Politics

Think Inside the Box

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Surely once or thrice you’ve been asked to think outside of the box.

A wise CEO once asked a group a few moons ago to think inside of the box.  Why?  To get their attention is one reason.  And, to realize where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there is another.

So, where is America right now, and more importantly for Republicans where is their party in the minds of Americans?

America is seriously divided on a plethora of issues right down party lines.  Each side asks that we “come together as a country” frequently.  What they mean is “agree with us and all will be well.”  The ask doesn’t even sound sincere and it certainly doesn’t work that way.

Republicans are thought of and/or portrayed as white, old, stodgy, racist, set in their ways, and out of touch.

What to do?  How about doing some things that are progressive and democratic at the same time yet reflect conservative views?

Say what?  Well, it’s a lot different than it may sound at first blush.

Progressive also means “happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.” Democratic also means “relating to or supporting democracy or its principles.”

Try just a few on for size.

How about getting all new leadership after the midterms regardless of the outcomes?  Isn’t it past time that old Mitch McConnell for one, arguably the biggest RINO of them all step aside? Just last week he mumbled, “if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” implying that Black voters are not Americans.

On Friday, he said he “inadvertently omitted the word ‘almost,’” but then after the news conference ended, he returned to the microphones to correct himself one more time. “The omitted word is ‘all,’ not ‘almost,'” he said. “Sorry.”

Biden is worse tripping over his own tongue, but not by much.  The elephants need a fresh face, voice, and view.

How about having all 50 Republican Senators vote for the SCOTUS black female nominee?  Let’s assume that she is qualified, regardless if opinions vary if she is the most qualified.  The vote is supposed to be cast on qualifications, not political ideology.

Madame VP Harris would cast the 51st vote for her confirmation regardless, but that’s not really the point.  The point would be that America could look at this as “progress.”  Take the lead in celebrating her nomination.  Maybe even a RINO or two could sell it that way as “coming together as a country.”

Eleven Democrats voted for Clarence Thomas.  One was not then-Senator Biden, but we digress.   Thirty-nine Republicans voted for Ruth Bader Ginsberg.   Only one Democrat (don’t Build Back Better Joe Manchin) voted for Brett Kavanaugh.

And, how about looking ahead to 2024?  If you support true conservatism, you’d support it regardless of who espouses it, wouldn’t you?  Nominate the right presidential candidate from the right.  Then choose Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat in name only as your VP running mate.

Sound crazy?  It might drive perpetually in mourning Morning Joe crazy.  But, listen to what she believes in and you’ll swear that she’s further right than any Bush, Graham, McConnell, Crenshaw, Romney, or Rubio ever sounded.

It is after all principles, not sheep in wolves’ clothing that matter most, isn’t it?  And, who wants to be the first Democrat to stand up and say that nominating a Dem female is a bad idea?

Progressive and democratic is the new conservative.

Do you say it can never happen?

Don’t tell Joe Burrow “never.”

Orange and black is the new AFC Champion.

 

 

Churn and Burn

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

If it’s Breyer’s, it’s got to still be good!  Any ice cream company founded in 1866 and still churning today has to be good.

But, with FDA government regulations, even good goes bad when it gets old.  Use by this date or discard the label says.

Yesterday, someone somewhere in the government decided that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s discard date had come up as well.

Breyer’s retirement was reported by the press before he himself made it.  This led to speculation that it had been leaked by a White House eager to appease left-wing critics after its recent legislative failures and court defeats.

Might the party in charge be worried about Republicans winning the Senate in 2022?  Might the party in charge be worried about another Ruth Bader Ginsberg situation?  Out with the old and in with the new.

Multiple sources told multiple members of the press that Justice Breyer was not planning to announce his retirement yesterday. They describe him as “upset” with how this has played out.  Breyer prides himself on not being partisan.

Apparently, the White House prides itself on not caring what Breyer cares about.

Did Demand Justice, a left-wing group formed to oppose Trump’s Supreme Court picks have a hand in forcing Breyer’s hand? The group proudly launched a “Breyer Retire” campaign just weeks after Biden took office.  Demand Justice is quite open about its goal of seeking to overhaul the federal court system to advance progressive goals.

Both WH press secretary Jen Psaki and Paige Herwig, Biden’s point person on judicial nominations, previously worked for Demand Justice.  Coincidence?

Breyer was good until a new flavor, but with similar tastes in thinking, can head to the Supreme Court.  And the new appointee needs to head that way before November.

