7 Things: Biden’s terrible ideas staggering; pork-filled budget shepherded by Shelby; and more …

7. GoFundMe set up for Alabama veterans who were trapped in Ukraine

• The Alabama Republican Party is looking to help raise funds for the families of two Alabama veterans captured in Ukraine and held by Russian forces from June to September.
• The goal of the GoFundMe account is to help Alex Drueke and Andy Huyn raise enough money to pay off their bills ahead of the Christmas holiday. ALGOP Chairman John Wahl set up the account and private donations after learning the men’s families were paying for their flights home. Wahl said in a press release, “These families went through so much, and I wanted to show that we cared. The Alabama Republican Party has always been supportive of our veterans, and this is just one small way we can help give back.”

6. Facebook $1.5 billion data center in Alabama may be dead, for now, maybe

• A new economic development deal for Facebook parent company Meta and north Alabama could be in peril. Huntsville’s facility is not the only one being shelved for now, Temple, Texas and Odense, Denmark also had their projects paused or canceled.
• Meta says the Alabama deal is not dead, “We remain committed to this community, our local stakeholders, and our supply chain partners. We will work closely with our stakeholders to transition this project design as efficiently as possible.” There is speculation that Meta lost so much money attempting to set up a functional and thriving metaverse that other projects have been changed.

5. No surprise that Democrats will release Trump’s tax returns

• Surprise! Surprise. Surprise …  Democrat members of the House Way and Means Committee have voted to take former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, acquired under the pretense of doing oversight of the Internal Revenue Service’s auditing process, and release them to the public. That was always the plan.
• The chair of the committee, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), wouldn’t say if there was anything nefarious in Trump’s taxes on the personal or business side. Neal suggested that “we need to leave that to the tax folks,” after voting to release the tax returns, which is all this was about.

4. Budget deal brokered by Shelby gets closer

• After doing nothing on the issue of the budget to keep the United States of America’s government functioning for a full year, members of Congress are prepared to move a huge deficit-spending bill through both Democrat-led houses of Congress with less than 3 days left before a government shutdown.
• Alabama’s senior U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Tuscaloosa) is right in the middle of the issue and has now gained the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who says the bill is “as good as it gets.” The bill is full of earmarks, including $656.4 million for Alabama.

3. Biden’s inflation plan is his bad immigration plan with a new desired outcome

• Every plan that the Biden administration has unveiled has been pretty bad, and their next plan to fight inflation is worse than the Inflation Reduction Act, which did not act to reduce inflation. Now the administration wants to fight inflation with more immigration.
• The plan includes providing legal status to “Dreamers” and increasing the labor supply through immigration. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told Axios, “[w]e’re down a million immigrants a year. That’s a workforce that we need.” But this ignores the massive illegal immigration issues we are currently dealing with and the fact she is calling for an influx of low-wage labor or indentured servants.

2. Biden’s immigration plan is open borders

• The solution to a massive immigration problem is apparently to make immigration easier, illegal and otherwise. As if this was not bad enough, the Biden administration is now actively courting the end of Title 42. These geniuses want to wait until after Christmas. After all, Christmas is the holiday the media and their Democrats use to incorrectly tell you that “Jesus was an immigrant” or “Jesus was a transgender drag queen immigrant.”
• Luckily for Biden and his totally competent team, 14,000 immigrants a day are expected to cross the border daily after Title 42 expires; up from 9,000 now as the current system fails. So, even though illegal immigration is at record levels, Biden wants to pour gasoline on a fire and then throw your family into it,

1. Here are some dumb things in the latest “must-pass” spending bill

• Any spending bill is going to have pork in it, this bill is no exception. The bill working its way through Congress has $858 billion in defense spending and $772.5 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. Not all of that discretionary spending is pork, but in those 4,155 pages, there is a lot … oink … oink.
• U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and his staff fired off a lengthy tweet thread focusing on some of the more ridiculous items in the bill. This includes, but is not limited to, $3 million for bee-friendly highways; $575 million for “family planning” to stop threats to biodiversity; a federal building named for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); a Michelle Obama Trail; $477k for antiracist stuff; $3 million for the LGBTQ+ museum; $1.2 million for DACA recipients; Ukrainian Independence Park in D.C.; $524.4 million for Diversity Equity and Inclusion gender programs in Pakistan; $7.5 million to better understand domestic radicalization; and $535 million for the hit pieces from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Lastly, money CAN NOT be spent on our border security but $410 million is available for border security in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman.