What do Amtrak, public schools, and inner cities have in common? Democrats who abhor economic principles and thinking by spending more money fixes all ills. Larry Elder takes us on a tour of history as he bounces around the tragedy of the recent Amtrak derailment, and the derailing of our schools. The solution according to Democrats?
Here are excerpts from Kotkin’s article that Prager is reading from in the above audio (video):
The Big Idea: California Is So Over: California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.
….But since the 1970s, California’s water system has become the prisoner of politics and posturing. The great aqueducts connecting the population centers with the great Sierra snowpack are all products of an earlier era—the Los Angeles aqueduct (1913), Hetch-Hetchy (1923), the Central Valley Project (1937), and the California Aqueduct (1974). The primary opposition to expansion has been the green left, which rejects water storage projects as irrelevant.
Yet at the same time greens and their allies in academia and the mainstream pressare those most likely to see the current drought as part of a climate change-induced reduction in snowpack. That many scientists disagree with this assessment is almost beside the point. Whether climate change will make things better or worse is certainly an important concern, but California was going to have problems meeting its water needs under any circumstances.
It’s not like we haven’t been around this particular block before. In the 1860s, a severe drought all but destroyed LA’s once-flourishing cattle industry. This drought was followed by torrential rains that caused their own havoc. The state has suffered three major droughts since I have lived here—in the mid ’70s, the mid ’80s and again today—but long ago (even before I got there) some real whoppers occurred, including dry periods that lasted upwards of 200 years.
[….]
But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ KevinDrum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money.
[….]
This fundamentally hypocritical regime remains in place because it works—for the powerful and well-placed. Less understandable is why many Hispanic politicians, such as Assembly Speaker Kevin de Leon, also prioritize “climate change” as his leading issue, without thinking much about how these policies might worsen the massive poverty in his de-industrializing L.A. district—until you realize that de Leon is bankrolled by Tom Steyer and others from the green uberclass.
So, in the end, we are producing a California that is the polar opposite of Pat Brown’s creation. True, it has some virtues: greener, cleaner, and more “progressive” on social issues. But it’s also becoming increasingly feudal, defined by a super-affluent coastal class and an increasingly impoverished interior. As water prices rise, and farms and lawns are abandoned, there’s little thought about how to create a better future for the bulk of Californians. Like medieval peasants, millions of Californians have been force to submit to the theology of our elected high priest and his acolytes, leaving behind any aspirations that the Golden State can work for them too.
(CBS) …The Sorek plant produces more than 165 million gallons of fresh water and accounts for more than 20 percent of Israel’s water consumption, according to Udi Tirosh, a director at IDE.
Factoring in several other desalination plants, an astonishing 50 percent of the country’s drinking water now comes directly from the ocean – an amount capable of supplying the entire city of Los Angeles.
Plant officials also say it offers some of the world’s cheapest desalinated water because of new technology and a series of engineering improvements that have cut down the massive energy normally required to transform seawater into fresh water.
Fountains that were once forced to dry up now are flowing again….
Another MUST READ excerpt by a really well written article is this one by Victor Davis Hanson:
Just as California’s freeways were designed to grow to meet increased traffic, the state’s vast water projects were engineered to expand with the population. Many assumed that the state would finish planned additions to the California State Water Project and its ancillaries. But in the 1960s and early 1970s, no one anticipated that the then-nascent environmental movement would one day go to court to stop most new dam construction, including the 14,000-acre Sites Reservoir on the Sacramento River near Maxwell; the Los Banos Grandes facility, along a section of the California Aqueduct in Merced County; and the Temperance Flat Reservoir, above Millerton Lake north of Fresno. Had the gigantic Klamath River diversion project not likewise been canceled in the 1970s, the resulting Aw Paw reservoir would have been the state’s largest man-made reservoir. At two-thirds the size of Lake Mead, it might have stored 15 million acre-feet of water, enough to supply San Francisco for 30 years. California’s water-storage capacity would be nearly double what it is today had these plans come to fruition. It was just as difficult to imagine that environmentalists would try to divert contracted irrigation and municipal water from already-established reservoirs. Yet they did just that, and subsequently moved to freeze California’s water-storage resources at 1970s capacities.
All the while, the Green activists remained blissfully unconcerned about the vast immigration into California from Latin America and Mexico that would help double the state’s population in just four decades, to 40 million. Had population growth remained static, perhaps California could have lived with partially finished water projects. The state might also have been able to restore the flow of scenic rivers from the mountains to the sea, maintained a robust agribusiness sector, and even survived a four-or-five-year drought. But if California continues to block new construction of the State Water Project as well as additions to local and federal water-storage infrastructure, officials must halve California’s population, or shut down the 5 million acres of irrigated crops on the Central Valley’s west side, or cut back municipal water usage in a way never before done in the United States.
As the #FightFor15 movement get fast food workers to strike in order to get a $15, and they watch businesses in Seattle closing because of the forced raise in wages. Automated cashier options are now an option to be weighed. Of course a business wants a human face to represent it. But the business wants to stay in business, so many are being forced to choose a cheaper, more sustainable option for its budget.
Would you like some microchips with that burger? McDonald’s Europe strikes another blow against human interaction by installing 7,000 touch-screen computers to take your order and money.
[….]
McDonalds recently went on a hiring binge in the U.S., adding 62,000 employees to its roster. The hiring picture doesn’t look quite so rosy for Europe, where the fast food chain is drafting 7,000 touch-screen kiosks to handle cashiering duties.
And this real world affect of what politicians can merely raise taxes to meet budgets with (or, on the Federal level just print more money [a dumb move BTW]) is that small business go out of business, thus affecting the poor who want jobs.
But now the option through technology is to replace workers for businesses altogether:
(Washington Policy Center) Everyone is predicting what the real world impact of Seattle’s newly passed $15 minimum wage will be. The truth is there will not be a mass exodus of businesses from the city, nor will the economy crash.
But many businesses will simply figure out how to employ fewer low-wage workers. They will do that by substituting machines and technology for people.
Service industry CEOs have cautioned a higher minimum wage is “encouraging automation,” which can improve efficiency. Even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates warns that a higher minimum wage would “encourage labor substitution” and incentivize employers to “buy machines and automate things” and ultimately “cause job destruction.”
He’s right. When government increases the cost of labor, employers find other ways to save money.
Just look at how McDonald’s has responded to France’s $12 an hour minimum wage. In 2011, McDonald’s invested in 7,000 touch screen computers in France to reduce the number of workers needed. Restaurants around the country are already exploring automation as a means to cut costs; Applebee’s is installing 100,000 tabletop tablets for ordering and payments.
Many food businesses are considering a machine that can freshly grind, shape and custom grill 360 gourmet burgers per hour, no human labor needed. Alpha, the burger-making robot, can even slice and dice the pickles and tomatoes, put them on the burger, add condiments and wrap it up. The manufacturer makes the point that cashiers or servers aren’t even needed: “Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.” The maker says Alpha will pay for itself in a year.
Wintery Knight pulls together some of the above discussion with detailed information that should scare us all!
This story, which was written up in National Review by religious liberty defender David French, has two parts.
The first part talks about the police raids. I can only snip a little to capture the horror of the raid.
It says:
THEY CAME WITH A BATTERING RAM
Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.
She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.
She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door.
“I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic.
“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”
She got the dogs safely out of the house, just as multiple armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bathroom, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee….
The article talks about a few more of the home invasions, and the warnings not to tell anyone were the same.
Here’s another:
Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t tell your friends. The kids watched — alarmed — as the school bus drove by, with the students inside watching the spectacle of uniformed police surrounding the house, carrying out the family’s belongings. Yet they were told they couldn’t tell anyone at school.
They, too, had to remain silent.
The mom watched as her entire life was laid open before the police. Her professional files, her personal files, everything.
District Attorney Chisholm was a Democrat, a very partisan Democrat.
Almost immediately after opening the John Doe investigation, Chisholm used his expansive powers to embarrass Walker, raiding his county-executive offices within a week. As Mr. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth explained in court filings, the investigation then dramatically expanded:
Over the next few months, [Chisholm’s] investigation of all-things-Walker expanded to include everything from alleged campaign-finance violations to sexual misconduct to alleged public contracting bid-rigging to alleged misuse of county time and property. Between May 5, 2010, and May 3, 2012, the Milwaukee Defendants filed at least eighteen petitions to formally “[e]nlarge” the scope of the John Doe investigation, and each was granted. . . . That amounts to a new formal inquiry every five and a half weeks, on average, for two years.
