Category Archives: Politics

House Passes $1.9 Trillion Pork-Filled COVID ‘Relief’ Package. Here’s What It Includes.

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House Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed during an early-morning vote on Saturday. The bill passed 219-212, along party lines. Two Democrats, Reps. Jared Golden (ME) and Kurt Schrader (OR), voted in opposition to the bill.

The 591-page bill is filled with pork, the biggest one being an increase in the federal minimum wage over the next five years. The current federal minimum wage sits at $7.25. By year five, it would sit at $15 an hour, assuming the Senate votes in favor of the bill.

House Democrats decided to keep the increase in the bill even though Senate parliamentarian said it violates the budget reconciliation process.

The bill includes another round of stimulus checks. Individuals making less than $75,000 will receive a $1,400 check. Couples earning less than $150,000 will receive a combined $2,800. As an individual or couple’s income increases, their stimulus amount decreases.

Of the $1.9 trillion, $350 billion will go towards states and local governments. Unemployment benefits will provide Americans with $400 a week on top of their state-issued benefits.

Under this bill, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is replenished with $7 billion in additional funding. The Emergency Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program will also receive $15 billion.

WATCH: Don Jr. Sounds Off on Cheney and the GOP Establishment
In addition, the bill ups the child tax credit to $3,600 for children six and under. That credit drops to $3,000 for kids ages seven to 17.

The bill is expected to have an uphill battle in the Senate, particularly with the minimum wage increase tied to the relief package. Moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) have both said they take issue with the minimum wage increase being part of the COVID relief package.

Beth Baumman

Liberals–Incurably Irrational

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Rep. Chris Stewart: “With the White House now suggesting they will turn the resources of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) inward to conduct domestic surveillance, they seek the power to covertly target and retaliate against political opponents, potentially silencing dissent.
Given the way Obama operatives created a Russian collusion conspiracy out of whole cloth to serve their political agenda, Americans should be more than just leery of the administration’s justifications for this expanded surveillance. They should be terrified.”

Like I said: It’s not an administration; it’s an occupation. It’s not a President; it’s a one-party dictatorship, with no possibility of losing at the polls. They are creating the tools to spy on Americans who do not support their edicts. And they will be rounding dissidents up, in time. Who will stop them? Two justices on the Supreme Court?

FL Gov. DeSantis warned conservatives that if they stand for the right things that they will “be attacked,” “smeared,” and “even canceled by the major organs of the political left. Now anyone can spout conservative rhetoric, we can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy, but I’m not saying you don’t do any of that, but the question is, when the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you, will you stay strong or will you fold?” DeSantis concluded. “When you do and you engage in the battles ahead, hold the line. Stand your ground, and don’t ever, ever back down.”

True, but leftists will not back down. NOT EVER. You’re dealing with irrational, totalitarian thugs. Everything DeSantis says is true, only it’s much worse. Leftists and Democrats are incurably irrational, hate-spewing, crude authoritarians. On top of it all, they seek to disarm you, force you to wear a face diaper forever, pay huge sums for gas and fuel, pay huge taxes only if you work or achieve, and force you to fund public schools and universities that (1) teach students to hate freedom and (2) brainwash your own children into hating YOU for loving freedom. There is nothing remotely tolerable about these horrible people — I mean all committed Democrats, your neighbors, your relatives, your supposed friends. They have literally voted away our rights and rigged the system in such a way that we are forced to choose between total submission–or civil war.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Kavanaugh and Barrett: John Roberts Retreads ?

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All that work for, and faith in, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett! As with John Roberts before, we are once again the victims of unrequited affection and lost labor. Like other Republicans, I expended lots of hours and effort to do my part in getting all three confirmed. I wrote articles, did radio and TV interviews, gave speeches, called Senators and asked my friends to do so, and spoke to countless people.

I even attended the Senate Hearings for two of them; and in the case of Kavanaugh went face-to-face against a wild group of “feminists” blocking my way to the Senate hearing room, was bad-mouthed by them while in waiting-lines, and harassed in the office taken over by these “non-insurrection” protestors while trying to get my pre-arranged ticket which they had dumped. (Interestingly, when complaining to police how the “progressive” protestors had taken over Senator Grassley’s office, the Capitol Police replied: “This is a public space, open to the people, and we cannot stop them from exercising their right of speech and assembly”).

