Political Pistachio
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By Douglas V. Gibbs
Constitutionally, the federal government cannot enter a State with federal personnel without permission. The Founding Fathers did not want the federal government intruding into State affairs without the States’ permission. However, if a State asks for help, typically because the State’s resources fail to be fully adequate in the face of an emergency, the federal government is not only expected to assist, but is obliged to.
When Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, the governor refused to call a state of emergency, which basically meant that the federal government was not welcome to come in and assist. President Bush was hammered for a failed response when the State refused his assistance. He was hammered because it was four days before he even flew above the dismal scene after the hurricane struck the area. Constitutionally, however, since federal government assistance was not requested, he could not act until it was.
The worst hurricane since Katrina is the recent storm, Helene. The storm was last week, and the Biden/Harris regime is only now starting to act like they give a care about what happened. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, with Elon Musk and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse at his side, was on the scene immediately doing what he could to provide assistance. All of the states affected have requested federal assistance, and that help has not arrived. Then, on Wednesday, October 2, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement that a part of the reason for the slow response has been that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is out of money.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” he said, and “we are expecting another hurricane…we do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what – what is imminent.”
FEMA money, however, was used without a care when the illegal alien crisis created by this administration demanded $1.4 billion. The Biden/Harris administration also found a way to send money to enemies of America in the Middle East, and they sure were able to send money to Ukraine without a blink of an eye; but when Americans need help after a natural disaster Americans are dying because the Democrats sent money to deal with illegal aliens instead. In fact, according to one report, the federal government has been confiscating supplies, grounding planes, and refusing to send relief.
“Betrayal” is the word that comes to mind. Biden and Kamala Harris have proven that for them, Americans are last on their list of concerns. Throwing open the border, and then pumping money into care for the illegal aliens flooding into this country as a result of their anti-American border policy is more important than helping people through the hurricane season.
Trump says Make America Great Again; Biden and Harris proclaim Make Americans Last…Again.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Yes, this blog typically has political and constitutional posts on it, but as a huge baseball fan I had to write the following piece about Pete Rose. He was, after all, one of my favorite players as a child. I fell in love with baseball during the 1970s. I was nine when I played my first Little League game in Bellflower, California. My first baseball card was Tony Perez of the Reds before that. So, by virtue of a connection to those two teams as a kid, they were my original favorite teams. The Mets made me familiar with players like Tom Seaver, Ron Hodges, Dave Kingman, Rusty Staub, and for a while Manager Yogi Berra who left the team before that 1975 season was over. The Cincinnati Reds, however, thanks to that Tony Perez baseball card half a decade earlier, caught my attention first. And it was fun to love the Reds, since my family was all about the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Big Red Machine of the mid-1970s was phenomenal. To this day I can easily name them all. Johnny Bench at catcher, Dan Driessen or Tony Perez (depending on the year) at First Base, Joe Morgan at Second, Dave Concepcion at Shortstop, Pete Rose at Third Base, and in the outfield George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, and Ken Griffey, Sr. As for the pitchers of that era, Don Gullett, Pedro Borbon, and Clay Carroll stick out most in my mind. Tom Seaver, like Driessen, joined the Reds in 1977.
Pete Rose and Johnny Bench were the ones that caught my attention most, though speedy Joe Morgan was among my favorites, too.
That first year in Little League I watched the grass grow in the outfield, with a ball rarely reaching beyond the infield. I had no talent, no throwing arm, and couldn’t hit the baseball if it was the size of a beach ball. I got better, eventually, and enjoyed stints at Second Base most of the time in my later years, but Third Base was what I usually wanted to play because of Charlie Hustle. Pete Rose stood out in ways that the other players didn’t. He was all-in all of the time. I loved the scrappers who played the game with grit. Later, Darin Erstad of the Angels would be the guy that also earned that title in my world of baseball.
Pete Rose was just about the biggest name in baseball, when I was in Little League, too. He was so popular that even when my family took me to Dodger games there would be cheers (and of course a bunch of jeers, too) inside the stadium when Pete walked out on the field.
