Fall Guys Column: Now is the autumn of Democratic discontent Matthew Continetti

https://freebeacon.com/columns/fall-guys/

President Joe Biden practically begged a group of moderate Democrats visiting him in the Oval Office Wednesday to say how much money they are willing to spend on the massive “Build Back Better” reconciliation bill making its way through Congress. According to Politico‘s Playbook, he didn’t get an answer.

The 11 moderates, including Senator Joe Manchin and congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, insisted that Democrats agree first on how much revenue they will raise in taxes before settling on a price tag on a bill that would transform energy, health care, higher education, pre-K, and paid leave. A disappointed Biden assigned the moderates homework: Come up with something that will stop Progressive House members from killing the separate, $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package that already has passed the Senate and is scheduled for a September 27 House vote.

Best of luck. In another meeting Wednesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pulled a Wendy Sherman and broke into tears while pleading that the reconciliation bill include an immigration amnesty (the Senate parliamentarian has said it can’t). Jayapal urged Biden to delay Monday’s vote or be prepared for Progressives to nix the infrastructure deal. Biden didn’t give in, but he did leave open the possibility that the vote won’t take place on September 27 as planned.

Yet any postponement would create new problems for the White House. House moderates have pledged to sink the reconciliation bill if they don’t get to vote for infrastructure first. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes. And the Senate is tied, with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema still cagey about what they want to do. And oh, by the way, Congress needs to fund the government before September 30 and raise the debt ceiling before mid-October. Is your head hurting yet?

Democrats have run smack into political reality, and it isn’t pretty. They spent months convincing themselves that a presidential election decided by 42,000 votes in three states, a tied Senate, and a 220-212 House (with 3 vacancies) is the same as FDR’s and LBJ’s supermajorities. Now they are just figuring out that the coalition that put them into office doesn’t agree on much of anything besides the idea that Donald Trump shouldn’t be in the White House.

Now the autumn of 2021 is turning into a reckoning for a Democratic Party that wanted to leverage a squeaker election into fundamental change. Like their predecessors in 1993 and in 2009, frontline House Democrats have to decide whether supporting a liberal agenda is worse for their careers than denying a president of their own party a legislative win. Either way, they lose.

Chance, guile, and missteps put the Democrats in this position. They hardly could believe their luck when Trump’s sour grapes cost the GOP two winnable seats in Georgia and handed Vice President Harris the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. What they forgot was that full control of government is a mixed blessing: Your partisans expect the sun, moon, and stars, while independents have no one else to blame when things go wrong. A Republican Senate might have given Biden a foil, and a reason to govern as the centrist he pretended to be during the campaign. Instead, he has no wiggle room. Thanks, Trump.

IRS would track all bank transactions over $600 under Biden plan; businesses revolt A letter signed by more than 40 trade associations calls on Congress to reject the proposal, saying it violates customer privacy and would create an incredibly expensive and elaborate reporting requirement for banks.By Casey Harper

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/irs-would-track-all-bank-transactions-over-600-under-biden-plan-businesses-revolt

A major component of President Joe Biden’s plan to raise revenue to pay for his trillions of dollars in new federal spending is now under fire from trade associations across the country.

The Biden administration has made clear its plan to beef up IRS auditing by expanding the agency’s funding and power. Biden’s latest proposal would require banks to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service bank account information for all accounts holding more than $600.

In a sharp pushback against the proposal, more thn 40 trade associations, some of which represent entire industries or economic sectors, signed a letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) raising the alarm about the plan.

The letter, which includes the support of several banking coalitions, calls on Congress to reject that requirement, saying it violates customer privacy and would create an incredibly expensive and elaborate reporting requirement for the banks.

“While the stated goal of this vast data collection is to uncover tax dodging by the wealthy, this proposal is not remotely targeted to that purpose or that population,” the letter said. “In addition to the significant privacy concerns, it would create tremendous liability for all affected parties by requiring the collection of financial information for nearly every American without proper explanation of how the IRS will store, protect, and use this enormous trove of personal financial information. We believe that this program is costly for all parties, not fit for purpose, and loaded with potential for unintended and serious negative consequences.”

