Lot Of Meat On This Bone.

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Anyone who wants to send me a message best do so not on linked in because I seldom go to that site.  The way to reach me is respond to my memo, if you get it, or berkobroker@gmail.com   Thanks, Me

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McCarthy’s Debt-Ceiling Offer

The GOP appears to have gotten its act together. Will Biden continue obstructing?

By Kimberley A. Strassel 

Joe Biden has been betting his debt-ceiling strategy on continued GOP House disunity—not a bad wager in light of initial Republican turmoil. But what does the White House do if Speaker Kevin McCarthy gets his team onside? We may be about to find out.

Mr. McCarthy unveiled his debt-ceiling strategy this week, and the party looks to have found a landing spot. In a Tuesday letter to Mr. Biden, Mr. McCarthy notes the rapidly approaching “X” date for hitting the country’s borrowing limit and asks for a meeting. More notably, he unveils the GOP’s term sheet—laying out several spending reduction proposals as examples of what House Republicans might trade for a debt-ceiling hike. Democrats can no longer claim they don’t know what the GOP is asking for. Republicans have made their offer. Over to you, Mr. President.

Remarkably, Mr. Biden stiff-armed Mr. McCarthy—again. The leader of the House has now been refused any communication on the debt limit for two months—unable to get a single chin-wag or meeting with Mr. Biden, the White House chief of staff, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen or even some midlevel aide. The White House is warning of apocalypse if it is required to cut even a penny from current spending, while claiming no talks can happen until the House GOP produces a budget resolution. It is ordering the opposing party in the House to raise the limit with “no strings attached.”

This is irresponsible brinkmanship wrapped in bad spin. Mr. Biden knows his demand for a GOP budget is a canard, unnecessary for talks. Just as the president’s wild $6.9 trillion budget was dead on arrival in this House, any GOP budget resolution is DOA in a Democratic Senate. Both are pure messaging documents. And it’s not as if anybody needs to know, say, the proposed Republican 2028 top line for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get a debt ceiling/spending reform deal.

Mr. Biden’s real aim is to coax Republicans into a protracted internal fight over a sprawling resolution, wait out the clock, then jam the GOP into a clean hike. Precisely because the president has been so openly salivating over the prospect of a GOP budget brawl, House Republicans have decided they aren’t going to give him the satisfaction—at least not before a debt ceiling moment. House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington says any GOP budget resolution is months away. This is designed to delink the question of the resolution from talks. (And yes, it also conveniently puts off a messy GOP fight.)

Mr. McCarthy can do this in part because of the work of Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, who for months has been holding talks with the speaker’s office and the heads of the “five families”—ideologically diverse caucuses that represent the bulk of House GOP members. Republicans may not yet have agreement on a budget, but those meetings and communications did produce support for the list of spending reforms Mr. McCarthy now offers in return for a debt-ceiling hike. They include returning nondefense discretionary spending to pre-Covid levels, clawing back unspent pandemic funds, imposing modest work requirements for some benefits programs, and enacting policies to lower energy costs and enhance border security.

This has the potential to rewrite debt-ceiling dynamics. If Mr. Biden still refuses to negotiate, Mr. McCarthy could move to pass a short-term debt-ceiling increase with some modest savings attached. Then dump it in the Senate’s lap, and put it on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to act. Would the White House and the Senate then risk default?

So far, the White House is indicating it will continue to play hardball, perhaps in the hope that Mr. McCarthy’s caucus cracks. And it could. But if the GOP holds together, this White House may have to acknowledge that Republicans won the House and fully intend to use what few must-pass pieces of legislation exist to accomplish some of their priorities.

The GOP proposals meanwhile have the benefit of being considered and reasonable—especially in light of recent insane levels of spending. They also have the potential to draw the support of some Democrats, who are increasingly eager to show the public that they are aware of and care about inflation and today’s $31 trillion in debt.

If the GOP House remains united, the White House might even face the prospect of a series of short-term debt-ceiling hikes, which could continue to consume Washington oxygen. The White House will have to decide if it prefers that scenario to a larger deal that extends the ceiling past the 2024 election.

No one wants a default, but no one can also deny political reality. The entity holding the debt ceiling hostage is a White House refusing to talk with a GOP House that wants a deal and now appears to know what it’s after.

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TRUMP

Radicals will go to any length to destroy Trump. Hillary used fascism, the AG in New York, hate, now what drives the entire Democrat Party's, sole focus/tactic is weaponization of politics. Sad indeed and eventually could destroy the nation.

