Cage-Free Eggnog

In a recent blog post I wrote “A loser blames politics and favoritism for his failures; a winner would rather blame himself than others—but he doesn’t waste much time on any kind of blame.”  And true to form, we can’t watch the news these days without the Left blaming everyone and everything but themselves, as they lay the blame on misogyny and racism for the drubbing Kamala took last month.  Doug & Wendy Whiner of Saturday Night Live fame have nothing on the progressive left.

Meanwhile, political analyst and ardent left-winger Mark Halperin had a more realistic take about Harris’s future political prospects. “I think it’s ridiculous, given her past performance…she’s run twice now and done poorly both times, and I think it’s incumbent upon the media and Democrats to have an honest and fair discussion about whether this is the right role for her, because she’s 0 for 2 in pretty dramatic fashion.”

As democrat mega-donor John Morgan told Chris Cuomo, “Kamala Harris’s political future is OVER after she completely botched her campaign.  If you can’t run a campaign, you can’t run a country.”  The financial scope of Harris’s presidential campaign was staggering, including reports that her campaign and the Democratic Party expended nearly $1.5 billion – yes you read that correctly – and now, unbelievably, we learn, the campaign is in debt!

~ It’s in the Left’s DNA ~

The way all politicians, especially democrats spend money is akin to watching a 16-year-old girl with her daddy’s credit card running loose in a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon – and like her cohorts on the left, Ms. Harris had no conception of the fiscal responsibility of running a campaign  – but that shouldn’t have been a surprise, pork, earmarks and wasteful spending has been the hallmark of the Biden Harris administration.

Rewind to the nearly $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Buried within the 591-page bill was a $350 billion bailout for 50 states, tribal governments, U.S. territories, and more than 30,000 cities and counties.

Congress earmarked billions in the COVID “relief” bill and then tried to hide these line-by-line appropriations. https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/6/CD13263501.pdf . Exacerbating the deception, then Speaker of the House, Pelosi and her democrat sycophants changed the allocation formula from one based on population to one based on the unemployment rate resulting in 23 states gaining $31.9 billion and 27 states losing $31.9 billion.  Of course, the four biggest winners were Democratic strongholds: California—which reaped an extra $6.7 billion; New York—which added another $6 billion; Illinois — increased by $2.1 billion; and New Jersey — a $2 billion increase.

Overall, California was allocated the most money ($42.3 billion), but the democrat bastions of New York ($23.5 billion), Illinois ($13.5 billion), Michigan ($10.1 billion), and New Jersey ($10 billion) weren’t far behind.

The biggest losers were Florida (-$2.3 billion), Vermont (-$2.1); and Wyoming (-$2 billion). The funding change rewarded Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in New York ($23.5 billion) over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in Florida ($17.3 billion), even though Florida has a larger population.  Even our putative 51^st state, heavily democrat Puerto Rico received more funding ($4 billion) than 22 states, including an extra “plus up” from the previous CARES Act Covid aid bill, while the District of Columbia with a population of 678,000, received more funding at $2.3 billion than 13 states.  In the meantime, our national debt increased from $10 trillion (2008) to $19.6 trillion (2016) to $23.6 trillion (2020) and stands at $36 trillion today.

~ Irony from the Other Side of the World ~

Meanwhile, the continuing charade the United Nations’ calls its COP29 Climate Summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, ended with another promise by wealthy countries to spend $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer ones adapt.  One pundit openly wondered if this was ransom for letting high-flying emissaries escape on their CO2 spewing private jets.  Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” each annual U.N. climate confab is a repeat of the last with poorer countries lambasting wealthier nations for their CO2 emissions while wealthy countries self-flagellate promising to atone by financing climate projects in developing countries – and that about sums up the 2024 farce in Baku.

Self-defeating climate policies continue to fail in reducing global emissions and in what is more than ironic, as “green energy’ drives up the cost of production in their own countries, it pushes more manufacturing to China & India, nations that rely on coal.  At the same time, global emissions are set to hit a new peak this year (big surprise!) though U.S. CO2 emissions are expected to decline slightly due to cheap and abundant natural gas that’s replacing coal in power production.  As a sidebar, shale fracking has done more to reduce emissions than all the West’s climate mandates and subsidies combined.

The absurdities emanating from the Left know no bounds, and all I can say is January 20^th can’t come soon enough…

Quote of the Day: “Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” – G.K. Chesterton