I have traveled over 800 miles, paid for motels, and over the years took off work so as to help these nominees become confirmed justices. Like so many others on our side, we believed in them. Finally, strong justices, conservative like us. The Court was finally ours… a dream come true.

Well, the dream has died and our hopes for the Great Cause have not been respected by those in whose behalf we so tirelessly worked.

First, the Roberts/Kavanaugh/ ACB trio did not agree to take the Texas case brought by the AGs of Texas and many other states, supported by 100 Congressional representatives, that logically asserted that the voters of their respective states had been disenfranchised by the illegalities of those states that had twisted their election laws to guarantee a national Democrat electoral victory, effectively nullifying a fair election result for those voting in other states. Yes, the reasoning may have been correct, but the trio, together with the pre-disposed liberals, said Texas had “No Standing.”

The Pennsylvania’s case, brought separately and earlier, was the most egregious of all. Pennsylvania’s civil servants and courts brazenly nullified the wishes of the state legislature. State legislatures have been given full and final say-so by the U.S. Constitution over election matters. The Republican legislature was stripped of its constitutional authority by local Democrats, culminating in allowing ballots where addresses and signatures were not verified or postmarked and allowed entry even three days after the election. Yet, the trio and other liberals on the Court said: “Until the actual infraction happens, the case is not actionable.” Yet another excuse allowing the Democrats to cheat as they brazenly did.

To our disbelief, now that the election has happened and the reprehensible consequences have been revealed and implemented in actuality, with grave portent for upcoming elections, Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett agreed the case “was moot.” It already happened, they said, and thus it’s too late. In other words, we will never accept these cases, not before the election or after the election and we won’t acknowledge “standing,” either. This is blatantly contradictory, dishonest, a shirking of responsibility and, worse, an indifference to justice and regular voters.

By now, we have seen how Roberts will decide some of the small cases for conservatives, but does whatever legal juggling is necessary to provide the Deep State, Obama, and the Democrats what they want on the big and important cases. Roberts is their clutch hitter. His effusion for Obama and public distaste for Trump is obvious, and his decisions reflect this unprofessional side of him. Old news. Lost cause. While Liberals don’t betray their patrons, has-been conservatives frequently do.

It seems to me that while Kavanaugh and Barrett are “Originalists” in their legal approach to the Constitution, which is but an academic and theoretical discipline, they are not movement conservatives. They are not authentic replacements of Scalia. They are probably not America First types or paleo-conservatives. It is Ivory Tower stuff, not grass roots, rarified thinking, not earthy, gritty conservatism. They are not motivated by an inward, primal urge to do that which allows the people to control their destiny, to undo this injustice to America’s regular voters. They are not, it seems to me, put off by the long reach of the elites or elitism itself.

Perhaps they want to be on the good side of their boss, John Roberts, who assigns plum cases. Perhaps, Barrett and Kavanaugh do not want to be seen or be considered part of the Trump camp, nor be blasted in the headlines of the New York Times and Washington Post. Kavanaugh was thrashed and burned by Democrats during his confirmation hearing and may have learned the lesson they were warning him: Don’t do anything that will thwart us politically or we will again come after you and your family via headlines. A traumatized Stockholm Syndrome victim. Perhaps, Mrs. Barrett wants her children to be accepted in certain Ivy or second-tier influential schools. There is a price to be accepted for that entry: part of your soul.

Perhaps they want to be on the good side of their boss, John Roberts, who assigns plum cases. Perhaps, Barrett and Kavanaugh do not want to be seen or be considered part of the Trump camp, nor be blasted in the headlines of the New York Times and Washington Post. Kavanaugh was thrashed and burned by Democrats during his confirmation hearing and may have learned the lesson they were warning him: Don’t do anything that will thwart us politically or we will again come after you and your family via headlines. A traumatized Stockholm Syndrome victim. Perhaps, Mrs. Barrett wants her children to be accepted in certain Ivy or second-tier influential schools. There is a price to be accepted for that entry: part of your soul.

