Speaker Johnson was all set to put forward a three-month Continuing Resolution that is crammed full of things Americans didn’t vote for, including the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which has been illegally censoring conservatives for years. He was literally ready to give them more money and another year of life so they’d be in place when Trump took office.
You know what else was in there? A pay raise for members of Congress. But not a cost-of-living adjustment, or some “merit” increase (LOL). No, they were going to give themselves a FORTY-PERCENT RAISE.
These criminal do-nothings work a part-time job and were ready to make themselves millionaires over their time of service by jumping their pay from the current $174,000/yr. to $243,000/yr.
For what!?!
All these cretins do is hold ineffective hearings (basically show trials without any convictions), make speeches that no one listens to, and write strongly worded letters.
Can anyone tell me what positive legislation they’ve crafted recently to give me more freedom and let me keep more of my money?
In a statement shared with the Washington Examiner, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) office defended the GEC provision.
“Speaker Johnson has killed multiple efforts to pass a 5-year reauthorization of the GEC during the past year, including as recently as the National Defense Authorization Act last week,” a spokesperson for Johnson said. “This bill ensures the incoming Trump Administration has the maximum ability and authority to determine how to handle the office, its authorities, and funding.”
According to a congressional source familiar with the matter, the GEC provision was a demand from Senate Democrats in exchange for Republicans getting a provision aiming to protect small businesses from certain fines approved by the Biden administration under a bill called the Corporate Transparency Act.
Fortunately, president-elect Trump, vice-president-elect Vance, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy all called them out and it looks like the bill is dead. That’s a good thing, because our elected representatives—and “we the people”—are beginning to realize that it won’t be business as usual anymore.
We’re tired of getting ripped off and told to shut up by swamp creatures.
This guy gets it:
Throw Speaker Johnson out—he’s a weak leader. We need a bulldog with a spine like Trump in that chair.
I hit a milestone birthday last week, so I took a couple of days off from the blog to celebrate with family and friends. My favorite quote: “It’s weird being the same age as old people.”
Israel is gearing up for a ground invasion of Gaza, probably today. There’s a lot of mixed emotions being expressed on social media, ranging from “the Palestinians deserve it” to “what about the innocent women and children?”
It’s raised some heated conversations in this country as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have shown. It has also resulted in many elite college groups, particularly at Harvard, releasing statements of support for the Palestinians and Hamas and blaming Israel for the violence.
That led Bill Ackman, a Harvard grad and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, who has a net worth of $3.5 billion, to issue a call for Harvard to release the list of students in the groups so that CEOs won’t inadvertently hire any of them.
I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their… https://t.co/7kzGOAGwp9
The pro-Hamas Harvard groups that signed the letter are African American Resistance Organization, Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College, Harvard Act on a Dream, Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association, Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association, Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine, Harvard College Pakistan Student Association, Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association, Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association, Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society, Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine, Harvard Islamic Society, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine, Harvard Jews for Liberation, Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus, Harvard Muslim Law School Association, Harvard Pakistan Forum, Harvard Prison Divest Coalition, Harvard South Asian Law Students Association, Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research, Harvard TPS Coalition, Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective, Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo, Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance, Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association, Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society, Neighbor Program Cambridge, Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates, and Society of Arab Students.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the letter states, adding: “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.”
The letter has since been updated to remove the list of groups that signed it “for student safety.” [All emphasis mine.]
The Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools. But it’s not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas &…
The Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools. But it’s not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas. I’ve been as vocal as anyone in criticizing left-wing cancel culture (see my first book “Woke, Inc.”), but it’s bad no matter who practices it. It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive “DEI” pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel. This isn’t a legal point, it’s a cultural point. I say this as someone who vehemently disagrees with those Harvard student groups.
Those calling for blacklisting students right now are responding from a place of understandable hurt, but I’m confident that in the fullness of time, they will agree with me on the wisdom of avoiding these cancel-culture tactics.
I take issue with his first sentence that the student groups who co-signed the letter “are simple fools.” A “group” is an anonymized organization, not a person, and therefore cannot be a “simple fool.” Groups are made up of students led by one or more students and only such a student can be a simple fool. Calling a “group” foolish is really calling its leaders and / or its members foolish.
Secondly, what is this idea of being unproductive about? It’s “not productive” for a company to blacklist students? Why not? If I were a CEO, I’d wouldn’t want to hire someone who blames the cold-blooded murder, rape and decapitation of innocent civilians by barbaric terrorists on the victims.
If your ideology won’t let you distinguish between good and evil when it’s that obvious, maybe you have a problem distinguishing between right and wrong at any level. Or perhaps you have a different idea of what “right” and “wrong” are.
