NYC Pays Al Qaeda Terror State $200M to Rent Hotel Rooms to Illegal Aliens
Paying for your own destruction.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
The Roosevelt Hotel claims that it’s the place “where classic elegance meets contemporary luxury”. Classic elegance and luxury at the midtown Manhattan hotel looks like busloads of migrant invaders arriving and camping outside the golden doors. The scene is no better inside where 41 migrants have been arrested for beating wives, girlfriends and significant others.
There have also been assaults on employees and an arrest for child endangerment.
While the Roosevelt Hotel may have an old name, Mayor Eric Adams and New York City actually leased it from Pakistan for $220 million. That amounts to paying $210 per room for each night that an illegal alien invader uses it to smoke meth or abuse their wives and daughters.
The Roosevelt Hotel was named after Teddy. You can imagine what he would have done if thousands of foreigners had invaded a hotel and turned it into a drug den on his watch.
In a city where a quarter of young children live in poverty, that $220 million could probably be put to better use than paying the Islamic terror state linked to the September 11 attacks on New York City for the privilege of housing the hordes of invaders in “contemporary luxury”.
Mayor Adams has already jettisoned his promise of universal day care to care for the migrants.
Inside the Roosevelt from the gilt sign at the entrance to the art deco halls has been tarnished. Migrants squat under the massive crystal chandelier in the ballroom and sleep on the red carpet. Despite supposedly being poor and desperate, many are swiping and clicking through their smartphone apps while they wait for their next taxpayer-funded benefit to arrive.
Once the setting for movies like Wall Street and The French Connection, the storied hotel is now home to another kind of corrupt crime story. The black marble pillars and spacious rooms have been fully occupied by an endless invading army that continues to stream across the border. The smells and the level of filth are reflective of the three remaining working showers.
The massive influx of migrants has made the area near Grand Central Station as unsafe as it was in the 1970s. Despite the hotel being supposedly reserved for families, Central American and African male migrants in their twenties wearing blue surgical masks that cover most of their faces swarm the area and move in packs at night around nervous tourists and local businesses.
The fame of the Roosevelt Hotel appears to have traveled along the migrant pipeline and male migrants have fought, sometimes violently, to stay there instead of being relocated to homeless shelters. Local businesses, already battered by the pandemic, have been hit hard by the crisis.
The cost of housing the invaders is being paid to the Pakistani government. Even though
Pakistan International Airlines, under the control of the terror state’s government, was barred from flying directly to the United States after 9/11, it was allowed to take over the hotel and run it into the ground. The Biden administration has since allowed PIA to resume direct flights.
The Pakistani government harbored Osama bin Laden. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had initiated negotiations with Al Qaeda and offered to “reestablish normal relations.” Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, nicknamed ‘Taliban Khan’, had called Bin Laden a “martyr”.
Now New Yorkers are stuck paying hundreds of millions of dollars to an Islamic terror state tied to the attacks that killed so many fellow residents and citizens to provide luxury housing for the latest wave of the invaders. Osama bin Laden would be proud of what is happening here.
Beyond Pakistan, other foreign business interests are also benefiting from the foreign invasion.
Chinese developer Jubao Xie, who put up the world’s tallest Holiday Inn in Manhattan, got $190 a night, $93,000 a day and $2.8 million a month to house the invaders. The skyscraper hotel, a bafflingly ugly eyesore, was in trouble before the migrant bailout was approved by a bankruptcy judge. A number of other foreign owned hotels are also benefiting from the arrangement.
The use of high-end hotels to house the illegal invaders has not only wrecked classic storied hotels like the Roosevelt or the Paramount, but it has also ruined the surrounding areas that the Giuliani administration had struggled to drag away from the blight that had overtaken Midtown.
Where tourists are supposed to arrive by train, take in Broadway shows and go to a nice restaurant afterward, the streets swarm with migrant thieves, beggars and madmen.
