Timing is everything

My Mommy says . . . .

I must be psychic.  I posted a blog entry that dealt with my buddy, my old NYC pal Charles "Fauntleroy" Schumer;  leading Donkey strategist, guiding light, bomb thrower and Momma's Boy. One of the things I mentioned was that he perpetually throws around the sobriquet "extreme right-wing" whenever he speaks about even the mildest, most centrist political opponent, and the next day he gets caught on tape pretty much agreeing with me.   He's been doing it for decades.  He has NEVER in his entire life held an honest job; although a Harvard trained lawyer, a member of the Bar, he has never practiced law.  This is a guy who got a perfect 1600 SAT score, went to Harvard as an undergraduate and then on to the Law School. He's extremely bright, he ran for the New York State Assembly right out of college and won at age 23, and he has never, not ever, lost an election.  He has been in Washington since 1981, and for you Donkeys that means thirty years.  

Hence, Schumer  the Tumor, the persistent cancer that continues to grow on the American body politic.  He won't go away folks; Chuckie can't DO anything else.  Like Quaddafi, like Saddam, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe--there is no AFTER for The Tumor, no Plan B, no Part II.  Truthfully, he doesn't much want to go away.  If he wanted to be a Governor of New York, he would have run already.  But Schumer knows his perfect place:  making laws at the national level.  Telling YOU, people who live in disparate parts of the US, how to live, what to eat, how many and what sort of firearms you can own.  

He's the quintessential  effete, urban Progressive.  He hears the call, he knows what he must do.   And . . . he knows he has to fool most of you into accepting what he wants.  He's been a champion on Obamacare, he's switched sides three times on the financial crisis, he's big in consumer product regulation.  And of course, the Senate Judiciary Committee, where that "right-wing extremist" Molotov cocktail gets used frequently.  After all, when you are gutting the Constitution in the Legislature you cannot afford to have some judge with an unhealthy affection for that ancient document scuttle your plans.

Schumer is pretty hawkish on defense, but you have to appreciate  the delicacy of that position.  First, he's from New York City, Brooklyn to be specific.  He still lives there with his family.  As a fellow City boy, I cannot adequately convey the utter shock, horror and outrage that natives felt when those murderous animals flew planes full of human beings into buildings full of human beings.  Schumer was married at Windows on the World, a great restaurant at the apex of the North Tower of The World Trade Center.  My wife took me there to celebrate my MBA, but I worked across the street for Bankers Trust for years and it was my favorite place to take visitors for the panoramic views of New York and the harbor. [BT got eaten by Deutsche Bank and my building was itself later a casualty of the WTC collapse, declared uninhabitable and finally succumbing to fire some years after]  I went to a small, all-male Jesuit high school in Chelsea.  Xavier is coming up on it's second century and 25 alums were listed as casualties of 9/11.  If my life had zigged instead of zagged, I could have been up there watching a passenger jet speed headlong into my desk.

The second thing you have to understand about Schumer on defense is Israel.  Schumer is Jewish, much of his original and current core constituency are Jewish.  Support for Israel is the sine qua non of  politics in NYC and for a Jewish politician, well it comes with the briss.  Support for our staunchest ally in the Middle East is something I can enthusiastically get behind, I've been to Israel, it's a wonderful country.   I have no doubt his position is sincere, he gets a little heated when talking about it.  In speaking of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, he told an audience that "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution, they don't believe in the Torah, in David . . . . you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay."  So much of his support for the War on Terror is informed by those two points.  

And being meddlsome with laws is just in his nature.

This is Schumer's niche in life, he's happy doing what he does.  Well, "happy" may be too extravagant a term as Chuck Schumer usually looks so sour it's as if he were weaned onto solid food by sucking lemons and never quite recovered from the experience.  Chuck Schumer smiling is a terrifying sight to behold, the kind of expression a prison warden attending  a state execution might give the condemned as he whispers "this is gonna hurt."   He's the Democratic Policy Committee Chairman and he is at the apex of his power in Washington; if you doubt for a second that he is one of the leading figures championing the aggressive stance of the Donks in confronting the drive to reduce federal spending, then I have some wonderful beachfront property in Japan that I can get for you at a bargain.

I'm a Payload Specialist

I started this series of posts about Bill Nelson, the Senior (and next ex-) Senator from Florida and let me reiterate the connection:  ASTRO BOY and Donks like him are important for men like Schumer to shove their Progressivist world view down your unsuspecting maws.  They provide cover.  I caught Nelson on C-Span the other night speaking in the Senate.  I managed to stay awake.  That men's-store-mannequin spouted every Donkey platitude about who they are protecting and who the real villains in America are, how the everything is going to be wonderful.  

For example, he whined on about oil companies not paying royalties to the US for oil from leased Federal lands.  Well---Bill---if memory serves, you had a 60-seat majority in Congress, a majority in the House and a President in the White House for two damn years.  Why didn't YOU do something about it?

Nelson also trotted out the now-standard Donkey diatribe against corporations that don't pay taxes.   YAWN.  Ditto for this one too, Bill, where where you and your fellow Donks?   On a junket paid for by GE, maybe, one of the biggest tax avoiders of all but also former owner of a few lovely broadcast networks that just happen to support the Democrats in almost everything they do?  

Is there anyone out there who doesn't understand that whatever taxes a corporation has to pay it passes along to it's customers in the form of higher prices.  I guess there are.  No, competitive pricing won't help you; taxes are imposed across all competitors so they will ALL raise their prices.  Or some will go out of business and you will have fewer choices and, oh yes, the survivors will raise prices because they can!  

But that's the dirty little secret::  The Donks in Congress and the White House KNOW all this, so when they rail on about raising taxes on corporations and the great unwashed cheers and thrusts fists in the sky, they are really setting themselves up to be the ultimate taxpayer.  The Donks in Congress have just wiped off their fingerprints. 

Yes, I do moisturize . . . .

Folks in Florida, remember what Nelson says.  Remember in whatever state you live the next time you are tempted to vote for that nice person with the Jackass button on their suit lapel.  The 2010 elections knocked off a lot of the moderate Donks, leaving the screedy shrill ones like Maw Pelosi in place.  But for all intents and purposes there are NO moderate Democrats in Congress anymore.  They cannot vote that way with the hard lefties in all the senior positions.  

Remember what all those who did not buck the Progressives said when there was time to do something about it.   Remember and think for yourselves.

Now, now, I know best!

My memory works just fine.  I remember what has happened in the world during my life and what I thought about it at the time.  I need no one to help me remember history through the prism of political spin.  I remember who promised what, who tried to call attention to problems, who shouted them down and why.  And I'll tell you that the problems we are facing TODAY have been brewing for years, that there were plenty of warnings, that many of the Donks in power now were around then and screaming against solutions.

And here's a little video that does a GREAT job explaining it for those that are numerically impaired.