This memo is dedicated to those friends of mine who are so overboard in their hatred of Trump that I am going to contrast the differences as psychotic because I have no other explanation. When Trump was a New York Playboy Real Estate Developer the mass media loved him because he gave them copy, blacks oved him because he was charitable and hired them for significant corporate positions and the workers loved him because he would sit on a scaffold with them and eat a sandwich.

Then he concluded the country was going to hell, decided to run for president and threatened the elites who loved him and they turned on him like fascists and Hillary, working though a Democrat Law Firm concocted a plan to wreck his campaign and you know the rest. This allowed a double standard of justice to form and to shield and attack him on trumped up accusations and the mass media assisted led by the anti-simitic New York Times.

My liberal friends accuse Trump of narcissisms, bad behaviour, vulgar language and aggressive verbal abuse and other non-presidential behavior of which he is totally guilty. They ignored disgusting Bill Clinton's behaviour, Hillary's fascism and Obama's Muslim intent to to transform America.

They also ignore his accomplishments under outrageous and illegal efforts to stop his administration.  Yet, he reduced inflation, increased employments quieted our adversaries, extended his hand to bring about peace( actually brought a semblance of calm and comity to the Middle East) because he thought outside the box and was not politically ideological but rational and other things like reducing fentanyl, closed/reduced illegal immigration and, again, you know the rest and I have yet to mention the benefits that accrues to the lower echelons of our society.  Amazing accomplishments against undeniable illegal resistance.

                                                                             BIDEN

My liberal Friends are so under the irrational influence of hatred they defend their positions by asserting Biden is unaware of what he is doing and allow him total cover yet: fentanyl is killing Americans, Americans citizens are being attacked by illegal immigrants who are flooding the nation because Mexican drug cartels are earning billion from illegal trafficking (read articles by Victor Hanson.)  Young girls are being transported to engage in sexual activities.  Inflation has been unleashed the banking system  is quivering, people have been flooded with government funding  and no longer feel the need to work.  

Biden lies and denies and has purposely chosen to undo whatever Trump accomplished as he allows Obama to serve a third term and we are now facing potential wars as we refund Iran, face China's South China Sea Dominance and threats to Taiwan and Russia is at war in Ukraine.

China is moving aggressively to replace the dollar as the currency of choice and my Liberal friends continue to Hate Trump and not want to jail him so he cannot run for president.  Fascism and a double 

standard of lack of due process, the bedrock upon which our legal foundation rests, continues.

The hatred of my liberal friends knows no bounds, continues driven by the mass media and knows no bounds.

I warned, year ago, when corporate America began to control the mass media entertainment would replace solid, responsible reporting. Visual abilities to entertain added another sense and thus the AOC's were allowed prominence etc.

If I have overstated fact, which no longer have currency, I invite debate.

Those who hate Trump have allowed The Trojan Horses who want to bring America to its feet to become respectable and have weaponized politics and more particularly the Democrat Party which has radicalized itself to the point that it no longer deserves to stand as governing party.

I rest my case.

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Cuomo kicks off his comeback tour

by Jonathan Tobin

For anyone who has covered New York politics in the last half-century, listening to a member of the Cuomo family waxing eloquent about his support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism is standard fare. Thus, Andrew Cuomo appearing via video for a featured speech last month at a Carnegie Hall event honoring the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, even 19 months after he resigned as governor of New York in disgrace, is not altogether surprising.

It appears Cuomo is attempting a comeback by running against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) next year. Like his late father, Mario, who also was elected three times as governor of the Empire State, the younger Cuomo has long cultivated a reputation as a friend of the Jewish community. So what could be more natural than to launch his return by playing the kind of religious/ethnic politics that has long been the mother’s milk of New York public life? That Cuomo was assisted in this effort by the celebrity cleric and Kosher Sex author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a frequent dabbler in the political world and the organizer of the Carnegie Hall event, was also nothing out of the ordinary.

Undaunted by the fact that there is no shortage of groups whose purpose is to build support for the Jewish state, Cuomo announced at the event that he was founding yet another one, which he has named Progressives for Israel. That’s not to say it’s not a savvy move: As a new Gallup tracking poll indicated, for the first time, there are more Democrats who support the Palestinians than those who back Israel when forced to choose, and pro-Israel activists are inclined to welcome any effort along these lines. Cuomo was also right to say, as he recently did on his podcast, that the intersectional Left is intimidating centrist Democrats on the issue.

But the notion that a politician who was driven from office because of multiple charges of sexual harassment, as well as carrying heavy baggage from thousands of COVID-19 deaths among the elderly that were arguably caused by his decisions, is going to be the answer to Israel’s problems among Democrats seems more than a stretch. While Cuomo’s pro-Israel advocacy may be sincere, the purpose of his speech, as well as his activism on the issue, has more to do with his insatiable personal ambition than the conflict in the Middle East or anti-Jewish hate.