Row Hotel, a classic Times Square hotel that promises “comfort and security while away from home” turned into another migrant hellhole. That’s where Daniel Hernandez Martinez, a migrant who was arrested six times for five assaults in two months, attacked a man with a bike tire.
Martinez was responsible for a one-man crime wave in the Times Square area. The criminal migrant was apparently staying in a $500 a night hotel which a former worker described as a
‘free for all’ of drugs, sex and violence where the rooms have been trashed and defiled.
Messages at the formerly stylish hotel described everything from a 10-year-old girl drunk alone in the room to an intruder carrying a machete. “Every day, we find about ten kids alone in their hotel rooms, either drinking or doing drugs. Weapons will be in the room,” a worker described.
And while America’s enemies are laughing and profiting, we are doing this to ourselves.
Open borders is only half the story. At a local level, the other half of the story is the ‘right to shelter’ regulations like those in New York City and other epicenters of the migrant invasion that guarantee everyone a room regardless of how illegal, violent or diseased they may be.
The homeless industrial complex claimed that the only reason junkies were wandering the streets was that an unfair capitalist system had deprived them of affordable housing. They invented a ‘right to shelter’ and radical leftist politicians who came to power implemented it.
A decade ago, I wrote about the rise of “homeless by choice” in which migrants, tourists and traveling junkies showed up in New York City to claim their “three meals a day, a microwave oven, TV, free laundry, free Internet, free health care and a prepaid cell phone with 300 minutes a month.”
And I warned that it would end badly. Now instead of a few thousand junkies, there are tens of thousands of migrants. And they’re just the beginning. Each of them also wants their free phones, health care, meals and everything else they think that they’re entitled to.
Including a stay in a luxury hotel.
Back then, one in four homeless in New York listed addresses outside the city. Today it’s probably the vast majority. There’s no longer even the pretense of a homeless problem.
New York City’s homeless problem just consists of people from other countries showing up in the city and demanding a room at the Roosevelt, the Row or the Paramount. Why be a sucker and pay $300 bucks for a hotel when you can just arrive as a refugee and demand a free room.
The taxpayers will pay for it and hand over the cash to Pakistan to finance more terrorism.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Reader Interactions
It's not fun being a sanctuary city anymore
Once upon a time, it was so much fun being a sanctuary city. It made you popular with immigration activists and the self-declared "enlightened" class. Suddenly, sanctuary cities are about dealing with migrants who accepted your invitation. As someone said on the TV, it's like inviting a bunch of people for dinner and then realizing that you can't pay the bill.
The problem is really serious in the so-called "blue cities" as Naomi Lin recently wrote:
New York City's struggle to care for about 110,000 immigrants who have arrived in the city since last year is having political repercussions for President Joe Biden, more than 200 miles away in Washington, D.C.
But the political ramifications for Biden are not only emanating from New York City but also other Democratic-run cities, including Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, before next year's election.
What is unfolding in New York City regarding immigrants is "a prime example of what happens when you combine bad local policies with poor enforcement of federal immigration laws," according to Republican strategist Lanhee Chen.
"NYC's policies have created a permissive environment where, unsurprisingly, migrants have fled to seek shelter," Chen, policy director of Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-UT) 2012 presidential campaign, told the Washington Examiner. "Even blue-state governors like Maura Healey in Massachusetts have decried the 'crisis of inaction' within the Biden administration when it comes to enforcement of federal immigration laws."
Crisis of inaction? A permissive environment? How about a good case of demagogic policies meeting reality?
I don't feel sorry for any of these Democrats. They played this issue against Governor Greg Abbott in Texas. They preached tolerance, diversity, inclusion, and everything else.
Now, Mayor Eric Adams is threatening to make budget cuts and the governor of Massachusetts doesn't know what to do. Sorry, but I can't feel their pain.
P.S. Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos.
