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31 October, 2018

DHS Secretary Nielsen: 'Caravan Is Not Getting In'; Trump: 'Military Is Waiting for You'

As thousands of Central Americans continue marching north, President Trump reportedly plans to make a major immigration speech on Tuesday.

According to the Washington Post, he is expected to announce that he is invoking emergency powers, on national security grounds, to stop those people and others from entering the United States.

Trump on Monday had a message for the thousands of Central Americans heading to the Southwest border:

"Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border," he tweeted. "lease go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!"

"I think what the president has been saying and will continue to say, and certainly what I have been saying, is, this caravan is not getting in," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told "Fox News Sunday."

"There is a legal way to enter this country. Those who choose to enter illegally will be stopped."

Nielsen said her message to the caravan is, "Do not come. You will not be allowed in. There is a right way to immigrate to the United States and this is not it."

What we're really talking about is the flow of people that are headed towards United States. They have chosen to break laws along the way. You saw some of them, frankly overwhelm and burst through the border between Guatemala and the country of Mexico.

Mexico has offered them asylum. In some cases, they have refused. Mexico has offered them work permits. In some cases, they have refused.

And I think what the president and I are both saying, and we want to be clear on this is, if you seek asylum, do so in the first place, country, Mexico has offered you refuge.

If you want a job, that is not asylum. If you want to be reunited with your family, that is not asylum. If you want to just come live in the United States, that is not asylum; there are legal ways to do that.

But this is about the rule of law. This is about understanding who is in the flow. And Chris, I cannot tell you as Secretary of Homeland Security, that I know every person in this flow.

Nielsen described the daily Southwest border breaches as a "crisis": "We are stopping between 1,500 and 1,700 people a day, trying to cross illegally into this country. This caravan is one iteration of that but frankly we essentially see caravans every day with these numbers.

"So I think what the president is making clear is every possible action, authority, executive program, is on the table to consider, to ensure that it is clear that there is a right and a legal way to come to this country and no other ways will be tolerated."

Host Chris Wallace asked Nielsen how women and children "threaten national security."

"Well I think there's a couple ways to look at this," Nielsen responded. She said the caravan "isn't a ticketed event," and it may include terrorists who blend in with the crowd. "In general, we stopped -- across United States -- 10 known or suspected terrorists a day from getting into the United States."

Last week, Trump tweeted: "To those in the Caravan, turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!"

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, issued a statement last week, commenting on Trump's reported plan to block asylum-seekers and immigrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border:

“It’s disgraceful the Trump administration would even consider what’s being reported. It would mean refusing to protect people who can prove they are fleeing persecution. That would be a huge moral failure and any plan along these lines will be subject to intense legal scrutiny.”

SOURCE 

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Politicizing and Profiting on Hate: From Bomb Threats to Slaughtering Innocents

Last Friday, Cesar Sayoc, a Democrat-hating sociopath who drives a vehicle plastered with pro-Trump and anti-Democrat stickers, was arrested in Florida. He is the prime suspect who sent what I noted Thursday were likely inert mail bomb packages to 14 Democrat notables. As I wrote, "Given the amateurish construction, packaging, and delivery method, tracking down the threat package maker(s) will be swift." And it was.

As I also noted, "To be clear, whether or not these devices were intended to detonate or disrupt, this is, by definition, an act of terrorism [as was] the case with the envelopes laced with the deadly toxin ricin, sent to the Pentagon and White House three weeks ago." It is curious that there has been no information about whether the mail packages were intended to harm or a hoax intended to make headlines.

Tragically, over the weekend, there was hateful bloodshed. A self-styled neo-Nazi sociopath, Robert Bowers, murdered 11 mostly elderly innocents at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. According to reports, he may have been inspired in part because Donald Trump is the most PRO-Israel president since Ronald Reagan. As you recall, in May Trump boldly made good on a 23-year-old American commitment to move our embassy to Jerusalem.

Bowers reportedly yelled, "All Jews must die!" as he entered the synagogue, reminiscent of the much more frequently heard declaration "Allahu Akbar" when Islamists are slaughtering innocents.

The leftist publication Slate declared, "Bowers made his hatred of Trump clear" — he believed "Trump was under the control of Jews, who are out to destroy Western civilization." Reuters reported that Bowers "is a registered voter with 'no affiliation' who took aim [at] Donald Trump, accusing him of being a 'globalist' who did nothing to stop the 'infestation' of the United States by Jews."

"Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist," Bowers wrote on his social-media page prior to the assault. "There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation." He also wrote, "For the record, I did not vote for him nor have I owned, worn or even touched a MAGA hat."

There are on average more than 40 homicides every day in America, disproportionately black-on-black attacks in Democrat-controlled urban centers — the direct result of generations of leftist social policies. And those murder rates continue to rise because of those policies.

But the mass murder of a group of 11 people who have no connection to drug or gang violence, innocents targeted solely because of their faith, should inspire profound and universal righteous indignation in all of us. It should be one of those moments when we come together as a nation to universally condemn such hatred.

That notwithstanding, predictably, before the blood of these precious souls was dry, leftist politicos and their Leftmedia outlets were scheming how to politicize and profiteer from this tragedy. Unfortunately, all the Left has to offer is a platform of fear, hate, and division."

Beyond the knee-jerk calls for gun control, two political narratives have emerged about the Pittsburgh assailant's motives.

First is that he is a "right wing" neo-Nazi.

This characterization is correct, except for the commonly misunderstood "right wing" part. Today's Democrat socialists don't object to the increasingly violent so-called "antifa movement" of self-proclaimed anti-fascist fascists, but they like to claim that sociopathic Nazis and other seditionist and anarchist groups are "right wing." That may fit nicely into their politicized sound bites, but seditionists and anarchists, whose primary political goal is to overthrow our government, are by definition "leftist."

That being said, there is no question that Bowers's hatred was inspired by Nazism and the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party.

The second political/MSM narrative is an attempt to pivot the motive for his violence to the approaching "caravasion," the caravan of migrants organized and supported by leftist groups. They are now passing through Mexico, intent on forcing their way across the U.S. border — which is an invasion, despite the fact that most of these migrants are opportunists looking to better their lives. The MSM points to a recent post by Bowers claiming HIAS, a Jewish refugee agency, is behind the march. According to Bowers's deluded perspective, "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."

But again, this is not rooted in Bowers's concern about migrants; it is rooted in his anti-Semitic delusion that the organization of the caravan is a Jewish conspiracy.

Both of these narratives more closely reflect the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Democrat Party allies, including anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour and Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan. Regarding the latter, John Kass wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "Few if any Democratic voices are being raised against Farrakhan. The Congressional Black Caucus certainly won't condemn him. And white Democrats aren't demanding condemnation either. They don't want to risk losing votes. This silence is dangerous."

Bowers has been charged with numerous federal crimes, including 11 counts of Obstruction of Exercise of Religious Beliefs Resulting in Death, 11 counts of Use of a Firearm to Commit Murder During and in Relation to a Crime of Violence, and four counts of Obstruction of Exercise of Religious Beliefs Resulting in Bodily Injury to a Public Safety Officer.

President Trump and federal prosecutors are calling for his execution if found guilty. The Left will likely object...

A final note on the hate profiteers, those other than the MSM profiteers whose market share and ad revenues depend on sensationalism. As I anticipated when first hearing about the Bowers assault Saturday, within hours, a reflexive fundraising response hit my inbox from the left-wing SPLC, the nation's most profitable hate-hustling "civil rights" group. In its fundraising "special edition," the SPLC regurgitated more of its leftist rhetoric.

SPLC has an "endowment" of $320 million and in the most recent year of record, the organization listed revenue in excess of $58 million. So my question for the SPLC: The Pittsburgh assailant had a long history of racist rhetoric and activities — did the SPLC spend one dime of its endowment and revenues identifying this hater and reporting him to law enforcement authorities? Of course not.

SOURCE 

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While know-it-alls lecture on tariffs against China, Trump dials up new trade deals with UK, Europe and Japan

While President Donald Trump continues to bring the pressure to China, so far with 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods shipped to the U.S., rising to 25 percent in Jan. 2019, which comes atop another 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of goods from China, he is dialing up new trade deals with traditional U.S. allies.

Trade agreements with South Korea, Mexico and Canada are already going to Congress, accounting for a combined $1.4 trillion in trade with the U.S.

And now, Trump has notified Congress of his intent to negotiate deals with the UK, Europe and Japan, with whom the U.S. carried on a combined $1.7 trillion in trade.

These were supposed to be mutually exclusive things, according to all the experts. Trump could either put up more trade barriers or lower them, but he could not do both. Instead, Trump is proving that the U.S. can walk and chew gum at the same time as it pursues the Trump trade agenda.

If nations act fairly and reciprocally with the U.S. to lower trade barriers, they can get a good deal. If not, like China, then they face tariffs.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we will continue to expand U.S. trade and investment by negotiating trade agreements with Japan, the EU and the United Kingdom,” said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in a statement.

“Today’s announcement is an important milestone in that process. We are committed to concluding these negotiations with timely and substantive results for American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses,” Lighthizer added.

It’s the ultimate carrot and stick. By acting tough, and levying across the board tariffs, Trump gave the U.S. room to negotiate and incentive for other countries wishing to export to the U.S. to close a deal.

As for China, for now they get to feel the pain. China has retaliated with tariffs on $60 billion of goods including agricultural products soybeans and pork. On currency, China has devalued the yuan almost 10 percent since February.

Trump has warned that if China retaliates, another $267 billion of tariffs could be in the offing.

Speaking on CBS’ 60 Minutes on Oct. 15, Trump said he “might” do more tariffs on China but held out hope they might want to do a deal, too.

“I have a great chemistry also with President Xi of China. I don’t know that that’s necessarily going to continue. I told President Xi we cannot continue to have China take $500 billion a year out of the United States in the form of trade and others things.”

Trump added, “I want them to negotiate a fair deal with us. I want them to open their markets like our– our markets are open.”

As for the prospect of retaliation, Trump dared China to intervene, stating bluntly, “They can retaliate, but they can’t — they don’t have enough ammunition to retaliate. We do $100 billion [in trade] with them. They do $531 billion with us.”

In other words, China could rapidly run out of bullets to fight a trade war with the U.S.

On Oct. 9 the President said, “Now look, China wants to make a deal, and I say they’re not ready yet. I just say they’re not ready yet. And we’ve canceled a couple of meetings because I say they’re not ready to make a deal. We can’t have a one-way street. It’s got to be a two-way street. It’s been a one-way street for 25 years. We gotta make it a two-way street. We’ve got to benefit also.”

So, no deal yet. In the meantime, Congress will have a multitude of trade agreements with South Korea, Mexico, Canada, the UK, Europe and Japan to consider later this year and in 2019 that promise to lower trade barriers for U.S. exporters and get a better deal for American workers.

China will just have sit back and watch. If it wants a good deal, too, then it’s time to talk about currency, intellectual property, dumping and other trade barriers that it has put up. No more free lunches.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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30 October, 2018

WHY was President General Antonio López de Santa Anna such a crazy galoot?

I gather that most Americans still remember the Alamo.  They remember a desperate defence of around 300 Americans against the army of an evil Hispanic dictator, President General Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1836.

But President General Antonio López de Santa Anna was not evil.  He was very foolish but he was not evil. He was in his mind doing something that all national leaders were once -- before the current American Left came along -- duty-bound to do:  Chase away illegal immigrants from his country.  The Texians -- inhabitants of what was then Mexican Texas -- refused to assimilate to Mexico and were generally pesky and rebellious towards President General Antonio López de Santa Anna. They even wanted their own republic

And President General Antonio López de Santa Anna could in fact be seen as something of a hero:  He led his troops personally, something that had gone out of fashion long ago at the time.

So the big question is why the battle went so badly for all concerned.  Why did the Texians and other Gringos not surrender when faced with a whole army arrayed against them?  Why did they fight to the death? They took down two Mexicans for every one of them but what good did that do?  What was gained by the death of 300 gringos and 600 Mexicans?  It was simply a grievous loss all round.

President General Antonio López de Santa Anna was responsible for that.  He was so riled up by the Texians that he declared them pirates, meaning that they would be shown no mercy of any kind.  They could only be killed on the spot.  President General Antonio López de Santa Anna was so emphatic about that that he sent a letter to the President of the United States declaring it.  And the Texians were in no doubt that he would do as he said.  There was simply no point in surrendering.

Had President General Antonio López de Santa Anna been a wiser man he would simply have given the Texians safe conduct out of there and escorted them to the Mexican border.  He would have got rid of them and done so in a way that would have been generally understood and accepted.

And after he had inflicted such a savage and humiliating defeat on the Texians, President General Antonio López de Santa Anna no doubt expected the Texians to do what his fellow Hispanics would have done:  Go home and do nothing more than talk big talk.

But the Gringos did nothing of the sort.  They were instead outraged and rallied to arms, building up an army big enough to chase after President General Antonio López de Santa Anna and give him a taste of his own medicine, which they did.

So there is a question why here also.  Why were the Gringos so outraged?  There are probably several reasons but a major one was cultural. Mercy towards the defeated was in most cases simply good policy.  It presented the victor in a good light among the vanquished and it saved him the lives of many of his troops. And that was widely known and accepted. 

But there was also good history to support that policy: History going all the way back to Alexander the Great.  When Alexander defeated the Persians at Issus in 333BC. After the battle, the Hellenes captured Persian emperor  Darius' wife, his daughters and his mother, all of whom had accompanied Darius on his campaign. Alexander treated the captured women not only with mercy but with great respect.

Moving further forward into history we come to the crusades.  The Crusaders held on to the Holy Land for about 200 years but were finally routed by Egyptian armies under Saladin.  And Saladin was an unusual man.  He was a Kurd.  So he was not an Arab.  Kurds were and are Indo Europeans, people related to us.  So how did he get to lead Arab armies?  Simple:  He was very good at it.  He won a lot of battles.  And the thing that stood out about Saladin to the crusaders was his mercifulness, honorableness and chivalry.  He was not vindictive to the crusaders when he defeated them.  And the whole of Europe got to hear of that from returning crusaders. And the medieval practices of knightly and courtly behaviour were inspired by the example of Saladin.

And when the extremely pesky Napoleon was captured -- twice! -- he was just exiled, not executed.

So mercy to the defeated had among Europeans what we might call these days a very good press.  And that showed in the 19th century also.  When the Prussians defeated Napoleon III at Sedan in 1870, the defeat was so total that Napoleon III was himself captured.  So did the Prussians behead him?  Far from it.  There survive from the dawn of photography pictures of Napoleon having a polite conversation with the Prussian leader, Otto von Bismarck.



And Napoleon was eventually released on condition that he move to England and stay there -- which he did.  That episode is later than the battle of the Alamo but it illustrates a powerful current in European traditions.

So the Texians, Texans and others from further North were right to be horrified by the actions of President General Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Alamo. It went against all that they regarded as honorable and wise.

So President General Antonio López de Santa Anna earned himself a military defeat shortly after at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and lost control of Mexican Texas, which soon declared itself an independent Texian republic.  President General Antonio López de Santa Anna was captured at the Battle of San Jacinto but the Texians spared his life. They could well have done otherwise but were true to their own traditions. They sent him back to preside in Mexico city

But that was not the end of his humiliations.  He never accepted his loss of territory and kept up a hostile attitude to the Gringos.  And that came to the attention of President Polk of the United States.  From his Anglo-Saxon traditions he thought that some sort of compromise might be reached which would restore peaceful relations between the USA and Mexico.  So he sent an ambassador to Mexico, with a small military escort drawn from the United States army.  So what did President General Antonio López de Santa Anna do about that?  He attacked the American military detachment!  With incredible folly, he attacked the US. army.  He really did. The USA was already a formidable power by that time so that needs explanation too.

President Polk was incensed by this vicious behavior and asked Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico, which was promptly granted.  The US army marched South and cleaned up all  Mexican forces sent against them, capturing Mexico city itself .  Mexico was comprehensively defeated and was forced via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to cede a third of its territory before the Gringos would go home.  That's how The USA acquired California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and the rest of Texas.

So what on earth can have lain behind the disastrous deeds of President General Antonio López de Santa Anna?  In one word:  Machismo.  So what is machismo and what causes it?

It is a feature of Mediterranean countries and is particularly strong in Spain, and President General Antonio López de Santa Anna was for all intents and purposes a Spaniard. It arises from the fact that Mediterranean families are very mother-dominated.  Initially the grandmother is in charge and then the mother. And mamma really does rule the roost. Both sons and daughter are supposed to take orders from her. And the aim of it all is to create the family as a powerful single unit that will defend and protect all its members against outsiders.  It is a bit like how men in the army are taught to march together under a single command.

And the best known example of a Mediterranean mother is probably the Yiddisher Momma.  Israel is after all a Mediterranean country.  If you don't know about Yiddisher Mommas and the terrible things they say to keep their children in line Google should enlighten you but a cartoon below should tell you how ruthless these ladies can be in what they say to keep control.



But Mediterranean mothers do tend to emasculate their sons.  Being mother-dominated is not manly, regardless of what feminists might say. And Mediterranean men hate to think that they are under a female thumb.  But it is hard to show that they are not when they are.  So they do anything they can think of to demonstrate their masculinity.  And that can often lead to excess.  They can mistake aggression and inflexibility for manliness. And that is what President General Antonio López de Santa Anna did.  He thought "I'll show 'em" not only to the Gringos but also to his own people -- by being ruthless with the Texians at the Alamo.

So in the end it was a culture clash.  Machismo against an American culture of Northern European origin that included a tradition of mercy to the vanquished.  President General Antonio López de Santa Anna is a towering example of how foolish and destructive machismo can be -- JR.

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Trump jokes about his hair -- and the media promptly condemn him for that

Apparently they are the only ones allowed to say when you can joke about his hair.  The idea of a joke as tension relief is apparently beyond these brainboxes

The United States is reeling from a week of violence allegedly perpetrated by white-male terrorists. And the President seems more worried about his hair.

Past presidents would have immediately suspended politicking and given convincing condemnations of violence.

Mr Trump issued a condemnation, of sorts, yet he then criticised the synagogue for not having “some kind of protection”.

He then refused to cancel a planned political rally. Instead, he complained to the crowd that the “very unfortunate news conference”, where he commented on the synagogue killings, had got his hair wet.

“The wind was blowing and the rain and I was soaking wet, and that’s what I ended up with today,” he told the crowd, pointing to his hair. They cheered.

“And I said, maybe I should cancel this arrangement, because I have a bad hair day. And the bad news, somebody said actually it looks better than it usually does.”

SOURCE 

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They are NOT refugees. They are a deliberate invasion

Caravan migrants heading to the U.S. have refused Mexico’s offer to receive refugee status that would provide schooling, jobs, medical care and shelter.  Thousands of migrants turned down Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto’s program You Are In Your Home, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

The program gives refugee status to those who apply and provide migrants access to shelter, medical attention, schooling and temporary employment opportunities to Central American migrants in the Chiapas and Oaxaca states

“Our goal is not to remain in Mexico,” Oscar Sosa, 58, of Honduras told The AP. “Our goal is to make it to the (U.S).”

Those of working age would clean, repair and maintain infrastructure in the two southern Mexican states, according to the program. Migrants can also obtain Mexico’s version of a social security number called CURP (Clave Unica de Registro Publico). This will allow the migrants to have legal proof of identity, enter and leave shelters and open bank accounts.

The program came in response to the “unprecedented flow of people from Central American countries who have entered [into Mexico] the last few days,” according to the program’s press statement.

SOURCE 

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Trump mulls plan to bar entry of all migrants at US-Mexico border

President Trump is considering a sweeping executive order that would block migrants, including asylum seekers, from entering the U.S. at the southern border in a bid to stop the caravan traveling north through Mexico.

The White House, if it goes ahead with the measure, would issue new regulations restricting certain migrants from seeking asylum. The rules would effectively block most if not all the migrants who are taking part in the caravan, Politico first reported.

Fox News has learned the proposal originated out of the White House and is one of several being considered. No final decision has been made.

The order would be akin to Trump's previous aggressive immigration-blocking executive orders, such as the travel ban aimed at halting people from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

Any attempt to block the entry of Central American migrants is likely to prompt legal challenges, though Trump is likely emboldened following a Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer that affirmed the president’s right to bar the entry of migrants who “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Hundreds of U.S. troops are also set to make their way to the southern border to help Homeland Security and the National Guard as the caravan pushes north.

Democrats, while previously outspoken regarding Trump’s immigration policies, are staying largely silent on the issue, instead preferring to remain focused on tackling the GOP on issues like health care, saying it’s the winning issue this election cycle.

SOURCE 

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NBC hid exculpatory information that would have cleared Kavanaugh of gang rape accusation

NBC News is admitting that information that would have exonerated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of a gang rape accusation was kept from the public.  Instead, despite knowing that the charge against Kavanaugh was bogus, NBC ran the story anyway.

The information involves the sworn affidavit of a supposed witness to the gang rape given to the Judiciary Committee by attorney Michael Avenatti on behalf of the alleged "victim," Julie Swetnick.  Swetnick said Kavanaugh was present during her rape by several of his friends.

But the witness claims that Avenatti twisted her words.

On Thursday, nearly three weeks after Kavanaugh's confirmation, NBC News published an article headlined, "New questions raised about Avenatti claims regarding Kavanaugh," that detailed "inconsistencies" with Swetnick's claims.  In the article, NBC News admitted the unidentified woman repudiated the sworn statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee on her behalf to corroborate Swetnick's claims. ...

"Reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only 'skimmed' the declaration.  After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: 'It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch.  I didn't see anyone spike the punch...I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one,'" NBC News reporters Kate Snow and Anna Schecter wrote on Thursday.

"I would not ever allow anyone to be abusive in my presence.  Male or female," the woman told NBC when pressed about Avenatti and his client's claims, according to NBC's report.

NBC's latest story also noted that Avenatti attempted to "thwart the reporting process" and the woman changed her mind several times before eventually texting the network a final time.

"I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti.  I do not like that he twisted my words," she wrote.

Not surprisingly, Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley has referred both Avenatti and Swetnick for perjury prosecution.

CBSNews:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on Friday referred lawyer Michael Avenatti to the Justice Department for a second criminal investigation, alleging that Avenatti had submitted a fraudulent sworn statement to the committee on Oct. 2.  Grassley also referred Avenatti and his client, Julie Swetnick, to the Justice Department for a separate investigation Thursday, for three separate crimes: conspiracy, providing false statements to Congress and obstructing a Senate investigation. ...

Swetnick was never a credible witness.  The fact that she sued her former employer for being sexually harassed by two male coworkers after they had filed suit against her for harassment – later withdrawing her own suit – would have convinced any professional journalist that her accusation was baseless.

And they wonder why Trump attacks the media?

SOURCE 

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A moral tale

The wedding ceremony came to the point where the minister asked if anyone had anything to say concerning the union of the bride and groom.  

The moment of utter silence was broken when a beautiful young woman carrying a child stood up. She starts walking slowly towards the minister.

 The congregation was aghast - you could almost hear a pin drop.  The groom's jaw dropped as he stared in disbelief at the approaching young woman and child.  Chaos ensued.  The bride threw the bouquet into the air and burst out crying.  Then the groom's mother fainted.  The best men started giving each other looks and wondering how to save the situation.

 The minister asked the woman, "Can you tell us, why you came forward?   What do you have to say?"   There was absolute silence in the church.

 The woman replied, "We can't hear you in the back."

 And  that illustrates what happens when people are considered guilty until proven innocent.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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29 October, 2018

Synagogue gunman was a TRUMP HATER

So a pro-Trump man sent easily identifiable bombs to Democrat politicians that hurt nobody while an anti-Trump man killed 11 people in a terrorist attack.  Is Trump still the problem or is it the frenzy of hatred poured out at Trump that has generated such extreme reactions?  It's the Trump hatred that has killed in these two episodes. The Trump defender just sent a graphic warning

The suspected gunman who opened fire on a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday morning, killing at least 11 people and injuring several others, has been named as 46-year-old Robert Bowers, a Trump-hating antisemite who regularly complained on social media about the president and 'the infestation of Jews.'

Bowers allegedly opened fire at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh shortly before 10am. The synagogue was busier than usual with Sabbath services and because of a baby naming ceremony that had also been scheduled.

After opening fire on the congregation with three handguns and an AR-15, he was confronted by two Pittsburgh police officers who had been called to the scene as he tried to leave the building. Police say Bowers returned fire, injuring both of the cops, then retreated inside and ran to the third floor to hide.

He then engaged in a gun battle with a SWAT team and injured two of them before being shot multiple times himself and surrendering.

He is still alive, in a stable condition, and is in the hospital under the watch of police.

None of the victims have been named. Police revealed on Saturday afternoon that all of those killed were adults and that no children were harmed.

The six people injured include a 70-year-old man who is undergoing surgery for multiple gunshot wounds and a 61-year-old woman who is expected to survive.

Three of the four cops are likely to survive but a fourth, a 55-year-old law enforcement officer, is in a critical condition. 

The entire incident, from when he entered the synagogue to when he was removed, lasted 20 minutes.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Saturday that the federal government plans to file hate crimes and other charges against the alleged gunman - which carry the maximum penalty of death.

SOURCE 

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Crowd Full of Young Black People Erupts When Trump Walks In

There is a lot of love shown towards Trump by his followers.  That must help him to withstand the hatred poured out at him by the media and the Left generally

The cultural shift toward conservatism within the black community is very real … and it’s picking up steam faster than the left wants to admit.

For months, we’ve pointed to examples of how African-Americans, long considered almost guaranteed to vote Democrat, have been rejecting the left’s narratives and are increasingly climbing aboard the Trump Train.

Figures like conservative commentator Candace Owens have led the way, using sharp intelligence and world-class debate skills to dismantle liberal arguments. Cultural icons such as Kanye West, an unlikely ally, have also come on board — and the rapper’s recent meeting in the Oval Office could be seen as a pivotal moment.

Now, President Donald Trump himself is proving just how powerful this shift has become.

During a large gathering of black Americans at the White House organized by the Young Black Leadership Summit, the president made a much-anticipated appearance — and the largely black crowd gave him a rock star reception.

Video of the event shows a large White House room filled with American flags and young people sporting “Make America Great Again” hats. There’s a buzz of excitement, and then a voice pierces the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.” As Trump steps into the room, the young people in attendance break into cheers and even shrieks of excitement with their hands in the air.

Then a chant of “USA! USA!” spontaneously breaks out as the president steps to the podium.

There was a similar excited and friendly energy earlier in the day, when the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., mingled with the African-American crowd and joked around with attendees.

“Check out the energy & passion,” the younger Trump tweeted, along with a video of him with the crowd. “The largest ever young conservative black summit started tonight.”

The clip showed him excitedly joining the group of young black Americans, including Owens, while the entire room joyfully chanted “USA! USA!”

SOURCE 

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Trump: 'Call Me a Nationalist If You’d Like, But I Don’t Want Companies Leaving’

President Donald Trump referred to himself again as a “nationalist” during the White House State Leadership Day Conference on Tuesday, saying that he doesn’t want U.S. companies to move their businesses overseas.

“Call me a nationalist if you'd like, but I don't want companies leaving. I don't want them firing all their people, going to another country, making a product, sending it into our country -- tax-free, no charge, no tariff, no nothing. And in the meantime, we end up with empty plants, unemployment all over the place. We end up with nothing. So those deals are not happening anymore,” he said.

Trump used the same term on Monday night at a rally for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in Houston.

“A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can't have that. You know, they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a nationalist. And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist,” the president said. "Nationalist. Nothing -- use that word. Use that word."

During Tuesday’s event, Trump touted the success of the economy during his first two years in office.

“This is a truly exciting time for America. You've heard me say this before, but we just got the World Economic Forum the recognition that the United States has reclaimed its rightful place, after many years of being off the list, as the most competitive economy anywhere in the world,” he said.

“And if you look at consumer confidence, we're at the top of every list. We're setting records in terms of that, too. But we got back on the list in the number-one position and world's most competitive. Following the passage of our massive tax cuts and regulation cuts, the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level in more than 50 years,” the president said.

“We have created more than 4.2 million new jobs and lifted over 4 million Americans off of food stamps,” he added. “Median household income in 2017 was the highest level ever recorded.”

Trump applauded low unemployment numbers among Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans. He also heralded the creation of the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“We've reached a deal to replace NAFTA, and, as you know, I wasn't a big fan of NAFTA. I think it's one of the worst trade deals ever entered into. I rate it second; I won't tell you what the first is. There's another one that's actually worse, and I won't tell you it's the WTO. Okay? I refuse to tell you the name,” he said, as the audience laughed. “But that's a total disaster, also. I refuse to say what it is, though. Keep it quiet. Am I allowed to say ‘off the record?’ Let's see.”

“And we have a tremendous new deal with -- so, with the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The ‘USMCA,’ we call it. I didn't want the ‘NAFTA’ name on it, because I saw what NAFTA did many years ago to towns and factories and businesses and what it did to the car companies where -- not so much to companies -- to Michigan, and Ohio, and Pennsylvania and Kentucky and so many other places where these companies just left the United States. And we still have empty factories all over the place from that devastation of NAFTA,” the president said.

“Well, we have just the opposite: the USMCA. One of the strongest things about that, you're not going to have companies leaving anymore, because they have a disincentive to leave. I don't want them to leave,” he said.

SOURCE 

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How Trump’s New Rule Aims to Expand Health Coverage and Lower Costs

The Trump administration just announced a major regulatory change, effective Jan. 1, 2020, that could significantly expand access to affordable health coverage and increase the choice of health plans, particularly among workers and their families in small businesses.

The proposed rule, jointly developed by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department, would allow employer-sponsored health reimbursement accounts to fund the purchase of individual health insurance on a tax-free basis.

Today, workers and their families can use tax-free health reimbursement accounts to offset medical expenses, such as out-of-pocket medical costs. Under the new rule, workers and their families could use employer contributions to the accounts to buy health insurance on their own.

This opportunity is particularly valuable for workers employed by small business owners who cannot afford to offer standard group health insurance, but who could afford to help offset the premium costs of their employees’ individual coverage.

Treasury Department officials estimate that the new rule could encourage as many as 800,000 employers to sponsor health reimbursement accounts, or HRAs, to fund individual coverage for more than 10 million workers.

This relief is crucial, particularly for workers and their families in small businesses. With the enactment of Obamacare in 2010, the already fragile condition of health coverage among small businesses worsened. For little companies with fewer than 25 workers, the percentage of businesses offering health insurance fell from 44 percent in 2010 to just 30 percent in 2018.

The Trump rule has the potential not only to expand coverage, but also to increase employees’ choices in health plans.

Among small and midsize companies (with fewer than 200 employees), 81 percent offered only one health plan as of last year. No choice, just a “take it or leave it” option.

The Trump rule would open up new coverage opportunities for employers and employees.

The rule also has some ancillary benefits for workers already covered by traditional, employer-sponsored health insurance. It would permit employers to contribute up to $1,800 yearly (indexed to inflation) to reimburse workers for certain additional medical expenses, such as dental benefits, as well as premiums for short-term health insurance plans. Such less expensive plans are especially valuable for persons who are between jobs.

The impact of the Trump rule could prove genuinely transformational, if Congress would take the obvious next step: Adopt the reform policies outlined in the Health Care Choices Proposal, developed by a broad coalition of conservative health policy analysts.

That proposal would restore the bulk of regulatory authority over health insurance markets to the states, provide financial assistance for the poor and the sick, and enable persons in government programs to use public funding to enroll in a private health plan of their choice, if they wished to do so.

By enabling states to liberalize their health insurance markets, Congress could enable employees, using health reimbursement accounts as a vehicle for tax-free premium payments, to choose among a variety of new and innovative plans.

Today, enrollees in the broken individual and small group markets are trapped in artificially expensive Obamacare plans. They are punished with explosive deductibles, shrinking choices, and excessively narrow networks of doctors and hospitals.

Working together, Congress and the president could yet achieve the greater policy goal long supported by America’s most notable economists, including the late Milton Friedman: individual tax relief for the purchase of health insurance in a robust and competitive consumer-driven market.

That change could be, in the very best sense of the word, revolutionary.

SOURCE 

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The Left’s Latest Absurd Claim: Requiring Voter Registration Is ‘Voter Suppression’ Tool

As Election Day rapidly approaches, the radical Left is making yet another absurd claim: that requiring voter registration is a “voter suppression” tool.

Registration is essential to assure the integrity of elections. It allows election officials to verify the eligibility and identity of voters. It also enables them to make sure they will have enough ballots in polling places that use paper ballots — and that’s the majority of jurisdictions across the U.S.

The Washington Times recently reported that the Texas Democratic Party “asked noncitizens to register to vote, sending out applications to immigrants with the box [on] citizenship already checked ‘Yes.’” And Texas is not the only state where the accuracy and integrity of the voter-registration process is imperiled.

To improve the accuracy of the state’s records, Georgia legislators last year passed a law requiring voter-registration-application information to match a “driver’s license, state ID card or Social Security record.” Inconsistencies can cause a voter’s registration to be flagged as “pending” while the discrepancy is investigated.

Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor, accuses the Republican candidate and current secretary of state, Brian Kemp, of “voter suppression” simply for complying with this law.

But here’s the rub: A “pending” status does not bar anyone from voting. All they need do is “show a government photo ID that substantially matches the registration application.” Even if the voter’s information can’t be verified on the spot, the voter can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted once the registration information is verified by local election officials.

How can that be “voter suppression?”

So why the uproar about voter registration? Abrams claims that Kemp’s effort to enforce the law is an “intentional move” to suppress votes, especially of minority voters. Kemp has refuted those claims and says that application discrepancies that make registrations “pending” are due to “sloppy forms” submitted by the New Georgia Project, a group founded by Abrams herself in 2014 that “set out to sign up 800,000 new young and minority voters.”

The real issue here is a disregard for election integrity. And that includes those who are calling for an end to traditional voter registration in favor of automatic voter registration based on government databases such as driver’s licenses and property-tax records.

While government records are useful for verifying voter registrations, research shows they would be ineffective in creating accurate voter rolls. One of the most glaring problems with these databases is that they cannot verify a basic eligibility requirement for voting — citizenship. Noncitizens can receive driver’s licenses in all 50 states, and illegal aliens are receiving licenses in more than a dozen states, including California. Noncitizens also pay property taxes. Automatic voter registration would register all such ineligible individuals.

Moreover, individuals can be listed multiple times in different government databases that would be a source for automatic registration. For example, one person may pay taxes in multiple counties and multiple states, raising the possibility that he could vote multiple times, in multiple jurisdictions.

Also, voter registration requires a signature to verify petitions, ballot initiatives, and absentee ballots. Many government databases don’t contain signatures and thus would be useless for verifying signatures.

Such issues came to light recently in California, where the DMV admitted that, in just the last two months, it had mistakenly registered 24,500 ineligible individuals, including noncitizens. The problem arose because of the state’s new voter-registration process, which automatically registers people who renew or replace their driver’s licenses. The error came to light only after a Canadian citizen told the media he had been improperly registered by the state.

No evidence exists that eliminating voter registration will increase turnout. In fact, Census Bureau data from the 2008 election found that individuals who were not registered to vote did not cite registration problems as the reason for not voting. Instead, 46 percent were not interested in the election and 35 percent listed other reasons, such as “not being eligible to vote, thinking their vote would not make a difference, not meeting residency requirements, or difficulty with English.” The biggest reason for individuals’ not registering and not voting is a lack of interest in politics and candidates, which has nothing to do with registration.

The registration fight in Georgia is just part of a larger effort by the Left to undo any reforms that increase the security and integrity of the voter-registration and election process. Ensuring election integrity begins with creating and maintaining accurate voter rolls. Voter registration is an essential part of the process, and it should be a bipartisan effort.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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28 October, 2018

The Divisiveness in America today:  How much is Harry Reid to blame?

The extreme polarization of American politics in America today has been  blamed on many things.  Democrat politicians blame it on a "racist" President Trump and say they are just trying to protect fairness and justice for all, but particularly for illegal immigrants.  Such brainlessness need not detain us however.  Their constant shrieks of blame are just a poor mask for their complete absence of constructive and realistic policy.

But it's not so long ago that there was a degree of bipartisanship in America.  Ronald Reagan, for instance, got his remarkable reforms through a Democrat-dominated Congress.  And bipartisanship was valued. It was so valued that it was entrenched in the rules of the Senate.  The filibuster rule meant that a President's nominees to the courts had to muster 60 senate votes to pass as distinct from a simple majority of 50.  So judges had to be pretty centrist -- however that was conceived at the time.  Basically, both sides of politics had to agree to a significant extent in order to get anything done.

But impatience  is at the very heart of Leftism -- An impatience with the world as it is and an urgency to change it.  And in 2013 the Democrat leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, pushed through a vote to abolish the filibuster in order to get some of Obama's appeal court nominees through -- over the top of Republican opposition.  Obama nominated extremist judges who had no respect for the law and thus made bipartisanship impossible.

Harry acknowledge that he was loading the gun with ammunition that future Republican majorities might use to Democrat disadvantage, but Leftists live almost wholly in the present so Harry said that was OK by him.  He was warned multiple times of what the future effect of his actions might be but he still went ahead.  And his Senate caucus went ahead with him.  More background here

Reid did have one element of caution, however.  He broke the filibuster for lower court nominees only.  He knew how dangerous a Republican Supreme Court could be to his party so left the filibuster just alive enough to block nominations to SCOTUS.

But once he had put a hole in the dam, it was easy for the rest of of the dam to be breached.  And so it was.  When Mitch McConnell was pushing Trump's SCOTUS nominees through, the Democrats used the filibuster to block Judge Gorsuch.  So McConnell used his majority to abolish the last of the filibuster and got Gorsuch through.  And after Gorsuch there came the dreadfully abused Kavanaugh -- also pushed through in the absence of the filibuster despite a quite incredible cacophany of abuse from the Donks.

Without Harry Reid's attack on the filibuster rule, the Donks could easily have blocked both judges -- and conservatives have been cackling about that ever since.  They now love the now retired brainless Harry.  There have been many "Thank you"s to Harry after Gorsuch and Kavanaugh got through confirmation. I wouldn't be surprised if on some social occasions Republicans have drank toasts to Harry

But the point is that both new judges are very conservative and their very membership of the court has snatched away from the Donks their alternative legislature.  Up until recently, they could get lots through the courts that they could not get through Congress.  They got got through such huge agenda items as homosexual marriage, universal abortion, the barring of Christian observance in the schools and "affirmative action".  All those were legalized through SCOTUS only.  The people did not get a vote on any of it.  That is now gone and it went through their own Donk folly.  No wonder they are half crazed. A large part of their world has fallen apart.  And it is all because of Harry Reid.

Their access to sympathetic courts once kept them happy -- or as happy as they are capable of being.  So that allowed them to be magnanimous to Republicans on some occasions and to some degree.  They could afford to be a bit magnanimous in Congress because the main game was not there.  It was the courts that would enforce their agenda.

But the basic point is that the filibuster demanded and got a degree of bipartisanship if either party was to get anything done.  That is gone and Harry did it.  All restraints are now off.  He clearly had no inking of how great would be the damage he did both to his own party and to the American constitution, broadly conceived

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Trump outlines new plan to lower Medicare drug  prices, end 'rigged' system

Once again he objects to Americans being treated differently

President Donald Trump outlined a plan Thursday he said would allow Medicare to lower drug prices for its Part B coverage and end this "rigged system" that allows other countries to pay less than the U.S. for the same drugs.

Under the administration's proposal, the Department of Health and Human Services would permit Medicare to create a new payment model that would bring drug prices in line with what other nations pay.

HHS estimates $17 billion in program savings over five years, it said in a press release. The agency is trying to issue a formal rule early next year with the new payment model taking effect in 2020, HHS said.

"For decades, other countries have rigged the system so that American patients are charged much more ... for the exact same drug," Trump said in his speech at HHS headquarters in Washington.

"Americans pay more so that other countries can pay less," Trump said. "The government pays whatever price the drug companies ask ... not any more."

The SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals index, which tracks drug stocks, was more than 2 percent higher early afternoon Thursday.

In May, Trump said it was time to end the "global freeloading once and for all," referring to how some countries set price controls and therefore pay less for drugs than Americans, while U.S. companies invest in research and drug development.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar released a report earlier in the day that said the U.S. pays 1.8 times more, and sometimes four times as much, for prescriptions covered by Medicare Part B than other nations.

"The United States will finally be able to confront one of the most unfair practices ... that drives up the cost of medicine," Trump said. "For decades other countries have rigged the system so that American patients are charged much more, and in some cases much, much more for the exact same drug," he said.

Overall, the prices for Part B drugs in America exceed the prices paid in countries with similar economic conditions. These higher prices mean that Medicare pays nearly TWICE as much as it would for the same or similar drugs in other countries. We can and must do better.

Medicare reimburses the list price of the drug plus 6 percent, so capping price increases could help lower the program's costs. Total Medicare drug spending reached $162 billion in 2015, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"Because @POTUS wants to end global freeloading, we compared prices for the most costly physician-administered drugs that are covered and paid for by Medicare Part B," Azar tweeted. The "prices for Part B drugs in America exceed the prices paid in countries with similar economic conditions."

SOURCE 

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Lame duck opportunity for GOP to cut spending, pass MERIT Act, build wall and Atlantic pipeline

By Robert Romano

Come what may in the November midterms, whether Republicans hold Congress or not, afterward there are a number of spending measures that remain to be enacted by Congress for Fiscal Year 2019.

So far, all Congress has finished and had signed into law by President Donald Trump are Defense, Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Energy, Military Construction and Legislative Affairs.

That leaves Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Commerce, Justice, Science, Financial Services and General Government, Homeland Security, State, Foreign Operations and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said the unfinished business gives Republicans an opportunity in November and December to enact the Trump agenda, including the wall and the President’s call for non-defense discretionary spending to be cut by 5 percent.

“Regardless of the outcome of the midterms, the lame duck session will present the GOP with a rare opportunity to pass legislation that limits the size and scope of government and hopefully implement President Trump’s call to cut spending by 5 percent,” Manning said.

That would amount to about $28 billion in savings, right there, if implemented, which, after the $779 billion deficit for FY 2018, would be welcomed by taxpayers.

Other agenda items that are definitely coming up is full funding for the southern border wall, which would need to be included in the Homeland Security funding bill, a key Trump and Republican campaign promise, and with the migrant caravan still headed for the border, one with some urgency.

Policy riders could also be tied to funding that limit government, for example, the MERIT Act by U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), that would expedite the firing of federal employees. Similar reform was passed for the Department of Veterans Affairs after too many veterans died waiting for medical attention. Now, the same reforms need to be enacted across the board to all departments and agencies.

For the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will transport natural gas across West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, Congress could include a simple rider that allows the pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail, avoiding costly and time-consuming lawsuits.

Also of interest, the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Plans is expected to complete its work on a report to make recommendations for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and Congress to follow in addressing 114 out of the nation’s 1,400 multiemployer pension plans covering 1.3 million workers being underfunded by $36.4 billion.

This could be addressed now, or later. But chances are, Congress will address it.

In fact, these are all things likely to come up, and depending on how the midterms go, Republicans can address them in the lame duck, or take their chances in 2019 when, who knows, Nancy Pelosi might be Speaker. Midterms are usually not kind to the President’s party, and while the GOP holding onto the Senate seems likely, the fate of the House still hangs in the balance.

Depending on how things go in November, clearing the decks on the Trump and Republican agenda in Congress after the election might be the last full opportunity until 2021 the earliest. Something to keep in mind.

SOURCE 

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Obama Is 'Making Stuff Up' About The Trump Economic Boom

Growth: Economists expect the third-quarter GDP number — to be released this Friday — to be a strong one, in the range of 3.4%. Maybe that's why Barack Obama is running around this week trying to take credit for the economic boom. And he says President Trump has trouble with facts?

In a speech at a rally in Nevada, Obama claimed that the current economic boom has nothing to do with Trump's economic policies.

