Mad King Ludwig says pigs will fly

 

You're going to see billions of dollars, even trillions of dollars coming into our country very soon in the form of tariffs.

-- here, 3/25/25, and here

Reagan Democrat, who turned Republican in 1985 but remained an immigration liberal, Lincoln Diaz-Balart has died of cancer at 70

Former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart dead at 70: Former south Florida congressman fought Fidel Castro regime

 

... The Diaz-Balart brothers hail from a prominent family of prerevolutionary politicians who fled Cuba when Fidel Castro took power.

Their grandfather, father and uncle served in Cuba’s House before the family fled to the United States in 1959, the year of the revolution, when Lincoln was 5.

His father’s sister was married to Castro in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but they divorced and a falling-out between the families ensued. ...

May he rest in peace.

Cowardly Republican stooges, but I repeat myself, dummy up on UN vote and Trump appeasement, but Cocaine Mitch comes through

 

 Republicans mostly mum on Trump’s upending of Russia policy: Some spoke out against Putin, sidestepped Trump 

... The two votes on Monday were the latest sign of a dramatic reversal of America’s bipartisan policy since World War II of standing diplomatically and militarily with Europe to defend against the threat of Soviet and later Russian aggression.

It is a shift that congressional Republicans have, with very few exceptions, silently watched unfold.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, issued the most fulsome GOP dissent to date against President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine.

McConnell, in a statement, called Trump’s unfolding policy reversal “disgraceful” and “unseemly” and suggested it was a reprise of the appeasement that led to World War II.

“‘Peace for our time’ is a noble end, but hope that appeasement will check the ambitions of this aggressor is as naïve today as it was in 1939,” McConnell said, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark after signing the Munich Agreement and Germany’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. “America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all.”

Such a “hollow peace,” he said, would “invite further aggression,” a reference primarily to the lesson China might take away from a demonstration of wilted U.S. resolve.

... virtually no GOP lawmakers besides McConnell have directly criticized Trump’s emerging plan . . ..

 

Trump's two-faced positioning on the H-1B Visa Program in 2024 is mirrored by his two-faced positioning on DACA from 2015

 

 Trump was NEVER all-in about his immigration positions, which went back and forth from the beginning. 

People forget that he and Ann Coulter had a knock-down drag-out fight in the Oval Office about immigration sometime in late 2017, early 2018. The newly elected president had done NOTHING about the border wall, deportations, and the Dreamers. He had used her book about immigration to distinguish himself from the numerous other GOP candidates and get himself elected, and promptly tossed her aside like all the other women he has cheated on.

Trump is nothing if he's not a user.

People also forget the blow up in August 2016 before he was even president, when Trump toyed publicly with the idea of a DACA amnesty. NeverTrump noticed:

Donald Trump ... is suddenly embracing the idea of working out a way to give legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been here a long time and have kept out of trouble. ... Trump's latest comments that it makes no sense to deport millions of people who have lived in the U.S. for a decade or more -- which constitutes two-thirds of the undocumented immigrants here now -- are a far cry from what he had been saying for the previous 14 months.

MAGA ignored this. Conservatives like Coulter were demoralized, months before they were actually betrayed. Trump only narrowly defeated Hillary. 

And few remember how he blew himself up in the 2018 elections, losing the House, in part because he used DACA as a bargaining chip in early 2018 in a failed attempt to get his wall funded, shutting down the government in the process. His lone achievements in his first two years were a modest and temporary tax cut package, and a massive defense spending bill to restore what Obama had gutted.

The legions of disaffected young men hoping Trump-Vance would bring a new era of opportunity for native born Americans over cheaper foreign workers are sadly experiencing buyer's remorse because of Trump's capitulation to the Tech Bros, discovering anew that Trump is the snake in the parable he always used to talk about on the campaign trail.

Welcome to hell part deux.