Pete Rose was a throwback, when players played the game for the love of it, and with all of the grit they could muster. He wasn’t about trying to hit the ball out of the park; he just put the ball in play and then ran the snot out of each chance he could around the bases. He dove for balls at the hot corner, and fired his strikes to First Base even if it meant that his body fell to the ground due to the enhanced effort. His uniform was always dirty, usually down the front since he loved to slide hands first.
Pete Rose was all about baseball. In his interviews that’s all he really talked about. He was born to play ball, and that’s all he ever wanted to do. Nobody played harder, nobody got dirtier, and nobody loved the game more.
His famous slide at home plate during the 1970 MLB All-Star Game pretty much summed up his attitude. It was an All-Star Game. Basically a show for the fans. Yet, it was still about putting everything into the game, from Pete Rose’s point of view. It was the 12th inning, game was tied, and Rose barreled into home plate to win the game as if the whole season was on the line. Fosse missed catching the ball, and Fosse’s shoulder was dislocated as a result. Fosse’s shoulder was never the same, but the clip continued to play as long as I could remember. The funniest part about it is that Fosse and Rose considered themselves to be friends, and in fact got together to hang out after that game. Rose played for all of the marbles, played hard and with grit, but was also liked by even his rivals. I suppose you could say back then he was the ultimate ambassador for the game. Good guy, hard player, and a passionate baseball marvel who was liked by pretty much everyone.
In the 1975 World Series, the first one that I really paid attention to since it was also my first year to play ball, Rose and the Cincinnati Reds squared off against the Boston Red Sox. It was a brutal series that went a full seven games. Pete Rose got the MVP Award, hitting well over .300 and probably could have gotten over .400 with a few more at bats. During that postseason I got to know the players quite well from the games, becoming a fan of a number of players from Boston, Pittsburgh and Oakland, as well. Later, I heard that Rose said to someone during the game, “Isn’t this just great?! Aren’t we lucky?! Can you think of anything you’d rather be doing?!” I don’t remember who he said it to, or if the statement is just another part of baseball lore that may or may not be true, but it sounds exactly like something Pete Rose would say.
To my absolute joy, the following year the Reds spanked the Yankees four-straight. It was a thing of beauty, and I was already not a fan of the evil empire from New York. Johnny Bench’s play outshined Pete Rose’s, that time, but I was good with it. Bench was my other favorite Reds player.
Pete Rose’s career lasted 24 years, more than twice what was needed to qualify for the Hall of Fame. He broke Ty Cobb’s lifetime hits record, joining the very small 4,000 hit club. I collected magazines with Rose on the cover. TIME, Sports Illustrated, and others. I saved newspaper clippings. I have baseball cards of Pete Rose going back to 1972. I think my love of Pete Rose was a key part of why I adopted Doug DeCinces of the Angels (post-Baltimore) during the years he was in Anaheim. DeCinces played with grit, and he was, you know, at Third Base.
Pete Rose finished his career with a .303 Batting Average, 4,256 hits, and a .987 fielding percentage. He played in 17 All-Star Games, he’s a three-time World Series Champion, won the Rookie of the Year award in 1963, won the NL MVP in 1973, had two Gold Gloves, one Silver Slugger Award, and finished with the top Batting Average in the National League three times. He not only owns the hits record, but his 3,562 games is another record we may never see broken. He’s also first all-time with 14,053 At Bats, first all-time with 15,890 Plate Appearances, second all-time with 746 doubles, first all-time with 3,215 singles, first all-time with 5,929 times on base, enjoyed a 44-game hitting streak in 1978, and ranks among the top defensive players of all-time. He’s also the only player to play at least 500 games at five different positions (1B, LF, 3B, 2B, and RF), carries four switch-hitter records (Runs, Doubles, Walks and Total Bases), and a ton of other records that fills a list too long to put here. In the post-season he had a batting average of .321, and ranks high on a long list of other post-season honors, as well.