The White House had little to say about Breyer’s retirement because they said it wasn’t “official” yet.   Odd?  Though they did quickly add that the Biden Administration would follow through on his campaign promise to add a black and female jurist to the highest court.  Odder?

Why not choose whomever they thought was most qualified regardless of gender and skin color?  As a Senator Joe Biden voted against the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas, probably because he thought that he was unqualified.  Oddest?

Will the administration throw Breyer a retirement party?  If so, will they let him in on when it is?

And, most of all, will they serve Breyer’s Ice Cream with the cake at Justice Breyer’s going away party?

It’s likely, but only if the use-by and discard date hasn’t come and gone like the justice’s has.

Because remember, it’s got to still be good!

 

 

Toothless Crime Enforcement

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

For over forty years the one constant in fighting crime on a national level is McGruff the Crime Dog.  He debuted in 1980 with a series of public service announcements educating citizens on personal security measures, such as locking doors and putting lights on timers, in order to reduce crime.

McGruff did and continues to serve loyally.  But, by 1994, America felt the need to take yet another bite out of crime.

Democrat President Bill Clinton signed HR 3355-Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 into law.  The bill was sponsored by Democrat Representative Jack Brooks out of Texas and Democrat, now Socialist, Bernie Sanders even voted yes along the way to the president’s desk.

The bill is better known as the “three strikes and you’re out” law.   It provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes.

Over time, studies and sentiment have deemed certain aspects of the stringent guidelines with the law too harsh.  Judges, states, and DA’s have eased up on its presumed punitive measures.

The slippery slope to lower bails, lighter sentences, plea bargains, and outright indifference to certain crimes has accelerated in the last decade.  NY and its mayor Bill DeBlasio told cops to stand down time and again.  It stopped its “stop and frisk” policy.

Social injustices and Soros’ money created movements in the streets.  Mostly peaceful protests weren’t mostly peaceful.  Cities, like Portland, worked by day and burned by night.

And, then George Floyd was killed.  And, the US was incensed and nearly incinerated.

Defund the police became the cry heard around the world and measures in some of the US blue states did just that-defund the blue.

So, now where do we stand?

Well, if you’re Cali Governor Gavin Newsom you stood in the trash of the opened boxes of stolen property on the rails of the Union Pacific railroad late last week.  There you took to the microphone (for the photo op) and blamed these railroad robberies on gangs.  Then you apologized in the next sentence, called your words pejorative, and said that you should have called them “organized groups of people.”  That’ll show them.

If you’re the newly elected NY DA you go down the rabbit hole of outlining in a penned memo that most crimes in his jurisdiction wouldn’t be prosecuted and if they were, criminals wouldn’t face jail time except for offenses committed with a gun.

Over the last two weeks, an LA officer was shot and killed, two cops in NY were shot, leaving one dead and one severely injured, a Houston officer was gunned down, and a border patrol agent in Texas was murdered.

And countless others, out on light bond money or none at all, have committed more serious crimes than their last offense.

So, now where do we stand?

McGruff has proven quite loyal, but right now his bark is far worse than his bite.  Our law enforcement has no teeth and the outlaws sense it.

If the three-strikes bill long ago was too far one way, is today’s mess too far the other?

The pendulum always swings.  Doesn’t it?   One can hope.

Kudzu

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

How can you win when you lose?

Stacey Abrams was a big win for the Democratic Party on a national level when she lost the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Race. Maybe few saw it then, but looking back you can see it clearly now.

“Voter suppression,” she screamed.  “Vote counting irregularity,” the Dems and their national lawyers who flew in yelled.  Recount the votes.  Recount them again.

Georgia is a have or have not state.  The title to its fertile land was owned by slave-owning, white farmers, and is perceived the same to this day.  The same with its politics.  It’s always about power.

But, in that rich soil seeds of doubt were cast about how we cast and count votes.  And the valuable crops of social injustice and voter suppression were cultivated all over again and spread like nasty kudzu.

“Hmmm?” the DNC pondered.  “How can we fertilize and water this and get it to harvest nationwide by November 2020?”

And, like the much-needed rain to nourish, fell a plague from the sky.  Covid-19 it was called, and its case count was growing like the aforementioned nasty weed.

How can we ask people to stand in line and show a silly voter identification when they could die doing so?  “We can’t,” said many blue states, using a version of the infamous blue flu to approve mail-in ballots, dropbox ballots, absentee ballots, and most of all harvested ballots.

