a laser-focused effort to achieve Republican victory in the 2026 midterms. Securing another two-year hold on majorities in both the House and the Senate, at a time when Democrats are unpopular and suffering a leadership vacuum, would bring about a real crisis for the “progressive” grassroots of the Democratic Party going into the 2028 presidential election campaign. The prospect that J.D. Vance (or whoever wins the GOP nomination in 2028) could win what would in effect be Trump’s third term? Oh, you think Democrats are panicking now, just you wait and see! Maintain the MAGA momentum another three or four years, and they’ll all be fleeing the country like Rosie O’Donnell.

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Category: Congress, Election

‘Supports Digestive Health’

Posted on | March 15, 2025 | Comments Off on ‘Supports Digestive Health’

You probably wouldn’t expect me to be a whole wheat kind of guy, but that’s one improvement in my life for which I credit my wife. When I married her, she couldn’t believe I was still eating crappy white bread, and looking back on it, I’m kind of amazed myself. So, every morning my breakfast is peanut butter on wheat toast — two slices. It’s simple and easy. I don’t usually like to eat a big breakfast, because whenever I eat a big meal, I suddenly feel like taking a nap, and that won’t do.

If you’re going to have two slices of peanut butter toast for breakfast, you want quality ingredients. I insist on Jif peanut butter. Ninety-nine percent of groceries, I’m perfectly fine with store brands, but when it comes to peanut butter, there’s simply no store-brand equivalent for Jif — it’s indisputably superior, the Aryan race of peanut butter, so to speak.

Quality bread also matters, when it comes to breakfast toast. When our youngest daughter is at home, she buys Dave’s Killer Bread, which is top-of-the-line stuff, because the Vegan Princess needs that for her avocado toast. (Well, of course, she’s about the avocado toast. It’s 2025, man.) But I’m fine with Arnold’s Whole Grain bread, which is still a quality product, if not quite the primo caliber of Dave’s. And the reason I’m going on this long dissertation about breakfast toast is because the other day in the grocery store, I go to get a loaf of bread and notice the package declaration: “Supports Digestive Health.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what’s called a euphemism. We know what it really means, don’t we? You could come up with your own blunt expression, but what it means is this stuff is going to rip through your guts like a .45-caliber hollow-point slug. In a healthy way.

Television ads have a lot of these “digestive health” references. As the Baby Boom generation ages, there’s this weird obsession with intestinal function — citizens of Hypochondriac Nation being a prime target for advertisers trying to sell various products aimed at those seized with a morbid fear of colon cancer. That term is almost never used explicitly in advertising for “digestive health” products, but neither is constipation, the other malady that aging Boomers seem obsessed with.

STOP TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR COLON PROBLEMS!

My attitude toward health is mixture of Calvinism and the Dale Carnegie “Power of Positive Thinking” approach. On the one hand, I figure when my number’s up, that’s it. God has ordained me to live a certain number of days, and it’s impious to imagine that I can cheat God in this matter. On the other hand, I think worrying about health is unhealthy. That’s why I try to avoid doctors. Lecture me all you want about the importance of regular check-ups, but what if they find something? So long as I’m not actually sick — that is, I’m not feeling any particular pain — I will consider myself healthy, and therefore in no need of medical attention.

Fear of disease can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know what’s a major contributing factor to health problems? Stress. You know what’s stressful? Worrying constantly about your health problems.

So, no, I don’t want to hear about your colon problems, because this might give my colon some kind of signal. Same thing with every other organ — liver, spleen, kidneys, prostate gland. I’m not sick, and I don’t want to worry about getting sick, and I need you people to shut the hell up about all these health issues you seem to be having all the time.

Have you seen these commercials for Jardiance? You know, the one with the fat lady dancing and singing a song?

I have Type 2 diabetes, but I manage it well.
It’s a little pill with a big story to tell.
I take once-daily Jardiance at each day’s start.
As time went on, it was easy to see,
I’m lowering my A1C.

The Commercial Jingle From Hell that gets stuck in your head, and I’m like, “Why didn’t we think of this before?” Five thousand years of human civilization, yet we never before came up with songs about our medical symptoms and treatments until the 21st century. And I suppose this is some people’s idea of progress. They want to end the “stigma” associated with certain health problems. Everybody knows that there is a correlation between obesity and Type II diabetes, the same way we know what “Supports Digestive Health” really means. The ad agency that produced the Jardiance commercial couldn’t reference this directly, however, so instead we get the pleasantly plump gal — not morbidly obese, just somewhat on the chunky side — singing, smiling, positive!

“Take our prescription drug, and you’ll be happy, too.” That’s the implied message, and I’m sure Type II diabetes patients are now sitting around mystified by the disappointment of the false hope of Instant Happiness™ raised by those Jardiance commercials. Whatever the improvement in their A1C score, they don’t feel any impulse to jump up and start dancing while singing about “the little pill with the big story to tell.”

