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The ADVANCE, November 24, 2021/Page 6A
allie Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quotes for our Times:
Monica Showalter, writer for American
Thinker: Kamala Harris camp leaks to press
about racism among the Bidenites.
Meanwhile, everyone else can see that
she's a phony, The White House, though,
knows it will have to keep heaping the
praise — and likely support her in her likely
2024 run for president despite the fact that
they can't stand her and she's been noth
ing but incompetence and trouble. When
Kamala whips out the race card against
them, out they will come like a mechanical
cuckoo clock in praise for her — with about
as much authenticity.
Sounds like a lovely scene at the White
House these days.
Leah Barkoukis, online features editor
at Townhall.com: Lee presses Mayorkas:
What’s going to happen to border when
agents get fired over the vaccine man
date?
The Ohio Republican (Rep. Jim Jordan
(R-OH)) also pointed out how "ridiculous"
the policy is when hardworking agents who
do not wish to get vaccinated will lose their
jobs but "people who break the law and
come in here" have the option to get the
vaccine. "No big deal, your choice, it's up
to you."
Mayorkas was also asked about that
during Tuesday's hearing.
"The analysis for migrants encountered
at the border is quite different than for the
federal workforce that leads by example,"
he said.
Matt Vespa, Senior Editor at Townhall.
com: MSNBC host throws a bit of a tantrum
over how American voters don't like Joe
Biden.
Well, there is no polling bump from the
$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. There won't
be — and can we please stop acting like
Joe Biden was super popular, to begin
with? The man always failed miserably in
his presidential ambitions; his 2008 run was
especially anemic. Even after being on a
winning ticket in 2008 and 2012, there have
been more than a few reports that even
Obama knew this guy just doesn't have
what it takes, even trying to dissuade him
from running. This is going to get worse, es
pecially since this guy is lost in space and
reentry is not an option anymore.
Greg Gutfeld, host of Gutfeld! and co
host of The Five: The media got what they
wanted and pretend you deserve it.
But it's not surprising — the media's bra
zen defense of Joe's downfall. It's as irratio
nal as the attacks on Trump, but in reverse.
Perhaps they know what a mistake they
made — trading peace and prosperity, in
exchange for fewer mean tweets.
Was it worth less food on the table? Was
it worth shortages and $4 gas? Was it worth
giving China such a boost that even our al
lies are taking Mandarin lessons?
Now they got what they wanted — in
all its misery — and they pretend you de
serve it too. Good luck with that.
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Joe Biden’s Incredible
Shrinking Presidency
Joe Biden was never exactly
a colossus bestriding the Earth,
but he’s been getting smaller by
the day.
A Washington Post poll over
the weekend suggested that his
presidency is, for now, a
smoking political crater. It had
him at a 41% approval rating,
despite the passage of his long-
sought infrastructure bill that
was supposed to buoy him and
his party.
Even more striking, the
survey found that Republicans
lead Democrats on the generic
congressional ballot by 10
points, 51% to 41%, an
unprecedentedly strong
showing for the GOP that
forecasts an earthquake,
tsunami, and maybe a few more
natural disasters for Democrats
come next fall.
And who can be surprised?
Biden is stumbling, out of
touch, and weak. Two of his
major initiatives, at the border
and in Afghanistan, created
completely avoidable
catastrophes. He has given no
sense of being in control of
events or even his own party.
He is an accidental president
who is running smack into his
own inadequacies and absurd
pretensions.
No one in Washington over
the last four decades ever said
that Joe Biden was just the man
with the foresight, wisdom and
deft political touch to lead the
free world.
No, he was an average
senatorial bloviator whose first
two presidential campaigns
flamed out in embarrassing
fashion, before he hit the
jackpot when Barack Obama
chose him as his running mate
in 2008.
Showing the advantage of
hanging around for a very long
time, Biden won both the 2020
Democratic nomination and
the presidency by default. In
the primaries, the former vice
president looked good in
comparison to Bernie Sanders,
and he ran in the general on not
being Donald Trump.
Now, Biden is allied with
Bernie Sanders, who helped
write the first version of his
Build Back Better plan, and
Donald Trump no longer looms
as large as Biden’s foil.
The best case for Biden’s
presidency was that he could be
a kind of consensus caretaker
— restoring a sense of normality
and maintaining a low profile
while riding in the slipstream of
improving economic
conditions and a diminishing
pandemic.
Instead, he’s been carried
along by the left-wing tide of
his party and repeatedly
engaged in unconstitutional
executive overreach. On top of
it all, he’s brought his own
brand of incompetence,
exemplified by the botched
pull-out from Afghanistan.