Eighty-one million ballots in all were cast for the next President of the United States-Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.  That’s the highest vote count in American Presidential voting history for one candidate.

Donald Trump nearly lost his mind over losing to a man that may have lost his mind, claiming voter fraud from sea to sea.  “Turn those machines back on,” he squealed.

And, the Democrats roared.  “How dare you contest the fairest election that we’ve ever had?”

Team Trump had no more valid claims of illegal activity than the DNC did in Georgia, but never let facts get in the way of a good narrative.

And, just 14 months later the most voted for President in our history is polling at historic lows.  In fact, a poll yesterday of American adults aged 18-64 had 70% of its respondents checking the box “no, I do not want Biden to run for reelection in 2024.”  Go figure.

That poll was released just one day after Biden held a nearly two-hour press conference, his first in nearly 80 days.

During the presser, Biden pressed on about voting fraud.  When asked if he was concerned about the upcoming 2022 midterms he offered,  “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” Mr. Biden said. “The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”

Those reforms were two bills, both defeated in the Senate disguised as voting rights bills but were really fed overreach to take election control from the states.

Mr. 81 Million vote-getter is now worried about fair elections with the same laws in place that got him elected.  Go figure.

Jen Psaki, clean up on aisle two.

The kudzu spreads.

 

 

 

 

 

Free and Freedom Aren’t Cheap

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

There’s free and then there’s freedom.

And, free is getting more plentiful while freedom is getting harder to find.

But, aren’t the best things in life free? That depends on where you look.

It costs nothing to catch Omicron, but that’s not the best thing in life.  But, at least our government is doing all it can to help prevent it and all of that is free.

There are free vaccines and free boosters and more free vaccines and more free boosters.  Stand in line.

If you think you might be coming down with a “rare” breakthrough case, there’s free testing too.  All that you have to do is wait in line for one assuming you can find somewhere that has any.

The US government has ordered half a billion on top of another half of a billion tests making its availability for immediate purchase nil and reminding you of your local grocer’s empty shelves.

We are told that the supply chain issue should resolve itself in a week, and then just another 7-12 days beyond that to ship right to your door!  Think Feb 8th or so and all will be well.  And, likely you’ll be well by then, too.

But wait, there’s more!

The government has ordered an untold number of N95 masks and close replicas and will be distributing those soon and free as well.

All of this is an extra good safety net in case your Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare didn’t keep you well during these troubled times.   Remember Bernie Sanders has told us repeatedly that healthcare is a basic human right.  Don’t try claiming Ivermectin on your insurance though.

He also has told us that college tuition should be free.  The avowed Socialist and almost every one of his colleagues from the left is a big supporter of Build Back Better which provides free preschool, darn near free child care, and child tax cuts.

Have a child and you can pay less tax for you and yours to live here.  Makes sense to you?

What about bread? Shouldn’t that be free, too?  If you were willing to stand in line for it, would this government attempt to provide it for you?

If only the wealthy would just pay their fair share, whatever that means.

Freedom, on the other hand, is getting harder to find.

Well, it isn’t if you’re an illegal alien (sorry, migrant) that walks in and gets shipped to, say NY.  Free healthcare and voting rights await your jet’s arrival.

If you fly to Pennsylvania you can even get a free puddle jumper to Delaware as the Penn Governor says that Joe Biden’s home state ought to have some new neighbors as well.

But, don’t write or say the wrong thing on any social media platform.  You’ll be suspended for some time, or if you’re a serial misinformer like Donald Trump you’ll be banned for life.  Freedom of speech isn’t free.

Let’s not get started on attempts to control guns.

You can still have a “mostly peaceful” protest at least.  It’s even a protected freedom to burn the American Flag.  Although, we don’t think the damage done to property gets fixed for free.

Where did all of those protests go by the way?  Is everything that we were mad about getting fixed?  Wait till Summer 2022 and/or Summer 2024 and we’ll see.  We digress.

And, don’t go try to earn a living, or go out to eat unless you follow the mask, social distance, vax, and testing protocol mandates we need to flatten the two-year-old two-week curve.

Freedom is out of style.  Free is trending.

Both are going to cost a lot more to keep this the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

 

 

Taking the Bad With the Good

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

So there’s bad news, more bad news, and even more bad news, and good news. Then there’s bad news and good news.  Which do you want first?

Ah, yes.  Understood.  Let’s get most of the bad out of the way first to get on to sunnier days.

The first bit of the bad is that those long lines that you’re standing in to get tested for Covid -19’s latest variant Omicron aren’t going to get shorter anytime soon.  New cases have exploded to surpass the previous highs of the late Spring of 2020.

