Message to Congress: Balance the Budget

I hope you and your family are recovering from the caloric overload you experienced on Thanksgiving Day.  Now you have piles of leftovers and lots of uneaten turkey but be creative!

Turkey gumbo is one of our favorites, and my Louisiana-born wife did get the know-how from her mother.  And turkey salad is great as is turkey chili, turkey tacos, or grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches.  It’s a simple matter of taking what you have and making something good from it.

I believe we ought to run the government somewhat like what we do in dealing with Thanksgiving Day leftovers.  Instead of whining about the government we wish we had, use the one we have but be creative in making it work. 

Instead of continuing to borrow ridiculous sums of money and boosting the national debt higher than the Sears Tower, take the money we actually have collected and limit our budget and spending to that amount.  It’s what American families do every month.  It’s what small business owners do to stay in business.  And it’s what 49 of the 50 governors do with their state budgets that law requires them to balance each year.  It’s not easy, but neither is it impossible.  It’s why I’m on the board of the Balanced Budget Amendment Committee, comprised of several former and current governors and senators, and business leaders who are fed up with debts piling up with no responsible plan whatsoever to pay them back.  I have little to no hope that Congress will ever impose a balance budget amendment upon themselves, but it doesn’t leave the American people powerless to make a change.

There is a provision in our Constitution that allows for the people to propose and pass an amendment to the Constitution.  Doing it to force Congress to do what every individual and business has to do is not too much to ask.  It’s not an easy process and it shouldn’t be, but it’s become a necessary one. 

The Balanced Budget Committee has already cleared over 30 state legislatures and is very close to the number of states required to pass it in order to then get it ratified and voted on by the citizens to make it the law of the land.

This is not a Democrat or a Republican issue.  No citizen regardless of party affiliation should want to see our nation slide into bankruptcy because of reckless spending often done in order to buy votes by a showy and extravagant spending bill.  Spending money we don’t have and borrowing money we can’t afford to pay back hurts every American, but especially younger Americans who are the recipients of the burdensome debt long after there will be any benefit to their generation.

I hope you’ll be vocal in supporting the Balanced Budget Amendment and equally vocal to your Congressmen and Senators in asking them to support a federal mandate to balance the budget just like it currently exists in 49 of the 50 states.  As a Governor, I would have been breaking the law if I led the state in spending money beyond the budget and the revenues we had.  It was sometimes unpopular to have to make cuts to budget items when the economy was in a recession, but the law forced us to be responsible and not obligate future generations for spending money for which there would be no benefit to those future generations.

In the meantime, I would propose that Congress pass a law that withholds Congressional paychecks until Congress passes a budget and certifies it’s a budget balanced to actual revenues.  It’s the way the real world works.  And it’s time Congress is forced to live and work in the REAL world like the rest of us!

Another electoral win

Public opposition to the left’s economic destruction, hostility to individual rights, and wide-open borders has been growing for some time. Now, the worldwide explosion of violent, pro-Hamas protests in such once-unlikely places as Ireland seems to have awakened voters to the dangers they’ve allowed into their homes, and we may be seeing a worldwide blowback of epic proportions, accompanied by ever more hysterical reactions from the left.

Last week, it happened in Argentina. Now, leftists are foaming at the mouth over last week’s election in The Netherlands, where the typical Euro-greenie leftist they expected to win was crushed by longtime foe of unfettered Islamic immigration, Geert Wilders, and his Party For Freedom. We’re hearing from the left that the public’s rejection of their insane and suicidal policies in favor of a political outsider who promises to secure the borders and enforce the laws means that “democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are under siege!” Gee, where have I heard something like this before?...

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/11/23/dark-dawn-a-threat-to-society-our-9-11-left-mourns-as-populist-veteran-geert-wilders-wins-landslide-election/

For those wanting some background, Mark Steyn has plenty, including a column he wrote in 2010 about how Wilders was getting death threats (he’s also under 24-hour police protection due to a fatwa being placed on him for opposing Islamic immigration) while the Dutch government was trying to imprison him with a kangaroo trial for “incitement” for opposing their leftist policies. Again, where have I heard something like this before?

https://www.steynonline.com/13943/is-there-non-far-right

And despite all that demonization and political prosecution, Wilders just won a landslide election. I hope I hear something like that again…

Pelosi and Kerry: Beware the second-generation propagandists on the left

Did you know that Nancy Pelosi has a daughter who produced a documentary on January 6 while her mother’s “select” committee was presenting one carefully-edited side of that event?