Pete Rose loved baseball, and he WAS baseball. Then, accusations arose. The Black Sox scandal way back in 1919 had made gambling a gigantic no-no in baseball, and according to certain pieces of evidence that I believed at the time failed to be absolute proof, Pete Rose was accused of betting on baseball, and some of those games being ones he was a part of. He denied it, and then got banished from baseball, including his otherwise inevitable inclusion into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2004, he admitted publicly to betting on baseball, and even Reds games. In 2007, he told ESPN when he bet on his team, he always bet his team would win, and “I loved my team, I believed in my team … I did everything in my power every night to win that game.”
The kid who began as a member of the Cincinnati Reds in 1960, a dream come true since he was a local kid from Cincinnati, then spent time with the Phillies doing the player-manager thing for a bit, and then back to the Reds (with a single season with the Montreal Expos tucked in between) He was the player who outshined the best and was an all-around threat on the diamond. Pete was the man who became known as Charlie Hustle (a name, they say, he got from Mickey Mantle after the famous Yankee watched Rose during a spring training game – though most will argue it was also a variation of the “Joe Hustle” nickname he earned during his minor league days), and was possibly the greatest player ever to play the game; yet, he is not in the Hall of Fame, and he died before that error could be corrected.
Pete Rose died at the age of 83 on September 30, 2024. The outfielder turned Third Baseman and First Baseman (but began at Second Base) died at his home in Las Vegas. The day before he was in Nashville, surrounded by other members of the Big Red Machine, continuing to talk about the game he loved. He was in a wheelchair in Tennessee, with Concepcion, Foster, Perez and Griffey by his side. The day before Johnny Bench was there, too. Despite being in pain (he said his back was hurting, that day) he got to be with his Big Red Machine buddies. It was a highlight for him, no doubt. He also signed around 200 autographs in Nashville the day before he died, and posted for photos with fans.
A friend of mine was frank with me when we discussed Charlie Hustle’s death. “I won’t visit the Hall of Fame,” he told me, “until Pete Rose is in it.”
I’ve been there before, myself, in Cooperstown to see the grand Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s a wonderful visit. But, I agree, Pete Rose needs to be there. It’s incomplete without him.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
If you listen carefully, the Democrats will tell you exactly what they are up to. When Barack Obama, for example, said he planned to fundamentally transform America, he was telling the honest truth, and he wanted to get as much of it done as he could during his presidency. In the grand scheme of things, he was the set-up man, and Hillary Clinton was the closer. The Democrats were convinced that Hillary Clinton would win, and they’d cheat to achieve it if they had to, and she would finish the transformation of America that Obama had launched. The key, however, was not only to perform the transformation, but to make sure that the Democrats gained full power and held on to that power indefinitely. All of that work to gain power is all for naught if the opposition can take it from you in the next election.
In the Democracy that they have created in America (remember, we were originally established as a republic – a very different type of system than a democracy), the vote means everything. The Democrats have resorted to identity politics to establish and define the components of their base, and then they have worked very hard to convince their identity blocks of voters that they care about that particular group, that they are working very hard to give gifts from the treasury or legislative chest to that particular group, and that the opposition is racist and only cares about rich, white, heterosexual, male deplorable supremacists.
The problem is, the “minority groups” they have targeted are not providing enough votes consistently, especially with the last remnants of the republic still in place (like the Electoral College), so they need to spread the members of their voting base into enemy territory with community development laws that encourages demographic movement, and they need to add more voters – as many as they can muster – in order to swing the pendulum of the democracy in their favor. And, along with all of that, they have also regularly employed tactics during the election seasons that essentially enables them to press their fingers down on the scale every chance they can get.
Voter fraud has been a valuable tool, but in the face of someone like Donald J. Trump, it can only go so far. The black vote has worked well for them in many elections, and Biden reminded those voters that “if you don’t vote Democrat, you ain’t black,” but the black population hasn’t been growing in terms of percentage of the population, perhaps because they’ve also been encouraged to abort their babies and dismantle their family units (the latter for a few more government dollars through various programs), so the Democrats have realized that they need a voting block larger than the black vote to push the Democrats over the hump and into the zone of single-party rule.
The problem is, they’ve angered all of the groups not in their camp, and they’ve been losing many women and homosexuals (despite their efforts to keep them) to the other side in protest of pet beliefs like parental rights, gun ownership, and chopping children up below the waist in the name of affirmation. The loss of those voters came as a surprise to the Democrats. They figured, in their arrogance, that all members of their special identified protected groups would vote Democrat no matter what since they had convinced the general public that the GOP is racist to its core and all Republicans hate gays, believe women have less rights, and want to take us back to the days of slaves and women wearing dresses up to their necks, and down to their ankles and wrists. But, for some reason, some of those people become “red pilled,” and fly the coop.
The Democrats have increased their use of the race card, doubled-down on the false idea that the Democrats are for the poor and the Republicans are for the rich even though the results of their policies say otherwise, and they have intensified their efforts to convince everyone that they are the “party of democracy.” They’ve even got most of their opposition calling our republic a “democracy.” Immigrants, legal and illegal, have heard the call, and believe that it is America’s “democracy” that has made the country so prosperous. Therefore, when they arrive, it makes sense that the party of democracy, and the party that gives them gifts from various government programs, would be the party to vote for. So, armed with this knowledge, the Democrats have encouraged migration, any kind of migration from any place, into the minds of the people of the world. It almost sounds like a circus ringmaster. “Come one, come all, to the greatest giveaway on Earth.”
As a result, partially due to their fertility rate, and partially due to the fact that they are crossing the southern border in droves, Hispanics have become the fastest growing voting block, and the Democrats are poised to do everything they can to make sure that particular group adores the Democratic Party, hates the Republicans, and votes whether it’s legal for them to, or not.
The problem, however, has been that in the minds of the Democrats time is running out. The cogs of their machine to fundamentally transform America are spinning, but the machine has not moved forward because delays have messed things up thanks to people like Donald J. Trump throwing monkey wrenches into the works. The progressive collective left have been working for over a century on their project to destroy America’s constitutional founding and to remake America into the image of the visions of people like Karl Marx and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and their patience of late have been wearing thin. With Obama and Hillary they were so close that they could taste it, but Trump interrupted the process and they are antsy to be able to get back on track and finish their latest sixteen year plan. They believe the new infusion of Hispanic voters will get them where they want, but they need it to happen soon. They can’t wait any longer. They can’t afford another set-back like what they experienced with Trump’s election as President of the United States in 2016.
The need for more voters quickly is where illegal aliens fit in. The undocumented immigrants knew that it was the Democrats who encouraged them to cross the border, and who were promising all kinds of government programs to make sure they could survive in America. As far as the Democrats were concerned, once those people begin to vote they will vote Democrat. But, they need them to vote NOW, and they need many more illegal aliens in the United States so that they can be ready to vote as soon as possible. However, the incoming flow was not large enough. More voters is needed. The clock is ticking. They need more, and not enough of them have been crossing the border. So, especially during recent years, various schemes have kicked into high gear; motor voter laws, killing voter ID laws, and opening the border as wide as possible so as to pour as many undocumented democrats into the country as fast as possible.
The Democrats, however, always fail to comprehend that what accompanies their actions are consequences. Everything has consequences, despite their efforts to eliminate them. In the case of a wide open border, a criminal element and invaders from countries that hate America have been crossing into the United States. For the Democrats that was a more than acceptable consequence since they also want chaos and lawlessness. When violence, lawlessness, and destruction sets in people cry out for government to save them. But, the problem with the criminal element and the invaders is that it disrupts peace and safety just enough that people take notice. The Democrats brushed the problem off their shoulder like a buzzing pest, and continued to push forward. What did they care if a few people noticed the damage being done by so many unvetted criminal invaders coming into the country? The Republicans, as they were approaching the coronation of Hillary Clinton, had nobody capable of dethroning them, so the plan marched on.
