Free Republic

How do you explain why an ultra-experienced politician makes a major speech on the behalf of a legislative goal that is both doomed to fail and unpopular with voters? Especially when his speech is boycotted by the bill's chief backers and consists of one big lie after another? resident Joe Biden's speech in Atlanta on Tuesday raised these questions, although most of the media are unlikely to ask them. The speech purported to rally support for the Democrats' legislation to impose federal standards on voting in all 50 states -- legislation that has no chance of passing. It doesn't even...

Democrats in Congress are unable to move forward on their massive spending bill because of bipartisan opposition. Polling showed resident Biden’s Big Government Socialism Bill was wildly unpopular with the American people. That is no surprise when you consider it did not address any of the significant issues facing American families today like sky-high gas prices, rising food costs, spikes in violent crime, and a shortage of products because of a failing supply chain. So, what’s next for the radical progressives in Congress? That would be pushing another wildly unwanted, unnecessary, unpopular bill. The Left now wants a complete federal...

He was packaged to American voters as “Lunch Bucket Joe,” a moderate, a voice of reason who would bring factions together and sooth a “suffering” nation. In his inaugural address, resident Biden repeated this message, stating, “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.” But a casual review of several his political appointments raise serious questions about the cultivated image of Biden as a unifier and a centrist. The administration has nominated a series of individuals with far-left political views and many with a history of divisive...

Inflation continues to skyrocket nationwide, biting into the slight wage gains American workers have experienced so far this year. Prices for food, energy, and other essentials have all surged since the enactment of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill earlier this year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like these price increases are on pace to subside anytime soon. It’s possible inflation could even get worse, particularly as it relates to energy prices, if congressional Democrats get their way and enact their multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill. Although the details of their bill change on a near daily basis, one thing remains constant:...

As Covid lockdowns eased this past year, people all over the world went back to work and play. But while oil, natural gas, coal and electricity demand predictably shot up, President Biden canceled and hyper-regulated pipelines, leases and drilling permits. European leaders took similarly shortsighted actions. Inadequate global supplies chased rising global demand, and prices predictably skyrocketed. Regular gasoline that averaged $2.17 per gallon in 2020 hit $3.49 in November 2021, costing American motorists $17 more to fill their tanks. Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm laughed it off, saying, “If you drove an electric car, this wouldn’t be affecting you.”...

"'Hope' is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul," wrote Emily Dickinson. "And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm." Staring ahead on New Year's Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful country is going to have to fall back on its reserves. What storms? Suddenly, the omicron variant of the coronavirus is sweeping the nation, shutting schools, shops, restaurants and bars that were only lately reopened. In this last week of 2021, new infections twice set records. Is a...

When I wrote my end of the year column last year I thought there was nowhere to go but up. I was wrong. While 2020 sucked in more ways than I care to remember, 2021 out-sucked it by a mile. The only thing bad about it ending is the same clowns who ruined this year will still be in power in 2022 (though hopefully for the last time). Where to start with the sucking? Might as well start at the top – the Biden administration’s retreat from Afghanistan. Make no mistake about it, it’s wasn’t a withdrawal, it was a...

I love the smell of Joe Manchin in the morning … it smells like … victory. If you survey the charred ruins of the progressives' hopes and dreams, you will need to have a heart of stone not to burst into hysterical laughter at their pain. They were so close, so very close, and their heart's desire was ripped from them by a senator from a sane state who had zero desire to commit ritual, political suicide to please the brother-curious likes of Ilhan Omar. Cue the gif of a team of Joes carrying a coffin to that catchy EDM...

“Why are we allowing someone that makes $500,000 to get a discount on an electric vehicle? That doesn’t make any sense to me at all,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) declared while stopping Biden’s $2 trillion boondoggle misnamed the Build Back Better (BBB) Act. The socialists seeking to control our energy have no satisfactory answer to Senator Manchin’s criticism. Biden’s BBB would rob from the poor and middle class, to give to the elite under the guise of climate change. The BBB includes a whopping $7,500 tax credit to purchase electric vehicles, which would mostly benefit the wealthy. The legislation also...

The saying, "One man with courage makes a majority" has been attributed by historians to different sources. But regardless of who said it, there is one man who stands out today worthy of this description. It's West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin has been a one-man show in the Democratic Party, standing often in solitude, holding feet-to-the-fire of his president and his party's leadership, pushing back on the massive and irresponsible spending avalanche in the Build Back Better act. Now, Manchin has slammed the door, saying he can't vote for the bill, effectively killing it. In so doing, Manchin has...