 

This is pretty funny

 

Trump’s second administration set to be filled with losers 

 At least 17 of his picks have previously lost elections:

Marco Rubio

Linda McMahon

Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Doug Burgum

Doug Collins

Pete Hegseth

Scott Turner

RFK Jr

Lee Zeldin

Matthew Whitaker

Tulsi Gabbard

Dr Mehmet Oz

Pete Hoekstra

Mike Huckabee

Dave Weldon

Vivek Ramaswamy

Karoline Leavitt

 

Beltway Republican David Winston for Roll Call wants 2016 to have been about the economy when it was about illegal immigration

 

This slight-of-hand reasoning is how Trump got co-opted by the GOP in 2017 in the first place, and it's how they're going to co-opt him again should he win. Beltway Republicans love, love, love immigration, so the top issue cannot, must not, be that.

 In 2016, the economy was the top issue, just as today . . ..

Here.

Trump's controversial 2015-2016 message was immigration, immigration, immigration for 14 straight months, until Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway got a hold of him in August 2016.

Trump barely won.

Trump's unfavorables were indeed high, but not because Hillary drove them there as Winston says. People forget that Trump did that all by himself. He ended up underperforming John McCain 2008 in 12 states and DC.

Trump was an insurgent candidate who exploited division within the GOP to capture the nomination. The 2016 primary popular vote for Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich exceeded Trump's 13.3 million.

That division has subsided, but it has never gone away, and Winston is one of the other side's smooth operators who still want to change the subject to anything else but the issue staring everyone in the face, from working class Americans now competing with 8 million new illegals for wages to upper class suburban denizens of Massachusetts being told to cope with hordes of new students in public schools they never designed to accommodate this flood.

That's the issue confronting voters, not Trump's Kangaroo Kourt Konviction, about which David wrings his hands.

If there's any vengeance in American politics about which we should be upset in 2024, Joe Biden's open southern border is surely it.

Biden's doing the same thing as Obama in making the 2020 crisis spending the baseline for his future spending proposals

 Obama did it in 2009 and Republicans acquiesced, running trillion dollar plus deficits for four straight years until Republicans enforced some fiscal discipline in Obama's second term.

The author below, a Republican, doesn't mention that.

Will Republicans acquiesce again?

If they do, the national debt will easily swell to in excess of $51 trillion by 2033, from $31 trillion at the end of 2022.

From the story, "Trillion-dollar deficits: Biden’s new normal":

The president and his White House have taken the 2020 COVID-19, one-time-only crisis budget as his administration’s working baseline, rather than the pre-Covid 2019 budget, which had a significant $4.4 trillion price tag.

In 2020, because of the pandemic, the budget jumped 47 percent to $6.5 trillion, as both Democrats and Republicans supported the need for emergency funding. That COVID funding was to sunset as the country returned to normal — as it did last year. Apparently, Biden decided to ignore that crucial point.

$2.2 trillion Build Back Butter bill Democrats insisted would cost nothing CBO estimates would cost $367 billion over ten years

 

 

 

 

 

 

So-called Democrat moderates in the House voted for it anyway, 220-213, undermining Republican claims their votes could be peeled away once the infrastructure bill had been passed separately.

Between the $250 billion cost of the infrastructure bill and the $367 billion cost of the Build Back Better bill, the optimistic CBO estimated combined ten year costs will dig a $617 billion hole in addition to the $6.8 TRILLION in fiscal year deficits for 2020 and 2021 spent since the onset of the pandemic to alleviate it.

The pandemic spending orgy, which was bipartisan, makes this all seem like a kerfuffle about relatively little.

Already pared back from $3.5 trillion or more in spending, the BBB faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The wild spending dreams of progressives may have been dashed, but anyone who pretends any of this makes any sense is crazy.

The country is currently holding at $28.9 TRILLION in debt, and is set to explode higher pending the raising of the debt ceiling. 

From the story: 

The final outcome wasn't much in doubt after centrist Democrats' deficit concerns largely melted away.

The vote came hours after the Congressional Budget Office issued its official cost estimate of the sweeping legislation, which moderate Democrats eagerly awaited to ease their concerns over the fiscal impact. The Biden administration and Democratic backers of the bill have insisted it would pay for itself and not add to federal deficits.

The nonpartisan CBO, the official scorekeeper, offered a cost estimate with a little wiggle room. It said the measure would increase deficits by $367 billion over 10 years — but that doesn't count additional revenue that could come from increased IRS tax enforcement.

