These are the highlights and lowlights of the Massachusetts congressional delegation over the last year:
First, the single highlight of the year, which surprisingly came from Rep. Seth Moulton. After the humiliating fall of Afghanistan, “President” Moulton listened in amazement as Dementia Joe Biden incoherently babbled that some of our Afghan allies actually wanted to remain behind as the Taliban regained control.
“Utter BS,” Moulton said. “Don’t tell me they don’t want to leave when they’re literally clinging to airplanes to try to get out of this country.”
A random act of truth-telling — a gaffe, in other words. And that was the delegation’s high-water mark of the year, the only one, in fact.
As for lowlights, let’s start with the fake Indian, who’s laid up right now with the virus. This could be the proverbial blessing in disguise for Lieawatha, if it puts a temporary end to her recent string of comments that are idiotic even by her own abysmal standards.
She just accused Elon Musk of being a “freeloader,” as he was about to pay the US Treasury $11 billion in capital-gains taxes.
“If irony were a disease,” Musk responded, “she would be dead.”
Then there was her statement accusing supermarket chains of “profiteering” — the same sector that has the lowest profit margin of any major industry. She’s also come out in favor of packing the Supreme Court.
I think Pocahontas is on the warpath because despite being many moons beyond her expiration date, she wants to run for president again. Thus she is already re-fighting the last campaign, and her strategy is to never be out-Bernie Sandersed again.
Then there’s Sen. Ed “Mr. Frosty” Markey, the man that time forgot. His year, like all the last 50, can be described in a single headline, with only a few words interchanged here and there:
“Markey (choose verb: urges, files bill, calls for, or most likely joins) with (pick any loathsome pol: most likely AOC, Chuck Schumer or Mass. Democrats) in calling for (choose some really stupid idea, like the Green New Deal, or just this week, a statewide mask mandate, or was it a vaccine passport, or both?).”
Moving along, to the House of Representatives, January was a big month for the delegation. Tubby Rep. Jim McGovern began 2021 denouncing GOP attempts to deny certification of the 2020 presidential election. The president of the Fidel Castro Fan Club claimed that any attempt to challenge the results of an election is “an existential threat” to the system — you know, mail-in ballots, voter harvesting, no voter IDs etc. — and threatens to “usurp” democracy.
This is the same Jim McGovern who exactly four years earlier had, you guessed it, objected to the certification of Trump’s election because of “Russian hacking.” There wasn’t “Russian hacking,” of course, but being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry. Now that would be a real existential threat to the system — their system, not ours.
Rep. Bill Keating likewise had a big January. He stumbled into a House cafeteria and saw some National Guard troops who had dropped their Fauci face diapers, and he lost it. Soon the Guard was exiled to a cold parking garage. A day later, after the story broke, Keating had to issue a statement saying that he didn’t really pull a do-you-know-who-I-am? Instead, he claimed, he merely remarked casually about, well, following the science or something.
By the way, every year is a big year for Keating, because once a month, for the last 11 years, he gets a direct deposit to his bulging bank account of $9,537 before taxes. That’s his state pension, which he greedily pockets on top of his $174,000-a-year Congressional salary.
As for Rep. Steve Lynch of South Boston, he endorsed a winning candidate for the Boston City Council and he tested positive for COVID-19 and, er, that was about it.
Rep. Richard “the Sheik” Neal had a near-death political experience in 2020 — he was almost Capuano’ed in the primary by the mayor of Holyoke, a member of at least two protected classes, gay and Ivy League. When Tip O’Neill used to worry about someone running against him, that person would get a new, higher-paying job, like Somerville Mayor Larry Bretta back in the day, before he went to prison.
Guess what good news Neal got this year? That $87,754-a-year gay mayor of Holyoke got a new job as the $175,000-a-year administrator of Provincetown, far, far from the 1st Congressional District. Now he’s Bill Keating’s problem.
Neal spent the rest of 2021 trying to get Donald Trump’s federal tax returns because … Orange Man Bad. Those are the kind of bona fides a 72-year-old white male heterosexual native Catholic needs to fend off the next blow-in wokester from Chicago or Colorado or Oklahoma. A federal judge even ruled in Neal’s favor, regretfully: “It might not be right or wise to publish the returns but …” But Richie Neal is a shameless hack.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley couldn’t have been happy when Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty, because this is how she described the Kenosha Kid in a tweet in 2020: “A 17-year-old white supremacist domestic terrorist drove across state lines armed with an AR-15.”
She got one fact right. Kyle was 17. How much has that kid from Covington Catholic High collected so far from the alt-left media for their libels, which weren’t as defamatory as what Ayanna said about Rittenhouse?
You’d think someone married to an ex-con would have more respect for … due process, the Sixth Amendment, etc. But no, she’s on the burning issue of vaccine passports and student loan debt. To ask anyone to pay their voluntary debts, Ayanna says, is “policy violence,” whatever that is.
Then there is the STOCK Act, which requires members of Congress to report their financial transactions. Never heard of it? Apparently neither had Reps. Katherine Clark and Lori Trahan. They both “neglected to file,” but not a problem — they’re Democrats, you know.
As for freshman Rep. Jake Auchincloss, I never thought about him much one way or the other until I found out his father works for Dr. Fauci in the D.C. health care hackerama. Now I say, Auchincloss Must Go!
The most disappointing news of the year was the U.S. census. Sadly, Massachusetts will not be losing a House seat this decade. Addition by subtraction is what a lost House seat in this ruined state would be.
Unfortunately, you can’t lose ‘em all.