For what it’s worth
Renee Parsons
If there is one heads-up from the Biden SOTU is that the 2024 election campaign is going to be one hell of a dirty street fight; the Democrats are not just having a bad hair day with its widespread unconstitutional censorship, support for street violence, civil chaos at all levels and disruption of public society. Even before Biden’s announced attack on American institutions, it was obvious that the Ukraine war was always a foil to destroy Russia and Vladimir Putin in particular.
Like the Bolsheviks before them, the Democrats are in this domestic conflict to seize full and total control of the Federal government, collapse its independent judiciary and will not stop at whatever else must be done, whatever it takes to accomplish the conquest. Besides a litany of invented propaganda, half-truths and lies, Biden’s bombast contained a locked-in-time-and-place quality; as if he was still fighting communists from the 1950’s.
As if a warning forward to the 2024 political era, a recent musical discovery from the turbulent 1960’s provided a prelude-of sorts to the chaos that may be expected that has percolated to the surface today. Unfortunately not enough people of deep insight were paying attention to hear the message beyond its lyrics.
If ever there was incentive to encourage Republicans to get their campaign act together, Biden’ s State of the Union speech should have pushed them over the edge. While it was no surprise that he provided a one dimensional recitation with no real analysis of the State of the Union, no insights into the country’s well-being.
A normally doddering old man, his outlook was absent any executive order on immigration or the southern border, exhibited no worries about a cyber attack, a failed grid or a sleeper cell come awake and that J6 ‘insurrectionist’ was the ‘gravest threat to democracy since the civil war.’
Instead there was praise for public school teachers, the country’s largest union which will deliver the Democratic vote and acknowledging the US on the international stage as the originator of Forever Wars.
The most striking element of the evening was Biden’s cite of FDR’s WW II alert to the country as if to predict the US was about to experience a similar “unprecedented moment to Wake Up Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary time.”
Satisfying the Dems bloodlust is always popular as he alleged “Putin of Russia is on the march” and “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not.” Further assuring continued hostilities in Ukraine, with all the bravado he could must, “I will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.” The Ukraine war is not just any military conflict; it is an existential conflict as NATO ‘s last stand as a US proxy in its adversary war against Russia.
Surrounded by a wildly cheering throng of true believers, including female House Democrats who dressed in white as if to convey images of The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian view of a futuristic America which may already be on our doorstep. The House floor atmosphere reeked of a mindless partisan pep rally with Biden frequently slurping his words, could have claimed the moon made of blue cheese as that group of unhinged leftist syncophants would have shouted their robotic praise.
There was nothing philosophical that suggested Biden’s thought process on how he makes decisions, if he is the decision-maker. He was totally lost in his own ill-conceived agenda that the current maelstrom of upheaval throughout the country remains a mystery to him as it is to much of Congress, with no understanding that the majority of Americans have seen through the pretend narrative.
Propagating the fantasy of a blue collar Democratic party which has otherwise transfigured itself into a revolutionary Socialist cadre, Biden preached from his perch as the Oracle of DC delivering prophecies to the awaiting pagans, promising he was “delivering results in fiscally responsible ways; we’ve cut the federal deficit over $1 trillion” which was in total denial of the fiscal realities threatening a default on the debt.
Days after the Supreme Court delivered a 9-0 vote maintaining Trump’s right to be on the Colorado ballot, Biden dared to directly threaten the Supreme Court on abortion “With all due respect, Justices, women are not without … electoral or political power,” adding off the cuff “You’re about to realize just how much …” to audience hoorays and standing ovations as the Justices remained impassive.
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To add further chaos at about the same time Biden was spinning multiple deceits, after seventeen years as Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky) announced he will step down after the November election when a new minority (or majority) leader is selected. The question remained open of why he is allowed to prolong the agony of maintaining a handicapped coercive leader as the only top Republican leader who did not endorse President Trump for re election.
As the Senate mechanically rubber stamped a 1,000 page appropriation bill for a mere $460 Billion filled with Pelosi spending levels and Schumer woke policies, Republicans are desperately in need of a fully functioning leader better aware of today’s political realities The 63-35 vote included the usual fourteen RINOs who frequently vote with the Dems. Without Republican ‘cooperation,’ the funding resolution would have failed on a 49-49 tie vote.
Earlier, the Senate approved the Continuing Reconciliation which had previously been adopted by the House in an effort to avoid a government shutdown as if the wheels of government would grind to a halt thereby stalling the embedded administrative staff from dominating the federal bureaucracy. HR 4366, the Consolidated Appropriations Act was adopted on a 75 – 22 vote with a colossal 25 Republicans voting with the Democrats.
It should be a puzzlement how those Democrat-voting Republicans are from Red Republican states which can only be attributed to an apathetic, unengaged constituency.
Leadership candidates Sen. John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas) who frequently vote with the Dems, voted to support the CR. Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo), also a leadership candidate was Not Voting.
Similar floor debates in the Senate have not captured the same level of attention as the House which has long been a bastion for being more obstreperous as it is referred to as the People’s House rather than the more egalitarian ‘upper house’ Senate; although they share a legislative stature, the House initiates impeachments and ‘raising revenue’.
It is no secret that under the aegis of Sen. Mitch McConnell as leader of the Senate’s Republican caucus, the Senate lost its stature, losing its eminent edge over the years and is no longer internationally recognized as the world’s most esteemed judicial government agency on Constitutional law and legal issues.
None of the RINO candidates have yet displayed real leadership qualities when it mattered or can be expected to provide alternative political resistance as authentic governance on the debt ceiling or fiscal imbalance irretrievably tied to military conflict or rescue the country from the clutches of the McConnell/Schumer foreign policy directives.
Senators Mike Lee (Utah), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky) and Sen. Rick Scott (Fl.) questioned the 6,000 earmarks buried within the CR with an accumulated cost of $12.7 billion to American taxpayers. Sen. Scott, who challenged McConnell in 2022 is also an announced candidate for Leader and voted against the CR as did Lee and Paul.
Multiple Continuing Resolutions were opposed by those fiscally responsible members of Congress who favor single subject spending bills, who are alarmed at the $35 Trillion debt along with the $2 trillion deficit which is expected to increase $1 trillion approximately every 90 days. The full implications of the disintegration of the US, hitting an economic rock bottom has not yet been explained sufficiently to the vast American public which assume tweedle dee and tweedled dum will be ever present to bail them out as everything works out for the best.
Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.