Nancy pelosi

Democrat gets bitten by fox — and hypes the CDC

Authorities have finally done something about the aggressive, rabid critters that lurk around our nation’s capital and slink from their dens on the Hill to assault honest people for no good reason. Cockburn has encountered all sorts of such creatures on various Capitol Hill pub crawls, but the type the police just decided to address was neither a blundering elephant nor an indignant jackass. Neither was it a Blue Dog, one of those endangered porcupines that rarely appear in the Swamp, nor even a squawking chicken hawk. It was a red fox. A cute little lady fox with a majestically bushy tail, black-tipped ears and feet, white markings on her chest and muzzle, and shining black eyes. People first started posting images of the fox on Monday.

Do House Democrats want cities to die?

The Democratic Party is out of the office. Quite literally. Nancy Pelosi, who controls administrative policy in the House, this week extended the in-office moratorium and proxy voting through the middle of May. Pelosi says she based the policy on the recommendation of the sergeant-at-arms who wrote that there is still an ongoing “public health emergency due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 remains in effect.” Quite the contrast to the president’s message. Pelosi's extension follows reporting from the Washington Free Beacon last week that most Democratic offices in DC remain shut, citing Covid-19 pandemic and workplace restrictions as the reason.

Bono’s ‘poem’ was an insult to the craft of verse

From our UK edition

Poet', said Robert Frost, 'is a praise-word'. So it is. That explains in part the unabashed delight with which Colm Tóibín, speaking in our current Book Club podcast, talks about publishing his fine first poetry collection Vinegar Hill – decades of international acclaim as a novelist notwithstanding. Poetry is a high-status artform, perhaps the highest. Yet unlike most other artforms, very many people seem to think of it as something that anyone can do. You wouldn’t expect to be able to write a symphony, or build a suspension bridge, or win Wimbledon, without many years of apprenticeship and intimate attention to the work of those who have excelled in those things.

Democrats double down on wasteful foreign aid

The latest version of the Democrats' $1.5 trillion spending bill being pushed through Congress includes funding for questionable foreign projects, such as "gender programs" in Pakistan and democracy building in authoritarian nations. According to a section of the bill outlining State Department funding for the year, an unspecified portion of the nearly $4 billion available in bilateral economic assistance — meaning direct transfers from the United States to other countries — shall "be made available for programs to promote democracy and for gender programs in Pakistan.

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Nancy takes a knee for Beijing at the Winter Olympics

Nancy Pelosi, stock-trader extraordinaire, doubles as an adviser to America’s Olympic athletes. And her wise, nuanced advice to them is simple: “Shut up.” It would be a very bad idea, she says, to voice any political criticism at the games of the Chinese Communist Party or its glorious rule. You may have missed her similar advice to LeBron James, as he kissed the backside of Beijing’s dictators. You may have missed her critique of the NBA, as it protected its highly-profitable franchise in China. They were as compliant as any US multinational operating in Germany in the 1930s, eager to retain their profitable operations.

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Nancy rides again

Long live the gerontocracy: Nancy Pelosi will seek reelection in 2022. The House speaker, who turns eighty-two in March, announced her move in a Twitter video. “While we have made progress much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives,” Pelosi said. “Our democracy is at his because of assaults on the truth, the assault on the US Capitol and the state-by-state assault on voting rights.” “This election is crucial: nothing less is at stake than our democracy,” the speaker continued. “But as we say: we don’t agonize, we organize! And that is why I am running for re-election to Congress and respectfully seek your support.

nancy pelosi

New Year’s resolutions for the political class

If you think politics was insufferable in 2021, just wait until the New Year. The midterms are around the corner, so before the incessant campaign ads begin, I’d like to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for our political class. Let’s start at the top with the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Perhaps Joe, who as usual is on vacation in Delaware, could begin 2022 off by firing his speechwriters. I have long suspected that saboteurs lurk in the White House. Who in his right mind would put the word “Galapagos” into a Biden speech? There is a double agent in the Biden-Harris administration who is trying to trip up the 79-year-old — so whoever it is needs to hear two of the last president’s favorite words: “You’re fired.

Biden is losing America

From our UK edition

Plummeting polls are sending a clear message to the Biden administration, but the President is deaf, dumb and blind to it. And it's not just the polls. Take congressional retirements. Democrats who chair congressional committees, reading the grim poll numbers, figure life will be a lot more comfortable as highly paid lobbyists than as powerless minority members. They are retiring in droves. Historically, retirements by well-informed insiders are strong predictors of the next House majority. Local elections are sending the same message. They tell Democrats they have moved too far left and that voters’ quality of life is suffering. Voters are especially troubled by inflation, Covid and crime.

The Democratic distraction

Ten months into Joe Biden's presidency, he finds himself sitting at the lowest approval rating of his time in office, most recently due to massive inflation and supply chain issues. The Democrats have a novel solution to their crumbling popularity: avoid tackling any of the actual issues facing American families, continue their political obsession with pinning the January 6 riot at the Capitol on former president Donald Trump. Democrats ignore the fact that the FBI found scant evidence that January 6 was some massive conspiracy and that some bad actors had already made their way to the Capitol building and were pushing down police barriers before Trump concluded his so-called "inciting" speech.

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Congress: worst anime ever

Yes, yes, I know Congress has a lot to worry about these days. But have you seen the anime edit videos? Over now to Crazytown's favorite son, Congressman Paul Gosar, who this week found himself on the butt end of a censure hearing. His crime? He had retweeted an anime video that depicted a likeness of himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword before also attacking Joe Biden. This was, according to the scrupulously nonpartisan Nancy Pelosi, an "emergency," worthy of a criminal probe, and possibly a threat to the republic as we know it. We're 100 words in and already you may be thinking: what in God's name is wrong with the United States Congress? If so, be assured that this is a perfectly healthy rumination and one you should keep repeating on a near-constant basis.

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Nancy Pelosi is losing her grip

Top Democrats took a media victory lap last weekend, crowing about the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that finally cleared the House on Friday night after months of false starts and intra-party squabbling. The vote came only after Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her latest Hail Mary, attempted to satisfy progressive lawmakers by also allowing a procedural vote on the massive social spending bill craved by liberals. Even then, Pelosi was forced to rely on a handful of Republicans to secure a majority. Predictably, the White House was eager to spin the bill’s passage as major win for the Biden agenda, claiming it would energize voters and pave the way for trillions more in government spending just in time for the holidays.

Who asked Meghan Markle to save Build Back Better?

Could a helping hand from a considerate royal help Nancy Pelosi in her time of need? Right now the House Speaker is stressed. Can you blame her? The $3.5 trillion spending boondoggle, which the left claims we need desperately in order to save our doomed planet and also fund their pet projects, is still gridlocked. Thanks to Pelosi’s skills as a “master legislator,” this monstrosity of a spending bill is tied to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. At one point Nancy tried to back off her all-or-nothing posturing, but it was too late. The far-left Squad had already started parroting her “in tandem” talking points. On top of all of this, Pelosi’s subjects in the mainstream media have become unruly lately.

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The sleepwalkers

It is customary for presidencies to lose vitality and purpose in their last months. It is unprecedented for a presidency to lose its way in its first year, and when it still holds a majority in both houses of Congress. The Biden presidency has donned Jimmy Carter’s cardigan of shame in only nine months. If, that is, it ever was the Biden presidency. It was sold from the get-go as the ‘Biden-Harris presidency’. Double-barreled names are an inveterate mark of snobbery, and in this case the snobbery is that of the higher tokenism. Even the Democrats’ own members didn’t want Harris on the card in 2020. Harris’s symbolic merits as a woman of color seem to have been outweighed by her blatant falsity and opportunism.