"By the time I left office," he said, "wages were rising, uninsurance rate was falling, poverty was falling. And that's what I handed off to the next guy. So when you hear all this talk about economic miracles right now, remember who started it."

Just the Facts?
Later in that same self-congratulatory speech, Obama said that "unlike some, I actually try to state facts. I believe in facts. I believe in a fact-based reality and a fact-based politics. I don't believe in just making stuff up."

So let's look at some of the facts about the economy that Obama handed off to Trump.

Despite what Obama now says, the economy was far from solid when he left office. In fact, it was in a slump.

GDP growth was decelerating throughout 2016. Household income was flat. The unemployment rate was flat. The stock market was flat.

And, "by 2016, wage growth began to taper off quickly," notes the American Action Forum's Ben Gitis.

Even The New York Times, which has been gamely trying to grant Obama credit for the current boom, now admits that 2016 was an "invisible recession."

"There was a sharp slowdown in business investment, caused by an interrelated weakening in emerging markets, a drop in the price of oil and other commodities, and a run-up in the value of the dollar," it explained.

Slow Growth Expected

By the end of 2016, pundits and economists were widely predicting a new era of slow economic growth. Why? Because for eight years under President Obama's leadership, the economy struggled to even top 2% annual growth. It never reached 3%. And every single year GDP growth missed the forecasts by Obama's own economists. So for Obama to claim that he handed Trump a thriving economy is 100% pure poppycock.

What's more, Obama and other liberal Democrats insisted in 2016 that if Trump were elected, he'd send the economy into a tailspin. Well, Trump was elected, and instead of faltering, the economy surged.

Since Trump took office, quarterly GDP growth has averaged 2.9%. Once the recession ended, the quarterly GDP growth averaged 2.2% under Obama.

Since Trump took office, the unemployment rate has been in a steady decline. Economic optimism — which languished for years — suddenly skyrocketed. The stock market took off. The U.S. reclaimed the No. 1 spot in global competitiveness. Family incomes reached all-time highs.

Engineering an Economic Boom

Not one of these trends was in place when Obama left office. So what exactly is Obama claiming? That his policies failed to kick in until after he left office? Talk about "making stuff up."

The fact is that as soon as Trump took office, he started reversing as many of Obama's economic policies as he possibly could.

Trump halted Obama's massively expensive new environmental regulations, and cut back old ones. He signed a massive tax reform bill that took the tax code in the opposite direction of Obama — toward lower rates and fewer loopholes. He signed a law partially dismantling Dodd-Frank, one of Obama's other big "achievements." He dialed back ObamaCare where he could.

In other words, Trump immediately embarked on a policy of tax cuts and deregulation that Obama has repeatedly insisted "never worked" to grow the economy. Yet here we are, with growth topping 4% last quarter, and likely to top 3% this quarter.

Here's a message for Obama: When it comes to today's economic boom, you didn't build that.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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26 October, 2018

This had to happen  -- or did it?

What was behind the bombs sent to prominent Democrats?

Not all Trump supporters are Christians.  Many are in the police and the military, for instance. And they have to be hard men.  So one of them may have come to feel that the contant verbal attacks on Trump and the many physical attack on other Republicans deserve a response.  "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7). "As ye sow, so shall ye reap (Galatians 6:7) "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).  The Left seem to think that they are above those ancient warnings. So the grave faces on CNN and elsewhere are rather amusing.  When did they put on such faces in response to the many attacks on conservatives?

BUT:  Maybe we are leaping to conclusions.  On my TONGUE-TIED blog, I have often put up reports of "racist" graffiti and so on that were initially attributed to conservatives but which eventually turned out to be done by Leftists as a provocation. Was this bombing done by Leftists as an "October surprise" -- intended to discredit conservatives in the run up to the mid-terms?  You would have to be dumb not to suspect that. 

And it looks like the Leftmedia suspect that.  I have not so far heard them attribute the bombings to Trump supporters. And they normally attribute EVERYTHING bad to Trump and his supporters.  So they clearly don't want to get egg on the faces over making a foolish accusation.  Do they know something that we don't?  Could be.

We might also note that nobody was hurt in the bombings, unlike Rand Paul and Rep. Scalise. Someone put it to me: "If conservatives had done it, they would have done a better job


President Donald Trump addressed on Wednesday suspicious packages sent to former President Barack Obama, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and other individuals as well as CNN, saying the country's leaders must "come together" to speak out against threats of political violence.

"I just want to tell you that in these times, we have to unify," Trump said at an unrelated opioid bill signing event at the White House. "We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that threats or acts of political violence have no place in the United States of America."

"It's a very bipartisan statement," he added. "This egregious conduct is abhorrent to everything we hold dear and sacred as Americans."

Earlier Wednesday, authorities have intercepted suspicious devices intended for Obama and Clinton, and the Florida office of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was evacuated Wednesday after a suspicious package was mailed there.

Also, CNN's New York bureau in the Time Warner Center was evacuated after a package with an explosive device, addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, was discovered, city and local law enforcement officials said.

In addition, sources told CNN that a suspicious package intended for California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters was intercepted at a congressional mail screening facility in Maryland and the San Diego Union-Tribune evacuated its building after "suspicious looking packages" were spotted outside.

The President noted he had just concluded a briefing with the FBI, Department of Justice, Homeland Security Department and Secret Service. "The full weight of our government is being deployed to conduct this investigation," Trump said. "We will spare no resources or expense in this effort."

The President spoke from TelePrompTer but added this line at the end -- not on screen in front of him: "We are extremely angry, upset, unhappy about what we witnessed this morning, and we will get to the bottom of it," Trump said.

SOURCE 

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The "bombs" were hoax devices, not meant to do harm

A former Navy explosives expert pointed to some characteristics of the explosive devices sent to CNN and other current and former Democratic officials, which indicated to him amateurish construction and perhaps an ulterior motive beyond causing bodily harm.

CNN posted an image of a pipe bomb sent to its New York City bureau, which prompted the evacuation of the entire building on Wednesday.

The package was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN’s office in the Time Warner Building in midtown Manhattan.

Thomas Sauer, who according to his LinkedIn profile is a Naval Academy graduate and served as a commander of a Naval explosive ordinance disposal unit, offered some observations on Twitter about the device.

First, he noted that wires were connected on both ends of the bomb, a style of construction he called “dumb.”

Sauer next pointed to the timer and saying that an experienced bomb maker would have placed it inside the pipe. “That thing is just silly looking,” he wrote.

Concerning the appearance of the device itself, he concluded, “Bottom Line: Whoever made that wanted it to be painfully obvious to anyone and everyone that it’s a ‘bomb.'”

Sauer then offered that “hoax devices” are “FAR more common than real ones. In which case, we should ask ourselves what the motives of the ‘bomber’ are and ‘who benefits?’ Go ahead. Think deeply and critically.”

SOURCE 

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A man with zero self-insight

THE blame game has begun between US President Donald Trump and one of his biggest critics, CNN, after the network’s New York bureau was targeted.

Mr Trump said in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon local time that he “will spare no resources” in trying to find the culprit.

He said “this egregious conduct is abhorrent”, adding that America would “have to unify” in these times.

CNN president Jeff Zucker lashed out at Mr Trump, criticising the seriousness of his attacks on media.

“There is a complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” he said.

“The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary, should understand their words matter. So far, they have shown no comprehension of that.”

More HERE 

Does the sugary one (Zucker is Yiddish for sugar) have any understanding about the seriousness of CNN's continued attacks on Trump and his supporters?  CNN should understand that their words matter. So far, they have shown no comprehension of that.”

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When Hillary got what she called for, she did a 180

She had to.  She knew she could be blamed for the bombs so had to cover herself

After suspected bombs were sent to her home, Hillary Clinton called for unity at a political rally the same day.

This, of course, is the massive hypocrite who just weeks ago dehumanized Republicans to the point that she wondered how anyone could be civil to them. Earlier in the month, Hillary told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.” Just weeks later, Hillary is now bemoaning a lack of civility.

Hillary’s new views on civility after the bomb scare

Hillary spoke earlier this morning at a campaign rally in Florida and began by addressing the bombs that were sent to her, and others. “It is a troubling time, isn’t it. And it’s a time of deep divisions, and we have to do everything we can to bring our country together.” So I guess the time to bring back civility is now, not after the midterms? Or is it only the right that has to be civil?

She then immediately made things political. “We have to elect candidates who … will set goals that will lift up every Floridian and American, who will look into the future,” Hillary continued.

If whoever is responsible for sending explosives did so only to Republicans, wouldn’t they simply have been abiding by Hillary’s advice to abandon civility? It’s at least nice of her to change her tune once she realized that she could be harmed by the very posture she advocates.

Responses to her comment were mixed, with most highlighting Hillary’s hypocrisy.

SOURCE 

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Watch: Audience Roars as Trump Announces Plan to Get Hillary Investigated: Nominate Her to SCOTUS

It was a popular chant for then-candidate Donald Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign season, and even Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters got in on the act after they felt he was “robbed” of the Democratic nomination by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In October 2016, Trump addressed the matter, in a way, by telling the Michigan crowd, “Hillary’s corruption is a threat to democracy. She’s likely to be under investigation for criminality for a very, very long time to come,” reported Dallas News.

And now, the “Lock her up!” theme is back. While in Texas this week, as The Daily Caller‘s Benny Johnson posted on Twitter, Trump made a statement regarding getting Hillary investigated.

With that one quip, Trump landed blows against Clinton, the establishment media, the left’s behavior during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email server scandal. And the crowd loved it.

But her email scandal is not the only thing establishment media largely ignored or dismissed. And it’s not the only thing resurfacing with a vengeance as of late, either.

Establishment media outrage over the alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is understandable. But many are questioning where their moral outrage was six years ago when Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi.

It is a scandal that began with lies and, to this day, has uninvestigated ties to Clinton that the establishment media continues to largely ignore or dismiss. Benghazi survivor Kris Paronto, however, has not let the matter rest, and since the Khashoggi news broke, has hit the hypocrisy hard.

For 3 weeks Saudi Arabia said Jamal Khashoggi left their consultant safe and sound. They said they had no idea where he was. They denied all wrongdoing to every leader in the world as late as yesterday. Now they say they accidentally killed him in a fistfight. Bullshit.

Leftist journalists & liberals screaming that the President isn’t doing enough to the Saudi’s because one of their own was killed.Where in the hell were you when @BarackObama left 30+ AMERICANS to die in Benghazi Libya including an Ambassador?!!You all are a disgrace .

And speaking of Paronto and Hillary scandals, he’s also hit the Russia collusion scandal with a tie-in to Clinton. Investigation into the accusation that Trump colluded with Russia keeps leading back to Clinton, among other Democrats.

“Now a lot of reporters, some at The Washington Post and some at The New York Times, are complaining that Hillary’s lawyer lied to them. Heaven forfend! Did somebody say collusion with Russians?”

While Trump riles liberals, the media and the establishment of both parties with his utter willingness to speak out in the face of political correctness, his supporters are thrilled by the off-the-cuff, wise-cracking, “genius” that entertains and enthralls so many.

Sick of politics as usual, many longed for a straight-shooter who would just get things done. Things, in particular, that benefit America.

And Trump seems to be doing that, in what — for supporters anyway — is a non-traditional, and thoroughly highly refreshing way.

SOURCE 

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Trump teases 'major tax cut for middle-income people' before midterms

President Trump said Saturday he plans to roll out a major tax cut to the middle class before November.

"We are looking at putting in a very major tax cut for middle-income people. And if we do that it'll be sometime just prior, I would say, to November,” Trump told reporters after his rally in Nevada Saturday. “We are studying very deeply right now round the clock a major tax cut for middle income people."

Trump has taken criticism from Democrats for his tax cuts, which they claim only help large corporations and the top 1 percent. But Trump said the tax cuts he is looking to implement soon would not be related to businesses whatsoever.

“Kevin Brady is working on it, Paul Ryan is working on it,” said Trump. “I would say sometime around the first of November, maybe a little before then.”

SOURCE 

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Florida and Texas Post Record Sept.-to-Sept. Job Gains; Ohio Has Largest Gain in 21 Years

Florida and Texas, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not only led the nation in the number of nonfarm jobs they added in the year running from September 2017 to September 2018 but also added the greatest number of jobs to their states in any September-to-September period on record.

Ohio and Pennsylvania—sometimes considered part of the nation’s “Rust Belt”—also saw significant job gains from September 2017 to September 2018, with Ohio showing the largest increase for its state in 21 years and Pennsylvania showing the largest increase in 18 years.

“Thirty-seven states had over-the-year increases in nonfarm payroll employment in September,” BLS said in its state employment report. “The largest job gains occurred in Florida (+407,300), Texas (+406,400), and California (+339,600). The largest percentage gain occurred in Florida (+4.8 percent), followed by Utah (+3.6 percent) and Texas (+3.3 percent).

The unemployment rate in Florida was 3.5 percent. In Texas, it was 3.8 percent. In California, it was 4.1 percent.

While California ranked third among all states for the number of job gained during the period from September 2017 to September 2018, its statewide jobs growth numbers during that period were actually smaller than they were in two of the previous three September-to-September periods. (From September 2014 to September 2015, California added 493,000 jobs; from 2015 to 2016, it added 393,800 jobs; and from 2016 to 2017, it added 307,500 jobs)

Florida’s jobs grew 4.8 percent during the latest September-to-September period. Texas’s jobs grew 3.3 percent. California’s jobs grew 2.0 percent.

In Texas, the number of jobs rose from 12,232,100 in September 2017 to 12,638,500 in September 2018—accounting for the record 406,400 increase.

SOURCE 

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Leftists are untouchable



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A puzzle



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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25 October, 2018

Deception Is Democrats' Weapon of Choice

The party of the BIG Lie is at it again, and midterm campaign examples abound.

Some call it spin. Some might refer to a political reality. Others may say it’s the use of propaganda. Regardless, this election is chock-full of devices that either reframe a candidate to hide his or her authentic approach to governance or, in many cases, outright lies are being told to confuse and misrepresent the facts.

The weapon of choice this (and every) election cycle for Democrats is deception.

Let’s look at just a few examples to understand that, while campaigning, some Democrats want to run from their actual record and appear to voters as “Republican-lite.” The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.

The Senate has been the perfect example of the vast schism between reality and political “reality.” Let’s look at a few facts and understand that Democrats not only ignore, avoid, and distort the truth; they don’t recognize truth in their world of the aggrieved and offended. That helps explain their ongoing efforts to engineer chaos and mob rule.

Let’s begin in Michigan, where Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the incumbent Democrat, is facing a tough GOP opponent in John James, a black businessman with distinguished service in the U.S. Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Once upon a time, Stabenow was a vocal supporter of tax cuts that “create jobs here rather than overseas.” Funny, she voted against the historic Tax Acts and Jobs Act that added 39,700 jobs in Michigan already this year, 5,500 more than in 2017. Now, the promise of the Democrats is to reverse the Republican tax cuts … simply because President Donald Trump signed them into law.

Run down to Tennessee’s open Senate seat in the Marsha Blackburn vs. Phil Bredesen slugfest and see if you can figure out who’s running as the Republican nominee. Publicly, Democrat and former governor Bredesen can’t run fast enough from the names of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Yet Bredesen landed $3.5 million in ads from Schumer’s political action committee and $1.6 million contributed directly to his campaign while enjoying a high-dollar fete at the New York home of gun-control extremist Bloomberg. The billionaire socialist has pledged $20 million to the Senate Majority PAC, fueling Democrat races in the nation’s upper legislative chamber. Add all this to the undercover video capturing Bredesen operatives freely admitting his deception regarding his support for Brett Kavanaugh, and the camouflage donned in the Volunteer State right now is not just worn by hunters.

A few more on the deception dance card in the Senate are Jon Tester in Montana and Claire McCaskill in Missouri, both of whom campaigned on the importance of securing the southern border, yet voted against funding all the recent measures to fund personnel, structure, and resources to actually stem the tide of illegal immigrants coming to America. Likewise, when Kyrsten Sinema was running for Congress in Arizona in 2012, she pledged legislation that “secures our border from the threats of criminal cartels and criminal syndicates In Mexico.” Now, as a Senate candidate, Sinema has no recollection of voting against immigration reforms. Let’s not forget Sinema’s list of outrageous statements, including getting caught telling stay-at-home moms they are leeches in the world of progressive feminism. She went all in with the pink-hat-gals.

Bundle up and head to North Dakota to see Heidi Heitkamp’s voting history that matches Schumer’s 80% of the time, despite promising she’d be that same kind of independent that Bredesen conjures up. Heitkamp has likely sealed her own doom with TV ads aimed to tie newly confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to domestic assault victims — partly because she failed to get approval to use the victims’ names in the ad. Exploitation for the cause of deception — we guess that’s the collateral damage Nancy Pelosi spoke of last week when calling her Resistance crowd to action.

There is so much more, but the theme is clear: You can’t trust Democrats to tell the truth during campaign season or to govern in a manner that upholds the respect of our laws, our nation’s border and sovereignty or, sadly, the financial security and privacy of average Americans.

While we may laugh in disgust at the dishonesty of politics, heed a serious warning. The type of behavior witnessed by Democrats in power — weaponizing agencies of government like the IRS, DOJ, EPA, etc. to control and punish political foes; using slander at every turn alleging sexism, racism, and all other -isms to marginalize; agitating the offended to the point of riot and violence; importing foreign individuals as part of a ploy to disrupt our government under the guise of asylum and safety; and employing a two-tiered system of justice to exempt criminal acts of the elite but not the average — is not just despicable, it’s dangerous. In decades past, these acts would be accurately defined and viewed as totalitarianism.

#WalkAway from the deception and dangers of the Democrats.

SOURCE 

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Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the African-American Vote in 2020?
    
The provocative Donald Trump certainly seems to be disliked by a majority of African-American professional athletes, cable news hosts, academics and the Black Congressional caucus. Yet there are subtle but increasing indications that his approval among other African-Americans may be reaching historic highs for a modern Republican president.

Some polls have indicated that Trump’s approval rating among black voters is close to 20 percent. That is far higher than the 8 percent of the African-American vote that Trump received on Election Day 2016.

A recent, admittedly controversial Rasmussen Reports poll showed African-American approval of Trump at 36 percent.

Even 20 percent African-American support for Trump would all but dismantle Democratic Party presidential hopes for 2020. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election with 88 percent of the black vote. That was about a six-point falloff from Barack Obama’s share of the black vote in 2012.

But far more importantly, an estimated 2 million of the African-American voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 simply did not show up at the polls in 2016 to vote for the off-putting Clinton.

Even a small drop in African-American turnout or anything less than the usual 85 percent to 90 percent supermajority for a Democratic presidential candidate on Election Day can prove fatal. Why?

Republican presidential candidates now routinely win 55 percent to 60 percent of the so-called white vote, and about 70 percent of voters are white. That lopsided margin may widen further, given that progressive Democrats are not making any effort to recapture turned-off white working-class voters.

With continually diminishing white support, Democrats must increasingly count on massive minority turnout and bloc voting — especially among African-American voters, who make up about 12 percent of electorate.

Roughly a third of Asians and Latinos vote Republican, and voter turnout among these groups generally isn’t as strong as it is among whites and African-Americans.

But why is the supposedly odious Trump having any success in undermining the traditional marriage between African-Americans and Democrats?

The most recent jobs report revealed that the unemployment rate for African-American teenagers fell to 19.3 percent, the lowest figure on record. That number stands in marked contrast to the 2010 rate of 48.9 percent under the Obama administration. Overall black unemployment is currently at 5.9 percent, which is close to a record low.

Under Trump, the economy is growing at nearly 4 percent per year. The robust growth coincides with Trump’s effort to curb illegal immigration and imported labor. The net result has been to empower minority job applicants in ways not seen in nearly half a century.

Trump’s implicit message is that every American worker is now crucial in maintaining the red-hot economy. In a job-short economy, laborers suddenly have a lot of leverage over their employers. And wages are rising.

Trump’s nationalist message adds to this sense of empowerment, especially when he campaigns on putting Americans first in his economic decision-making.

A former entertainer, Trump is courting African-American celebrities such as rapper Kayne West and football legend Jim Brown. Activist Candace Owens and her Turning Point USA organization are trying to convince black voters that being politically independent forces both parties to compete for the African-American vote.

Ironically, Trump is reaching out to the African-American community to a much greater degree than progressives are reaching out to the estranged white working class.

Trump has other issues that might fuel the effort to redirect black support. Abortion, for example, is supposedly a Democratic sacrament. But few progressives talk much about the high rate of black abortions. African-Americans make up between 12 percent and 13 percent of the American population but account for as many as 35 percent of all abortions.

Yet liberal family-planning advocates were not always shy about their occasionally eugenics-inspired agendas of the past. The spiritual founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was an unapologetic eugenicist who professed that the object of birth control was to discourage the reproduction of those she derided as “the unfit.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon, once couched her support for abortion in neo-eugenic terms. In a disturbing 2009 interview, she was quite blunt: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Trump should stress other issues that might appeal to African-Americans, such as the right of access to charter schools, and how boutique environmentalism and over-regulation drive up the cost of affordable housing, fuel and electricity.

Trump might also make it clear that his message is geared to all Americans, including African-Americans. As a group, they are already doing better economically today than during the Obama administration — and everyone gains political clout when politicians must work for, rather than feel entitled to, their votes.

SOURCE

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ASTROTURF

Is this the October surprise from the Donks?


A new Republican women's group who is "fed up with Trump" and pouring cash into toss-up congressional districts is bankrolled solely by a male billionaire venture capitalist who is a major donor to Democratic campaigns and causes, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Republican Women for Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based "grassroots" nonprofit, was founded by Jennifer Pierotti Lim and Meghan Milloy and is comprised of "right-leaning" women who are opposed to President Donald Trump. The group has garnered glowing national media profiles that include a ten-minute segment on CBS News and articles in publications such as Glamour, Slate, and others.

The group is so far active in competitive congressional districts in New Jersey, Kentucky, and Michigan.

"We think the best thing that we can do for the party and for the country right now is to make sure there are good women—Democrat or Republican—that are elected to office and who can serve as a check on this administration and on the president," Milloy told the Detroit Metro Times. "[This effort] really was inspired by us talking to Republican women in these districts where they said there was just no way that they could vote for the Republican."

The group established a political action committee, the Republican Women for Progress PAC, on Sept. 13 to support their work for the midterms and has since spent $231,000 on independent expenditures for voter recruitment and advertisement productions in the toss-up districts in three states.

The PAC disbursed $76,000 on ads and recruitment in support of Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey's 11th congressional district, $78,000 backing Amy McGrath in Kentucky's 6th congressional district, and $77,000 on Elissa Slotkin in Michigan's 8th congressional district.

The PAC's October quarterly filing—the first from the group—also shows that the group of Republican women is bankrolled by just one donor: Reid Hoffman, a venture capitalist and co-founder of LinkedIn, who is a major donor to Democrats. Hoffman cut a $400,000 to the PAC on Sept. 27, its filings show.

Hoffman has pushed millions into the coffers of Democratic committees and campaigns this cycle.

More HERE 

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The Trump Manufacturing Jobs Boom: 10 Times Obama's Over 21 Months

The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, six months into former President Obama’s first term. The economy continued to shed jobs until the following March. Manufacturing was particularly hard hit, with almost 2.3 million manufacturing jobs—some 1 in 6—lost between January 2008 and March 2010.

As is the case during recoveries, jobs bounced back, with seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment expanding almost 12% from March 2010 until January 2017, when President Obama handed over the presidency to Donald Trump.

But during the same period, manufacturing employment grew only 7.7% with manufacturing payrolls virtually flat in the last 21 months of the Obama administration.

We were told it was the new normal.

At a town hall in June 2016, President Obama famously said that some manufacturing jobs “are just not going to come back.” He went on to mock then-candidate Trump by saying he’d need a “magic wand” to make good on this manufacturing job promises.

Months later, as the shock of a President-elect Donald Trump was still being absorbed, New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman tweeted on November 25, 2016, “Nothing policy can do will bring back those lost jobs. The service sector is the future of work; but nobody wants to hear it.”

Well, a funny thing happened—Trump’s policies, and just as importantly, the expectation of Trump’s policies, ignited a manufacturing resurgence.

In the first 21 months of the Trump presidency, nonfarm employment grew by a seasonally adjusted 2.6%. In the same period, manufacturing employment grew by 3.1%, reversing the trend under Obama when overall employment grew faster than employment in the manufacturing sector.

Comparing the last 21 months of the Obama administration with the first 21 months of Trump’s, shows that under Trump’s watch, more than 10 times the number of manufacturing jobs were added.

Three things likely sparked this manufacturing jobs spike.

First, eight years of the Obama Administration’s piling on regulation upon regulation, from labor rules, to the Clean Power Plan, to the implementation of ObamaCare, placed industry into a defensive crouch. Business leaders were fearful of investing capital, not knowing how the federal rules might capriciously change, thus wiping out their expected return on investment.

That defensiveness ended in November 2016 when the expectations of additional regulatory burdens under a prospective President Clinton vanished. Not coincidentally, manufacturing employment started its sustained upswing the very month of Krugman’s tweet.

Second, the Trump Administration’s deregulatory practice exceeded expectations, with red tape being cut at a faster clip than achieved under President Ronald Reagan 36 years earlier.

Third, with the Republican Congress, President Trump delivered on a major overhaul of the tax code, including a significant cut to business taxes as well as a change to the treatment of overseas profits that incentivized the repatriation of some $300 billion in the first quarter of 2018 out of what the Federal Reserve estimates is $1 trillion in multinational profits held abroad.

Whether this manufacturing jobs boom will continue is now largely dependent on the Trump Administration’s high-stakes trade stand-off with the People’s Republic of China.

Some economists warn that Trump’s tariffs put our healthy economic expansion (stimulated by tax cuts and deregulation) at risk. The administration’s defenders, on the other hand, see tariffs not as an end to themselves, as they were with the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, but as part of a wider effort to renegotiate the terms of trade with China. Included in the effort are the difficult issues of widespread and systematic Chinese intellectual property theft and opaque non-tariff barriers.

Past performance is no guarantee—but so far, President Trump’s pro-growth policies have confounded his critics’ predictions with the prime beneficiaries being hard-working Americans.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

**************************




24 October, 2018

Donald Trump: 'I'm a Nationalist'

His initial hesitancy in using that term is understandable.  In one sense it can mean a desire to make your country rule other countries -- but it can also mean nothing more than an appreciation of your own country's special characteristics and a desire to promote and restore them.  Trump is clearly in the latter camp. 

The Left want to destroy everything that is unique and good about America.  As Obama said to immense cheers from his followers ten years ago, they want to "fundamentally transform" America.  The present hysterical hostility to Trump is hostility to what he stands for:  America and ordinary Americans.  Under Obama they had made a start on destroying much that was American, only to have that snatched away from them by Trump


Washington: US President Donald Trump has declared he's a "nationalist" at a campaign rally on as he appealed to Texas Republicans to re-elect Senator Ted Cruz and help the party keep control of Congress.

Trump ran for president as a nationalist, declaring he would place "America first" in his policies. But he has previously declined to label himself, even telling the Wall Street Journal in an April 2017 interview, "hey, I'm a nationalist and a globalist. I'm both."

At the time, some members of his administration were considered globalists by their critics, including former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.

Trump's declaration on Monday, US time, came as he criticised Democrats, associating them with "corrupt, power-hungry globalists".

"You know what a globalist is, right?" Trump asked his audience. "A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can't have that.

"You know, they have a word - it sort of became old-fashioned - it's called nationalist. And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word.

"You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK - I'm a nationalist,' the President said. 'Use that word."

SOURCE 

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Military Poll a Morale Victory for Trump
    
Under Barack Obama, the biggest threat to our military might have been the policies of the man in charge of it. From the toppling of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the rollout of open transgenderism, most service members couldn’t wait to get back to the business of warfighting. In 2016, they got their wish. After eight long years, the new commander-in-chief went to work, rescuing our troops from the radical grip of the Obama years. “I want a very, very strong military,” Donald Trump said. And he is proving it.

It wasn’t easy restoring a sense of pride to a military devastated by two terms of social engineering. But this president didn’t wilt under the pressure. He walked right into the fire and did what was right — whether the issue was the budget, sexuality, faith, gender, or draft-related. Now, almost two years into upending the policies of Obama, Trump’s troops are showing their gratitude. About 44 percent of active-duty troops have a favorable view of the commander-in chief — nine points higher than Obama’s top mark.

Of course, the headlines will be misleading. Even the reporters at the Military Times, who conducted the poll, say the president’s support is “fading.” But barely. Unlike Barack Obama, who watched his approval rating fall through basement — barely cracking 15 percent when he left office — Donald Trump is only 2.8 points off his 46.1 percent mark from inauguration day. That’s almost within the statistical margin of error. Obama’s support, on the other hand, almost completely evaporated, dropping 25 points between 2009 and 2015.

When it comes to Trump’s actual policies, the numbers are night and day. “Troops surveyed continue to give high marks to the president for his handling of military issues specifically,” the survey points out. “More than 60 percent said they believe the military is in better shape now than it was under President Barack Obama, and nearly the same number have a favorable view of his handling of the military.” Only 13 percent think Obama’s military was in better shape than Trump’s. That shouldn’t be surprising. Instead of dismantling the military like the last administration, this president is focused on rebuilding it. And when he does, it’s with an eye on their mission — not his.

“Trump has done some things to win the hearts of the military, whether it has been the budget or just avoiding a foreign policy catastrophe,” said political science professor Peter Feaver. “And he has talked about the importance of the military, making it a focus of his campaign and presidency.” Some of the men and women interviewed agreed. “[Trump’s] definitely improving the readiness of the military and giving us the resources we need to get the mission done, not hamstringing us by cutting our budget,” said Staff Sgt. Kyle Overholser, an airman stationed in Arizona.

And while officers trail in their enthusiasm of Trump, even their favorability ratings have jumped 10 points — from 31 percent a year ago to 41 percent now. In the enlisted ranks, there’s always been a more positive opinion of the president than negative. Gender seems to be the only real divide. Female troops (who made up just 11 percent of the respondents) are much less supportive of this White House than their male counterparts.

Thanks to President Trump, the military is finally fighting something other than the culture wars. And honestly, that’s the difference between his administration and Obama’s. This president uses our troops to advance America’s interests — not his own. And our service members aren’t the only appreciative ones!

SOURCE 

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Voices of Reason — and Unreason

Susan Collins put on a clinic in thoroughness and justice
    
What did the Kavanaugh controversy tell us about our historical moment? It underscored what we already know, that America is politically and culturally divided and that activists and the two parties don’t just disagree with but dislike and distrust each other. We know also the Supreme Court has come to be seen not only as a constitutional (and inevitably political) body but as a cultural body. It follows cultural currents, moods, assumptions. It has frequently brushed past the concept of democratic modesty to make decisions that would most peacefully be left to the people, at the ballot box, after national debate. So citizens will experience the court as having great power over their lives, and nominations to the court will inevitably draw passion. And this was a fifth conservative seat on a nine-person court.

But the Kavanaugh hearings had some new elements. There were no boundaries on inquiry, no bowing to the idea of a private self. Accusations were made about the wording of captions under yearbook photos. The Senate showed a decline in public standards of decorum. A significant number of senators no longer even pretend to have class or imitate fairness. The screaming from the first seconds of the first hearings, the coordinated interruptions, the insistent rudeness and accusatory tones — none of it looked like the workings of the ordered democracy that has been the envy of the world.

Two Republican senators this week wrote to me with a sound of mourning. One found it “amazing” and “terrifying” that “seemingly, and without very much thought, nearly half the United States Senate has abandoned the presumption of innocence in this country, all to achieve a political goal.” The other cited “a truly disturbing result: One of the great political parties abandoning the Constitutionally-based traditions of due process and presumption of innocence.”

At the very least, Senate Democrats overplayed their hand.

My bias in cases of sexual abuse and assault, and it is a bias, is in favor of the woman. I give her words greater weight because I have not in my personal experience seen women lie about such allegations, and I know the reasons they have, in the past, kept silent. If you know your biases and are serious, you will try to be fair — not to overcorrect but to maintain standards. On Sept. 16, the day the charges made by Christine Blasey Ford appeared in the Washington Post, I was certain that more witnesses and information would come forward. We would see where justice lay. The great virtue of the #MeToo movement is that the whole phenomenon was broken open by numbers and patterns — numbers of victims, patterns of behavior, and the deep reporting that uncovered both. In this case great reporters tried to nail down Ms. Ford’s story. But they did not succeed. The New Yorker story that followed was dramatic but unpersuasive, a hand grenade whose pin could not be pulled. The final allegation, about rape-train parties and spiked punch, was not in the least credible.

It was Ms. Ford’s story that was compelling, but in need of support or corroboration. It did not come.

It was a woman who redeemed the situation, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. In her remarks announcing her vote, she showed a wholly unusual respect for the American people, and for the Senate itself, by actually explaining her thinking. Under intense pressure, her remarks were not about her emotions. She weighed the evidence, in contrast, say, to Sen. Cory Booker, who attempted to derail the hearings from the start and along the way compared himself to Spartacus. Though Spartacus was a hero, not a malignant buffoon.

Ms. Collins noted that she had voted in favor of justices nominated by George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She considers qualifications, not party. She reviewed Brett Kavanaugh’s 12-year judicial record, including more than 300 opinions, speeches and law-review articles; she met with Judge Kavanaugh for more than two hours, and spoke with him again for an hour by phone with more questions.

She judged him centrist in his views and well within the mainstream of judicial thought. He believes, he told her, the idea of precedent is not only a practice or tradition but a tenet rooted in the Constitution.

As to Ms. Ford’s charges, since the confirmation process is not a trial, the rules are more elastic. “But certain fundamentally legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness do bear on my thinking, and I cannot abandon them.”

“We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.” She called the gang-rape charge an “outlandish allegation” with no credible evidence.

At this point it was understood the Democrats had gone too far.

It is believable, said Ms. Collins, that Ms. Ford is a survivor of sexual assault and that the trauma “has upended her life.” But the four witnesses she named could not corroborate her account. None had any recollection of the party; her lifelong friend said under penalty of felony that she neither remembers such an event nor even knows Brett Kavanaugh.

Ms. Collins said she has been “alarmed and disturbed” by those who suggest that unless Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination was rejected, the Senate would somehow be condoning sexual assault: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The atmosphere surrounding the nomination has been “politically charged” and reached “fever pitch” even before the Ford and other charges. It has been challenging to separate fact from fiction. But a decision must be made. Judge Kavanaugh’s record has been called one of “an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband, and father.” Her hope is he “will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions and so that public confidence in our judiciary and our highest court is restored.”

And so, she said, she would vote to confirm.

It was a master class in what a friend called “old-style thoroughness combined with a feeling for justice.”

A word on the destructive theatrics we now see gripping parts of the Democratic Party. The howling and screeching that interrupted the hearings and the voting, the people who clawed on the door of the court, the ones who chased senators through the halls and screamed at them in elevators, who surrounded and harassed one at dinner with his wife, who disrupted and brought an air of chaos, who attempted to thwart democratic processes so that the people could not listen and make their judgments:

Do you know how that sounded to normal people, Republican and Democratic and unaffiliated? It sounded demonic. It didn’t sound like “the resistance” or #MeToo. It sounded like the shrieking in the background of an old audiotape of an exorcism.

Democratic leaders should stand up to the screamers. They haven’t, because they’re afraid of them. But things like this spread and deepen. Stand up to your base. It’s leading you nowhere good. And you know it.

SOURCE 

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Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016

Individual income taxes are the federal government’s single biggest revenue source. In fiscal year 2018, which ended Sept. 30, the individual income tax is expected to bring in roughly $1.7 trillion, or about half of all federal revenues, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Bloomberg looked into the 2016 individual returns data in detail for some additional insights:

The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent).

The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes.

Top 3% of U.S. Taxpayers Paid Majority of Income Taxes in 2016
In other words, the bottom 50 percent paid 3 percent. Which small percentile of tax payers also paid 3 percent or more? You might have guessed it. It is the top 0.001%, or about 1,400 taxpayers. That group alone paid 3.25 percent of all income taxes.

The individual income tax system is designed to be progressive – those with higher incomes pay at higher rates.

SOURCE 

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Global Competitiveness Report: U.S. is World’s Most Competitive Economy, Closest to ‘Ideal State’

The United States has the most competitive economy in the world, according to the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum.

“The United States is the closest economy to the frontier, the ideal state, where a country would obtain the perfect score on every component of the index,” the report reads.

The United States obtained a competitiveness score of 85.6% on the scale of zero to 100, which places it in the top spot among 140 countries, states the report.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has not reached the No. 1 spot “since 2008,” when “the financial crisis stalled output and triggered a global economic slowdown.”

Singapore occupies the No. 2 spot (83.5%), followed by Germany in third place (82.8%).

The report “assesses the competitiveness landscape of 140 economies” and “provides insight into the drivers of economic growth in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

The new Global Competitive Index (GCI) 4.0, which is featured in the document, includes 98 indicators that are grouped into “12 pillars of competitiveness.” The pillars are “Institutions, Infrastructure, ICT adoption; Macroeconomic stability; Health; Skills; Product market; Labour market; Financial system; Market size; Business dynamism; and Innovation capability.”

Among these pillars, the U.S. ranks the highest in three, including Labour market, Financial system and Business dynamism. It ranks second in Market size and Innovation capability, and third in Skills and Product market.

Despite the U.S.’s glowing competitiveness score, however, the report pointed out that there is still “room for improvement.”

“With a competitiveness score of 85.6, it is 14 points away from the frontier mark of 100, implying that even the top-ranked economy among the 140 has room for improvement.”

Some areas of improvement include Health, in which the U.S. scored 47th, as well as Homicide rate (92), Complexity of tariffs (108) and Imports % of GDP (136).

The median competitiveness score of all 140 countries is only 60.0%, according to the report. Chad, with 35.5%, holds the lowest spot.

According to the report, the GCI 4.0 weighs pillars “equally rather than according to a country’s current stage of development. In essence, the index offers each economy a level playing field to determine its path to growth.”

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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23 October, 2018

JAMAL KHASHOGGI: The terrorist truth behind the media lies

In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.

“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.”

The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting.

The media calls Khashoggi a journalist, but his writings from 80s Afghanistan read as Jihadist propaganda with titles like, "Arab Mujahadeen in Afghanistan II: Exemplifies the Unity of Islamic Ummah".

And when Osama bin Laden set up Al Qaeda, he called Khashoggi with the details.

After Afghanistan, Jamal Khashoggi went to work as a media adviser for former Saudi intel boss, Prince Turki bin Faisal, alleged to have links to Al Qaeda. Those allegations came from, among others,  Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth hijacker.

When the other 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks of September 11, Khashoggi wrote that the Saudis would not “give in” to American “demands” for “unconditional condemnation” and “total cooperation”.

"Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy," he declared.

"A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century."

That’s the real Khashoggi, a cynical and manipulative apologist for Islamic terrorism, not the mythical martyred dissident whose disappearance the media has spent the worst part of a week raving about.

Jamal Khashoggi was not a moderate. Some describe him as the leader of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist network admires Hitler and seeks to impose Islamic law around the world. Nor was he a supporter of freedom of the press. In one of his Al Jazeera appearances, he complained that the Saudi government was allowing some journalists to report positively on Israel.

His final project, DAWN or Democracy for the Arab World Now was meant to aid Islamists. According to Azzam Al-Tamimi, an old Muslim Brotherhood ally aiding Jamal, "The Muslim Brothers and Islamists were the biggest victims of the foiled Arab spring." Al-Tamimi has endorsed suicide bombings.

But unlike Osama bin Laden, Khashoggi did not use the Muslim Brotherhood as a gateway drug to the pure and uncut violence of Al Qaeda or ISIS. He was still betting on a political takeover. As he recently put it, “Democracy and political Islam go together.”

Khashoggi went on making the case for the Islamic state of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went on making that case even as the Saudis decided that the Brotherhood had become too dangerous.

Like his old friend, Jamal Khashoggi went into exile in a friendly Islamist country. Osama bin Laden found refuge in Pakistan and Khashoggi ended up in Turkey. The Khashoggi family had originated from Turkey. And Turkey was swiftly becoming the leading Sunni Islamist power in the region. Living in Turkey put Khashoggi at the intersection of the Turkish-Qatari backers of the Brotherhood and the Western media.

His disappearance has touched off fury and anger from the Islamist regime that harbored him. And it has also set off an unprecedented firestorm of rage and grief by the American media which adored him.

Media spin describes Khashoggi as a dissident. And he certainly was that. But so was Osama bin Laden.

What Khashoggi wasn’t, was a moderate. No more so than the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t a proponent of human rights, but of Islamic rule. He could be found on Al Jazeera, Qatar’s Jihadist propaganda network, bemoaning Saudi opposition to the Brotherhood and its friendliness to Israel.

"Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood and stop treating them as the enemy or a threat to Saudi Arabia," he complained, and urged the Saudis to fight Israel instead.

 Jamal Khashoggi’s career of spouting Muslim Brotherhood propaganda for his new Turkish and Qatari masters came to an end in a curious way. Before Khashoggi allegedly entered the Saudi embassy, from which Turkey claims that he disappeared, he told his Turkish fiancé to call Yasin Aktay if he didn’t return.

Yasin Aktay is the Turkish equivalent of Obama’s Ben Rhodes, and served as the AKP Islamist ruling party’s spokesman. Why call one of the regime’s top propagandists instead of the police?

Before the summer coup of 2016, Turkey was said to have 50,000 political prisoners. Many of them were members of the country’s oppressed Kurdish minority which is deprived of its most basic civil rights. These include even the use of their own language. Doing so can carry a prison sentence.

In that terrible summer, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Turkey’s Islamic tyrant, finished securing his absolute hold on power with the coup as his Reichstag fire. The alleged coup became a blank check for the mass arrest and torture of countless thousands of political prisoners. Amnesty International estimated that 50,000 had been detained. The UN listed a figure as high as 180,000. They included 300 journalists.

Lawyers described clients being brought to them covered in blood.

Erdogan went after professors, judges, law enforcement, the military and the last remnants of a free press. A Human Rights Watch report documented electric shocks, beatings with truncheons and rubber hoses, and rape by Erdogan’s Islamic thugs. Heads were banged against walls. Men were forced to kneel on burning hot asphalt. Medical reports showed skull fractures, damage to testicles and dehydration.

The media didn’t show any of the hysterical outrage at these crimes that it has over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The media cares more about Khashoggi, a former media mouthpiece of the Saudi regime before it turned on his Muslim Brotherhood brothers, than about 300 Turkish reporters.

It’s not hypocrisy, it’s consistency.

Erdogan and Khashoggi are both militant Islamic activists. And their opponents, the victims of Erdogan’s Reichstag fire and the new Saudi king, had fallen afoul of them for being insufficiently militantly Islamist.

The media will always take the side of Islamists over non-Islamists. That’s why it bleeds for Khashoggi.

There was a reason why Jamal Khashoggi felt so comfortable in Turkey, while actual journalists in the country were terrified of being locked up, tortured and disappeared. If that was the fate that befell Khashoggi, it was a commonplace one in Turkey. And it may have been carried out by his own Turkish allies who decided that their Saudi subversive had more value as a false flag martyr than a house guest.

The media’s disproportionate outrage over Khashoggi has nothing to do with human rights. If it did, the media would have been just as outraged at the arrests and torture of tens of thousands in Turkey.

It’s not. And it won’t be.

And the politicians shrilly urging that we punish the Saudis never thought about curtailing arms sales to Turkey. Many of the same politicians were unhappy when President Trump used economic pressure on Erdogan in an effort to free American hostages, like Pastor Andrew Brunson, being held by Turkey.

This is about Islam.

The struggle between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand, and Turkey, Qatar and Iran on the other, is the next stage of the Arab Spring. And, from Yemen to Turkey, the media has made no secret of being on the Islamist side. Its outrage over Khashoggi, like its claims of a human rights crisis over the Saudi bombings in Yemen, are not journalism, they’re the political spin of the Islamist axis.

The media has reported every claim of victimhood by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s Al Jazeera propaganda arm, while giving as little attention as possible to the victims of Muslim Brotherhood church bombings. Its coverage of Israel has been little more than terrorist propaganda since Osama was in diapers. Its coverage of the Khashoggi case is every bit as dishonest as its slanted attacks on the Saudi embargo of Qatar, as its propaganda about the wars in Yemen and Libya, and just as devoid of context.

The Khashoggi case demands context.

Before the media and the politicians who listen to it drag the United States into a conflict with Saudi Arabia over a Muslim Brotherhood activist based on the word of an enemy country still holding Americans hostage, we deserve the context.

And we deserve the truth.

The media wants the Saudis to answer questions about Jamal Khashoggi. But maybe the media should be forced to answer why the Washington Post was working with a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist?

The real mystery isn’t Khashoggi’s disappearance. It’s why Republicans aren’t asking those questions.

The media’s relationship with Khashoggi is far more damning than anything the Saudis might have done to him. And the media should be held accountable for its relationship with Osama bin Laden’s old friend.

SOURCE 

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Ben Carson Takes on High Housing Costs

When Ben Carson was appointed the nation’s 17th secretary of housing and urban development, there were ample reasons to doubt his qualifications, and the first few months of his time in office were largely dominated by missteps and misstatements, including a mini-scandal over a $31,000 dining table, which seemed to validate his critics.

But since then, Carson has quietly pushed a number of policy initiatives that could cement his legacy as one of Trump’s most consequential cabinet members. If successful, Carson’s efforts could be some of the biggest boosts for the poor and disadvantaged to come out of Washington in quite some time.

Carson has not hesitated to challenge many of his department’s sacred cows. He’s called for the elimination of Community Development Block Grants, long known as a source of both corruption and political patronage, and he’s been willing to slash some of the bureaucratic red tape that has long afflicted HUD. He’s also shown a willingness to adjust rents in public housing in an effort to control the department’s ballooning expenditures.

But Carson’s most important initiative — and the one that holds the most promise — is his full-frontal assault on zoning and land-use ordinances that deprive the poor of affordable housing.

Born largely out of racism (Baltimore’s zoning laws, for instance, explicitly prohibited anyone from buying a house or renting on a block where more than half the residents were of a different race), zoning has evolved into a tool for wealthy property owners to protect their property values at the expense of the poor and minorities. It is a simple question of supply and demand: By restricting the supply of new housing, zoning and land-use regulations drive up the cost of housing and rents beyond the reach of many poor Americans. Studies show that such regulations add as much as 20 percent to the cost of a home in Baltimore, Boston, and Washington, 30 percent in Los Angeles and Oakland, and an astounding 50 percent or more in cities such as San Francisco, New York, and San Jose.

Is it any wonder that the poor have trouble finding affordable housing?

The traditional response to this regulation-driven increase in housing costs has been to simply chase rising costs with higher subsidies. That is the approach currently championed by California senator and probable 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who has sponsored legislation that would provide a tax credit to subsidize rents for families earning as much as $125,000 per year whose housing costs exceed 30 percent of their income.

But instead of pursuing this costly policy that mostly redounds to the benefit of landlords, Carson has decided to go directly after the source of the problem. Specifically, he has let it be known that he intends to link federal housing funds to local officials’ willingness to reduce regulations that restrict affordable housing. He wants to ensure that if mayors and governors continue to pander to wealthy special interests by enacting barriers to housing construction, Washington will no longer bail them out.

The high cost of housing is an important factor in trapping millions of Americans in poverty. On average, Americans in the lowest third of incomes spend more than 40 percent of their income on housing, a number that rises to more than 50 percent for renters. In addition, high housing costs can prevent geographic mobility, making it all but impossible for the poor to move to areas with less crime, more jobs, and better schools. Zoning also continues to be an important factor in reinforcing American racial segregation.

Carson aims to change this state of affairs for the better. “We’ve been looking for ways that we can remove some of the restrictions nationally and some of these zoning ordinances nationally so that we can, in fact, build more affordable housing,” he has said. “Because we have the capacity to do it; we just have to be able to get out of our own way.”

If he’s able to make good on that potential, Carson will strike a powerful blow on behalf of the poor and vulnerable. And in that case, his critics might be forced to admit that they severely underestimated him.

SOURCE 

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Pelosi calls border wall ‘immoral’ — while protecting her Napa vineyard with one

Self-proclaimed future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is laying out her priorities for after Democrats’ assumed victory in the midterms, and she’s made it clear there’s “nothing” that will persuade her to approve President Trump’s promised border wall.

Erecting a big beautiful wall along the nation’s southern border to stop the steady flood of illegal immigrants and drugs is “immoral, expensive, ineffective, not something that people do between countries,” Pelosi said in response to a question at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on Tuesday, according to The Harvard Gazette.

“In any event it happens to be like a manhood issue for the president,” she said, “and it’s wrong and I’m not interested in that.”

A wall to protect the nation from illegal and dangerous intruders – “immoral,” not interested. But wall to protect Pelosi’s posh Napa Valley vineyard, that’s totally different. The Trump-supporting duo Diamond and Silk exposed Pelosi’s hypocritical position on immigration in the hilarious and timely documentary “Dummycrats,” which premiered in Washington, D.C. this week.



In the movie, presented by The American Mirror, the sisters from North Carolina explain how Democrats often say one thing, they do whatever they want. The flick features Pelosi, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama denouncing a border wall, while highlighting the fences, guard shacks and brick barriers that separate the unwashed masses from their mega-mansions and lavish properties.

Diamond and Silk also take to the streets of Pelosi’s San Francisco district to document the impact of her brand of progressive politics: illegal plastic straws but free plastic drug needles, resources for illegal immigrants amid an epidemic of homeless citizens, and streets littered with garbage, used needles and human feces.

The girls “talk about what’s happening right now in these communities,” Diamond told The Epoch Times. “People living in tents, people defecating on the streets. That’s a problem that’s got to be solved.”

Diamond and Silk’s message is simple: “We are holding Congress accountable. Long gone are the days when you can walk in poor come out rich.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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22 October, 2018

The party of Antifa fascists?

Do we really want these intolerant, violent mobs and their representatives running America?

Paul Driessen

Who are the “Antifa” mobs? What are they doing to our country? How long will we tolerate them?

The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings were their latest excuse for tantrums and intolerance. Dismissing fairness, propriety and due process, they screamed that mere allegations of misconduct were enough to bar him from the Supreme Court, despite no corroborating evidence or witnesses.

Vicious harassment of senators and White House officials in restaurants, streets, grocery stores, and Senate offices and elevators was matched by ambush tactics and despicable behavior by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. If Justice Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings were “an electronic lynching,” those hearings were an electronic assault on a respected jurist, his wife and young daughters.

When Kavanaugh fought back, the same Senators and their media friends said he “lacked the proper temperament” to be on the Court. (Apparently, he should have just tried to enjoy the experience.)

The fact is, Democrats and their allies had said in lockstep and from the outset that they intended to keep any Trump nominee off our highest court. The Women’s March mistakenly released a statement saying it opposed the “nomination of XX” to the Court. (They forgot to fill in the blank.) They view the Court as their supreme state and national legislature: it’s far easier to get 5 votes than 5 million or 50 million.

In reality, this ongoing attempted rule by mob (with Portland, Oregon a prime example) goes back to the 2016 elections that put Donald Trump in the White House. The mobs weren’t just disappointed that Hillary Clinton had not won. They were enraged. And they’ve remained so ever since.

In fact, their furor goes back even further – to mounds of excrement they left behind in North Dakota, for instance, where they tried to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, by burning and bombing bridges, threatening local residents and killing cattle. One “peaceful protester” tried to shoot a deputy sheriff.

In another example, they enlisted state attorneys general, universities, wealthy leftwing foundations and private law firms (on a contingency fee basis) to bring RICO and other actions against scientists and think tanks that voice skepticism about “cataclysmic manmade climate change.” On college campuses they have banned, disinvited, mobbed, harassed or just plain screamed over 300 conservative speakers into silence. Being a Republican or wearing a Trump MAGA hat can get you beaten, or worse.

They forget President Obama’s dictum: “Elections have consequences.” One is the President’s right to nominate Federal judges. But from their perspective, “consequences” must never apply when they lose – and the Electoral College must be abolished when it works as our Founding Fathers intended: to keep populous urban areas from dominating presidential elections and imposing a tyranny of the majority. (The fact that 85% of all US counties voted for Donald Trump illustrates this principle in action.)

In most of these cases, “they” are the Antifa mobs. Antifa being short for “anti-fascist.” Don’t be conned.

The Antifa mobs are fascists! And they have become the ski-masked thug wing of the Democratic Party.

They (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kyrsten Sinema, Andrew Gillum, Bernie Sanders and other favored candidates) certainly espouse socialism as their vehicle for wealth redistribution. However, in almost every other respect, their philosophies and actions reflect fascism, which is generally defined as:

A political system in which an authoritarian government does not own businesses and industries, but strictly regulates and controls their actions, output and rights – while forcibly controlling and suppressing citizens and their thought and speech via stringent laws, intimidation and even violence.

Sadly, the Democratic Party is slipping further into these tendencies, becoming ever more closely aligned with these radicals. It relies on Antifa thugs to “rally the base,” intimidate and abuse Republican voters and candidates, and get Democrat (and “undocumented”) voters to the polls. Like too many in the “mainstream” news media, Democrats refuse to condemn the mob behavior – and say it’s wrong to even call them mobs. They’re just concerned citizens, peaceably assembling and seeking redress of their grievances. Right. (Hint: You don’t like being called fascist mobs? Stop behaving like fascist mobs.)

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Hillary Clinton said recently. So instead of civil debates we’re to have civil war over whose vision and agenda will rule? Is there something wrong, antiquated or “threatening” about debating issues?

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said, when Republicans “go low” with their rhetoric, “we kick them.” Rep. Maxine Waters (R-CA) incites Antifa mobs by ranting, “If you see anybody from the Trump Administration in a restaurant, in a department store, tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Now on top of the speech codes, trigger warnings, boycotts, censorship, groupthink and identity politics, Google, Facebook and Twitter control and restrict access to conservative views; crowd funding sites prevent conservative groups from raising money; and the Obama IRS prevented Tea Party groups from getting the tax status needed to operate. When all that fails, we’re supposed to tolerate mobs and riots.

On campuses, LGBTQ diversity is virtuous. Diversity of viewpoints or political affiliation is intolerable. Some say Republicans want to control what you do in your bedroom. But Democrats want to control everything you do anywhere outside your bedroom. And Antifa mobs will keep you quiet and in line.

Antifa thugs fire-bombed a North Carolina Republican office and trashed another one in New York City, where they left a note that said, “This is just the beginning.”Others knocked a 71-year-old female congressional staffer unconscious! It even reached the point where a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter tried to gun down Republican legislators and staffers who were practicing for a charity baseball event.

Indeed, death on a large scale, to serve state or other “higher interests,” is another aspect of fascism. We see that with millions of people dying every year in Africa and Asia, because pressure groups deny them access to energy, insect control, water purification, agricultural and other modern technologies, in the name of protecting the environment from dangerous climate change, chemicals and biotechnology.

There are crazy ironies, too. Google helps the Chinese Communist Government prevent its citizens from accessing “forbidden” knowledge and ideas – but then claims helping the US Defense Department with Cloud computing or artificial intelligence surveillance would “violate its principles.”

Around many neighborhoods, signs proclaim “Hate has no home here,” in multiple languages, with an American flag heart logo reminiscent of the Obama campaign logo – in liberals’ yards. The signs are part of a project that “promotes just and inclusive communities.” Trump supporters need not apply.

Democrats appear to be depending on all of this to counter a possible “red wave” – and regain control of the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate. If they succeed even with just the House, Democrat congressional committees will investigate, interrogate and try to impeach Trump, Kavanaugh and other officials. They will impede and obstruct everything the Trump Administration tries to do.

They’ll also try to abolish ICE, block the Wall, pack the Supreme Court, ban guns, bash Israel – and replace the fossil fuels that provide 80% of our energy with “100% renewable energy” that is so expensive and unreliable it will bring our industries, economy and nation to its knees, while blanketing rural and habitat land, damaging people’s health and property rights, and butchering birds and bats by the millions.

Our rebounding energy, employment, economy, markets and living standards would get rolled back.

Victorious Democrats would also end congressional investigations into the Hillary-Deep State-DNC-Russian-Clinton Foundation collusion and corruption. All the players in these massive, sordid affairs will be deemed “too big to jail” – and too closely tied to the Democratic Party to be investigated further.

Some say the Antifa-Schumer-Pelosi-Clinton-Holder-Waters strategy will backfire. I hope that happens, because it would be disastrous if these people run Congress, America and our lives. But I won’t bank on it.

If you’re worried too (and you should be), get inspired and involved. Above all, VOTE! Vote to preserve our democratic Republic, our freedoms, our booming economy, reliable and affordable energy for all Americans – and equal justice for all, based on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Via email

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The Democrats are wrong about tax cuts and deregulation

By Geoff Diehl (R) Mass. State rep.

In December 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren teamed up with Bernie Sanders to complain in The New York Times that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, then on its way to being passed by Congress, would be “an enormous tax giveaway to the wealthy.” In a subsequent interview on CNBC, Warren opined that the act gave “$1.5 trillion away to the richest Americans and the biggest corporations, and let everybody else pick up the crumbs.”

But if she delved into the economics of the legislation and addressed how it would benefit her constituents, she would find that the act has significantly helped the Massachusetts economy. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, about 80 percent of the Commonwealth’s taxpayers will receive a tax cut, helping people all across the board and creating a surplus of $1.2 billion in revenue for the state.

The key provision of the Tax Cuts Act is the reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Never mind that the idea of reducing the US corporate tax rate, previously the highest in the world, has long had bipartisan support. And never mind that support for cutting the rate is based on data from the Tax Foundation showing that a lower tax rate would spur GDP growth, investment, and job creation.

In the short time since the passage of the act, we already have evidence of its effectiveness in promoting economic growth. US real GDP growth in the second quarter of 2018 was 83 percent greater than it was in the second quarter of 2016, the last year of the previous administration. The growth of real private fixed investment was 129 percent greater. The unemployment rate fell from 5.0 percent in September 2016 to 3.7 percent in September 2018

The Tax Cuts Act is not the only action to come out of Washington that has spurred the economy. There have been 74 recent steps to eliminate burdensome regulations that have played their own role in hindering the economy. It is worth delving further into the effects of the Tax Cuts Act, though, in order to grasp the class-warfare mindset that characterizes our senior senator.

The US economy grew 4.1 percent during the second quarter, a healthy clip that suggests the recovery may be accelerating.

Mainstream economic theory argues that a reduction in the corporate tax rate will incentivize corporations to invest and create jobs. The only question is how much investment and how many jobs. Using its peer-reviewed US Economic Model, the Beacon Hill Institute, a Massachusetts think tank, has found that the Tax Cuts Act will, by the end of 2018, have caused real US GDP to rise by $547 billion and private investment by $179 billion. It will have added 2.9 million new jobs to the US workforce. Massachusetts alone will have added 29,000 new jobs, $3.2 billion in private investment, and $6.7 billion in disposable income by the end of the year. Both the Tax Foundation and the Joint Committee on Taxation of the US Congress have likewise found positive effects on the economy.

For many Democrats, however, none of this matters. Corporations are just pots of money to be redistributed from self-interested shareholders to their own preferred social classes. They can’t grasp the idea that when shareholders are allowed to keep more of their profits, they will want to invest in plant, equipment, and job creation.

To avoid going back to a stagnant economy of no wage increases, no job growth, and high unemployment and underemployment, policies need to be evaluated by how they will affect Massachusetts industry and jobs. By decreasing regulations and taxes, we will continue to encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses, which create three out of every four new jobs in the Commonwealth.

To roll back the 2017 tax cuts and to reintroduce the regulations that have recently been lifted by the federal government would threaten to return the nation — and the state — to the economic doldrums that beset the Obama administration.

But we want to go forward, not backward. Congress needs to make the individual tax cuts in the Tax Cuts Act permanent and act on their many more proposed deregulatory measures that need to be undertaken if we are to keep the economy humming. It is necessary to expand the policies that have led the nation and the state to its current wave of prosperity and build toward the future rather than obstruct.

SOURCE 

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Go Figure: Federal Revenues Hit All-Time Highs Under Trump Tax Cuts

The Laffer curve agan

Critics of the Trump tax cuts said they would blow a hole in the deficit. Yet individual income taxes climbed 6% in the just-ended fiscal year 2018, as the economy grew faster and created more jobs than expected.

The Treasury Department reported this week that individual income tax collections for FY 2018 totaled $1.7 trillion. That's up $14 billion from fiscal 2017, and an all-time high. And that's despite the fact that individual income tax rates got a significant cut this year as part of President Donald Trump's tax reform plan.

Income Taxes After Trump Tax Cuts

True, the first three months of the fiscal year were before the tax cuts kicked in. But if you limit the accounting to this calendar year, individual income tax revenues are up by 5% through September.

Other major sources of revenue climbed as well, as the overall economy revived. FICA tax collections rose by more than 3%. Excise taxes jumped 13%.

The only category that was down? Corporate income taxes, which dropped by 31%. Overall, federal revenues came in slightly higher in FY 2018 — up 0.5%.

Spending, on the other hand, was $127 billion higher in fiscal 2018. As a result, deficits for 2018 climbed $113 billion.

Let's compare these results with Obama's last full fiscal year in office, 2016.

Individual income tax revenues went up by a mere 0.3%, Treasury data show. Fiscal 2016 also saw a 13% drop in corporate income taxes. FICA tax collections climbed by less than 1%. Excise tax collections dropped almost 3%.

Overall revenues increased by 0.5% — about the same as this year. The deficit? It climbed by $148 billion.

So, in other words, the government did better on revenues and deficits in the year after Trump's tax cuts went into effect than it did in Obama's last year in office.

Trump Tax Cuts To Blame For Deficit?
To this, critics say, yes, but revenues would have climbed faster had it not been for the tax cuts, because the economy was booming in 2018, unlike in 2016.

Not necessarily.

Yes, the economy was booming in fiscal 2018. But it probably wouldn't have been booming without the tax cuts. Had Trump not succeeded in getting his pro-growth tax cuts across the finish line, it's possible we'd have seen a year like Obama's last one. A sluggish economy, barely increasing federal revenues, and a large increase in deficits.

Does that mean Trump's tax cuts are fully "paying for themselves"? We wouldn't make that argument. But the faster economic growth is clearly offsetting at least some of their costs — which is precisely what backers said would happen.

What is unmistakable from the data, however, is that the Trump tax cuts are not entirely, or even mostly, responsible for the increase in the deficit. Blame for that rests squarely with spendthrifts in Congress — on both sides of the aisle — who refuse to bring federal spending under control.

So, the question is: Would it have been better to have kept taxes high, and sacrificed economic, job and wage gains we've been enjoying, so that the government could have collected a little bit more in taxes?

SOURCE 

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Evangelical leader: Not worth risking ties with Saudi Arabia over missing journalist

Robertson is diplomatically naive.  Any sanctions are likely to be symbolical and hence innocuous -- e.g. temporarily barring members of the administration from visiting Saudi

A prominent evangelical leader told viewers to “cool down the tempers of those who are screaming blood for the Saudis” and not risk a $100 billion arms deal over the apparent death of Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Appearing on Christian television show "The 700 Club," Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is too important to risk.

“These people are key allies,” Robertson said Monday on the show, first reported by Right Wing Watch. “I don’t think on this issue we need pull sanctions and get tough. I just think it’s a mistake.”

More HERE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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22 October, 2018

We are watching the evolution of the Democratic Party into an explicitly Fascist party

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed "collateral damage" against Americans who do not share the views of the Democratic Party during an interview over the weekend with left-wing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Pelosi made the remarks on Sunday in New York City at an event hosted by the 92nd Street Y where she spoke about the Democratic Party's agenda.

"We have to have total clarity about what we do when it comes to everything — a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage ... whether it’s about immigration, whether it’s about gun safety, whether it’s about climate ..." Pelosi said. "I think that we owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there’s some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn't be our original purpose."

Pelosi's inflammatory language comes as political tensions across the U.S. have turned violent in recent months with much of the violence coming from the political Left.

The most significant act of political violence to take place over the last 18 months happened on June 14, 2017, when a Democratic terrorist opened fire on Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice in Virginia.

The perpetrator, who was a Bernie Sanders supporter and an MSNBC fan, reportedly screamed "this is for healthcare" as he fired upon Republican lawmakers, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

The Democratic Party has increasingly used inflammatory and violent language to motivate their base, with recent examples coming from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Democrat Eric Holder, and two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Waters called for attacks against members of the Trump administration in June while at a rally, saying, "Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere."

Booker encouraged left-wing activists to "get up in the face" of some members of Congress in July, which came just a couple of days after he said supporters of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh were "complicit in evil."

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said earlier this month that when Republicans go low, Democrats "kick them."

Clinton said in an interview with CNN this month that Democrats can't be civil with members of the Republican Party because Republicans disagree with the agenda of the Democratic Party.

"You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about," Clinton said. "That's why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength."

SOURCE 

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Leftist Violence Natural Outgrowth of Authoritarian Ideology

David Limbaugh
    
What do you make of the leftist violence and anarchy all over the country lately? Is it just random and unrepresentative of the Democratic Party and the left as a whole? Or does it logically follow from what the left has become?

In Portland, Oregon, in June, a leftist mob surrounded a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, barricading the exits and blocking the driveway. “Guards” patrolled the doors, trapping biohazard cleanup crew workers inside in stifling heat and with infernal odors. The agitators carried signs calling ICE employees Nazis and white supremacists. The Portland Police Bureau denied assistance to federal officers pleading for help.

Mob members followed one ICE officer as he picked up his daughter from summer camp, and some also showed up at his house. Protesters went to another officer’s home with flyers showing his picture and name and accusing him of being part of the Gestapo.

Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, also police commissioner, ordered the police not to intervene in these assaults. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict,” tweeted Wheeler, “particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track.”

In an equally despicable incident, the Portland mayor refused to respond to antifa’s blocking traffic and harassing bystanders. These leftists took to the streets to protest the death of Patrick Kimmons, who was fatally shot by police.

Leftists assaulted two GOP candidates in Minnesota. A man punched state Rep. Sarah Anderson in the arm when she objected to his destroying Republican yard signs. Shane Mekeland, a candidate for the Minnesota House, sustained a serious concussion when sucker-punched at a restaurant while speaking with constituents. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party suspended its communications staffer William Davis for jokingly posting on Facebook that Democrats should “bring (Republicans) to the guillotines” after the midterm elections.

Shrieking leftists pawed at the Supreme Court building as Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed. Leftists spit on Sen. Lindsey Graham in the Senate hall over his support for Kavanaugh. A Democratic operative for a George Soros-funded group was arrested for battery against a Nevada GOP candidate’s female campaign manager.

Democratic politicians and the leftist media are using increasingly hostile rhetoric. Sen. Tim Kaine said liberals must “fight in the courts, fight in the streets” and “fight at the ballot box.” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski called for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office, claiming he “is not fit to lead” because he is “going to do something crazy in five minutes, one hour, tonight or tomorrow.”

Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, said that he disagreed when Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high.” Holder said, “When they go low, we kick them.” Hillary Clinton said, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.”

We can dismiss these and scores of other orchestrated incidents as merely anecdotal or as no worse than what the political right is doing, but I honestly don’t believe there is equal mania on each side of the political aisle — and there’s a reason for that.

It seems there is a logical connection between the left’s ideology and its authoritarian, intolerant and violent behavior. There are passionate advocates on both sides of the political divide, each fervently believing in their respective views, but the modern political left is much less respectful of the Constitution, the rule of law and democratic processes. For far too many leftists, the end justifies the means, so they are willing to suspend due process and change the rules when they don’t prevail at the ballot box.

Just consider their use of government agencies to prevent Donald Trump’s election and emasculate his power once he was elected, their rumblings about restructuring the Supreme Court if they regain power, their stated intention to abolish the Electoral College, their plan to impeach Trump because they can’t stand him — irrespective of whether he has actually committed an impeachable offense — their threats to impeach Justice Kavanaugh after they couldn’t block his confirmation through the constitutionally established process of advice and consent, their use of judicial activism to achieve policy results through court “super-legislatures” that they can’t achieve through the democratically elected branches, their opposition to voter ID laws, their desire for open borders, and their use of executive orders and overreaching administrative rulings to achieve results they can’t achieve through the proper legal channels.

Leftists, being largely secular, invest their faith in government, which partially explains their inability to accept the failures of their policies to achieve the results they claim they want (socialism) and their sometimes even abandoning the pursuit of those results. For example, they are often concerned with employing some nebulous form of fairness even when it means spreading economic misery across the board.

The left’s moral preening, virtue signaling and sermonizing are natural outgrowths of its quasi-spiritual, unshakable faith in its failed utopian policies. Leftists invested enormous hope in Obama’s agenda, but it yielded only economic stagnation and an America in decline. Their faith-based incredulity manifests itself in their taking credit for Trump’s economy — even after their leader himself, former President Obama, predicted that the dreadful economic malaise over which he presided was to be a permanent phenomenon in America.

The sad reality is that Democrats have no solutions anymore and thus are reduced to crass, divisive identity politics — pitting minorities against white people, women against men, and poor against rich. No matter what they say, there is no satisfying them; they traffic in agitating racial, gender and economic warfare, and it’s devastating to the national fabric. This explains why they demonize Kanye West and any other black person who dares to stray from the prescribed liberal dogma.

The left’s increasing violent episodes and rhetoric give us a taste of what Democrats would be like if they regained majority power. If that happens, they will engage full-bore in the kind of lawless authoritarian behavior they falsely accuse President Trump of committing.

There are wonderful rank-and-file Democrats throughout the nation, but the extremists are in firm control of the party, and until that changes, we have to fight as intensely as they do and soundly defeat them at the ballot box.

SOURCE 

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Georgia Democrats Cry Racism to Mask Voter Fraud

Demo gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams floods the system with bogus voter registrations.

In news even less surprising than Democrat Sen. Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren’s DNA test showing she is 99.9% white, the Georgia Democrat Party is using accusations of racism and voter suppression as a smokescreen to hide their own efforts at voter fraud.

Georgia’s Democrat/Socialist gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has filed a lawsuit claiming Georgia’s Secretary of State (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Brian Kemp has disenfranchised 53,000 mostly minority voters by flagging their voter applications pending verification under Georgia’s so-called “Exact Match” law.

Where to begin?

First, and most importantly, the law does not prevent anyone from voting. Democrats claim that a simple spelling discrepancy is enough to prevent a voter from casting a ballot, but that is a blatant lie. In fact, the phrase “exact match” appears nowhere in the law.

Georgia law (HB 268) requires the voter registration application address to match the address on file with the Department of Driver Services. If there is a discrepancy, the voter has 26 months to provide the necessary documentation to correct the error and, in the meantime, the voter may still cast a provisional ballot. If the voter information can be verified, the ballot is counted. None of the 53,000 applications in question are removed from the voter rolls. They are put in a category designated “pending” until the identity of the voter is definitively determined.

Democrats point to the 35,000 voter applications that were rejected by Kemp’s office from 2013-2016, which sounds like a lot until one realizes that represents just 0.5% of Georgia registered voters. (For reference, that’s higher than the amount of Cherokee blood in Warren’s veins.)

In reality, the purpose of the lawsuit is two-fold. Primarily, the goal is to push through as many fraudulent voter applications as possible, hoping Secretary Kemp will bow to political pressure and violate the law in allowing ballots of unverified voters to be cast (almost exclusively for Democrats). If that fails, then Democrats have established a narrative by which they can claim the election was stolen, minority voters were disenfranchised, and Kemp’s election is illegitimate.

Last week while speaking to supporters in the Democrat stronghold of Clayton County, Abrams revealed her true intentions when she spoke of the coming “blue wave” she believes will restore Democrats to power.

Abrams declared, “The blue wave is African-American. It is white. It is Latino. It is Asian-Pacific Islander. … It is made up of those who’ve been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented [emphasis added].” When contacted by The Washington Free Beacon and questioned about what role she believes “undocumented immigrants” (read: “illegal aliens”) will play in the election, Abrams refused to respond.

The most infuriating aspect of all this is the media’s complicity in perpetuating the lies, and its refusal to acknowledge that this whole fiasco was engineered by Abrams.

The flood of questionable voter applications are the result of efforts by the New Georgia Project (NGP), a nonprofit founded in 2014 by none other than Abrams, with the stated goal of registering minority voters in Georgia.

Abrams’s organization has been the subject of intense criticism since its founding, including from leaders in her own party, who have pointed to her $175,000 salary, the complete lack of transparency by Abrams, and NGP’s history of submitting “fraudulent and invalid voter registration applications to the Secretary of State.”

In 2014, the leftist rag Slate wrote about NGP, documenting, as described by Georgia State Rep. Bert Reeves, the “sloppy, questionable, and invalid voter applications” routinely submitted to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. Even Creative Loafing, a local lefty newspaper in Atlanta, questioned the validity of Abrams’s accusations against Kemp, warning that the voter applications may have been manufactured by Abrams’s group in order to justify the millions of dollars she took from NGP’s donors.

When challenged on her habit of submitting inaccurate and fraudulent applications, Abrams smugly responded that Georgia’s election law only “requires that we turn in all application forms we collect, regardless of concerns over validity. It’s the job of the secretary of state to determine the status of the applications. We do not get to make the decisions about whether or not a form is valid or not.”

In other words, Abrams’s organization flooded Secretary of State Kemp’s office with tens of thousands of inaccurate and fraudulent voter applications, knowing full well it would take significant time and resources to review and verify the applications, and then she screams racism and voter suppression when the bogus applications are flagged as “pending” until verified.

Of course, there is a long history of Democrats engaging in voter fraud and then fighting any effort to investigate or put in place measures that would catch fraud. Though Democrats always claim voter fraud is almost nonexistent and therefore should not be addressed, the reality is that election fraud is rampant among Democrats.

Ironically, despite even the leftist ACLU and the just as leftist Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia’s largest newspaper) trying to correct the intentional deception lest it damage Democrats’ chances, Abrams persists with the claim of disenfranchisement of minority voters by Kemp’s office.

How fitting it would be if Abrams lost a close race because she convinced her own voters that their votes wouldn’t count.

SOURCE 

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Another great sign for the economy: Job openings hit an all-time high in August

Job openings hit 7.14 million in August, notching a record for a survey that began in December 2000, according to the Labor Department.

Job openings hit a record in August, indicating companies could face more inflationary pressures ahead with a tight labor market.

The vacancies level hit 7.14 million for the month, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, a report Federal Reserve officials watch closely for clues about where employment stands.

The total number of hires also reached a record of 5.78 million.

Openings dwarfed the total level of workers looking for jobs, which stood at 6.23 million for that month and fell to 5.96 million in September, recent Labor Department statistics show. The JOLTS survey, as it is known, lags the government's nonfarm payrolls count by a month. The survey began in December 2000.

Economists have been watching JOLTS closely as in indicator of when worker wages might start catching up with the acceleration in employment and the rapid decline in unemployment. The headline jobless rate for September was 3.7 percent, its lowest level in 49 years.

Workers continued to show confidence in the jobs market, evidenced by a quits rate that edged just a shade lower from July to 3.58 million. The rate, which counts those who voluntarily left positions, jumped 12.7 percent from August 2017.

"The fact that record numbers of workers are voluntarily quitting their jobs suggests that they are finding substantially better opportunities elsewhere in the economy," said Julia Pollak, labor economist at online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter.

Wages have been moving higher over the past year but still haven't broken out of the post-recession range. Average hourly earnings rose about 2.9 percent in August and 2.8 percent in September.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

**************************







19 October, 2018

Boy, 11, hacks voting website, changes results in 10 minutes at Las Vegas convention

This year's highlight of the DEFCON hacker conference was the voting village. The event created nearly real scenarios where people hacked into voting machines, changed results and hacked into replicas of state voting websites.

The event culminated in a group of kids, ages eight to 16 hacking into and changing election results on a replica of a state voting website. Emmett Brewer, 11, hacked the site in less than 10 minutes. An eight-year-old girl also did it, in 15 minutes.

Jake Braun, Executive Director of Cyber Policy initiative at the University of Chicago said he doesn't understand why people are not taking the threat against our elections seriously. Braun is also the co-founder of the Voting Village at DEFCON.

"[President] Trump's czar of cyber security was there, and he said, 'I'm glad you guys are doing this because we know our adversaries are doing this same thing.'"

When the children broke into the election websites, they were able to change party names, candidate names and change vote tallies. One hacker changed the name of a candidate to 'Bob da Builder' and gave him 12 billion votes.

Braun said since the 2016 elections, Congress has done nothing to safeguard our election process.

"[The Voting Village] is something we need to be working on every day of every year, not just once a year for a few days at a conference."

To protect elections, Braun said polling places need to first be using paper ballots. Second, he said there needs to be a way to monitor websites to see if they have been hacked. Braun also said the country needs to be investing around $5 billion to safeguard voting systems if elections going to be using them.

While the Voting Village highlighted a lot of problems, Braun said it also highlighted an encouraging future.

"When you walk around DEFCON it's very male-dominated, but almost half of the kid hackers were girls. I hope it's a sign the future of our industry is changing for the better."

The National Association of Secretaries of State disagreed with the findings from DEFCON's Voting Village. We are also concerned that creating “mock” election office networks and voter registration databases for participants to defend and/or hack is also unrealistic. It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols. The NASS also said it would be willing to work with civic-minded hackers on the problem.

SOURCE 

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Dem Operative Arrested in Nevada After Assaulting Female GOP Staffer

The Minnesota Democratic Party has suspended a spokesman for calling for violence against Republicans even as two GOP candidates have been assaulted in suspected politically motivated attacks.

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has suspended communications staffer William Davis for one week without pay after making a Facebook post joking that Democrats would "bring [Republicans] to the guillotine" on Nov. 7, the day after the midterm elections.

Minnesota Republican Party chairman Jennifer Carnahan said the suspension was not enough, calling for his immediate firing in the aftermath of separate attacks against Republican candidates. She said she has been subjected to numerous death threats during her tenure as the state party leader and that death threats are no laughing matter.

"The overt hatred and violence that has become prevalent from many Democrats towards Republicans in recent times is unlawful, unacceptable, and downright scary," she said in an email. "Yes, we have free speech and the right to peacefully assemble, but these words and actions by the left have gone too far. … He should have been terminated immediately."

DFL officials did not respond to request for comment.

The suspension came days after Minnesota state representative Sarah Anderson was punched in the arm after spotting a man destroying Republican yard signs. She said the attack left her scared, and her attacker only desisted when she fled to her car and threw it in reverse.

"It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don't you go kill yourself?'" Anderson told the Washington Free Beacon. "To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you is just disheartening."

The Plymouth Police Department investigation into Rep. Anderson's alleged assault remains ongoing. A spokeswoman confirmed the department had identified a suspect, but declined further comment.

Anderson was not the only GOP candidate attacked. First-time state representative candidate Shane Mekeland suffered a concussion after getting sucker punched while speaking with constituents at a restaurant in Benton County. Mekeland told the Free Beacon he has suffered memory loss—forgetting Rep. Anderson's name at one point in the interview—and doctors tell him he will have a four-to-six week recovery time ahead of him. He said he was cold cocked while sitting at a high top table at a local eatery and hit his head on the floor.

"I was so overtaken by surprise and shock and if this is the new norm, this is not what I signed up for," he said.

Benton County Sheriff Troy Heck told the Free Beacon that his department has interviewed the alleged assailant. Investigators are awaiting medical records about the extent of Mekeland's injuries before referring the case to the local district attorney's office. He expects those results to come in the next week.

Mekeland said he was disappointed that he had not seen Democrats condemn the attack against him, but was floored to see the party take such a light approach to Davis's comments. "He's a political staffer so you'd think if anybody should know boundaries, I think that'd be it," he said.

Anderson was equally harsh about the DFL's response, calling it "incredibly irresponsible."

"This is exactly what incites people to violence. … It's why you have somebody who goes and attacks me on Sunday just because we have different political beliefs," she said.

The alleged assaults have both candidates weighing changes in their approach to campaigning in closing days of the race. Mekeland was unable to leave the house to knock on doors due to his sensitivity to sunlight on Tuesday. He said he and his volunteers will only travel in pairs for the rest of the campaign to ensure they are not alone during such visits, which will limit the ground they cover. Anderson said she has gotten offers from her husband and other volunteers to escort her around the district. She pledged to keep knocking on doors until Election Day.

"I refuse to be bullied and intimidated," she said. "You can’t let this stop you from reaching out and talking to voters."

SOURCE 

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A Revolution Is Under Way in America

By Tucker Carlson 

The aftermath of the 2016 election is recognizable to any parent who has argued with a child. Everything’s fine until the kid loses interest in what you think. Once it becomes clear the child really doesn’t care about your stupid rules, you lose it and start screaming. The less control you have, the more hysterical you become.

Dying regimes are the same way. They get more repressive as they fade. As their power ebbs, rulers lash out against dissent and disobedience. Deposed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu barked orders at his guards as they led him to the firing squad.

Our leaders understood Donald Trump’s election as a direct challenge to their power. They’ve been fretting about his authoritarian tendencies ever since. Because they lack self-awareness, they don’t perceive this as projection. They can’t see that they’re actually talking about themselves.

Let’s say you were an authoritarian who sought to weaken American democracy. How would you go about doing that? You’d probably start by trying to control what people say and think. If citizens dissented from the mandated orthodoxy, or dared to consider unauthorized ideas, then you’d hurt them. You’d shame them on social media. You’d shout them down in public. You’d get them fired from their jobs. You’d make sure everyone was afraid to disagree with you.

After that, you’d work to disarm the population: You’d take away their guns. That way, they would be entirely dependent on you for safety, not to mention unable to resist your plans for them. Then, just to make sure you’d quelled all opposition, you’d systematically target any institution that might oppose or put brakes on your power. You’d be especially concerned about churches, the family and independent businesses. You’d be sure to undermine and crush those, using laws and relentless propaganda.

If, despite all this, election results still didn’t go your way, you’d use an unelected bureaucracy to neuter any leader you hadn’t handpicked yourself. But you’d be shaken by an election like that. You’d resolve never to allow one again. To make sure of that, you’d work tirelessly to replace the old and ungrateful population with a new and more obedient one. That’s what you’d do.

Sound familiar? For all of his many faults, Trump isn’t doing any of that. Our ruling class is.

It’s probably a fruitless exercise on their part. The status quo is over. A revolution is on the way.

Hopefully, it’ll be the kind of low-grade revolution where everybody learns something and nobody gets hurt. But it will be wrenching either way, because revolutions always are. This used to be a placid country. It’s not anymore, and won’t be for a while.

What went wrong?

The disaster began when almost everyone in power joined the same team. You used to hear debates between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, on issues that mattered to the rest of the country. That’s over. Our public debates are mostly symbolic. They are sideshows designed to divert attention from the fact that those who make the essential decisions, about the economy and the government and war, have reached consensus on the fundamentals. They agree with each other.

They just don’t agree with the population they govern.

Left and right are no longer meaningful categories in America. The rift is between those who benefit from the status quo and those who don’t. That’s rarely acknowledged in public, which is convenient for those who are benefiting. The people in charge are free to pursue policies that are disconnected from the public good but that have, not coincidentally, made them richer, more powerful and much more self-satisfied.

But not more impressive. Our leaders are fools, unaware that they are captains of a sinking ship.

SOURCE 

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Jeff Sessions rips federal judges over anti-Trump bias

Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed a blistering assault on federal judges Monday, saying anti-Trump bias has led some to abandon their role as legal referees and become “political actors” erecting roadblocks to the president’s policies.

In unusually stark language, Mr. Sessions suggested judges could soon face “calls for their replacement” if they don’t cool it.

He blasted one judge who called the president’s policy toward illegal immigrants “heartless,” and said another judge put “the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind” on trial to pave a path to block the government from asking about citizenship on the 2020 census.

“Once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back,” Mr. Sessions said in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation. “We are seeing it in case after case. When a hot-button policy issue ends up in litigation, judges are starting to believe their role is to examine the entire process that led to the policy decision — to redo the entire political debate in their courtrooms.

Just ahead of the speech Mr. Sessions told The Washington Times that he saw anti-Trump resistance at play in some of the judges’ moves.

“I have to say I think some of it is,” he said. “I regret saying that, but I’m afraid it’s true in some of these cases and if so, it’s very wrong.”

He added that unfair intervention from judges has left the administration in legal tangles, forcing the president to fight senseless and distracting cases.

“He has monumental responsibilities and no court without serious cause should interrupt the function of government. It takes untold hours and time to deal with these things. It slows up multiple agencies of government,” the attorney general told The Times.

Judges have been divided in their approach to Mr. Trump.

Some have delved into his Twitter account or looked back at statements he made during the campaign, citing them as evidence that justifies halting policy decisions made by Cabinet secretaries elsewhere in government.

Others, including a majority of justices on the Supreme Court in this year’s ruling upholding the president’s travel limits, looked chiefly at the policies themselves, saying that’s the crux of their judiciary’s role in the government overall.

In that case the majority in the 5-4 ruling said Mr. Trump was on firm national security grounds. The dissenters disagreed, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the president overstepped security powers and illegally targeted Muslims.

Mr. Sessions didn’t mention that case, but most of the ones he did single out Monday stemmed from immigration-related fights.

He chided one judge who earlier this month issued an injunction blocking Homeland Security from phasing out special Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants from El Salvador, Haiti and elsewhere.

Federal law says the Homeland Security secretary’s TPS decisions cannot be reviewed by courts, but the judge ruled he was reviewing the process by which the secretary reached the decision, not the decision itself.

One crux of his decision was Mr. Trump’s reported use of an insult to describe El Salvador and some African countries during a closed-door immigration meeting earlier this year, which U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen, an Obama appointee, said showed “animus” that could have poisoned the administration’s entire decision-making process.

In his speech Monday, Mr. Sessions also criticized U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who last year during a hearing told a Justice Department he couldn’t defend a policy “that is so heartless.”

Mr. Sessions criticized the judge at the time, telling him to stick to rulings on the law, not to opine about his political beliefs. The judge fired back, saying Mr. Sessions seemed “to think the courts cannot have an opinion.”

The attorney general replied Monday evening that “of course a judge can have political and policy opinions. But they should decide legal questions based on the law and the facts — not their policy preferences.”

Mr. Sessions said that when Congress fails to act, that is a decision. And courts cannot step in to do what Congress has decided not to do.

He called that “judicial encroachment,” and said it has become so bad that judges are trying to rehash the full decision-making of administrative actors in their courtrooms.

As part of that, judges are increasingly allowing intrusive legal “discovery” — the process of delving into records and decision-making to let judges review not just the final decision, but the way it was made.

Mr. Sessions said demanding handwritten notes from Cabinet secretaries or, in a case now before the Supreme Court, ordering the Commerce secretary to be deposed in the Census citizenship question case, goes too far.

“The Census question — which has appeared in one form or another on the Census for over a hundred years — is either legal or illegal,” the attorney general said. “The words on the page don’t have a motive; they are either permitted or they are not. But the judge has decided to hold a trial over the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind.”

He said it would be the equivalent of forcing judges to reveal their conversations with their law clerks when they were deciding what to write in their opinions, or forcing members of Congress to divulge their discussions with their staffers.

“Subjecting the executive branch to this kind of discovery is unacceptable. We intend to fight this and we intend to win,” Mr. Sessions said.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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18 October, 2018

Is Elizabeth Warren an 'Honest Injun'?  

 

As Elizabeth Warren lays the groundwork for her long-denied 2020 presidential bid, she’s out — again — with another defense of her claimed “Cherokee ancestry,” this time with a contrived DNA test. Clearly, she would like to get her “Fauxcahontas” lie out of the way before 2020.

We’ve previously called out her “identity” issue, but now, according to her fanboys at The Boston Globe, “Warren has released a DNA test that provides ‘strong evidence’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations.” By the end of the day, the Globe issued this correction: “Due to a math error, a story about Elizabeth Warren misstated the ancestry percentage of a potential 10th generation relative. It should be 1/1,024.”

Furthermore, buried in the report is this gem: “To make up for the dearth of Native American DNA, [Stanford University professor Carlos D. Bustamante] used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American.” Nevertheless, to tell the difference, “Bustamante said he can tease out the markers that these South Americans would have in common with Native Americans on the North American continent.” So she’s definitely at least 1/1,024 Mexican, Peruvian, or Colombian. Or something.

Vindication? Hardly. “By that measure,” observes Matt Walsh, “almost everyone in America is a minority.” In fact, most white Americans have twice that much “native” DNA.

Recall Donald Trump’s challenge to Warren: “I will give $1 million to your favorite charity … if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.” Fact is, by Warren’s definition of “Native American,” it is highly probable that Trump has more native ancestry than she does.

Our friend Michelle Malkin suggests, “1/1024 ‘Native American’ indirectly derived from South American genetic markers is ‘proof’ of Native heritage? 1/1024 of $1 million = $976.56. President Trump should donate that amount in Monopoly money, which is as genuine as Warren’s claim.” We suggest he donate it directly to her campaign, and we recommend this old Cher song, “Half Breed,” as Warren’s campaign theme song!

Brazenly, Warren is now calling on Trump to pay up: “Remember saying on that you’d give $1M to a charity of my choice if my DNA showed Native American ancestry? Please send the check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.”

Actually, Trump said if “the test … shows you’re an Indian.” We will defer to the Cherokee Nation elders for their opinion on that.

On behalf of the Cherokee Nation, its Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin protested: “Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It … dishonors legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

Trump responded, “Now Cherokee Nation denies her DNA test… Even they don’t want her.”

As partial penance for her shameful lie, it is Warren who should send a check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.

So, Warren thought this charade would lay her disputed claim to rest? On her promotion of the DNA report as “proof” of her native ancestry, conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey observed, “This is like spiking the ball after scoring a touchdown in the other team’s end zone.” It’s a permanent stain on her campaign.

More important than Warren’s pitifully weak ancestry “proof” remains the primary question about how she used this faux ancestral claim at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. She declared herself to be Native American at both institutions and fooled them, so, in keeping with her elitist arrogance, she is certain she can fool her Democrat constituents!

Clearly, among her genetic markers is a significant one for lying. Warren is a wealthy, disingenuous socialist, and that’s about as un-American as it gets.

SOURCE 

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Lindsey Graham to take DNA test to find Native American roots: 'I think I can beat' Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is ready to show up Sen. Elizabeth Warren, saying Tuesday he plans to take a DNA test to find out whether he has more Native American heritage than she does.

“I’m going to take a DNA test,” Graham told “Fox and Friends” on Tuesday. “I’ve been told my grandmother was part Cherokee Indian. It may all just be talk.”

SOURCE 

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2017 tax law continues to bring benefits

Even before enactment, anticipation of passage spurred investments, jobs and growth

Mark Murphy

Not long ago, a dentist called seeking advice about investing in new equipment for her practice. Business had been strong, but she envisioned enhancing the customer experience and growing her practice even further. The experience will set her apart from many other dentists, allowing her to retain existing clients and attract new ones. New state of the art dental technology would allow her to jump-start the process.

The dentist is part of a wave. Across the country, small and mid-sized business owners, entrepreneurs and start-ups are primed to invest in and expand their businesses.

These new provisions in the tax law are a godsend to business owners. They’ve have been asking for this, they’ve been heard, been provided for and are now anxious to spend and invest.

My business consultancy has received a steady flow of calls from many such owners. While diverse in geography, size and focus, they are all eager and optimistic. And they are all inspired by one thing: the new federal tax law. Like the dentist, they are finding that the incentives created by the statute make reinvestment and expansion a smart move.

In the less than a year since it was passed, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is fast becoming one of the biggest incentives to US business growth in at least a decade. Unemployment has reached lows not seen in decades.

After a strong push from the Trump Administration, the law went into effect in December 2017. It includes several features designed to relieve tax burdens on businesses of all sizes. Of particular note, the corporate tax rate reduction has leveled the playing field for US-based companies when they compete with foreign based companies in the global economy. Lower taxes are passed to the consumer.

Another popular provision – affecting over three quarters of small companies – allows a 20% deduction for all pass-through businesses. Another much-heralded clause slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. Yet another allows businesses to deduct up to 100% of investments in new business equipment costs during the first year.

A broad range of business owners seek to take advantage of the new law. The head of a small technology company showed us a proposal to expand its marketing. A service company presented us questions about how it could expand by 25% in the next two years.

Our dentist wants to expand into vacant space in her building. This law is turbo-charging the entrepreneurial spirit of our business owner clients.

In each instance, the owners were able to key in on particular provisions of the new tax law that apply to their unique situations. Together with them, we have found ways to use the law to their advantage.

Just as important as particular features of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the overwhelmingly positive climate it is helping to create. Owners who have felt shackled for years by a restive investment environment and too many taxes and regulations are now encouraged to pump more money into their businesses.

A good example is the Rabine Group, a collection of small constructions companies based in Illinois.  This year they have pledged to commit more resources to hiring, research and development, and expansion. They are also offering employees far bigger raises this year than in any of the previous eight years. All of these moves are a result of the new tax law, the owners have reported.

That spirit of optimism has already brought signs of vibrancy that the US economy has not seen in years. Business investment is set to rise by 7% this year, following a robust 5.3% increase in 2017, on the heels of timid, desultory growth the previous decade.

As businesses expand, so do their needs for new employees. More than 134,000 new jobs were added in September 2018, bringing an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. The average hourly earnings gain is now 2.8% year over year. Retail sales are up, too; they are projected to reach 4.2% this year.

These gains are all inspired by the new tax breaks and reduced federal regulatory fervor. Tax cuts do pass down to many levels and spur spending. That’s a basic economics axiom.

Some say the new law favors major corporations over small business owners. That’s understandable. It’s a party line and core belief among some.

Indeed, thus far, the biggest tax savings resulting from the new law have been posted by the biggest US banks. In all, the six largest Wall Street banks – Bank of America, Citi Group, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley – have reported a total of nearly $5 billion in savings, according to their Second Quarter reports.

The new law has allowed the banks to cut their tax rates from as high as 31% to just 10 or 11 percent.

Large multinational corporations have slowed their borrowing, lessening the amount of debt they issue, according to the Wall Street Journal, using data from Goldman Sachs. The Fed analyzed share buybacks of non-financial firms with large cash holdings – and they have doubled, mimicking a similar tax holiday 15 years ago.

However, the strong gains posted by banks and other corporations actually mean everybody wins. The gains have contributed to a buoyant economic mood, which in turn is inspiring corporate employees and other consumers to spend more on their personal lives. Much or most of that spending has gone to small and medium-sized companies.

The corporate tax cut and gradual repatriation of trillions of dollars into the US economy has also helped mitigate fears that more jobs are going overseas. That is encouraging consumers to focus on retirement planning, invest in new cars or other goods – or in their companies – or take much-needed vacations. This too benefits smaller businesses.

Many businesses have undoubtedly not fully researched the ways the tax code can benefit them. As with any new statute, they need time and expert advice to understand the law’s fine print.

However, the smartest owners are moving quickly. Like the dentist, they have discovered that the time to take advantage of the new tax law is now, or at least as soon as they can grasp the new law’s opportunities, intricacies – and potential pitfalls for the unwary.

Via email

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When Health Policy Neglects Economic Principles, Patients Suffer

The healthcare sector of the U.S. economy is extraordinarily dynamic and complex, providing constant challenges for policymakers and regulators working to improve healthcare markets. However, recent research and policies suggest the greatest challenges for policymakers might be their misunderstanding of economic fundamentals.

Earlier this year, the Annals of Internal Medicine journal published a paper which found the prices increased for nearly 100 drugs while they were in a shortage between 2015 and 2016. The paper also notes these “price hikes” (price increases) were less severe in markets with comparatively more competitors (defined as more than three drug providers).

Although the authors consider these findings “mysterious,” they confidently offered policy recommendations to correct “the imbalance between supply and demand.” As they stated in their conclusion, “If manufacturers are observed using shortages to increase prices, public payers could set payment caps for drugs under storage and limit price increases.”

The situation described above, and the folly of its policy prescription, are no mysteries for anyone who understands basic economics.

A shortage occurs when there are too few goods available to satisfy too many consumers. Shortages dissipate when prices increase, motivating more production and less consumption. Competition among producers is an indispensable component of this process, working to provide more (and often better) goods to consumers.

Economic principles also teach us that “payment caps,” more commonly called price controls, do not resolve shortages. Instead, by keeping prices from rising, price controls remove the incentive for competing producers to supply more goods and for consumers to buy less.

For credible scholars to display such a blatant misunderstanding of economic principles is dumbfounding. And for such mistakes to be published in a peer-reviewed journal deemed “the most cited general internal medicine journal and one of the most influential journals in the world” is especially troublesome.

Unfortunately, misunderstandings of elementary economics also pervade contemporary health policymaking. EpiPens, which provide potentially life-saving treatment for patients with severe allergies, have been in a severe shortage in the United States since April. When children returned to school recently, parents struggled to send them back with much-needed emergency medicine, and pharmacies faced long backorders while trying to provide them.

In response, the Food and Drug Administration issued a statement asking pharmacies to extend expiry dates for EpiPens by four months. While this might lengthen periods between prescription refills, it will not lead to more EpiPens and does not address the primary cause of the shortage.

That cause is a lack of competition stemming from overregulation.

From 2011 to 2016, EpiPen’s manufacturer received three patents, granting it extended monopolist status and preventing competition from entering the market. Over roughly the same period, EpiPen prices increased about 500 percent. However, without competition stepping in to increase production, shortages persist.

Thankfully, around the same time, the FDA also approved a generic version of EpiPen. Introducing a generic competitor will increase EpiPen’s availability and reduce the shortage. However, the lack of competition and the current shortage are due to the FDA’s previous regulations. Most importantly, the consequences of these regulations are entirely predictable with only a minimal understanding of economics.

Determining effective health policy is incredibly difficult, and elementary mistakes cause widespread damage. However, understanding the origins of shortages, the role of competition in the market, and how prices guide resources to socially desirable uses to allocate resources are the backbone of doing any policy work. Recent events indicate an urgent need for researchers and policymakers to relearn the basics.

SOURCE 

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Trump's North American Trade Triumph

For those on the left and right who were certain that President Donald Trump's presidency meant the end of global free trade ... think again. Though Trump's critics have dismissed the significance of the new Mexico and Canada trade deal, it's hard to deny that it is a welcome advance for the economy of the entire continent.

The pact will extend for years a (mostly) tariff-free North American trade zone. This was Ronald Reagan's vision nearly four decades ago — and that legacy can now live on for hopefully many years to come.

Here's just one example of the importance of this agreement. In the area of energy production, the integration of our economies and the freer flow of energy investment capital across our southern and northern borders means more pipelines, more LNG terminals, more oil refineries and more exploration. North America is poised to be the new Middle East for energy production for the next 50 years, with all the related economic advantages that confers on our region.

One of the most favorable outcomes of the new trade pact is the provision that locks in 10 years of patent protections for new pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. While some critics are portraying this as a sell-out to the big drug companies, the opposite is true. Patent protections for drugs invented in America reduce costs for American consumers by forcing foreign countries to help pay for the research costs (about $1 billion for each new drug brought to market) and stop free riding on our innovation.

As University of Chicago professor Tomas J. Philipson puts it in a 2018 study on the drug industry: "There is no free lunch. If neither Americans nor foreigners pay for the R&D to develop new drugs, then soon nobody will receive new treatments."

One research team that found that price controls and inadequate patent protections will prevent the development of six new blockbuster drugs each year by 2020 and more than a dozen a year by 2050. No one can benefit from a drug to cure cancer, MS, Alzheimer's or epilepsy at any price if it hasn't been invented.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement will both save lives by accelerating medical research and reduce drug prices at home by ensuring that foreigners no longer enjoy medical innovation without paying their fair share.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

**************************




17 October, 2018

Trump wins again

Even the Leftist writer below has to acknowledge that

“60 Minutes” aired an interview with President Donald Trump — rare for its status as having appeared outside of Fox News or conservative media. Appearing the same weekend as First Lady Melania Trump’s appearance on “20/20,” this would seem to represent a new level of media blitzing on the part of an administration that’s already seen its head get plenty of free promotion during rallies broadcast on cable news. And, like Melania Trump’s utterly-on-message, relentlessly forward-moving TV interview, the president’s interview had effectively the same impact as a rally; it allowed him to bulldoze his chief enemy, the media, while airing his own points at ceaseless length. The lesson the media has evidently not learned yet is not to be sitting right there when he does it.

Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump was an undeniable get; he’d been scarce on mainstream media since around the time he appeared on tape with NBC’s Lester Holt and indicated he’d fired former FBI Director James Comey in part due to the Russia investigation. But the interview seemed governed by two motives, both of which played into the hands of a media-savvy president whose refusal to play by typical rules of engagement has been at the center of his rise.

First, Stahl seemed to want to conduct a definitive interview with Trump summarizing his presidency so far. In so doing, she skittered across the map of global and domestic issues, seeming to touch on every topic under the sun, from the ultra-current — the fate of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — to the more long-range. Questions about, say, North Korea, tariffs on China, climate change, and NATO were met with long bursts of Trumpian verbiage, spilling out so fast they seemed barely able to be edited. What fell away in editing, or what was barely allowed to happen in the time allotted, were many follow-ups.

And when follow-up questions did happen, they seemed to fall into the interview’s second trap: Trying to crack the code of Donald Trump, human being. “I wish you could go to Greenland,” Stahl mused in the brief portion of the interview dealing with climate change, “watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels.” Trump shouted her down, predictably unmoved by Stahl’s evident passion about a story imbued with dread. He won every segment of the interview because he was utterly unable to brook doubt — and, at this point, a broadcast dealing with a president who cannot face facts must be armed with real facts of their own. Stahl asked Trump about “the scientists who say [the effects of climate change are] worse than ever,” but was unprepared to cite one; knowing, now, that the human factor will not work on Trump, a broadcaster should be prepared to cite hard facts in a face-off with the president.

Not, of course, that those facts will change his mind or even elicit an unexpected answer from the Commander-in-Chief. But it felt like a missed opportunity that both so many ardent Trump fans and so many in the hazy middle tuned into an interview with the president and found so much of what was put to him phrased in loose, conversational terms. If he won’t deal with the realities of climate change (presented in this interview only in anecdotal terms of ice and hurricanes and in data, never explained, from “NOAA and NASA,” and not the recent, catastrophic United Nations report) or of abandoning NATO, the broadcaster should rush in to fill the gap. Instead, facts like these ones seemed to be assumed on the part of the viewership at home, and the silences were filled by Trump, who explained away why orthodoxies were wrong while Stahl struggled to break into his monologues. The one moment Stahl meaningfully challenged Trump was on his alliance with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un — presenting the president with a “resume” of his conversation partner’s misdeeds in his own country — but even then, the format demanded she move forward after Trump said the pair shared “a good energy.” Her next question was, verbatim, “China.” And Trump free-associated there, too.

So many of Stahl’s questions seemed premised on the notion that Trump could be brought to reason through earnest questioning that treaded somewhat lightly — but that signaled to viewers at home a certain set of values. This would have been a good playbook for a conservative-but-not-category-busting President Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, perhaps; all players could say their piece, and all could go home relatively unscathed. But even as Trump was unwilling to play along, the questions got no harder. Late in the interview, Stahl asked Trump what had been “the biggest surprise” and what he had learned as president, a question unworthy of the occasion and of time that might have been spent fleshing out answers elsewhere. (The surprise is that politicians are “vicious,” and the president went on.) Trump relentlessly talked over the follow-ups to a further question — why he didn’t bring the country together in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, seeking a moment of unity. That the president’s vanishingly rare appearance on a nonpartisan news program had resulted in a spectacle in which randomly assorted questions were bulldozed by a man eager to speak, and in which the interviewer generally left the viewers to decide what those answers meant without the benefit of meaningful follow-up, made the point clear.

By pushing through questions and by capitalizing on an interview approach seeking to synthesize his entire presidency into two segments of television, Trump effectively converted “60 Minutes” into a short rally. There are those who will see his rants as worthy, and those who will loathe them; whatever unity can be made to exist by the president exists only within those camps. That “60 Minutes” went looking for something greater is more proof than viewers needed that their approach to the president left them outmatched.

SOURCE 

For a conservative perspective on the interview, see here

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U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults — A Red Flag For Electoral Fraud

American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

Murdock counted Judicial Watch's state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That's 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don't have that many people.

Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don't have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.

California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.

Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation's most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That's a huge number of possible votes in an election.

But, Murdock notes, "California's San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138% registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters."

State by state, this is an enormous problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. Having so many bogus voters out there is a temptation to voter fraud. In California, where Hillary Clinton racked up a massive majority over Trump, it would have made little difference.

But in other states, and in smaller elections, voter fraud could easily turn elections. A hundred votes here, a hundred votes there, and things could be very different. As a Wikipedia list of close elections shows, since just 2000 there have been literally dozens of elections at the state, local and federal level decided by 100 votes or fewer.

And, in at least two nationally important elections in recent memory, the outcome was decided by a paper-thin margin: In 2000, President Bush beat environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore by just 538 votes.

Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, won his seat by beating incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008. Coleman was initially declared the winner the day after the election, with a 726-vote lead over Franken. But after a controversial series of recounts and ballot disqualifications, Franken emerged weeks later with a 225-seat victory.

Franken's win was enormous, since it gave Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate. So, yes, small vote totals matter.

We're not saying here that Franken cheated, nor, for that matter, that Bush did. But small numbers can have an enormous impact on our nation's governance. The 3.5 million possible fraudulent ballots that exist are a problem that deserves serious immediate attention. Nothing really hinges on it, of course, except the integrity and honesty of our democratic elections.

SOURCE 

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Stormy Daniels’ Defamation Suit Against Trump Dismissed: Daniels Ordered To Pay Trump’s Legal Fees

This is not a good day for Stormy Daniels and her creepy porn lawyer (CPL). A federal judge dismissed Daniels’ defamation suit against President Trump today.

Stormy filed a defamation suit against President Trump after he mocked her over a sketch of the man who allegedly threatened her–the man in the sketch looked eerily like her ex-husband.

The U.S. District Judge dismissed the case on grounds Trump’s tweet was “rhetorical hyperbole,” not defamatory as Stormy Daniels alleged.

President Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder released a statement saying the President is entitled to an award of his attorney’s fees against Stormy Daniels. The amount to be awarded to President Trump will be announced at a later date, Harder said.

SOURCE 

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Self-made billionaire and Minecraft creator Markus Persson says that the political left has “literally been taken over by evil.”

Persson, who is an award-winning video game programmer and designer, made the comments on Twitter during a discussion about how the left deploys ad hominem slurs and insults against its political adversaries.

Tweeting from his verified ‘@Notch’ account to 3.7 million followers, the 39-year-old Swede wrote, “I know people don’t like it when I point this out, but the left has been taken over by evil,” adding, “And I mean that literally.”

He went on to agree with another Twitter user that intersectional feminists were actively working to deprive other people of rights, remarking that such individuals are intent on “selfishness, greed, lying, and willingness to cause suffering.”

 Persson has proven himself willing to address political issues in the past, having previously tweeted “It’s ok to be white” while arguing that white privilege is a “made up metric.”

He also tweeted that there should be a “heterosexual pride day,” but subsequently walked back the comment.

SOURCE 

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House Majority Leader To Roll Out Fully Funded Border Wall Bill

A leading House Republican this week said under legislation he is introducing, Congress will finally build that wall.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Tuesday that he will call for full funding to build President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall between the United Sates and Mexico, Breitbart reported.

“Few things are more fundamental to a nation than a protected border,” McCarthy tweeted Tuesday. “Proud to introduce the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act.”

McCarthy is among those expected to make a bid for the post of House speaker, assuming Republicans maintain control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

Ohio’s Jim Jordan, a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, are also mentioned as possible GOP contenders for the speaker’s chair, Roll Call reported.

The bill McCarthy is proposing would allocate $23.4 billion towards wall construction. Congress has already approved $1.6 billion toward building the wall.

McCarthy’s proposal will address other immigration- and crime-related issues such as sanctuary cities and criminal gangs.

Trump last month vented his objections to the fact that Congress had not funded the wall.

“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms?” Trump tweeted. “Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!”

McCarthy said his bill is necessary to protect the nation. “For decades, America’s inability to secure our borders and stop illegal immigration has encouraged millions to undertake a dangerous journey to come here in violation of our laws and created a huge loophole to the legal channels to the immigration process where America welcomes immigrants to our country,” McCarthy said in a statement published by Breitbart.

“President Trump’s election was a wake-up call to Washington. The American people want us to build the wall and enforce the law. Maintaining strong borders is one of the basic responsibilities of any nation. For too long, America has failed in this responsibility,” McCarthy said.

But funding the wall has been a divisive issue ever since Trump took office, and outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan does not see that changing.

“We intend on having a full-fledged discussion on how to complete our mission to secure the border and yes, we will have a fight about this,” the Wisconsin Republican said Monday, according to the Washington Examiner.

SOURCE 

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Real Economics

Walter E. Williams
    
A widely anticipated textbook, “Universal Economics,” has just been published by Liberty Fund. Its authors are two noted UCLA economists, the late Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen. Editor Jerry L. Jordan was their student and later became a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, as well as the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Professor Alchian was probably the greatest microeconomic theorist of the 20th century, while Professor Allen’s genius was in the area of international trade and the history of economic thought. Both were tenacious mentors of mine during my student days at UCLA in the mid-1960s and early ‘70s.

“Universal Economics’” 680 pages, not including its glossary and index, reflect a friendly chat I had with Professor Alchian during one of the UCLA economics department’s weekly faculty/graduate student coffee hour, in which he said, “Williams, the true test of whether someone understands his subject is whether he can explain it to someone who doesn’t know a darn thing about it.” That’s precisely what “Universal Economics” does — explain economics in a way that anyone can understand. There’s no economic jargon, just a tiny bit of simple mathematics and a few graphs.

Chapter 1 introduces the fundamental issue that faces all of mankind — scarcity. How does one know whether things are scarce? That’s easy. When human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants, we say that there’s scarcity. The bounds to human wants do not frequently reveal themselves; however, the means to satisfy those wants are indeed limited. Thus, scarcity creates conflict issues — namely, what things will be produced, how will they be produced, when will they be produced and who will get them? Analyzing those issues represents the heart of microeconomics.

Alchian and Allen want your study of economics to be “interesting and enjoyable.” They caution: “You’ll be brainwashed — in the ‘desirable’ sense of removing erroneous beliefs. You will begin to suspect that a vast majority of what people popularly believe about economic events is at least misleading and often wrong.” The authors give a long list of erroneous beliefs that people hold. Here’s a tiny sample: Employers pay for employer-provided insurance; larger incomes for some people require smaller incomes for others; minimum wage legislation helps the unskilled and minorities; foreign imports reduce the number of domestic jobs; “equal pay for equal work” laws aid women, minorities and the young; labor unions protect the natural brotherhood and collective well-being of workers against their natural enemies, employers; and we cannot compete in a world in which most foreign wages are lower than wages paid to domestic workers.

One of Professor Alchian’s major contributions to economic science is in the area of property rights and its effect on the outcomes observed. The essence of private property rights contains three components: the owner’s right to make decisions about the uses of what’s deemed his property; his right to acquire, keep and dispose of his property; and his right to enjoy the income, as well as bear losses, resulting from his decisions. If one or more of those three elements is missing, private property rights are not present. Private property rights also restrain one from interfering with other people’s rights. Private property rights have long been seen as vital to personal liberty. James Madison, in an 1829 speech at the Virginia Constitutional Convention, said: “It is sufficiently obvious that persons and property are the two great subjects on which governments are to act and that the rights of persons and the rights of property are the objects for the protection of which government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.”

At the end of many of “Universal Economics’” 42 chapters, there’s a section named “Questions and Meditations.” Here’s my guarantee: If you know and can understand those questions and answers, you will be better trained than the average economist teaching or working in Washington, D.C.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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16 October, 2018

Kanye West: The Trump Economy is Delivering The American Dream

It’s no secret Kanye is a fan of President Trump. Recently, he was greeted with boos for performing a pro-Trump riff as the closing musical act on “Saturday Night Live.” Kanye says his support for President Trump stems from the ability “to do the impossible,” but hardly the first prominent African American suggest as much.

While in law school, former President Barack Obama said that American’s commitment to “individual freedom and mobility” transcends race. Americans as a whole, he wrote, have such “unfounded optimism” their American Dream is to be Donald Trump. In a fateful twist of irony, Trump has done in two years what Obama could not achieve in eight — creating a climate of opportunity for minorities to achieve the American Dream.

Trump and Congressional Republicans have enacted significant tax cuts, repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate, reformed the banking system, and rolled-back a host of oppressive Obama-era regulations.  The outcomes speak for themselves: 4.2-percent GDP growth last quarter, wages are on the rise, and unemployment is at a 50-year low.

For minority communities, the booming economy has been nothing short of a miracle — the wand has been waived and jobs are coming back. African-American unemployment is 6.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is at 4.5 percent, and Asian-American unemployment is at an astonishing 2.7 percent. Cumulatively, these are some of the lowest unemployment numbers since race-based records began in the 1970s.

In a reboot of his 2012 “you didn’t build that” message to business owners, Mr. Obama has hit the campaign trail taking credit for Trump’s economy. With the mid-term elections on the horizon, it’s important for all minorities to take stock of the gains over the last two years and fully understand the platform Democrats are running on.

Mr. Obama said in a recent speech that Democrats are running on “good new ideas” like “reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts,” “putting a price on carbon” and “Medicare for all.”  These are not “good new ideas,” they are doubling down on old failed ideas.

Perhaps one of the most significant provisions of last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the permanent reduction of the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.  According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation “[e]conomic evidence indicates that it is workers who bear the final burden of the corporate income tax, and that corporate income taxes are the most harmful for economic growth – raising this tax rate is not advisable.”

The only thing egregious about the TCJA’s corporate income tax cut was that it was not done sooner.

With respect to pricing carbon, well it’s not a new idea at all. In 2009, Nancy Pelosi passed a carbon cap-and-trade bill out of the U.S. House of Representatives, but Harry Reid just couldn’t get the votes for it in the U.S. Senate despite his comfortable majority. This legislative failure didn’t stop Mr. Obama from attempting to regulate the energy industry at every turn.

Thanks in part to President Trump’s regulatory rollback in the energy sector; the United States is now the world’s top producer of oil, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. This is more welcome news for minority communities. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that in this pro-development climate the oil and gas industry will create another 444 thousand jobs for minority workers by 2025.

As for Medicare for all, well that’s a $32 Trillion boondoggle that is unmoored from economic and political realities.   The fact remains all of these “new ideas” from Democrats would expand the size and scope of government – which has been shown to negatively impact economic growth – and return the United States to the old “new normal” of continual stagnation of the Obama years.

Kanye’s right, President Trump is doing the impossible and for the first time since the Great Recession, “unfounded optimism” has transcended race and faith in the American Dream has been restored.  Mr. Obama’s rhetoric may have provided hope in the past, but Trump’s actions delivered on the change.

SOURCE  

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Socialism Destroys

John Stossel
    
Socialism is hot. Famous actors recently made a commercial proclaiming that “democratic socialism” creates some of the best parts of America. It’s “your kids’ public school” (says Susan Sarandon), the “interstate highway system” (Rosario Dawson), “public libraries” (Jay Ferguson), “EMTs” (Ethan Embry), “workers who plow our streets” (Max Carver) and “scientists” (Danny DeVito).

Wow. I guess every popular thing government does is socialism.

The celebrities conclude: “We can do better when we do them together.”

There is sometimes truth to that, but the movie stars don’t know that America’s first highways were built by capitalist contractors. They also probably didn’t notice that the more popular parts of government — public schools, EMTs, snow plowing, libraries, etc. — are largely locally funded.

“They should wake up,” says Gloria Alvarez. She is from Guatemala and says, “I’ve seen the impact of socialism. My father escaped Cuba. My grandfather suffered under Communists in Hungary before escaping.”

This week I turn my video channel over to Alvarez so she can give her perspective on democratic socialism’s new popularity.

“As a child, I was taught to mock socialism,” she says, “but democratic socialism sounded OK. It made sense that government should take care of the economy. Then I watched democratic socialism fail in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay. I learned that every time a country started down the socialist path, it fails.”

But every time a country tries it, even just a little of it, people applaud. When Castro came to power, people cheered because he was going to help the poor and make everyone equal.

But governments can’t plan things efficiently without the prices and constant individual decision-making that free markets provide.

The result in Cuba was economic stagnation and horrible loss of freedom.

Cuban refugees who now live in Miami’s “Little Havana” neighborhood warn Americans about socialist promises. Michel Ibarra told Alvarez, “You don’t see any future. Everything is stagnated. Health care, education — nowadays they’re in ruins.”

Venezuela didn’t learn from Cuba’s problems. They voted in Hugo Chavez when he said that “capitalism is the realm of injustice” and promised wealth would be distributed equally.

But when there was no more money left to take from rich people, he did what many governments (including our own) do: He printed more. That’s caused inflation approaching 1 million percent.

When business owners raised prices to try to keep up, Chavez and his successor just seized many of them. Again, Venezuelans applauded. Taking from the rich is popular. Ramon Muchacho, a former mayor in Caracas, told Alvarez that when Chavez seized businesses, people were “clapping so hard. They were like, ‘Oh, finally there is somebody here making social justice!’”

But government grabbing private businesses creates shortages. Governments aren’t good at running supermarkets. One Venezuelan refugee told Alvarez, “It’s like the apocalypse. No food. No medicine.”

But in the U.S., socialism still holds appeal.

“Plenty of (socialist) countries are nothing like Venezuela,” says comedian John Oliver.

“When I talk about democratic socialism, I am not looking at Venezuela,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders, “not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark, like Sweden.”

So many American politicians now cite Denmark as a socialist paradise that Denmark’s prime minister felt compelled to go on TV to say, “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

Exactly. Socialism, democratic or tyrannical, means government owns or controls businesses. In Scandinavia, business is largely left alone. Governments don’t even set a minimum wage. Economic freedom rankings give Scandinavian countries high scores on property rights and business freedom.

Those countries do have big welfare programs, but they are funded by thriving free enterprise. In addition, many cut back on their welfare programs after they discovered they were unsustainable or discouraged work.

Think about that the next time you hear celebrities saying “Sweden” and praising socialism.

As one Venezuelan refugee told Alvarez, “You don’t need the government to dictate how to live your life, how much money you should make, how your family should be treated.”

Increased government control rarely helps people. It wrecks economies. It wrecks lives

SOURCE 

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How Democrat Rage is Destroying America

A deranged radical movement gets high on its own fury.

“Use the rage,” former Attorney General Eric Holder scream-tweeted. “Get people out to vote and be rid of these people.”

Had President Trump urged his supporters to channel their rage into politics, the quote would have been good for a week of sanctimonious media lectures about his destruction of democratic norms. Not to mention his dangerous divisiveness, the risk of violence and the high price of tea in Outer Mongolia.

But the media has neither the interest nor the inclination to even note Holder’s ‘rage’ tweet. It’s too busy preaching anger, fury and hatred to the same shrieking choir of maddened lefties screaming at the sky, having meltdowns on social media and clawing madly at the doors of the Supreme Court.

"We need to stay angry about Kavanaugh," E.J. Dionne Jr. fulminates in the Washington Post. But that’s nothing compared to the New York Times where the old gray lady is frenziedly distempered all the time.

"Get Angry, and Get Involved," an op-ed screeches. "Tears, Fury or Action: How Do You Express Anger?", an op-ed from a few days before shrills. “Fury Is a Political Weapon And Women Need to Wield It,” a third howls.  That’s a lot of anger from the megaphone of the privileged wealthy northeastern left.

There hasn’t been this much peevishness on Martha’s Vineyard since they raised the yacht docking fees.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are echoing Holder’s call for political anger. Rage will solve all of America’s problems. If the Democrats stay angry, they’ll take over the government and be truly ready to unleash their rage on “these people”. Otherwise known as the rest of the country.

Even as the media preaches the virtues of leftist rage, it warns about the threat of Republican anger.

"Brett Kavanaugh's Anger May be Backfiring," the Washington Post had hopefully speculated earlier. "Judge Kavanaugh is One Angry Man," the New York Times spat. "Kavanaugh Borrows From Trump's Playbook on White Male Anger," it threw in.

But there’s a fundamental difference between Kavanaugh’s anger and that of the media left.

Brett Kavanaugh was angry because he had been falsely accused of rape by the media, with no actual evidence. His life was torn apart. His family, as he testified, had been “destroyed”. Democrats demanded that a 53-year-old man account for every detail of his high school and college years.

His accuser was held to zero standards while he was told to disprove an accusation lacking basic essentials like a specific time, place and witnesses. Had a black teen in the ghetto been hit with equally flimsy charges, the left would have gone into a rage tantrum in support of the accused rapist.

But, unlike Brett, the left wasn’t angry because it had been personally abused. Despite the efforts to pass off paid leftist activists as “sexual assault survivors”, the progressive bilious bile was purely political.

Kavanaugh was angry because his life had been destroyed. The left is angry because it wants power.

Leftist political anger inflicted sadistic torments on Brett Kavanaugh for political reasons. And the media pretends that this political anger is somehow more worthy than that the outrage of its victim.

Obama activists, Senate Dems, Soros social justice flunkies, sleazy lawyers and fake news reporters put a decent man through hell so that they could, as Holder tweeted, “use the rage” in the midterm elections.

The media left demanded to know what right Brett Kavanaugh had to be angry. They mocked his pain, ridiculed his suffering with the venal contempt and snarky hatred that now passes for leftist comedy.

But a better question would be what right does the left have to its endless anger?

Eight years of running the country didn’t leave it any more generous toward its opponents, any less hungry for power, or any less tribal, partisan and furious than it had been in 2007. The left isn’t angry because it cares about rape victims. Not when it’s lining up to buy tickets to Bill and Hillary’s latest tour.

It’s angry because, as Holder tweeted, it wants power.

And it’s willing to destroy every political, civic, cultural, social and moral norm to get it. The left doesn’t believe in norms because it doesn’t believe in any compromise or standard. All it has is its will to power.

Some people have the right to win elections (Hillary Clinton) and others (Donald Trump) don’t. Some justices have the right to be confirmed without campaigns of personal destruction (Democrat nominees like Kagan and Sotomayor) and others (Republican nominees like Bork, Thomas and Kavanaugh) don’t.

And some people have the right to be angry (New York Times and Washington Post readers) and others (Trump supporters and Front Page Magazine readers) don’t. The entitlement of double standards is essential to the leftist quest for power which is about manufacturing perceived inequality in order to administrate mandates of total inequality. Disparate impact justifies affirmative action. If black workers or students underperform, then poor white workers and students must go to the back of the line.

But if replacing the norms of political discourse with livid tantrums is bad, then it’s bad for everyone.

There’s no way to mandate anger as affirmative action. If you insult, deprive and oppress people, they will become angry. And the only thing you can do is get angry right back or outlaw their anger.

The choleric left is working on the latter. But in its conniption fits, it’s settling for the former.

It deprives people of their rights and it responds to their anger with more anger. In its rage, it wipes out every political and social norm it can manage until its opponents are being hounded out of restaurants, fired from their jobs, assaulted on the street, shot at charity baseball games, smeared as rapists, doxed by reporters and staffers, censored on the internet and eavesdropped on by corrupt federal agencies.

There isn’t a legal or political norm that Obama didn’t violate during his time in office. Reporters were spied on. So were Republicans. The IRS and the FBI were used to target political opponents. A man was sent to jail for making a YouTube video. The DOJ was used to go after folks who mocked Obama.

After eight years of political terror, the Democrats have settled into accusing their political opponents of treason and demanding their imprisonment, everything from intimidation to death threats to attempted murder, and trying to destroy a Supreme Court nominee based on the most baseless allegations.

This is what leftists have done to our political norms. And what enrages them about Kavanaugh is not any feigned concern for our political norms, but that our norms survived their tantrums and dirty tricks.

The media claimed that Brett Kavanaugh should not sit on the Supreme Court by reason of his temperament. That’s rich coming from a deranged political movement getting high on its own fury.

"If you're not angry yet, you should be," a riled New York Times editorial yelps. A forum for readers discusses their struggles “expressing rage” and urges them to turn “anger into action”.

The media used to believe that basing national politics around anger was destructively bad. Now it’s been radicalized enough that it celebrates hate, rancor and rage. As long as it’s leftist rage.

Love can be one-sided. But anger rarely is.

When the media riles up leftist fury, it’s also rousing Republican anger. The Kavanaugh hearings are a clear example of how rage-driven abuses by the left lead to a wrathful reaction on the right.

The Democrats and their media allies furiously preach anger, and their rage is tearing apart America.

SOURCE 

**********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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15 October, 2018

America's Insulated Elites

They protect themselves from the consequences of polices and ideas they inflict on the rest of us

Few things are more worthy of disdain than America’s elites and their penchant for insulating themselves from the consequences of polices and ideas they inflict on the rest of us.

In 1986, our elitist class determined that unambiguous amnesty for 2.7 million illegal aliens — in exchange for shutting down the border and cracking down on businesses who hired illegals going forward — was the way to go. Americans were also assured this was the last time they would have to endure what amounted to the elevation of political expediency over the Rule of Law.

It was all lies.

During the Obama administration, the lying got worse. Years of record-breaking border surges were sold to the American public as another Democrat “what about the children” effort, and the term Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) became part of the Democrat-Leftmedia lexicon, with all the attendant implications that anyone who would resist allowing illegal children to flood across the border was xenophobic and heartless.

Again, it was all lies. In 2017, it was revealed that nearly 30% of the UACs being held by the U.S. in dormitories were teens with gang ties. “Operation Matador,” an effort by law enforcement officials aimed at combatting transnational gangs in Long Island, the New York City metropolitan area, and Hudson Valley, precipitated 475 arrests. Of those arrests, 227 were criminal arrests and 248 were “administrative immigration arrests,” as in those made to combat terror or control illegal immigration. MS-13 gang members comprised 274 of the arrests and most were apprehended in Nassau and Suffolk counties. During a May 2017 meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini revealed that the MS-13 gang was linked to 38% of all the homicides in that county over the preceding 16 months, and that 4,624 UACs had been placed in the county since 2013.

Now one might think the upsurge in the brutal gang violence that is an MS-13 speciality — including reports the gang has called for assassinating law enforcement officials — might precipitate a reassessment by our elites regarding sanctuary policies. Yet the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has declared itself a “sanctuary diocese,” using its 129 churches to shield illegals from arrest and deportation. Nassau County sanctuary policies protected a previously deported illegal now accused of raping a woman. And Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent a “cease and desist” letter to ICE, insisting its raids netting 225 suspected illegals — 180 of whom had criminal convictions — were unconstitutional and “un-American.”

The same Andrew Cuomo is routinely surrounded by armed security.

Other New York elites are securing themselves as well. While ordinary folk on Long Island remain completely vulnerable to MS-13 brutality, billionaires who vacation in places like the Hamptons are turning their mansions into de facto fortresses, replete with luxury “panic” rooms. “People used to open up their garages and show off their Lamborghinis,” explains Herman Weisberg, managing director of the personal-security firm Sage Intelligence Group. “Now they take guests to the wine bar in their safe room.”

And while the safe rooms go up, so does the influx of MS-13 gang members. According to Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector Chief Manuel Padilla Jr., the number of arrests of MS-13 gang members in his sector has increased by well over 200%.

How many others evaded arrest?

East Coast elites aren’t alone. “I finished a [security] system for $100 million,” said Al Corbi, president of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments), in reference to a project he recently completed on the West Coast. “That sounds like a lot but there is nothing I know of, human or manmade, that could possibly harm this family for three generations, including global nuclear holocaust, a pandemic, or a second Ice Age.”

For other elites, domestic fortresses are insufficient. Seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have purchased bunkers and placed them in New Zealand. “New Zealand is an enemy of no one,” said Gary Lynch, general manager of the Rising S Co. that produced the bunkers. “It’s not a nuclear target. It’s not a target for war. It’s a place where people seek refuge.”

Refuge, or escape from the consequences of their own policies? “The communications kingpins of California have no allegiance to ordinary Californians — or ordinary Americans, for that matter,” asserts columnist Edward Ring. “To them, ordinary people are Pavlovian proles, expendable parasites that pollute the environment. To the extent these kingpins have compassion, it is to profitably create for the expendable multitudes a benign zoo; smart cities of high rises, contained in areas as geographically minute as possible, so that only wild nature, corporate farms, and private estates of the super-rich exist outside the urban containment boundaries.”

On almost every issue that roils the nation, there is a gargantuan disconnect between elites and ordinary Americans. Those who yell loudest for gun control live in gated communities and/or are surrounded by armed guards, even as they produce ultra-violent cultural sewage for the masses to consume; those who speak in glowing terms about a globalist economy and open borders don’t go near “flyover” America’s economically ravaged towns and cities that bear the brunt; those who rail about the ravages of global warming travel in private jets, and live in huge mansions; those who would turn you and your children into social media addicts prevent their own families from getting addicted; those who champion public education put their own children in private school.

And if you don’t like who the “little people” elected as president? Attempt to precipitate a coup d'etat.

That every bit of it reeks of rank hypocrisy? Communication titans make sure most Americans are too distracted and angry to notice. “If you watch TV news or read most mainstream media, you would believe our country is in meltdown,” writes columnist Salena Zito. She wrote her column while visiting Western Pennsylvania, where she spoke with Green Party mayoral candidate, and black American, Darcelle Slappy, who has it exactly right. “Unlike Washington, we are all just a few notches from each other in either direction,” Slappy asserts, referring to her community where people differing political persuasions — and ethnicities — somehow manage to get along. “We have much more that draws us together than divides us, she adds. "The real division is between the elites and us.”

These elites continue cultivating those divisions with as much relish as they can muster. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” declares former Democrat Party standard-bearer Hillary Clinton. “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

No power, no civility? Clinton has issued a clarion call to the same useful-idiot mob that made an utter mockery of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. And if her extortionist drivel precipitates widespread violence?

Clinton, like all her fellow elites, will remain safe and sound.

SOURCE 

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The Party of Evil
    
The Democrats and their parrots and lapdogs in the liberal media never stop accusing people on the right of being racists, sexists and homophobes.

But if you pay even the slightest attention to what the left says and does, you know that they are the real bigots.

They’re the ones who thought it was real funny - and perfectly OK - when a “Saturday Night Live” skit on the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings last weekend used the word “queen” and other gay-world references to imply that Republican Senator Lindsay Graham was secretly gay.

The left are also the ones who didn’t complain the other night when Don Lemon laughed along with his panel of CNN nobodies as they mocked Kanye West for being President Trump’s “token Negro.”

If any Republican or Fox News host ever referred to someone like Lemon “queen” or called him CNN’s “token Negro,” they’d be branded a racist homophobe by the liberal media and forced off the air forever.

The latest example of the left’s devious wordplay is its new definition of the word “mob.”

Tucker Carlson, who said the mindless anti-Kavanaugh protesters banging on the Supreme Court’s doors last week reminded him of zombies from the Netflix series “The Walking Dead,” correctly called them a “mob.”

But CNN and their liberal ilk disagreed.

As far as they are concerned, only right-wingers can become a dangerous mob - like the angry Tea Party activists who showed up and shouted at political meetings back in 2010.

Creepy Antifa kids disrupting traffic and harassing old folks in Portland?

Gangs of progressive screamers showing up in restaurants to publicly harass Republican officials or politicians?

The leftwing media say they are not really “mobs.”

They’re principled, youthful protestors trying to build a kinder, gentler, socialist world for every American who’s not rich enough to buy their own car.

The voting public is not fooled by this double standard in the liberal media.

They know it’s not Republicans who are telling their people to chase politicians or pundits out of restaurants.

They know it’s Democrats like Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Irresponsible Democrats like her are going to get someone killed - a Republican someone.

It almost happened last year when their attacks on President Trump and Republicans incited some “progressive” nut ball to start shooting Republican congressmen practicing at a Washington baseball field.

Now, thanks to the Democrats’ ugly smear campaign against Judge Kavanaugh, Republican senators like Susan Collins and Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders need security guards 24/7.

It’s not the new Supreme Court Justice who’s evil.

It’s the Democrat Party and the nasty “progressives” who’ve taken it over and are willing to say or do anything or destroy anyone to bring down President Trump.

Maybe this is not something new. Maybe the Democrats have always been this evil.

Maybe my father foresaw the future when he said in the early 1960s that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the party left him.

Where are the Hubert Humphreys, Scoop Jacksons and Daniel Moynihans? Where are great Democratic statesmen of yesterday? They don’t exist.

The Democrat Party is no longer the Party of FDR. It’s the party of destruction.

Sometimes it almost makes me glad that my father is not alive to witness this sad state of our politics - or FDR. Or Lincoln. Or the Founding Fathers.

SOURCE 

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Alaska GOP Considering Whether To Throw Murkowski Out Of GOP For Opposing Kavanaugh

The Alaska Republican party has requested that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) submit any information she has that might dissuade them from reprimanding her for opposing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

As AP reports, “Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock says the committee could decide to issue a statement. Or he says it could withdraw support of Murkowski, encourage party officials to look for a replacement and ask that she not seek re-election as a Republican.”

Babcock noted that the Alaska GOP has, in the past, withdrawn support for other Republicans who caucused with Democrats.

After Murkowski voted against cloture last Friday, indicating she would vote against Kavanaugh in the Senate vote for confirmation to the Supreme Court, Babcock said he was "surprised." He added, "It's significant enough that I'm going to convene the whole state central committee, which is about 80 grassroots volunteers around the state, and we'll start drafting what our response should be.”

SOURCE 

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The Democrats’ Kavanaugh Backfire

Republicans have been so angered by the Democrat’s anti Kavanaugh antics that they look to be motivated to prevent any ‘blue wave’ in next month’s mid-term elections.

The Federalist Papers reports:

Democrats seem to expect a “blue wave” that puts them in control of the House and maybe even the Senate. The latest poll however might put a damper on Democrats expectations and has good news for Republicans:

After a blistering confirmation battle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh will take his seat for oral arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court with a skeptical public, a majority of which opposed his nomination.

However, Democrats may not be able to exploit this fact in the upcoming elections as much as they hope, because the independent voters overwhelmingly disapprove of their own handling of the nomination by a 28-point margin, a new CNN/SSRS poll finds.

Overall, just 41 percent of those polled said they wanted to see Kavanaugh confirmed, compared to 51 percent who said they opposed his confirmation. In previous CNN polls dating back to Robert Bork in 1987, no nominee has been more deeply underwater.

What’s interesting, however, is even though Democrats on the surface would seem to have public opinion on their side, just 36 percent approved of how they handled the nomination, compared to 56 percent who disapproved. (Republicans were at 55 percent disapproval and 35 percent approval).

A further breakdown finds that 58 percent of independents disapproved of the way the Democrats handled the nomination — compared to 30 percent who approved. (Independents also disapproved of Republicans handling of the matter, but by a narrower 53 percent to 32 percent margin).

SOURCE 

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Media Research Center Reports That 92% of Stories on Donald Trump Are Negative

We see why Trump has to be his own news organization

In a Wednesday morning tweet, President Donald J. Trump referenced a Media Research Center study by Rich Noyes of NewsBusters that shows, as Trump stated, “92% of stories on Donald Trump are negative.”

“Despite so many positive events and victories, Media Research Center reports that 92% of stories on Donald Trump are negative on ABC, CBS and ABC,” wrote President Donald J. Trump on his Twitter page. “It is FAKE NEWS! Don’t worry, the Failing New York Times didn’t even put the Brett Kavanaugh victory on the Front Page yesterday-A17!”

According to the Media Research Center study by NewsBusters, “Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a President in TV news history — 92 percent negative, vs. just eight percent positive.”

MRC analysts reviewed all 1,007 evening news stories about President Trump’s administration on ABC, CBS and NBC from June 1 to September 30 for the report. That’s 1,960 minutes of airtime.

“[O]ver the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia,” notes the study. “The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one percent of the four-month total).”

The Russia “collusion” investigation saw the most coverage during the time-span of the study, with 342 minutes and was 97 percent negative. Next was immigration policies, making up 308 minutes of the coverage, 94 percent of which was negative. Coverage of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh was third with 291 minutes at 82 percent negative coverage. Coming in fourth was North Korean diplomacy with 179 minutes of coverage, 90 percent of which was negative. Lastly, relations with Putin’s Russia saw 151 minutes of coverage with 99 percent of the coverage being negative.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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14 October, 2018

The Left is promising to abuse power if they win; voters should take them seriously

In 2005, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Kelo v. New London, diminishing Americans’ property rights. The ruling said that governments can seize your home through eminent domain, even if their intention is merely to hand the land over to private developers.

Conservatives saw this as one more bad ruling from a Supreme Court that issued a whole lot of them. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was a bit more sanguine, and her famous response exemplifies the respect and reverence that liberals once had for the Supreme Court, just so long as it was influencing culture and moving the national conversation in a way they liked.

“It is a decision of the Supreme Court,” she said, emphasizing its finality. “If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken.”

Today, the Left is in a panic because they fear that God’s voice (and perhaps even his wrath) are about to turn against them. And it is making them very dangerous. The Supreme Court’s composition is changing, and they have responded like cornered animals, with their vicious and desperate campaign of slander and political dirty tricks during the confirmation process of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Liberals are so accustomed to getting their way that they cannot control themselves. They fear an era is coming to an end, and they want to prevent this. So before the newly reinforced, John Roberts-led court has heard a case or issued a single ruling, they are already doing everything in their power to delegitimize the institution they once looked upon as almost God.

The Left has vilified the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of our legal system and an indispensable moral principle as well. For even outside of criminal court, decent people simply don’t brook accusations that are presented without even the hint of corroborating evidence. Without proof, it is gossip, and especially so when the story is inconsistent and lacks basic details that could lead to proof one way or the other. The organizers of the not-insignificant Women’s March are assailing Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as a rape apologist for merely adhering to this time-tested principle. This is how they treat anyone with whom they disagree.

The death threats and vile messages that progressive activists have aimed at Kavanaugh and his family, as well as at Republican senators’ offices and homes and families, is a clear statement of who they are, and why the nation will suffer if they are ever returned to power.

The Democrats who caused and put on the entire Kavanaugh farce are already promising to abuse their power further, if the voters will only give more of it to them. They are promising a scurrilous impeachment of Kavanaugh, and also to pack the Supreme Court if given the chance. Why? Because they are angry, and they don’t respect the rules and norms of government, and they are not mature or clever enough to wait to reveal this until they have power.

The same party that originally went nuclear on judicial confirmations — a temptation Republicans resisted ten years earlier in the same circumstances — have also brainwashed themselves into believing that they played no role in the breakdown of comity in our institutions of government. This makes them especially dangerous. Having failed to accept the outcome of the 2016 election, they are now trying to place an asterisk next to a lawfully and constitutionally confirmed Supreme Court justice.

In truth, the only cloud over Kavanaugh is the one that they worked hard — but not hard enough — to put there. When they promise to abuse power, and to be even more ruthless next time (it’s hard to imagine how they could do that without physical violence), voters should take them seriously

SOURCE 

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Amid Pressure From White House, Turkish Court Frees Evangelical Pastor Andrew Brunson

"Working very hard on Pastor Brunson!" President Trump tweeted Friday morning, just as news reports said a Turkish court has finally freed Brunson from house arrest. "My thoughts and prayers are with Pastor Brunson, and we hope to have him safely back home soon!" the president said in a second tweet.

And a short time later, a third tweet from Trump: "PASTOR BRUNSON JUST RELEASED. WILL BE HOME SOON!"

Pastor Andrew Brunson, an evangelical preacher from North Carolina, was arrested two years ago, after two decades of living and ministering in Turkey. He was charged with terrorism and espionage, charges that both he and the U.S. government refute.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative civil liberties group that represents Brunson and has worked for his release, quoted the pastor as saying, "This is the day our family has been praying for – I am delighted to be on my way home to the United States.”

"Pastor Brunson is now en route to the United States," the ACLJ said in a news release.

"President Trump and his team have been tenacious in seeking the release of Pastor Brunson,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “We’re grateful to the President, members of Congress and diplomatic leaders who continued to put pressure on Turkey to secure the freedom of Pastor Brunson. The fact that he is now on a plane to the United States can only be viewed as a significant victory for Pastor Brunson and his family.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who visited Brunson in jail and spoke directly to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the case, called this a "great day," but he said he'll wait until Brunson is back in the USA to celebrate. "When he gets home, I'll feel better," he said.

SOURCE 

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Team Trump is protecting America’s vital manufacturing, defense industrial base from big risks

This is fairly orthodox economics

America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base – vital to ensuring our national security – is under significant threat at a time when the military capabilities of China, Russia, and our other strategic competitors are growing. This is an enormously important issue that has received far less attention in the news media than it deserves.

Fortunately, President Trump has long recognized that to be strong and secure our nation must be able to rely on U.S. companies to manufacture products needed for our national defense. He understands that we must never become dependent on foreign nations to design, produce and maintain the aircraft, ground combat vehicles, ships, munitions, components of our nuclear arsenal, and space capabilities that are critically important to our nation’s defense.

Additionally, manufacturing remains a key source of jobs and our economic strength. While President Obama was content to see manufacturing jobs exit the U.S. for other nations, President Trump’s wise America First policies are strengthening American manufacturing and creating well-paid jobs for hardworking Americans.

President Trump signed an executive order in July 2017 directing the secretary of defense to assess what must be done to strengthen our manufacturing and defense industrial base. The report giving this assessment was recently released and reveals hundreds of gaps and vulnerabilities that demand immediate attention. Under this administration, they will get that attention.

This landmark report outlines ways to harness the capabilities of industry and government to work together to defend our country effectively and efficiently, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent frugally and wisely.

President Trump understands that that best way to deter our enemies and prevent war is for America to have the strongest military in the world – a goal he has achieved with increased investment in our nation’s defense. And he knows that if we are forced into a conflict, we must give the brave men and women in our armed forces what they need to prevail overwhelmingly.

Under the Obama administration, years of dangerous cuts in America’s defense budget put our national security at risk and failed to give members of our military what they needed to protect us.

To Make American Great Again we must Make American Manufacturing Great Again – something President Trump realized long before he declared his candidacy for the presidency. He has been acting on that since the day he entered the Oval Office.

Overregulation, too much bureaucratic red tape and outdated defense purchasing practices have made it hard for manufacturers to supply us with the vital equipment our military needs and have discouraged innovation by these suppliers.

And past administrations have allowed China and other nations to steal the intellectual property that American companies have worked years to develop.

All of this has contributed to the exodus of American jobs and American manufacturing capabilities to other nations – an exodus President Trump is reversing.

The new Defense Department assessment also identifies alarming shortages in the number of American workers needed to keep our manufacturing and defense industrial base strong and healthy. This points to the need for our country to educate and train more Americans to fill jobs – from software engineers to industrial welders – that will provide them with secure long-term employment and make our nation more secure as well.

A recent survey found nearly 73 percent of American manufacturing firms say the inability to find and retain workers with critical skills is their top challenge. This is unacceptable and must change.

To Make American Great Again we must Make American Manufacturing Great Again – something President Trump realized long before he declared his candidacy for the presidency. He has been acting on that since the day he entered the Oval Office.

And it’s important that we have multiple American manufacturers to supply our defense needs – so the Defense Department need not be dependent on a sole supplier for crucial military equipment.

Competition leads to greater efficiency and innovation by manufacturers and holds down prices – benefitting the American taxpayer. And if we are dependent on only one company to make military equipment and that company goes out of business or decides to stop making the equipment, we are in trouble.

This is not a theoretical risk – it is something we are faced with today on a number of fronts.

For example, “sole source purchasing” risk exists with large-caliber gun barrels for armored vehicles and mortar tubes, which the Army buys from only one government-run arsenal.

“Single source risk,” in which the Defense Department has only one qualified supplier, manifests itself in the production of ammonium perchlorate – a chemical widely used by the Defense Department as a propellant for rockets and missiles.

Similarly, the problem of a “fragile supplier” occurs when only one company manufactures a product. This is true in the case of the rotor blade castings required for the manufacture of a Marine helicopter capable of lifting very heavy loads. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

In addition, “fragile market” risk exists for products that have no commercial applications outside of our military. This is the case with strategic radiation-hardened microelectronics – a critical component of our nuclear deterrent designed to withstand short bursts of intense radiation.

“Product security” risk threatens the physical security and cybersecurity of the manufacturing and defense industrial base. Cyberattacks on manufacturers in the defense sector are skyrocketing – nearly doubling from 2014 to 2015. You can be sure the number of these attacks will increase.

A key finding of the Defense Department assessment is that China’s increasing manufacturing dominance represents a growing risk to our military-industrial capabilities ranging from critical materials to electronics.

China’s civil-military doctrine continues to exploit areas of vulnerability through economic and cyber actions, creating a further erosion of trusted supply chains vital to manufacturing for our defense sector.

The Trump administration, with bipartisan support from the Congress, has already taken important steps to strengthen America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base.

Examples include passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, providing near-term budget stability through the 2019 fiscal year. Another example is the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $200 million to shore-up small and medium suppliers in our submarine industrial base.

The 2018 Defense Authorization Act also provides critical modernization for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Together with actions taken under the Trade Act of 1974, these changes will help defend our national security from foreign acquisition of American intellectual property and technologies.

Recent updates to the Trump administration’s conventional arms transfer policy and unmanned aerial systems export policy also support U.S. industrial base competitiveness and strengthen international alliances and partnerships.

In addition, the Defense Department is working with the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – our partners in the National Technology Industrial Base – to determine how to increase cooperation to address areas of mutual concern across global supply chains.

On top of these actions, the new Defense Department assessment lists a comprehensive set of actions government and manufacturers can take to work together to address identified risks and vulnerabilities across the range of hardware, software and workforce needs to maintain the technological superiority that protects our national security.

The Defense Department will move swiftly to address problems identified in its report with a series of reforms.

Title III of the Defense Production Act allows the president to direct already appropriated dollars to lower tiers of the supply chain providing defense-critical capabilities, oftentimes ones that lack a commercial market and are in considerable distress.

Title III is a critical tool for ensuring that the United States retains the type of capabilities our warfighters require, from specialized fuel cells for antisubmarine warfare to lithium seawater batteries used in the Navy’s future unmanned underwater vehicles.

A Labor Department task force on apprenticeship is already working to increase the number of Americans trained for skilled jobs needed for our national defense.

In addition, the Defense Department’s enhanced use of the National Defense Stockpile program will provide a buffer against sudden or severe shocks that would otherwise create supply disruptions for strategic and critical materials. Modernizing the arsenals, depots and public shipyards that provide for the readiness of our armed forces will ensure ongoing support for current and future national defense operations.

Together, all these actions embody one of the most important principles of the Trump administration: economic security is national security. As President Trump stated in his National Security Strategy issued last December, a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector and a robust and resilient defense industrial base are national strategic priorities of the highest order.

SOURCE 

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The Democrats Politics of Destruction Against the GOP’s Politics of Results

It’s “shameful to say Republicans do not care about women,” Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Tuesday, blasting Democrats’ efforts to infuriate women voters.

In a Fox News Channel interview, McDaniel implored Democrats to abandon their destructive, divisive strategy: "This is what Democrats do. They try and divide our country. They try and incite anger. That is just shameful to say Republicans do not care about women. I am a woman. I am a mother of a 15-year-old daughter. Please don't go there.”

McDaniel said that American women are seeing through the Democrats false, incendiary claims because they see that Republican policies are producing results for women and minorities:

“But that is where they are going. Because it is destroy, it's distract, it's divide our nation - let's make women so angry. Women are smarter than that. We are delivering results right now at the Republican Party from our President: 3.7% unemployment, the lowest in history for African-American and Hispanics, a 65-year low for women.

“We are a Party that is making lives better for families across this country. So Democrats will continue the politics of destruction, and we are going to continue the politics of results."

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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12 October, 2018

The Senate Is an 'Unfixable Crime Against Democracy'?

Brent Bozell makes some good points below and both he and I have written previously on why the last electoral college vote has been greatly misrepresented by the Left, but I think I can make some further points relevant to the present Lefist shriek. 

For a start, the shriek implies a very simplistic definition of democracy.  The implied definition -- that a democracy is ruled by the majority vote of the population -- rejects most of the democracies of the present world and of history as not being democracies. To take just two reference points:  The most famous democracy of history -- ancient Athens -- was not a democracy by that definition.  Only about a third of the Athenian population had a vote. And to take a much more recent example, Bill Clinton fell well short of getting a majority of the popular vote in 1992 -- at 43%.  And in Europe it is almost unprecedented for a leading party to gain a majority of the popular vote.

So what is going on?  The plain fact is that people's political beliefs are all over the place in any democracy, including some very wacky befiefs.  So you have to have a way of deriving a parliamentary majority out of that confusion. And doing that can be quite precarious.  There is no doubt that proportional representation is the fairest way of putting into parliament a clutch of politicians who mirror the range of views out there but that almost never leads to simple majority rule.  In Germany and Australia, for instance, the party with the biggest share of the popular vote generally gets to form government but that party can still have a hell of a job of getting any new legislation through their parliament.  Yet it all works, sort of.

The American system deals with the same difficulty in a different way:  It cuts down your choice to just two parties -- leaving voters who like neither party out in the cold.  And there are quite a lot of Americans who like neither party -- as is shown by the low voting turnout.  So a big majority of the popular vote will always be a small minority of the qualified voters.  There is no way that can reasonably be seen as fair but it all works, sort of.

And there is in the American system another deliberate distortion:  Both the electoral college and the Senate are designed to privilege inhabitants of the smaller States.  There is no way that is fair either but it all works, sort of.

Why are the smaller states given enhanced representation?  It goes back to the days when America really was a federation -- something Abraham Lincoln put a stop to.  In those palmy days of independence, States could possibly have refused to join the new Federation of States.  And many considered it.  The smaller States in particular were wary that by joining a federation, they might end up being ruled by the bigger states in ways that were inimical to their own best interests.  So to create the United States of America, the smaller states had to be assured that they would have a voice in decisions that was nearly as strong as the bigger States.  And both the electoral college and the Senate do just that.  And if you now tried to take any of that protection away, you would energize a huge bloc of votes against your party.  It would be electoral suicide.  So it all works, sort of.

So the U.S. system is just one of the many flavors of democracy.  There is no perfect system.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses -- JR


MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell revved up his Outrage Machine on Friday night once it became apparent that Brett Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. There was a new crime against democracy — or rather, there was a very old crime. It's called the Senate.

Come again? Senators are elected, but since they voted to give President Trump a narrow victory, it can't be democracy. The Founding Fathers designed a Senate that wasn't elected by the people but by the state legislatures. (Some regret that the 17th Amendment changed that.)

O'Donnell lamented that America's never been worse: "And so the Senate is now deeply undemocratic and getting worse every single day. People who live in countries that have never really pretended to be fully democratic don't feel the disappointment and sickness that Americans feel when democracy so obviously fails."

Someone get O'Donnell a handkerchief, and perhaps a textbook on how a republic operates. Like many Democrats, O'Donnell feels that the popular vote should prevail on everything. The Electoral College must be scrapped because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote — she should be president.

Using the same peculiar calculations, liberals claimed that there are now four Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents who didn't win the popular vote. Those geniuses forgot that George W. Bush nominated two justices after he won the popular vote in 2004.

But let's return to O'Donnell just making things up, like John Belushi's "Animal House" rant about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor. He blathered: "An American realist knows that the federal government has never even tried democracy, not for one day. And so today in the United States Senate, the senators who represent 55 percent of the American people lost an important Senate vote — again."

The MSNBC host was parroting a survey paid for by Marist and the taxpayer-subsidized liberals at NPR and PBS that found the 49 senators who opposed Kavanaugh represented 55.8 percent of the public.

This sentiment was ably mocked on Twitter by New York Yankees fans.

In the 1960 World Series, the Yankees outscored the Pittsburgh Pirates 55 runs to 27... and lost the World Series. Their wins were blowouts. Theirs losses were close games. O'Donnell mourned that he used to be proud to work in the Senate a while back for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but it slowly dawned on him that the Senate is "an unfixable crime against democracy" perpetuated by a group of racist, sexist Founding Fathers. He lectured his liberal viewers to get out and vote, "the vote for United States Senate that the Founding Fathers never wanted you to have."

Jim Geraghty at National Review pointed out more flaws in this analysis, writing: "The second-least populated state in the union is Vermont ... the 45th is Delaware; the 43rd is Rhode Island; and the 40th is Hawaii ... All of those states have two Democratic senators."

In fact, election expert Jeff Ditzler of Decision Desk HQ tweeted that the top 10 states by population (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan) have elected 11 Democratic senators and nine Republican senators, and the bottom 10 states (Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire) have elected ... 11 Democratic senators and nine Republican senators.

It's obvious that Friday night felt a lot like election night 2016 to liberals. What's so upsetting to them is that the liberal media can't successfully engage in mind control and run the country by chanting their baloney into the television set. MSNBC just hates that democracy in America doesn't have enough of a liberal bias.

SOURCE 

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Democrats Don't Embrace the Mob; They Are the Mob

Having convinced themselves that Trump is apocalyptic, they've resorted to rank fascism

“Go to the Hill today. Get up and please get up in the face of some congresspeople.” —Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), July 28

Like so many of his Democrat colleagues and their supporters, Booker endorses thuggery and intimidation as a legitimate expression of political dissent. And having convinced themselves that President Donald Trump is apocalyptic, they and their equally contemptible media allies have fully embraced an “ends justify the means” approach to politics that is nothing less than rank fascism, masquerading itself as a commitment to “social justice.” One of the newer weapons in their wannabe totalitarian arsenal? Doxxing.

For American who may not be familiar with the term, “doxxing” is about searching for, and publishing, a person’s private information on the Internet, almost invariably with malicious intent. Not content with harassing Republicans and members of the Trump administration — even in restrooms — leftists have taken to publishing the personal information of several Republican senators in the hope that protesters will surround their homes and intimidate not just the senators themselves but members of their family, including children, as well.

Last Tuesday, one of the alleged perpetrators of this tactic was arrested. Jackson Cosko, 27, was caught in the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) by one of her staffers, who called the U.S. Capitol Police. At his arraignment last Thursday, Cosko was charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, threats in interstate communication, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary and unlawful entry. Specifically, he’s accused of posting to Wikipedia the personal information of Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch, as well as two other senators who remain unnamed.

According to prosecutors, Cosko was caught “at a computer.” They also allege that one senator’s Wikipedia page contained threats of future doxxing, as in the assertion “it’s my legal right as an American to post his info,” posted on the same page.

Cosko allegedly logged onto the computer using the credentials of the staffer who caught him. Police allege that staffer received a threatening email. “If you tell anyone I will leak it all. Emails signal conversations gmails,” Cosko allegedly wrote. “Senators children’s health information and socials.”

Cosko was a former congressional staffer in his own right — working for Hassan “from January 2017 until May 2018 as a legislative correspondent/systems administrator,” according to a spokesperson for the senator.

Hassan apparently knows how to “pick ‘em” as it were. Another of the senator’s interns, Caitlin Marriott, was the woman who shouted, “Mr. President, f—k you!” across the Capitol Rotunda at Trump on June 19.

Cosko has also worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and former Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer.

His most recent Capitol Hill job is cause for curiosity. His position was initially described as that of an “unpaid intern” for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), whose office says he has been terminated. Yet according to his own lawyer, Cosko was a far more important “fellow in her office,” one “paid by an outside institution,” Fox New reports. What outside institution? Perhaps Rep. Jackson Lee, whose office insists they’re fully cooperating with the police, could enlighten us. No doubt by sheer coincidence, Cosko allegedly posted all the personal info shortly after Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Unsurprisingly, the media has attempted to shape The Narrative. “Kentucky’s Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul joined a growing group of D.C. lawmakers who have had their private information leaked to the public,” reports the Louisville Courier Journal.

Not DC lawmakers. Republicans, three of whom sat on the Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Moreover, Republican senators needed police escorts to shield them from protesters unlawfully demonstrating in Senate offices. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and John Kennedy (R-LA) were swarmed by protesters demanding they block Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Court.

So how did CNN Political Commentator Sally Kohn view the orchestrated chaos? “This, my fellow Americans, is what democracy looks like,” she insisted.

No, this is what Brownshirt thuggery, replete with more than 300 arrests, death threats aimed at GOP senators and their families, and Kavanaugh and his family, looks like, Ms. Kohn.

As for doxxing, it would be useful if Kohn herself experienced what Rand Paul’s wife, Kelly, has detailed in an open letter directed at Cory Booker, regarding how she and her husband are currently forced to live:

“It’s nine o'clock at night, and as I watch out the window, a sheriff’s car slowly drives past my home,” she writes. “I am grateful that they have offered to do extra patrols, as someone just posted our home address, and Rand’s cell number, on the internet — all part of a broader effort to intimidate and threaten Republican members of Congress and their families. I now keep a loaded gun by my bed. Our security systems have had to be expanded. I have never felt this way in my life.”

Mrs. Paul then reminds the Sally Kohns of the world that Rand was present at the congressional baseball practice when Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer James Hodgkinson — who had a list of Republican names in his pocket — nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise, and that Rand himself had six ribs broken by a neighbor “leaving him with lung damage and multiple bouts of pneumonia.”

“The thing I don’t understand is, why do Democrats like Cory Booker, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, etc., think they are the only ones who can use violence to advance their cause?” asks columnist John Hinderaker. “Do they not understand what a whirlwind they will unleash if they try to use political violence as a path to power?”

Democrats have already unleashed the whirlwind. From the purposeful chaos they created on first day of Kavanaugh’s judicial hearing, right through the end of the seventh FBI investigation they insisted was insufficient, Democrats — in lockstep with a corrupt media lending credence to maliciously outlandish accusations — made sure their ideological allies remained in a heightened state of hysteria. Allies like Jackson Cosko and others who believe it is their “duty” to make America’s lawmakers and their families as vulnerable as possible to the mob.

Allies who, if guilty as charged, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

“There are no random events,” writes columnist Michael Goodwin. “It is a straight line from the unprecedented plot by President Barack Obama’s administration to infiltrate and wiretap the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 to the scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh.”

It’s what happens where leftists believe they are entitled to run the country, even when the electorate says otherwise. And it’s easy to understand how Democrats can convince a certain segment of the public to act like a hate-filled, braying, anti-democratic mob:

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” —George Orwell, Animal Farm

SOURCE 

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Pompeo hails 'another step forward' after 2-hour meeting with Kim Jong Un

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday in what he called a "good, productive conversation."

The top US diplomat met with Kim in Pyongyang for two hours before Pompeo flew to South Korea Sunday afternoon for a two-day visit.

In South Korea, Pompeo appeared alongside President Moon Jae-in, who said the world wanted to know the results of the Pyongyang meeting, "so if the secretary can disclose the results, please tell us."

"I don't have much to add," Pompeo replied. "I will surely tell you in private about our conversation. I thought we had a good, productive conversation, and as President Trump has said, there are many steps along the way, and we took one of them today, another step forward."

The secretary of state added that South Korea has been an integral part of negotiations aimed at denuclearizing North Korea, and he passed along Trump's gratitude for the country's efforts.

On Sunday, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement that "Chairman Kim invited inspectors to visit the Punggye Ri nuclear test site to confirm that it has been irreversibly dismantled."

Nauert said Pompeo "held productive discussions" with Kim on Sunday. The statement said the two leaders "discussed the upcoming second summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim and refined options for the location and date of that next summit."

Moon said he hoped that Pompeo's visit and a second US-North Korea summit would provide a chance to take "a decisive step forward in the denuclearization and peace process on the Korean Peninsula."

In Tokyo on Saturday, Pompeo promised he would bring up Japan's concerns about North Korea's alleged abductions of Japanese citizens and its nuclear ambitions.

Pompeo said he wanted "a fully coordinated, unified view of how to proceed, which will be what is needed if we are going to be successful in denuclearizing North Korea."

According to pool notes from Pompeo's early Sunday visit to Pyongyang -- the secretary's fourth -- Pompeo and Kim emerged from their meeting and had lunch together before Pompeo left for South Korea.

"I am really pleased for this opportunity. After having a nice meeting we can enjoy a meal together," Kim told Pompeo as they walked down a hallway toward a guesthouse dining room.

Later Kim said, "It's a very nice day that promises a good future" for both countries. Pompeo told reporters in Pyongyang the two "had a great, great visit" and that Trump sent his regards.

SOURCE 

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A classic piece of Leftist projection

"You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about," Hillary Clinton, who's never been civil, insisted Tuesday. "That's why I believe, if [Democrats] are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength."

More HERE 

Note that Christ knew of projection long before Freud did -- Matthew 7: 4,5. And his words fit very well in this instance.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************



11 October, 2018

Democrats Have Become A Dangerous Threat To Our Institutions

When modern Democrats talk about preseving “norms,” traditions,” or even the “Constitution,” they’re really talking about preserving their preferred policies. We know this because “liberals” have shown themselves not only willing to destroy the legitimacy of institutions like the presidency, the Senate ,and Supreme Court to protect those policies, they’re willing to break down basic norms of civility, as well.

Take the example of Hillary Clinton. In the very first sentence in her new scaremongering essay, which makes the case that America’s “democratic institutions and traditions are under siege,” she attacks our democratic institutions and traditions. “It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States,” the piece begins.

The intimation, of course, widely shared by the mainstream left, is that Trump isn’t a legitimate president even though he won the election in the exact same way every other president in U.S. history has ever won election. According to our long-held democratic institutions and traditions, you become president through the Electoral College, not the non-existent popular vote.

So when Clinton, or writers at Vox, or The Atlantic, or Politico, or new liberal favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say it’s “well past time we eliminate the Electoral College, a shadow of slavery’s power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic,” you’re either tragically ignorant about our system or cynically delegitimizing it. Or maybe it’s both.

The Electoral College isn’t ornamental; it exists to undercut the tyranny of direct democracy and ensure the entire nation is represented in national elections. When you attack it, you’re not condemning Trump, you are, in a very palpable way, attacking a core idea that girds much of our governance.

With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the anti-majoritarian Senate is also suddenly problematic for many Democrats. When a NBC reporter, commenting on a Washington Post article, says “the idea that North Dakota and New York get the same representation in the Senate has to change,” he’s probably not ignorant about why the Founders implemented proportional voting, or why there is a difference between the House and Senate, or why the Tenth Amendment exists. He simply favors a system he thinks would allow liberals to force others to accept his preferred policies.

That’s the thing, of course. North Dakotans can’t make New Yorkers ban abortion, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned. They can’t make New Yorkers legalize “assault weapons” if Heller is upheld. But New Yorkers are perfectly content to force North Dakotans to accept both abortion and gun control. So, then, surely nothing could be more frustrating to the contemporary liberal than the existence of an originalist court that values the self-determination of individuals and states.

That is why the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t only about the nominee, but the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. When you can’t corrode constitutional protections by seating justices that simply ignore the words and purpose of the founding documents, you can proactively smear the people whose decisions do uphold those values.

When Sen. Mazie Hirono, who rejected basic tenets of due process throughout the Kavanaugh hearings, argues Kavanaugh “is going to be on the Supreme Court with a huge taint and a big asterisk after his name,” she, like many others, is giving her followers a pretext to ignore the court.

If there is a “taint,” a proper constitutionally mandated solution exists: provide evidence and impeach him. Otherwise, there is no asterisk. Republicans didn’t break any constitutional norms. Trump nominated a candidate with a blemish-free ten-year record on the DC appellate court.

Republicans in the judiciary committee had hearings in which Democrats could question the nominee. Republicans even added additional hearings after Democrats leaked uncorroborated accusations. Republicans then asked for a seventh FBI investigation into the nominee before voting. Then the entire Senate voted. There is no asterisk.

Of course, if Democrats had been in charge of the Senate, they would have been free to shelve that nomination just as Republicans had done with Merrick Garland, when they also decided adopt the “Biden Rule.” If Democrats had followed the norms of the Senate in 2013, rather than using the nuclear option, they might have been able to filibuster Kavanaugh. They didn’t.

Instead, during this entire constitutionally mandated process we just went through, Democrats demonstrated a malicious disregard for the institution, not only by slandering those they disagreed with, and by leaking uncorroborated accusations, and by attacking the principles of Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and by ignoring long-held Senate rules during the proceedings in their Spartacus moments, but by preemptively declaring the pick illegitimate the day the president announced it.

According to liberals, every conservative-run institution is illegitimate. Working out how it’s illegitimate is the only question.

Even the questions in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote point to misunderstanding of process. Did Democrats “fight hard enough” to stop a nomination? What does that even mean? You fight by winning the argument, and by appealing to a large swath of Americans to win the Senate, and by winning the vote. In a decent nation, you don’t win by smearing your political opponents as gang rapists, and you don’t win by acting like a mob and screaming at your fellow citizens in restaurants and elevators.

After all, Hillary, and others who write about Trump’s supposed annihilation of our institutions, seem wholly concerned about aesthetics, manners, and policy, not procedure or institutions. Civility is a worthwhile issue, but it is a separate issue. You might find immigration and environmental policy of primary importance, but not getting your way isn’t a constitutional crisis. When they act like it is, liberals—and it’s getting progressively difficult to give them that descriptor—are destabilizing the institutions they are claiming to save.

How many times did a Democrat even mention the Constitution during the Kavanaugh hearings? I imagine, if we’re lucky, a perfunctory handful. Trump, far more than the previous administration, has strengthened proper separations of power. One of the ways he’s done it is by his judicial appointments. And Democrats’ inability to make any distinction between the neutral processes of governing and their partisan goals makes them, to this point, a far bigger threat to constitutional norms than the president.

SOURCE 

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America hits best unemployment rate in 49 years

The September jobs report released today shows a continuation of the booming labor market, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.7 percent, the lowest in 49 years. Average weekly wages rose at an impressive 3.4 percent over last year. These are the pocketbook issues that actually make a difference in the lives of voters. If Republicans can make the case that their policies are largely responsible for this increased pay and improved job prospects, they can maintain control of Congress in midterms.

So far this year, the average number of jobs created each month is 16 percent higher than last year, suggesting that the tax cuts that took effect this year are boosting the labor market. This is the sixth straight month the unemployment rate has been at or below 4 percent, the best in a half century. Black and hispanic unemployment rates hover near record lows. In addition to the unprecedented number of job opportunities, wages are increasing at their quickest pace in a decade, rising about 50 percent faster than during the second term of President Obama. But the legacy media continues to stick to its “stagnating wages” talking point.

What makes this wage growth even more impressive is that it has coincided with a significant influx of less skilled workers into the job market. Since the 2016 election, the unemployment rate has fallen by 20 percent. Hundreds of thousands of people, who had quit looking for work altogether, have returned to the workforce to take advantage of this historic opportunity. Over the last couple years, the labor market has grown far faster than the long running trend would have suggested.

This top line wage growth figure only takes into account wages before taxes. Wages after taxes are growing even faster as tax cuts have reduced the amount of federal withholding taken from paychecks. Americans are receiving higher take home wages because of a doubled standard deduction, doubled child tax credit, and lower tax rates that took effect this year. The new 20 percent small business tax deduction is contributing to this historic labor market. This is strengthening the economic backbone of the country by allowing them to protect a fifth of their earnings from taxes and reinvest it in their operations and employees.

SOURCE 

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Good news about Obamacare premiums can't hide long-term pain

Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently announced that premiums for a benchmark Affordable Care Act 2019 plan on the federal exchange will drop 2 percent nationally compared with 2018 premiums — the first reduction since the law's implementation.

While this is encouraging news, it is no cause for a major celebration. When Obamacare's exchanges open for business in just a few weeks, on Nov. 1, many consumers will still find exchange plans unaffordable. Rates will soar by double digits in many states. Despite the slight decline in the national average premium, the typical 2019 plan sold through the HealthCare.gov exchange will still likely cost more than twice as much as the average individual market plan in 2013, the year before most Obamacare provisions went into effect.

Until Obamacare's incoherent rules and regulations are loosened, there will be no sustained relief for everyday Americans.

Hefty premium increases are the new normal. Americans who shopped for Obamacare-compliant coverage off the exchanges fared just as poorly as those who watched rates soar on the exchanges. The average individual market plan sold through eHealth, an online insurance marketplace, cost $197 per month in 2013. In 2018, the average plan on eHealth was $440 per month — a 123 percent increase.

Republicans are lessening premium pain
Consumers won't get much relief this enrollment cycle. But at least they won't be penalized for going without coverage, as Republicans reduced the fine for violating the individual mandate to zero.

Premiums for the benchmark 2019 silver plan in Burlington, Vermont, will rise 23 percent relative to 2018. In the nation's capital, they're going up 21 percent. In Seattle, premiums are jumping 12 percent.

These hikes are the inevitable result of Obamacare's premium-inflating mandates.

The law requires all plans to cover 10 essential health benefits, from prescription drugs to pediatric dental care. Insurers have raised prices in response. As much as 11 percent of Pennsylvania's premium increases and 8 percent of Georgia's were due to the essential health benefits mandate, according to a McKinsey study. 

Obamacare also forbids insurers from denying coverage to customers based on their health status or charging sicker enrollees more than healthy ones. And it bars insurers from charging older enrollees more than three times what they charge younger enrollees, even though older people are five times costlier to insure.

SOURCE 

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The Left’s Pattern of Overlooking Due Process

 

The notion that certain Americans are pre-emptively guilty of wrongdoing, whether there’s any corroborating evidence to back up an accusation or not, isn’t reserved for conservatives who happen to be in contention for a Supreme Court seat.

In the hierarchy of progressive values, due process is a bottom dweller.

Over the past decade, you could see the illiberalism evolving on college campuses, where Democrats subverted basic standards of justice.

It was the Obama administration that demanded schools judge cases of alleged sexual assaults under a “clear and convincing evidence” standard rather than on a “preponderance of evidence” standard, allowed accusers to appeal “not guilty” findings, and permitted the meting out of punishment before any investigation was even conducted, among other big problems.

Democrats are simply shepherding those corrosive standards into the real world.

Another area of American life where we continue to see egregious attacks on the presumption of innocence is gun ownership. You might remember that a couple of years ago, Democrats engaged in a much-covered congressional “sit-in” to support legislation that would have stripped Americans on secret government watchlists—hundreds of thousands of people who had never been accused, much less convicted, of any crime—of their constitutional right to bear arms.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in fact, proposed legislation that would have restricted not only American citizens on faulty watchlists but anyone who had been on any watchlist at any time during the previous five years and anyone who had traveled to select Middle Eastern countries.

Apparently, Democrats believe limiting the number of refugees from Syria is unconstitutional but explicitly restricting the constitutional rights of Syrian immigrants here legally is just fine.

Then again, the entire effort was a frontal attack on about half the Bill of Rights. At the time, even the American Civil Liberties Union, which has increasingly turned away from its guiding principles, argued that policies based on flawed terror lists would undermine civil liberties.

In much the same way they are attempting to sink the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, Democrats relied on theatrics, bombastic rhetoric, and a compliant media, which framed the issue exactly how they had hoped.

You can imagine such bills will reappear when they’re back in charge. Until then, though, Democrats have been doing some gun grabbing—and I don’t mean it figuratively—on the local level.

California, a state that already features the strictest gun control laws in the country, just enacted a law that raises the allowable age to buy a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21.

The United States might be willing to hand weapons to young men and women who volunteer to protect their country, but Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t believe those young men and women should be able to protect their own property or families.

An even more outrageous new law bans Californians who’ve been hospitalized more than once in a year for mental health issues from owning a gun.

Federal law already prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective.”

Until now, a person had an option to appeal the ban and show “a preponderance of evidence” that he would use firearms in “a safe and lawful manner.” Now California bans one-time patients from owning firearms for the rest of their lives.

This is an excellent way to stigmatize people who suffer from maladies that often have nothing to do with violence or criminality.

Now, I was going to ask the reader to imagine an alternate scenario in which Republicans pushed a bill prohibiting those who have been in hospitals—for, say, nervous exhaustion or an addiction—from being able to freely express their opinions in public ever again.

If a law-abiding American can be stripped of his Second Amendment rights, then why not his First Amendment rights? But then, these days, I imagine many Democrats would simply answer, “It depends on what the person is going to say.”

Another California law allows police to verbally ask to confiscate a gun rather than make their case in a written request. Under “red flag laws,” guns can be confiscated from citizens who’ve never been charged with, much less convicted of, breaking any law. And it’s getting easier and easier to do it.

All it takes in many states is for a family member, neighbor, or co-worker to accuse you of a pre-crime. One of Maryland’s many new laws (signed by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan) allows the police to confiscate weapons for up to a year—or until the next person accuses you of a crime you are only yet to commit.

There is risible evidence that these new regulations will stop mass shootings or lower gun crime. But as William Rosen, deputy legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety, explains, “red flag laws” are needed to “step into that gap.”

What gap? You know, the pesky space between protecting the ideal of presuming innocence and completely ignoring it when you feel like it.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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10 October, 2018

Thank you Harry Reid

Without Harry, we might not now have a justice Kavanaugh on SCOTUS.  It was Dear Harry, when he was Democrat Senate leader,  who nuked the long standing filibuster rule for judicial nominations.  Kavanaugh would have needed 60 Senate votes if that rule were still in force.  Lots of people told Harry that he was setting his party up for a fall in future but being a typical Leftist he was incapable of looking beyond his nose.  In the eternal present that Leftists inhabit, thinking ahead is amost impossible.  So there were Obama nominees to get through and that was all that mattered.  Out with the filibuster! Democrats are sometimes their own worst enemies.

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Trump's Approval is UP!

It seems likely that the Democrat tantrums about Kavanaugh have rebounded against them    

Was it the good economic news of record-low unemployment numbers? Was it the successful renegotiation of NAFTA? Was it the Senate Democrats’ hateful smear job of newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh? Was it a combination of all of these? This past Friday, Rasmussen released its latest presidential tracking poll showing that 51% of likely voters now approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance, compared to 48% who disapprove. This is Trump’s highest approval rating since March 2017.

One reason for Trump’s growing approval may have more to do with his uncanny ability to get his political opponents to reveal their true colors. By refusing to play by Washington’s conventional politically correct “rules,” Trump tweaks the “sensibilities” of the political elites. In so doing he has effectively exposed a growing political cancer of social-Marxism that has almost completely infected today’s Democrat party — a party that now has no room for political centrists but rather has become a bastion of the extreme Left.

When Americans witnessed the number of high-profile Democrats who willingly threw out one of our nation’s bedrock principles of jurisprudence — the concept of “innocent until proven guilty” — in order to weaponize a “social justice” mob all for the sake of seizing power, many were rightly horrified and left wondering, just who are these Democrats?