And when you finally get to the front of the line and assuming they haven’t run out of test kits, the results might not be accurate so says the FDA.  “Covid-19 antigen tests may be less capable of detecting the fast-spreading Omicron variant,” the Food and Drug Administration cautioned on Tuesday.

If you test negative but exhibit the symptoms, stay home they ask.  Sure.

The new warning is based on preliminary studies by the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative using patient samples with the live virus — analysis that “represents the best way to evaluate true test performance in the short-term,” according to FDA.

The good news is that help is on the way.  The Biden administration has signed a $137 million contract with a pharmaceutical company for the purpose of building a factory for COVID-19 test strip materials, a White House official confirmed yesterday.

But it’s going to take a while.  The new facility will not start churning out the materials for three years, according to the company.  Never mind that the administration is under fire for reportedly rejecting a deal in October that would have strongly ramped up the supply of COVID tests available now.  Remember, Biden always says, get vaccinated, NOW!  Maybe his new command will be, “Get tested, LATER!”

Of course, the bad news is that the three-year timeline also signals that the administration expects the need for tens of millions of such tests per month into 2024 or 2025 and beyond.

So, Covid-19 has plans to have a sixth and seventh sequel called Covid-24 and Covid-25?  How many Friday the Thirteenth’s can you watch?

At least $137 million is cheap money for such non-entertainment in these inflationary times.

Further, the multi-department cooperation by our government is heartening.  The Department of Defense issued a press release stating that it had awarded the contract in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services.  It was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Got that?  Government red tape never has supply chain issues.

The White House inked the agreement with MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of German firm Merck KGaA, not to be confused with U.S. company Merck & Co.

“The money will allow the company over three years to build a new facility to produce nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that displays test results, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,” the outlet reported. “That, in turn, will allow for 85 million more tests to be produced per month.”

Well, at least that’s some good economic news for Wisconsin.  After the Kenosha riots that never should have happened, the subsequent trial that never should have happened, and the SUV in Waukesha that ran down its citizens at a parade, they could use a dose of good news.

And, based on the above we could use another dose or two from Pfizer to boost our spirits as well.

 

 

 

We Come Bearing Gifts!

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Tis the season for gifts.  And, yesterday, while you were returning those one size too small pj’s, your government and its agencies were bestowing a few other gifts for you to try on for size.

The biggest gift of all was Joe Biden giving the states the responsibility to solve this pesky virus problem.  On a teleconference with governors, he said, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”

This seems odd.  A year or so ago, Kamala tweeted out that the first thing she and Joe Biden were going to do when they got to the White House was to solve this virus problem.

And, just a week ago he coughed through a White House speech telling us all that the federal government was ordering more testing, mailing in-home test kits, putting Army doctors into needed states, and telling us to get vaccinated, NOW! This Omicron variant must have really snuck up on them.

And with that, he clicked his heels and walked to his helicopter to depart to his Delaware beach house that you and some lobbyists gifted him for all of his roughly 94 plus years of loyal government service to the people and counting.

But wait!  There’s more!

The CDC gave you new social distance guidelines reducing the stay-away zone from six feet to merely three.  Retailers love selling gifts, so across America they are busy this AM scraping the old 6 ft. floor signs off and sticking new 3 ft. ones down.  Our best guess is that two years into this we can’t sneeze quite as far as we used to.  It happens to the best of us.

And then the good doctor, Dr. Fauci, weighed in.   He was and wasn’t in the gift-giving mood Monday.

First, he wanted to mandate that we give you the jab or three in order to get on airplanes.  “When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci said on MSNBC. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”  Could he help with all of the cancellations, too?

But, then he wanted to take away your fun this New Year’s Eve. “When you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party, we have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating. You do not know the status of their vaccination, I would recommend strongly staying away from that this year.”  Isn’t he the dud bottle rocket that never leaves the bottle?

He wasn’t asked directly about the 50-80 thousand fans in the stands at the roughly 25 bowl games between now and the New Year thankfully.  For now, it’s game on, if you can field a team that is.

The NFL is giving its players reduced return to work requirements after consulting with the NFLPA starting this weekend.  The new protocols are more lengthy and complicated than War and Peace.  There’s not enough virtual ink on Al Gore’s internet to relay them.  The New Orleans Saints needed a dose of this last night.

