But you tell me over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction!

All these years later, the 1965 folk/protest song “Eve of Destruction” remains a big buzz kill. That dire dirge plays like the anthem of our perpetually peeved progressive acquaintances (for they ARE …). 

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of Senators don’t pass legislation.

Three cheers for that handful of senators! One of them is our Mountain Man of the Month: Joe Manchin. (O.K., promise: no more alliteration.)

His $1.5 Trillion ceiling on Joe Biden’s $3.5 Trillion grab bag of progressive goodies is approximately $1.5 Trillion too high but it may as well be absolute zero, given the intransigence of our progressive acquaintances, who prove once again their historic inability to govern. (See Cuba, Venezuela, California, Portland, and the Madison WI school board.) For progressives, the cup is always half empty. And they can’t count.

→ The Head Groundskeeper at the Werkes swears to the Hippocratic Oath of Politics: First Do No Harm. 

Political innumeracy

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie betrays his political innumeracy by claiming “there are 51 votes —  the Senate Democratic caucus plus Vice President Harris — to:

• Reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, 
• End partisan gerrymandering and 
• Shield state and local election officials from outside interference. (By “outside interference,” Bouie means elected state legislators.)

Bouie even believes “They might also … codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.” They might also track down Gabby Petito’s killer for good measure. More Bouie b.s.:

And, despite the recent collapse of negotiations between Senators Cory Booker and Tim Scott, there are almost certainly 51 votes for substantial police reform.

Except that there are not 51 votes for substantial police “reform.” More bad math. Booker walked away. Joe Manchin is not going to give up the police representing a state that Donald Trump won by 28 percentage points by “substantially reforming” police. Not with violent crime up 30 percent!

“The overriding problem for Democrats is that they are trying to pass a Bernie Sanders agenda with a Joe Biden mandate.”
— Wall Street Journal 10-01-21.

Praying for a do-nothing Congress!

Where is the groundswell for that $3.5 Trillion? Does anyone outside the Congressional Budget Office know what’s in it? 

Charlie Cooke writes in National Review. “What [Manchin and Sinema’s critics] are ultimately complaining about is that their party does not have more seats in the federal legislature. And why doesn’t their party have more seats in the federal legislature? Well, because the American public did not give them more seats in the federal legislature.”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Blame a little thing called democracy. 

Platinum subscribers bonus filler: 

“Eve of Destruction” singer Barry McGuire is today a born-again Christian. Guess you could say the man is on the eve of redemption.

Can Manchin save the Democrat(ic) party?