Image: Tim Pierce
When it comes to illegal aliens, Democrat mayors seem deliberately dense
America is struggling with illegal aliens, but the situation is fixable. Before dealing with the immigrants already here, we must stop the ones who keep coming. There must be a blindness to logic in leftists, willful or not, who don’t seem to see this. I don’t know which is scarier—they actually don’t see a logical solution, or they do see one but refuse to consider it.
Thanks to Gregg Abbott’s and Ron DeSantis’s decision to ship illegal aliens to “sanctuary cities,” we got to see a panicked Mayor Eric Adams announce New York City’s potential destruction. It seems the uncontained influx of illegals has presented the city with a multi-billion-dollar cost to house and feed them. After available hotel rooms were gone, school gymnasiums, rec centers, and other facilities were called into use. And then, the master stroke…NYC is starting to ship the excess to other boroughs, flooding their facilities, parks, and schools. Worse, with school starting, non-English speaking illegal aliens will fill the classrooms alongside little Johnny, making the issue even more personal for parents.
Image: Eric Adams. YouTube screen grab.
If I didn’t have a soul (and a heart for the borough residents), the schadenfreude would be delicious:
New York City’s newly-elected Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, expressed deep concerns during a recent town hall meeting about the increasing influx of undocumented immigrants into the city, warning that the situation could potentially lead to the city’s destruction. Mayor Adams cited the significant challenges posed by the rising numbers of illegal immigrants and the strain it’s putting on the city’s resources.
[snip]
“I don’t see an ending to this. I don’t see an ending to this,” he said. “This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month. One time we were just getting Venezuela. Now we getting Ecuador. Now we getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico. Now we’re getting western Africa. Now we getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and coming into New York City. And everyone is saying it’s New York City’s problem.
“It’s gonna come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this,” he continued. “I said it last year when we had 15,000. I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose. And we’re all in this together. All of us. Staten Island is saying, ‘send them out to Manhattan,’ Manhattan is saying, ‘send them out to Queens,’ Queens is saying, ‘send them out to Brooklyn.’”
Note that he says nothing about fixing the problem by closing the border, as anyone with three working brain synapses could figure out. It’s just like watching the water spew from the broken pipe in your basement but being unable to comprehend that the pipe must be repaired. Adams can’t see that no amount of bailing and buckets—or relocations—will have any effect on the flooding problem.
It’s not just in New York. Los Angeles’s communist mayor, Karen Bass, announced that the city is no longer extending an open invitation to illegal immigrants. This comes just two months after the city council voted to become a sanctuary city in response to Gregg Abbott’s illegal alien relocation policy. The vote came with the usual leftist gobbledy-gook about being “a place that values and dignifies all human life, no matter who they are or where they come from,” and included de rigueur words about “dignity and compassion.” Then, reality hit them between the eyes.
Chicago has the same problem. Worse, Chicago Democrats’ political base consists of its black citizens—and they are growing outraged as the city ignores them in favor of illegals. What these black citizens have worked so hard for is being freely handed over to people they see as invaders. Sounding very MAGA, Chicago’s blacks claim that illegals don’t follow the laws, only to find the government doesn’t care:
“I understand that everyone deserves a chance, but this chance was given. Now they are abusing the chance, and now the people that live here that pay taxes here and take care of the block are the ones being ignored,” Gage Park resident Julio Ocampo said.
They’re learning that the Marxist-leftist influencers in DC want open borders, with an endless flood of illegals, because they see it as a means to perpetual power. However, they failed to see that the people most directly affected by the influx will not stand for it for long. That’s one reason Joe Biden is trying to pass an order to force illegal aliens to remain in Texas. Governor Abbot has indicated he’ll double his order for more busses.
As a famous radio pundit once said: “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” I don’t think we can see a clearer example than Democrats and the fallout from illegal immigration. These leaders are either incompetent and should be fired, or they are doing it on purpose, in which case they should be in jail. Which is it?