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Diners: the least woke places in America

I just read a headline on the Daily Mail (I know, I know, I get what I deserve): '[Singer] Demi Lovato says they are no longer sure they want children — admitting life in their 30s without kids is "pretty nice" — as they open up about coming out as nonbinary and pansexual.' I rubbed my eyes and put in my monocle. Surely someone for whom English is a second language wrote this article? I squinted. 'Demi Lovato is no longer sure that parenthood lies in their future.' As intrigued as I was to learn more about Demi’s reproductive longings, neither my grammatical standards nor my sanity could take any more. Off I sped as fast as I could to the American Diner to recover my faith in humanity.

Blame Biden for the sinking infrastructure bill

President Joe Biden, facing a crisis on the southern border, a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and a breakdown of relations with foreign allies, desperately needs a win on his domestic agenda. It looks increasingly unlikely, however, that the ambitious spending bills he wants passed will ever make it to his desk. The usually unified Democratic party is so fractured over the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that it appears Speaker Nancy Pelosi no longer has the votes to pass either. Biden is primarily to blame for negotiations going this way. He said back in June that he would not sign the infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill, describing the bills as being in 'tandem’.

bill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

California’s Wild West versus Canada’s security

Some conservatives did themselves no favors by exaggerating the threat of election irregularities in California’s Tuesday recall election. Tomi Lahren of Fox Nation claimed on air that: 'The only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.’ A New York Times news story promptly labeled concerns about the election as 'baseless allegations’. But regardless of the recall outcome — which Gov. Newsom is favored to survive — we shouldn’t dismiss concerns about the shift California and other states have made to all mail-in elections at the expense of the traditional secret ballot. Two elec­torates in places with some 40 mil­lion peo­ple each — Cal­i­for­nia and Canada — will vote this month.

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The new McCarthyism

Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of Donald Trump? I am wondering when we are going to have Congressional Committees grilling people about such matters. I suppose they could, in homage to a certain senator from Wisconsin, be called the House and Senate American Activities Committee. Nancy and Chuck should preside. They could share some of that expensive chocolate ice cream that the always well-coifed Nancy likes as they root out people who say things they don’t like and vote for people with whom they disagree. I’m sure they would get a lot of academic support. Just a week or so back, one professor suggested that criticizing St Anthony Fauci or other government officials should be a federal hate crime. Why not?

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Do I get Friday off for Juneteenth?

Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act this afternoon, which designates June 19 as a federal holiday. In recent years, the date has been a cause to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. George Granger assumed command of 2,000 federal troops on the island of Galveston in Texas and transmitted the news of the Emancipation Proclamation to the state's residents, freeing the slaves at the end of the Civil War. But in 2021, June 19 falls on a Saturday. According to the US Code (specifically 5 U.S. Code § 6103), 'Instead of a holiday that occurs on a Saturday, the Friday immediately before is a legal public holiday for...employees whose basic workweek is Monday through Friday.

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HR 1 must be stopped

There is a reason Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called her 791-page bill, stuffed as it is with her favorite election-related changes, House of Representatives Bill Number 1 or HR 1. It’s that important to her. She has convinced or pressured every single House Democrat to co-sponsor it as it comes up for a vote this week. That means it will likely pass narrowly given that Democrats have a 219 to 211 majority. It faces more debate and a tougher road in the Senate, which is split 50 to 50 between the parties with Vice President Kamala Harris as tiebreaker. It can be stopped. It must be stopped. It is the worst piece of legislation I have even seen in my 40 years reporting from Washington.

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Why hasn’t Congress given you more money?

It has been months since Congress passed the last COVID-19 relief package, and as DC hurtles toward its Christmas holiday, the prospect of another legislative effort is still bedeviling Capitol Hill.That we are here at all reflects a divergence from the lawmaking consensus that saw three phases of major COVID-19 legislation pass in March — including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which constitutes the largest economic response legislation passed in US history. At that time, there was general bipartisan agreement that it was necessary; that the lives of Americans were being consumed by a crisis not of their own making, and one that was putting the livelihoods of small businesses and families at risk. (That didn’t stop the bill from being stuffed with unrelated pork, however.

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