Faced with possible prosecution for his actions toward women as well as possible impeachment from Albany politicians who once feared his wrath, Cuomo had no choice but to resign as governor in August 2021. But he made it clear almost immediately that not only would he not admit guilt, but he was also determined not to accept the end of his political career. Spending the rest of his life in quiet obscurity after decades in office was not in the cards for a man who only a year earlier had become a COVID media star and who believed that, sooner or later, he should be president of the United States.

That explains why, at a time when others in his position might be content with getting out of the crosshairs of the media, Cuomo was openly plotting a comeback only a few months after his resignation. He flirted with the possibility, among other targets, of seeking to unseat Attorney General Letitia James, the woman whose investigations helped topple him. Once he saw that wasn’t a viable opinion, he wisely sat out the 2022 race. But he appears determined not to let another election cycle pass without seeking some kind of political vindication.

The attempted resurgence of this 65-year-old political thug felled by #MeToo charges and COVID-19 blowback poses some consequences far beyond Gotham: Rather than just a test of the appeal of a politician and a family name that has been a dominant force in New York politics for two generations, a Cuomo comeback would also generate enormous national attention and likely become a liability for the Democratic Party during what could be a difficult quest to reelect President Joe Biden.

A rapid fall from grace

Cuomo’s fall from grace was spectacular.

In 2021, he was preparing to run for a fourth term in Albany. There was little indication that he wouldn’t succeed in doing something that eluded his father, who, after 12 years in the governor’s mansion, was defeated for reelection in 1994.

During his 11 years as governor, Cuomo achieved the sort of dominance that few governors achieve, especially in normally fractious Albany. Though he was repeatedly beset by left-wing opponents, he trounced everyone, including a well-funded and highly publicized primary challenge by Sex and the City actress Cynthia Nixon in 2018. State legislators feared to cross him, even when, as was the case with his nursing home COVID-19 scandal, he appeared to be highly vulnerable.

Cuomo came up in politics as a loyal aide to his father, who was allowed to play philosopher prince while his eldest son used rough tactics to help him get elected as governor. The crown prince of a would-be Democratic dynasty, he married into the Kennedy clan and moved up the political ladder as the head of a fashionable nonprofit organization and a member of Bill Clinton’s Cabinet. After a failed effort to win the governorship in 2002, he rebounded by being elected as state attorney general and then succeeded Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was himself toppled by a sex scandal, as governor in 2010, after an interim governorship by Spitzer's lieutenant, David Paterson.

Moreover, in 2020, he became the country’s pandemic hero. With Biden, then the Democratic presidential nominee, keeping an understandably low profile to avoid harming his cause with blunders, Cuomo’s daily televised press conferences, for which he won an honorary Emmy Award, made him a star and the face of his party. Fawning treatment from leading figures in the corporate liberal press, talking heads, and the hosts of late-night comedy programs who contrasted his supposedly steady and empathetic leadership to that of President Donald Trump contributed to his enormous popularity at the time.

That was in spite of his infamous March 25, 2020, order, in which he had forced New York nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus victims. This action led to thousands of preventable deaths and was compounded by the cover-up of the number of victims by the governor’s office. But this still would not be Cuomo’s undoing.

His problem was that once Trump was defeated and defending the Biden administration became the priority for the media, Cuomo became expendable. So when the multiple charges of sexual harassment, detailed in a report issued by James, the attorney general, were made public, his former sycophants and enablers ran for cover.

At that point, Cuomo’s trademark arrogance and his willingness to run roughshod over friend and foe alike caught up to him. He left Albany with his reputation destroyed and his career apparently at an end

Cuomo isn’t willing to accept that, and as improbable as it may seem, a successful comeback may not be as unlikely as it sound

Gillibrand’s weakness

Gillibrand has reportedly already begun telling her donors that Cuomo will run against her in a Democratic primary next year when she seeks her third full term (she served out the last two years of Hillary Clinton’s term after being appointed to fill the seat following the former first lady’s appointment as secretary of state in 2009

At first glance, having a #MeToo victimizer challenging a female senator seems like an insane idea. There are others on the long list of men whose careers were “canceled” by accusations of sexual misconduct after the #MeToo tide broke with the Harvey Weinstein revelations in 2017 who have resumed some public activity. But the attempt of a governor, who was treated as an icon by the corporate media during the pandemic, to return to a position of trust and power after a very public shaming is somewhat different. It is not to be compared with the ability of, say, a comedian such as Louis C.K. to win a Grammy after apologizing and taking a brief hiatus out of the public ey

But Gillibrand might be far weaker than those who think Cuomo is dreaming understand, and she is right to be scared. With $10 million in campaign funds still in his account, Cuomo has the resources to attempt a credible challenge to Gillibrand. More than that, his knowledge of New York politics and extensive connections to the party apparatus were not all lost in the summer of 2021 as his sexual harassment scandal overwhelmed him.

