Prices, Borders, Sports, Spending . . . Setting Table For Politics Is Enough To Kill Anyone’s Appetite

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — Having to grind your teeth may be unnecessary preparation for eating a meal, but grinding them seems unavoidable upon noticing how grocery prices have skyrocketed due to Joe Biden’s intentional mismanagement of a nation screaming in protest against a whole menu of his stomach-churning policies.
A can of house-brand mackerel costs twice as much as not long ago, a 50-cent can of vegetables is up to 89 cents, a $12 container of spice jumped to $15, and a can of house-brand cranberries quadrupled. That may mean nothing to the emperor of the White House at his banquet table, but it’s a big new chunk out of a six-member working family’s budget.
Why, this food must be cheaper than it’s ever been, if we were to use the Biden administration’s comparable upside-down way of, for instance, looking at the wide-open border as being remarkably secure, or forcing sexually disoriented males into women’s sports as the exercise of basic civil rights, or raising the staggering debt ceiling yet again as the necessary way to keep government running.
When will the breaking point arrive? Maybe it already did in the November 2022 midterm elections, before some results were manipulated. If so, how many more electoral cycles would the elite be able to get away with imposing their will over the people’s, before the disconnect blows wide open?
During an interview posted May 3 for Fox News, Arizona’s former Democrat-turned-Independent U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was having none of the Biden nonsense out of the mouths of the likes of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas.
Reacting to blatant falsehoods by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that Biden has decreased illegal immigration “by more than 90 percent,” Sinema said, “Obviously, the border is not secure. Anyone with eyes can see that. And anyone who lives in a border state like I do. Born and raised in Arizona, actually takes offense at comments like that because they’re just factually not true.”
Sinema said she recently had a hearing that brought in a Democrat mayor and a Republican mayor from small Arizona border towns. “And we just asked them, what is it like every day in your town? And…there are high-speed chases going on through the city of Sierra Vista right now with young teens driving cars and sometimes being killed or causing the death of others transporting drugs and other migrants through these communities.”
Despite letting more than two years pass when he could have taken serious action against — not in favor of — massive illegal immigration, Biden recently announced that he was sending 1,500 troops to the border. Which is a public-relations stunt by a desperate administration, and is about as meaningful as putting a little plug in a gaping hole in a ship’s hull — after the ship already sank.
Biden and his far-left administration left many Democrats, as well as the rest of the nation, in the lurch as he eagerly imposed a radical program across the board. Would enough Democrats use the opportunity to dump Biden if they saw a viable alternative? How about Democratic scion and candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently announced he’s in the presidential race against Biden.
Political-science professor and author Paul Kengor, noting Kennedy’s leadership against the Biden administration’s vaccine-mandate fanaticism, said RFK Jr. recently denounced forcing men into women’s sports as a supposed victory for progressives.
Kengor wrote that Kennedy “came out against the ongoing surreal spectacle of 6-foot-3, 200-pound dudes trouncing girls in swim meets. . . . ‘I am against people participating in women’s sports who are biologically male,’ Kennedy told a stunned CNN reporter. ‘I think women . . . have worked too hard to develop women’s sports over the past 30 years. I watched it happen, and I don’t think that’s fair’.”
Kennedy’s stand “is common sense,” Kengor wrote. “And yet, it flies in the face of the unhinged Joe Biden and fellow cultural revolutionaries who want teenagers to get gender-mutilation surgery without their parents’ permission.”
In addition, Fox News posted on May 3 that Kennedy attacked loose immigration policies that allow defiant crossers to wreak havoc in the U.S.
When a repeatedly deported Mexican national was accused of fatally shooting five people in Texas, Fox said Kennedy tweeted, “Francisco Oropeza Perez-Torres has been arrested for the murder of 5 people. It is not anti-immigrant bigotry to demand an immigration system that keeps out criminals. In fact, letting them in stokes bigotry. As president, I will enforce a secure border, and I will expand the kind of LEGAL immigration that made our country great.”
Reportedly characterizing the open border as “a humanitarian nightmare,” Kennedy tweeted, “America should be a haven of freedom and prosperity, open to law-abiding migrants who will contribute to our society. However, immigration must proceed in an orderly, lawful manner.”
Not a conservative, Kennedy was lauded at the Los Angeles site LA Progressive with an article headlined, “RFK Jr. Takes Strong Antiwar, Anti-Empire Stance in Presidential Run — A candidacy not to be ignored when it comes to peace.” It was reprinted from Antiwar.com and noted “Joe Biden’s cruel U.S. proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder.”
Another issue is a political game long played about raising the debt ceiling. In 2008 it was about $10 trillion. Left-wing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced this load of debt. However, by the time he left office after eight years in the White House, it was around $20 trillion. In other words, Obama allowed the horrible debt actually to double in his eight years.
Now, seven years later, in 2023, it stands at around $32 trillion, and Joe Biden — who prints limitless dollars for his crazy spending — demanded that it be raised again with no strings attached.
It seems that every time we’re told the government will collapse if conservatives/Republicans don’t surrender on the issue, then the big spenders just go ahead with amassing more debt until the next showdown.
On May 3 the Washington Examiner posted that political leaders finally were acting as if the situation is serious. “The urgency of the situation has seemingly dawned upon President Joe Biden and Republican leadership in Congress. Just days ago, the Biden administration still had its feet dug in on raising the ceiling without spending cuts, and Republicans vowed to reduce spending. Now both sides have agreed to start talking.
“Biden invited House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to the White House” for May 9, the Examiner said — the Tuesday after this hardcopy issue of The Wanderer went to press on May 4.
“Biden hasn’t met McCarthy since February, shortly after McCarthy won a lengthy battle for the speaker’s gavel,” the Examiner added. “. . . Some lawmakers have expressed a willingness for a temporary fix, which would essentially just mean kicking the can down the road in order to allow more time for negotiations. For instance, last month the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus floated suspending the debt ceiling through the end of the year.”