Donald J. Trump burst on the scene largely because of the immigration issue. Despite all of their efforts to stop him, he pulled off the win in 2016. It was confusing to the Democrats. They had manipulated all of the polls and had them leaning towards Hillary Clinton, their forces in full swing at the voting booths were making sure they pulled off more Democratic votes than usual, and they pumped more money than ever before into the presidential campaign; yet, Hillary lost. They were shocked and stunned. The public, and even the press, began asking questions – How could the polls have been so wrong? How could the inevitable election of Hillary Clinton be thwarted by a loud-mouthed businessman with no political experience and no political army behind him?
It must’ve been the Russians, they claimed. There was no way he could have legitimately beaten Hillary, the Democrats argued, so Russian interference in the election was the only possible answer.
Their claim was proven to be a bunch of hooey, but by the time 2020 came along they had their forces in the press, entertainment, academia, and everywhere else they could muster in full swing. Trump was so popular that he garnered more votes than any presidential candidate in history (and probably more than we were told, to be honest), but the machine was ready for it this time and in 2020 they were ready to make sure their plan was back on track. Irregularities and anomalies haunted the 2020 Election, and many of them were pointed out by legitimate sources. The Democrats, however, handled it perfectly. They argued it was a safe and secure election, and any argument to the contrary was either conspiracy theory, or treasonous. Then, when Trump’s MAGA followers decided they would protest at the Capitol on January 6, the Democrats saw it coming, and staged a violent clash. Despite the fact that the “insurrection” mostly occurred before the first MAGA supporters from Trump’s speech across the way even arrived, anyone and everyone who set foot on the grounds around the Capitol were targeted, and slapped with the accusation of being an insurrectionist. It was all a production, and the Democrats provided Oscar-worthy performances. They got what they wanted. Their opposition was finally being branded as unhinged, dangerous, violent, and treasonous; and without anymore opposition standing in their way for the moment Joseph Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20, 2021 whether he actually won, or not.
The Republicans grabbed a majority in the House of Representatives, however, making it impossible for the Democrats to unleash their plan to its fullest extent; they surely noted it to themselves, and added to their plans for 2024 to address the down-ballot as well.
Now, the next election looms on the horizon, and the Democrats are ready to make sure that their plan never gets derailed again. They’ve done everything they can; they have pursued and jailed everyone they can get their hands on regarding January 6, pumping fear into the opposition. They have also targeted Trump and anyone associated with him. The lawfare, while it did not land Trump and many of his minions in jail, worked well enough to enable them to hammer the “he’s a felon” mantra over and over again. They believe Trump and his MAGA movement has been defanged. But, his followers are still willing to vote for him, despite all of the efforts to convince them otherwise.
And the immigration issue has turned against the Democrats in a big way.
The Democrats have realized that their open-border policies are not popular with the people, and the criminal element crossing the border has caused serious damage to their image as the party of the immigrant. People want the border secure, and they want the people coming into the country vetted, even if those people are asylum seekers as the Democrats claim. So, the Democrats in 2024 have realized they have to make a few changes.
In Kamala Harris’s speech in Douglas, Arizona on September 27, 2024, while she was in the area for her photo opportunity at the border to make it look like she cares about the immigration issue, she laid out exactly what is going on and what she is really doing (remember, the Democrats lay out what they are up to if you just listen). They had already been attacking the Republicans for following Trump’s advice and standing against the “bi-partisan border bill” that the Democrats claim was exactly what is needed to secure the border. Kamala reminded everyone of that talking point, accusing Donald Trump of getting on the phone and convincing the Republicans to shoot it down because, “he wants to run on a problem rather than solve it.”
Kamala and the Democrats know that immigration is an issue that they are losing on. Donald J. Trump launched into political prominence way back in 2015 when he exclaimed stepping off an escalator, “I want to build a great big beautiful wall.” Most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, believes that we should have immigration laws in place, follow those laws, and that we should not throw the border wide open and let anyone cross into the country – especially criminal aliens. The average person believes we are a country of immigrants, and that immigration is a good thing, but unchecked illegal immigration poses a danger to the security of the United States.