Fox News Runs Devastating List of Every Single Current Biden Controversy, It’s Worse Than You Think By Kipp Jones

https://www.westernjournal.com/fox-news-runs-devastating-list-every-single-current-biden-controversy-worse-think/

“The good news: There are just under three and a half years left of this madness — if we’re lucky.”

Fox News on Wednesday ran a scroll listing the many controversies plaguing the Biden administration during its eighth month, and the moment really put things into context.

We’re in deep trouble.

Not that we didn’t already know our country has descended into complete chaos. That much has been obvious for some time. It’s everywhere you go, actually.

Grocery stores, gas stations, airports and the passable portions of the country’s southern border are all reminders of how terrible President Joe Biden has been for America.

Walk by a TV, though, and the larger picture comes into focus.

That was especially true on Fox News when “America Reports” anchors Shannon Bream and John Roberts rolled out a list of the ongoing crises, tragedies and other disasters plaguing the country and its inept leadership.

“It’s been eight whole months, but it looks like the honeymoon is over,” Bream said while Fox viewers were reminded of the many failings of the Biden administration.

A graphic displaying “current controversies” scrolled upward as the pair commented on the 18 different issues the network had keyed in on. Bream declared that not even the “mainstream media can ignore” all the trouble.

Joe Biden: Tax Tyrant, Tax Cheat, Tax Hypocrite

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/27/joe-biden-tax-tyrant-tax-cheat-tax-hypocrite/

If there were any doubts that the Democrats are closeted authoritarians who sometimes crack the door and reveal their urge to rule like autocrats, all should have been removed last week when President Joe Biden yapped about federal tax policy.

“I’m running to change the dynamic of how the economy grows,” he said. “I’m tired of trickle-down. Trillionaires and billionaires are doing very, very well.”

First, as has been noted elsewhere, there are no trillionaires in the U.S. It shouldn’t be too much to ask a U.S president to know this, but Biden, afflicted with a sharp cognitive decline and a long history of wild embellishment, is no normal president.

Second, it’s not up to Biden to change the “dynamic” of how the economy grows. That’s not his job. An economy grows organically, through the spontaneous, non-coerced actions of free people. Central planners cannot command an economy to expand. Biden was elected to be the CEO of the federal government, and to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, not to carry out his personal preferences. 

Furthermore, Biden has neither the moral nor constitutional license to meddle in private affairs and employ authoritarian means to abolish something simply because he’s tired of it. He is not a king whose whims are law.

An objective media wouldn’t let him get away with making statements in which he makes threats the way a monarch would. But our press is largely along for the ride with the left. They want Democratic presidents to have czar-like powers.

Had he stopped at his “tired” comment, Biden would have been in a deep enough hole, at least with those who aren’t members and patrons of the ruling class. But there’s never been a governor on his tongue, so he continued to dig, insisting the wealthy should be taxed more.

Pelosi Goes for Broke Focused on her legacy, the Speaker pushes Democrats to take votes that will end careers in 2022.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-pelosi-goes-for-broke-house-spending-bill-democrats-senators-joe-manchin-kyrsten-sinema-11632690894?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Can Nancy Pelosi bull-rush her few House moderates and Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema ? That seems to be her strategy this week as she prepares to jam a $3.5 trillion (really $5 trillion) tax and spending bill through Congress.

Mr. Manchin recently wrote in our pages that he favors a “strategic pause” on the spending bill to assess its economic impact and take more time to debate specific policies. Sounds sensible. But Speaker Pelosi doesn’t do pauses, especially in what she views as her legacy project to turn the U.S. into a European entitlement state.

She keeps moving on the spending bill she calls “transformative” to appease her left flank. The Budget Committee marked it up this weekend. She’s hoping this movement will be enough to pass the Senate infrastructure bill through the House this week. Her expectation is that passing that bill will be enough to buy off the swing-district Democrats to sign up for her entitlement project. These Democrats haven’t shown any backbone to date, so it’s a reasonable bet.

The bigger imponderable is whether she and President Biden can bludgeon hesitant Senators into submission. Mrs. Pelosi promised her caucus any bill will be pre-negotiated with the Senate before a vote. But she may have to break that pledge, and many House Democrats have already taken votes in committee that could end their political careers in 2022.

For Mrs. Pelosi, legislative success on her terms is all that matters. The party’s fate in 2022 is incidental, since she’s likely to retire and once entitlements are in place she figures Republicans will lack the fortitude to repeal them. The Speaker will keep marching even if it breaks her own majority.

The War against Woke Communism Thomas D. Klingenstein

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-war-against-woke-communism/

Now is the time to stand boldly for American justice.

This excerpt is from Claremont board chairman Thomas D. Klingenstein’s speech, “Winning the Cold Civil War.” Responses will follow in the days to come.

In a traditional totalitarian regime, the government uses arbitrary violence to control every aspect of public and private life, all the way down to little league. In America, the government does not control everything. But today, through the power of the purse and the courts, the government influences a lot. And where the government leaves off, the cultural business complex takes over.

Education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, especially big tech, are to varying degrees aligned with the Democratic Party, which is now controlled by Woke Communists. These institutions together with the government function as a totalitarian regime, crafting narratives that advance their agenda and suppressing those that do not. Instead of violence, there is canceling. This may not look like a totalitarian regime, but it acts like one. Last summer’s riots are a case in point. Woke Comm agitators sparked the flame that lit the riots. Their intellectual leaders justified the riots; their corporate donors gave billions to the Black Lives Matter network; their media looked the other way; and their politicians, from Joe Biden on down, fanned the flames.

What is Woke Communism?

Like any regime, Woke Communism is built on a particular understanding of justice. For the woke comms justice is outcome equality. That is, all identity groups proportionately represented in all aspects of American life. So for example, the woke communists believe that blacks, who count for about 13% of the population, should have 13% of the nation’s chief executive officers, prisoners, heart attacks, wealth, top test scores, homes, corporate board seats, school suspensions, and everything else you can think of.

Life along the border collapses as Biden fiddles by Salena Zito

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/life-along-the-border-collapses-as-biden-fiddles

Take all of the imagery you have seen of the over 14,000 Haitian migrants camped under an international bridge in the small Texas border town of Del Rio and add the complications of disease, public excrement, unbearable heat, and heightened frustrations. It has led to violence that has injured Border Patrol officers .

Now close your eyes and imagine it is 100 times worse.

Because that’s what it is, said Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, the freshman Republican who represents 42% of the border. The overwhelmed city of Del Rio had been in a rapidly deteriorating crisis situation when illegal immigrants first began surging into the community in January, but Gonzales now says the situation here is a “Category 5” and that the environment is unlike anything he has ever seen before.

“I arrived here today to pure chaos,” he said. “I’ve never seen it in this environment. There literally is no border left.”

Gonzales said Del Rio is in dire straits. “There’s no doubt there’s COVID here, there’s measles, tuberculosis, all kinds of diseases,” he said. “You’ve got kids running around in nothing but diapers. A handful of port-a-potties — my God, the stench is terrible. This is not good for the migrants. It is not good for the residents. It’s not good for wherever our government is sending them in the interior of the country.”

It’s fake news that the Maricopa audit proves Biden won By Andrea Widburg

/www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/its_fake_news_that_the_maricopa_audit_proves_biden_won.html

UPDATE: The Cyber Ninjas document is not final. I’ve clarified this post to reflect that fact.

Democrats are strutting because the final Cyber Ninjas audit in Arizona showed that “[t]he auditor’s final hand count—which quadruple-checked every single one of the 2.1 million ballots—matches Maricopa County’s official machine count.” Big whoop. For those complaining about irregularities in the 2020 election, the question was never about miscounting. Instead, it was about the claim that an inordinate number of the ballots in the Joe Biden pile didn’t come from real people. Instead, they were alleged to have been faked—and the audit confirms almost 60,000 wrongfully counted ballots that could easily switch the Arizona Electoral College vote from Biden to Trump. No wonder Cyber Ninjas says the Arizona result should not have been certified.

There are two documents at issue here, one of which is a purported final draft of the executive summary from Cyber Ninjas, which I’ll get to in a moment, and the other of which is a cover letter that Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate President, sent to Mark Brnovich, the Arizona Attorney General. I quoted above from Fann’s cover letter, which offers the meaningless conclusion that a hand count matched the machine count. That’s what the MSM (including Fox, which you may remember was the first to call Arizona for Biden) is crowing about.

