The RINO Party and Putting the ‘Con’ into Conservatism

The Republican Party is and has always been the RINO Party.

by Jack Kerwick for American Greatness

There appears to be a consensus of sorts among Republican and conservative voters that the reason they are continually screwed over by the GOP—despite the repeated pitches for the party made by Republican candidates and their water-carriers in the conservative media, and regardless of whether the party has majority control of government—is that there are just too many damn “RINOs” (Republicans-In-Name-Only).

This, I submit, is what they must tell themselves in order to further the illusion that by continually voting Republican, they can, one day, weed out the frauds and traitors and wrest power from the Democrats. This belief in the RINO, a belief nurtured at every turn by Big Conservative media chatter boxes, serves as the scapegoat for GOP/conservative movement failure. 

It is the basis for the conservative voter’s faith in the future: Eliminate the RINO, and all will be well.

Let’s be blunt: The notion of the RINO is actually fiction.

To put it another way, the RINO is not a deviant, a figure who has fallen away from an otherwise conservative party. No, the GOP is the party of RINOs. The Republican Party is the Republican-In-Name-Only Party.

Nor should it be difficult for anyone who thinks about it for a minute to realize this:

First, the GOP purports to be the party of “limited government.” There isn’t anyone remotely familiar with it and, particularly, no one who was around to endure the unprecedented COVID restrictions of the last couple years, who can still seriously say that the GOP’s actions, as opposed to its rhetorical ticks, betray a commitment to a smaller, decentralized, “limited” set of institutional arrangements. Just the opposite, it’s painfully clear, is the reality.

The GOP is every bit as much in favor of Big Government as its rival. What actual differences—differences in policy prescriptions (not rhetoric)—are there between the GOP and the party of the jackass? They are differences in degree, never in kind.

Second, the RINO continually changes form. Those who loudly insist that conservative voters must vote out all RINOs have undoubtedly voted for their share of RINOs.

Big Conservative media figures who regularly, daily, supported George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for eight years played no small role in convincing Americans to elect them. These, though, are the same Americans who today decry Bush II and Cheney as RINOs.

Paul Ryan was a rock star with the Tea Party. Conservative voters swooned over him.

Today he’s a known RINO.

John McCain was always regarded as a RINO by conservative voters, it’s true. Yet they voted for him repeatedly in Arizona, and when he ran as a presidential candidate (on the pretext that his running mate wasn’t a RINO—as if Sarah Palin, as vice president, would have been able to accomplish anything of importance).

Conservative voters voted for Mitt Romney (despite his abysmal record).

Today he’s a known RINO.

Chris Christie too was a sensation over a decade ago.

Today, he’s a known RINO.

Mike Pence elicited praise from conservative voters when he became Donald Trump’s running mate.

Today, he’s a known RINO.

Marco Rubio was a shining light of the GOP and the conservative movement a decade back. Conservative talk radio Godfather Rush Limbaugh, along with Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, regularly featured him on their shows and predicted that Rubio would one day be POTUS.

Today, he’s a RINO.

Ted Cruz had been regarded as a rock-ribbed conservative—until he ran against Trump in the primaries of 2016 and since then.

Today he’s a RINO.

Mike Lee was a Tea Party darling.

Today, he’s a RINO.

Nikki Haley was a rising star in the conservative media.

Today, she’s a RINO.

Bobby Jindal was the face of a truly conservative GOP.

Today, he’s a RINO (if anyone recollects him at all).

We could continue endlessly in this same repetitive vein. Undoubtedly, there are readers who will predictably mistake the trees for the forest and quibble with one or more specific choices from this list of RINOs, objecting that theyalways knew that so-and-so was a RINO, or that so-and-so is not really a RINO, or some other non sequitur of this sort. Fine. Focusing on specific RINOs for whom the GOP’s conservative base has voted risks conveying the false impression these choices of RINOs were anomalies. That the GOP has always been the party of RINOs is borne out by none other than the conservative voters themselves! Whether it is on purpose or not, they confess to voting RINO and promoting the narrative that is pushed tirelessly by Big Conservative media.

According to this narrative, Donald Trump began giving the GOP a facelift when he ran for the presidency. “MAGA” or “America First” marks a welcome and long overdue transformation of the GOP that preceded Trump.

In other words, the GOP, these same Trump enthusiasts are acknowledging, had been a RINO Party up until Trump.

That Trump’s candidacy and then election marked a dramatic, if largely cosmetic, shift in GOP politics is undeniable. Putting aside for the moment Trump’s own deficiencies, the narrative that he is the savior of the Republican Party is belied by that very narrative. For according to that narrative, the Trump agenda was frustrated and his presidency brought down by Democrats, yes, but even more critically . . . RINOs!

Trump had to first fight both national parties to become POTUS before, ultimately, being defeated by both national parties, or so this narrative would have us believe.

So, the Republican Party had been the party of RINOs before Trump’s presidency, during his presidency, and remains the party of RINOs today.

The narrative is incoherent. But it should serve to make the point that the RINO is hardly the deviant that the narrative’s authors would have us think it is. This tale, rather, compels us to concede that of our two national political parties, one is the RINO Party. In voting straight Rs, the very people who swear that the solution to conservatives’ woes is to simply vote out the RINOs are actually solidifying the RINO’s habitat by voting for the RINO Party. 

Conservative media personalities have been strengthening the RINO Party since forever and without missing a beat: Though the vision and rhetoric of George W. Bush is dramatically different from that of Donald Trump, these same figures moved effortlessly, and without apology, from cozying up to the former and then cozying up to the latter.

GOP politicians and their media lapdogs have put the “con” into conservativism.

And, to repeat, the Republican Party is and has always been the RINO Party.

And we Know and On the Fringe- Oct 9

 

Yes. Tonight is the night that cop show that I have a huge love/hate relationship with is back. Already have a  review planned, so I'll be putting that up sometime in the wee hours of tomorrow.

Here's tonight's news:

Prudence Is a Virtue

The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? 

Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon?

by Roger Kimball for American Greatness

Joe Biden has me thinking about Aristotle. 

If that seems odd—and I understand that it does—consider Biden’s much publicized remarks last week at a Democratic fundraiser about “Armageddon.” Referring to Vladimir Putin’s veiled but increasingly strident threats to use “all the means at our disposal” to defend Russian territorial integrity, Biden went full-Cuban missile crisis on the assembled members of the great Democratic ATM: “We have not,” he said, “faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.” 

Hmm.

Are we to infer that Joe Biden is like John F. Kennedy facing down Nikita Khrushchev? You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment. 

Granted, the idea is preposterous in about 87 different ways. But perhaps Biden’s speechwriters wanted to plant a seed. Anyway, we are probably meant to keep JFK in the back of our minds. 

Biden did not actually cite the Book of Revelation, which identifies Armageddon as the site of the final battle between good and evil at the end of the world, but I have no doubt that the word “Armageddon” was echoing loudly down the corridors of the Kremlin. That, I am pretty sure, was by design. Did it have Putin polishing the launch apparatus on some of his 6000 nukes? I don’t know.

Probably, though, Putin’s lips were pursed when he heard Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president and celebrated T-shirt model, call upon NATO to conduct “preventative action” against Russian targets to prevent their use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

I thought it was cute that Zelenskyy’s translator first said “preventative strikes” before correcting himself and substituting “preventative action.” 

Another seed planted. Was it deliberate? You tell me.

This is the first of two places that this little pas de deux (or is it trois?) reminded me of Aristotle. 

You don’t have to know much about ye olde Stagirite to know that he had some interesting things to say about the idea of causation. When we ask about the cause of something, he noted, there are several things we might mean. I won’t go into that interesting discussion here but will note that in common parlance, when we ask what causes X, we are asking what brings X about. 

Often, the answer to that question involves several things, some less obvious than others. What caused World War I? German aggression? Unwise alliances and security guarantees in the West? The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand? All of those and more? 

In this sense, when we are thinking about what is happening—and what might happen—in Ukraine, we have an abundance of what Aristotle called “efficient causes.” First of all, there is Vladimir Putin. After all, he invaded Ukraine last winter and so brought about the conflict that is raging there now. 

But as the war has unfolded, we see that there are many other causative agents at work in perpetuating and escalating the conflict. Zelenskyy has contributed his bit. So has NATO by suggesting that anyone, except Russia, might be a good candidate for that boy’s club. And so has the Biden Administration by supplying arms and intelligence to Ukraine to carry on the fight. 

What if that hot war gets hotter? What if Putin continues to suffer setbacks and, taking on board the belligerent rhetoric emanating from the Biden Administration, decides to use nuclear weapons? What if we intervene ourselves with nukes? Who or what will have caused that horrific eventuality

The answer, I think, is not as simple or straightforward as you might think. Sure, if Putin uses nukes, he can be said to have caused the conflagration. But what about statements designed to push Putin to the wall? What role will they have played? 

Consider, to take just one example, the recent column by John Bolton, unhappy chest-beating former national security advisor to Donald Trump and one of the most belligerent senior neocons on the scene today. Bolton said that “There is no long-term prospect for peace and security in Europe without regime change in Russia.” Regime change. And he made it crystal clear that he would be happy for America to go to war to achieve said regime change, i.e., removal of Putin from power.

Like almost all leaders, Vladimir Putin will strenuously resist such efforts. Which is why Scott McKay, in an intelligent column for the American Spectator about Bolton’s saber-rattling effusion, included some sage advice from the venerable Sun Tzu: “Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across,” Sun Tzu advised. That is, give Putin an attractive off-ramp. As McKay put it, “A wise American leadership would be building that golden bridge for Putin, not openly plotting his downfall.” Because, as Sun Tzu warned, “an opponent with his feet in the river will fight to the death.” Often, it is worth remembering, to the death of both parties. 

“A wise American leadership.” Is that what we have now? 

That question brings me to my second page from Aristotle. 

At the center of Aristotle’s ethics is the concept of “prudence.” The ethical man is also the prudent man. Is Joe Biden prudent? Was it prudent to talk about the prospect of Armageddon when his relevant audience was not a bunch of Democratic moneybags but an increasingly isolated and jumpy Russian dictator?

This was something that worried Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. “We must,” he said in response to Biden’s talk of Armageddon, “speak with prudence” when we speak of such matters. “I have always refused to engage in political fiction,” Macron continued, “especially . . . when speaking of nuclear weapons.”

Most of the time, I am not part of the French president’s fan club. But I do think that he is 100 percent right in this case. It is good, peace-loving advice. It is a pity that Biden and his handlers seem less and less willing to follow it.

The Ant and the Contact Lens

posted by Menagerie at Conservative Treehouse

Sorting through some old papers I had stashed away, today I came upon this story I had printed out from an email I received on October 11, 2004. The original source for the story is the book Keep A Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot, published in 1995. It became attributed to Josh and Karen Zarandona when they passed it on in an email.

Supposedly, the original story came to Ms. Elliot from a Brenda Foltz, of Minnesota. I found the story just as thought provoking as I did in October of 2004. I really wish that I were writing this story as an illustration of a moment and a revelation that changed my life. Unfortunately, having a penchant for truth, I’ll confess that did not happen. I wish it had.

Sometimes I need to be reminded – over and over – of the lessons I need to learn in life. I share this with you in that spirit. I suppose most of you may have seen this in the past, but perhaps a few of you, like me, could enjoy it again.

The Ant and the Contact Lens

Brenda was a young woman who was invited to go rock climbing. Although she was scared to death, she went with her group to a tremendous granite cliff. In spite of her fear, she put on the gear, took hold of the rope, and started up the face of that rock. Well, she got to a ledge where she could take a breather. As she was hanging on there, the safety rope snapped against Brenda’s eye and knocked out her contact lens. Well, here she is on a rock ledge, with hundreds of feet below her and hundreds of feet above her. Of course, she looked and looked and looked, hoping it had landed on the ledge, but it just wasn’t there.

Here she was, far from home, her sight now blurry. She was desperate and began to get upset, so she prayed to the Lord to help her to find it.  When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but there was no contact lens to be found. She sat down, despondent, with the rest of the party, waiting for the rest of them to make it up the face of the cliff. She looked out across range after range of mountains, thinking of that Bible verse that says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth.” She thought, “Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me.”

Finally, they walked down the trail to the bottom. At the bottom there was a new party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff. One of them shouted out, “Hey, you guys! Anybody lose a contact lens?” Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why the climber saw it? An ant was moving slowly across the face of the rock, carrying it. Brenda told me that her father is a cartoonist. When she told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a picture of an ant lugging that contact lens with the words, “Lord, I don’t know why You want me to carry this thing. I can’t eat it, and it’s awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I’ll carry it for You.”

At the risk of being accused of being fatalistic, I think it would probably do some of us good to occasionally say, “God, I don’t know why You want me to carry this load. I can see no good in it and it’s awfully heavy.  But, if You want me to carry it, I will.” God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

This was originally published in the very early Treehouse days. It has been shared many times in many places. I thought now would be a good time to re-visit it.

When The Left Tries To Control You With Fear, Conjure Up The Courage Of Kanye

In withstanding the public flogging, Kanye is inspiring people across the country to break free from their mental chains.

Evita Duffy reporting for The Federalist

On the heels of Kanye’s “White Lives Matter” viral fashion statement during Paris Fashion week, the business mogul and rap artist sat down for an exclusive and explosive interview with Tucker Carlson.

During the interview, Kanye laid into the speech police that make up the corporate fashion world, Hollywood, and the “Godless” media. He called out the censorship regime for trying to control political messaging in pop culture by manipulating his reality TV-famous ex-wife Kim Kardashian and mercilessly punishing him for being a free thinker. And perhaps most of all, he showed why, when the left tries to control you with fear, courage is the only option.

Corporations Punish Ideological Dissent

Indeed, censorship and groupthink were the themes of the night, with Kanye describing how since he’s moved off script, the media and celebrity class have waged full-out war against him. For instance,Kanye believes he was “set up” by Conde Nast (a global mass media company that owns Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, and Vanity Fair, among others) and Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue (and the devil from the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”), after the fashion show where he wore the “White Lives Matter” shirt. 

The first shot taken in the setup came from Vogue fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who said on her Instagram that Kanye’s “White Lives Matter” shirt was “indefensible behavior,” “pure violence,” and that there was “no art here.” 

Then Wintour unleashed her “dolls,” mega influencer models Gigi Hadid and Hailey Baldwin, now Bieber. Suddenly, “All her dolls had something to say.” The smearing and faux online outrage, said Kanye, would only have been done with the tacit permission of Conde Nast and powerful Democrat ally and donor Wintour. Calling out Black Lives Matter and stating the obvious about the organization’s corporate-funded corruption must be punished immediately by making him radioactive in the fashion world and to corporate America.

Throughout the ordeal, Kanye has been accused of all the usual ‘isms: racism, sexism, as well as bullying and fat shaming, presumably because Vogue’s Karefa-Johnson is plus-sized. Never mind that Kanye responded to her ludicrous accusations of “violence” by mocking her style and specifically her ugly boots, not her body.   

Using His Family to Silence Him

Sadly, Kanye’s friends and family joined in the attacks and are perpetuating the narrative that he is mentally ill and unstable. This time, Kim Kardashian’s people had a source dish to Hollywood Life that she thought her husband’s shirt was a “horrible choice” and that she was “utterly disgusted” to see him with conservative commentator Candace Owens, who also wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt to the show. 

Kanye also told Carlson the Clintons have their political tentacles around Kim. “It was wild that I didn’t know how close my own wife was to the Clintons,” said Kanye, who revealed that the Clintons and other political forces attempted to influence him via Kim. “…Yes, there was manipulation,” said Kanye, adding that powerful influences succeeded in initially stopping him from coming out as a Trump supporter. 

Kanye explained that during the 2016 presidential election campaign, “every single person in Hollywood,” including Kim, Kris Jenner, his “so-called friends,” and “handlers” told him that if he publicly supported Trump, his career would be “over” and that he might even lose his life. 

Speech police also warned Kanye that the future of his marriage and the well-being of his children would be threatened if he went public with his Trump support, he recalled. As a man who so openly talks about the importance of fatherhood and his children, these warnings must have weighed heavily. Not even the most powerful and wealthy rap icon in America is immune to intimidation when countering the leftist narrative, and even he felt compelled, for a period of time, to “bit[e] [his] tongue” for the sake of his children.  

The most poignant and clearly painful moments of the interview came when Kanye talked about his wife’s decision to commodify her body to sell products and maintain her lavish lifestyle, and the message that sent to his young kids. “Kim is a Christian, but she has people who want her to go to Interview magazine and put her ass out while she’s a 40-something-year-old, multi-billionaire with four black children,” Kanye said.  

According to Kanye, anyone with influence, such as his ex wife, will have forces trying to control them, and fear is the primary weapon. “[Those with influence] have people that are around them at all times, telling them what to be afraid of.” Interestingly, he revealed, they are not told what to say as much as what not to say. 

Kim showed courage when she put her passion for criminal justice reform over politics and worked with President Trump in 2020. Kanye suggested, however, that more often than not Kim’s luxury lifestyle and her desire for influence take precedence.

Now divorced, Kanye divulged that one of the “Godless” media’s most painful campaigns against him was when they called him a “stalker” for buying a house near Kim, so he could be near his children and fulfill his duties as a father. 

Breaking Free from Mental Chains

Despite all the personal suffering, Kanye didn’t shy away from stating facts that undermine the regime, such as stating that more black children are aborted than born in New York City. He even talked about Planned Parenthood’s racist, eugenic roots, something the left has been trying to keep quiet for decades. 

Kanye credits his Christian faith for withstanding the tribulations. “God builds warriors in a different way. I don’t know if it’s because of me being born in Atlanta and growing up on the south side of Chicago that, you know, he made me for such a time like this.”

By speaking his mind and prompting others to think, Kanye is one of the left’s biggest targets. They tried making an example of him, showing what will happen if you dare step out of ideological line. Yet in standing his ground, Kanye succeeded in getting his messages across. In not buckling under the pressure with some mechanical PR team-written apology and proving he could withstand public flogging, he inspired Americans across the country to break free of their mental chains and self-censorship too. As Kanye said, fear is one of the left’s favorite weapons, which is one reason courage is so crucial.

'Unhinged' Katie Hobbs Freaks When Kari Lake Shows up in Town Hall Audience

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Over the last few months, Arizona’s gubernatorial race has firmly moved into my “want to win the most” column right alongside John Fetterman being defeated in Pennsylvania. Republican Kari Lake is an excellent candidate running against Democrat Katie Hobbs, whose quintessential Karen-ness has just become unbearable.

Hobbs has refused to debate Lake and has laughably gone to great lengths to never even be in the same room as her opponent. That led Lake to call Hobbs “unhinged” during a press gaggle on Tuesday after the Democrat demanded the two candidates enter from opposite sides of the building for an event. Fact-check: True.

The silliness continued on Saturday at another town hall event. Naturally, Hobbs refused to appear on stage with Lake as is customary. Then this bit of hilarity happened.

Under the agreed-upon rules for the pre-recorded event, which was taped Monday and airs at 7 p.m. Saturday Arizona time, the candidates were not supposed to be onstage at the same time and Hobbs was supposed to go first.

But a problem arose before Hobbs even took the stage: Lake was sitting in the front row, in a direct line of sight at where her opponent would sit.

As a crowd of more than 200 watched, organizers said Lake was supposed to be in a hold room under the rules, a copy of which they refused to provide to NBC News. Lake protested, saying she was unaware of that rule and said Hobbs should come out and debate her. Hobbs didn’t.

Lake, ever the cunning operator, noted that the rules said they couldn’t be on stage together. In response, she went and sat in the audience right in front of where Hobbs would be speaking to hear what the Democrat had to say. Instead of being an adult, Hobbs apparently freaked out in the green room and refused to come out like a frightened child.

I can only assume the organizers of the event are Democrats as they then forced Lake to leave the premises. More telling is that they allowed Hobbs to dictate such ridiculous rules in the first place. Who has a candidate town hall where the candidates aren’t allowed to be in the same room? It’s just stupid, and the lengths to which Hobbs has gone to avoid being challenged disqualifying, never mind her actual record.

If a candidate can’t even face their opponent, they have no business trying to run a state, much less a relatively large state dealing with a major crisis. Is Hobbs going to hide in her room every time the going gets tough as Governor of Arizona? It would seem so, as that’s become her go-to move.

Arizonans shouldn’t reward that kind of cowardice. It is a state that needs a strong, fearless leader that is willing to face problems head-on. Hobbs is not that person, and she should be sent back to her liberal wine-mom parties instead of being allowed anywhere near power.

Chicken Kiev with a side of Armageddon

Nothing complements a rubber chicken fundraiser quite like a side of Armageddon.

posted by Dianny at Patriot Retort

The other day, Joe Biden decided a Democrat fundraiser was the perfect opportunity to bring up nuclear Armageddon.

Nothing complements a rubber chicken fundraiser quite like a side of Armageddon.

For a guy who loves to say, “that’s not hyperbole,” there’s never been an occasion where Joe Biden won’t engage in hyperbole.

During his remarks at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reception in New York on Thursday, Biden had this to say:

“Think about it: We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’ve got a guy I know fairly well; his name is Vladimir Putin. I spent a fair amount of time with him. He is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical and nuclear weapons, or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

As Becket Adams added on Twitter:

“Anyway, be sure to make those checks out to the DNC and enjoy the chicken.”

There’s a time and a place to address the prospect of Putin using nuclear weapons, but a campaign fundraiser at a private residence in New York City is not one of them.

If Joe Biden was actually the President of the United States, this is the kind of thing he’d say in a nationally televised address.

But not this guy. Nope. He used his nationally-televised address to engage in over-the-top hyperbole to portray his political opposition as a threat to our Republic and saved the nuclear threat from Russia for a campaign fundraiser.

But let’s pretend for a moment that it is an appropriate venue to warn that we are on the cusp of nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

If Vladimir Putin feels emboldened enough to threaten nukes, what does that say about Joe Biden’s track record as President of the United States?

Is it really a campaign selling point for the Democrats that the Democrat President has ushered us to the brink of Armageddon for the first time in sixty years? Especially when you consider that this Democrat President is the same guy who, ten years ago, mugged for the cameras and laughed like a hyena when Paul Ryan brought up Russia during the Vice Presidential Debate.

What’s truly astounding about his Armageddon talk at this fundraiser, however, is that Biden used it as a cudgel to attack … you guessed it … the previous administration:

“I didn’t realize how much serious damage the last administration did to our relationships around the world. The America First policies put us basically last.”

As Byron York observed in the Washington Examiner:

If the worst happens, Joe Biden will be pointing fingers till the end.

Yes, I can totally picture Joe Biden being herded into the White House bunker as Kyiv is enveloped in a mushroom cloud whining to Jill, “It’s that damn Trump’s fault! And OPEC!”

He’ll be sitting in the bunker while the Joint Chiefs brief him, muttering like the guy from Chernobyl, “We did everything right. We did everything right.”

This is the same man who, before the 2020 election, was boasting that Vladimir Putin was shaking in his boots at the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency:

Yes sir. Putin didn’t want him in the White House because Joe was going to stand up to him.

And yet once Biden was in the White House, Putin began amassing troops along the border with Ukraine.

Joe strutted around for weeks before the invasion talking about those super tough sanctions and how Putin better think again because, boy, no hyperbole, those sanctions were going to cripple him. Not a joke, folks. Putin better not test old Joe. No one fucks with a Biden.

If we stand on the brink of Armageddon nearly two years into his presidency, isn’t it fair to say Joe Biden has been a complete and utter failure?

Joe’s delusional tough-guy talk both before the election and before the invasion did nothing to stop Putin from ordering Russian forces into Ukraine.

And after Putin did it, how did Joe respond?

Joe said at Thursday’s fundraiser, “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well; his name is Vladimir Putin. I spent a fair amount of time with him.”

If he knows Putin so well, shouldn’t he know that Vladimir Putin is a wee bit more than a “bully?”

As I wrote the day after Russia invaded:

Bullies will knock your lunch tray out of your hand and leave you to clean up the mess while the rest of the kids in the cafeteria laugh at you.  They’ll yank your pants down when you’re walking to class or take your books from your hand and throw them in the toilet.

What bullies don’t do is invade a sovereign nation and bring Europe to the brink of war. That’s a bit beyond their field of expertise.

It finally dawns on this idiot that Vladimir Putin is more than a bully, and he chooses a rubber chicken fundraiser to point it out?

This is not a serious man.

It should come as no surprise that President “Not Hyperbole” bringing up nuclear Armageddon at a Democrat fundraiser did more than just raise a few eyebrows.

And as is always the case when this loose-lipped idiot drops a rhetorical bomb, the White House Office of What He Meant to Say had to come in and clean up the fallout:

Joe Biden has always been a reckless big-mouth. He has always lacked the intelligence, seriousness, and competence to lead. But he is so full of arrogance and vanity that he lacks the self-awareness to realize just how far over his head he is.

And if Armageddon comes knocking, it will be Joe Biden who opens the door.