And, last but not least, the CDC gave us this statement yesterday.  “Given what we currently know about COVID-19, CDC is shortening the recommended time for isolation from 10 days to 5 days, if asymptomatic, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask when around others.”  Mask and ye shall receive a 5-day reprieve!

What’s better than the gifts that keep on giving?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

 

 

 

An Empty Suit?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Pre Zoom and pre casual Friday there were offices, typewriters, secretaries, liquid paper, ties, and suits.  The suits may have been two-piece or three-piece, wide lapel or not, with a matching pocket square or not, but everyone wore them in the workplace.

Surely you’ve heard that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  But, ultimately it was what’s inside of that suit that counted.

One of our senior staff members had a dyed in the wool suit wearer of a father, complete with a fedora most days.  When he thought less of a person’s abilities than necessary to competently carry out the duties of their job, he called them an “empty suit.”

An empty suit might have looked the part or tried to talk the talk, but they couldn’t walk the walk as we twist Jimmy Johnson’s battle cry.

Today, we have a Vice President of the United States who regardless of her choice of clothing might have reached “empty suit” status.  Her name is Kamala Harris, and her accomplishments after one year are, well, we aren’t so sure.

But, she seems so sure of her abilities.  “Anything that I handle is because it’s a tough issue, and it couldn’t be handled at some other level.  And it has actually been part of my lifelong career to deal with tough issues and this is no different.”

Sounds like she’s talking down to the minions at levels below the VP to us.  We also note that there is no “I” in “team” as you may have heard.

And, actually, there may be no team in DC named team Kamala soon as well.  Her key staff departures are growing by the week.  Rumors of lack of strategy, lack of preparedness, and outright finger-pointing by the VP abound.

So what does a VP really do?  And what should/or does this VP really do?  POTUS named VPOTUS as the lead on the border crisis for one.  She’s resisted going there and says that she’s working on the “root causes” of unprecedented illegal crossings.

Don’t we all know what the root cause is?  It’s an open border policy driven by this administration of course.  Close the border, fix the problem.  Boom!  “What’s next?” she could ask.

She did fly to France and back.  The reasons for which are still unknown.  She does laugh a lot.  The reasons for which are called nerves.

Could she tackle this tricky virus thing?

She’s not the first VP and won’t be the last to be a punching bag.  The list and the list of failures/shortcomings are long.  VP nominee Spiro T Agnew, for example, never made it to the office for all of the right reasons.  Dan Quayle ran headlong into a tough word in a spelling bee.

But, Kamala might have made it to the office for all of the wrong reasons.  Joe Biden moved left and further left in each passing week on the road to the nomination. During Democratic debate #2 he announced that if nominated he would have a woman as his running mate.  During debate #3 he announced that she would be black as well.

There’s nothing wrong with being black or being a woman.  But, those aren’t qualifications.  They’re vote-getters.

There is plenty wrong with being over-jobbed.

What to do?  What to do?  Ah, yes.  Play the race card.

The Daily Mail reports that Ms. Harris has told her confidants that she would get better press coverage if she was a white man.  Joe Biden isn’t feeling too good about his press coverage right about now.   Donald Trump took a daily beating in years prior.  And, George Bush doesn’t send Dan Rather any Christmas cards.

So, is it down to whether Joe chose wrong, or a serious operation is forthcoming?

As a reminder, Harris was polling at less than 1% before dropping out prior to the first primary in Iowa when gunning for the highest job in the land back in 2019.  Basically, her own party doesn’t like her.

Now, with her all-time low VP poll numbers in 2021, she’s turning to none other than Hillary Clinton for advice to reverse the dire poll numbers.

Maybe the “vast right-wing conspiracy” theory will get dusted off?  There’s a great Bleachbit joke possible there too.

This will get interesting.  You now have an “empty suit” asking an “empty pantsuit” for advice.

What could go wrong?

 

 

 

Sunny Days

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Lessons today, we have three.   Geography, English, and Math.

First, can you tell me how to get, how to get to the White House from Capitol Hill in DC?  Pennsylvania Ave. is a good guess.  But the correct answer is a quick shortcut-Sesame St.

Today’s lesson is brought to you by the letter B and later the letters R and D.  Let’s use the letter B in a sentence or two.  Do you know what BBR and BBB(short for Build Back Better) have in common? If you said two B’s that is correct.  Do you know what else?  Nothing!  Correct.  You’re off to a good start.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin(D) doesn’t have constituents that have much in common with BBB either.  Yesterday, he told Fox News that studied the bill and was going with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” when deciding his potential vote on the big, bigger, biggest government social and welfare handout attempted since Obamacare was railroaded through.

