Whose Shutdown Is It?

The Progressive-Democrats in the Senate—nearly all of them, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY)—have closed the Federal government over their demands to get their minority party way entirely. Senator Tim Kaine (D, VA), as cited by The Wall Street Journal,

said he could vote for a spending bill with a promise to extend the ACA subsidies later, provided that he could get a commitment from the White House to impose a moratorium on firings and spending cuts.

So much for Party’s blather about demanding negotiations on the subsidies as a condition of reopening the government. Now, it’s Party demanding an outright guarantee of the extension, no negotiation at all.

So much, too, for any possibility of the Progressive-Democratic Party ever being interested in cutting spending, only constant increases.

Senator Angus King (I, ME) made even more explicit who is responsible for closing the government:

the vote’s result (Friday’s Senate vote on the House-passed clean CR) “demonstrated that a vague promise about conversations about the ACA isn’t going to be enough to induce my colleagues to end the shutdown.”

This is King’s acknowledgment that it’s Party that has shut the government, and it’s Party that insists on keeping the government shut. With their determined closure, it’s Party that’s harming ordinary Americans with their cutoff of project funding that leads to private sector jobs being HIAed, even as Party bleats that it’s Republicans who are responsible.

Party ignores the fact that the Republicans in the House, despite Party’s best efforts, passed a clean Continuing Resolution—no pork for either party, just funding for seven weeks of government operations—and sent it to the Senate. It’s Party in the Senate that is demanding a Christmas tree worth of Party pork be added to the CR or they’ll leave the government closed, those projects unfunded, and those jobs HIAed.

This Isn’t Just Political Mischief

Nor is it merely divisiveness.

Jay Jones, Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Virginia Attorney General, has threatened a political opponent, Todd Gilbert, at the time the Republican Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, with murder, with implied threats against his wife and children, as well. This was as recently as August 2022. What he texted another delegate, a Republican:

Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, Hitler and Pol Pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.

Here’s Jones’ full sequence:

From inflicting metaphorical violence on us average Americans with their government shutdown to threatening physical violence in the form of murder threats by a candidate for State Attorney General(!)—this is, mind you, against years of assaults like Bernie Sanders smearing Republicans as Nazis, followed shortly by a mass murder attempt against Republican Congressmen at a baseball practice; Chuck Schumer threatening by name two Supreme Court Justices, followed shortly by a murder attempt against one of them; Party politicians in drumbeat cadence calling Donald Trump Nazi, Hitlerian, a threat to democracy, followed shortly by two murder attempts—this is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s view of how to deal with their political opponents. If they don’t get their way, they will attack American citizens as a whole and seek to murder their political opponents.

And just to drive home Party’s point, Jones is refusing to withdraw his candidacy for State AG, and no one in Party is pushing him to withdraw. To a man and woman, Party politicians are downplaying Jones’ threats, pretending he was joking.

This is the Party that wants to seize control of our Congress in 2026 and seize the White House in 2028.

“We cannot normalize”

ICE and CBP are patrolling downtown Chicago and arresting criminals along the way. DHS noted that (with accompanying images)

11 violent rioters were arrested last night in Chicago outside the ICE detention facility: these are two guns that were taken off rioters in Chicago right against the fence at our ICE detention facility. An investigation is underway into what appears to be some sort of explosive device found last night near the ICE Chicago detention facility.

Progressive-Democrat Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is dismayed, and he’s hyping the fact that ICE and CBP agents are armed in a dangerous city while they go about their intrinsically dangerous job of law enforcement. He said this, too:

We cannot normalize militarizing American cities and suburbs. Make sure you know your rights and stay alert.

Neither can we normalize violent lawlessness, even in Chicago. We do know our rights, we are staying alert, and so do—and are—those law enforcement personnel. Pritzker, though, would rather protect the criminals rampant in one of his State’s major cities than protect the residents of that city.

US Naval Academy Midshipman Honor Concept and Mikie Shirrell

New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Governor, it turns out, was barred from walking with her Naval Academy class during its graduation ceremony, although she was allowed to graduate and be commissioned into our Navy. Her explanation for this is this:

I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk….

What she didn’t turn some of her classmates in over was a cheating scandal that impacted 130 midshipmen in her class.

And she’s proud of that refusal.

This is the Naval Academy’s Honor Concept [boldface in the original, italic emphasis added]:

Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.
They tell the truth and ensure that the truth is known.
They do not lie.

They embrace fairness in all actions. They ensure that work submitted as their own is their own, and that assistance received from any source is authorized and properly documented.
They do not cheat.

They respect the property of others and ensure that others are able to benefit from the use of their own property.
They do not steal.

By refusing to turn in those classmates about whom she knew, by refusing to testify over the course of the cheating investigation, Sherrill openly lied by omission. She further lied by tacitly obstructing that investigation. She affirmatively prevented the truth from being known.

This is the concept of honor and integrity that Mikie Sherrill is putting on offer for the good citizens of New Jersey. It seems a poor fit for any Governor’s office.

The Party that Invented Political Weaponization

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians have been bleating for most of this year about the alleged weaponization of the Department of Justice. However, Party invented that weaponization with ex-President Barack Obama’s DoJ and his Attorney General Eric Holder, who swore fealty to Obama with his “I’m his wingman” oath, and then proceeded to use his AG office to go after us American citizens for daring to disagree with Obama’s pen and phone activities. Obama expanded that weaponization with his use of the IRS to go after Conservative nonprofit political organizations.

Biden expanded, while particularizing, that Party weaponization with his DoJ and its subordinate FBI categorizing concerned mothers as domestic terrorists and traditional Catholics as far-right extremists that bore watching. He and his followers engaged in explicit, politically motivated prosecutions of Trump over the riots at the Capitol and over his concerns about election integrity in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

Trump has been attacking political opponents during his second term? Or is he going after wrong-doers who happen to be, also, in the other party?

Whatever those answers might be, here’s Party’s House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) promising more, explicitly more, Party weaponization with promised attacks, not just on Trump, but on anybody “doing the bidding of the Trump administration.”

One thing to understand as people who are flirting with the Trump administration, or doing the bidding of the Trump administration, or engaging in the “pay to play schemes” of the Trump administration, the statute of limitations is five years…there will still be accountability to be had. And that process begins now, but it will not be complete until there is an independent Department of Justice and certainly an independent House of Representatives in Democratic hands.

In Democratic hands—my irony meter pegged hard.

This is the level of integrity Party has on offer for 2026, 2028, and in the out years.