I suspect that though conservative in approach to constitutional “wording,” Barrett and Kavanaugh are “fair-haired” types, in a way privileged, used to being looked up to and admired, not necessarily fighters, and most likely enamored of certain social “respectability,” getting the nods from the Chevy Chase, Bethesda, Georgetown in-neighborhoods. Perhaps after high school they never had to claw their way up… certainly not like Scalia or Thomas or Alito. They remind me of those sport figures at school that always had a certain leg-up, an ease of acceptance. They got used to it, expected it, and felt entitled to it.

No doubt they are not liberals like Breyer, Kagan, or Sotomayor and will disagree with them regarding the Commerce Clause, some religious liberty issues, etc. After all, conservatives are allowed to support these things without getting totally shunned and ostracized. But they may not be willing to align themselves with the “unsophisticated, deplorable” crowd, something their assent in these cases may have been seen as.

In Yiddish, there is an expression: “der finer mentschen.” It means those who are not willing to get their hands too dirty, like a Romney or Toomey. I hope I’m wrong, but I think these two rarified conservative justices may be from that type, a little too antiseptic and self-conscious to fight the earthy fights. They’ll give us a bone, but not raw meat. Next time, I’ll be looking for a John Wayne-type justice before I travel 800 miles to help.

Photo crefit: YouTube screengrab (cropped)

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is president of Caucus for America and author of Push Back: The Battle to Save our American Judeo-Christian Heritage (which can be purchased on the caucusforamerica website

Trump—Once and Future King ?

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I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.”

So says Mitt Romney, the sole Republican senator to have voted twice to convict President Donald J. Trump of impeachable acts.

But is it possible Trump could win the nomination in 2024?

What does history teach us about Republican presidents who, after losing the White House, come back to win it again?

Well, to be frank, there is no such history.

Consider. Four Republican presidents in the 20th century were defeated while seeking a second term. None was nominated again.

William Howard Taft lost the White House to Woodrow Wilson in 1912, and even ran behind the third-party “Bull Moose” candidate, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. Taft never ran again but went on to serve as chief justice of the United States.

Ex-President Teddy Roosevelt was considering running again in 1920 but died at 60 in January of 1919 at Sagamore Hill.

After President Herbert Hoover lost to FDR in 1932, he never ran again.

Gerald Ford, serving out Nixon’s second term, lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and packed it in for good, as did President Carter after losing to Ronald Regan in 1980.

George H. W. Bush lost the White House in 1992 and retired from electoral politics, never to run again.

As for Trump running in 2024 and winning the GOP nomination, he does hold high cards no other ex-president held, except perhaps Roosevelt.

Trump has a vast and loyal following. Currently three-fourths of all Republicans see him as their leader. He won 74 million votes, the highest total ever for a sitting president or a losing presidential candidate.

Their loyalty is traceable to what Trump achieved, whom and how he fought, and the new issues he introduced and has become indelibly associated. Foremost among these is his struggle to secure the Southern border against endless illegal migrant crossings.

Unrestricted immigration from the South, the Third Worldization of America, is the true existential threat “climate change” purports to be.

Trump also succeeded in enacting the traditional GOP platform of low taxes and deregulation, producing record-low unemployment — before the pandemic hit in March 2020.

His record of elevating strict constructionists, constitutionalists and conservatives to the federal courts, and three Supreme Court seats, is unrivaled in the history of the modern Republican Party.

Trump also forged a bond with Middle America by taking on a media whose treatment of him was remorselessly hateful and hostile. “We love him for the enemies he has made,” it was said of Grover Cleveland.

He brought a new and unique agenda to the GOP.

He replaced a free trade globalist ideology with nationalism. He set out to rebuild America’s depleted manufacturing base and restore her economic independence. Under Trump, the slogan “America First” came to represent a new foreign policy where rich and prosperous allies carried more of the burden of their own and the common defense.

He wanted Americans to do their nation-building here in the USA.

While Beltway Russophobes prevented Trump from achieving the rapprochement he wanted, and he failed to extricate us from the forever wars of the Middle East, he did drawdown U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and keep us out of an all-out war with Iran.

There is thus a specific Trumpian agenda, with which he is alone associated, that is becoming the issues agenda of the conservative movement and the party base, if not the party elites.

Yet, the drawbacks to a Trump nomination remain major.