As his pro-Israel gambit indicates, Cuomo understands that New York politics can be intensely tribal. While this initiative will not endear him to the state party’s powerful left-wing faction, primaries in New York aren’t necessarily determined by the Manhattan elites who never had much use for him in the first place. Cuomo understands that turning out specific groups in a low-turnout primary, whether it is Jews from the outer boroughs or the suburbs as well as Hasidic enclaves, whose residents vote en masse in blocs, can be more important than the inevitable avalanche of scorn that will be aimed at him from liberal outlets such as the New York Times

The first point of vulnerability is that Gillibrand hasn’t faced a competitive election since her first successful run for Congress in 2006, when she upset four-term Republican incumbent Rep. John Sweeney. But even that happened only after the leak of a domestic violence complaint against him in the final weeks of the campaign that effectively turned that race on its head. After being appointed to the Senate, she has coasted to easy victories in what has become, in effect, a one-party, deep-blue state. But her much-hyped attempt to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 was a disaster, in which her reputation as an inauthentic striver with few clear political principles — she abandoned her pro-gun rights and other more conservative positions once she entered the Senate — dogged her. She withdrew in August 2019, long before a single vote had been cast.

Gillibrand also has more than her share of political enemies. Many in the party resented her determination to drive Al Franken from the Senate after #MeToo accusations involving inappropriate conduct during his days as an entertainer were lodged against him in 2017. Franken was shamed into resigning, but many on the Left who admired the former comedian, as well as Democrats who believed that such charges should only be taken seriously when they involved Republicans, blamed Gillibrand for his forced departure from politics. Indeed, the backlash against her on this score has been so strong that even Gillibrand has voiced some second thoughts about her stance against Franken. Her problems fundraising for her presidential campaign are also traced to this

There is also the sense that Gillibrand lacks Cuomo’s grasp of the tribal politics that can make the difference in races when the opposition is more than, as in her 2010, 2012, and 2018 Senate races, a token Republican with no chance of victory. And with only mediocre approval ratings — a Quinnipiac University Poll from last fall showed her with only a 45% positive rating, with 36% negative and 19% saying they didn’t know — Gillibrand can’t count on any great reserve of popularity to carry her to victory if faced with a tough challenge.

That’s why Cuomo’s bid to position himself as the champion of the Jews and Israel shouldn’t be entirely dismissed as nothing more than cynical posturing. Cuomo’s father had a part-time job as a Shabbes goy in his youth, a non-Jew hired by Orthodox Jews to turn on lights and appliances on the Sabbath. It was a line that this father used frequently with Jewish audiences and one Andrew Cuomo invoked at the Carnegie Hall event — declaring that he will be a Shabbes goy who will fight the rising antisemitism that is prevalent within his own party’s left wing. In doing so, he is attempting to seize control of an open lane in New York Democratic politics that could prove extremely advantageous in a state with so many Jewish voters.

 

Boteach, who met Cuomo in Poland when they both attended the ceremonies commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, has had close associations with other political figures such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). He says he has no qualms about backing Cuomo: “I believe in redemption and repentance. He paid a huge price and took responsibility for his actions. I don’t want to live in a country where people can never atone for mistakes.”

Of course, it is far from clear that Cuomo actually has made amends for his behavior, his ludicrous claim that his unwanted touching was merely a matter of being an Italian American or the attempts by staff and friends to besmirch his accusers. But undaunted by that, Boteach said that if Cuomo is willing to leverage his reputation to speak about antisemitism at a time of an epidemic of anti-Jewish violence in New York City, he deserves the gratitude of Jewish voters. Boteach also pointed out that on the most important vote concerning Israel during her Senate career, Gillibrand voted for the Iran nuclear deal that endangered the Jewish state’s existence. But while that can be used against her, it’s also true that Cuomo didn't take a stand against the pact at the time either.

An opening for a centrist

Boteach seems to be turning a blind eye to the tone of defiance rather than repentance that Cuomo has exuded since his troubles began. But he might not be the only one thinking that in a Democratic Party increasingly dominated by progressives and celebrity members of the congressional “Squad” such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who helped to push weather vane politicians such as Gillibrand further to the left, even someone with Cuomo’s baggage might be useful in the fight against the radicals.