We await the similar treatment of anti-psychotic drugs:

I was going kind of crazy,
Paranoid as hell,
Until I found a little pill with a story to tell.
Now I’m drowsy and drooling,
You know what I mean?
Zonked out on daily Thorazine.

Speaking of psychotics — this is what we professional journalists call a “transition” — Andy Ngo has a Zizian murder cult update:

Ziz trans terror update: At the March 14 pre-trial court hearing for murder and attempted murder suspects Alexander ("Somni") Leatham and Tessa Berns ("Suri Dao") in Solano County, Calif., Leatham was rolled out in a wheelchair and began screaming behind his mask: "This is a show… pic.twitter.com/eeBaZICuGK

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 15, 2025

“This is a show trial to coordinate the genocide of transgender people.” He screamed this nonstop and was moved to a separate booth so the hearing could proceed. He’s had this outburst repeatedly now at pre-trial hearings.

Oh, we need to destigmatize mental illness, they told us, and how is that working out? What part of Crazy People Are Dangerous do I need to explain here? “Transgender” is a euphemism for crazy, the same as “Digestive Health” is a synonym for . . . Well, you know what.

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Category: Culture

In The Mailbox 03.14.25

Posted on | March 15, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox 03.14.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Happy Pi day!
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Hybrid 3D Printed Guns, also Let’s Dance
EBL: Happy Dead Karl Marx Day, Democrats are a bit upset with Chicken Chuck Schumer, How Christianity Almost Vanished in 303 AD, Frank Zappa teaches Steve Allen to play The Bicycle, and Why Is There No Bridge to Sicily?
Twitchy: Van Jones Describes the Eruption of Democrat Rage Over Schumer’s CR Vote, Megyn Kelly Slams Chris Murphy Over Naked Ambition & New Girlfriend, and Fauxcahontas On Verge Of Tears Over Dismantling Of Education Department
Louder With Crowder: BLM lashes out at rapper Lil Yachty who dared to disagree with the organization
Vox Popoli: Putin’s Ceasefire Terms, Redefining Christianity, No Deal, and The First Color Revolution
According To Hoyt: The Big Tent, The Future of the Past, Coming To Ourselves, and The Beatings Will Continue Till The Culture Improves!
Monster Hunter Nation:
Stoic Observations: How Sam Harris Lost Me
Bugscuffle Gazette: Flexible Impact Weapons Part III