As the bad news surges and throbs again about the coronavirus, you can easily sense the lack of political vitriol for this president. Joe Biden gets a free pass. On CBS's "Face the Nation" on Dec. 19, reporter Mark Strassmann solemnly marked "another milestone in mourning." "Bells tolled Thursday for 800,000 Americans dead from the virus. That is almost the population of San Francisco. Roughly 1,200 Americans still die daily from the virus." Nobody blamed Biden. Instead, CBS preceded this dirge with a Biden lecture: "For the unvaccinated, we're looking at a winter of severe illness and death, unvaccinated, for...

Speaking to the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill, paraphrasing philosopher George Santayana, made a critical point: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." In his book, "While England Slept," Churchill makes the case World War II could have been avoided had England's weak and feckless prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, not tried to appease Germany's power-hungry despot, Adolf Hitler. We now have President Joe Biden taking Chamberlain's approach with three contemporary tyrants: Russia's Vladimir Putin, Communist China's Xi Jinping and Iran's "supreme leader," Ali Khamenei. As Chamberlain learned, appeasing tyrants never works. It's like...

One of the most popular provisions of the 1994 Contract with America was a rule requiring Congress to live by the same laws that families and businesses are subject to. So, why doesn't Congress live by the financial and accounting standards required of the rest of us? I'm speaking of the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better law, a giant financial masquerade. No one knows what it costs. None of the Democrats in Congress who are hellbent on passing it seems to care. That may be because, as the House Budget Committee chairman has pronounced, "We can pay for whatever we want...

Like a broken-down vaudeville performer of old, Joe Biden has just a few acts in his repertoire and he’s sticking to them. One of those acts that he drags act as often as possible is climate change. So it was that, after the terrible damage when a tornado devastated Mayfield, Kentucky, Biden immediately said that the tornado is proof of global warming. (Other Democrats piled on with the same message.) However, the reality is that extreme weather events are getting less frequent. More than 40 tornadoes touched down in a six-state region on Friday night, with the greatest damage centered...

From Russia with Love was the second in the James Bond series featuring Sean Connery as 007. Bond was sent to assist in the defection of a Soviet consulate clerk after Bond killed Dr. No in the first of the series. Today we have a remake, more in keeping with modern times. Now we have Dr. Dementia, also known as resident Biden, assisting in the defection, actually resettlement, not of Soviets, but of Afghans, hundreds of thousands of them. Instead of James Bond, we have Donald MAGA as the good guy, with Dr. Dementia punishing America for the audacity to...

Looking at the “Border Patrol agents with whips” hoax, it’s clear what’s happening. We have gone down the rabbit hole and ended up in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, a place in which there is no logic, all of the characters are crazy, and the ones with the most power are the most cruel. For Alice, it was a bad dream but, for all Americans, especially the scapegoated Border Patrol agents, Biden et al are making trying hard to ensure that this is a nightmare from which we’ll never awaken. To refresh your recollection, in Alice in Wonderland, Alice attends a trial...

We are so screwed. On inauguration day, I knew a rough ride lay ahead, a path filled with the worst ideas of the left. After a half-year of Joe Biden, the Obama presidency seemed more innocuous, and the Clinton years look positively Churchillian. Insane spending, disastrous climate extremism, heavy contributions to our cultural rot—I expected those. And I expected horrid foreign policy guidance from a team of egghead academics wholly unappreciative of the toughness needed to position America in a dangerous world. But this Afghan disaster is something I rarely experience: a surprise. The exit decision was not a surprise....

Democrats are busy trying to ensure a victory in the 2022 elections. If public opinion plays any part (and if the elections are honest), they'll likely lose in even larger numbers than in 2020, which was bad for them, President Joe Biden's "victory" notwithstanding. But the Democrats in power are very, very good at gaming the system; we can expect them to exploit "fear porn" associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. They will demand the continuation of practices that are rife with potential for fraud, such as ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots, and fight tooth and nail against election integrity efforts...

In keeping with its penchant for increasing government dependence, the Biden administration recently announced it has greenlit the largest-ever increase for Americans on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. Under the revised SNAP guidelines, the 42 million Americans on SNAP will receive a 25 percent monthly increase. This means the average SNAP recipient will now receive $157 per month in benefits. According toTom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “I think the pandemic sort of shocked people out of the belief that this is a program that was for some others, somebody else,...

It is one of the unfortunate ironies coming out of the Biden administration that, with all the obsession about so-called equity, the policies they are putting forth will only hurt the very low-income Americans they pretend to want to help. The Biden administration is growing government at a record pace. If what they want is opportunity for every American, government policy should aim to encourage economic growth. Bigger, more intrusive government achieves the opposite. It stifles economic growth. The Biden administration submitted its first 10-year budget to Congress last month. The budget projects average annual economic growth for 2023 through...