“The constitution is on the president’s side and then there’s the facts: How do you incite a riot that was already planned? When you tell people at a rally to peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard?” – Congressman Jim Jordan
Elections have Consequences (as do Campaigns): Read the article entitled the “Secret History of the Shadow Campaign” below to see how prepared, funded, organized, and effective the left was in implementing their strategies. I was impressed and appalled at their success to frame the issue, and co-opt the public. I am stunned by our ineffectiveness in doing anything similar, to insure safe and fair elections. There are some very important “take-aways” in this article and I would encourage every activist to read it.
Blind Democrats: Pelosi & Schumer seem to have blinded most Democrats in their caucus regarding their responsibilities to represent their constituents. They are forcing these “sheep” to vote purely on party lines, ignoring their home constituencies. So where are the independent, moderate Democrats representing working class Middle America?
Any group of Democrats who could put together about 10-12 votes can control the House…talk about the power to change things…if they have the guts to represent their constituents!?!
How about a…
Democratic Energy Caucus: There are plenty of Democrats who represent states and constituencies that make America energy independent. Many represent the thousands of union workers whose jobs were killed with the killing of the Keystone Pipeline.
Democratic Auto Caucus: Talk about Middle America! Millions of Americans are represented by Democrats in auto manufacturing and auto supplier states and districts. The middle class was built on the Auto Industry…and the Green New Deal will kill the domestic auto industry.
Democratic Intelligence/Defense Caucus: In the last few elections a new slew of supposedly “strong defense” Democrats who served in the military and among our intelligence agencies won seats in Congress. They were going to “mainstream” the Democrats and make sure America was strong and ready to defend herself. Where are they? Where have they been? Democrats advocate cutting defense spending and gutting our intelligence services while creeping in a “1984” mode of domestic surveillance.
Democratic Civil Libertarians: There used to be Democrats who were fearful of big government, big brother, and other three letter agencies that could/would spy on Americans in the name of security & terror related concerns. Now they blindly back draconian legislation that could drastically restrict our freedom of thought, speech, and assembly.
Democratic Progressive Caucus: AOC (#AlexandriaOcasioSmollett) and her “squad” are loud, but don’t seem to have the guts to do squat! They get lots of coverage for threatening moderate Democrats and claim they can take out Democrats in primaries…but so far, other than scaring Schumer in New York…they speak (yell) loudly and carry a little stick.
Democratic Pro-First Amendment Caucus: No thanks, cancel woke culture prevails. Ministry of Truth?!?
Democratic Pro-Life Caucus: I guess not.
Democratic Pro-Second Amendment Caucus: In hiding.
Democratic Manufacturing Jobs Caucus: Hoping no one notices.
Democratic Balanced Budget Caucus: Say what?!?
Eventually Americans will see what happened to their parent’s Democratic Party…and they will look for an alternative. Republicans need to provide answers, programs, vision, and alternatives that matter to Americans across the board. As we have seen (and hopefully learned) elections are about choices and right now most of the country is frustrated and thinks there’s slim pickings.
Balance Budget Amendment: With Congress and the White House in the hands of progressive liberals, now more than ever we have to complete the effort to call for an Article 5 Constitutional Convention to pass a Balance Budget Amendment.
Join the effort at with the BBA Task Force which explains: The U.S. national debt ($24.6 trillion) is now 7 times federal revenue ($3.6 trillion), a serious imbalance that will cost us over $600 billion (16.5% of federal revenue) in 2020. We’ve already seen a $1 trillion spike in the 2020 deficit in just the last month as the Corona-virus stimulus starts to add up. It is hard to calculate where we will be at the end of the year, but the one thing we can say for certain is that it will be on for the record books.
The root cause of the problem was best explained by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee when it concluded, “the many statutory constraints enacted over the years to control spending failed because no Congress can bind a succeeding Congress by simple statute.” Therefore, only a balanced budget amendment (BBA) will do. Given Congress’ 75-year failure to propose a BBA, the states must do so by calling an Article V convention.
Join this fight to get a Balance Budget Amendment and it will be much less important as to what political party controls Congress.
Check out Senator Rand Paul’s “three-penny” plan, there’s an article below.
Florida Still Got It Right: Let’s learn from Florida! It was the first large state and battle ground state to announce its results on election night this last year with virtually NO controversy at all!