And finally, to criticize blacklisting as “wrong” in all cases is to reduce all perceived offences to the same level. Is he really going to argue that refusing to hire someone because they have the “wrong” political opinion (MAGA) is the same as refusing to hire someone who unequivocally and publicly supports the brutal killing of defenseless men, women, children and the elderly?
This, to me, is a perfect example of how convictions about what is right and what is wrong have been weakened in our contemporary culture. Ramaswamy says he’s making “a cultural point.” Well, at some point the “culture” needs to take a stand on good and evil. And when they do, it might look like blacklisting the overtly hostile instead of trying to “persuade” them that they’re wrong.
The “kids” (as Ramaswamy calls them) may have to learn a harsh lesson — that such extreme ideology has no place in a civilized society.
Like Kathy Griffin.
I’ve soured on Vivek. Nice guy with a lot of energy and some good thinking on some things, but he’s not my candidate, and his thoughts on this matter didn’t help.
We’re still 17.5 months away from the next presidential election, enough time for the Resident to do more considerable damage to the nation of which he is the titular head. I won’t say that he “leads” the U.S. because as we all know, he doesn’t have that capacity.
Nevertheless, we can begin fretting about how the political fight among Republicans will shape up and start making some observations. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and conservative radio host Larry Elder have officially declared their candidacies to be the Republican nominee for president.
Of course, the presumptive nominee to beat is president-in-exile Donald J. Trump.
Former President Donald Trump is likely to become the next U.S. president, according to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson.
“A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case,” Ferguson, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, wrote in a May 13 op-ed for The Spectator.
Ferguson explained that there is a “campaign of lawfare against Trump” but the effort “has already started to backfire.”
“It may seem paradoxical that the Democrats are harassing Trump in the courts if they want to run against him. But it makes sense: the prospect of him performing the perp walk attracts media coverage, and media coverage is the free publicity on which Trump has always thrived,” Ferguson wrote.
Ferguson added, “Every column inch or minute of airtime his legal battles earn him is an inch or a minute less for his Republican rivals for the nomination.”
We already know that the DNC, the media, NeverTrumpers and social media giants like Facebook are all in to prevent Trump from becoming president again, and they’ll abuse the law in service to that end if it keeps him out of office.
I’ve said before that the greatest service Trump did for the country, perhaps apart from appointing conservative Supreme Court justices, was to expose the Deep State and their lawless activities, even if he did it inadvertently. Did you see John Durham’s report yesterday? It proves that the FBI knew the Steele dossier was garbage, but they used it as a pretext to open the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether Trump was a Russian stooge. It also proves that Hillary Clinton was in on the scam from the start. Think anyone will go to prison for conducting a psyops campaign during a presidential election, or nah?
Norms status: R E S T O R E D.
If Trump wins the White House again, it will be the same harassment and false charges all over again to hamper any effectiveness he might have.
What about Ron DeSantis?
Ferguson also argued that if it were a two-man race between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, there would be “a good deal more uncertainty around the outcome,” given that the governor “still looks to be in contention” in head-to-head polling.
“When voters are polled about this crowded field, Trump is the clear frontrunner, leading DeSantis by an average margin of nearly 30 points, 52.1 percent to 22.9,” Ferguson wrote.
Currently, the Florida governor has not indicated when or if he will announce a 2024 White House bid.
I like what I’ve seen of DeSantis, but I also like what I’ve seen of Ramaswamy. As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m very mixed on Trump. Although if he’s the nominee, I’d crawl over broken glass and spilled vinegar to pull the lever for him.
As for the primaries, Ferguson notes that Republican candidates that have an early lead in the polls, as Trump does, typically end up the nominee. “Early frontrunners have won Republican primaries in six out of eight competitive races since 1972, when the modern system of primaries was introduced,” he notes. “The two exceptions were John McCain in 2008 and Trump himself in 2016.”
If Donald Trump maintains his current average polling numbers throughout the first half of 2023 but fails to become the Republican Party’s choice for the presidential nomination, he would become the highest-polling candidate ever to be unsuccessful in securing the nomination. So the odds are clearly in his favor.
As for the general election. Democrats assume that Trump can’t beat Biden — and that’s probably the only reason they’re tolerating nominating a vegetable for president — particularly in light of the results of the 2022 midterms. Of course, while Joe Biden likes to take credit for that, the abortion issue was a much more significant factor than Joe Biden.
Ferguson goes on to say that the economy will be a huge factor in the 2024 election and that, historically, “The Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election.”
I don’t know that post-2020 we can count on historical precedent. We now know that the government uses its political power to favor Democrats and that organizations like Facebook pump money into regions where they can harvest ballots on behalf of Democrats. We are becoming like the corrupt third-world countries run by tin pot dictators who hold political power by cheating and rigging and influencing the elections. I used to feel sorry for those people who voted in vain.
