Best Of

I don't use the word hate, but I'll just say my dislike is legion.

This was the headline for The Political Tribune.

Ah, this is a democracy which apparently FG doesn't understand anymore. We do have a choice and high likelihood is, that choice is not going to be you.

Read on the way here that MTG is basically calling JD Vance a lunatic (he is) and that he should be fired by the FG's campaign. She offers herself as the replacement because I presume, she somehow thinks she is far smarter than Vance who is saying such outlandish things.

JD for the most part has parroted the benefactor that chose him as a running mate so not sure where Ms. Marge is getting her inclinations on Mr. Vance's mental health. That said, I find I can agree with the statement, if not specifically her. She is possibly an even bigger lunatic, and perhaps the "takes one to know one" sort of applies here.

Happy Thursday morning.

With Congress set to return to Washington next week after a very long absence, House Republicans have new targets in mind — Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The House Republicans have turned the machinery of their committees against the Democratic presidential ticket. It’s a preview of what they’ll face if Republicans keep the House and Harris manages to defeat former President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee subpoenaed Walz’s administration over fraud allegations at a federal food program in Minnesota. The move surprised Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.), ranking Democrat on the committee. “The timing of the Republicans’ subpoena to Gov. Walz is weird,” Scott said.

But that’s just the beginning of what House Republicans have in mind.

—On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a field hearing in Santee, Calif., titled “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: California Perspectives.” The hearing has been in the works for some time, but it’s taken on new significance since the California-born Harris became the Democratic nominee.

—House Judiciary will also hold a hearing next Tuesday on “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives.” And a Judiciary subcommittee is set to meet the same day on “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Noncitizen Voting.”

Democrats note that border crossings by undocumented migrants are at a four-year low thanks to new Biden administration policies, but GOP lawmakers see the issue as a huge political vulnerability for Harris.

—The House Oversight Committee has launched probes into Walz’s “long standing connections” to China and Harris’ “role in effectuating the worst border crisis in American history.”

— An Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee will meet Wednesday for a hearing on energy policy. The session is called “From Gas to Groceries: Americans Pay the Price of the Biden-Harris Energy Agenda.”

— The Judiciary Committee is back the same day with a hearing on crime: “The Consequences of Soft-On-Crime Policies.” This is clearly aimed at Democrats.

— House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, who is in charge of party messaging, sent a letter to Harris in late July expressing concerns about her national security adviser, Philip Gordon, and “his close ties to a known Iranian agent within the Department of Defense.”

—Even the normally staid Veterans Affairs Committee is getting into the mix. The panel has a hearing set for Tuesday called “Accountable or Absent?: Examining VA Leadership Under the Biden-Harris Administration.”

“I’m not going to deny that in this season, with a new top of the ticket, that the hearings may be calling out that it was a Biden-Harris administration and a Biden-Harris candidacy until recently,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Friday’s Judiciary Committee hearing is in Issa’s district, where border security and immigration are huge issues.

“Many may think of it as kind of a congressional ‘Oh, you’re trying to affect an election.’ I think the special prosecutor just re-indicting [Trump] 65 days out, that is more overtly affecting an election. These are messaging [hearings] that we’ve been doing.”

Democrats counter that House Republicans, with no major legislative accomplishments to fall back on, need to damage Harris and Walz in order to preserve the GOP’s razor-thin majority.

“I think [Republicans] regret having a convention devoted to the facially ridiculous proposition that Donald Trump is a warm and compassionate man,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), top Democrat on the Oversight Committee. “Now, regretting that, they’re basically going to try to have their convention in the House of Representatives with a kitchen sink full of attacks on the Democratic ticket.”

“Donald Trump and his extreme MAGA allies in the House are launching pathetic, false attacks on the Vice President and Governor Walz because they cannot win on their own records of taking away Americans’ freedoms and putting billionaires and corporations ahead of hard-working families,” added Mia Ehrenberg, a Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson.

Remember, House Republicans already pushed through a non-binding resolution back in July that “strongly condemns the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris’s, failure to secure the United States border.” Six House Democrats supported the resolution.

And it also comes as Speaker Mike Johnsonis preparing to offer a six-month funding bill with the SAVE Act in order to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1. That measure requires proof of citizenship before registering to vote in a federal election. It’s opposed by both Senate Democrats and the White House, who note that there’s no proof that this is a problem. It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. But Trump is pressing Johnson to add it to the CR.

It’s hardly new for lawmakers to use their committees or floor speeches to score points against the other party’s nominee. Who can forget Hillary Clinton appearing before a House select committee in October 2015 on the Benghazi attack or being grilled about her private emails? Or the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid falsely suggesting in 2012 that Mitt Romney hadn’t paid federal taxes in a decade?

Yet Republicans are in a unique situation here.After spending 18 months using their investigative committees to go after President Joe Biden, the GOP has been forced to pivot to hitting Harris just months before the election.

That’s not to say everyone in the GOP is ready to let go of their Biden attacks. There are murmurs that conservative hardliners may try to force a bound-to-fail floor vote on impeaching Biden when they return to Washington. And Trump still spends a head-scratching amount of time going after his former opponent during campaign rallies and TV interviews.

This is from Punchbowl News by he way.

We are in a little bit of a lull here. Not sure what is going on but it was reported that campaign people/staffers were told not to talk to the media at all for the next two months. It seems that if they do they could be fired. So, it was the viewpoint that something perhaps menacing to the campaign could come out and therefore, the warning.

Who knows. It does seem like the FG handlers are not putting him out now, but likely in part because it really sounds like he has little ability left — if there is something to try and hide as well, double trouble because it as is often said — all comes out in the wash. Someone will 'leak' because that is how it always works.

The fact that he is not being put out and especially in the swing states just gives us a bit of a leg up.
All the work has to be done, but it does seem like that side is counting on other things to skewer the results if they can. At the same time, there are it would seem an awful lot of Reps. ready to vote for Harris. They realize the FG has ruined a large part of their party and it is for the most part (save for making troubles) not survivable as a party and if they elect Harris now and can re-direct their party for 2028 or beyond, that is the only way they will actually survive.

Leaves me with a lot of questions about where all the extremists will actually go, and very much the extreme evangelicals.

Working on it.

Called sick and demented.