The truth is we have no access to the criminal records in other countries, so the only way we can hope to prevent the entry into the United States by criminal aliens is to secure our borders and strictly enforce the laws on the books which contain protocols designed to vet the individuals coming into America across the border. The truth is there are enemies of the United States in the Middle East, China, and other parts of the world who are sending their agents into the United States across our open border, and the only way we can hope to prevent the invasion of enemy agents is to secure the borders and strictly enforce the laws on the books which contain protocols designed to vet the individuals coming into America across the border.
I believe most Americans realize those truths.
The Democrats realize that the tide has turned against them, and that people are beginning to demand a secure border and demand that the people coming into this country go through a process to make sure the people being let in are not dangerous to America’s general population. But, at the same time, the Democrats need the flow of “immigrants” to remain constant. They need to tip the balance so that they can use democracy to further establish their power and keep someone like Trump from ever upsetting the apple cart ever again. The “bi-partisan border bill” is that vehicle. It is designed to expand the immigration court system so as to move through the system asylum-seekers more quickly. In other words, create the illusion that they care about the border, and even set up a system that looks like they are vetting the people crossing the border, but do it with their judges in courts set up by them and let everyone in anyway in the name of asylum. That way, they get their proverbial cake and can eat it too. Keep the flow of people who will vote Democrat coming into the country, but with the illusion of border security and vetting the people coming in attached.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
One of the unique characteristics of the American System is its series of checks and balances. The Constitution was designed not to create a democracy, but a republic, and a part of being a republic is the concept that the majority must be held back and not allowed to act unilaterally without the minority voice having a say. That is the reason for the creation of the Electoral College, the reason the Founders established it to be two Senators per State in the U.S. Senate, the reason the State Senates used to be one senator per county (changed by Reynolds v. Sims in 1964), the reason the U.S. Senators were voted into office by the State Legislatures rather than by a democratic popular vote (changed in 1913 by the 17th Amendment), why the States originally analyzed the federal budget before providing the income tax (changed in 1913 by the 16th Amendment), why it takes a super-majority to ratify amendments to the Constitution, why it takes a super-majority to ratify treaties, why it takes a super-majority to convict during an impeachment hearing, and why the Senate came up with the Filibuster Rule.
Checks and balances are not something that tyrannical authoritarians are fond of, which is why Democratic Party and their presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, are promising to get rid of the United States Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. Without it any majority will get whatever they want with no obstacles in the way, and in their arrogance they believe they will hang on to the tight majority they have in the Senate, if not solidifying their majority by picking up more seats in November.
The Constitution may not be an obstacle to them, but the filibuster is. Without the filibuster, and if they were able to grab a majority in the House of Representatives and the White House in the next election, they believe they will be able to do as they please like the Democrats do in California with their Golden State Super-Majority.
Harris has indicated during her current campaign for President that she wishes to eliminate the filibuster so that they can do an end-around the United Supreme Court who invalidated Roe v. Wade in 2022 with their ruling of the Dobbs v. Jackson case. Never mind that the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to be involved in the abortion issue, which is why the Supreme Court sent it back to the States; Harris plans to unconstitutionally push legislation codifying unrestricted abortion nationwide despite the Constitution and despite the High Court.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio.
That’s what tyrants do. They change the rules to eliminate the voice of the opposition, they silence anyone who could get in their way, and they push for unilateral law-making and a single-party system.
Harris defended the filibuster when the Democrats were in a solid minority during her years in the chamber in 2017 with a letter urging then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to preserve the filibuster amid fears from Democrats at the time that Republicans would kill it.
“We are united in our determination to preserve the ability of Members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor,” the letter stressed, alluding to the filibuster.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) highlighted the letter after Harris’ recent interview during which she call for nixing the filibuster, stating that “Her word is meaningless” and “She’ll do anything to get elected.”
While the recent call last week by Kamala to get rid of the filibuster is the first time she verbalized her desire since the launch of her presidential campaign, she has indicated many times prior to the coup that put her in Biden’s place on the Democratic Ticket that she wants the filibuster done away with. Many of her fellow Democrats have advocated for doing so, as well.