This expansion coincided with one of the more remarkable state-level political controversies in modern American history – the protest (and passage) of Act 10, followed by the attempted recall of a number of Wisconsin legislators and, ultimately, Governor Walker.
Dennis Prager reads from a New York Times article (http://tinyurl.com/pm886zv) slamming “infantile” persons creating “safe spaces” to act… well… child-like. This is just another example — from the many — of just how the Left in America harms freedom of thinking and freedom of interaction with competing ideas.
How do I look at it? Makes dealing with infantile ideas/position THAT much easier for people who actually engage in the real world. Some liberals get it, like this professor who warns that by doing such (labeling people and blocking out competing ideas) creates a false reality in the classroom and will sneak up on people out in the real world: http://tinyurl.com/dxznh3h
For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/
Just a taste of the article… crazy stuff!
KATHERINE BYRON, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims, free from anything that might prompt memories of trauma.
So when she heard last fall that a student group had organized a debate about campus sexual assault between Jessica Valenti, the founder of feministing.com, and Wendy McElroy, a libertarian, and that Ms. McElroy was likely to criticize the term “rape culture,” Ms. Byron was alarmed. “Bringing in a speaker like that could serve to invalidate people’s experiences,” she told me. It could be “damaging.”…
Are women independent? Tough? Able to do anything a man can do or bear? Or are they children… lesser of the sexes? Needing to be coddled? Protected at all times?
“Triggering” has become the all-purpose left-wing tool for censoring opinions leftists don’t like on the basis that expressing such opinions produce badfeels.
If these dames can’t handle the stress of interacting with the real world, they should just stay home and knit. Or iron, I got a whole pile of shirts they could get started on.
“Atheism is a disease of the soul before it is an error of the mind.” ~ Plato
A woman who lives near the scene described Hicks as short-tempered. “Anytime that I saw him or saw interaction with him or friends or anyone in the parking lot or myself, he was angry,” Samantha Maness said of Hicks. “He was very angry, anytime I saw him.”
Hicks’ ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, said that before they divorced about 17 years ago, his favorite movie was “Falling Down,” the 1993 Michael Douglas film about a divorced unemployed engineer who goes on a shooting rampage.
“That always freaked me out,” Hurley said. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all,” she said.
Gateway Pundit hit a home run, and this will go under my long list of people acting out the violence of the Left. GP quotes two good points, here they are:
A review of the Facebook page of the man charged in these murders, Craig Hicks, shows a consistent theme of anti-religion and progressive causes. Included in his many Facebook “likes” are the Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye “The Science Guy,” Neil deGrasse Tyson, gay marriage groups, and a host of anti-conservative/Tea Party pages.
I’m placing the SPLC on my list of “groups associated with hate killings” now. After all, this isn’t the first such incident….
This video is only meant for those who wish to see the affiliated likes the Chapel Hill killer has on his Facebook. It is in 1080p, so you can pause it and take a gander. I edited out innocent persons and movies he liked. AGAIN, could you imaging the ruckus if a Tea Party Patriot killed three Muslims and on his Facebook there were similar (but conservatively religious) “likes” ~ front page news.
Gateway then posts a video I was previously unaware of. And it is in regard to that domestic gay, anti-Christian terrorist, Floyd Lee Corkins II:
From FBI interrogation footage. Confessed terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who attacked Family Research Council on August 15, 2012, shooting and injuring Leo Johnson (before Johnson subdued him and took his weapon) explains to FBI interrogators that he used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list to find his target.
It is this ideology rather than numbers that causes Moonbat to note: “The days of anticommunist Democrats like JFK and Scoop Jackson are a fading memory now.” While I believe the Democrats have had a very sordid history, in the least they use to fight foreign threats/ideology, well. Now they cannot bring themselves to call the Taliban a terrorist organization.
All this aside, let us take a look at the numbers of a few radical left parties. First up, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). They have about 10,000 persons in their membership. While this seems small, let’s look at their influence on members in Congress, shall we (note, these stats are somewhat dated [111th Congress], but the importance of their impact still stands):
Q: How many of the DSA members sit on the Judiciary Committee?
A:Eleven:
John Conyers [Chairman of the Judiciary Committee], Tammy Baldwin, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutierrez, Melvin Watt, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez [there are 23 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of which eleven, almost half, are now members of the DSA].
Q: Who are these members of Congress?
Answer:
Co-Chairs: Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07); Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Neil Abercrombie (HI-01); Tammy Baldwin (WI-02); Xavier Becerra (CA-31); Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL); Robert Brady (PA-01); Corrine Brown (FL-03); Michael Capuano (MA-08); André Carson (IN-07); Donna Christensen (VI-AL); Yvette Clarke (NY-11); William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01); Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05); Steve Cohen (TN-09); John Conyers (MI-14); Elijah Cummings (MD-07); Danny Davis (IL-07); Peter DeFazio (OR-04); Rosa DeLauro (CT-03); Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04); Keith Ellison (MN-05); Sam Farr (CA-17); Chaka Fattah (PA-02); Bob Filner (CA-51); Barney Frank (MA-04); Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11); Alan Grayson (FL-08); Luis Gutierrez (IL-04); John Hall (NY-19); Phil Hare (IL-17); Maurice Hinchey (NY-22); Michael Honda (CA-15); Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02); Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30); Hank Johnson (GA-04); Marcy Kaptur (OH-09); Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13); Barbara Lee (CA-09); John Lewis (GA-05); David Loebsack (IA-02); Ben R. Lujan (NM-3); Carolyn Maloney (NY-14); Ed Markey (MA-07); Jim McDermott (WA-07); James McGovern (MA-03); George Miller (CA-07); Gwen Moore (WI-04); Jerrold Nadler (NY-08); Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL); John Olver (MA-01); Ed Pastor (AZ-04); Donald Payne (NJ-10); Chellie Pingree (ME-01); Charles Rangel (NY-15); Laura Richardson (CA-37); Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34); Bobby Rush (IL-01); Linda Sánchez (CA-47); Jan Schakowsky (IL-09); José Serrano (NY-16); Louise Slaughter (NY-28); Pete Stark (CA-13); Bennie Thompson (MS-02); John Tierney (MA-06); Nydia Velazquez (NY-12); Maxine Waters (CA-35); Mel Watt (NC-12); Henry Waxman (CA-30); Peter Welch (VT-AL); Robert Wexler (FL-19)
Here’s my list of 50 of the most obvious socialists in the House, with links to my website Keywiki for the backup evidence. Apologies to the many I’ve omitted. Please email me at trevor.newzeal @gmail.com if you’d like to be included in future lists.
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) Has worked closely with the Communist Party USA since at least 1993. A self-described “Alinskyite.” Traveled to Cuba in 2015.
Ami Bera (D-CA) Has used Communist Party USA campaign volunteers in 2010, 2014 and 2016. Also close to Democratic Socialists of America.
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Very close to several key Communist Party USA allies in San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s. Also some involvement with Democratic Socialists of America.
Barbara Lee (D-CA) Lee has been close to the Communist Party USA for decades. In the 1990s she was a leading member of the Communist Party spin-off Committees of Correspondence. Has been to Cuba more than 20 times.
Ro Khanna (D-CA) Very close to Democratic Socialists of America.
Salud Carbajal (D-CA) Long history with Democratic Socialists of America members.
Judy Chu (D-CA) Was heavily involved with the now-defunct pro-Beijing Communist Workers Party in the 1970s and ’80s. Still works closely with former members today. China’s best friend in the US Congress.
Raul Ruiz (D-CA) Worked closely with Workers World Party members in Massachusetts in the late 1990s.
Karen Bass (D-CA) Was actively involved with the Marxist-Leninist group Line of March in the 1980s. Still works closely with former members. Mentored by a leading Communist Party USA member. Also close to Democratic Socialists of America and some Freedom Road Socialist Organization members. Has been to Cuba at least 4 times.
Maxine Waters (D-CA) Long history with the Communist Party USA. Also ties to some Communist Workers Party and Workers World Party fronts. Has employed staff members from Democratic Socialists of America and League of Revolutionary Struggle.
Joe Courtney (D-CT) Has worked closely with several Communist Party USA leaders.
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) Has worked extremely closely with the Communist Party USA for many years. Traveled to Cuba in 2014.
Jim Himes (D-CT) His 1988 thesis “The Sandinista Defense Committees and the Transformation of Political Culture in Nicaragua” was a sympathetic portrayal of Marxist government’s civilian spy network. Has worked closely with one Communist Party USA front group.
Kathy Castor (D-FL) Has worked closely with Cuba and pro-Castro organizations to open US trade with the communist island.
John Lewis (D-GA) Worked closely with the Communist Party USA and Socialist Party USA in the 1960s. In recent years has worked with Democratic Socialists of America members.
Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) Has worked with Democratic Socialists of America members through her political career. Ties to some Filipino-American “former communists.” Worked with Communist Party USA affiliated former Congressman Dennis Kucinich to defend Soviet-Russian puppet Syrian leader Bashar-al-Assad.
Bobby Rush (D-IL) Former leader of the Maoist-leaning Black Panther Party. Has worked closely with Communist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America. Has traveled to Cuba twice.
Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL) Has worked closely with the Communist Party USA for nearly 40 years.
Danny Davis (D-IL) Was a member of Democratic Socialists of America in the mid 2000s. Has worked closely with the Communist Party USA since the 1980s. Also close to Committees of Correspondence in the 1990s.
Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) Was a member of Democratic Socialists of America in the 1980s and has continued to work closely with the organization. Has also worked closely with some Communist Party USA members.
Dave Loebsack (D-IA) has worked closely with Socialist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America members for many years.
John Yarmuth (D-KY) has worked with Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism members. Traveled to Cuba in 2011.
Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has worked closely with Democratic Socialists of America for many years.
Jim McGovern (D-MA) has supported Latin American socialist and revolutionary groups for 20 years. Has traveled to Cuba at least three times.
Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) Has been endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America. Worked with Freedom Road Socialist Organization front groups and with the pro-Beijing Chinese Progressive Association in Boston.
Andy Levin (D-MI) Close to Democratic Socialists of America for at least a decade.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) Democratic Socialists of America member.
Betty McCollum (D-MN) Close ties to communist Laos. Has worked with Democratic Socialists of America members. Traveled to Cuba in 2014.
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Supported by Democratic Socialists of America- controlled groups Our Revolution and National Nurses United. Reportedly a self-described “Democratic Socialist.”
Bennie Thompson (D-MS) Was close to the Communist Party USA for many years. Also supported one Communist Workers Party organization. Traveled to Cuba in 2000 and worked with Fidel Castro to train leftist American medical students in Cuba.
William Lacy Clay (D-MO) Has worked with Communist Party USA fronts for many years.
Greg Meeks (D-NY) Has traveled to Cuba at least 3 times. Was a strong supporter of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
Grace Meng (D-NY) Very close to the pro-Beijing Asian Americans for Equality. Was also active in a radical Korean-American organization.
Nydia Velasquez (D-NY) Close ties to Democratic Socialists of America. Welcomed Fidel Castro to Harlem in 1995.
Yvette Clarke (D-NY) Addressed a Workers World Party rally in 2005. A close ally of a prominent Democratic Socialists of America member. Traveled to Cuba in 2007.
Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in the 1970s and was involved with Democratic Socialists of America in the ’80s and ’90s.
Jose Serrano (D-NY) Close ties to the Communist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America. Was a strong supporter of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) Some connection to Workers World Party and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Also close to the “former” communist led Moral Mondays movement.
Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) Ties to Democratic Socialists of America. Traveled to Cuba in 2002.
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) Ties to Democratic Socialists of America.
Steve Cohen (D-TN) Close ties to Memphis Socialist Party USA members. Traveled to Cuba in 2011.
Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) Elected to the Texas State House with Communist Party USA support. Works closely with a major communist-influenced organization.
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) Long relationship with the Communist Party USA. Traveled to Cuba at least twice.
Marc Veasey (D-TX) Very close relationship with the Communist Party USA.
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) Has been involved with Democratic Socialists of America since the 1980s.
Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) Has been involved with Freedom Road Socialist Organization-connected groups for many years.
Mark Pocan (D-WI) Close to some Democratic Socialists of America activists. Long-time active supporter of Colombian revolutionary movements.
Gwen Moore (D-WI) Has been mentored by leading Democratic Socialists of America and Communist Party USA members.
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) Former Young Peoples Socialist League member. Long connection to Democratic Socialists of America.
So… while the DSA has only 10,000 members, officially, the impact and membership is wider than that.
Now, let us look at the Communist Party USA. Keep in mind they have voted for quite some time a straight Democratic ticket… only now have they officially announced the policy to continue on this path:
So how many members does the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) have? Two-thousand. Again, the numbers do not matter, it is that the very root of communism and “democratic” socialists ~ their ideology (the CPUSA as well as the DSA) ~ are anathema to our founding ideals and documents.
You may think this is the end of my rant. However… you would be wrong. Because there is another radical group that has historically been Democratic and still to this day vote predominately for Democrats. You must be wondering who?
I will tell you.
KKK
The Ku Klux Klan.
(California’s KKK Grand Dragon, Will Quigg, Endorsed Hillary)
All the way up to the 1970’s the Klan was exclusively Democratic:
“…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
“…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.
And the switch of “Dixiecrats” to Republicans is a myth. There were a couple dozen Dixiecrats and all but one remained Democrats until they retired or were voted out. But that aside, how many of the Klan members voted for a black President? Obviously there isn’t a scientific polling of this, so we rely on polling by smaller oraganizations or magazines that are interested in the topic. Here is one such article from Esquire Magazine:
How do racist anti-Semites view America’s first black president? Not necessarily the way you think they would…. In an informal Esquire survey, three out of four [literally] white supremacists prefer Obama.
Mind you, these are 3-out-of-4 MAIN leaders in the KKK [supremacist groups] in some form.
Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance; Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980…
Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America; Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join.
Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.”
Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party; Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”
Also note Duke’s hatred toward conservative media via the Examiner:
Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke has joined President Obama and the American Nazi Party in supporting the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“I cheer the men and women on the streets condemning the international banks that hold America financially hostage. These Wall Street banks are not the product of free enterprise; they are the product of crime,” Duke said in a video supporting the protests.
CNS News reports that Duke “repeatedly attacks what he refers to as “Zionist bankers” such as Ben “Shalom” Bernanke,” and claims that while many have lost up to half of their savings, the “Zionist owners of the predatory banks made more shekels.”
Duke also decries what he calls the “Zionist media and their paid whores,” and attacks Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly….
I could go on, but you get the point: as the Democrats move further left in their welfare programs which keep minorities in poverty and increase in their hatred towards the Jewish State. Klan members who by-and-large already vote Democratic will increase towards this proclivity.
Already under fire for many of his anti-Christian and pro-Muslim sentiments expressed during his relatively short time in serving under the Obama administration, United States Secretary of State John Kerry made another fairly recent assertion that has many Christians up in arms, as he attempted to interpret Scriptures to say that America is commanded by the Bible to protect the Muslim world from “global warming.”
[….]
America’s chief foreign diplomat contended that both religions scripturally share a common bond to the environment, asserting that because most Muslim countries are “vulnerable” to the effects of “climate change,” the United States is obligated to safeguard them by implementing green policies to protect them from the so-called effects of pollutants.
“Our faiths are inextricably linked on any number of things that we must confront and deal with in policy concepts today,” Kerry proclaimed late last year, according to Freedom Outpost. “Our faiths are inextricably linked on the environment. For many of us, respect for God’s creation also translates into a duty to protect and sustain His first Creation, Earth, the planet.”
Staying true to much of the environmentalist messaging and rhetoric used to promote the green movement’s endorsement of global warming-based policies and industries, Kerry used the Book of Genesis to imply that “Mother Earth” and nature should come before man.
“Before God created man He created Heaven and Earth,” Kerry stressed at the ceremony.
Fighting the greatest threat to humanity?
Kerry argues that fighting the highly contested global warming is perhaps the biggest threat to the world — and he attempted to use the Bible to prove his point, commanding America to use green technology and policies to “aid” Islamic nations.
“Confronting climate change is, in the long run, one of the greatest challenges that we face, and you can see this duty or responsibility laid out in Scriptures, clearly, beginning in Genesis,” Kerry insisted. “And Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable. Our response to this challenge ought to be rooted in a sense of stewardship of Earth. And for me and for many of us here today, that responsibility comes from God.”
Obviously, Professor Harris-Perry has never known anyone who has poured his or her life into starting and keeping open a business, such as a beauty supply store or cell phone outlet. The endless hours and sacrifice of family life necessary to make a business work through thick and thin constitute the very essence of a person’s life, and the loss of a business to arsonists and looters constitute an attack on that person’s life. When he or she loses the business, part of that person’s life is lost, too.
But how would she know that? She would have had to talk to such people and listened sympathetically to their stories. She would have had to understand that meeting a payroll when sales are down, or shoplifters have overwhelmed the retail margin, means sacrificing other important things, selling off precious possessions so that employees can be paid, or working a second job on the graveyard shift to put food on the table when the business is failing.
I would wager a substantial amount of money that Harris-Perry considers herself a caring and compassionate woman. But progressives have a way of dehumanizing people with whom they disagree, and regarding people who actually seek to create and maintain a business as exploiters, and therefore subhuman.
She is Al Sharpton with a PhD.
How bout when a cop-hating liberal progressive honky is punched in the face for trying to protect property? Via Gateway Pundit:
(ABC) Six former Directors and Deputy Directors of the CIA fired back at the Senate Intelligence Committee with a vehemence almost never seen in the intelligence world.
The former CIA leaders — including George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — blasted the Senate report as “one-sided and marred with errors” and called it “a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.”
Their 2,500-word rebuttal was posted as an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website once the report was released. The former intel chiefs are also launching their own website to respond to the attacks on CIA’s post-9/11 activities.
….We, as former senior officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, created this website to present documents that conclusively demonstrate that the program was: authorized by the President, overseen by the National Security Council, and deemed legal by the Attorney General of the United States on multiple occasions. None of those officials were interviewed either. None. CIA relied on their policy and legal judgments. We deceived no one. You will not find this truth in the Majority Report.
Absent from the report is any discussion of the context the United States faced after 9/11. This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a “ticking time bomb” every single day.
In this atmosphere, time was of the essence. We had a deep responsibility to do everything within the law to stop another attack. We clearly understood that, even with legal and policy approvals, our decisions would be questioned years later. But we also understood that we would be morally culpable for the deaths of fellow citizens if we failed to gain information that could stop the next attacks.
The report defies credulity by saying that the interrogation program did not produce any intelligence value. In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives…
This from the Wall Street Journal in regards to that last emphasized sentence:
…First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.
Information provided by Zubaydah through the interrogation program led to the capture in 2002 of KSM associate and post-9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. Information from both Zubaydah and al-Shibh led us to KSM. KSM then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia—in which more than 200 people perished.
The removal of these senior al Qaeda operatives saved thousands of lives because it ended their plotting. KSM, alone, was working on multiple plots when he was captured.
Here’s an example of how the interrogation program actually worked to disrupt terrorist plotting. Without revealing to KSM that Hambali had been captured, we asked him who might take over in the event that Hambali was no longer around. KSM pointed to Hambali’s brother Rusman Gunawan. We then found Gunawan, and information from him resulted in the takedown of a 17-member Southeast Asian cell that Gunawan had recruited for a “second wave,” 9/11-style attack on the U.S. West Coast, in all likelihood using aircraft again to attack buildings. Had that attack occurred, the nightmare of 9/11 would have been repeated.
Once they had become compliant due to the interrogation program, both Abu Zubaydah and KSM turned out to be invaluable sources on the al Qaeda organization. We went back to them multiple times to gain insight into the group. More than one quarter of the nearly 1,700 footnotes in the highly regarded 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 and a significant share of the intelligence in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on al Qaeda came from detainees in the program, in particular Zubaydah and KSM….
Ever since Barack Hussein Obama became president, there has been a notable acceleration in the use of State power to punish, harass, and wreak vengeance on those the left perceives as their enemies. Just a few examples:
Inevitably, when the left-wing comes to power, the first order of business is to punish their perceived enemies. That has been the case in every country in which any brand of Marxism has come into power. There was a naive assumption that the political system of the United States, with its body of laws and system of checks and balances, was immune to these types of abuses. Clearly, the last six years have shown that it is not.
Modern leftism is less a set of political beliefs than a militant pathology. If your political philosophy is based on the idea that those who disagree with you are evil, and/or greedy, and/or racist, and/or homophobic, and/or sexist, then, of course, they need to be punished, and of course, the reason your side was elected was to punish them. Obama himself admitted as much when he stated that the purpose of elections was “to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” And his administration and his party have done exactly that….