And did you know that environmentalist jet-setter and major CO2-emitter John Kerry has a daughter who rivals him at presenting outrageously misleading statistics as an excuse to meddle in every aspect of life?

Before the release of Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary, THE INSURRECTIONIST NEXT DOOR, on HBO October 15, she appeared on (where else?) THE VIEW to promote it among her like-minded friends.  Here is that segment, though I warn the weak-of-stomach who choose to watch it that you might want to take something ahead of time to ward off nausea.

https://youtu.be/Ln4wruy-6NE?si=Rbic3yGuoIna_vu3

Pelosi II equates Trump supporters with religious cult members. Trump has the “cult of personality,” she says, and they have “this religious attachment --- that’s still not broken --- to HIM, personally.”  When Joy Behar asks her why it’s religious, Pelosi II refers to a crass remark Trump was recorded saying years ago and says, baffled, “But he’s still their savior, that’s what I mean!”  Their lack of repentance in court is, to her, evidence of this religious fervor.  (Never mind that they honestly don’t think they did wrong and have policy-related reasons to think he was a great President.)

Since Pelosi II brought it up, we have to ask if she’s ever wondered what it meant when Oprah and others of similar inclination called Barack Obama “The One” and “The Light Bringer.”  Sounds pretty worshipful.  And I’d hesitate to characterize the many Christian Trump-supporters as believing in Trump as Savior.  As I’ve explained repeatedly, I can support Trump on policy alone precisely because, unlike Democrats, I DON’T look to any politician to be my Savior. Moving on…

Pelosi II insists that a small core group was serious about getting the “normies” to “burn the city to ash today” because that was in a tweet.  (Never mind that crowds of leftists have for the past few years actually been burning cities, not just gotten excited and tweeted about it.)  The core Trumpies were getting them “all fired up,” she said.  (Never mind the allegations and emerging evidence that the FBI was playing a role as well in getting them fired up, not to mention the proof that Pelosi II’s own mom refused Trump’s offer of National Guard troops.)

“We need to agree to a set of FACTS,” she concluded, “and when Republicans say, ‘Oh, they were all just tourists,’ no.  This is one of the darkest days in American democracy.  They weren’t tourists, because I saw --- one of the people in my film --- people were accused of literally pooping in the United States Capitol.  Okay?  That actually happened; I saw it with my own two eyes.”     

Now, if we’re all going to agree on a set of facts, Pelosi II needs to speak more precisely.  Did she mean she saw a protester accuse someone else of defecating in the Capitol, or that she personally saw it happening?  If she saw it happening, would she be able to identify that person?   If someone did it, what does that have to do with the “tourists” who wanted to take selfies in the Capitol?  Was the person who allegedly did it an actual Trump supporter (as Pelosi II is assuming) or an Antifa plant?  Or perhaps it was some other plant?  How are we going to agree on the facts when they are this sketchy?

And by the way, is Pelosi II seriously going on record to say that public defecation is wrong, when her mom represents San Francisco?  (Somebody has to ask these things.)

Anyway, since we’re quite devoted to facts ourselves, we looked into the story about the, um, soiling of the Capitol building and traced the allegations to Chuck Schumer’s office.  A “Schumer insider” told it to the NEW YORK POST, who duly reported it on January 8, 2021.  They also said Hakeem Jeffries had asserted there was “urine...clear desecration.”  But consider the sources, known for distributing plenty of figurative poop themselves.

And ask: With all the security cameras inside the Capitol --- approximately 44,000 hours of video --- would there not have been be any video evidence?  Was anyone charged with such vile vandalism?  (If they did this, they certainly should have been!)  No one can prove it didn’t happen, as that is not possible, but why did this story essentially go away for years until Pelosi II brought it up again, unchallenged, last month on THE VIEW?

https://nypost.com/2021/01/08/rioters-left-feces-urine-in-hallways-and-offices-during-mobbing-of-us-capitol/

Speaking of facts, it’s the GOP-led committees that are trying to get all the facts, after Nancy Pelosi’s “select” committee selected the ones they wanted and sliced-and-diced them for public consumption.  It’s taken this long to get all the security camera video released.  How can we ever agree about what happened unless absolutely none of it is withheld?  Thanks, Republicans!