Lewis Dovland is a passionate observer of America’s future direction with a focus on exposing the “Big Picture” end goals of the progressive Marxist movement and how we can prevail. Email at Lewis.Dovland@gmail.com.
Sanctuary City NYC to Cut Services, Police Overtime to Pay for Migrants
The sanctuary city of New York City is set to cut overtime for New York Police Department (NYPD) officers, as well as city services across the board, to pay for tens of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens living off New Yorkers.
According to the New York Post, Mayor Eric Adams’s (D) office is asking the NYPD, as well as other public agencies like the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), to make plans to dramatically cut their overtime costs.
“The mayor will … issue a directive to implement an overtime reduction initiative for our city’s four uniformed agencies (NYPD, FDNY, DOC/DSNY),” Adams’ office wrote in a memo obtained by the Post. “These agencies must submit a plan to reduce year-to-year [overtime] spending.”
The two other agencies mentioned are the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Department of Sanitation (DSNY).
Likewise, Adams is directing every city agency to make five percent budget cuts so New Yorkers can afford the $12 billion price tag that comes with the arrival of the more than 110,000 border crossers and illegal aliens that have arrived in the city since the spring of last year.
WATCH: Democrat NYC Councilman: We Need Remain in Mexico, We Can’t Pay for Migrants While They Wait Ten Years for Asylum Hearings
“While our compassion is limitless, our resources are not,” Adams said:
This is a sobering fact, and that’s why today’s decision was not made lightly. At this time, we are asking all of our agencies to submit a plan to reduce their city-funded spending in each year of our financial plan… [Emphasis added]
Even with the five percent budget cuts and slashing of overtime for NYPD officers and FDNY firefighters, Adams’ office suggests such plans will pay for just two-thirds of the costs associated with illegal immigration to the city.
Adams made national waves last week when he delivered an honest speech to New Yorkers, warning them that illegal immigration “will destroy New York City.”
“It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this,” Adams continued. “I said it last year when we had 15,000. I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose.”
WATCH: NYC Mayor: Migrant Crisis Will Destroy New York City
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
The Ingraham Angle on Joe's senility with videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kfbKfm1vHo
Bidenomics Broke America: Real Household Income Suffers Biggest Drop In 12 Years
The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years.
Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when it household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985.
The declines were driven by high inflation. The measure of inflation that is used to calculate real income rose 7.8 percent, the worst inflation since 1981.
The real median earnings of all workers—including part-time and full-time workers—declined 2.2 percent between 2021 and 2022. Median earnings of those who worked full-time, year-round fell 1.3 percent in 2022.
The figures are even worse once taxes are figured into the equation. Real median post-tax household income in 2022 fell 8.8 percent in 2022.
Income inequality also got worse in 2022 once taxes are calculated. Pre-tax, income inequality—as measured by an gauge of income distribution called the Gini index—declined for the first time since 2007. After taxes, however, the index increased 3.2 percent. An increase in the Gini index signals increasing income inequality.
The official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty. This was unchanged from the prior year.
Breitbart Business Digest: Bidenomics Summer Ends with Americans More Pessimistic About Their Finances
The Bidenomics Summer Gambit Goes Bust
If Joe Biden was hoping this would be a hot Bidenomics summer, he has got to be feeling pretty disappointed right now.
The best way to think about the Bidenomics push from the White House is as a bet on a strengthening economy and cooling inflation. In some ways, this was an outlandish gambit because the odds were always against what Wall Street has been calling “immaculate disinflation.“ The most likely outcomes were that inflation would remain persistently high or the economy would significantly slow down.
Most economists saw the latter outcome—sluggish growth or even an outright recession—as the most likely. A few analysts—including the folks who bring you Breitbart Business Digest—argued that we were most likely to see high inflation paired with an economy that would continue to grow at a pace that Federal Reserve officials describe as “above trend.”