How much new revenue that effort would yield has been hotly debated. The White House has said increased enforcement, aided by an additional $80 billion in IRS funding, would produce $480 billion in new revenue over a decade. The CBO took a more cautious view, saying the effort might produce $207 billion.

Bipartisan Senate infrastructure plan authorizing $550 billion in new spending passed the House late last night and goes to Biden for his signature

The bill was opposed in the House by almost all Republicans, and by six far-left Democrats who were outmaneuvered by thirteen moderate Republicans who threw their support to the plan, which 19 Republican US Senators had voted for earlier this summer. 

The House progressives had insisted that the infrastructure plan be voted on together with Biden's social spending plan in order to force moderate Democrats to go along with the latter. The House Republican votes for the Senate bill ended up thwarting that linkage, making it even more likely that the House version of the social spending plan will have to be much less ambitious.

A small group of House Democrats have insisted the Congressional Budget Office score the impact of the separate social spending plan, which would have been standard operating procedure under Republicans but which Democrats under Pelosi have been avoiding until now. They don't give a damn about the true costs. They've even claimed absurdly a $3.5 trillion social spending plan will cost NOTHING. Ha ha ha ha ha.

That ranks among the most shameless attempts to change reality through a talking point ever attempted.

Whatever comes out of the House on that will face the hard scrutiny of Democrat Senators Manchin and Sinema regardless. 

Roll Call:

The bipartisan bill would reauthorize surface transportation and water programs for five years, adding $550 billion in new spending. 

It includes $110 billion for roads, bridges and major projects; $39 billion for transit and $66 billion for rail; $65 billion for broadband; $65 billion for the electric grid; $55 billion to upgrade water infrastructure and $25 billion for airports.

WaPo:

The bill includes more than $110 billion to replace and repair roads, bridges and highways, and $66 billion to boost rail, making it the most substantial such investment in the country’s passenger and commercial network since the creation of Amtrak about half a century ago. Lawmakers provided $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply and replace lead pipes, $60 billion to modernize the power grid and billions in additional sums to expand speedy Internet access nationwide.

Many of the investments aim to promote green energy and combat some of the country’s worst sources of pollution. At Biden’s behest, for example, lawmakers approved $7.5 billion to build out a national network of vehicle charging stations. Reflecting the deadly, costly consequences of global warming, the package also allocates another roughly $50 billion to respond to emergencies including droughts, wildfires and major storms.

LGBT activist pissed off Census Bureau finds same sex households are only 1 percent of total in USA

“It’s significant progress and we are excited about it, but we’re really missing quite a lot of community data,” said Meghan Maury, policy director for the National LGBTQ Task Force. ... [C]ensus officials raised concerns that mistakes stemming from people who did correctly identify their gender may have inflated the number of same-sex couples in the country.

More here.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan's former spokesman calls for increase to Congressional pay

Your man or woman in Congress is already in the top 3% of wage earners in America, but it's not enough, says this guy. Republicans carry the Democrats' water, every damn time.

Congressional pay raise amendments roil House:

Brendan Buck, former spokesperson for onetime Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., tweeted his support for a pay raise Friday.

“Congressional member and staff pay should be increased. I know that sounds bad, and makes for bad politics, but it’s just true. No, current member pay is by no means paltry, but it is too low, and it’s having a negative effect on Congress,” said Buck.

National Popular Vote passes in Colorado: First you drug the people, then they give away their freedom without a care

You lose your country by degrees. Colorado is the 12th to go.

Colorado joins effort to elect presidents by popular vote, go around Electoral College:

Although Colorado has trended more solidly Democratic in recent elections, the state represents the first traditional swing state to join the effort. Every other state in the compact has voted for the Democratic presidential candidates in every election since at least 1992. ...

The other states that have signed on since 2007 are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia. ...

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, only 19 percent supported changing the system, down from 54 percent in 2011.

Democrats were a mirror image, with 81 percent supporting an amendment to switch to a national popular vote, up from 69 percent five years earlier.