His foremost mistake was
overestimating an attenuated
electoral mandate for pedestrian
governance as a permission slip
for passing nearly the entirety
of the progressive agenda in the
space of less than a year.
Not only has there been
sticker shock over the price tag
of the Biden agenda, but it has
little connection to things
people truly care about. The
infrastructure bill polls well,
but no one goes about their
daily lives worried about the
alleged crisis of crumbling
bridges and tunnels.
Meanwhile, the Build Back
Better bill started as a $3.5
trillion grab bag of everything
that progressives want but
couldn’t get in the infrastructure
bill. Passing as much spending
as you possibly can before you
lose Congress a year from now,
which is essentially the rationale
behind Build Back Better, is not
a compelling reason for a
historic spate of federal
spending.
That legislation has been
Please see Lowry page 9A
GRITTY
Build Back Better
- Wasting Trillions
As Democrats re
group to try to pass
their $2 trillion Build
Back Better Act,
pressure grows for
shining the light of
fiscal responsibility
on all this.
Given President
Joe Biden’s crashing
approval ratings, there
is some hint that the American people
smell a rat.
One sign of the smell of that rat is the
alarming escalation of the rate of inflation
to where it hasn’t been in over 30 years.
Let’s start with the announcement
from the Treasury Department a week ago
that the revenue measures built in to fi
nance the $2 trillion in spending will not
only not add to the nation’s existing fiscal
deficit but will reduce it.
The headline from the Treasury de
partment reads “Preliminary Estimates
Show Build Back Better Legislation Will
Reduce Deficits.” The document shows an
estimate of $2,151 trillion in revenue rais
ing measures against $2 trillion in spend
ing.
However, the University of Pennsylva
nia Wharton School of Business has its
own model, overseen by a professor with
extensive experience in the Congressional
Budget Office and the Treasury Depart
ment. According to the Wharton model,
Build Back Better will add $500 billion to
the federal deficit.
Treasury says the Build Back Better
cuts the deficit by $151 billion. Wharton
says it increases it by $500 billion. Not ex
actly a trivial difference.
Who do we believe?
The Congressional Budget Office will
also weigh in. But it still leaves us with the
question of who to believe.
It isn’t about one place having better
economists than the other.
The problem is that it is impossible to
make meaningful forecasts with such huge
Please see Nitty page 9A
COMMENTARY
Court Blasts
Biden’s Anti-
Work Vaccine
Mandate
By Betsy McCaughey
Working Americans got good
news on Friday. They may not have
to worry about getting laid off
because of qualms about the
COVID-19 vaccine. A federal
appeals court suspended the Biden
administration’s attempt to mandate
the shots at private sector workplaces
with 100 or more employees.
Under President Joe Biden’s
order, which would go into effect
Jan. 4, employees who refuse the
shots have to submit to weekly
testing at their own expense or lose
their jobs.
Vaccines are not required to
collect welfare or food stamps, or to
come across the southern border
and apply for asylum. They’re just
required to work. Go figure.
Justifying the mandate, Biden
said his “patience” was “wearing thin
and “too many people remain
unvaccinated.”
But a three-judge panel in the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
slammed Biden’s ends-justifies-the-
means approach. The Constitution
limits what the federal government
can make people do, even in
emergencies.
It’s in the public’s interest, Judge
Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote, to protect
“our constitutional structure and”
maintain “the liberty of individuals
to make intensely personal decisions
according to their own convictions
- even, or perhaps (SET ITAL)
particularly(END ITAL), when
those decisions frustrate government
officials.”
And exasperate their liberal
media allies. CNN bashed the Fifth
Circuit as “notoriously conservative.”
Vox dismissed it as a “right-wing
panel.” Washington Post columnist
Ruth Marcus slammed the judges’
“stingy vision of the federal
government’s powers” and threw up
her hands: “Maintaining our
constitutional structure? How about
saving lives?”
Conspicuously lacking in the
left’s response is a legal defense of
the mandate. It’s indefensible. Even
before Friday’s ruling, Biden’s
spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre
told employers to bulldoze ahead,
disregarding legal challenges.
That shows how little the Biden
administration and Democrats care
about the rule of law and individual
freedoms.
The Fifth Circuit judges deemed
the mandate recklessly
“overinclusive.” Rather than using “a
delicately handled scalpel” to
identify workplaces where
unvaccinated workers may pose a
severe risk - such as meatpacking
plants, where employees work
shoulder to shoulder - federal
regulators used “a one-size-fits-all
sledgehammer.”
At the same time, said the
judges, the mandate is inexplicably
Please see Guest page 10A