The trouble for Biden was that neither of these outcomes looked particularly pleasant in terms of the 2024 election. If the economy fell into a recession in the second half of this year or early next year, Biden would be making a plea for another four years amid rising unemployment. If inflation stayed hot, Biden would look ineffectual on what poll after poll shows to be the top issue for voters.
So, the Biden gambit was to shoot the moon: bet on the improbable outcome and claim credit for it. It was never likely to pay off, but there was little downside because if the economy did not improve, Biden was likely to suffer in November. Might as well try for the maximum upside.
The Economy Did “Immaculately Disinflate” a Bit
Earlier this summer, the improbable outcome was looking increasingly less improbable. Inflation made a big climb down, helped in part by the fact that prices rose so much last year that the year-over-year numbers were always going to look flattering. The economy actually accelerated from the first quarter’s two percent rate of growth to the second quarter’s 2.1 percent rate. Now it looks as if the economy could grow at a better than three percent rate in the third quarter.
However, there have been signs that the inflation story was not as benevolent as it appeared to be. Underlying inflation, for example, has remained even more persistent than headline inflation. While the headline consumer price index (CPI) peaked at 9.06 percent in June of last year, median CPI did not peak until February of this year. Where headline CPI fell all the way from nine percent down to around three percent in June of this year, median CPI has only declined from February’s seven percent to July’s 6.1 percent.
Headline CPI and Median CPI
Looking at the month-to-month changes in median CPI, we see that there has been no downward trend at all. After registering 0.6 percent in February, median CPI clocked in at 0.4 percent for four months in a row. It fell in July down to a more moderate 0.2 percent but is likely to climb again when the August numbers are released later this week.
Inflation, in other words, has proven stickier than most economists expected or the Biden administration hoped.
Increasing Public Pessimism
The public clearly views Bidenomics as a flop. On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released the results from its monthly survey of consumer expectations. This showed that consumers are increasingly pessimistic about the labor market and household finances. On inflation, the public’s views were largely unchanged.
The share of the public that says it expects their own household financial situation to be “much better” a year from now slipped from 3.9 percent in July to 3.5 percent in August. The share expecting things to be “somewhat better” dropped from 25.4 percent to 20.3 percent, a significant slide.
Those expecting their household financial situation to be about the same climbed from 44.1 to 46.9 percent. Those expecting things to be somewhat worse fell from 27.7 percent to 24.9 percent (a thin silver lining for Biden), but those expecting things to get much worse climbed to 4.4 percent from 3.9 percent.
The New York Fed’s survey also asks consumers to compare how they are now to a year ago. The share saying things have gotten much better dipped from 3.3 percent to 3.1 percent. The share saying things are “somewhat better” fell to 14.9 percent from 18.2 percent. The share saying they expect no change rose to 41.9 percent from 38.7 percent.
In the retrospective question, there was a dip in the “somewhat worse” response: from 32.7 percent to 29.5 percent. Unfortunately for Biden, all of that change is explained by those moving down into the category of people who say things are much worse now than a year ago. This rose from 7.1 percent to 10.6 percent from July to August.
A recent poll by the Wall Street Journal found that around three in five voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. Sixty-three percent say they do not like how Biden has handled the issue of inflation.
Of course, the last hand in the game has not been dealt. There’s still a chance that the Bidenomics bet pays off. But from the perspective of September 2023, that still looks like a long shot.
Congress reconvenes amid budget crisis as US federal deficit doubles
Members of the US House of Representatives return to Washington on Tuesday with only three weeks, including 12 days of scheduled legislative sessions, before the end of the 2023 fiscal year on September 30. At that point, unless a new budget is passed, or a “continuing resolution” to authorize further government spending, the federal government will begin a partial shutdown.
The stage has been set for yet another round of political theater over the budget deficit, in which the Republicans will posture as the defenders of “fiscal responsibility” (which never includes cuts in the bloated Pentagon budget), while Democrats posture as advocates of “fairness” and “compassion” (knowing that any proposed tax increases on the wealthy or social spending for the poor can never be enacted because of Republican opposition).