Some of Manchin’s fellow students disagreed with his learnings.  Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said, “While Manchin is exercising unusual power because of the numbers and is willing to be one man, one person that will hold up assistance to the American people, is absolutely disgusting and amazing to me.”

This brings us to the dreaded math session brought to you by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 50, 51, 1.7 trillion, 30 trillion, and 50 trillion.

One sometimes is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know.  But Manchin is doing something very similar to what John McCain did just a few years back when the GOP attempted to end Obamacare.  That is, he has the right and courage to stand up for what he believes in.  Refreshing.

She continued, “In that bill, we have the child tax credit, where we’re having to eliminate poverty for children in this country. I have in that bill money for housing. The cost of housing is exploding. We need to build affordable housing. We need to do something about homelessness.”   What about free lunches, too?  People get hungry, don’t they?

Did she forget that 50 Republicans are also against this government handout?  Probably not, but there’s that pesky letter D after Manchin’s name that so upsets her.  Cause 50 R’s plus one D equals 51.  And that’s the kill shot to the $1.7 trillion bill that Biden says will pay for itself.

Sure it would have, just like it only took to two weeks to slow the curve two years ago.  Now it’s three vaccines, not Maxine’s, and counting, but we digress.

Waters added, “I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to get away with this.”  Get away with what?  His right to vote for that which he thinks is right?

Put the bill up and let him stand before the American people and tell them that he does not support child care and climate change, and housing assistance for people who are desperately in need of rental assistance and the ability to have safe and secure housing.”

Sounds like this bill could have been the panacea for nearly all that ails Americans.  And more.

It even solves the largest existential threat to our country-climate change.   And, it is way, way cheaper than the $30-50 trillion bandied about during the Democratic Nomination process.

Back to geography we go. Doesn’t Manchin know that Miami is about to slip into the ocean?  Does he even care?

West Virginia is a long way from any rising waters. Manchin is in hot water with the Dems.  And Maxine Waters is, well Maxine Waters.

Can you tell me how to get…

Class dismissed.

 

 

 

 

Crime Solved

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Yesterday BBR posted content questioning what some cities and their leadership were doing about the ramp-up in flash mob theft.  We specifically cited Lori Lightfoot’s ignorant response(s) which put the responsibility back on the retailers.  Lightfoot is no gumshoe, but we digress.

We also observed that about twenty national retailers penned a letter asking the federal government for help.  Well, what do you know?  Yesterday, Jen Psaki, WH Press Secretary was asked what the reasons for this spike were and what help the Biden Administration would provide back to the local level.

“I would say, we have seen, I’m not going to attribute the reasoning from here,” Psaki said. “What I will tell you is we have seen an increase in crime over the course of the pandemic. There is a range of reasons for that.”

Psaki didn’t go into any of the range of reasons.  But she did cite the pandemic.  We are aware of several side effects of Covid-19 and its variants like the loss of taste and smell, but not the loss of merchandise in stores.   Who knew that planned robberies were a viral symptom?

What is even stranger is that this side effect seems to be acutely affecting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and Minneapolis.   All of these cities lead the way in mask mandates and social distancing.  We wonder if asking their police to stand down prior to the pandemic during the “mostly peaceful” protests could be a root cause as well.

Maybe.  “The president has proposed additional funding in the budget to make sure local police departments and cops have the funding they need,” Psaki said. “We also have worked directly with police departments in areas where they are seeing the highest impact of the crime, the retail theft—which we have great concern about.”

So, it seems that defunding the police and causing mayhem was the ticket to getting elected while refunding the police might be needed to get reelected.

Also.  “One of the root reasons of crime in communities is guns and gun violence, and we’ve seen that statistically around the country,” Psaki said last week.  Chicago might even agree.

No one asked her if any guns have been brandished during the smash and grab crimes.  They haven’t been.  But, it’s always a good day to take a shot at gun control that way when a store owner shoots a “victim or two” we can take to the streets again protesting these senseless shootings.

And finally.  She added: “Our focus is currently on doing what we can to make sure the funding is out there to the communities that need it the most.”

Which communities need it the most?  The ones cited above that elected them in the first place.  It’s always a good day to throw federal money at your local political bases.

So there you have it.  Just one day after asking, ye shall receive.

This is governance at its finest.

Problem day one, fixed day two.

Now, these cities can go back to enforcing the reinstated mask mandates to save even more lives.