Diversity: The Jews and the Muslims are havin' themselves a war . . . in the US House

I still say we give the Muslims Washington State, the Jews Florida, we take over the entire Middle East and let Disney run the Bible Lands concession.

A Jewish Republican accused a Muslim Democrat of anti-Semitism, she accused him of Islamophobia

Hey Drudge he called in the cavalry, not "Calvary"

"Jones Brings in Cavalry to Boost Black Turnout in Alabama Senate Race"

Judicial overreach: 3-judge panel invalidates 3 Texas congressional districts, 2 Republican, 1 Democrat

Never mind every congressional district in America is a joke.

There is no way one man or one woman can claim to represent the interests of 743,126.4 people, on average, as is the case now countrywide.

Texas has 36 men and women representing nearly 27 million in the US House, but 254 counties. Give Texas 254 seats in the House, and representation would increase to 106,299.2 Texans per member of Congress, on average. Who knows, the members of such a Congress might actually knock on your door every two years.

Do the same with the rest of the country and we could dispense with legislatures redrawing district lines every ten years after every Census, and more importantly with meddling courts trying to interfere in the politics of self-government.

The county system is ancient, venerable and stable. Black counties will have black representatives, Latino counties Latino representatives, and so on, just as it should be.

The time is long past to reform representation in the United States so that we actually get some for a change. Not coincidentally, that's the main impediment to it.

From the story here:

[T]he court ruled that the legislature drew the lines with “the intent and effect of diluting Latino voter opportunity.” ... [T]he court said the legislature used race to draw the lines, packing Democrats into the district and thereby diluting their voting power elsewhere. The court also ruled that the legislature pushed Hispanics into the district in an effort to defeat Doggett if a Hispanic candidate challenged him.

Hillary call your office: Jason Chaffetz sends letter to AG Sessions asking for grand jury or charges against Bryan Pagliano

Story here.

Self-hating liberal elitist appalled how little rural America travels to experience other cultures . . . on America's coasts

The guy's a boob . . . from Ohio:

"When you are in the white bubble, you just don’t know it."

The guy's so ignorant he doesn't even know that Americans are the second most traveled people IN THE WORLD, right behind #1 Finland. And they actually do most of their traveling within the country, contrary to the thesis.

Besides, if Americans want to visit a third world hellhole, they already know they don't have to travel abroad. They can just head over to Chicago's Chatham neighborhood, or West Englewood.

Just bring a gun.

Speaker Ryan is still disgraceful, small and weak, still tiptoes up to "regular order" instead of demanding it

And the opposition can smell the weakness.

The job of Speaker is much too big for little Paul Ryan, who appears to have not one single fight in him.

From the story here in Roll Call:

Minibuses would break up the 12 individual spending bills into a few small packages rather than lump them into a single omnibus bill. Ryan has argued that passing minibuses is closer to regular order and would make the appropriations process more digestible. But he's privately acknowledged that such a strategy would likely result in some bills not getting done, leaving the agencies covered by the unfinished measures in need of a continuing resolution to extend funding through the remainder of the fiscal year.

Three Cheers For Dana Rohrabacher: Christian Love Is Furthered By Individual, Not Government, Action

Quoted here at 218, the blog of the oligarchy:

"No. 1, a policy of legalizing the people who are here, the sort of easy way out, would in the long run put 40 million new people into our country, which would change the nature of our country, and that would be a bad thing, not to mention breaking the bank, etc."

“Also, my response was that Christian love is not furthered by advocacy of government policy but instead by individual action and commitment."

“Individual commitment is not individual commitment to changing a government policy, it is to come out and help specific people and people who are in need, and if [the pastors] really wanted to help people who are here illegally or in bad situations they, they want to pay for their health insurance and everything, then I would be saying how wonderful that is. But if they are advocating that the government do that, then it will break our bank and destroy our country.”

Roll Call Magazine's 218 Blog Embraces The Oligarchy

"218: Because it's the only number that really matters in the US House."

Yeah, and that's the problem.

Current population: 316.8 million.

Implied representation on the constitutional formula rejected by the anti-Federalists: 10,560 US Representatives in the US House.

Preferred level: 21,120 in the US House. Let 'em camp in tents on FedEx Field.