This degraded process will end, as it always does, with further cuts in social spending, while the military and the super-rich, the two principal clients of both capitalist parties, go entirely unscathed.
The political conflict over the budget has been exacerbated by two reports released on September 6 indicating that the federal deficit for the current fiscal year will double, from $1 trillion in fiscal 2022 (October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022) to $2 trillion in fiscal 2023.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the US Treasury had already borrowed $1.6 trillion in the current fiscal year, with nearly two months to go. The CBO projected a full-year deficit of $1.7 trillion, with spending up 10 percent over fiscal 2022 and revenues down 10 percent.
The same day, the right-wing think tank Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that it was projecting a $2 trillion deficit by September 30. The group said that by its calculations, federal spending was up 16 percent compared to a year ago, while revenues were down 7 percent.
The CBO estimated that individual income and payroll taxes would drop by $313 billion this year, largely due to the decline in the stock market last year, which slashed capital gains taxes and reduced taxable income for corporations. At the same time, remittances from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury—effectively, profits from its lending to banks—fell by $98 billion. This is largely due to the effect of higher interest rates on the home mortgage market.
The main components of the increase in spending from FY 2022 to FY 2023 included:
$244 billion from a 12 percent rise in the total cost of the three main entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This had two main contributing factors: continued high rates of retirement among the “baby boom” generation, and a continuing pandemic-related ban on states removing Medicaid recipients from the rolls—a prohibition that the Biden administration allowed to expire in May.
$146 billion from a 34 percent increase in interest payments on federal debt, largely due to the extremely rapid rise in interest rates. The CBO now estimates that the federal government will pay $10 trillion in interest over the next ten years, a staggering sum that will go largely to wealthy investors and big banks.
$100 billion or more in military spending. There is an increase of $67 billion for the regular Pentagon budget. A further sum, not yet estimated but perhaps as large, is due to increased military and financial aid to Ukraine and other fiscal consequences of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.
$91 billion from a one-time increase in spending by the Department of Education. This is a budget anomaly, as the Biden administration chose to record the entire long-term cost of its reduction in student loan debt in the month of July. This sum amounts to just over 5 percent of the $1.7 trillion in total student loan debt.
The latest figures have fueled demands from the Republican Party and the corporate media—including publications closely aligned with the Democratic Party—for urgent action to slash the deficit through major cuts in domestic social spending, particularly in the entitlement programs that constitute the major social support for the elderly, disabled and sick.
There are few calls within the capitalist political establishment for cuts in military spending, and none at all for cuts in interest payments, although these constitute a form of tribute paid by the federal government to the billionaires. In effect, after repeatedly slashing taxes for the wealthy, most recently in the 2017 Trump tax cut, the federal government is now compelled to borrow from the super-rich to make up the lost revenue, and pay them billions in interest.
On August 31, the Biden administration threw its support behind an effort to pass a continuing resolution, after concluding that it would be impossible for both houses of Congress to approve 12 separate budget bills, one for each major department or group of departments, by September 30.
Budget Director Shalanda Young indicated that there had to be some spending increases within the framework of a continuing resolution to avoid the crippling of several key programs, including $1.4 billion for the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, whose budget has been depleted by record high food prices. She warned that without new funding, WIC would have to cut benefits and implement waiting lists in October.
The House Freedom Caucus, the fascistic wing of the House Republicans, is spearheading the demands for massive spending cuts. The group recently demanded that the discretionary spending level set last May in the debt ceiling deal between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy be lowered from $1.59 trillion to $1.47 trillion, a cut of $120 billion, or about 8 percent.
Members of the caucus declared that they would vote against any budget or continuing resolution unless it included a series of ultra-right proposals, including billions in funding to resume building Trump’s wall on the US-Mexico border, the restoration of Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy toward asylum seekers, and a measure to address “the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI”—effectively a demand for the dropping of federal charges against ex-president Trump.