After the 2000 electoral debacle in Florida that made hanging chads famous, Florida created a bi-partisan commission to review its state laws and procedures to make sure something like that would NEVER happen again. It instituted a set of reforms that today makes Florida a model for the country.
At the very least…all the states that had controversies and confusion with regard to their voting process and procedures that contributed to this year’s electoral fiasco should consider creating a similar commission and passing reforms in their respective state legislatures.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada could go a long way towards restoring trust in our system of elections by doing a fair and open assessment of the issues raised and insure they are fairly addressed by new laws and rules where necessary. We have to have a process that EVERY voter in America trusts, win or lose, that continues this great tradition of a constitutional republic.
–Saul Anuzis
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60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
The 60 Plus Association launched the Accountability Project, Liz Cheney survives vote to remove her from GOP leadership, and John Kerry flies on private jet to battle climate change!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kerry-private-jet-iceland-climate-award
Biden’s first 10 days – here’s how he infuriated half the nation in record time
It took only 10 days to expose President Biden for the fraud that he is.
Joe Biden lied. He lied about wanting to bring the country together. He lied about trying to work “across the aisle.” He lied about being a “moderate.”
It took only 10 days to expose President Biden for the fraud that he is. That’s a good thing.
After the blitzkrieg rollout of 40 executive orders that targeted President Trump programs, kowtowed to progressives (and enraged conservatives) on hot-button issues like taxpayer funding of abortion and showed Biden’s disdain for our country’s system of checks and balances, Republicans have zero excuse for cooperating with the new administration.
Elections have consequences; the behavior of the winners has consequences, too.
First up: given Democrats’ fragile majorities in Congress, GOP legislators should be emboldened by Biden’s take-no-prisoners approach and push back hard against his $1.9 trillion “relief” package. The giant bill mainly provides relief to Democrats hoping to keep the House and Senate in 2022 by spewing cash to voters – employed and unemployed – even as the economy rebounds.
Will a Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?
Biden is advancing radical policies that most Americans do not support.
The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter-Reformation of reformist, and more zealous, Catholics.
The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring ’20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression.
The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.”
So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions — and sometimes counter-reactions.
Even Democrats Concerned!?! The Biden stimulus is admirably ambitious. But it brings some big risks, too.
President Biden’s $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief plan, added to the stimulus measure Congress passed in December with the incoming administration’s strong support, would represent the boldest act of macroeconomic stabilization policy in U.S. history. Its ambition, its rejection of austerity orthodoxy and its commitment to reducing economic inequality are all admirable. It is imperative that safety-net measures for those suffering and investments in vaccination and testing be undertaken rapidly after the indefensible delays of the last months of the Trump administration.
Yet bold measures need to be accompanied by careful consideration of risks and how they can be mitigated. While the arguments for providing relief to those hurt by the economic fallout of the pandemic, investing in controlling the virus and supporting consumer demand are compelling, much of the policy discussion has not fully reckoned with the magnitude of what is being debated.
I agree with the general consensus of progressive economists that it would have been much better if the Obama administration had been able to legislate a much larger fiscal stimulus in early 2009, in response to the Great Recession. Yet a comparison of the 2009 stimulus and what is now being proposed is instructive. In 2009, the gap between actual and estimated potential output was about $80 billion a month and increasing. The 2009 stimulus measures provided an incremental $30 billion to $40 billion a month during 2009 — an amount equal to about half the output shortfall.
The Challenge of Going It Alone
The last time we had a Senate divided at 50/50 was back in 2001. It only stayed that way until May of 2001 when Vermont Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords switched parties, giving Democrats 51 seats.
But, the make-up of the Senate was much less polarized than it is today. In 2001, 30 senators — 10 Republicans and 20 Democrats — represented a state that voted for the other party’s presidential nominee. There were blue-state Republicans like Senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, and red-state Democrats like Senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. Today, just six senators — three Republican and three Democrats — sit in a state where their party’s nominee for president did not win. In other words, 20 years ago, many more senators had a political incentive to work with the opposite party. In fact, when President Bush passed the 2001 tax bill through reconciliation, 12 Democrats voted for it and two Republicans voted against it. Today, reconciliation means it passes only with a party-line vote.