A Balanced Budget Amendment

Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on May 3 that Republicans aren’t blameless on the issue.
“This isn’t an issue where one party holds any particular moral high ground in Congress,” Querard said. “While Republicans at the state level do very well on most spending issues, Congress has proven itself incapable of controlling spending no matter who is in charge.
“That is why the only solution is to force a Balanced Budget Amendment onto Congress,” Querard said. “Then they will have to live with the same rules as nearly every state in the country. Disclosure: I’m very involved in the fight for the BBA.”
Meanwhile, Arizona dictator-ette Katie Hobbs, the bumbling left-wing Democrat who was installed as governor after voting machinery miraculously collapsed on Election Day 2022 in populous Maricopa County, may have begun thinking she doesn’t have such a swell new job after all.
As chronicled here in The Wanderer, Hobbs spewed out a record number of dozens of vetoes, even against popular bipartisan bills, and even while the legislature continued in session. A comment posted at the May 3 edition of the unofficial “Republican Briefs” blog said: “As of the 110th day of this session, 156 [legislative measures] have been sent to her desk and the governor has vetoed 63 and signed 93.
“By signing 11 vetoes in one day, she broke former Gov. [Janet] Napolitano’s previous record of 58,” the blog comment said. “She also vetoed HB 2675 that would have declared drug cartels to be terrorist organizations….[O]ne must question the governor’s sincerity in saying she takes the illegal immigration, child smuggling, and the fentanyl drug crises seriously.”
A video posted May 2 by two Phoenix-area television stations, Channels 3 and 5, showed Hobbs scrambling away from reporters to hop into an SUV as they peppered her with questions.
“Governor, governor, it’s been a week since you vetoed a bill,” one reporter yelled out. “What do you want? Why won’t you take any questions? [Indistinct] weeks since you’ve had a gaggle. Why are you avoiding the public? Why are you avoiding the press, governor?”
Accompanying the video, the two TV stations’ political reporter, Dennis Welch, posted: “The Hobbs Dodge: Footage from @Governor Hobbs yesterday ducking questions from the press, again. The move has increasingly become standard operating procedure for a governor who promised an open relationship with the media at the start of her administration.”
On the other hand, the Republican gubernatorial nominee who had the Arizona election yanked from her, Kari Lake, was finding media welcoming her in, of all places, Hungary. Lake continued to build her reputation far beyond the Grand Canyon State by being a speaker this time at the Conservative Political Action Conference-Hungary in early May.
The newspaper Demokrata wrote: “It is anti-immigration, family friendly, pro-peace, adamant and uncompromising. These are the best words to describe former Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s political creed.”
Lake tweeted a photo of herself sitting down for a talk in Budapest with a writer for the Magyar Nemzet “to discuss the future of the populist movements in both Hungary and the United States!”
The Budapest Times posted on May 3 that Lake “decried ‘pressure in the world’ to ‘homogenize and destabilize everything.’ ‘We live in dangerous times,’ she said, adding that there were leaders ‘who stand out and do the right thing for their people,’ noting [Hungarian] Prime Minister Victor Orban among them.”
The Newsweek site posted that Lake said Arizonans were asking why Biden was pouring resources into Ukraine rather than her own American state: “The people of Arizona are asking why are we sending $200 billion to Ukraine, why are we sending weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to start a war half the world away when we have an invasion on own border.”
Sometime soon Lake should be back home in the Phoenix metropolitan area, where summer brings its annual reminder of the political adage about staying out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.
The Pennsylvania Dutch have their Groundhog Day in early February about the anticipated end of winter, but a Phoenix heating and cooling company teamed with Phoenix-area TV Channels 3 and 5 for a contest in which viewers guess on what day Phoenix will hit 110 degrees for this first time this year.
Not 100 degrees, 110 degrees. And everyone in the metropolitan area knows that will happen. And happen some more at least through August or September.
Now there’s a number that traditionally goes high even without help from Biden. Could he be planning to help the mercury hit 250 degrees as saguaro cactuses pop out their white blossoms on the tips of their arms?