Politics

Right On Cue

by

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I expected trump would be demanding searches at Pres. Biden’s home over news that documents had been found in a locked closet in an office he used from 2017-2019, and according to The Hill, he’s fired his first salvo:

Trump himself sounded a similar theme on social media.

“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?,” he asked on Truth Social.

In the same article, The Hill also notes that the House of Representatives has formed an investigatory committee on the “Weaponization of the FBI” and predict that it will be used to investigate the Biden document situation as well.

The panel, which is in essence looking into what Trump calls “the Deep State” and what his critics say is a conspiratorial fiction, was created on a straight party-line vote. The panel is sure to probe deeper into the Biden documents.

Read more

Lying Liar Lies Some More

by

I’m beginning to wonder if George Santos, the Pinocchio of the House of Representatives, has ever been caught doing or saying anything honest.

According to CNBC, one of his fund-raising tactics for both his 2020 and 2022 Congressional campaigns was to have someone from his staff call wealthy donors and impersonate Dan Meyer, who is Kevin McCarthy’s Cheif of Staff.

CNBC also reported that the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan watchdog group, has filed a complaint with the FEC with questions about how Santos was able to loan his own campaign $705,000 when he only has a middle-class income. Among the CLC’s concerns are the possibilities that he

…violated federal campaign finance laws by engaging in a straw donor scheme to knowingly and willfully conceal the true sources of $705,000 that Santos purported to loan to his campaign; deliberately reporting false disbursement figures on FEC disclosure reports, among many other reporting violations; and illegally using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, including rent on a house that Santos lived in during the campaign.

In addition, there are concerns that because he has been concealing the sources of his donations that he may have taken donations from corporations or foreign nationals, both of which are illegal for Federal candidates.

Given the sheer number of other lies Santos has told, it’s appropriate that his finances should be given a very close look, as it seems that politicians lie about money more than anything, except maybe sex.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

by

As you’ve likely heard by now, former President Trump has been under investigation for having removed several classified documents from the White House as he was leaving in 2020 and may be facing serious legal consequences because of them.

He was asked to return them by the National Archives and, when he failed to return all of them, the FBI searched his home at Mar-a-Lago to try to find the rest. He has spent the last several months bitterly complaining that the documents are his (they aren’t) and must be returned immediately (they won’t be.) He’s said that he declassified them (but left no record of his having told anyone about it, which is an important step.) He also filed a suit to try to stop the investigation, but the suit was dismissed by the District Court.

Read more

A Taste of Things to Come

by

Several Representatives watching as Rep. Hudson (R-NC) pulls Rep. Rogers (R-AL) back - with his hand on Rep. Rogers face - from confronting Rep. Gaetz (R-FL) after he votes "Present" on the 14th attempt to elect a House Speaker.

If you’ve been awake at all this week, you’ve almost certainly heard about the colossal mess the Republicans have made of the House Speaker election. Sadly, this photo from earlier this evening, showing Rep. Hudson (R-NC) pulling Rep. Rogers (R-AL) back from Rep. Gaetz (R-FL), is about as good of a representation as any of what we can expect from the 118th Congress.

After 15 rounds of voting, the House appears to have finally elected a Speaker of the House, and – surprise! (not) – it’s Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has been super transparent about his desire to be Speaker for at least the last 2 years, if not longer, and the Freedom Caucus of the House has used that desperation to great effect. pushing McCarty to make a large number of often significant concessions to buy their votes. Unfortunately, it’s not just McCarthy who will be paying that bill. It may be a bit before we know exactly how much he’s truly given up and how much it will cost us, but it’s not going to be cheap.

Now, let’s see if they can get a rules package passed so they can actually start doing things.

Can Viking Virtues Defeat “Wokeness”?

by

Arthur Herman, writing at Fox News, is concerned about the “plague of CRT and wokeness”, but he thinks it’s about to end:

The return of Bob Iger to leadership at Disney, and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, are signals that the leftist madness that had seized America’s biggest corporations is starting to turn around. Americans are also more aware than ever that this systematic attack on American culture, history, traditional institutions, and the American family has benefited communist China

He also thinks he has the solution for the “leftest madness” (aka progressive policies) – he thinks that conservatives need to adopt more Viking virtues.

I would suggest that the key for doing this can be found in the virtues that brought the first Europeans to the shores of North America, despite the risks and uncertainties — namely the Vikings. The virtues that sustained those intrepid explorers, traders, and settlers, in the world’s most dangerous waters, are precisely the ones Americans will rediscover in 2023.

What kind of virtues does he ascribe to the Vikings? According to Herman, they are the spirit of entrepreneurship, an instinct of workmanship, commitment to family, and meeting all challenges with agility and bold innovation. How do these values challenge progressive policies? It’s not terribly clear, especially since the values he cites are hardly exclusively conservative values. What do I mean? Well, let’s take a look at a couple of his examples.

Read more

%d bloggers like this: