BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Keeping in mind the warning we published last week, commentators are advised to keep their postings on topic, relevant, and free of diatribes and personal insult. If you go off topic, have a good point to make. Our first warning had a good effect, one that began to wear off at the weekend. Our bouncers have been checking I.D.s and are even more willing to toss. Keep it real. Don’t do Topix here.]

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY FEB. 11, 2019) — The GOP’s secret weapon to retain the White House in 2020 — which, incidentally and unbelievably is less than a year away — has struck again. The Dems’ only hope will be to find a way to stifle this traitorous element of the party and see that Joe Biden, a Syracuse product and the only serious Donkey contender at this point, wins the nomination. Fightin’ Joe, however, will find it more difficult each day wild-eyed Rep. Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez continues to House wreck and run wild off the leash.

O-C has unveiled her so-called Green New Deal. The proposal, which calls for an unprecedented expansion and intrusion of the federal government into every aspect of daily life, makes FDR’s New Deal look like the economics of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman of the Chicago School. THE PLANET would love Dr. Charles Trzcinka’s take.

Of course, the radical plan was endorsed by ultra-left party apparatchiks including reps. Ed Markey of the Bay State, and presidential no-shots Kamala Harris, D-CA; Cory Booker, D-NJ, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and our own Elizabeth Warren. The latter, incidentally, had to issue her third apology of the week when the Washington Post revealed she had self-identified as “American Indian” in her 1986 Texas bar application.

Fortunately, the plan has zero chance of success. It’s a non-binding resolution, not a bill. At best, it would provide input on future congressional legislation on climate change. At worst it dies on the vine as a PR stunt given life solely because of social media and O-C’s lipstick. If she looked like Bella Abzug, no one hears about it.

The Green New Deal’s purpose is to serve as a publicity campaign O-C, Booker, Harris, and company. Cheap publicity has replaced sober policy for moonbat, you-go-girl, party progressives (Andrea Harrington and Helen Moon, anyone?). Unfortunately, this stuff plays well on social media, irreparably harming the minds of countless young people whose beautiful idealism becomes sacrificial victim of cynical political opportunists. The strategy, which plays well for the party elites in Berkshire County and bicoastal enclaves, will flop elsewhere. Can you imagine someone like Harris as the Democrat nominee next year, having to defend a “democratic economy?”

If Democrats seriously advance what O-C calls “a comprehensive agenda of economic, social, and racial justice,” it will ensure a bull rush for Republicans, mainly from middle America. That’s why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wisely dismissed the wacky plan as “the green dream, or whatever they call it … nobody knows what it is.” You see, kids, it is wise to have the adults around.

The Green New Deal would intrude into every aspect of daily life. For example, it would ban commercial air travel. Buh-bye, airplanes; they pollute too much. It would provide welfare (taxpayer money) to all in need, even those, in O-C’s memorable words, “unwilling to work.” Let that sink in. The Green New Deal will hand out monthly payments for every lazy moocher in the land. Welfare scamming is bad enough now, but under the new plan, the cheats would no longer have to scam. They would simply be given a monthly kiss “just because.”

None of the backers of the resolution have explained how they would pay for it. Actually, there’s no way to realistically calculate the cost of such an ill-defined deal. Initial estimates put the floor at $2 trillion dollars. No number, though, could be put on the cost of disrupting global trade or the one million jobs the plan would eliminate. We’re talking multiple trillions of dollars.

The Republicans actually have been tame in their response, willing to let the damage play out across America.

“The Green New deal is a raw deal for the American taxpayer,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “[It’s] a socialist manifesto that lays out a laundry list of government giveaways, including guaranteed food, housing, college, and economic security [income], even for those who refuse to work.”

THE PLANET would like to think that the Democrats aren’t that stupid. We’d prefer the nomination of a strong candidate who can provide the entire country, and not just the radical left, with a viable choice in 2020.

Joe Biden, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

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“But tell me, who are they, these wanderers, even more transient than we ourselves?” — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Fifth Duino Elegy.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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