If Pelosi II truly thinks of January 6 as “one of the darkest days in American democracy,” as she said on THE VIEW, she certainly was being disingenuous with those to whom she spoke while courting them to get some good stuff for her movie.  In some surreptitiously-recorded video, she’s seen animatedly telling one January 6 defendant, “After the Democrats lose the House [in 2022], and then they get rid of the committee, people may lose interest.”

“The first trials are going to get a lot of attention”… “It’s like [an] anniversary, the first one is no big deal”… “No one’s gonna care after the Democrats are out of power… “And then take Biden out of office --- then who cares?”… “I know you’re not the bad guys…” “If it was an insurrection, you were supposed to have a plan…” “You’re going to be able to laugh about this one day.”

Yes, she actually said this to a January 6 defendant.

https://twitter.com/CarlosSimancas/status/1728395876777807993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctw

Sounds like she doesn’t really believe January 6 was “worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 put together,” or even that it was an actual insurrection. Like her mom (I suspect), she just plays someone who believes that on TV.

….

Now let’s talk about our other second-generation propagandist, John Kerry’s daughter Vanessa, or, as we’ll call her, Kerry II:

“We’ve learned, with great, great understanding in the most recent years, that the climate crisis is a health crisis,” says Kerry II.  “And already, we see 7 million a year dying from air pollution, for example.  That’s more than we saw in the entire COVID pandemic over three years, and that’s one person every five seconds, so that by the time I complete my next sentence, someone else will have died.  And we see this in every aspect of health, the way climate change is impacting our lived experience.  So there’s a very real opportunity for us to have a health-centered approach to climate change and to be able to ensure that we’re protecting how we live, how we breathe, how we walk, and what we can do in our lives…”

Yes, “climate” activists would like nothing more than to link climate change to a health emergency, because that would give them the ticket to CONTROL what we can do in our lives.  But let’s have a show of hands: does anyone see a problem with the statistics cited by Kerry II?

That’s right, class!  With all the variables involved, there is absolutely no way realistically to determine that 7 million people died from air pollution, let alone that their deaths had anything to do with “climate change.”  This is a spurious argument.  Kerry II makes vague reference to the number of deaths from COVID over three years, another statistic that’s impossible to state with accuracy but that is, according to her, apparently smaller than the number dying from air pollution.  But is lung damage from air pollution a risk factor for COVID?   If so, are people dying from air pollution or COVID?  A combination of both?  Would COVID have killed them anyway?  Or are increased deaths (if there are indeed increased deaths) caused by something else?  All we have are alleged correlations.

You see the problem.  Kerry II seems to know about as much about how “the science” works as her father does, which is to say not much.  But she sure knows how to make emotional appeals.  On the bright side, if she and dad can share private-jet rides to their various conferences, they’ll put out half as much air pollution as they would have otherwise.

https://rumble.com/v3y04le-climate-change-will-be-the-w.h.o.s-skeleton-key-for-total-control.html

A discussion of our third second-generation threat will have to wait for another time. That’s Alex Soros.

12) A Gift Guide from Dave Barry

Now that Cyber Monday is here and Christmas shopping season has officially begun (I may be a relic of a bygone age, but I still don’t believe in starting Christmas festivities until after Thanksgiving), here’s that annual Christmas tradition: humorist Dave Barry’s gift guide for 2023:

https://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/gift-guide/article281011198.html

And to get you into a Christmas mood for real, here’s our writer Laura Ainsworth in her other job as an award-winning retro jazz singer, performing the original lyric of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Give it a listen, a like and a share, I know you’ll love it. You can also find it on all your favorite streaming and download services, to add to your holiday music lists.

https://youtu.be/lFTz3QG7EBs?si=qk25VeldXV8sp48i

 I JUST WANTED TO SAY: 

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