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Ukraine’s Kursk Offensive Was a Miserable Failure
American Greatness: DNI Chief Tulsi Gabbard Vows to ‘Aggressively’ Pursue Bad Actors in IC Leaking Classified Info to Liberal Media Outlets, also, West VA Governor Signs Riley Gaines Act Into Law Defining Sex-based Terms Like ‘Woman’
American Thinker: On XY in XX’s Sports, Whoopi G. Opens Her Mouth—and Removes All Doubt
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Rich Getting Richer Friday
Baldilocks: Stream of Consciousness, also, Trump Is A Copycat
BattleSwarm: The Stupidest Example Of Musk Derangement Syndrome Yet, also, LinkSwarm For March 14
Behind The Black: Blue Ghost watches the Earth eclipse the Sun from the Moon, Launch window for first launch of German rocket startup Isar rocket revealed, Europe’s Hera asteroid probe sends back data from Mars fly-by, Scientists issue new map of land below Antarctica’s icecap, and Florida’s two senators introduce bill to move NASA HQ to their state
Cafe Hayek: Trump & Co.’s Sheer Ignorance of the Economics of Trade
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: GOP No Longer Being “The Stupid Party” Democrats and Particularly Chuck Schumer Hardest Hit , also, I just asked GROK to Create a Simulated Rush Limbaugh Opening Monologue on the CR fight cumulating in Chuck Schumer folding and voting Closure on the GOP Resolution
Don Surber: Treating Maine Like Biden Treated Musk
First Street Journal: Has the federal Department of Education actually improved educational outcomes?
Gates Of Vienna: Government Corruption, Zakat and the Future of Kafirs, also, Why Islam is Not a Civilization
The Geller Report: “The Smell of Blood Permeates the Syrian Coast”, Columbia University Expels Jew-Hating Hamas Terror Students Who Forcibly Took Over Building, “BASTARDS!”: Chuck Schumer Caves on CR Resolution, Democrat Radical Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Federal Employees Across Six Agencies, and IDF Troops Will Remain in Five Outposts in Lebanon
Hollywood In Toto: Day the Earth Blew Up Captures Classic Looney Tunes Humor, Bill Burr Struck with Elon Musk Derangement Syndrome, President Trump’s Apprentice Rocks Prime Video Charts, Steven Soderbergh Compares Trump to Movie Villain, and Uncanceled – New Era Welcomes Back Fallen Stars
The Lid: 16,000 Fast Food Jobs Lost in California after New $20 Minimum Wage Law Starts
Legal Insurrection: JD Vance Skewers CBS News for ‘Harassing My Mother-in-Law’ Over Their Differing Views on DEI, USPS Working With DOGE to Fix ‘Broken Business Model’, EPA to Close Environmental Justice Offices, Complying With EO Eliminating DEI, Pelosi Futilely Pushed Senators to Defy Schumer: ‘Listen to the Women’, and Columbia Student ‘Involved in Activities Supporting Hamas’ Self-Deports
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Great Migration
Outkick: NASCAR Star Who Abruptly Quit Accuses Sport Of Rigging Races, Morgan Wallen Enjoyed Watching His Tennessee Vols, But Longhorns Mascot Got A Little Too Close For Bodyguard, Tens Of Thousands Of Fans Turn Out To Watch Dodgers-Cubs Warmup, Danica Patrick’s Golf Outing Raises Questions, Hot College Coach Molly Has Our Attention & Paulina Gretzky! and MLB Teams Dealing With Major Pitching Injuries, So Where’s Trevor Bauer?
Power Line: They Really Don’t Get It, The Dems’ Civil War, Feeding Our Fraud – Bock on cross, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Debbie Mayfield Gets Rick Scott Endorsement For SD-19
Shot In The Dark: Focus, also, The Only Explanation
The Political Hat: Happy Pi Day
This Ain’t Hell: President Trump’s EO potentially adds to the cost of frivolous lawsuits against the administration, President Trump looking to utilize Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to conduct deportations, Navy’s Transgender Policy Announced, Valor Friday, and Missouri man charged with stolen valor
Transterrestrial Musings: Warfighting In Space, The Latest In the Mann Suit, and Trump And The End Of The Long 20th Century
Victory Girls: Swatted – Influencers Get Police and Pizza, Maxine Incites Trouble, also, Trump Voter Regret is the Democrats’s New Wishcasting
Watts Up With That: Climate Gobbledygook: ‘Experts’ Pontificating Mitigation Failure, The Independent is Wrong – Avocado Consumption Isn’t Causing Climate Change, The People vs. Gavin Newsom’s Mandate, Bill Gates-Founded Clean Energy Group Reportedly Slashes Workforce, and US Multinationals Purging Online Climate Action Pages
The Federalist: For A Party Of ‘Joy,’ Democrats Are Awfully Miserable, Trump Slams ‘Communist’ Persecution Of Conservatives While Speaking At DOJ, America Becoming Less Christian Is A Problem For Everyone, Hegseth Guts Pentagon Office That Gifted Lucrative Contracts To Famed Russia Collusion Hoaxer, and 7 Trump Orders Congress Should Codify To Keep Wokeness Out Of The Military
Mark Steyn: Moving On to the Next Phase, Death By DEI, COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff, How About You? and Live Around the Planet – Donald, Where’s Your Truce, Sir?

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Chuck Chickens Out: No Schumer Shutdown, CR Will (Barely) Pass Senate

Posted on | March 14, 2025 | Comments Off on Chuck Chickens Out: No Schumer Shutdown, CR Will (Barely) Pass Senate

Because you’ve probably already seen the news elsewhere, permit me to begin by saying that Chuck Schumer may be the leading cause of anti-Semitism in America. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a righteous Gentile, the exact opposite of a Jew-hater, a philo-Semite who is more fanatically Zionist than Bibi Netanyahu. But when I contemplate the profound dishonesty of Chuck Schumer . . . Well, it occurs to me that anti-Semitic prejudice didn’t just magically materialize out of the ether; Schumer is the embodiment of every hateful stereotype, and actually looks like a cartoon in Der Stürmer. Some pious rabbi needs to talk to senior officials of the Anti-Defamation League about their Chuck Schumer problem. The man is becoming a shanda fur die goyim.

With that preamble, now time for the news:

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared that he will not vote against moving forward with a Republican-backed stopgap bill to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.
The announcement, in which Schumer criticized President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort led by Elon Musk, marked an abrupt turnaround. Just one day ago, the top Senate Democrat insisted the Republican majority did not have enough votes for the House-passed continuing resolution to clear a key procedural hurdle.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. … I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor.
He added later: “I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.” . . .
The Democrat leader’s statement came after a Senate Democrat meeting in which reporters said they could hear Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) shouting about a shutdown.

I just heard Gillibrand say “This will not be a normal shutdown”

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) March 13, 2025

.@SenSchumer (D-NY): “While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse … Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.” pic.twitter.com/1IkuJqOObr

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 13, 2025

Speaking of shouting about a shutdown, I had a rather heated phone call last week with a young friend, who unwisely spends too much of his time in the online MAGA echo chamber, and was therefore pro-shutdown.

Look, it’s not as if I’m a squishy RINO sellout. I just happen to be about 25 years older than my young friend, so I have some institutional memory on this topic. Well do I remember the fierce budget battles between Gingrich-led congressional Republicans and Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, when “government shutdown” first became a headline, and Republicans took a severe public-relations beating, only to fold their cards because Bob Dole couldn’t keep Senate Republicans in line.

This has always been the big problem facing the conservative movement. Every time we get a GOP House majority, we are confronted by the problem of the Senate filibuster. Unless Republicans can get to 60 votes in the Senate, they must negotiate with the Democrats to be able to pass anything, and so the Freedom Caucus types eventually have to accept a deal that is antithetical to their principles. Personally, I agree with Grover Norquist’s most famous quote: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” But that doesn’t change the reality of how legislation gets passed, nor does it change the political calculus of how to maintain a Republican congressional majority. Having finally gotten Trump elected to a second term, the clock is now ticking down to the 2026 midterms, and it will be some kind of miracle if we can stop Democrats from taking over Congress again. The last thing we need, at a time when the GOP is running the whole show in D.C., is to have a government shutdown, which will be perceived (by the moderate “swing” voters, at least) as evidence that Republicans aren’t competent enough to do basic “keep the trains running on time” governance.

So I found myself raising my voice in last week’s phone conversation with my young friend, who can’t see it from this kind of long-term big-picture perspective. Experience proves that we cannot suddenly change everything in Washington; conservatives must build an effective governing majority, and then proceed step-by-step through the legislative process. This kind of patient labor strikes the young hotspurs as timid, lacking the kind of a revolutionary excitement they crave. But we must remind the callow youth that they stand on the shoulders of giants, being heirs to a movement that began long before they were born. It was during the historical apogee of liberal prestige — when FDR’s New Deal commanded the allegiance of an overwhelming majority — that a tiny handful of dissenters organized what became the conservative movement in America. Hayek, Kirk, Weaver, Chambers, Regnery, Buckley — by the early 1950s, the torch had been lit, and was passed along from Taft to Goldwater to Reagan. Alas, we have lost much that ought to have been conserved, and yet despite such defeats, nevertheless the fight continues.

Pardon that digression, but there are too many people on “our” side who are encouraging an irresponsible attitude toward the current situation, and I just want everybody to calm down about it. Let the Democrats stir outrage among the kook fringe on their side, appealing to the fathomless ignorance of their voters. Back to the news:

The Senate needs three-fifths majority — or 60 votes — to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster on the GOP’s six-month continuing resolution. Because Republicans have a 53-47 majority, they cannot clear that threshold without some kind of bipartisan agreement. The spending legislation will need only a simple majority to prevail in a final vote. . . .
It was not immediately clear how many Democrats or independents will join Schumer, though his opposition to a shutdown may signal better odds for the Republican continuing resolution. Still, some on the Left have expressed stern disapproval of the plan.
Many Democrats had previously released statements claiming they would resist the GOP measure. Prior to Schumer, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the sole Democrat to openly state that he would not support blocking the Republican stopgap bill. . . .
One Republican — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — signaled that he will vote against the bill. However, that does not necessarily mean he would oppose breaking the filibuster. . . .
The GOP-led House passed a 99-page continuing resolution, which provides funds to various federal agencies and programs through September 30, via a 217-213 vote on Tuesday. All but one Republican and a single Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) — supported the measure. The rest of the Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) opposed the bill.

There was a parade of Democratic senators on Twitter yesterday declaring that they would vote against the CR, but the final vote — i.e., yea or nay on the passage of the bill — isn’t the issue. It’s the cloture vote that is the hurdle. If all 53 Republicans vote for cloture, and Chuck Schumer can deliver six Democrat “yea” votes, then when you add J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, that’s the 60 votes needed to end the filibuster. Once that’s done, getting 51 votes for passage won’t be difficult.

If we can trust Schumer when he says he is now against the shutdown, that means he’ll find a half-dozen Democrats to “walk the plank” for the sake of avoiding a shutdown (for which Schumer apparently sees that Democrats would be blamed). That buys him another six months to try to work up some kind of new wicked scheme, and I hope the ADL will intervene to stop him, because otherwise this living Der Stürmer caricature might keep stirring up Jew-hatred past the point of no return.

Now, about those Puerto Rican stereotypes . . .

AOC’s brain completely short circuits when she’s asked about Chuck Schumer saying a shutdown would’ve been worse than accepting the CR.

She then pushes the lie that Trump’s tax cut only benefits billionaires.

The Hill debunked that hoax. Middle-income filers benefit the most. pic.twitter.com/dzVKqouyuW

— Paul A. Szypula ?? (@Bubblebathgirl) March 14, 2025