We also know that the two parties don’t just disagree on how to solve problems; they don’t even agree on the same set of problems. This wasn’t always the case, according to data compiled by Pew Research Center. “In 1999, improving the educational system topped the list of priorities for both Republicans and Democrats, and four of the top five issues for Republicans were listed among the Democrats’ top five issues as well,” wrote the authors of the Pew survey. “Ten years later, in the wake of the financial crisis, three issues (economy, jobs and terrorism) topped the list among both Republicans and Democrats (although they ranked them slightly differently).” By 2019, there was “not one overlapping priority between the top five priorities for Democrats and those of Republicans.”
The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.
A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”
In a way, Trump was right.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Don’t Quit on the GOP
The Republican Party is the only plausible electoral vehicle for right-of-center politics, and it is worth fighting over.
After losing a national election, it’s natural that a political party goes through a period of soul-searching and internal turmoil.
The Republican Party, though, has taken it to another level.
President Donald Trump brought most of the GOP along for the ride during his conspiracy-fueled attempt to overturn the election.
His loyalists have been scouring the landscape searching for Republicans to censure or primary for insufficient loyalty to him.
The most famous Republican House freshman mused not too long ago about a space laser starting the 2018 California wildfires.
And Trump has maintained his hold on the party seemingly effortlessly.
This dismaying chapter has led to declarations that the party is doomed or calls to split it up.
A former chair of the Washington State GOP wrote in an op-ed in the Seattle Times urging, as the headline put it, “Let’s form a new Republican Party.” This prompted a Chris Cillizza item at CNN headlined: “Should Republicans disband the GOP?”
There’s been a spate of articles by erstwhile Republicans announcing they are done with the party.
The QAnon Takeover Of The GOP Is A Fantasy Of Dems And The Media
There’s a big push right now among corporate media, Democrats, and NeverTrumpers to establish a narrative that the Republican Party is being torn apart in a bitter civil war between its establishment wing and its supposed QAnon wing. It’s about as true as your garden-variety QAnon conspiracy theory, but it’s politically useful, which is why you’re seeing it crop up all over the media right now.
According to this narrative, dangerous right-wing conspiracy theorists and QAnon acolytes make up a sizable portion of the GOP electorate and enjoy broad acceptance among many Republican elected officials and right-of-center media outlets. These people believe all the “lies” and “conspiracy theories” that Trump peddled after the November election—so much so that they launched an “armed insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed attempt to overturn the election results and maybe even kidnap Vice President Mike Pence or murder Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This “wing” of the GOP is so dangerous, we’re told, we need a 9/11-style commission to investigate what happened on Jan. 6, we might need a new domestic terrorism law, and we’re definitely going to have to figure out how to “de-radicalize” Trump supporters. Half the country has lost its mind, you see, which is why so many legacy media outlets have been publishing very serious essays on “MAGA extremism.” If we don’t address this now then MAGA white supremacist militias will terrorize America—like al-Qaeda, only worse.
Tune into NPR or CNN, browse the pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post, and you’ll hear all of this discussed in detail, ad nauseum. But it’s pure fantasy, almost a kind of conspiracy theory of its own, akin to the years-long conspiracy theories about Trump’s collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, which Democrats and the press still cling to despite zero evidence after years of investigations.
Speech and Sedition in 2021
The progressive press decides that dissenters should be suppressed.
Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”
The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”
We highlight this as one example among many of the emerging appetite for viewpoint suppression among journalists, intellectuals and Democrats in the wake of the Trump Presidency. They increasingly see domestic enemies wherever they look, and are devising ways to use levers of power to restrict, regulate and boycott opposition. It’s an extraordinary and ominous turn in a democracy.
***
Many calls to sanction opposition media come from voices that claimed to be most alarmed by Donald Trump’s attacks on the free press. Margaret Sullivan, the Post’s media columnist, wrote this week that “corporations that advertise on Fox News should walk away,” declaring that the outlet’s “role in the 400,000 U.S. lives lost to the pandemic and in the disastrous attack of Jan. 6” has been “deadly.”
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times called for “pressure on advertisers to withdraw from Fox News so long as it functions as an extremist madrasa.” He added that “cable providers should be asked why they distribute channels that peddle lies.” A CNN writer asserted that providers like Comcast “have escaped scrutiny and entirely dodged this conversation.” By conversation he means political bullying from the left.