He did, after all, lose in 2020. And he has been damaged by the months-long battle since to prove that Biden was the beneficiary of a stolen election. The Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by MAGA militants was blamed on Trump and became the article of his second impeachment where every Democratic senator and six Republicans voted to convict him. And even some of those who voted to acquit, like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, declared him guilty of inciting the mob.

Moreover, Trump faces a blizzard of legal challenges and charges that will damage his reputation, his businesses and him, personally.

In 2024, Trump will turn 78, the age Joe Biden is today. And between now and 2024, there is sure to be considerable attrition in support among the 74 million who voted for Trump.

But if Romney is right and Trump has the kind of strength that could make him the nominee in 2024, that strength will surely be sufficient to veto or sink any potential nominee who does not have the former president’s blessing.

And, from seeing both candidates of 2020 up close in recent weeks and months, does not Trump appear more likely to be the Republican leader of his party than does slow-moving “Sleepy Joe” look like the Democratic nominee 44 months from now?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Unlimited Rights, Except for REAL Rights

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Congress, under Pelosi, has passed a sweeping gay/lesbian/transgender rights bill. Gay/transgender rights…not INDIVIDUAL rights.

Ain’t Communism hilarious? Unlimited (as opposed to equal) rights for gay people…yet these very same gay people will enjoy NO right to own a gun…to speak freely on social media… to keep most of their income…to walk outdoors without a mask EVER again…to buy fossil fuels…to operate a small business during a government declared crisis…Sure, you have a right to compel others to accept your sexuality. And no rights of any other kind. These nasty sociopaths like Pelosi care nothing for rights; only power. Gay people are pawns in their never-ending chess game. Sick.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Ayn Rand on the Mixed Economy

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We are not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy, i.e., a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls. A mixed economy is a country in the process of disintegration, a civil war of pressure-groups looting and devouring one another.

A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it. Such a system—or, more precisely, anti-system—breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting—and draining—the productive elements of the country.

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy’s only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalized plunder from running over into plain, unlegalized looting of all by all—is compromise; compromise on everything and in every realm—material, spiritual, intellectual—so that no group would step over the line by demanding too much and topple the whole rotted structure. If the game is to continue, nothing can be permitted to remain firm, solid, absolute, untouchable; everything (and everyone) has to be fluid, flexible, indeterminate, approximate. By what standard are anyone’s actions to be guided? By the expediency of any immediate moment.

The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.
You have seen, within the span of the last few years, that controls breed more controls, and that the proliferation of controls breeds the proliferation of pressure groups. Today, you see political manipulators setting up new conflicts, such as ethnic minorities against the majority, the young against the old, the old against the middle, women against men, even welfare-recipients against the self-supporting. Openly and cynically, these new groups clamor for “a bigger slice of the pie” (which you have to bake).

In a controlled (or mixed) economy, a legislator’s job consists in sacrificing some men to others. No matter what choice he makes, no choice of this kind can be morally justified (and never has been). Proceeding from an immoral base, no decision of his can be honest or dishonest, just or unjust—these concepts are inapplicable. He becomes, therefore, an easy target for the promptings of any pressure group, any lobbyist, any influence-peddler, any manipulator—he has no standards by which to judge or to resist them. You do not know what hidden powers drive him or what he is doing. Neither does he.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

If You Believe Life Will Return to Normal, You Have a Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Times in which We Live

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Despite all of the craziness that is going on out there, many pundits are trying to convince us that life will soon “return to normal” and that great days are just around the corner. They are telling us this despite the fact that the state of Texas has been in a state of collapse this week, the real economy continues to implode, the unemployment numbers are going up, civil unrest continues to rage in our streets on a nightly basis, and our entire planet continues to become even more unstable. Those that believe that happy days are here again have a fundamental misunderstanding of the times in which we live. This isn’t a period of time when America is going to “build back better”. Rather, this is a time when America is going to go even deeper into “the perfect storm”.

One of the reasons why so many on the left are feeling optimistic right now is because the COVID pandemic appears to be subsiding…

According to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, the US is seeing a 29% decline in new Covid-19 cases compared to this time last week, the steepest one-week decline the US has seen during the pandemic.

Improvements have been made; in a White House briefing Friday, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the US continues to see a five-week decline, with the seven-day average of cases declining 69% since peaking on January 11.