The filibuster rule establishes that to reach cloture (end of debate) 60 Senate votes must be achieved calling for an end to debate on a piece of legislation, regardless of how many members are present in the chamber. Supporters of the filibuster say that the number that exceeds a simple majority is needed to prevent a narrow majority from enacting radical, sweeping changes.
As with all other checks and balances instilled in the American System, it is designed to make sure that the tyranny of the majority is not allowed to run wild through unilateral means.
Abortion has been a major issue for the Democrats with the claim that a mother desiring to kill her own baby is her “reproductive right” and it must be preserved without any restrictions at all costs, even if that means violating the Constitution and legislating a national law to accomplish the feat. While Democrats hysterically claim Republicans wish to nationally ban abortion, a false claim since Trump and a majority of Republicans have echoed the Constitution and the Supreme Court that the decisions regarding abortion belongs to each of the States individually, following the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Dobbs v. Jackson, Biden said he would support eliminating the filibuster in order to nationally codify unrestricted abortion while Harris, as president of the Senate, said she would cast a tie-breaking vote to eliminate the filibuster if needed.
The primary reason the Democrats have not been able to achieve ending the filibuster has been because two former Democrats, who now consider themselves independents, oppose the change. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, however, according to Schumer at the Democratic National Convention, will no longer be Senators in 2025, and in their arrogance the Democrats are convinced that they will have a majority, and will have no opposition keeping them from removing the filibuster from the Senate’s rules once Manchin and Sinema are out of the way.
Manchin told CNN regarding Harris’ comments about killing the filibuster, “Shame on her. She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House [of Representatives] on steroids … I think that basically can destroy our country and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology.”
“To state the supremely obvious,” Sinema reacted on X, “eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide. What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea.”
Kamala Harris blasted Manchin and Sinema for daring to stand in dissent against her plan to put the filibuster into a grave.
The Democrats, in their arrogance, are not worried about any rule changes being used against them. They are convinced that they will never have to look back after this election. Trump and the MAGA Republicans will be a forgotten anomaly, and their journey toward a single party system without anyone standing in their way will be complete.
Filibusters are nothing new, dating all the way back to the Founding Fathers who put it in place during the U.S. Senate’s inaugural sessions in 1789. The filibuster was used as a mechanism to extend debate, but the idea of cloture (a vote beyond a simple majority to end debate) was not established until 1917, which then added a need for a two-thirds majority (then 64 senators) to end debate. In 1975, Senate rules were tweaked to reduce the cloture threshold to 60 votes. In 2013 the nuclear option was put into effect changing the cloture vote to a simple majority for ending debate on federal judicial nominees. In 2017 it was expanded again to 60 votes regarding the confirmation of Supreme Court nominees.
Harris has been urging Wisconsin voters to re-elect Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who has been losing ground to her GOP opponent, knowing that Baldwin’s seat might be a key in the Democrats holding on to a 51-49 majority.
“It is well within our reach to hold onto the majority in the Senate and take back the House. And so I would also emphasize that while the presidential election is extremely important and dispositive of where we go moving forward, it also is about what we need to do to hold onto the Senate and win seats in the House,” Harris said.
The reality is that the Presidential Election, while a key part of preserving the Republic, is not enough. The Democrats are going for broke. They are aiming for the White House, and all of the down-ballot seats. And, even if they somehow do not win the White House, it is their contention that if they own both Houses of Congress, any Republican President would be neutralized from the start, making their opposition ineffective, and ultimately all it would do is push their scheme’s ultimate goals a little farther down the road.
However, if they get the trifecta, White House and both Houses of Congress, they will change (and possibly dismantle) the Supreme Court to fit their fancy, and fundamentally change this country in ways that Obama could only imagine. No check and balance, much less the Constitution, from their point of view, would be an obstacle again. They would be free to rule, free to dominate, and free to fundamentally transform America into a collectivist failed state that the Founding Fathers specifically wrote the Constitution the way they did to stand against.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary