How can we miss her when she won’t go away?
No surprise that the fake Indian is planning to run for yet another six-year term in the US Senate next year, when she’ll be 75 years old, and does anything seriously believe that will be her swan song?
You know, I get that Liewatha doesn’t want to retire. As the late Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden used to say, “Ain’t but one major event left after you retire.”
That one major event would be a trip to the Happy Hunting Grounds, as Fauxchahontas’ ancestors, er, non-ancestors, used to say, at least in the Republic Pictures B-movie westerns.
But when did careers in Congress become peerages – lifetime appointments, with titles?
When Harry S Truman left the presidency in 1953, he drove his own car back to Independence MO. Few politicians stayed in Washington after retirement or defeat. Maybe it was the lack of air conditioning.
Then the Congressmen realized that post-retirement, they could make a lot more dough as lobbyists or influence peddlers or whatever. So they remained in DC until they either died or were imprisoned (like ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert).
Then they collectively figured out that they would just remain in office until they died, again, just a duke or earl in the House of Lords. Think Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg.
Now, even after they’re incapacitated, they remain in office. Resignations are no longer an option. They just move into hospitals, like Sens. Dianne Feinstein, age 89, and John Fetterman, who at age 53 hasn’t been seen publicly since he checked into Walter Reed Hospital five weeks ago.
It’s not just the White House that has been converted into an assisted-living facility or hospice.
The “junior” senator from Massachusetts is Ed Markey, who will be 77 in July. He’s already announced his plans to run for another term in 2026, at age 80.
What. Else. Would. He. Do?
To put it in fake-Indian terms, Markey has been in Congress for many, many moons – before Iron Horse, since there were more buffalo on the plains than stars in the sky. I remember his first run for the Senate – in 1984.
He had to drop out because he knew if he lost his House seat, he would have most likely either starved to death or ended up panhandling outside the Pine Street Inn. When he quit the Senate fight, I asked him at my TV station to autograph one of his Senate brochures for me as a souvenir.
He scrawled, “I wish I could have two jobs like you, Howie.”
Meaning that even if he lost, he wouldn’t have to do something unthinkable – like go to work.
But he’s almost 80 now. How much money does he need?
Same question for Cong. Richie Neal, age 74. And even more so, Rep. Bill Keating. He’s 70, he’ll get a huge federal kiss in the mail. And for more than 12 years, he’s also been pocketing a state pension that has risen to $115,099 a year.
Then there’s Rep. Steve Lynch – he turned 68 yesterday. He got confused recently at a hearing and called a witness named Shellenberger “Shellenbeck.”
As one commenter noted, “I went by a dry cleaner yesterday and saw an empty suit. I thought of Steve Lynch.”
Going back to the theme of fake Indians, these ancient House Hibernians are the local political versions of the Last of the Mohicans – white Irish-Catholic heterosexual males who were born here. Talk about unelectable in modern-day Massachusetts.
They aren’t any more of them coming up, that’s for sure. We used to describe these would-be dynasties – the Markeys, the O’Neills, the Creedons, even the Multiple-Choice Joyces – as K-Mart Kennedys.
Now even Kennedys can’t get elected in Massachusetts. Just ask young JoJoJo, crushed by Markey. JoJoJo was born in Brighton. Total deal-breaker in a Democrat primary.
As for the dinosaurs still clinging to their seats in Congress, you couldn’t pry ‘em out with the Jaws of Life. They’re all obsessed with not being “Capuano’ed” – defeated by some woke blow-in who checks all the boxes, like Rep. Ayanna Pressley back in 2018.
Pressley, native of Chicago like Mayor Wu, won’t take on the fake Indian, a native of Oklahoma. Business is too good in the racket that Tom Wolfe used to call “steam control.” And a run for higher office might mean more scrutiny, which is never a good thing in the steam control industry.
As for the fake Indian, of course she’d like to run for president, but c’mon. She had her chance in 2020, when she finished third in the Massachusetts primary.
She’s probably the least popular statewide politician in Massachusetts. Sure, she won a landslide reelection in 2018, but when you’re running against Geoff “DoorDash” Diehl, even a drunkard like state Sen. Michael Brady could win overwhelmingly, back in 2015.
As time goes by, even her fake-Indian scandal recedes into the past, especially since a new Pretendian is busted almost weekly. Johnny Depp, a dean at Dartmouth, Canada’s top “indigenous health expert,” and then over the weekend a Hollywood producer with, you guessed it, high cheekbones.
It’s almost become a cottage industry, the racial fraudulence that Elizabeth Warren pioneered. This latest flim-flammer, Heather Rae, was apparently planning on passing her grift down to the next generation. Her daughter had become an actress under the name of “Johnny Sequoyah.”
Now that her mom Heather Rae has been busted, maybe “Sequoyah” can go back to using her family’s real surname – Friedenberg.
The fake Indian will never be president, but being a US senator isn’t such a bad consolation prize. Big money, little responsibility, even less accountability. The only thing she must worry about is that one of her crackpot proposals might actually become law. Bailouts – for student loans! For the FDIC! How ‘bout a “wealth tax?”
It’s fun to hold hearings, not so nice if somebody actually follows through on any of your unconstitutional lunatic schemes. Down that road lies the Consumer Finance Protection Board… and disaster.
But hey, Diane Feinstein is 89. Robert Byrd made it to 92, Strom Thurmond to 100. Fake Indian can last many, many moons, maybe even as long as Great White Father Ed Markey.