Thomas Friedman in the Times also called for a business boycott of some Fox News shows and announced that Facebook needs to “surprise us by once and for all stopping the elevation—for profit—of news that divides and enrages over more authoritative, evenhanded news sources.” (Fox and the Journal share common ownership.)
Only non-divisive sources will be allowed, such as those that compare popular media outlets to an “extremist madrasa.” A former Facebook executive was more straightforward when he said on CNN, “we have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.”
Bipartisan support emerges for domestic-terror bills as experts warn threat may last ‘10 to 20 years’
An apparent bipartisan majority of the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday endorsed the idea of new laws to address domestic terrorism in the wake of last month’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, as experts warned such internal threats would plague the country for decades to come.
Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of homeland security for counterterrorism during the Trump administration, warned lawmakers that there is a “high likelihood” that another domestic terrorist attack would occur in the coming months and that the problem would persist “for the next 10 to 20 years.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told lawmakers that Jan. 6 had been a “watershed moment for the white supremacist movement,” and that its adherents viewed the Capitol breach as a “victory.”
Their comments came during the committee’s first hearing in its investigation into the riot that has moved House Democrats and 10 Republicans to impeach the now-former president for an unprecedented second time. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), indicated that he expected its probe would result in concrete legislation to punish and dissuade such attacks, and better monitor and regulate the environments in which extremist ideologies proliferate.
10 ways to fight back against woke culture
I realize the faddish thing to say these days is that we live in the worst, most broken and backward country in the world and maybe in the history of civilization. It’s utter nonsense.
I have a few basic litmus tests in my own life: Can I wear a tank top in public? Can I walk down the street holding the hand of my partner, a (beautiful) woman, in many places in America without getting a second glance? Can I wear a Jewish star without fear?
I do not take those things for granted. I know very well that in many other places, the answers would be different, and my life wouldn’t be possible at all.
America is imperfect. (Does it even need to be said?) There is bigotry toward blacks and gays and Jews and immigrants; there is intense polarization; political violence is becoming more regular; elected representatives believe conspiracy theories. All true here as in many other countries being torn apart by the dislocations of the 21st century.
But there is no gulag in America. There are no laws permitting honor killings. There is no formal social credit system of the kind that exists right now in China. By any measure, we have achieved incredible progress and enjoy extraordinary freedoms. And yet people aren’t acting that way. They are acting, increasingly, like subjects in a totalitarian country.
Sen. Tim Scott: COVID taught us this lesson — school choice matters more than ever
It is not a coincidence that support for school choice is steady and growing amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the last year, the coronavirus pandemic has forced families of all backgrounds to make impossible choices.
People’s lives and livelihoods have been upended; we’ve changed the way we engage in our communities; and schools across the country have been shuttered, presenting unexpected challenges for working families. While the impact we’re feeling now is immediate, the unintended consequences of keeping our young people home for a year will be felt far into their futures and the future of our country.
According to a study released last summer by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 41 percent of children in my home state of South Carolina are being raised in single-parent households.
School closures forced parents—many already working one or more jobs—to take on the additional full-time job as at-home teachers. And in the case of single parents, some were forced to quit their jobs to stay home with their children.
uWhile kids of all ages have been asked to stay out of the classroom in favor of safer “virtual learning,” families in rural and low-income neighborhoods know that this only works for dthose with reliable home broadband access.
There is no practical form of virtual learning for one in ten South Carolina households without reliable internet access, more than one-third of rural Americans without access to home broadband, or one-quarter of children living in Opportunity Zones without access to a computer with Internet.
Sen. Rand Paul’s three-penny plan would balance budget in five years after debt grew $4.4 trillion in 2020
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is offering an alternative budget plan that would cut three cents out of every federal dollar spent every year for five years, bringing the budget into balance by 2026, at a time when the U.S. added more than $4.4 trillion to the national debt in 2020 alone to $27.8 trillion.
Overall, the plan would cut spending by $67.4 billion in 2022, and over 10 years would cut $7.2 trillion. In a summary provided by Sen. Paul’s office it notes that the longer Congress waits to address the fiscal state of the nation, the worse it will get.
The summary states, “When Senator Paul first introduced a, flexible, off the top budget, simply freezing spending was all that was required to balance in 5 year.” That is why, per the summary, “To reach balance, this budget must cut 3 pennies each year for 5 years.”
Sen. Paul is not wrong.
An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2020 Election
Check it out….interesting.