Last week, fascist Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene added a new demand: “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.”
Such demands might appear delusional for a group that controls fewer than 10 percent of the seats in one house of Congress, but in capitalist politics, it is the fascist tail that wags the legislative dog. Any member of the Freedom Caucus can force a new election for House speaker, under the procedure that McCarthy was compelled to accept in January as a condition for a handful of ultra-right members dropping their blockade of his election.
McCarthy is now faced with the threat that unless he embraces the Freedom Caucus demands, he could lose his post. He has already voiced support for the spending cuts called for by the Freedom Caucus, claiming that the debt ceiling deal only set a ceiling on spending, not a floor. “We can always go lower,” he said.
Meanwhile, senators in both parties are seeking to add several special appropriations to any continuing resolution or budget bill, including $24 billion more for the war in Ukraine, and $16 billion for states like Hawaii and Florida that have been devastated by fires, heat waves, hurricanes or floods. McCarthy suggested he would back the disaster aid, but not the additional money for Ukraine, which led to a public rebuke by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, an all-out supporter of the war with Russia.
In the increasingly likely event of a deadlock on the budget, the federal government would begin a partial shutdown on October 1. Many federal workers would be furloughed or instructed to come to work without paychecks if they are deemed “essential.” There would be no immediate effect on the military or paramilitary police forces like the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but most civilian Pentagon workers would be sent home.
Biden Gets Confused for 13 Seconds, Takes Question After Saying It’s Bedtime – Then Is Shut Down Mid-Sentence by Press Sec.
After fumbling for 13 seconds to collect his thoughts, and struggling desperately to finish answering a reporter’s question, Pres. Joe Biden declared it was time for him to go to bed – but, stayed to take another question, prompting Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre to cut him off in mid-sentence after he confuses two parts of the world.
Speaking in Hanoi on Sunday, Pres. Biden had just finished smearing people who refute his climate-doom ideology as “lying, dog-faced pony soldiers,” when he became confused for 13 seconds as he tried to figure out what his next “orders” were. Finally, his staff told him what to do next:
Pres. Biden: “Well, there’s a lot of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers out there about — about global warming, but not anymore. All of a sudden, they’re all realizing it’s a problem. And there’s nothing like seeing the light.
“For — and let’s see…I’m just following my orders here.
“Uh…
“Staff, is there anybody I haven’t spoken to?
(Cross-talk.)
“No, I ain’t calling on you. I’m calling on — I said there were five questions.
Karine Jean-Pierre: “Anita — Anita from VOA.”
Pres. Biden: “Anita from VOA.”
Biden then appeared to become exhausted and gasped to get words out as he fought to finish a sentence about U.S.-China relations, after which he told his audience that he needed to go to bed:
“I just think that there are other things on leaders’ minds, and they respond to what’s needed at the time.
“And look, nobody…likes….having…celebrated…international meetings if you don’t know what you want…at the meeting, if you don’t have a gameplan. He may have a gameplan; he just hasn’t shared it with me.
“But I tell you what: I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”
But, Biden didn’t go to bed. Instead, he stayed and began to answer another question.
After the president confused the “Third World” with the “Southern Hemisphere,” his press secretary cut him off and called an end to the event as exit-music swelled:
Pres. Biden: “We talked about what we talked about at the conference overall. We talked about stability. We talked about making sure that the Third World — the — excuse me — ‘Third World’ — the — the — the Southern Hemisphere had access to change, it had access —
“We — it wasn’t confrontational at all. He came up to me. He said (cut off)
Jean-Pierre: “Thank — thank you, everybody. This ends the press conference. Thank you.”
Ironically, while Biden’s talk began at 9 p.m. Indonesia Time (ICT), he was actually speaking before noon U.S. Eastern Time.
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