However, the same letter, in a small bow to honesty, also points out systemic problems with election security. The five bullet-points can be summarized this way:

absentee ballots were inadequately verified,
voter rolls do not match the ballots, as well as showing duplicate and dead people,
amateurs oversaw election technology and machinery they didn’t understand and misused,
private companies had the passwords to the vote-counting machines, and
election officials deleted material making it impossible to do a truly accurate audit (or, in legal terms, they deliberately spoliated evidence, which I’m guessing might be illegal under statutory requirements that all voting data must be preserved for 22 months after an election).

What should we make of the 2020 election audit in Arizona? By Bill Weckesser

http://://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/what_should_we_make_of_the_2020_election_audit_in_arizona.html

Of course, President Trump had to lose.  He was an existential threat to the entire liberal project.  In retrospect, Trump’s four years set our betters on their ears.

Trump’s trade and immigration policies didn’t result in a global economic meltdown — as the experts on both sides of the aisle forecast.  Instead, they helped reduce American unemployed, especially among minorities, to record levels.

Trump’s energy policies didn’t usher in an environmental Armageddon.  Instead of the Green New Deal, Trump’s energy deal contributed to lower energy costs and, thus, higher disposable income for our country’s lowest earners, motivating the Saudis to consider selling Saudi Aramco, the key source of the kingdom’s wealth.

Trump’s foreign policy didn’t bring war.  Instead, North Korea realized it had options.  Terrorists were terrified.  And, perhaps most unbelievable, peace broke out in the Middle East.

Our betters, the establishment, the leaders in both parties have told us for decades that none of this was possible.  To even a casual observer, it must have looked as though the wrong folks had been in charge.  So Trump had to be dispatched.

That brings us to the Maricopa County election audit.  Clearly, thousands of illegal votes were counted correctly.  The “leaked” lead story — GOP audit shows Biden wins.  The establishment, or uniparty, looks to have had its hands all over the presentation of the data.  This “leak” on Citizen Free Press shows at least 42,727 votes (categories 1–3) that look traceable to mail-in fraud.

This meshes nicely with Time Magazine’s admission that there had been a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes” between business and labor — code for Republicans and Democrats.

Times Reveals FBI Role in January 6 One thing is certain; the Times’ damage-control article is just the tip of the FBI iceberg. And more proof January 6 was an inside job. By Julie Kelly

The New York Times often acts as the spin cycle for the Democrats’ dirty laundry. For years, Times reporters have helped get ahead of damning news, especially when it’s related to the Russian collusion hoax, in an attempt to establish the narrative early.

A recent example is the Times article downplaying the pending indictment against Michael Sussman, the Clinton campaign lawyer who acted in cahoots with the FBI to seed the collusion tale before the 2016 election. The article was published the day before Sussman pleaded not guilty of lying to the FBI.

On Saturday, the Times published a carefully constructed bombshell intended to soften the blow of an explosive scandal in the making: the FBI had at least one informant among the group of Proud Boys who marched on the Capitol on January 6. The informant, according to “confidential documents” furnished to the paper, started working with the FBI in July 2020 and was in close contact with his FBI handler before, during, and after the Capitol protest. 

“After meeting his fellow Proud Boys at the Washington Monument that morning, the informant described his path to the Capitol grounds where he saw barriers knocked down and Trump supporters streaming into the building, the records show,” reporters Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman (the Times reporter most responsible for priming the ground for news that was unfavorable to the Russia collusion narrative) wrote on September 25. “In a detailed account of his activities contained in the records, the informant, who was part of a group chat of other Proud Boys, described meeting up with scores of men from chapters around the country at 10 a.m. on Jan. 6 at the Washington Monument and eventually marching to the Capitol. He said that when he arrived, throngs of people were already streaming past the first barrier outside the building, which, he later learned, was taken down by one of his Proud Boy acquaintances and a young woman with him.”

In other words, one of the informant’s Proud Boy “acquaintances” was removing temporary barriers to allow a crowd to enter the restricted grounds around the building.

Sounds legit.