It appears now that more Americans are recognizing that despite, or maybe even because of, his obvious character flaws, Trump is actually the best man for this dirty job. Through thick and thin, Trump has demonstrated that he will stand and fight to come through on his promises. Frankly, the fact that his approval rating isn’t even higher shows just how far the nation still has to go.

SOURCE 

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The left eyes more radical ways to fight Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a partisan war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987.

An even greater conflagration may be coming.

“This confirmation vote will not necessarily be the last word on Brett Kavanaugh serving a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the liberal group Demand Justice and the top spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die.

Some have gone as far as proposing — if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after — expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove, and replace Kavanaugh.

Either step would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional and political norms. No justice has been removed through impeachment. And a previous attempt at court packing, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected important parts of his New Deal initiatives during the Great Depression, is broadly seen as having been misguided.

Either step would also face steep odds. Some Republicans would have to go along for them to work: A court-expansion bill would need the support of 60 senators to overcome a filibuster, and while a simple majority of the House could vote to impeach, removal would require two-thirds of the Senate.

Still, even the political pressure of the threat might make some of the conservative justices more cautious. While Congress rejected Roosevelt’s court-reform bill, the court changed course while lawmakers were considering it and started upholding New Deal laws — a move called “the switch in time that saved nine.”

Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives — Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings. As judges, they tend to rule more consistently for conservative outcomes than older Republican appointees, including retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

And just as in the early decades of the 20th century, when a conservative-dominated Supreme Court repeatedly struck down progressive economic policies including child labor and minimum-wage laws leading up to the New Deal fight, Democrats fear that the new majority will systematically crush their achievements — not just hollowing out past gains such as abortion rights, but also striking down programs they hope to enact if they regain power, such as expanding Medicare or efforts to curb climate change.

For the next few weeks, many Democratic strategists want to change the subject from the Supreme Court, hoping that Republican voters’ passions aroused by the Kavanaugh fight will fade before the midterm elections. Noting that the election is approaching, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that talk of impeaching Kavanaugh was “premature.”

“Talking about it at this point isn’t necessarily healing us and moving us forward,” he said.

But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he intended to help House Republicans in swing districts campaign on the issue over the next month, saying their Democratic opponents should be asked whether they supported impeaching Kavanaugh and “Do you want an outcome so badly that you would basically turn the law upside down?”

Still, many liberals are quietly looking forward to reviving the fight if they win a House majority and subpoena power, rather than resigning themselves to waiting for a conservative justice to leave the court. The oldest of the five, Justice Clarence Thomas, is just 70.

Many are vowing, for example, to try to uncover more files from Kavanaugh’s time as an official in George W. Bush’s White House in hopes of finding evidence to support their accusations that he lied under oath about his actions.

“We’re going to get those documents that are shielded from view, and they will provide further proof that he lied,” Fallon said. “And these sexual assault allegations have created a wave of outrage and challenge to the court’s legitimacy that may even eclipse the impact of the lying.”

Because of the Presidential Records Act, any Bush administration files that Republicans refused to seek during the confirmation hearings may remain hard for Congress to subpoena until 2021. But an eventual finding could provide a basis to try to impeach Kavanaugh.

“If a careful examination of the entire scope of his legal history — thus far withheld from the Senate — demonstrates that Mr. Kavanaugh lied under oath, the constitutionally prescribed remedy would be impeachment proceedings,” more than three dozen of the most progressive House Democrats wrote to President Trump urging his withdrawal ahead of the confirmation vote.

The idea of court packing emerged even before Trump nominated Kavanaugh. As soon as Kennedy announced his retirement in June, some liberals began calling for Democrats to prepare to expand the court by two justices when they regain power, permitting a future Democratic president and Democratic-controlled Senate to try to transform the court’s controlling faction from its five Republican appointees to six Democratic ones.

Still, opening that door could lead Republicans to simply expand the court again when the pendulum swung back, continuing the downward spiral.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, deemed it wishful thinking that Democrats would uncover irrefutable evidence of perjury by Kavanaugh. She said it was “inconceivable” that the Senate would convict and remove him and warned that even such an effort would damage the rule of law by delegitimizing the court as an institution that stands apart from partisan politics.

“They are speaking out of anger and frustration, and I hope it is not a way most Democrats would like to go. To say, ‘We’re so angry about losing one fight that we basically destroy the entire institution in a fit of pique,’ that is not going to be helpful to anyone,” she said. “I don’t think they would like that to be the standard applied across the board; I opposed Justice Kagan’s confirmation, but I’m not trying to impeach her.”

Indeed, Roosevelt’s court-packing proposal failed to gain support even from his fellow Democrats. Roosevelt should have been more patient, letting the court evolve through elections and natural turnover, William H. Rehnquist, then the chief justice, said in a 1996 speech looking back at that era.

“Although Roosevelt lost that battle, he eventually won the war by serving three full terms as president and appointing eight of the nine members of the court,” Rehnquist said. “This simply shows that there is a wrong way and a right way to go about putting a popular imprint on the judiciary.”

Still, liberals today are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the process by which several conservative justices won seats on the court, noted Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who studies judicial confirmations. For example, many on the left are still seething at Senate Republicans’ refusal to give a hearing in 2016 to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s last nominee for a vacancy, and consider Justice Neil Gorsuch to be occupying a stolen seat.

“The conservative majority will include four justices who were appointed by presidents who achieved office despite losing the popular vote, and added to that, the percentage of the voting population represented by Senate Republicans reflects a minority of the overall population,” Wheeler said. “And then you have the asterisk next to Justice Gorsuch’s name.”

Lee Epstein, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the judiciary, predicted that Chief Justice John Roberts, aware of the danger to the court’s legitimacy, will try to guide it into staying quiet for at least several years.

“This could be a terrible moment for the court,” she said. “The Republicans aren’t going to be running government forever, and it could lead to the kind of clash that we had in 1936 with Roosevelt. That was a bad moment for the court and a bad moment for the country.”

Swiftly after Kavanaugh’s confirmation Saturday, Democrats promised they would be watching closely.

“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court can justifiably be questioned,” former attorney general Eric Holder wrote on Twitter. “The court must now prove — through its work — that it is worthy of the nation’s trust.”

In an essay on Vox, progressive political and policy writer Matthew Yglesias also took note of a line of “optimistic” thinking that Roberts, concerned about preserving the court’s popular legitimacy, could serve as a brake on the other four conservatives — as he did when he voted to uphold part of the Affordable Care Act in 2012.

But if the five conservatives stick together and severely circumscribe a future Democratic majority’s ability to govern, he wrote, “Democrats will face some difficult questions about whether to try court-packing or other forms of exotic procedural extremism in order to secure the authority to govern.”

In that case, he said, the silver lining for liberals is that Kavanaugh was confirmed, as opposed to being withdrawn and replaced by an untarnished but ideologically similar nominee. The cloud over his presence, Yglesias predicted, will help the left’s “necessary delegitimization” of the court.

SOURCE 

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The hate is still boiling. Colbert Show Writer says of Kavanaugh: ‘I’m Just Glad We Ruined His Life’

Lovely people

The confirmation hearings on Brett Kavanaugh were disgusting, driven by Democrats who held a vicious 36-year-old allegation of sexual assault against the Supreme Court nominee until the 11th hour and then set about tearing down a good man who’d work his whole life to achieve his dreams of serving on the high court.

And that was always their intention. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had a letter from the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, all the way back in July, yet she never mentioned the alleged assault until the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote on the nomination in mid-September.

The Daily Wire reports:

Once she divulged the allegation (never corroborated by even a single witness, mind you), Democrats encouraged equally-scurrilous charges against the judge, including those brought by porn star lawyer Michael Avenatti.

So that was their mission: Destroy Kavanaugh. They had to go back 36 years — to when he was a 17-year-old high school student — to find anything remotely questionable, then picked about his entry in his high school yearbook, alleging that many references were about sex. The hearing itself was so violent that his two young daughters had to be escorted out of the Senate hearing room amid the chaos.

And the Democrats nearly succeeded. Throughout their grandstanding, they pretended that they were simply hunting for “the truth.” They demanded FBI probes and, along with the mainstream media, sought as much dirt as they could get on Kavanaugh.

SOURCE 

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Trump Unashamedly Celebrates Columbus Day While Columbus OH Does The Opposite

President Donald Trump wished Americans a happy Columbus Day in marked contrast to his predecessor with a Monday morning tweet.

Trump’s proclamation hails Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492 and makes no mention of any impact on indigenous Native Americans, saying:

"Columbus’s daring journey marked the beginning of centuries of transatlantic exploration that transformed the Western Hemisphere.  On Columbus Day, we commemorate the achievements of this skilled Italian explorer and recognize his courage, will power, and ambition — all values we cherish as Americans."

The administration’s declaration is starkly different from the 2016 Columbus Day proclamation issued by former President Barack Obama. Obama’s statement celebrated Columbus Day but included a prominent paragraph, which notes:

"As we mark this rich history, we must also acknowledge the pain and suffering reflected in the stories of Native Americans who had long resided on this land prior to the arrival of European newcomers. The past we share is marked by too many broken promises, as well as violence, deprivation, and disease. It is a history that we must recognize as we seek to build a brighter future — side by side and with cooperation and mutual respect."

The City of Columbus, Ohio however will no longer celebrate the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus, after whom the city is named.

Law and Crime reports:

Rather than re-naming the holiday and dispensing with it entirely–as many states and cities across the country have done over the past few decades–Columbus Day will remain the name of the holiday for now, but simply won’t be observed in any official capacity.

In effect, the decision mostly means that Columbus city government will function as usual on Columbus Day. According to a media advisory released by the municipality:

The City of Columbus will be open on Columbus Day on Monday, October 8, 2018. All city offices will maintain regular hours of operation. Trash collection and parking enforcement will also remain regularly scheduled.

So, does that mean the citizens of Columbus–and city employees in particular–are missing out on a holiday? Not exactly. Instead of observing Columbus Day as a governmental entity, the City of Columbus will observe Veteran’s Day instead.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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9 October, 2018

The Left just cannot face reality

SNL  put on a sketch designed to deride the Kavanaugh victory -- and CNN approved.  Below is what CNN said.  They claim  that Trump and the GOP just don't "get" women.  If they had said that they don't "get" feminists that would have been spot on.  But feminists are not all women and most women will have sons and brothers and other male friends and relatives whom they value -- so the feminist attacks on men will overwhelmingly be alarming to normal women.

The megaphone demands from feminists and the Left during the Kavanaugh hearings -- to the effect that due process and the presumption of innocence must be abandoned whenever some disturbed woman accuses a man of an offence -- will rightly be perceived by most women as a dire treat to their loved ones.  Feminists just don't load the simple fact that most women have male relatives that they care about and most women will not therefore wish to expose males to the unjust perils that hate-filled feminists have in mind for them.

The demand that women should always be believed is particularly pernicious.  Particularly in Britain, there are a lot of false rape allegations. The Brits do regularly put some of the women concerned behind bars for a couple of years -- as it is a very distressing and disruptive experience to the innocent men affected.  That is one thing that other jurisdictions could learn from Britain.

And the Democrats have now identified themselves with these crazy anti-men demands.  It must hurt them electorally.  53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016.  It will surely be higher next time.

We all know that Leftists have the attention-span of a goldfish and live in an eternal present so perhaps we can understand that they have forgotten that revealing 53% but even their attention span should have been sufficient to allow them to note the large number of women who knew Kavanaugh through work and universally spoke well of him.  And the large number of conservative women who rallied in support of him should have been visible too. And what about the increasing tendency of young conservative women to reject feminism -- for instance Allie Beth Stuckey in the USA, Lauren Southern in Canada and Daisy Cousens in Australia.  Conservatives get on very well with them!   But, no, they too are no doubt invisible to Leftists. They see only what they want to see. From a psychological viewpoint they would readily be seen as severe neurotics, heavily protected mentally by the full panoply of the Freudian defense mechanisms

And a diagnosis of neuroticism does suit the Left quite well.  Neurotics are more or less continually unhappy and Leftists are too.  They are never satisfied.  No matter what destructive reform they achieve, they still want more.  They will go all the way to bloody revolution if they can. They are chronically discontented people. There is always some apparent "injustice" that fires them up. They are a destructive force that is a danger to us all.

Neurotics are not mad however and the feverish opposition to Kavanaugh was in its own way rational.  It seems highly likely that the Left will now no longer  be able to get through the court what they could not get in any other way -- such as homosexual marriage and unrestricted abortion. Trump has shut down America's alternative and Left-leaning legislature. The court will now rule according to what the constitution actually says rather than on "emanations and penumbras".


'SNL' gets it right: Trump and GOP are clueless about women

(CNN)"Saturday Night Live's" opening sketch last night reflected a reality of today's Republican leaders: They just don't get women.

We saw this play out when President Donald Trump (the real one, not Alec Baldwin) declared on Air Force One last night that recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was "squeaky clean" and that, in his view, Kavanaugh's biggest supporters were the women of America.

Trump claimed women "were in many ways stronger than men in his favor." At that point, he should've just added, "And live from New York, it's Saturday Night!"

Trump's remarks would've been a perfect fit for "SNL's" cold open last night, which focused on how the GOP is obliviously out of touch with women, or simply doesn't care about them. The sketch featured impersonations of Republican senators celebrating the confirmation of Kavanaugh by partying in a locker room.

SOURCE 

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McConnell Sees Electoral Dividends With Kavanaugh Victory

In the end, Democrats, the Left, and other progressive sects have learned a lesson, even if they don’t realize it, you don’t mess with Cocaine Mitch. It was a brutal fight. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who President Trump had nominated to fill the vacancy left by Anthony Kennedy, was being eaten alive by the left-wing smear machine. He was facing three allegations of sexual misconduct that lacked in evidence or corroborating witnesses. It looked as if this fight was going to be a smooth win, but these allegations, dropped at the last minute, dragged us into the gutter.

It was a knife fight—and we won. Period. While the Left is happy their base is animated, this unfair, brutal, and totally outrageous character assassination attempt against Judge Kavanaugh infuriated the GOP, especially scores of conservative female voters who saw right through the smear campaign. It was a double-edged sword: the more the Left tried to destroy Kavanaugh, the more jacked up the GOP base became. And it isn’t just Trump supporters, Bushies, Never Trumpers, every wing of the GOP united behind this man. McConnell made a note that this fight has done wonders to get Republicans enthused for the 2018 midterms (via WaPo):

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he never considered urging the White House to withdraw Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and called opposition to the judge a “great political gift” for Republicans ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

In an interview with The Washington Post hours before Kavanaugh’s near-certain confirmation on Saturday afternoon, the Kentucky Republican again underscored his confidence in Kavanaugh’s denials of allegations of sexual misconduct decades ago while decrying the protesters who have challenged senators for days.

“I never thought Judge Kavanaugh would withdraw,” McConnell said during the interview with The Post. “When your integrity is attacked like his was, a withdrawal was certainly no solution to that, so we were in the fight to the finish.”

McConnell, overseeing a razor-thin 51-49 GOP majority, said the GOP is already seeing a boost in polling in Senate races because of the Democratic opposition to Kavanaugh combined with the protests. Republicans are on offense in the fight for control of the Senate, with 10 Democrats seeking reelection in states President Trump won in 2016.

“It’s been a great political gift for us. The tactics have energized our base,” he said, adding: “I want to thank the mob, because they’ve done the one thing we were having trouble doing, which was energizing our base.”

He elaborated further with Roll Call:

“I think there’s no question that the tactics have energized our base like we were unable to do before this,” McConnell said. “Not only the tactics of the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, but then those who literally have our members under assault I mean — they’ve come to our homes, they’ve you know basically brushed up against members.” ...

“The base is on fire. I was talking to several of my political advisers yesterday about what we’re seeing out in the red states is a dramatically rising interest,” McConnell said.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Wednesday indicated that the battle over Kavanaugh's nomination had helped close the enthusiasm gap.

Eighty-two percent of Democrats surveyed said the election was "very important" compared to 80 percent of Republicans. In July, the survey showed that 68 percent of Republicans deemed the election very important, compared to 78 percent of Democrats....

Democrats, of course, have the bulk of the incumbents in competitive Senate races on the 2018 map that are closely contested.

Ten Senate Democrats are running in states Trump won in 2016, but operatives on both sides agreed that at least two of them -- Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey -- are further out of reach for Republicans.

Sen. Joe Manchin III was the only Democratic senator in a state Trump won by double digits who decided to support Kavanaugh. The others, including Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester on Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, opposed the judge for various reasons. 

The Kentucky Republican name-checked those four Democratic incumbents as having, “voted frankly quite foolishly on this issue given their own electoral prospects.”

Polling showed that Joe Manchin’s re-election would be all but assured if he voted for Kavanaugh. Overall, Red State Democrats were put in a terrible political positionin this nomination fight. They could vote for Kavanaugh, but risk the wrath of the progressive grassroots and loss of access to key Democratic campaign financing. And they could vote against him, but be forced to update their resumes because they would be out of a job come January. Claire McCaskill knows this all too well.

On the Right’s flank, Arizona and Tennessee could be Democratic pick-ups, though I doubt how a rural, GOP state like Tennessee flips, but we’ll see. Missouri and Florida look like likely pick-ups for the GOP. If we hold the line in Tennessee, lose Arizona, and win in Missouri and Florida, we’re left with how the upper chamber started at the last Congress, 51-49. Still, a lot can change. The polling post-Kavanaugh has yet to be released. And in Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has been caught telling some tall tales about her upbringing. Stay tuned, but the fact remains that the GOP position is much better than in the House—though with the base energized, perhaps we could hold the line there. It would be a slim majority, but still a win—and one that would trigger another liberal meltdown.

UPDATE: Manchin may have voted with Republicans, but Mitch still plans to make a play to nab his seat:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Republicans will still campaign against Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) despite his being the only member of the opposing party who voted to approve now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

“Joe Manchin’s still a Democrat, and we’re trying to hold the majority,” the Kentucky Republican said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” when asked if he would tell President Donald Trump not to campaign against the red-state Democrat.

But McConnell said he appreciated Manchin’s vote, which he called “the right thing to do.”

Maybe Manchin should re-register as a Republican if he wins re-election, which he very well could, despite West Virginia being a deep-red state.

SOURCE 

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They're Not Done: The Left Is Gunning To Impeach Kavanaugh If Democrats Retake The House

They’re having a meltdown, folks. It’s delicious. The liberal tears are flowing. I’ve been drinking them up since 3:30 PM yesterday, but this fight is not over. It might not be a full-blown blitz. It certainly won’t be as intense as the attempted character assassination attempt against now-Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh that we saw over the past week in this hellacious nomination fight.

It will be more of a manning the watchtower because left-wingers are pushing to impeach Kavanaugh, which will be magnified if Democrats retakes the House in the upcoming midterm election. At the same time, Donald Trump Jr. had a more aggressive warning, which I agree with as well. This is a war.

Trump supporters - The fight isn’t over. You better believe that Democrats are going to do everything in their power to impeach Kavanuagh from the Supreme Court if they take control of Congress in November.  This is war. Time to fight. Vote on Nov 6 to protect the Supreme Court!

MoveOn also announced it was canceling a six-figure advertising campaign for Bredesen "due to his Kavanaugh position" and foreclosed any possible further efforts to help Manchin. Priorities USA, Democrats' largest super PAC, is not spending money in either race and won't be, said spokesperson Josh Schwerin.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats retake the House, and who would probably be the point-person on issues of impeachment, has signaled that he would reopen an investigation into Kavanaugh, who would be a sitting member of the high court by the time the new Congress is sworn in in January....

…40 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which speaks for the left flank of House Democrats, sent a letter to Trump last week suggesting Kavanaugh's impeachment could be the outcome of further investigation....

"This is absolutely a scrimmage for impeachment," said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser. "I believe they will try to impeach Brett Kavanaugh, I believe they will try to impeach President Trump."

But many liberals think impeaching Kavanaugh, or even talking about it, is not only bad politics, but dangerous for democracy.

"That is not happening anytime soon," said Jim Manley, a former aide to Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate leader. "I really wish folks would stop this talk of impeaching Kavanaugh and keep the focus on where it belongs" — the midterm elections. ...

…progressive opinion leaders are urging liberal voters not to invest energy or hope in what Mother Jones magazine calls a "liberal fantasy."

Worse still, warned Jonathan Turley, a prominent liberal legal scholar, impeaching Kavanaugh would set a dangerous precedent that either party could use to alter the balance of power on the court for political reasons.

"This is a terribly reckless idea for the Democrats to pursue," said Turley, a professor at George Washington University's Law School. "If we start to impeach justices based on shifting congressional majorities then we'll reduce ourselves to the level of Robespierre."

Why are some on the Left urging their side to move on from Kavanaugh? It’s because it will never happen. You need a supermajority of Senators to remove a federal judge. Democrats will never get 67 votes—ever. In the meantime, let’s say they do dabble in this nonsense; it will only animate the GOP base heading into a presidential election and give excellent fodder for Trump to bash Democrats. We would win this fight, but I’d rather spend the energy owning liberals on other fronts. Nevertheless, the threat is there. The Left has become unhinged. We must remain vigilant. Most of all, don’t forget to vote this November.

SOURCE 

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Leftism is largely inborn.  Is bureaucracy too?

All the twin studies how strong heritability for Left/Right political orientation.  Leftists are born dissatisfied and conservatives are born contented.  And Leftists love bureaucracy.  They can hardly get enough of it.  As V.I. Lenin remarked: "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything".  So is there also an inherited bureaucratic instinct?  Something I encountered recently inclined me towards that belief.

A little background:  I have a pinup on my bedroom wall.  It is a picture of the Queen.  No doubt many would say that I must be a poor thing to have the Queen as my pinup but it is a large and beautifully done portrait so I think it could be called a pinup.



And I am an unapologetic monarchist.  I believe that a constitutional monarchy is the best form of government,  Americans have to wait 4 years before they can get rid of an unpopular  President but, in a monarchy on Westminster lines, parliament can boot out at will any Prime Minister who has lost popularity --which the Australian parliament has done rather a lot of in recent years. So it suits my views that I have a picture of Her Majesty and Prince Philip on my wall.

But I have acquired that picture only recently.  There is an Australian tradition that Federal politicians can give out free pictures of Her Majesty to their constituents.  So I wrote to my local Federal MP, Terri Butler, member for Griffith, and requested one.  She represents the Labor Party so I was slightly surprised that she wrote back to me and agreed.  I had to pick the picture up from her electorate office but that was not far away from me so off I went.

When I arrived and rang the bell a large sandy-hired young man appeared. When I made my request he said; "We haven't received any correspondence about this".  I said, "I wrote to Parliament house".  He said "Did you get a letter from Terri Butler about this?"  I said I had.  "Have you got it with you" -- "No". "Where is it?" -- "At home".  And he went on generally in a rather circular way about having authorization to give me the picture.  I inherit a rather short temper from my father however so I very soon started to shout and bang on the counter.  That dislodged him and he gave me the picture.

As the  pictures are freely given out, there was absolutely need for any bureaucracy but this employee of the Labor party dreamed some up anyway.  He appears to have a bureaucratic temperament.  I suspect it was inherited -- JR

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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8 October, 2018

The Power of ‘I Stand With Brett’

Amy Swearer     encounters the silent majority

Friday morning, as the Senate prepared to vote to advance Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, I took a field trip with some of our interns. It wasn’t anything intensive—just a lap around the Capitol to observe the anti-Kavanaugh protests.

One of our female interns carried a sign. It was a simple sign with four words: “I stand with Brett.”

I somewhat expected those words to attract attention—they are, after all, words so contrary to the sentiments expressed by the majority of individuals who held signs around the Capitol this week.

What I did not expect was the type of attention it would draw and from what type of people.

You see, we were mostly ignored by the large groups of screaming, borderline-hysterical, anti-Kavanaugh protesters. Occasionally, a lone individual would heap some abuse our way, often in the form of telling us we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But overall, it appeared they had bigger fights to pick than with four fairly innocuous young adults who kept a respectful distance.

No, the attention we attracted was from people largely overlooked amid the shouting. And they were almost unanimously supportive.

Normal, everyday people—tourists from all areas of the country, couples pushing strollers, families with teenage daughters, middle-aged friends, elderly women out for a walk—all quietly, calmly approaching us for a word of thanks.

We could not go 50 yards without being stopped by someone expressing their gratitude or asking if we had any extra signs. I can’t tell you how many wanted to take pictures with the sign. I gave up counting the thumbs ups and smiles. I can’t tell you the number of ways we were thanked by different individuals.

What I do know is that the amount of encouragement received by people who would otherwise have stayed silent in the shadow of the larger anti-Kavanaugh mobs gave me hope.

More than anything, I was heartened by the women. For too many women, “I stand with Brett” is a phrase we’ve been told we mustn’t utter in public. It’s a conclusion we’ve been told we mustn’t reach. A rationale we’ve been told we mustn’t embrace.

And so many women have stayed silent. We’ve quietly absorbed the abuse aimed at us. Without retort, we have stood by and refrained from engaging in a prolonged ideological battle we fear we’ll fight alone.

But inside, we know. We know that there is not and has never been a shred of corroboration for the claims of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. We know that “Believe all women” is an irrational and untenable ideology that undermines every argument that we should be treated equally to men. We know that a good man has been forced to go to war for his honor and his family because he is being slandered on the altar of social justice run amok.

For dozens of women today, these four words printed on poster board were their voice, and they let us know it.

Reason and truth do not always belong to the loudest in the room. Sometimes, they belong to the whisperers the world barely acknowledges, and castigates when it does.

So let me unequivocally state today what so many of us have long known, but have too often refused to say publicly: Women, it’s OK.

It’s OK to not believe other women when the evidence is contrary to their claims.

It’s OK to adhere to basic concepts of rationality and fairness when making a judgment about a man accused of sexual misconduct.

It’s OK to stand with Kavanaugh if your reason so implores you.

These are things we need not only whisper in private. We can say them out loud, and boldly. Behind our whispers is a mighty roar to let others know they are not alone in thinking for themselves.

SOURCE  

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The U.S. Economy Is More Free Than It’s Been in Years

Economic freedom is good—whether in itself or because of the longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty it brings.

In a country that seems determined to reenact the 1850s, or the Weimar years, or maybe Italy's years of lead, good news about politics and the economy can seem exceedingly rare. But brace yourself for a shock, because this country around you that looks poised to tear itself apart has quietly broken a decades-long retreat from economic freedom, becoming a place more supportive of private business and the ability of individuals to make a living.

This good news comes courtesy of the latest report on the "Economic Freedom of the World," published last week by Canada's Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute and using data up through 2016. "The foundations of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, and open markets," write authors James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall, and Ryan Murphy—though there's rather a lot more behind the numbers, as you might expect.

Readers of Reason will take it as a given that freedom—the ability to order your own affairs and make consensual arrangements with willing people—is a good thing in itself. But the report notes that "countries with greater economic freedom have substantially higher per-capita incomes." In fact, those in the least-free quartile of countries have the lowest per-capita income at $5,649, rising to $11,465 in the third quartile, $18,510 in the second quartile, and $40,376 in the quartile containing the most economically free countries.

Life expectancy also rises and "is about 20 years longer in countries with the most economic freedom than in countries with the least."

And freedom appears to be indivisible, with the rights to run your business and use your property closely linked to the rights to criticize leaders and change the government. "Greater economic freedom is associated with more political rights and civil liberties," the report notes.

So economic freedom is good—whether in itself or because of the longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty it brings.

All of this should be important to Americans because the U.S. has been sliding in the rankings for many, many years. The 2012 report mourned that "[f]rom 1980 to 2000, the United States was generally rated the third freest economy in the world, ranking behind only Hong Kong and Singapore," but that it "has experienced a substantial decline in economic freedom during the past decade."

That year, the U.S. came in at number 18. If you're American and concerned about longevity, prosperity, and associated liberty, that wasn't a good sign.

But now, "the United States returned to the top 10 in 2016 after an absence of several years." While not back to its high-water mark, the U.S. is now ranked in sixth place. And if you're wondering, the U.S. ranking didn't improve because everybody else is going down the drain more quickly than us; our score actually rose, meaning the country became more free in economic terms.

If we can avoid tanking the world's economy in a trade war, we have some friends who might want to join the celebration.

"Worldwide, economic freedom has increased during the past three decades," the report points out. "Moreover, the increase in economic freedom of developing economies since 1990 has been more rapid than the increase of high-income industrial countries. The institutions and policies of developing countries today are substantially more consistent with economic freedom than was the case in the 1980s."

Remember that link between economic freedom and per capita income mentioned above? Now take that and apply that to the entire planet. Then wrap your mind around a report recently published by the World Bank finding that "the number of extremely poor people—those who live on $1.90 a day or less—has fallen from 1.9 billion in 1990 to about 736 million in 2015."

It's worth noting that the other major measure of economic freedom, the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom, still has the United States at an unimpressive eighteenth place—but that's despite real improvements in the country's performance. Heritage found an all-time high in global economic freedom; the U.S.'s improvements got swamped in that overall rising tide.

"The increase in its overall score would seem to indicate that the decade-long decline in America's economic freedom may have been arrested. There are signs of renewed labor market dynamism and increased growth, and major regulatory and tax reforms are spurring business confidence and investment," the Index's editors wrote.

That's not to say you should stop worrying; we're humans and we're perfectly capable of flushing away the good times. President Trump's protectionist instincts—his view of trade as a zero-sum game in which the U.S. is necessarily pitted against its partners—is brewing up a nasty conflict.

In May, more than 1,100 economists signed a letter deliberately echoing the one sent to Congress in 1930 urging rejection of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which subsequently contributed to the devastation wrought by the Great Depression. "Congress did not take economists' advice in 1930," the modern letter warns, "and Americans across the country paid the price. The undersigned economists and teachers of economics strongly urge you not to repeat that mistake."

Also disturbing, is that "global support for free markets seems to have been falling continuously since the 1990s," as described by Pál Czeglédi and Carlos Newland for the Economic Freedom of the World report. They examine several possible reasons before citing Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan to the effect that people seem to favor some sort of "parentalistic" protection. This role has been played in the past by religion, but in increasingly secular societies the state has stepped in with all of its coercive power.

It's an interesting theory that's worth exploring elsewhere. But, for whatever reason, surveys find increasingly wealthy populations voicing decreasing support for the economic freedom that made them prosperous. It's quite possible that anti-market fervor has slowed or even halted progress toward economic freedom in much of the world, Czeglédi and Newland add. They speculate that as governments substitute the preferences of politicians for the outcomes of voluntary exchange with inevitably unpleasant results, sentiment will shift again.

For the moment, though, the United States is an economically freer place in an economically freer world. That means improved prospects for long, free, and prosperous lives for all of us—if we don't mess it up.

SOURCE 

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Trump's 'Compromise' on Border Wall

"When will Republican leadership learn that they are being played like a fiddle by the Democrats on Border Security and Building the Wall?" Trump said.

"Without Borders, we don't have a country," he said. "With Open Borders, which the Democrats want, we have nothing but crime! "Finish the Wall!" he declared.

What inspired this presidential declaration?

A House-Senate conference committee had just finalized another massive spending bill. They called this one a combined "minibus" and "continuing resolution."

Unlike the "omnibus" Trump had signed in March, this minibus-continuing resolution did not fund the entire government in one bill. The "minibus" part of it, however, did "marry" the spending bill for the Department of Defense to the spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. It would fund those departments through all of fiscal 2019.

The "continuing resolution" part of it would fund only until Dec. 7 — and, according to the House Appropriations Committee, only at "current levels" — any other federal departments that did not have their own appropriations bills signed into law by Sunday, when fiscal 2018 ended.

In other words, those departments would be funded until one month after the upcoming midterm elections.

The Department of Homeland Security — which is responsible for the border wall — was one of these.

During the year, the House Appropriations Committee had approved a Homeland Security bill that provided $5 billion for the wall for fiscal 2019. The Senate committee had approved only $1.6 billion, making no increase from the 2018 level. And the massive minibus-continuing resolution would presumably maintain fiscal 2018's funding level — but only through Dec. 7.

Three days after Trump's tweet, the Senate approved this bill, 93-7. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-.Ky., in supporting it.

On Sept. 20, Trump tweeted about the bill again. This time, he put some of his words in capital letters.

"I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill," he said, "and where will it come from after the Midterms? Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!"

Six days after this tweet, the Republican leadership brought their minibus-continuing resolution up for a vote in the House. It passed with 185 Democrats voting for it but only 176 Republicans. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R.-Calif., in voting for it, while 56 House conservatives voted against it.

Funding for the border wall was not the only significant issue in this bill.

The original Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that the House Appropriations Committee approved in July included language that defunded both Planned Parenthood and research that uses tissue taken from babies killed in induced abortions. But that language was not included in the final minibus-continuing resolution that funded HHS for all of fiscal 2019.

Thus, the bill did not provide the funding Trump was seeking for the border wall, but it did provide the funding Democrats wanted for Planned Parenthood and aborted-baby-parts research.

On Friday, Trump signed into law this bill he had correctly called "ridiculous."

"This spending package reflects the compromise Republican leaders sought with the White House that postpones a fight over Trump's demand for a border wall until after the Nov. 6 midterm elections," the Washington Post reported that day.

SOURCE 

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Federal Government Cut 1,000 Jobs in September; -16,000 Under Trump so far

The number of people employed by the federal government declined by 1,000 in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since President Donald Trump took office, federal employment has declined by 16,000.

In December 2016, the month before Trump’s inauguration, there were 2,810,000 people employed by the federal government, according to the BLS data. By August 2018, that had declined by 15,000 to 2,795,000. In September, it declined another 1,000 to 2,794,000.

At the same time, overall government employment (including those employed by state and local governments) increased 13,000 in September and has climbed by 100,000 since December 2016.

In December, 2016, there were 22,306,000 people employed in state, local and federal government combined. By August 2018, that had climbed to 22,393,000. In September, it jumped again to 22,406,000.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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7 October, 2018

WE WON!

All of us won who spoke and wrote in support of the President's nomination to SCOTUS of Judge Kavanaugh.  But most of all it was another triumph for our hero, Donald J. Trump. He is an incredible winner.  The wall is next!

I am pleased to hear the following emailed comment from Tom Fitton of "Judicial Watch":

"We are grateful that a majority of the Senate rejected the leftist smears, abuse of process, and rejection of constitutional norms. Now there must be accountability for this lawless assault on our constitutional republic. Judicial Watch has launched an investigation into the Senate ethics and legal abuses by anti-Kavanaugh Senators. And we will continue to pursue our Senate ethics complaint against Sen. Booker for his admitted violation of Senate rules, the violation of which requires expulsion from the Senate".





Trump has a week to brag about

This article is from a Leftist source so I have deleted a few dubious claims and snide adjectives

He promised so much success that everyone would be tired of all the winning. But after 20 months that proved more arduous than President Trump once imagined, this may be the best week of his presidency so far.

The all-but-assured confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will cap a week that also saw the president seal an ambitious and elusive new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of his top campaign promises. And the latest jobs report out on Friday put unemployment at its lowest since 1969.

It gives Trump a fresh narrative to take on the campaign trail just a month before critical midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. With the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, turning quiet during campaign season, Trump has an opportunity to redirect the conversation onto more favorable territory.

Still, in Trump’s presidency, even victories come at a cost.  America has been ripped apart by the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, fraught as it was with gender politics that Trump seemed eager to encourage and anger on the left and the right.

His most significant legislative achievement was last year’s tax-cutting package, which was forged in large part by Republican congressional leaders.

The past couple weeks, however, saw Trump seal a revised trade agreement with South Korea and replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which not long ago seemed as if it might be beyond his reach. But the booming economy has become one of his strongest political assets. And with Kavanaugh nearing confirmation Saturday, he showed he could push through an important nomination that many predicted was likely to fail.

“It’s a wonderful week. We’re thrilled,” Kellyanne Conway, his counselor, said in an interview. “It shows that his perseverance and his tenacity and his adherence to campaign promises and principles are paying dividends.”

Whether the string of success for Trump will translate into support on the campaign trail could be the defining test of the next few weeks.

“Independents especially are tired of the chaos and the uncertainty,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008. “Yes, the economy is good; yes, Trump got two conservative judges on the court; and, yes, he is doing what he promised on the campaign trail” in terms of trade, tax cuts, and tougher immigration enforcement. “But at what cost?” she asked. “Tariff wars, separating children from their mothers, huge deficit. I can go on and on.”

SOURCE 

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Higher Educational Attainment Linked to Trump Support and Republican Favorability in Key Demographics

Among first generation Americans and blacks, higher education leads to conservative voting

Market Research Foundation was one of the first research groups to identify the ‘White, No College’ wave which brought out white blue-collar voters in droves and helped propel President Trump into the White House. Since then, data has been fairly consistent in validating this trend. Earlier this year, Pew published a series of reports showing the highest educational attainment-party divide in two decades. According to Pew’s surveys, in 1994, 39% of voters with a four-year college degree identified with or leaned Democrat, and 54% identified or leaned Republican. In 2017, those numbers were exactly reversed.

Market Research Foundation has identified a growing educational attainment trend in the opposite direction within two key demographics: Black voters and first-generation Americans. Our nationwide online survey from July of this year found that Black voters with higher levels of education are more likely to have supported the President, not less. Seventeen percent of Black Trump voters had a Postgraduate Degree, versus 12% of Black Clinton voters. According to the census Bureau’s educational attainment publication, only 22% of Blacks over age 25 had a Bachelor’s Degree and just 8% had an advanced degree in 2015. The more education a Black voter had, the more likely they were to support Trump. Combining the shares of Black Trump voters with a Bachelor’s Degree and a Postgraduate Degree, 49% had completed at minimum a BA. This is in stark contrast to the way white voters voted in 2016. Sixty-seven percent of whites with a high school education or less supported Trump in 2016, while just 28% supported Clinton.

Our nationwide July survey of 1,751 first generation Americans from across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, and South America, found that the less education an individual had achieved, the more likely they were to have supported Clinton – by 45.5%. In addition, higher educational attainment was correlated with higher Trump approval and higher approval of the Republican Party. The table below outlines the correlation between educational attainment and sentiment.

Education and views in first generation Americans

Overall, 35% of first-generation Americans voted for Trump in 2016, while 56% voted for Clinton.

While Clinton’s total share of college educated immigrants was higher than Trump’s, her share of the lowest educated vote was higher. Clinton got 69.2% of the vote among those with a high school education or less, and that dropped to 48.6% for those with some college, and 56.1% for those with a Bachelor’s Degree.
In contrast, only 23.7% of those with a high school education or less supported Trump, and his share of support rose to 42.3% among those with some college and 33.9% among those with a Bachelor’s Degree. To compare, Trump got 67% of whites with a high school education or less

Trump’s approval rating was higher among those with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree than among those with a high school education or less. 35% of respondents with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree approved of Trump, compared to 27.5% of those with a high school education or less.

Positive views of the Republican Party were also higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 31% percent of respondents with some college and 30% of voters with Bachelor’s Degree approved of the Republican Party, compared to 26.1% of those with a high school education or less.
Conversely, negative views of the Democrat Party were higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 37.8% of voters with some college and 34.2% of voters with a Bachelor’s Degree disapproved of the Democrat Party, compared to just 18.6% of those with a high school education or less.

SOURCE 

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Lowest Unemployment Rate Since '69; Lowest Number of Unemployed Since 2000

"Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969!" President Trump tweeted on Friday.

Not since the end of 1969 has the nation's unemployment rate been this low. The Bureau of  Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a point to 3.7 percent in September.

Last month, the number of employed Americans (155,962,000) remained near the record high of 155,965,000 set in July; and in September, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 270,000 to 5,964,000, a level not seen since 2000.

The unemployment rate for Hispanics, 4.5 percent, tied the record low set in July. For African-Americans, the unemployment rate in September was 6.0 percent, just a tenth of a point above the record low set in May.

And 70,656,000 women age 20+ were counted as employed in September, a record number for this group.

“Since the election, we have created over 4 million new jobs,” President Donald Trump told a rally in Minnesota Thursday night. “We've added nearly half a million new manufacturing jobs...and we have companies pouring into our country.”

On Friday morning, the Labor Department said another 134,000 jobs were created in September, a bit disappointing, since economists had projected a gain of 185,000 jobs.

But BLS also reported that total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up from +147,000 to +165,000, and the change for August was revised up from +201,000 to +270,000. With these revisions, employment gains in July and August combined were 87,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)

After revisions, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month over the last 3 months.

In September, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 258,290,000. Of those, 161,926,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 161,926,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.7 percent of the 258,290,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population, the same as August.

The higher the participation rate, the better, but economists expect this percentage to remain stagnant and decline in the years ahead as more baby boomers retire.

Another troubling number: BLS said a record 96,364,000 Americans were not in the labor force last month, meaning they did not have a job and were not looking for one, for whatever reason.

SOURCE 

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Hispanic Unemployment Rate Hits Lowest Level on Record in September

The national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. labor force fell to the lowest level on record in September of 2018, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday show.

In September, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.5%, tying July 2018 for the lowest level since the BLS began tracking Hispanic-Latino employment data in 1973.

Hispanic-Latino employment statistics for September 2018:

Unemployment rate: 4.5%, down from 4.7% in August
Number Employed: 27,059,000 up from 26,927,000 in August
Number Unemployed: 1,287,000, down from 1,315,000 in August
Labor Force Participation: 66.0%, up from 65.9% in August
Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population (16+ years old): 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August
Number Participating in Labor Force: 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

SOURCE 

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Manufacturing Jobs +18,000 in September

Manufacturing jobs increased by 18,000 in the United States in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In August, according to the new BLS numbers, there were 12,729,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States. In September, there were 12,747,000.

“Employment in manufacturing continued to trend up in September (+18,000), reflecting a gain in durable goods industries,” the BLS said in it monthly jobs report. “Over the year, manufacturing has added 278,000 jobs, with about four-fifths of the gain in the durable goods component.”

Manufacturing employment in the United States peaked in June 1979, when it hit 19,553,000. Even with the recent gains in manufacturing employment in the United States, there are still 6,806,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in this country than there were at the 1979 peak.

SOURCE 

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Sons of America, beware

By Cheryl K. Chumley

I have two sons. One is in his 20s, well on his way into adulthood. The other is 16 and, given the way the Brett Kavanaugh nomination process is headed, walking a tight rope between college preparation and jail.

As President Donald Trump noted in recent comments about the runaway train called Supreme Court Nomination, it’s “a very scary time for young men in America.”

Yes, it is. This is no joke. The sons of America are facing some dire straits.

The left, with one fell Supreme Court nomination swoop, has managed to upturn the entire notion of due process and collapse the cherished American principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Democrats shrug off such assertions and warnings by saying, in essence, oh, this isn’t a court of law — due process doesn’t apply. But that’s a skirt of accountability. That’s an argument of deceit. The left knows very well what it’s doing.

Senate Democrats know very well that Christine Blasey Ford’s high-school-era accusations against Kavanaugh are being kept alive solely on the willingness of the thug elements of the left to play their thug roles — on the willingness of these anarchy-minded to, say, corral Sen. Jeff Flake with a crying-on-cue show of female hysteria on a congressional elevator; or to stage noisy and disruptive sit-ins at the offices of Sen. Joe Manchin; or to shamelessly pitch and parade around the media ridiculous notions of Kavanaugh & Friend drug-fueled gang rapes.

Senate Democrats know they don’t have the evidence to prove these flimsy and fantastical allegations against Kavanaugh, so they instead resort to theatrics and distractions to convict — to convict in the court of public opinion, that is.

But slander is serious business. Tearing apart a man’s reputation for political sport is a grave enterprise.

So is the Democrats’ utter disregard for the long-term.

If Ford’s unfounded accusations are allowed to stand as truth, America’s standard of proof for guilt will be forever damaged. Courts won’t even matter, because mob rule will become the decider.

Ford, after making her allegations — or better yet, before or during — ought to have provided some corroborating evidence, some documentation from police, some irrefutable notes or papers from therapists, teachers, trusted adults who were in the know of what she alleged and who could provide the much-needed backing to cast genuine dark shadows on Kavanaugh’s character. But she didn’t. All Ford did was throw out her accusation with full expectation she’d be believed.