We are being told that if the numbers continue to plummet like this, soon there won’t be a need for masks, social distancing and other restrictive measures any longer.

In fact, James Hamblin says that there is a possibility that “pre-pandemic life will return even before summer is upon us”…

If all of this holds true, it would mean that many aspects of pre-pandemic life will return even before summer is upon us. Because case numbers guide local policies, much of the country could soon have reason to lift many or even most restrictions on distancing, gathering, and masking. Pre-pandemic norms could return to schools, churches, and restaurants. Sports, theater, and cultural events could resume. People could travel and dance indoors and hug grandparents, their own or others’. In most of the U.S., the summer could feel … “normal.”

But is this pandemic really over, or is it just transitioning into a new chapter?

According to the Daily Mail, the number of confirmed cases of “Super COVID” in the United States is now doubling every 10 days…

There are now more than 1,600 cases of the UK’s B117 ‘super covid’ variant in the US, according to a DailyMail.com analysis. Cases are doubling approximately every 10 days, according to a recent Scripps Research Institute study.

‘Super covid’ cases have exploded in two states that took opposite approaches to the pandemic: California, which has been under some of the nation’s strictest lockdowns, and Florida which has never had a mask mandate.

Cases of the 70 percent more infectious variant have exploded to 433 in Florida, in less than one month since the first case was discovered there.

Of course many experts are far more concerned about the new COVID variants that have emerged in Brazil and South Africa. Both of those variants have now made it to the U.S., and we already know that the current vaccines don’t work very well against the South African variant.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy continues to crumble right in front of our eyes.

On Thursday, we learned that another 861,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

Last week’s initial jobless claims soared to 861,000, despite more states and cities lifting restrictive business measures amid a decline in the number of coronavirus cases. Economists had predicted around 773,000 first-time claims for the week ended Feb. 13. Data for the previous week was revised up to 848,000 from 793,000.

Unemployment claims have been at catastrophic levels for nearly a year, and now they are starting to surge higher once again.

We also just learned that a whopping 92 percent of all restaurants in New York City “could not afford to pay their rent in December”…

A new report from the NYC Hospitality Alliance shows the extreme financial problems restaurants in New York City are facing, as 92% of the city’s restaurants could not afford to pay their rent in December.

The number has steadily worsened throughout the pandemic, from 80% of restaurants in June 2020 not being able to pay rent.

92 percent!

That isn’t what a “recession” looks like.

The truth is that we are in an economic depression, and there is no end in sight.

At the same time, communities all over the U.S. continue to be plagued by civil unrest and crime.

In cities such as Seattle, violent protests and riots have essentially become a nightly occurrence at this point. But most of the violence that we are witnessing is old-fashioned crime. One study found that murder rates in major U.S. cities were up by an average of 30 percent last year, and the chaos has continued into 2021. If you want to see an example of the lawlessness that is prevailing in our urban areas right now, just watch this video.

On top of everything else, our entire planet continues to behave in very unusual ways.

For instance, on Friday morning there was a magnitude 4.2 earthquake in Oklahoma…

A 4.2-magnitude earthquake shook Oklahoma and Kansas Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.

The 4.3-mile deep quake hit near Manchester, Oklahoma, at 7:56 a.m. CST, according to the USGS. Manchester is in northern Oklahoma near the state’s border with Kansas.

It is not normal to see earthquakes of that size in the middle of the country, but of course we are moving into times when all of the old rules will no longer apply.

Earlier this month, I wrote an article about how volcanoes all along the Ring of Fire have been “starting to pop off like firecrackers”. I believe that we have entered a time when we will see natural disasters become increasingly frequent and increasingly powerful, and despite all of our advanced technology we are exceedingly vulnerable.

Just look at what just took place in Texas. A single wave of cold weather plunged the state into a nightmare scenario.

If cold weather can cause this much chaos in Texas, what would a much more severe long-term emergency mean for our entire nation?

The events of the past week should be a wake up call for all of us, because the road ahead is certainly not going to get any easier.

Michael Snyder

Democrats Turning Down the Thumbscrews on Us to Make Us Suffer—Tormenting Us With Our Imaginary Sins

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Everything the Democrat Party does should be seen not from an economic or a political perspective, but one of sin and suffering — the suffering it imposes on us to expiate our imagery sins.