Though New York’s Democratic Party is one in which socialists are considered kosher, centrists understand that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s narrow victory last fall over Republican Lee Zeldin, who may also challenge Gillibrand next year, was due to the pro-criminal policies enacted by a left-wing-dominated legislature. If Cuomo runs as the pro-cop, anti-crime, and anti-woke candidate in the primary, that might be seen as more important than his past indiscretions.

Still, the odds against a successful Cuomo comeback remain long. The thought of someone with the #MeToo badge of shame successfully competing against a woman in any state, let alone ultraliberal New York, boggles the imagination. Talk of redemption notwithstanding, the main vibe Cuomo still gives off is entitlement. But if anyone could accomplish such a feat, the former governor, armed with the money and the political know-how needed for the rough and tumble of New York politics, might be the only one who could do it.

Jonathan S. Tobin is the editor-in-chief of JNS and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org, a senior contributor for The Federalist and a columnist for Newsweek. He is also the host of the Top Story podcast that can be viewed on YouTube and listened to on Spotify and other platforms. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@jns.org. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JonathanSTobincolumnist/.

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WHEN AN EDITORIAL LIKE THIS COMES OUT OF BOSTON, YOU KNOW THERE IS A BIG PROBLEM!

Excellent Boston Herald Editorial

Opinion by Peter Lucas

Joe Biden could have been a good president. All he had to do was leave things alone. Instead, he blundered into the office and wrecked the country.

He is like the guy on a Boeing 747 high over the Atlantic Ocean who breaks into the cockpit and says, "I can fly this thing" "You don't have to, Joe," the pilot says, "It's on autopilot. It flies itself. You know, computers." Undeterred, Joe presses buttons and flips switches. The plane goes into a nosedive.

Which is where we are today. You don't put a guy like this in control.

He is President Doom. Everything he touches goes bad. And nothing is his fault. He took an energy-independent country and turned it into a nation begging Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil. Gasoline prices hit the roof and inflation soared. But it is not his fault.

He forgot how he preened on Day One of his presidency, launching his war on domestic produced energy in favor of his Green Dream of a fossil fuel free world. Biden, John Kerry, his climate change czar, and the progressives would have you believe that the world will come to an end unless their anti-fossil fuel agenda adopted.

Yes, the world may come to an end. But the chances are the end will come sooner from the unleashing of nuclear weapons then it will come from the use of fossil fuels. But you do not hear politicians like Biden or Kerry talk much about doing away with nuclear weapons. On the contrary. Biden is reopening nuclear negotiations with Iran which will eventually lead to the Iranians having a nuclear bomb. This is the country where its religious fanatics have promised to use its first nuclear weapon on Israel and the second on the United States. If I were to bet, I would wager on the world ending in a nuclear bang before closing out in a fossil fuel whimper. Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps pumping away, and the American people suffer. But it is not Biden's fault. It is Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine who is to blame, not Joe Biden.

Joe Biden took a working and strict border policy left to him by Donald Trump and turned it into a humanitarian disaster. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries around the world are pouring into the United States and nobody is stopping them. And many of them are dying along the way. Bidens's decision to do away with border enforcement has also greatly facilitated the smuggling tons of drugs into the county, including deadly fentanyl from China that is killing many unsuspecting Americans. But that is not his fault either. It was Trump's racist border policy that caused all the problems. Besides, he assigned Kamala Harris to get to the root of the problem.

Biden also authored the ill-conceived and humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, causing the unnecessary death of 13 Americans at the chaotic Kabul airport, leaving hundreds of Americans, abandoning thousands of Afghan allies, and throwing he country into the chaotic hands of the Taliban. Naturally, he blamed Trump, which nobody bought. The next thing you know Joe Biden will be blaming Putin for the Supreme Court's decision to send the abortion issue back to the states. Putin somehow must have gotten Trump to appoint three conservatives to the court in order to roil the country.

According to Biden, the "one thing" that has destabilized the country under his leadership has not been soaring gasoline prices, inflation, the open border, the shameful retreat in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, the frightening rising crime rate or the pandemic, but "the outrageous behavior" of the Supreme Court on the abortion issue.

The court did not destabilize the country. Joe Biden did. This man does not belong in the cockpit.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter 

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Biden’s DIRTY Little Secret

President Biden has vowed to make America on 100% clean energy by 2050. But there is a massive flaw in his plan that no one in the Biden administration is talking about…

Click here to see it.

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