All the supporting evidence the Democrats have since tried to sell has crumbled in the light of day.

So what we’re left with is Ford’s accusation — filled with memory gaps — and the Democrats’ insistence that her simple I Am Woman allegation is enough to boot Kavanaugh from the nomination process.

Well, mark these words: If Democrats win on this, if they’re able to stop Kavanaugh’s nomination on such whimsical wordage, then each and every future Republican-nominated judicial pick will be treated to the same circus show. But not just judges. It won’t be long before Democrats, drunk with the power of the allegation, segue their Kavanaugh win to any and all male Republicans seeking public office — House, Senate, state and local legislative seats. All GOP candidates will soon enough be dealt the same Kavanaugh cards.

The effect to conservative male voices will prove chilling.

What Republican in his right mind would want to subject himself to the type of scrutiny Kavanaugh is enduring — just to hold a school board seat, for crying out loud?

But more than that, the effect to males in general will be downright silencing. Think about it: If the men of America know they’re one single female accusation away from losing everything, they’re much more apt to go along to get along — to keep from making waves, rocking boats, stirring pots, however they can. Guilt? Innocence? Truth? Doesn’t matter.

The left has an agenda here. And it should scare every male in America. This isn’t just about a political stifling; it’s a gender bash.

And mothers of America, of all political walks, Democrat, Republican, independent, what have you, take note: Today’s Kavanaugh is tomorrow’s John Smith.

Your son — yes, yours — is one Ford-like accusation away from complete character destruction.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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5 October, 2018

Infrastructure as a legacy

Leftists are notoriously interested only in the distribution of goods and services. They virtually ignore the process of producing goods and services.  They seem to think that goods and services drop down upon us like manna from heaven.  It is precisely that insouciance that makes socialist countries poor.  They just don't know how to arrange wealth creation efficiently so hamper it rather than fostering it.

And they seem to think the same about infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools  They give no thought to how those things come to be so and are very poor at providing them.  People who need the latest medical procedures don't go to Russia.  They go to the USA.

I think however that it is highly relevant to think about the origins of our infrastructure.  It didn't get there by accident and its distribution is not random.  Some countries have better infrastructure than others. So who provided that infrastructure and who owns it? 

A very large part of our infrastructure was put there by our ancestors.  They built the roads and buildings which we use today.  And the ownership varies.  Some is in private hands and some in government hands. But in an important sense it is a legacy to all of us today bequeathed to us by our ancestors.  Some of it is best in private and and some is regarded as best in government hands but we all benefit from it enormously.  Our entire modern life depends heavily on what we have collectively inherited from the past.  We didn't build the road we drive on or the hospitals and schools that we use.  We come into the world with most of what we use already laid out for us by our ancestors

Not all that we use will be inherited of course. But it will be the development of an inheritance. It might be a new road we drive on and a new school we attend.  But the building of that road and that school will have depended on all sorts of things from the past -- tools, techniques, machinery and the product of blast furnaces -- that have steadily evolved first in the hands of our ancestors and then in our hands.

So it seems to me that the physical facilities of our country that we use are just as much a legacy as is money left to us in a relative's will.  They were not produced by accident but were the product of work and ingenuity -- and we ourselves continue to build on those foundations.  We too enable the provision of infrastructure -- mainly through our taxes in the modern world but sometimes directly

I for instance have had a considerable presence in the real estate industry. I often took on semi-derelict buildings and organized their renovation.  Since I live in a capitalist country I did it entirely for my own private profit and did indeed earn significant income from my activities.  I have long ago sold the properties concerned and have money in the bank instead.  But the important point is that the properties I took on are now upgraded and will  be in that upgraded state when I die. I took existing things from the past and built on them to make them into better things.  That will be a legacy I leave when I die.  I will have left the infrastructure better than I found it and others will benefit from that.

I am aware that what I have just been saying sounds very much  like Obama's famous claim, "You didn't build that", so I think I had better do a little bit of differentiation.  He was of course right in pointing out that all we do depends in many ways on the work, past and present, that others do or have done. But what significance he saw in that is a bit mysterious. The most I can make of it was that he thought businesses should be thankful to the government and be humbled by its wise provisions.  By contrast, I would argue that the government is just another tool we have set up for achieving desired results. And I would argue that it is largely our ancestors we should thank for the infrastructure we daily rely on.

But what about immigrants?  Do they have any right to what is in fact our legacy?  They have not inherited anything  from our country or brought much, if anything, to it.  I think it is clear that they do to an extent steal our legacy. 

That is particularly clear in the case of Australia.  Recent governments have allowed a large "refugee" influx and that does harm us.  Our roads are now more congested, our public hospitals can barely cope and our schools are overcrowded and short of good teachers.  Such is the demand for teachers created by the active wombs of refugees that teacher standards have had to be lowered to near oblivion. Students with almost any High School pass are being accepted into teachers' colleges.  And on top of that we have to feed the "refugees".  Only a minority find employment and become self supporting.

But for various reasons good and bad our governments keep letting the refugees in and in so doing dilute that assets we all have to work with. With not a care in the world our governments have given away a significant part of our inheritance.  I think it should stop.  I don't think our government should give away what is the right of those of us who were born here.

So what do I propose?  A just policy would be to allow into our country only those who have paid for the privilege.  Citizenship could be bought.  And the proceeds would go to the construction of new infrastructure that would cope with the expanded population.

That's not going to happen, of course, but greater selectivity of some sort would certainly be fairer than the present system.  The less our inherited assets are handed to others the better.  I personally would be selective by allowing in only outsiders who are similar to the majority population  -- essentially other people of European origin.  They at least had ancestors who worked hard and effectively to improve their given environment so could help continue our ongoing work of improving our facilities, infrastructure and environment -- JR

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Amazon's Real Motivation for Raising Wages



A month ago, the socialist senator supreme, Bernie Sanders, introduced the Stop BEZOS (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies) Act, which would tax large corporations at a rate equal to the amount of federal benefits their employees receive from the government. Never mind Sanders's own personal wealth or Amazon owner Jeff Bezos's status as one of the socialist archenemies of Liberty — the bill was an effort to mobilize Bernie's voters this fall.

So it's no surprise on a couple of counts to see Amazon raise its internal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Good for Amazon ... except there's a catch.

Bezos, the world's richest man, gets a little breathing room with his fellow socialists for appearing virtuous, tamping down criticism of working conditions and unionization efforts at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, while also squeezing his competitors as the labor market tightens. A booming Amazon, now with more than $1 trillion in market cap, can — and probably should — afford to pay its workers more, but its local, "mom and pop" competitors don't have the profit margins to do likewise.

If this was just good old-fashioned market competition, it would be one thing. But Bezos didn't stop with his own action. No, like any "good" Big Business mogul, he's also getting in bed with Big Government, simultaneously announcing that Amazon will lobby to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. All the while, Bezos's Washington Post can make the media case for a higher minimum wage.

Amazon did essentially the same thing by leading the way advocating for an Internet sales tax. Its massive infrastructure could handle the added burden, so why not foist it onto smaller competitors to damage their bottom line?

As for the minimum wage itself, we've always argued that the true minimum is $0 an hour — employers will hire fewer workers if those workers are more expensive to employ. Washington, DC, of all places, has at least partly conceded this reality. The Democrat-run city council of DC, where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 86 points, took the first step in repealing Initiative 77, which gradually raises the minimum wage in the district even for restaurant servers and bartenders to $15 an hour plus tips. Restaurant workers actually opposed the wage hike. Sometimes a modicum of economic sanity can prevail even in leftist bastions.

SOURCE 

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Trump trade deals with Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Japan keep "America first" promise, isolate China

Everyone knew the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a bad deal. President Obama knew. Hillary Clinton knew. President Trump knew. But only President Trump was willing to use our leverage to push our neighbors to the negotiating table and work out a strong, better deal for the U.S. While previous presidents pandered to other nations in the name of globalization, Trump is pursuing bilateral trade relations which are more likely to put American first and get our workers back on the job.

NAFTA resulted in significant job loss as manufacturing sectors moved to Mexico, wages in the U.S. stagnated while working conditions in Mexico deteriorated as well.

While many American political leaders seemed to agree the deal was bad, former President Barack Obama never followed through on his campaign promise to renegotiate the deal — a promise he made repeatedly in Aug. 2007, Nov. 2007, Dec. 2007, Jan. 2008, and Feb. 2008. Similarly, in July 2016 Hillary Clinton denounced the deal saying it “had not lived up to its promises” and promised to rework it.

Instead, Obama pursued the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — a deal that included Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, Chile, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan — and which would have continued displacing U.S. workers and allowing other countries to lead the rules of trade. Obama’s globalist approach worked so hard to bring 11 other nations to the table, it left the U.S. behind. In Jan. 2017, President Trump withdrew from the TPP and plotted a different course.

By renegotiating NAFTA, President Trump has set a new course of smaller, individual trade agreements that work in the U.S. and our partner’s interest. This is already evidenced by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). For what the agreement lacks in a catchy acronym it seems to make up for in substance.

The deal will require 75 percent of duty-free car content be produced in the region with 40 percent being produced by $16-an-hour labor, this will bring manufacturing back to the US while helping Mexican workers who currently make cars for less than $4-an-hour.  U.S. farmers are also expected to see a boost in production as harmful limitations on dairy imports by Canada have been dropped in the new deal.

Following President Trump’s meeting at the United Nations last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to begin formal trade negotiations with the Trump Administration. This move has been praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Japan was originally part of the TPP, but since Trump removed the U.S. from that deal, Japan can now work with the U.S. directly to form a deal that actually benefits both countries, particularly in the auto industry. According to the White House, the agreement will “For the United States, market access outcomes in the motor vehicle sector will be designed to increase production and jobs in the United States in the motor vehicle industries…”

David Gossack, vice president for Asia at the Chamber of Commerce explained, “As the world’s third largest economy, Japan is one of the most important export markets for American goods and services. These new discussions should help put U.S. businesses on a level playing with our foreign competitors and address longstanding issues between our two nations.”

These bilateral agreements allow each country to get more of what they want than large, multinational agreements.

Last month President Trump signed another trade agreement with South Korea. President Trump explained during the Sept. 24 press conference, “The new U.S.-Korea agreement includes significant improvements to reduce our trade deficit and to expand opportunities to export American products to South Korea… These outcomes give the finest American-made automobiles, innovative medicines, and agricultural crops much better access to Korean markets.”

As part of this agreement, South Korea will also double the number of US cars sold within the country annually.

President Trump also recently announced India is wishing to engage in trade negotiations as well, in order to produce a bilateral agreement with the U.S. Trump has described this as a part of an increasingly broad plan to foster individual relationships with countries. Trump is also moving forward with bilateral trade talks with Brazil.

These agreements play a strategic role in combatting the attempts by China to dominate global trade.

In recent years, China has led the One Belt One Road initiative to connect 70 countries across Asia, Europe, and Africa via trade and infrastructure development. What has been deemed the “new silk road” threatens U.S. global economic dominance, but these bilateral trade agreements provide countries with a more profitable and stable path forward with the U.S. rather than China.

Combined with President Trump trade pressure, the new trade deals put China in a bind. He has placed an additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. China retaliated with $60 billion, but the U.S. only exports $135 billion to China, meaning China is almost already out of ammunition.

In an attempt to cheapen exports as a means of offsetting the tariffs, China has decreased the value of the yuan 8.8 percent since the beginning of the year, from $0.159 per $1 U.S. dollar to $0.145.

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) vice president of public policy Robert Romano explained, “Coupled with China announcing a general reduction on certain tariffs, China’s responses so far have been largely defensive and pretty weak. Devaluation and tariffing a limited number of U.S. imports, they’re running out of bullets. President Trump has exposed a major weakness of China’s export-dependent economic model that could compel Beijing to cave and ultimately come to the negotiating table. While Trump’s critics were moaning about a trade war, the President has been carefully ratcheting up pressure to achieve trade concessions, and it is working. The trade deals with Japan, South Korea and now Mexico and Canada signal that they see which way the wind is blowing.”

White House economic advisor Lawrence Kudlow predicts the G20 summit in Buenos Aires will be a good opportunity for China to come to the negotiating table. Kudlow explains, “The great hope here is that China will come to the table and start playing by the rules.” He noted talks thus far have been “unsatisfactory from our point of view.”

President Obama was willing to allow the U.S. to do worse in order to let other countries succeed, Trump proved that bilateral trade agreements can allow everyone to win, even China, that is, if it wants to do a deal.

As for the USMCA and South Korean trade deals, those still need to be passed through Congress, and this will require strict scrutiny to ensure the deal is the best it can be. Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning explained, “President Trump continues to keep his promises and on first blush, the USMCA looks like a better deal. However, the devil is always in the details, which deserve full scrutiny during the Congressional approval process.”

During the TPP debate, Congress went against the wishes of groups like Americans for Limited Government, which opposed “fast track” legislation in 2015 alongside Trump prior to his campaign announcement, legislation that allowed trade deals to pass both chambers of Congress with a simple majority vote, unlike the two-thirds Senate threshold required for treaties.

Congress went along with it, and now the trade authority extends to President Trump, and he’s taking advantage of it. Now that it has been done, a simple majority can pass USMCA once its details can be verified as favorable.

Officially certifying the USMCA will significantly reduce the damage caused to the American people during the reign of NAFTA and better unite North America. Following this model, President Trump can bring the entire international community together via individual, mutually beneficial trade agreements. The logic is simple: when every country commits to improving themselves, the world improves. This strategy has already proved more impressive than the failed promises of the Obama administration.

SOURCE 

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THIS POOR KID JUST LOST HIS CHANCE OF EVER BECOMING A JUDGE



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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4 October, 2018

Leftist Contempt for Middle-Class Values

Dennis Prager
    
When I was in graduate school, I learned a lot about the left. One lesson was that while most liberals and conservatives abide by society’s rules of order and decency, most leftists do not feel bound to live by these same rules.

I watched the way leftist Vietnam War protesters treated fellow students and professors. I watched left-wing students make “non-negotiable demands” of college administrations. I saw the Black Panthers engage in violence — including torture and murder — and be financially rewarded by leftists.

Today, we watch leftist mobs scream profanities at professors and deans, and shut down conservative and pro-Israel speakers at colleges. We routinely witness left-wing protesters block highways and bridges; scream in front of the homes of conservative business and political leaders; and surround conservatives’ tables at restaurants while shouting and chanting at them.

Conservatives don’t do these things. They don’t close highways, yell obscenities at left-wing politicians, work to ban left-wing speakers at colleges, smash the windows of businesses, etc.

Why do leftists feel entitled do all these things? Because they have thoroughly rejected middle-class, bourgeois and Judeo-Christian religious values. Leftists are the only source of their values. Leftists not only believe they know what is right — conservatives, too, believe they are right — but they also believe they are morally superior to all others. Leftists are Ubermenschen — people on such a high moral plane that they do not consider themselves bound by the normal conventions of civics and decency. Leftists don’t need such guidelines; only the non-left — the “deplorables” — need them.

In August 2017, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer in defense of middle-class values. She and her co-author cited a list of behavioral norms that, as Wax, put it, “was almost universally endorsed between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s.”

They were: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

She later wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “The fact that the ‘bourgeois culture’ these norms embodied has broken down since the 1960s largely explains today’s social pathologies — and re-embracing that culture would go a long way toward addressing those pathologies.”

For her left-wing colleagues at Penn Law School, this list was beyond the pale. About half of her fellow professors of law — 33 of them — condemned her in an open letter. And Wax wrote in the Journal, “My law school dean recently asked me to take a leave of absence next year and to cease teaching a mandatory first-year course.”

The Pennsylvania chapter of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild condemned her for espousing bourgeois values and questioned “whether it is appropriate for her to continue to teach a required first-year course.”

As regards traditional Jewish and Christian codes of conduct, just read the left’s contempt for Vice President Mike Pence’s religiosity. They fear him more than President Trump solely for that reason. One would think that leftists, as sensitive as they are to sexual harassment of women, would admire Pence’s career-long policy of never dining alone with a woman other than his wife. On the contrary, they mock him for it.

With such high self-esteem and no middle-class, bourgeois or Judeo-Christian values to guide them, many leftists are particularly vicious people.

The opening skit of “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend — Matt Damon’s mockery of Judge Brett Kavanaugh — provided a timely example. It is unimaginable that a prominent conservative group or individual would feature a skit mocking Kavanaugh’s accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Indeed, Kavanaugh noted his 10-year-old daughter’s prayer for his accuser, and a political cartoonist promptly drew a cartoon with her praying that God forgive her “angry, lying, alcoholic father for sexually assaulting Dr. Ford.”

Is there an equally prominent conservative public figure on the right who has ever said “F— Obama!” on national television just as Robert De Niro shouted, “F— Trump!” at the recent Tony Awards?

Now, why would De Niro feel he could shout an obscenity at the president of the United States with millions of young people watching him? Because he is not constrained by middle-class or Judeo-Christian moral values. In Nietzsche’s famous words, De Niro, like other leftists, is “beyond good and evil,” as Americans understood those terms until the 1960s.

In 2016, at a Comedy Central roast of actor Rob Lowe, the butt of the jokes was Ann Coulter, not Lowe. They mostly mocked her looks, and if there is something crueler than publicly mocking a woman’s looks, it’s hard to identify. For example, “Saturday Night Live” cast member Pete Davidson said, “Ann Coulter, if you’re here, who’s scaring the crows away from our crops?”

There surely are mean conservatives — witness some of the vile comments by anonymous conservative commenters on the internet. And it is a moral scandal that Ford has received death threats. The difference in left-wing meanness is the meanness of known — not anonymous — people on the left. They don’t hide behind anonymity because they do not feel bound by traditional notions of civility, for which they have contempt.

Now you can understand why the left hates Mike Pence, a man who has, by all accounts, led a thoroughly honorable life. He — and other evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews — tries to live by a code that is higher than him.

That ethic is what Ubermenschen seek to destroy. They are succeeding.

SOURCE 

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Trade ministers from the US, Canada and Mexico reach last-minute agreement to revamp the NAFTA deal after a YEAR of negotiations and a war of words between Trump and Trudeau

This seems to be the only account so far of what is actually in the deal

The US, Canada and Mexico have agreed to an updated version of the North America Free Trade Agreement following a year of agonizing negotiations. 

The Trump administration announced the new pact - which is being called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement - mere hours before the self-imposed September 30 deadline.

The agreement has been hailed as a major victory for Trump, who is now one giant step closer to delivering on his key campaign promise to overhaul NAFTA, which he called 'the worst deal maybe ever signed'.

A senior administration official told Politico late Sunday: 'It’s a great win for the president and a validation for his strategy in the area of international trade.'

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed satisfaction with the agreement as he left an emergency Cabinet meeting in Ottawa. 'It’s a good day for Canada,' Trudeau told reporters.

Trudeau called an emergency meeting with his ministers at 10pm Sunday in Ottawa as senior government officials reported the US and Canada were on the brink of striking a deal. 

Negotiators for both countries worked tirelessly over the weekend to meet the Trump administration's deadline.

According to a joint statement from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, the deal 'will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly half billion people who call North America home'.

The statement continued: 'We look forward to further deepening our close economic ties when this new agreement enters into force.' 

Sources briefed on the details of the reconstructed deal - which officials from all three countries began negotiating more than a year ago - have said it allows the US greater access to Canada's dairy market and also addressed concerns about auto tariffs.

Under the pact, Trump will maintain the ability to impose threatened 25 percent global tariffs on autos while largely exempting passenger vehicles, pickup trucks and auto parts from Canada and Mexico, according to a side-letter to the agreement revealed to Reuters on Monday.

Should Trump impose 'Section 232' autos tariffs on national security grounds, Mexico and Canada would each get a tariff-free passenger vehicle quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles exported to the United States annually.

Pickup trucks built in both countries will be exempted entirely, the side-letter said.

Mexico will get an auto parts quota of $108billion annually, while Canada will get a parts quota of $32.4billion annually in the event of US autos tariffs.

The quotas are significantly above existing production volumes in each country, allowing for some export growth. 

Congress will now be given 60 days to review the new deal and suggest changes before Trump can sign it.

Officials are said to be bracing for what may be a battle to get the agreement through the legislative body.

The Trump administration hopes to have the leaders of all three countries sign the agreement by the end of November, before Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto passes the baton to his successor.

Canada, the United States' No 2 trading partner, had been left out when the US and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp NAFTA.

The Trump administration was due to make a preliminary draft of that agreement public on Monday.

Trump had said he wanted to go ahead with a revamped NAFTA with or without Canada, but it was unclear whether he had authority from Congress to pursue an agreement with only Mexico.

Several lawmakers went on the record to say they wouldn't go along with a deal that left out Canada.

Earlier, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Fox News Channel's 'Sunday Morning Futures' that by Monday morning 'you will have some news one way or another that will... be big and perhaps market-moving.'

Among other things, the negotiators battled over Canada's high dairy tariffs. Canada also wanted to keep a NAFTA dispute-resolution process that the US wanted to jettison.

As US-Canada talks bogged down earlier this month, most trade analysts expected the September 30 deadline to come and go without Canada being reinstated.

They suspected that Canada, which had said it wasn't bound by US deadlines, was delaying the talks until after provincial elections Monday in Quebec, where support for Canadian dairy tariffs runs high.

SOURCE 

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Where is Atticus Finch today?

In "To Kill a Mockingbird"

The 1960 novel by Harper Lee was published to instant acclaim, has sold more than 30 million copies, and is ubiquitous in high-school curricula. The 1962 movie version, starring Gregory Peck, is a classic in itself and won three Academy Awards. A play based on the novel is about to open on Broadway.

This is quite the résumé for a book that, prior to the publication of a sequel in 2015 that was really the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, was Harper Lee’s only work. But nothing is forever, even for a book commonly called “timeless.” Lee’s novel is deeply out of sympathy with a moment when on college campuses, and in the culture more broadly, due process isn’t what it used to be, when it is often thought to be a hateful act to insist that allegations of sexual misconduct be proven.

A refresher on the story: It is told from the perspective of a young girl, Scout, who is the daughter of a small-town lawyer named Atticus Finch (played by Peck in the movie). The setting is Depression-era Alabama. Finch is unpopular in town because he has decided to take on the defense of a black man named Tom Robinson who is accused of rape by a young white woman.

And this is where the story, in contemporary terms, goes off the rails. Atticus Finch didn’t #BelieveAllWomen. He didn’t take an accusation at face value. He defended an alleged rapist, vigorously and unremittingly, making use of every opportunity provided to him by the norms of the Anglo-American system of justice. He did it despite considerable social pressure to simply believe the accuser.

In a gripping courtroom scene, Finch cross-examines Mayella Ewell, the 19-year-old daughter of an abusive drunk from a dirt-poor family who is Robinson’s accuser. With all the vehemence and emotion she can muster, Ewell insists that Robinson attacked her after she got him to break up a piece of old furniture at her house.

Without mercy, Finch takes apart her account. In contemporary internet argot, he “destroys” her. He brushes right by her tears. He doesn’t care about her feelings, only the facts. He exposes contradictions in her story and shreds her credibility, especially with the dramatic revelation that Robinson doesn’t have use of his left arm when he stands up at the defense table (he is alleged to have hit her with his left hand).

It is revealed that Ewell is lying. She had made an advance on Robinson and gotten caught by her vicious, racist father. The charge of rape against Robinson was a cover story, although the bigoted jury convicts him anyway.

To Kill a Mockingbird stands firmly for the proposition that an accusation can be false, that unpopular defendants presumed guilty must and should be defended, and that it is admirable and brave to withstand the crowd — at times in the story, literally the lynch mob — when it wants to cast aside the normal protections of justice.

Exactly what has made Atticus Finch such an honored figure in our culture would make him a very inconvenient man at many college campuses today, where charges of sexual misconduct are adjudicated without the accused being allowed to confront the accuser or make use of other key features of our system of justice. Finch is a rebuke to the shift from a presumption of innocence toward a presumption of guilt that now attends accusations of sexual harassment and assault. He didn’t believe that someone’s being accused of something is enough to establish his wrongdoing, or accept that a category of people were, by definition, to be under a pall of suspicion.

SOURCE 

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Fox News Contributor Fired After Calling Kavanaugh Accusers “Lying Skanks”

 

It seems that even Fox cannot handle too much truth

Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a Fox News contributor following a series of tweets in which he referred to Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers as “lying skanks” as the Kavanaugh hearing played out Thursday.

“Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a contributor. His comments on today’s hearings were reprehensible and do not reflect the values of FOX News,” said a Fox News spokesperson.

Jackson has been a contributor on Fox for several years, as well as a radio host on KJRadio and the author of the best-selling book “Race Pimping: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Business of Liberalism.”

“Feminists are their own worst enemies, and enemy of women,” Jackson wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “TO HELL with the notion that women must be believed no matter what. Lying skanks is what these 2 women are, and we ALL know more,” he wrote.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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3 October, 2018

The Barbarism of the Democrat Party
    
On Thursday, in Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony, the American people saw a man fighting for his reputation, his integrity, and his family. His moving words felt less like a testimony and more like the last cries of an innocent animal before it is slaughtered.

This is what the confirmation process has become for the Democrats: a slaughtering of innocent people who obstruct the political goals of their party. Through intimidation, psychological warfare, character assassination, and public shaming, they behead their opponents and hang their remains on pikes at the city walls — as a barbaric example to all who seek public office.

For Democrats, politics does not create better lives for the American people but instead serves as a power war justified in employing any tactic, at any time, anywhere. In their wake, Democrats leave the bodies of defamed leaders, politicians, and their traumatized families. This they cloak as “civic duty.”

In the Kavanaugh confirmation process, Democrats have completed perhaps their most shameful and disgraceful public operation. Yet they claim they do so for “women” and in support of #MeToo. In reality, they exploit women for political purposes, wrenching every last ounce of nonexistent evidence from their victims. Their anti-male, sexist rhetoric alienates half of the country, who had no choice in being born male. They claim that “all women” deserve to be heard. They do. But men are human beings too. Men also deserve the presumption of innocence. Men also deserve to be treated with respect and decency. Men also deserve a fair trial.

In their pursuit to “support women,” Democrats attempt to destroy the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons of so many women across this country. For political purposes, they elevate women as a super class, a protected class, a class of legal immunity. However, they only allow “useful” women to qualify for such status. The women assaulted by former president Bill Clinton (Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Leslie Millwee) have been ignored and cast aside because they served no political purpose. This clearly debunks the Democrat claim that in “listening to women,” they are righting the wrongs of misogyny for all of history.

Our country’s leadership does listen to women. The Senate treated Dr. Christine Ford with respect and honor. However, making an innocent man the scapegoat for 6,000 years of recorded history is wrong. Oppression and violence certainly have happened in human history. It was wrong then. It is wrong now. But replacing oppression of the past with discrimination against men in the present does not ameliorate the problem.

Democrat Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA), Patrick Leahy (VT), and Dick Durbin (IL) are wrong. American women don’t want to reconcile historical misogyny by destroying the life of an innocent man. American women want to see a Senate that has enough decency to support an innocent man and, in so doing, restore due process, the presumption of innocence, and the rule of law in this country.

And lest you think that discrediting, intimidating, and smearing is something new, view Justice Clarence Thomas’ response to the false Anita Hill allegations that took place during his Senate confirmation in 1991.

SOURCE 

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Countering the EU, UN, and Iran

Trump's clear-minded focus on the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program has been remarkable. 

President Donald Trump turned in a mixed performance at last week’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York. Occasionally lapsing into language more appropriate for a campaign rally, his speech to the General Assembly was a missed opportunity to make the United States’s case against the globalists who dream of the UN becoming a true world government. In his opening speech at the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, he declared, “Kim Jong-un, a man I have gotten to know and like, wants peace and prosperity for North Korea.” That’s a dismaying gaffe when referring to North Korea’s brutal dictator — a bloody despot ruling a rogue nation. It’s true he has a purpose with such flattery, but all things considered, it was a less-than-stellar performance from the leader of the free world.

But when it came to the president’s remarks on Iran and the challenge that nation’s nuclear program poses to the world, Trump delivered a message worthy of Ronald Reagan. Pulling no punches and sparing no feelings among friend and foe alike, the president made clear his determination to keep the pressure on Iran and his willingness to punish anyone trying to side with Tehran:

In the years since the [nuclear] deal was signed, Iran’s aggression only increased. The regime used new funds from the deal to support terrorism, build nuclear-capable missiles, and foment chaos. Following America’s withdrawal, the United States began re-imposing nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. All U.S. nuclear-related sanctions will be in full force by early November. They will be in full force. After that, the United States will pursue additional sanctions, tougher than ever before, to counter the entire range of Iran’s malign conduct. Any individual or entity who fails to comply with these sanctions will face severe consequences.

The president’s blunt threat to anyone attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions and do business with Iran should give pause to the European nations that have been making noise about doing just that. The European Union’s Federica Mogherini announced last week that the EU would attempt to form a special non-cash trade mechanism between Iran and EU nations specifically in order to avoid banking-related sanctions. Nothing could make clearer the craven mindset of the EU than a willingness to side with Iran in this way. The Europeans are more reliant than ever on foreign oil and natural gas as they pursue a utopian vision of domestic green-energy production. They have become more and more pacifist since the Soviet Union went bust, while cynically relying on the United States to be the world’s policeman. And they continue to delude themselves about the Iranian regime, thinking they can convert Iran into a responsible nation using only carrots and no stick.

But the Europeans must know that running afoul of U.S. sanctions will be financially ruinous at a time when many EU nations already face difficult economic conditions. The United Kingdom is bumbling its way toward a hard Brexit. Italy faces a full-fledged debt crisis. Germany, supposedly the economic powerhouse of Europe, recently saw its economic outlook lowered to a meager 1.7% annual growth. The recent tsunami of Middle East and North African migration continues to stress EU nations’ social systems. And the EU as a whole is expected to remain below 2% growth for the foreseeable future. Not exactly a good time for the EU to take on the additional burden of U.S. sanctions.

As for Iran, it is more vulnerable to sanctions than at any time since the 1990s. Its economy, which consists of little more than oil and pistachios, has been cratering, leading to protests throughout the nation in which ordinary Iranians have made clear they have no affinity for spending Iranian money on propping up Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The Saudis, who view Iran as a mortal enemy, have signaled their willingness to increase oil production to offset lost Iranian oil exports when sanctions kick in. The United States itself has leaped nearly to the top of the list of major oil exporters, exceeding three million barrels a day, second only to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. And as we have mentioned before, the Islamic Revolution in Iran has grown old and tired over the last 25 years — to the point that the mullahs must coerce rather than convince the Iranian people of their “right” to rule.

President Trump has had his ups and downs since taking office, but his clear-minded focus on Iran and the threat posed by its nuclear program has been remarkable. The presence of John Bolton on the president’s national-security team should help maintain that clear-mindedness going forward, and we wholeheartedly support the president’s challenge to our notional European allies that they cannot support a pariah nation without consequences.

SOURCE 

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How Trump Rescued Our Economy From Obama’s ‘New Normal’

It’s hard to believe that just two short years ago, our economy was limping along with no sign of a massive boom around the corner.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the pivotal factor in the last two years has been President Donald Trump.

Consider this. From 2009 to 2014, real median income fell overall. It did jump a few times between 2012 and 2014, but the overall trend was one of malaise. The reason? President Barack Obama’s regulations and taxes sat like a wet blanket over our economy.

Many of his policies aimed at curing perceived social injustices rather than promoting economic growth. He reasoned that it was an injustice that every American did not have health insurance, and that CEOs made hundreds of times more income than the average worker. It was also an injustice that banks and big business took advantage of consumers.

Obama convinced Congress to pass Obamacare in 2010, which resulted in health insurance being extended to an additional 6 percent of the population. But Obamacare came with new taxes—21 to be exact—and these helped suppress middle-class income, slowing economic growth.

Obamacare also forced employers to provide health insurance to all full-time workers or pay a fine, which could be as high as $3,000 per employee. This added to the cost of labor, which again had the effect of slowing growth. Since Obama defined a full-time employee as anyone working at least 30 hours per week, employers hired more part-time workers. This drove down household income and slowed economic growth.

Obama also made the 2001 Bush tax cuts permanent for all Americans, except for the highest income earners. For them, taxes increased by 10 percent. This reduced the amount of investment capital flowing into our economy, which slowed economic growth and tended to reduce household income.

Obama also said that the financial crisis was a result of predatory lending by banks. This occurred when households freely applied for mortgages that they simply could not afford. Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying these predatory mortgages from banks, the banks made those loans.

Obama convinced Congress to pass the Dodd-Frank bill, which stopped banks from predatory lending. The problem was that Dodd-Frank reduced all lending, which slowed economic growth and resulted in countless small community banks having to close their doors.

And yet again, this had the effect of reducing household income.

It’s no wonder that Obama was the only president in history to never see economic growth above 3 percent. The economy averaged just over 2 percent for his entire two terms. He referred to 2 percent growth as the “new normal.”

Trump flatly rejected this “new normal.” After entering office in January 2017, he spent much of February and March reversing many of Obama’s counterproductive regulations. By April 2017, the economy was back growing at a healthy 3 percent, which has since been maintained or increased.

By the end of 2017, Trump had convinced Congress to cut income taxes for all Americans, including those who supply capital: high income-earners and corporations. Since April of this year, the economy has been booming at a rate of more than 4 percent.

That growth has driven down underemployment, increased the proportion of Americans in the labor force, increased the number of part-time employees finding full-time work, boosted wages, and reduced the unemployment rate overall.

This all will lead to ever higher incomes for families. The real median income is set to hit a record level by the end of 2018.

Some have said that most of the growth will affect the highest income-earners. Whatever benefit they are getting (and they are certainly getting a lot), the facts are plain and simple: Over 700 companies have boosted wages, given bonuses and other benefits to their employees because of tax reform.

As President John F. Kennedy said, “A rising tide will lift all boats.” It’s happening. Why would we try anything else?

SOURCE 

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China slashes steel, textile tariffs as Trump ratchets up pressure

A President who is willing to use American power can jolt a lot of things loose

China's finance ministry announced Sunday that it will reduce import tariffs on a variety of products, including textiles and steel.

The tariff rate for textiles and metals including steel will fall to 8.4 percent from 11.5 percent, effective Nov. 1, Reuters reports. “Reducing tariffs is conducive to promoting the balanced development of foreign trade and promoting a higher level of opening up to the outside world,” the finance ministry said.

The ministry also announced that tariffs on wood and paper, minerals, and gemstones will fall to 5.4 percent from 6.6 percent, with average tariffs across 1,500 products reaching 7.8 percent, down from 10.5 percent.

The reductions come as President Trump deploys increasingly aggressive tariffs against Chinese goods, and just six days after Trump implemented a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods, following a similar action against $50 billion of goods in August.

The new tariff against Chinese imports was expected to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent at the end of the year.

In March, Trump began a global campaign to reform U.S. trade relations, introducing a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, only briefly exempting Mexico, Canada, and the European Union.

Trump argues that the U.S. has too great of a trade imbalance with China and other countries, and that unfair policies have hurt the U.S. economy. Critics say American consumers will end up paying more when the cost of tariffs is passed on to them.

It's not the first time China has reduced trade barriers amid Trump's criticism. In July, China lowered tariffs on consumer goods including clothing and home appliances.

The latest Chinese government announcement comes as U.S. trade negotiators face a midnight deadline for an agreement with Canada to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. and Mexico announced a deal on principles for a new pact in August, starting a one-month clock before the text is due to Congress.

SOURCE 

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As Obamacare Premiums Continue to Rise, Time to Look at Real Health Care Solutions

Obamacare has wreaked havoc on America’s individual and small group health insurance markets.

For the last four years, while lavish taxpayer subsidies insulated low-income people from soaring premiums and deductibles, millions of middle-class Americans in the individual Affordable Care Act coverage markets felt both blasts. At the same time, they lost their old plans and found fewer options available. They also found that, despite repeated assurances, they could not “keep their doctors.”

How bad is it?

From 2013 to 2017, premiums more than doubled. This year, average premiums for standard Obamacare plans shot up by a third. Deductibles now average $8,292 for “standard plan” family coverage, and $11,555 for the lowest cost “bronze” plans. For millions, it’s like paying a second mortgage.

Consumer choice is another casualty. In more than half of all U.S. counties, only one plan is available, and 73 percent of all Obamacare plans have narrow provider networks, reducing patient access to doctors and medical specialists.

With coverage so unattractive and unaffordable, fewer people are buying. Only 10.6 million Americans enrolled in the individual exchanges this year, well short of the 24 million projected when Congress enacted Obamacare.

Why isn’t it working? Because Obamacare runs on centralized regulatory control. Washington controls insurance benefits and coverage levels and enforces national rating rules—always driving costs skyward.

For example, Obamacare’s “age rating” rules require younger people to pay artificially high premiums. As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar explained, under Obamacare younger Americans must be charged at least one third of what older Americans pay.

This kind of price control chokes off private markets. Young people by definition are getting less than they pay for, so they opt out of the system. As a result, it turns out to be not a good deal for older Americans either. They’re the only ones left paying into the system, so their premiums rise.

Congress must get back to work, repeal the dysfunctional status quo, and make a serious start on comprehensive health care reform.

The “Health Care Choices Proposal,” developed by a broad range of conservative think tanks, would replace Obamacare’s spending schemes with state block grants to help the poor and the sick to get health coverage. It would restore regulatory responsibility to the states, and it would allow people enrolled in public programs such as Medicaid to redirect public dollars to private health plans of their choice—if they wished to do so.

It’s an approach that would empower consumers, revitalize state insurance markets, intensify competition among plans, and lower costs.

Can the states do the job? Yes, to judge from recent experience.

States that have received waivers from Obamacare rules are already diverting a portion of the law’s subsidies to create separate risk or health reinsurance pools for older and sicker persons.

According to early estimates, Alaska’s approved waiver would cut individual market premiums by 19.8 percent, while increasing enrollment by 7.1 percent. Minnesota, securing a similar waiver, is expected to reduce premiums by 19.7 percent, while increasing enrollment by 13.3 percent. Maine, Maryland, Wisconsin, and New Jersey recently got similar waivers.

The people of the states, through their elected representatives, should have the chance to improve their health insurance markets. The Health Care Choices Proposal would maximize their freedom to protect Americans with pre-existing medical conditions, lower insurance costs, and increase choices for millions of individuals and families. This would be a blessing, particularly for middle-class Americans who face being priced out of the health insurance market.

Washington’s central planning has resulted in exploding insurance costs, reduced choices, and collapsing competition in the state individual markets. Liberals’ ideological obsession with centralized power is rooted in the false faith that Washington’s experts know what is best for the rest of America. The evidence is indisputable: They don’t.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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2 October, 2018

Appeasing an aggressor invites only more aggression

From the playground to geopolitics, appeasing an aggressor invites only more aggression. This timeless truth of human nature is one that we moderns can’t seem to accept. We reflexively assume that a rational accommodation or concessions will be reciprocated by those proven to be ready to use any means necessary to achieve their aims, no matter how amoral, unfair, or vicious. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court illustrate that this false assumption leads only to more demands, and ultimately to defeat.

The last-minute accusations from Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who claims that decades ago Kavanaugh groped her at a high school party, and Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a frat party at Yale, are transparent acts of aggression against the judge and Republicans, one engineered by the Democrats.

Senator Dianne Feinstein sat for months on Ford’s letter and then––just as the Dems did in 1991with Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas’s during his hearings––released it only when Kavanaugh appeared to be heading for confirmation. Feinstein still hasn’t given the Judiciary Committee an unredacted copy of the letter. A few weeks after Ford went public, and after Kavanaugh said he had dairies from that summer detailing his whereabouts, The New Yorker published Ramirez’s account of a drunken party filled with obscene drinking games where he exposed himself to Ramirez.

Given that the Democrats had made public in advance their intention to derail the hearings and confirmation by any means possible, the timing of both sexual assault charges reeks of premeditated contrivance intended to delay confirmation as long as possible. But in the face of this naked ploy to bork Kavanaugh and derail the confirmation process for partisan advantage, the Republicans seem to be reverting to their customary preemptive cringe. All the Dems have to do is squeal “sexism” and Republicans start negotiating and offering concessions. Of course, after each concession comes another demand.

First the Dems demanded that Ford, a long-time Democrat activist, “be heard.” So last week the Chairman of Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, granted another deadline extension for Ford to decide whether to testify before the Committee on Monday. Senator Dianne Feinstein calls these concessions “bullying deadlines.” As Feinstein put it, “Show some heart. Wait until Dr. Ford feels that she can come before the committee.” Ford doesn’t “feel” like she can testify on Monday because she’s afraid of flying, despite offers from the Committee to travel to her in California. Then she feared for her life because of death threats ––threats also made to Kavanaugh, his wife and two young daughters–– so she now demands enhanced security measures. The Committee caved and moved the date to Thursday.

So of course, Grassley having been intimidated into giving Ford a chance to address the Committee, Ramirez and her handlers are now demanding the same privilege. “Creepy Lawyer” for porn star Stormy Daniels claims to represent a woman who also should be allowed to testify to the Senate Committee about Kavanaugh’s partying habits while at Yale. We’ll have to see whether Grassley can find the stomach to put an end to the farce of allowing unsubstantiated charges from Democrat activists to waste the Committee’s time.

Ford and Dianne Feinstein also keep demanding an FBI investigation, even though no federal crime is being alleged, and any investigation 36 years after the offense is impossible. Ford can’t remember where and when the alleged assault took place, nor how she got to or went home from the party where it allegedly occurred. Her own details of the event don’t jibe (Four boys or three? One girl or two?). She told no one about the assault until 30 years later. A “lifelong friend” whom Ford claims was at the party has denied any knowledge of the it, and says she’s never met Kavanaugh. Another friend who reported that the school was abuzz with gossip about the attack (which apparently took place during summer break), retracted her statement. The two men Ford named as possible witnesses to the assault have contradicter her claims under oath. And the accused Judge Kavanaugh also under oath vehemently denies the charges. Given that 36 years have passed since the incident, and the accuser’s memory is so hazy and short on coherent details, the FBI has nothing to investigate.

No law enforcement agency, let alone the FBI, would waste its time with an allegation of a crime decades in the past, and so patently incoherent and lacking in evidence. The “FBI investigation” is another delaying tactic.

The point is to delay confirmation by slandering Kavanaugh and baiting the Republicans into appearing to abuse victims of sexual assault. Why? Facing his likely confirmation, the Dems, egged on by the mainstream media––especially The New Yorker, which published a story too badly sourced even for The New York Times–– are desperately attempting to obstruct and delay the process until after the midterm elections, when they hope they will retake the Senate and thus stop any more Constitutionalist judges from being confirmed to the Court for the rest of Trump’s term.

The Democrats have stooped so low with these smears because they know the stakes. The courts and especially the Supreme Court have been critical to the progressives’ program since Woodrow Wilson. The biggest obstacle to the progressive dream of government controlled and managed by a technocratic oligarchy has been the Constitution. Its divided and balanced powers were designed precisely to rein in overreaching ambition and concentrations of power. Hence the Constitutional order must be subverted by the Supreme Court and its unaccountable justices enjoying lifelong tenure.

But if Kavanaugh is confirmed, there will be five reliably Constitutionalist justices on the bench, who are unlikely to tolerate judicial usurpation of Congress’s law-making powers. That’s why this current nomination is a hill the Dems are willing to beclown themselves on.

Given how obviously partisan and hypocritical this ploy is––doesn’t Keith Ellison’s accuser deserve to be heard and believed too? ––why has Grassley so far allowed himself to be played by the Dems? Because Republicans fear the backlash from all those women voters who presumably agree with the fundamentalist feminists, and insist that every accusation of sexual assault, no matter how much it’s unsupported by corroborating evidence or even plausibility, must be believed. This contention itself is an expression of the radical feminist narrative of innate male feral sexuality that makes them sexual predators.

The irony is that today’s feminists have been willing to sacrifice the earlier narrative of female power and agency that had been stifled by traditional views of the sexes and their capabilities. Instead, now women are Victorian hothouse flowers too delicate to make their way through their lives without the paternal federal government protecting them with its coercive power. Women have exchanged one form of dependence, and one double standard for another.

The Dems are using Ford and Ramirez as part of the Democrats’ transparently dishonest delaying tactics because they know that most Republicans have accepted this duplicitous feminist narrative and fear challenging it. Especially after the recent spate of sexual assault charges––many of them true, some false, others contested–– politicians consider bucking the narrative to be as politically suicidal as proposing to reform Social Security and Medicare. It’s the new third rail of American politics, one that transcends party affiliation. Hence the widespread virtue-signaling on the part even of conservative writers who preface their comments about Ford and Ramirez with prologues full of truisms about how horrible sexual assault is, how its self-proclaimed victims “must be heard,” and how churlish and sexist it is to question the truth of any charge. Grown-ups know all that and don’t have to be reminded every time the subject arises.

The Dems know that most Republicans come to this conflict with the huge disadvantage that results from accepting your opponent’s dubious ideology and dishonest narrative. The progressive party can dare the Republicans to ignore the endless specious demands, stop the show-trial, and proceed to a vote on Kavanaugh, because they know the Republicans, fearful of the “optics,” will cave. They know that the eleven male Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee dread the #MeToo movement casting them as knuckle-dragging Neanderthal sexists who want to “silence” the accuser with their “cavalier treatment of a sexual assault survivor,” as one Ford lawyer has said. Republicans still don’t get that no amount of appeasement will stop the left from demonizing them anyway. Just ask Boy Scout Mitt Romney, who was savaged for his innocuous “binders full of women.”

And don’t forget, the old sorta, kinda moderate Democrats like Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, who now have joined the crowd of trendoid socialists armed with torches and pitch-forks, will go along because they’re frightened of their party’s increasingly rabid left-wing base.

What can we do to end these confirmation circuses? Just stop holding them. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the Senate’s power to give “advice and consent” to the president regarding his nominee must entail days of televised hearings replete with caterwauling protestors and grandstanding Senators who’ve already made-up their minds. Invite written questions from the Senate, then schedule one day for the nominee to respond. Don’t put it on television, but make public a written transcript. Remove the television cameras, and attention-craving, politically ambitious Senators will be gone like a cool breeze.

For now, Grassley needs to end this farce.  No more concessions. No more delays. No more ceding control of the process to Democrat Party lawyers.  Make Senators go on the record with their votes, and hold them to account in November. Put to the test the Dems’ claims that a critical mass of women, many of them with sons they don’t want falsely accused, believes the fundamentalist feminist narrative and will vote accordingly. To borrow Churchill’s definition of appeasement, stop feeding the alligator in the hopes that you will be eaten last.

For fifty years the Democrats have proven they will demonize conservatives as racist and sexist no matter how often they bow and scrape. How about acting on principle for a change and shoot the alligator

SOURCE 

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David Horowowiz hits back at the fake news media

When Donald Trump refers to the anti-Trump media – CNN, MSNBC and network television - as “fake news,” his description is not only accurate but welcome: finally, a conservative is fighting back against a press whose venomous corruption is a grave threat to American pluralism and its democratic order. But when the same “news” outlets falsely characterize political opponents, including the president, as racists and “hatemongers” to render them illegitimate, our democracy is in grave peril. In sum, the term “fake news” greatly understates the nature of the threat, and, along with it, the crisis we are facing as a nation.

As a prominent antagonist of the left, I have been a target of its malice for decades – in fact, from the moment I departed its ranks in the 1980s, and vowed to speak to my former comrades in the same language they spoke to others. Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? Since then I have been one among numerous conservatives victimized by their malevolent disregard for the truth, for anyone they disagree with, for common decency, and for the country that gave them their freedoms.

Today things are much worse than ever before. The left’s lack of respect for democratic principles, for political “others,” their readiness to employ gutter tactics and mangle the truth, has spread from Communist fringe publications of the Sixties, like The Nation, and the Daily Worker, to the Huffington Post, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

[Editor's note: On the left is typical leftist libel of David Horowitz. Aside from the smear of racism, the HuffPost is crudely mistaken about another matter: DeSantis wasn't paid for any of his speeches.]

Two weeks ago despite a 50-year public career as a civil rights advocate, and despite being the author of three published books on race – all of them championing Martin Luther King’s vision of equality - I was attacked as a racist by, among others, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Esquire, New York Magazine, Politico, Newsweek, and a host of Florida newspapers, including the Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Bay Post, and the Sunshine State News. In blaring headlines, I was called “an infamous racist,” “a hatemonger,” “a white supremacist” and a “race war theorist.” And I wasn’t even the primary target of the attacks.

That honor belonged to Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, and legless war hero congressman Brian Mast, both of whom had the misfortune to attend my Restoration Weekend, which the Post designated “a racially charged event” and the others portrayed as a platform for racists. As it happens not only do I not invite racists to my events, for twenty years I have featured prominent African Americans as keynote speakers. In addition to Turning Point activist Candace Owens, I have recently given awards both to Larry Elder and liberal black Democrat, Adrian Fenty, former mayor of Washington DC. Fenty’s award was for the work he had done to provide scholarships for inner city children so they could get into schools that would teach them. Other keynote speakers at my Weekend have included former congressman J.C. Watts, former presidential candidate Herman Cain, Wall Street Journal editor, Jason Riley, Fox Business Channel anchor Charles Payne, former congressmen Allen West, Breitbart columnist Sonnie Johnson, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson,

Must I also mention that I have six grandchildren, whom I love dearly, of whom only one is white? Or that on the weekend following these attacks I was at an intimate gathering to celebrate two birthdays with my family, half of whom were black?

All the attempts to portray me as a racist arose out of a deceitful article in the Washington Post, which bore the headline GOP Candidate for Florida Governor Spoke at Racially Charged Events. The transparently sleazy intention of the article was to associate Congressman DeSantis with an allegedly racist event, to show that he is a racist himself. Both claims are bald-faced lies. If we were not both public figures, the Post would be facing major libel suits right now.

I have to confess that when I first read the article I missed all the dog whistles to left-wing race baiters which the reporter, Beth Reinhard, had planted in her text. Consequently, I was taken aback when the article instantaneously triggered the rash of character assassinating headlines in the publications I mentioned, targeting DeSantis, Mast and me. I just grossly underestimated the malevolence of “liberals” in the era of anti-Trump resistance. The whole episode put me in mind of the Nazi paper, Der Sturmer, which specialized in exactly this kind of attack in the 1930s.

Of all the dog whistles marshalled by Reinhard, my favorite was her comment that one of my speakers, Milo Yianopoulos made a joke about “black-male genitals.” The obvious implication: Members of Horowitz’s event are racist throwbacks to the era of Strom Thurmond and Bull Connor. In fact, this remark was actually a quite amusing self-referent joke about Milo’s attraction to his newly-wed husband, who happens to be black. But if Reinhard had published that fact, she would have blown her whole smear.

Despite my appeals to Reinhard and her editor, Eric Rich, no corrections were offered, or opportunities to correct a damaging, reputation-shredding, election-tilting, misrepresentation of myself and my two distinguished guests. I specifically asked for an op-ed column to respond, or an objective Post profile of my events, but Rich seemed perfectly comfortable with the display of guilt by innuendo in the article and the outrageous attacks that followed. He was obviously comfortable with its consequences, which were clearly intended, and might well be severe. Being falsely tarred as racists could presumably cost two stellar individuals their quests for seats in the election. It’s also left me wondering, what elected official would want to risk such damaging attacks by attending my events in the future.

One factor in these gutter campaigns that I haven’t mentioned is the laziness and unprofessionalism of the reporters (and editors) involved. Not one reporter participating in these character assassinations for the Post, Huffpo, Politico, Newsweek, and the other magazines called me to check any of the specific allegations of racism made in their articles. I was interviewed by Reinhard, but she failed to mention the black genitals comment or any of the other dog whistle claims to get my views on them, including the preposterous but damaging accusation that my events were “racially charged.”

“Racially charged” would of course be an apt description of the hand-holding sessions that Barack Obama, the congressional black caucus and the Democratic Party leadership have conducted with America’s most notorious, most rabid anti-Semite, and anti-white racist, Louis Farrakhan. But of course, Farrakhan’s courtiers have prominent roles in the Post’s party of choice and are not going to be held to account by Beth Reinhard, Eric Rich or the rest of the “liberal” media, let alone tarred and feathered like Ron DeSantis, Brian Mast and me.

In fact, all the malicious and baseless claims -- that I am “hate-monger,” a “white supremacist,” an “infamous racist,” an “anti-Muslim fanatic” -- come from a single source: the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center. This is an organization so reckless in its accusations that it recently paid a devout and moderate Muslim $3.4 million for having labeled him “an anti-Muslim extremist.” The payout to Maajid Nawaz was volunteered because England has much stricter libel laws than the United States where it is virtually impossible for public figures like DeSantis, Mast and myself to get redress for the violence that has been done to our reputations and work.

Speaking of laziness and casually malicious reporters, it was to be expected that to check such serious charges, Beth Reinhard would research my Twitter feed instead of the three books I have written about race – or the many YouTube speeches I have given on the subject. As it happens, the selection of one of those tweets, illuminates why these racial attacks on myself and my guests are also attacks on this nation.

The tweet Reinhard selected was this statement: “Black Africans enslaved black Africans. America freed them sacrificing 350k mainly white Union lives. American blacks are richer, more privileged, freer than blacks anywhere in the world, including all black run countries.”

Of course, even though every claim in this statement is true, Reinhard and her progressive audiences see such statements as prima facie evidence of my “racism.” In their narrative, whites enslaved blacks. To imply or say, as I have, that black Americans should be grateful to Thomas Jefferson and white Americans for freeing them is to add insult to injury, and to be insensitive to their suffering. It also undermines the truly racist narrative of the left that white people are oppressors and evil.

But of course, I didn’t say anything like that. I have never encouraged blacks or anyone else to be grateful to their oppressors. The real issue here is the foundational gift that America made in its very creation to all oppressed minorities, and to black slaves in particular. This is something that the current identity politics of the Democratic Party and the left generally ignores or denies. But if Americans can’t agree on this historic achievement, we no longer have a common bond as citizens of the same nation.

I specifically posted my tweet as an antidote to the anti-American, anti-white racism that is rampant on the left, in our schools, in the Democratic Party, and in its kept media, like the Washington Post. The widespread attitude in these quarters holds that American patriotism is “white nationalism.” This claim is a dagger aimed at America’s heart.

Slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years before a white person ever set foot there. European slavers did not go into the African bush and throw nets over blacks to enslave them. They went to slave auctions in Ghana and Benin, and bought already enslaved blacks from black African slavers. Slavery had existed for 3,000 years and no one had called it immoral, until white male Christians in England and America did so. Thomas Jefferson wrote into America’s birth certificate the revolutionary proposition that all mankind was equal and each individual was endowed with a God-given and therefore unalienable right to liberty.

This commitment launched the emancipation of black slaves in the northern states and ultimately throughout the western hemisphere. By contrast there is still black slavery in Africa today. To free the south’s slaves immediately would have precipitated a civil war, which the free states would have lost. But within little over one generation, the dedication of Americans to a nation conceived in liberty, led to the abolition of slavery at the cost of 350,000 mainly (but not exclusively) white lives. That is something every American white and black should be proud of. That is an achievement that unifies our nation. We participated in an evil system that we inherited from the British, yes. But as a nation we dedicated ourselves to liberty and equality and ended slavery..

The political left doesn’t want Americans to be proud of their country. They don’t want blacks to recognize they had benefactors who were white Christian males. So they lie about our history, and attack us as white supremacists. It is a sad comment on the state of our country that merely stating the facts of our heritage should be considered anti-black and racist, particularly by institutions like the Washington Post.

When one side insists on denying our history, attacking patriots as “white nationalists” and smearing political opponents as “white supremacists” we no longer have a common ground as a people. Instead we have become a nation divided by civil war.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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1 October, 2018

California judge punches hole in state's sanctuary law

A judge on Thursday ruled California’s sanctuary law tramples on the state’s charter cities, dealing a major blow to the state Democratic establishment’s anti-Trump policy.

California Judge James Crandall ruled in favor of Huntington Beach, which had argued it should be exempt from the law, which prohibits locales from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

Judge Crandall issued his ruling after a hearing Thursday, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Huntington Beach was one of a number of California jurisdictions that moved to try to thwart the state’s law, SB 54, which took effect at the beginning of this year.

California’s Democrat-led government had adopted the law as a political jab at the Trump administration, which has tried to increase deportations of illegal immigrants.

State officials say that having police cooperate in deportations scares immigrants, both legal and illegal, who then refuse to cooperate with authorities on other matters.

Judge Crandall didn’t buy that, instead siding with local officials who said they valued cooperation with federal immigration authorities, The L.A. Times reported.

The ruling applies to more than 100 charter cities in California.

SOURCE 

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Report Finds $3.1 Trillion in Savings for Taxpayers

Taxpayers could save over $3 trillion by eliminating wasteful and inefficient programs and unfair subsidies, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

Citizens Against Government Waste released its annual Prime Cuts report Wednesday, recommending 600 ways to reduce spending with savings of $429.8 billion the first year and $3.1 trillion over five years.

"Even in the ‘Drain the Swamp' era, the national debt of the United States first exceeded $21 trillion in 2018 and is poised to rise substantially in the coming years," the report begins. "To help chart a path out of this calamitous hole, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is releasing Prime Cuts 2018, a comprehensive account of options the federal government possesses to cut into the ballooning debt."

The group said cutting Medicare improper payments just in half could save $18.1 billion. Other recommendations include ending subsidies for Amtrak to save taxpayers nearly $10 billion over five years, and ending sugar, dairy, and peanut subsidies.

"As the U.S. budget hurdles toward trillion-dollar deficits and with the national debt exceeding $21 trillion, Prime Cuts 2018 is needed now, more than ever," said Tom Schatz, the president of CAGW. "The only way to put our country on a path toward fiscal sanity is for leaders to make bold decisions to reduce waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement; and Prime Cuts 2018 is an invaluable resource for them to achieve that objective."

Many items are in line with recommendations for spending cuts made by the Trump administration, such as eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Cutting the arts agencies would save taxpayers $1.8 billion over five years, the group said.

Numerous recommendations relate to redundant agencies and outdated federal programs that have lingered for decades beyond their initial purpose. Ending New Deal era programs, such as privatizing parts of the Tennessee Valley Authority, could save up to $1.1 billion over five years.

The group proposes eliminating Community Development Block Grants, which would save $15 billion over five years, arguing the program is unaccountable and inefficient. The program, intended for job creation and infrastructure in urban areas, does not "take a community's average income into account."

"As a result, several very wealthy cities with robust tax bases, such as Greenwich, Connecticut, have received CDBG dollars," the report said.

"Buffalo, New York, has received more than $500 million in CDBGs over the last 30 years, with little to show for it, and Los Angeles handed out $24 million to a dairy that went bust 18 months later," the report added.

Suspending federal land purchases would save taxpayers $466 million the first year and $2.3 billion over five years. CAGW argues the government owns more federal land than it can handle.

"The federal government currently owns roughly one-third of all U.S. land, including more than 80 percent of Alaska and Nevada and more than half of Idaho, Oregon, and Utah," the report said.

The group cited a Congressional Research Service report released this summer finding the National Park Service has $11.6 billion worth of necessary repairs and infrastructure work on federal land waiting to be completed.

SOURCE 

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The Leftist obsession with race -- again

“They know the optics of 11 white men questioning Dr. Ford … will be so harmful and so damaging to the GOP.” — Areva Martin, CNN legal analyst

“They understand that you have all of these white men who would be questioning this woman … the optics of it would look terrible.” — Gloria Borger, CNN chief political analyst

“Women across this nation should be outraged at what these white men senators are doing to this woman.” — Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

“There has been some discussion of the GOP senators who happened to all be … white men.” — Jim Sciutto, CNN correspondent

“What troubles me is now there are … they’re all white men.” — Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan, on CNN

“You’re seeing on display a metaphor for what this party is, which is basically ignorant white men.” — “Morning Joe” contributor Donny Deutsch

“All these white men … stumbling all over themselves asking her, you know, aggressive and obnoxious questions.” — Asha Rangappa, CNN analyst

“What are those — that collection of old white men going to do?” — Cynthia Alksne, MSNBC contributor

“If she testifies in front of the Judiciary Committee, where 11 members are white men …” — Susan Del Percio, Republican political strategist, on MSNBC

“Once again, it will be all white men on the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee.” — CNN anchor Poppy Harlow

“The optics for Republicans are going to be really tricky … You’ve got all white men on the Republican side here …” — Julie Pace, Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, on CNN

“The Republicans, it happens to be 11 white men still on that side.” — CNN host John Berman

“The Republicans, it is 11 white men, talk to me about how you think the tone inside this hearing on Monday will be perceived?” — Berman, a few minutes later

“On the Republican side, all 11 are white men.” — Berman, again, same show, several minutes later

“What hasn’t changed is the number of white men questioning, certainly, on the Republican side.” — Dana Bash, CNN chief political correspondent

“The Republican side on the Senate Judiciary Committee is all white men …” — Irin Carmon, senior correspondent for New York Magazine, on MSNBC

“Only this crowd of clueless old white guys …” — The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin on Twitter

SOURCE 

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President Trump needs to use his veto sooner or later to get the wall built

On March 23, when President Donald Trump signed the H.R. 1625 omnibus spending bill, he vowed, “I say to Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again.  I’m not going to do it again.”

Well, here we go again. Six months later and the end of the fiscal year is rapidly approaching. Energy, Miltary Construction and Legislative Affairs has already passed and been signed into law. Next up is Defense and Health and Human Services bill, which will also include funding for all other departments and agencies until Dec. 7. Another so-called cromnibus — omnibus plus a continuing resolution.

Speaking at a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the United Nations, President Trump said he would be signing the bill: “We’ll keep the government open. We’re going to keep the government open.”

The President should reconsider that position. The bill is a stopgap designed to get Congress past the midterm elections, which suits their priority to avoid any controversial votes prior to November.

There’s only one problem, besides funding the military for the full year, the legislation does not fund key Trump administration priorities including fully funding the southern border wall. Department of Homeland Security funding is being pushed off until December now, with no guarantees that it will include the wall.

Instead, Congress has jerked the President and his supporters around for almost two years now.

On Jan. 26, 2017,  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Philadelphia, and explained emphatically that “We are moving ahead” with the wall with a specific price tag of “$12 to $15 billion,” adding, “We intend to address the wall issue ourselves.”

A day later, House Speaker Paul Ryan told the American people that, “This is something, [the wall], we want to get on right away. And so we do believe this is urgent. We believe this is one of the most important promises the President made running for office. It’s a promise he’s going to keep and it’s a promise we’re going to help him keep.”

Ryan added, “We anticipate a supplemental coming from the administration on defense and the border” and “I’m hoping in the first quarter we can get this done. But again, it’s getting [Mick Mulvaney confirmed as Office of Management and Budget Director and] up and running so they can send us the supplemental.”

Mulvaney was confirmed on Feb. 16, 2017 and the supplemental request was proposed on March 14 by Mulvaney and then formally put in on March 16 by President Trump to Speaker Ryan. Trump kept his side of the bargain. But somehow, by March 30, Ryan had changed his tune, telling CBS News, “The big chunk of money for the wall really is… next fiscal year’s appropriations because they literally can’t start construction even this quickly.”

But then the wall was not funded in the fiscal year 2018 spending bill either. All they got was the President’s $1.6 billion supplemental “down payment” he had asked for last year.

No where can the “$12 to $15 billion” McConnell promised for the wall be found.

So, here we are, almost two years into the Trump administration, and Congress is about to go home with the midterms failing to fund the President’s signature legislative promise and show that finally they take the illegal immigration issue seriously.

President Trump may not wish to veto government spending now but one thing is clear, he is going to have to do it sooner or later if he wants to get the wall built. Time’s running out. And then he will need one-third of either the House or the Senate to sustain that veto — and then a real negotiation can be had.

SOURCE 

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Criminal Charges for North Carolina Woman Who Sheltered Pets During Hurricane Florence

A North Carolina woman says she just wanted local pets to have a safe place to stay as Hurricane Florence made landfall earlier this month. But now she's facing upward of a dozen criminal charges related to the medical care she freely provided to the animals.

Flood and tornado warnings were in effect last week in Wayne County, North Carolina, and the area got more than 10 inches of rainfall. Keeping 2016's deadly Hurricane Matthew in mind, Tammie Hedges realized that with residents evacuating, there would be animals in need of safe, dry shelter.

"It was brought to my attention from some individual rescuers that were going to go out again during this disaster and save some animals," Hedges tells Reason. "They just didn't have anywhere to put them."

But there was a solution. Hedges is the founder and executive director of Crazy's Claws N' Paws, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that takes in neglected or injured animals and finds them permanent homes. The volunteer-based, no-kill organization gives animals whatever they need, from medical care to microchipping.

Crazy's isn't a licensed animal shelter yet, but they're working on "renovating a shelter site," Hedges says. The building was not in a flood zone, and it's "easily accessible." In other words, the perfect place for pets to take refuge while Florence did her worst.

Hedges' organization took in a total of 27 pets—17 cats and 10 dogs. Thanks to donated food and other supplies, she made sure they were cared for. During the day, volunteers played with the dogs, walked them, and cleaned up after them. There was even a person who stayed at night "to make sure that the animals were not alone," she says.

On Monday, Hedges was at home when she got a call from Frank Sauls, the animal services manager for Wayne County. She says Sauls told he's received a call about flooding at the shelter site. There was no flooding, but Sauls asked her to come by anyway. When she arrived, Sauls asked if he could go inside to see the animals. She obliged.

Things quickly went south. "We didn't even get to the room that the animals were in and in and it was basically, 'you can hand them over voluntarily, or I'm going to get a warrant,'" Hedges says.

So what had Hedges done wrong? Hedges says Sauls threatened to charge her for administering veterinary medicine without a license. And while Hedges was taking care of the pets for free, she says Sauls told "one of the independent rescuers" that "he was looking at charging me for boarding." Finally, Sauls allegedly claimed Crazy's was operating an animal shelter without a license. "We had to keep telling him we're not open as a shelter," Hedges says. "This is an emergency disaster center for displaced animals for a natural disaster. That's all it is. It's temporary."

According to a Friday press release from the county, Hedges' crime was that she didn't have the proper license to give the animals veterinary medicine. The Wayne County District Attorney's Office has charged her with 12 counts of "misdemeanor practice/attempt veterinary medicine without a license and (1) count of solicitation of a Schedule 4 controlled substance," the press release says.

Hedges, though, says the dewormer and flea medicine she gave the animals are "over-the-counter" drugs, and thus "not illegal." Certain dewormers and flea medications can indeed be obtained over the counter, while others require a prescription. It's unclear which ones Hedges was using.

Hedges was arrested Friday, the Goldsboro News-Argus reports, and eventually released on $10,000 bond. Most of the charges, she told the paper, were a result of her administering amoxicillin, which is used to treat bacterial infections, to some of the animals. She also allegedly solicited a donation of the painkiller Tramadol.

On Tuesday, Hedges plans to meet with a lawyer, and she says she'll be "laying low" until then. But she's hoping this case will lead to changes in the government, "especially for the animals."

SOURCE 

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Has Bill got anything to fear?



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Go here for a brilliant display of Leftist rage and hate.  Leftist pundit Lawrence O’Donnell is not a nice man -- and it shows when his broadcast encounters some glitches.  He keeps his cool fairly well initially but towards the end he really loses it.

It's a video from  August 29, 2017.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Home (Index page)

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"

When it comes to political incorrectness, I hit the trifecta. I talk about race, IQ and social class. I have an academic background in all three subjects but that wins me no forgiveness

At its most basic psychological level, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the discontented people. And both are largely dispositional, inborn -- which is why they so rarely change

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

So an essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do

Leftists are the disgruntled folk. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears

Leftists aim to deliver dismay and disruption into other people's lives -- and they are good at achieving that.

Leftists are wolves in sheep's clothing

Liberals are people who don't believe in liberty

Because they claim to have all the answers to society's ills, Communists often seem "cool" to young people

German has a word that describes most Leftists well: "Scheinheilig" - A person who appears to be very kind, soft natured, and filled with pure goodness but behind the facade, has a vile nature. He is seemingly holy but is an unscrupulous person on the inside.

The new faith is very oppressive: Leftist orthodoxy is the new dominant religion of the Western world and it is every bit as bigoted and oppressive as Christianity was at its worst

There are two varieties of authoritarian Leftism. Fascists are soft Leftists, preaching one big happy family -- "Better together" in other words. Communists are hard Leftists, preaching class war.

Equality: The nonsensical and incoherent claim that underlies so much Leftist discourse is "all men are equal". And that is the envier's gospel. It makes not a scrap of sense and shows no contact with reality but it is something that enviers resort to as a way of soothing their envious feelings. They deny the very differences that give them so much heartburn. "Denial" was long ago identified by Freud as a maladaptive psychological defence mechanism and "All men are equal" is a prize example of that. Whatever one thinks of his theories, Freud was undoubtedly an acute observer of people and very few psychologists today would doubt the maladaptive nature of denial as described by Freud.

Socialism is the most evil malady ever to afflict the human brain. The death toll in WWII alone tells you that

The standard response from Marxist apologists for Stalin and other Communist dictators is to say you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. To which Orwell retorted, ‘Where’s the omelette?’

You do still occasionally see some mention of the old idea that Leftist parties represent the worker. In the case of the U.S. Democrats that is long gone. Now they want to REFORM the worker. No wonder most working class Americans these days vote Republican. Democrats are the party of the minorities and the smug

"The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women — of all classes — detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion — mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined." —T.S. Eliot

We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people -- Churchill

The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them

Definition of a Socialist: Someone who wants everything you have...except your job.


Let's start with some thought-provoking graphics


Israel: A great powerhouse of the human spirit


The difference in practice


The United Nations: A great ideal but a sordid reality


Alfred Dreyfus, a reminder of French antisemitism still relevant today


Eugenio Pacelli, a righteous Gentile, a true man of God and a brilliant Pope





Leftism in one picture:





The "steamroller" above who got steamrollered by his own hubris. Spitzer is a warning of how self-destructive a vast ego can be -- and also of how destructive of others it can be.



R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. Allende had just burnt the electoral rolls so it wasn't hard to see what was coming. Pinochet pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale

So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story

We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it

A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested

Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.

A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds

In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive

Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out

Insight: "A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility

Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.

"Those who see hate everywhere think they're looking thru a window when actually they're looking at a mirror"

Hatred has long been a central pillar of leftist ideologies, premised as they are on trampling individual rights for the sake of a collectivist plan. Karl Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” In 1923, V.I. Lenin chillingly declared to the Soviet Commissars of Education, “We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism.” In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin went so far as to assert that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”

If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.

The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that

Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.

Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech

Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs

Chesteron's fence -- good conservative thinking

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.

Mostly, luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.

Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.

Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves

Given their dislike of the world they live in, it would be a surprise if Leftists were patriotic and loved their own people. Prominent English Leftist politician Jack Straw probably said it best: "The English as a race are not worth saving"

In his 1888 book, The Anti-Christ Friedrich Nietzsche argues that we should treat the common man well and kindly because he is the backdrop against which the exceptional man can be seen. So Nietzsche deplores those who agitate the common man: "Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The socialist rabble, the chandala [outcast] apostles, who undermine the instinct, the pleasure, the worker's sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge. The source of wrong is never unequal rights but the claim of “equal” rights"

Why do conservatives respect tradition and rely on the past in many ways? Because they want to know what works and the past is the chief source of evidence on that. Leftists are more faith-based. They cling to their theories (e.g. global warming) with religious fervour, even though theories are often wrong

Thinking that you "know best" is an intrinsically precarious and foolish stance -- because nobody does. Reality is so complex and unpredictable that it can rarely be predicted far ahead. Conservatives can see that and that is why conservatives always want change to be done gradually, in a step by step way. So the Leftist often finds the things he "knows" to be out of step with reality, which challenges him and his ego. Sadly, rather than abandoning the things he "knows", he usually resorts to psychological defence mechanisms such as denial and projection. He is largely impervious to argument because he has to be. He can't afford to let reality in.

A prize example of the Leftist tendency to projection (seeing your own faults in others) is the absurd Robert "Bob" Altemeyer, an acclaimed psychologist and father of a Canadian Leftist politician. Altemeyer claims that there is no such thing as Leftist authoritarianism and that it is conservatives who are "Enemies of Freedom". That Leftists (e.g. Mrs Obama) are such enemies of freedom that they even want to dictate what people eat has apparently passed Altemeyer by. Even Stalin did not go that far. And there is the little fact that all the great authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Stalin, Hitler and Mao) were socialist. Freud saw reliance on defence mechanisms such as projection as being maladjusted. It is difficult to dispute that. Altemeyer is too illiterate to realize it but he is actually a good Hegelian. Hegel thought that "true" freedom was marching in step with a Left-led herd.

What libertarian said this? “The bureaucracy is a parasite on the body of society, a parasite which ‘chokes’ all its vital pores…The state is a parasitic organism”. It was VI Lenin, in August 1917, before he set up his own vastly bureaucratic state. He could see the problem but had no clue about how to solve it.

It was Democrat John F Kennedy who cut taxes and declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats"

Leftist stupidity is a special class of stupidity. The people concerned are mostly not stupid in general but they have a character defect (mostly arrogance) that makes them impatient with complexity and unwilling to study it. So in their policies they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot; They fail to attain their objectives. The world IS complex so a simplistic approach to it CANNOT work.

Seminal Leftist philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel said something that certainly applies to his fellow Leftists: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history". And he captured the Left in this saying too: "Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself".

"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; A man who is still a socialist at age 30 has no head". Who said that? Most people attribute it to Winston but as far as I can tell it was first said by Georges Clemenceau, French Premier in WWI -- whose own career approximated the transition concerned. And he in turn was probably updating an earlier saying about monarchy versus Republicanism by Guizot. Other attributions here. There is in fact a normal drift from Left to Right as people get older. Both Reagan and Churchill started out as liberals

Funny how to the Leftist intelligentsia poor blacks are 'oppressed' and poor whites are 'trash'. Racism, anyone?

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate. And you may not even survive at all. Stalin killed off all the old Bolsheviks.

A Conservative manifesto from England -- The inimitable Jacob Rees-Mogg


MYTH BUSTING:


The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

Just the name of Hitler's political party should be sufficient to reject the claim that Hitler was "Right wing" but Leftists sometimes retort that the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is not informative, in that it is the name of a dismal Stalinist tyranny. But "People's Republic" is a normal name for a Communist country whereas I know of no conservative political party that calls itself a "Socialist Worker's Party". Such parties are in fact usually of the extreme Left (Trotskyite etc.)

Most people find the viciousness of the Nazis to be incomprehensible -- for instance what they did in their concentration camps. But you just have to read a little of the vileness that pours out from modern-day "liberals" in their Twitter and blog comments to understand it all very well. Leftists haven't changed. They are still boiling with hate

Hatred as a motivating force for political strategy leads to misguided ­decisions. “Hatred is blind,” as Alexandre Dumas warned, “rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Three examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Jesse Owens, the African-American hero of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, said "Hitler didn't snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt never even invited the quadruple gold medal-winner to the White House

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

The Zimmerman case is an excellent proof that the Left is deep-down racist

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

FDR appointed a known KKK member, Hugo Black, to the Supreme Court

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

High Level of Welfare Use by Legal and Illegal Immigrants in the USA. Low skill immigrants receive 4 to 5 dollars of benefits for every dollar in taxes paid

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

The heritability of general cognitive ability increases linearly from childhood to young adulthood

The association between high IQ and long life is overwhelmingly genetic: "In the combined sample the genetic contribution to the covariance was 95%"

The Dark Ages were not dark

Judged by his deeds, Abraham Lincoln was one of the bloodiest villains ever to walk the Earth. See here. And: America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

At the beginning of the North/South War, Confederate general Robert E. Lee did not own any slaves. Union General Ulysses L. Grant did.

Was slavery already washed up by the tides of history before Lincoln took it on? Eric Williams in his book "Capitalism and Slavery" tells us: “The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century, which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism, slavery, and all its works. Without a grasp of these economic changes the history of the period is meaningless.”

Revolutionary terrorists in Russia killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881 (after three prior assassination attempts). Alexander II was a great reformer who abolished serfdom one year before the US abolished slavery. If his democratic and economic reforms had continued, Russia may have been much less radical politically a couple of decades later, when Nicholas II was overthrown.

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Conrad Black on the Declaration of Independence

Malcolm Gladwell: "There is more of reality and wisdom in a Chinese fortune cookie than can be found anywhere in Gladwell’s pages"

Some people are born bad -- confirmed by genetics research

The dark side of American exceptionalism: America could well be seen as the land of folly. It fought two unnecessary civil wars, would have done well to keep out of two world wars, endured the extraordinary folly of Prohibition and twice elected a traitor President -- Barack Obama. That America remains a good place to be is a tribute to the energy and hard work of individual Americans.

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” ? Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty



IN BRIEF:

The 10 "cannots" (By William J. H. Boetcker) that Leftist politicians ignore:
*You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

A good short definition of conservative: "One who wants you to keep your hand out of his pocket."

Beware of good intentions. They mostly lead to coercion

A gargantuan case of hubris, coupled with stunning level of ignorance about how the real world works, is the essence of progressivism.

The U.S. Constitution is neither "living" nor dead. It is fixed until it is amended. But amending it is the privilege of the people, not of politicians or judges

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong - Thomas Sowell

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

"England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution" -- George Orwell

Was 16th century science pioneer Paracelsus a libertarian? His motto was "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself."

"When using today's model of society as a rule, most of history will be found to be full of oppression, bias, and bigotry." What today's arrogant judges of history fail to realize is that they, too, will be judged. What will Americans of 100 years from now make of, say, speech codes, political correctness, and zero tolerance - to name only three? Assuming, of course, there will still be an America that we, today, would recognize. Given the rogue Federal government spy apparatus, I am not at all sure of that. -- Paul Havemann

Economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973): "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office."

It's the shared hatred of the rest of us that unites Islamists and the Left.

American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.

The Democratic Party: Con-men elected by the ignorant and the arrogant

The Democratic Party is a strange amalgam of elites, would-be elites and minorities. No wonder their policies are so confused and irrational

Why are conservatives more at ease with religion? Because it is basic to conservatism that some things are unknowable, and religious people have to accept that too. Leftists think that they know it all and feel threatened by any exceptions to that. Thinking that you know it all is however the pride that comes before a fall.

The characteristic emotion of the Leftist is not envy. It's rage

Leftists are committed to grievance, not truth

The British Left poured out a torrent of hate for Margaret Thatcher on the occasion of her death. She rescued Britain from chaos and restored Britain's prosperity. What's not to hate about that?

Something you didn't know about Margaret Thatcher

The world's dumbest investor? Without doubt it is Uncle Sam. Nobody anywhere could rival the scale of the losses on "investments" made under the Obama administration

"Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power" -- Murray Rothbard - Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995)

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy

"World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them--all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis... The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach." -- Solzhenitsyn

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." -- Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. -- Thomas Jefferson

"Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power" -- Bertrand Russell

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

The Republicans are the gracious side of American politics. It is the Democrats who are the nasty party, the haters

Wanting to stay out of the quarrels of other nations is conservative -- but conservatives will fight if attacked or seriously endangered. Anglo/Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh (1769-1822), who led the political coalition that defeated Napoleon, was an isolationist, as were traditional American conservatives.

Some wisdom from the past: "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." —George Washington, 1783

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

There is better evidence for creation than there is for the Leftist claim that “gender” is a “social construct”. Most Leftist claims seem to be faith-based rather than founded on the facts

Leftists are classic weak characters. They dish out abuse by the bucketload but cannot take it when they get it back. Witness the Loughner hysteria.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

The Leftist motto: "I love humanity. It's just people I can't stand"

Why are Leftists always talking about hate? Because it fills their own hearts

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

Gore Vidal: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little". Vidal was of course a Leftist

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left. Some evidence here showing that envy is not what defines the Left

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

Was Confucius a conservative? The following saying would seem to reflect good conservative caution: "The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

Some Leftist hatred arises from the fact that they blame "society" for their own personal problems and inadequacies

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

Leftist policies are candy-coated rat poison that may appear appealing at first, but inevitably do a lot of damage to everyone impacted by them.

A tribute and thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne. Her death was reprehensible but she probably did more by her death that she ever would have in life: She spared the world a President Ted Kennedy. That the heap of corruption that was Ted Kennedy died peacefully in his bed is one of the clearest demonstrations that we do not live in a just world. Even Joe Stalin seems to have been smothered to death by Nikita Khrushchev

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

Even in the Old Testament they knew about "Postmodernism": "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

Was Solomon the first conservative? "The hearts of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts" -- Ecclesiastes: 9:3 (RSV). He could almost have been talking about Global Warming.

Leftist hatred of Christianity goes back as far as the massacre of the Carmelite nuns during the French revolution. Yancey has written a whole book tabulating modern Leftist hatred of Christians. It is a rival religion to Leftism.

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among intelligent people, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics. -- C.J. Keyser

Hell is paved with good intentions" -- Boswell's Life of Johnson of 1775

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state -- capitalism frees them.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amendment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.

"Some action that is unconstitutional has much to recommend it" -- Elena Kagan, nominated to SCOTUS by Obama

Frank Sulloway, the anti-scientist

The basic aim of all bureaucrats is to maximize their funding and minimize their workload

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Some ancient wisdom for Leftists: "Be not righteous overmuch; neither make thyself over wise: Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" -- Ecclesiastes 7:16

Jesse Jackson: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." There ARE important racial differences.

Some Jimmy Carter wisdom: "I think it's inevitable that there will be a lower standard of living than what everybody had always anticipated," he told advisers in 1979. "there's going to be a downward turning."

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Big business is not your friend. As Adam Smith said: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values. -- John Maynard Keynes

Some wisdom from "Bron" Waugh: "The purpose of politics is to help them [politicians] overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power"

"There are countless horrible things happening all over the country, and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible"

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to Parliament [or Congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever"

"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled"

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were. Freedom needs a soldier

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in my MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

3 memoirs of "Supermac", a 20th century Disraeli (Aristocratic British Conservative Prime Minister -- 1957 to 1963 -- Harold Macmillan):

"It breaks my heart to see (I can't interfere or do anything at my age) what is happening in our country today - this terrible strike of the best men in the world, who beat the Kaiser's army and beat Hitler's army, and never gave in. Pointless, endless. We can't afford that kind of thing. And then this growing division which the noble Lord who has just spoken mentioned, of a comparatively prosperous south, and an ailing north and midlands. That can't go on." -- Mac on the British working class: "the best men in the world" (From his Maiden speech in the House of Lords, 13 November 1984)

"As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism"

During Macmillan's time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." --?Arthur Schopenhauer




JEWS AND ISRAEL

The Bible is an Israeli book

There is a view on both Left and Right that Jews are "too" influential. And it is true that they are more influential than their numbers would indicate. But they are exactly as influential as their IQs would indicate

To me, hostility to the Jews is a terrible tragedy. I weep for them at times. And I do literally put my money where my mouth is. I do at times send money to Israeli charities

My (Gentile) opinion of antisemitism: The Jews are the best we've got so killing them is killing us.

It’s a strange paradox when anti-Zionists argue that Jews should suffer and wander without a homeland while urging that Palestinians ought to have security and territory.

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" -- Genesis 12:3

"O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee" Psalm 122:6.

If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy -- Psalm 137 (NIV)

Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good. As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more willing and capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable." -- George Gilder

To Leftist haters, all the basic rules of liberal society — rejection of hate speech, commitment to academic freedom, rooting out racism, the absolute commitment to human dignity — go out the window when the subject is Israel.

I have always liked the story of Gideon (See Judges chapters 6 to 8) and it is surely no surprise that in the present age Israel is the Gideon of nations: Few in numbers but big in power and impact.

Is the Israel Defence Force the most effective military force per capita since Genghis Khan? They probably are but they are also the most ethically advanced military force that the world has ever seen

If I were not an atheist, I would believe that God had a sense of humour. He gave his chosen people (the Jews) enormous advantages -- high intelligence and high drive -- but to keep it fair he deprived them of something hugely important too: Political sense. So Jews to this day tend very strongly to be Leftist -- even though the chief source of antisemitism for roughly the last 200 years has been the political Left!

And the other side of the coin is that Jews tend to despise conservatives and Christians. Yet American fundamentalist Christians are the bedrock of the vital American support for Israel, the ultimate bolthole for all Jews. So Jewish political irrationality seems to be a rather good example of the saying that "The LORD giveth and the LORD taketh away". There are many other examples of such perversity (or "balance"). The sometimes severe side-effects of most pharmaceutical drugs is an obvious one but there is another ethnic example too, a rather amusing one. Chinese people are in general smart and patient people but their rate of traffic accidents in China is about 10 times higher than what prevails in Western societies. They are brilliant mathematicians and fearless business entrepreneurs but at the same time bad drivers!

Conservatives, on the other hand, could be antisemitic on entirely rational grounds: Namely, the overwhelming Leftism of the Diaspora Jewish population as a whole. Because they judge the individual, however, only a tiny minority of conservative-oriented people make such general judgments. The longer Jews continue on their "stiff-necked" course, however, the more that is in danger of changing. The children of Israel have been a stiff necked people since the days of Moses, however, so they will no doubt continue to vote with their emotions rather than their reason.

I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.

Fortunately for America, though, liberal Jews there are rapidly dying out through intermarriage and failure to reproduce. And the quite poisonous liberal Jews of Israel are not much better off. Judaism is slowly returning to Orthodoxy and the Orthodox tend to be conservative.

The above is good testimony to the accuracy of the basic conservative insight that almost anything in human life is too complex to be reduced to any simple rule and too complex to be reduced to any rule at all without allowance for important exceptions to the rule concerned

Amid their many virtues, one virtue is often lacking among Jews in general and Israelis in particular: Humility. And that's an antisemitic comment only if Hashem is antisemitic. From Moses on, the Hebrew prophets repeatedy accused the Israelites of being "stiff-necked" and urged them to repent. So it's no wonder that the greatest Jewish prophet of all -- Jesus -- not only urged humility but exemplified it in his life and death

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Karl Marx hated just about everyone. Even his father, the kindly Heinrich Marx, thought Karl was not much of a human being

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there'd be peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, there'd be genocide.


ABOUT

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect. Aside from my huge respect for the Queen, however, my favourite member of the Royal family is the redheaded Prince Harry. The Royal family is of course a military family and Prince Harry is a great example of that. As one of the world's most privileged people, he could well be an idle layabout but instead he loves his life in the army. When his girlfriend Chelsy ditched him because he was so often away, Prince Harry said: "I love Chelsy but the army comes first". A perfect military man! I doubt that many women would understand or approve of his attitude but perhaps my own small army background powers my approval of that attitude.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)


The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation

A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.

As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows

Leftists are usually just anxious little people trying to pretend that they are significant. No doubt there are some Leftists who are genuinely concerned about inequities in our society but their arrogance lies in thinking that they understand it without close enquiry


My academic background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

A real army story here

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

And something that was perceptive comes from the same chapter. Hitler said that the doctrines of the interwar Social Democrats (mainstream leftists) of Vienna were "comprised of egotism and hate". Not much has changed

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way




DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues


There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)


Some more useful links

Alt archives for "Dissecting Leftism" here or here
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia



Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF NAZISM

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.





Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:

TELSTRA
OPTUS
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus




Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Rarely updated)



Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
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OR: (After 2015)
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