It came to me in a flash of insight when I heard of a now-disgraced bureaucrat (“an undersecretary of climate change” in Massachusetts) who told a gathering of his colleagues that to fight melting ice caps and rising sea levels they would have to “break the will” of ordinary Americans, by “turning the screws” — raising energy costs so high that they would have to “stop emitting.” Admirable candor from a functionary of the state with the soul of a Medieval torturer.

But it goes beyond the need to make us obey. Progressives believe Americans must be made to atone for our sins (environmental, racial, economic and national) with higher taxes and energy costs, a lower standard of living, crime, open borders, racial humiliation and national dissolution.

It’s not a power-grab as much as an attempt to force a sort of secular Calvinism on the nation.

Global Warming – Our sins here include the internal combustion engine and reliance on fossil fuel, leading to CO2 emissions said to cause depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.

Democrats demand that we expiate these sins through higher energy costs, homes that are cold in the winter and hot in the summer, gas so expensive that we’ll be forced to walk or bicycle instead of driving. If you offered AOC and the other Green New Dealers an energy source that was clean, cheap and abundant, they’d reject it out of hand because there’s no suffering involved.

Open borders – According to their holy writ, we must pay for the sins of colonialism, exploitation of the Third World, using an unfair share of the earth’s resources and treating “migrants” cruelly. Our suffering includes being forced to take in hordes of poor, uneducated, unskilled invaders, including a significant criminal element (through lack of border enforcement and amnesties), which in turn will raise the costs of education, health care, criminal justice and welfare. But this is only right. If Hondurans are mired in poverty, it’s because we’ve exploited them, the left tells us.

Racial equity – To counter the sin of white supremacy, Caucasians must be made to suffer with reparations, riots, indoctrination of their children and public confessions of guilt. In some places, public schools are imposing a curriculum that forces students and parents to admit that their whiteness is a crime against the rest of humanity. If this seems like an updated version of Maoist self-criticism sessions, that’s because it is.

Gun confiscation – Gun owners (all 72 million in the United States), manufacturers and the NRA are said to be responsible for crime and mass shootings by clinging to the outmoded idea of a 2nd. Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The sins of bitter-clingers must be expiated by taking away their means to self-defense and shaming them – making them understand that every time a whack job shoots up a school, theater, nightclub or concert they are to blame.

The Lockdown Culture – The sin is not “listening to the scientists” (which ones?) as Clueless Joe would have it – and not taking the pandemic seriously at the outset, unlike the Red Chinese. The suffering is destroying businesses on a whim (more than 110,000 restaurants have closed permanently), eliminating shopping and entertainment and forcing us to go through the silly rituals of social distancing and face masks (which the Great Fauci assured us were unnecessary in March). Biden – who promised us the pain of a “dark winter” — has made face masks the symbol of his administration, going so far as to tell us that donning a mask is our patriotic duty – unless you’re Nancy Pelosi getting your hair done at a pricey San Francisco salon or Gavin Newsom dining with lobbyists at a swank eatery.

Socialism – What a wonderful way to spread the misery as widely as possible. Greedy capitalists are responsible for the plight of the masses, through unequal distribution of wealth. This must be rectified through income leveling, confiscation by taxation, in the name of fairness which (because competition is eliminated) results in a lower standard of living for just about everyone.

Given a choice between prosperity and what they call fairness, the Sanders and AOCs of the world – who are now driving the Democrat Party – will choose “fairness” every time, even if Venezuela and the rationing of toilet paper lie at the end of the road.

Biden is the perfect Great Leader for the grin-and-bear-it Democrats – dour, obsessive, guilt-mongering, insistent that we sinners bend to his will. Open borders, racial guilt, gun confiscation and a Green New Deal are pillars of his administration.

At the bottom of the sin and suffering paradigm is hatred – hatred of capitalism, hatred of Middle America and (at least subconsciously) hatred of the human race.

Besides sin and suffering, there’s also masochism. (Ayn Rand called it “the sanction of the victim.”) Roughly half the population was complicit in putting Torquemada – progressivism’s grand inquisitor – in the White House cum torture chamber.

Now, if he can only remember where he put his thumbscrews.

Don Feder, frontpagemagazine