(Via MRCTV/NEWSBUSTERS) The Sunday afternoon letter from Attorney General Bill Barr on the Mueller report has rocked the political world and burst more than a few bubbles in the liberal media, most notably their years-long insistence that the President and/or his team colluded with Russia.
Some journalists have conceded this reality, while others are mimicking Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II in 1971……
Last December, CNN’s Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. to give him access to stolen documents a full 10 days before they were released to the public.
Unfortunately for CNN, it turns out their sources gave them the wrong date. Don Jr. actually received an email with access to the stolen docs on Sept. 14, 2016, after they had already been released publicly.
2. ABC TANKS STOCK MARKET WITH FAKE FLYNN NEWS
ABC was forced to suspend Brian Ross after he falsely reported that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump ordered him to make contact with the Russians.
The stock market dropped a few hundred points at the news — but it turned out to be fake.
ABC clarified that Flynn was actually prepared to testify that Trump asked him to contact Russia while the administration was transitioning into office. Pretty standard preparation for an incoming president.
3. THE MOOCH IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION
CNN earns another spot on this list for their shoddy reporting about former Trump adviser Anthony, “The Mooch,” Scaramucci. In June 2017, CNN relied on a single unnamed source to claim that Scaramucci was under investigation for a meeting he took with a Russian banker prior to Trump’s inauguration.
The Mooch denied the story and CNN later gave him a much-deserved apology. Oh … and three CNN employees resigned over the botched piece.
4. BLOOMBERG’S DIRTY DEUTSCHE BANK SCOOP
Bloomberg initially reported in December that special counsel Robert Mueller had “zeroed in” on Trump by subpoenaing Deutsche Bank records for the incoming president and his family.
Bloomberg later admitted that Mueller was looking for records relating to “people affiliated” with Trump.
5. SESSIONS EXONERATED
Last May, CNN was sure that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had botched protocol when he didn’t list meetings he had with the Russian ambassador on his security clearance forms. To CNN and other establishment media outlets, this was proof that Sessions was hiding something related to Russia.
A little over six months later, CNN quietly walked back the scandal, explaining the FBI sent emails informing Sessions’ aide that he did not need to disclose the meetings on his forms because they were carried out in the course of his duties as a senator.
6. RUSSIANS AREN’T JUST HACKING THE ELECTION — THEY’RE HACKING OUR POWER GRID
The Washington Post claimed in January 2017 that Russians were hacking the U.S. power grid through a company in Vermont, only to change the story to say that only one laptop was infiltrated. It turns out that one laptop was never even connected to the power grid.
7. REPUBLICANS FUNDED THE DOSSIER!
A number of news outlets have consistently claimed that Republicans initially paid for the anti-Trump Steele dossier, failing to note that Steele wasn’t even contracted by Fusion GPS until after the GOP donors pulled funding. The Republican donors say they paid Fusion for standard opposition research and that they have zero connection to the dossier.
The media has perpetuated this falsehood so consistently that even former FBI director James Comey was confused, repeating the lie in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier…..
First, I want to start with a video from a Prager University flashback to the giant named Charles Krauthammer:
A compatriot on Facebook who is a #NeverTrumper posted a link to this article at the biased*WASHINGTON POST, entitled, “Trump’s wall is a monument to vanity and bigotry,” and then asked for the following:
Read this and THEN tell me why a wall (as described by Trump) makes sense. Feel free to comment if you have read the piece here by Michael J. Gerson.
I read the article and commented on it… here are some of my thoughts (I will add to the original comments for my site).
SAME POSITION
There are many issues with the article. A few being as follows, that Trump long ago said the Border Patrol wanted something different in parts and he would listen to them. He has also said a while back (during the campaign) that the BARRIER would be about a 1,000 miles long, again – some wall, and reinforcing fencing etc. Here, NPR (January 26, 2017) interviews the Border Patrol’s union leader Brandon Judd >>>
JUDD:I don’t think it’s going to be – well, OK, it’s going to be a lot more secure. But what we’re talking about is we’re talking about a wall in strategic locations. We’re not talking about a great wall of the United States. We’re not talking about a continuous wall from California down to Texas. We’re talking about a wall in strategic locations which then helps the Border Patrol agents do their job better.
INSKEEP:Because there are some places that are so sparsely populated and the ground is so fierce or so harsh you really don’t need…
JUDD: Correct, correct.
INSKEEP: So you’ve told us when you were on the program last time that about 10 to 15 percent of the border has serious fences in your view and maybe you’d double that under this proposal.
JUDD:That’s what I’m thinking. Again, I don’t have the exact specifics of what they’re going to do, but I do know that they’re looking in specific places like Laredo, Texas, where we have very, very little walls. Yet, the state that Laredo, Texas, borders is extremely violent. And so we’re looking in locations like that. They’re looking in locations like that, but I think it’s going to be very effective.
I post this clarification of the political hyperbole (on both sides) because the WaPo article refers to AN MIT ARTICLE discussing the cost of a 1,000 mile 50-foot wall. For all of Trump’s bluster, which the Left and #NeverTrumper’s take literally, like skeptics insist literalness in all places of the Bible instead of understanding hyperbole, and texts that do and do not incorporate it, such as: law text, history texts, wisdom literature, Hebrew poetry, prophecy, apocalyptic writing, and war texts. It would be like me reading EXODUS 15:8 and positing that God has a BIG nose, or reading PSALM 91:4 and saying God is a giant chicken. Many Christians would reject a skeptics misunderstanding in these areas (at least Christians true to a healthy hermeneutical approach to the Word).
Here is Brandon Judd in a more recent interview. Notice his position is the same, and in alignment with Trump:
First, understand the problem. In California, the migrants are targeting a part of the border where there is a barrier. But much of the border’s 1,954 miles remains uncovered. According to the Border Patrol, 354 of those 1,954 miles are protected by what is called a pedestrian primary fence, which is a single-layer fence. Another 37 miles are a pedestrian secondary fence, that is, double-layer fencing. And 14 miles are pedestrian tertiary, or a triple-layer fence. In addition, 300 miles are covered by vehicle fencing, which will stop a truck but allow anyone to walk through with no problem.
That is a total of 705 miles — 405 miles of some kind of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle fencing.
No one, or almost no one, says a fence should cover all 1,954 miles of the border. A significant part of the border is terrain so dangerous and imposing that it would be very difficult for migrants to cross. During the campaign, and during his presidency, Trump called for a wall along about 1,000 miles.
“We have 2,000 miles [of border], of which we really need 1,000 miles, because you have a lot of natural barriers,” Trump said in August 2016.
But Democrats oppose even that. And since Republicans could not pass wall funding when they controlled all of Congress and the White House, how could they possibly do it now, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in charge of the House?
Still, there is one possible course for Republicans. It is Public Law 109-367, better known as the Secure Fence Act.
The Act was passed by big, bipartisan majorities in 2006, receiving 283 votes in the House and 80 in the Senate. It required the federal government to build reinforced fencing, at least two layers deep, along about 700 miles of the border. It specified the areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas where fencing would be installed.
If the law had been followed, many vulnerable parts of the border would now be secured. But the very next year, 2007, after Democrats won control of the House and Senate, Congress amended the Secure Fence Act. The amendment said that “nothing in [the original legislation] shall require” the installation of fencing if the government determines that a fence is not the “most appropriate” way to secure the border……
Do I wish Donald Trump would communicate his ideas more thoughtfully and cogently? Of course. I am also an adult who realizes he must excoriate language to get to the real meaning of the points made by this administration — not use hyperbole to make an embroidered political statement back at Trump (a hyperbolic position). Something our border residents do not need.
REAGAN’S CITY
In another section of the WaPo article,
The era of limited government is emphatically over in the only political party where it once had some appeal. …. This is the strange case of a political metaphor slipping off the page and trying to break into reality. The images and symbols of political rhetoric can assume an importance beyond language. Ronald Reagan’s evocation of a “shining city on a hill” rooted his appeal in the American exceptionalism of our Pilgrim parents. …. But no one actually proposed getting the building permits for Reagan’s city…
The facile mantra I often hear is that “Reagan wanted to tear down walls; Trump wants to build.” WHAT NONSENSE!
For the record, liberals often falsely and inaccurately quote Reagan’s farewell address, in which he explained what he meant about the “shining city.” Yes, America was a nation of immigrants, but liberals fail to note his city had “walls” and “a door.” …. Reagan believed in borders, in earned American citizenship. He did not believe in breaking the law to get ahead.
It is a rejection of our broader concepts involved in our political history and battles thereof. In this regard, I have no idea why Michael Gerson would invoke Reagan? He wanted to spend money to reinforce the border along his Shining City. This is the most unlearned portion of the article. History is not the forte of the Left. Here is a reminder of Reagan regretting trying to make a deal with the Democrats from another post of mine. Reagan didn’t regret “amnesty,” he regretted TRUSTING THE DEMOCRATS who did not live up to securing the border ….. sound familiar? Larry speaks with John Heubusch of the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute:
What Trump Could Learn From The Reagan Immigration Amnesty: The Reagan Amnesty Of 2.7 Million Illegal Immigrants Was Paired With The Promise Of Controlling The Border
Of which I excerpt a portion of:
…In his book, Reagan: The Life, H.W. Brands writes about the president’s interpretation of a 1986 immigration bill at the time.
“Al Simpson came by to see if he had my support,” Reagan recorded in October 1986, shortly after the measure cleared the House. “They have one or two amendments we could do without, but even if the Senate conference can’t get them out, I’ll sign it. It’s high time we regained control of our borders, and this bill will do it.”
The legislation at the time was widely viewed as an enforcement-first measure, said then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who advised Reagan on the matter along with other Cabinet officials.
“It is very definitely a teachable moment,” Meese, the Ronald Reagan distinguished fellow emeritus at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal, when asked how the 1986 legislation might inform President Donald Trump in his negotiations with congressional Democrats on codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), implemented by his predecessor.
The Reagan amnesty of 2.7 million illegal immigrants was paired with the promise of controlling the border and penalizing employers who hire illegal immigrants. The legislation was better known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, named for its sponsors, Simpson and then-Rep. Romano Mazzoli, D-Ky.
The problem with the 1986 law was that the promised enforcement didn’t occur, but the amnesty did, Meese said….
President Reagan’s Remarks at Signing Ceremony for Immigration Reform and Control Act in Roosevelt Room. November 6, 1986
Steven Hayward, a historian and Reagan biographer, continues the idea in a DAILY SIGNAL, .
“I think President Trump has to insist that employment E-Verify, funding for serious border security, not necessarily a wall, and an end to chain migration have to be non-negotiable conditions of any deal,” Hayward said. “Reagan should have applied to immigration what he said about arms control with the Soviet Union, ‘Trust, but verify,’ or in this case, ‘Trust, but E-Verify.’ That’s the lesson Trump should take.”
The article mentioned that a better law for seasonal workers would work. Trump is not saying he doesn’t want this? Dumb. However, that would work better with the barrier.
Another glaring misstatement by the WaPo article is based off of this claim:
“Never mind that violent crime rates among migrants are significantly lower than among the native-born.”
This just is not true. The WASHINGTON TIMESnotes a more thorough study when they say conclusively that the “crime rate among illegal immigrants in Arizona is twice that of other residents, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday, citing a new report based on conviction data.” NATIONAL REVIEWrightly notes that John Lott used “more recent and comprehensive state data, found that illegal immigrants are far more likely to commit crimes than lawful residents.”
A SSRN STUDY by John R. Lott published in February 2018 found that from 1985-2017 illegal aliens had a 163% greater chance of being convicted of 1st degree murder than Arizona citizens. Illegals had a 168% greater chance of being convicted of 2nd degree murder than an Arizona citizen.
Continuing in another article, NATIONAL REVIEW says the following:
John Lott recently published a study that examines the incarceration of illegal immigrants in Arizona. Lott found that over the past 33 years, illegal immigrants have constituted an average of 4.8 percent of Arizona’s population. Yet during that same 33-year period, illegal immigrants constituted 11.2 percent of those convicted of crimes in Arizona — more than twice their share of the population. Lott found that illegal immigrants were dramatically more likely to be convicted of a homicide-related offense than either native-born Americans or legal immigrants during that 33-year period — 163 percent more likely to be convicted of first-degree murder and 168 percent more likely to be convicted of second-degree murder. “Undocumented immigrants were also consistently more likely to be convicted of manslaughter, armed robbery, sexual assault of a minor, sexual assault, DUI or DWI, and kidnapping.” Lott also found that illegal immigrants who met the age requirements for DACA were overrepresented in the prison population.
The Washington Post and the Left and #NeverTrumpers like to quote CATO Institutes study and Snope’s study refuting John Lott’s work. However, he has thoroughly responded to these works. Here are two examples — followed by others:
Between 4,000 and 6,000 people are murdered a year by illegal aliens (THE HILL & TIGER DROPPINGS). Remember, Obama declared a State of Emergency and stopped immigration over 4,000 deaths from H1N1.
WALLS WORK
When Gerson says the following,
Proposing a wall is really an argument that America can protect itself from the dangers of the world at its national boundaries. But this theory failed to contain the disorders of Europe and East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.
He goes on to note the Cold War and terrorism. Even going so far as saying to end his article, “putting our faith in a wall requires us to unlearn the bloodiest lessons of the last century. And to repeat them.” WTH?
This is just silly.
First, walls throughout history have worked. Even during the Cold War. For instance, the wall built by Communists in Germany… worked. The wall and the “rampart” slashed defections to just 185 people per year. (All of the following comes from AMERICAN RENAISSANCE):
The reinforcing of the border barrier (16-foot-tall barrier [barbed wire fence] ran 152-miles) between Egypt and Israel worked as well. The 2013 upgrade reduced illegal incursions at the border by an average of 99.4 percent. The improvements completed in January 2017 cut illegal immigration to zero. As of June 2017, not a single person had breached the fence. Here is a graph noting the drop:
The wall separating the West Bank and Israel worked as well. By 2012, 63 percent (277 miles) of the border was walled (25 feet high) or fenced. They have not built past the 63% mark:
In July 2015, Hungary began building a 13-foot-tall fence along its borders with Serbia and Croatia. This barbed wire enforced fence accomplished it’s goal:
LIKEWISE, as the length of the southwest barrier increased—evidence that even a limited barrier can deter illegal immigration:
Simply put, Walls Work:
Michael Gerson basically said wall don’t work. But they do. That is, if you look to the real world and not “experts.” The Border Patrol say they work. Again [sigh],
When charges of “racism” and “xenophobia” fail, Democrats’ fallback argument against President Trump’s proposed border wall is that it simply “won’t work,” so why waste billions building it? Tell that to the residents of El Paso, Texas.
Federal data show a far-less imposing wall than the one Trump envisions — a two-story corrugated metal fence first erected under the Bush administration — already has dramatically curtailed both illegal border crossings and crime in Texas’ sixth-largest city, which borders the high-crime Mexican city of Juarez.
In fact, the number of deportable illegal immigrants located by the US Border Patrol plummeted by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which the controversial new fence was built, ……..
The Border Patrol wants the same thing Trump does. An NBPC’s survey of more than 600 agents in two of the Border Patrol’s busiest sectors confirmed this: A stunning 89 percent of line agents say a “wall system in strategic locations is necessary to securing the border.” Just 7 percent disagreed.
To conclude my comments, I would have to say that only someone who has a bad taste for reality would say this is a good article. From using Reagan, to saying barriers don’t work, to not understanding what Democrats really want, etc., This is the low bar the Washington Post sets.
Sad. Sad that thinking Reaganite’s fall for it.
*Financial and readership decisions + dislike of Trump: “trump” civility and truth.
…former executive editor of the New York Times says the paper’s news pages, the home of its straight-news coverage, have become “unmistakably anti-Trump.”
Jill Abramson, the veteran journalist who led the newspaper from 2011 to 2014, says the Times has a financial incentive to bash the president and that the imbalance is helping to erode its credibility.
[….]
“Though Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump,” Abramson writes, adding that she believes the same is true of the Washington Post. “Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”
What’s more, she says, citing legendary 20th century publisher Adolph Ochs, “the more anti-Trump the Times was perceived to be, the more it was mistrusted for being biased. Ochs’s vow to cover the news without fear or favor sounded like an impossible promise in such a polarized environment.”
Abramson describes a generational split at the Times, with younger staffers, many of them in digital jobs, favoring an unrestrained assault on the presidency. “The more ‘woke’ staff thought that urgent times called for urgent measures; the dangers of Trump’s presidency obviated the old standards,” she writes.
Trump claims he is keeping the “failing” Times in business—an obvious exaggeration—but the former editor acknowledges a “Trump bump” that saw digital subscriptions during his first six months in office jump by 600,000, to more than 2 million….
(Jump to new material) First, here are the two articles by David Bernstein Dennis Prager is reading from:
Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump? || In short, probably not. And about that ADL study everyone is citing… (REASON.org)
Correcting the ADL’s False Anti-Semitism Statistic || The spread of misleading information on hate crimes is counterproductive in the fight against real and rising anti-Semitism (TABLET MAGAZINE)
Dennis Prager is livid at the lies (The Fake News) we are “bathed in” on a daily basis. This is a great segment to pair with an earlier upload of mine, titled: “Antisemitism In America ~ #FakeNews” (DENNIS PRAGER).
…The ADL also reports that “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of these incidents were of the alt-right nationalist variety, and how many were related to leftist anti-Israel activism? There is no way of knowing from the ADL study, but to the extent the latter was the cause, that could hardly be blamed on Trump.
Finally, it’s worth noting, that despite showing a 57 percent increase in incidents overall, from 1,267 to 1,986, the ADL study shows a 47 percent decrease in physical assaults, from 37 to 19. This is obviously inconsistent with the meme that 2017 saw a surge in violent anti-Semitism. Physical assaults are also the most objective sort of incident to document, which adds to concerns about the robustness of the rest of the data.
[….]
I have no desire to let Trump off the hook for his very real flaws, and I am not nor have I been a Trump supporter or apologist. But the Jewish community’s assessment of the dangers of anti-Semitism should be based on documented facts, not ideology, emotion, partisanship, or panic. And the truth is this: The claim that anti-Semitic incidents increased 57 percent in 2017 is contradicted by the very ADL study on which that claim is based.
There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it.
Second, the ADL report itself acknowledges that some of the rise in incidents may simply be due to better reporting (“more people are reporting incidents to ADL than ever before”).
Third, “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn’t say.
Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, “Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017. The desecration of Jewish headstones is a classic anti-Semitic act employed for hundreds of years. The majority of the cemetery desecrations occurred in the first months of the year, at the same time as the bomb threats were called in to Jewish institutions, which contributed to a sense that the Jewish American community was under siege.” The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just “mad and drunk,” not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts. Other questionable “anti-Semitic” incidents I’ve seen reported include graffitti with a swastika and “TRUMP.” Is the “author” supporting “Trump the Nazi” or attacking Trump by accusing him of being a Nazi? My inclination would in most cases be to suspect the latter, but surely it’s at least unclear….
NEW STUFF
AMERICAN GREATNESS has an excellent rebuff of David French’s recent article claiming “white supremacy” is growing thanks to us honkies.
…But David French at National Review has other post-election targets in mind—namely, the imaginary cabal of white supremacists taking over the Republican Party.
Outlandish Claims, Distorted Evidence French’s November 15 column, “The White-Supremacy Surge,” is more cowbell to amplify the media’s nonstop drumbeat that Donald Trump and his supporters are bigots, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis. (A despicable Washington Postcolumn over the weekend suggested that massacres and death squads might be in the offing because of Trump.)
Sadly, French’s incendiary analysis wasn’t far from that Post screed. It is a literary junk drawer of anecdotal evidence and conjecture scattered with overworn insults about Trump supporters.
In an attempt to boost his inaccurate claim that white supremacy is surging, French cited a sketchy study while overlooking exculpatory data in the very same report, and he mentioned random racial crimes that are vile but no indicator of a coordinated white supremacist movement. “Trump’s words have emboldened white supremacists,” French outlandishly declared, again without evidence.
In an effort to prove his case, French conflated a rise in white supremacy with a speculative rise in hate crimes. According to a May 2018 report from California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism—the paper French cites in his column—hate crimes increased by 12 percent in 2017 in 10 major cities. (The report documents the number of allegations, not convictions, reported to police. Dr. Brian Levin, one of the authors, confirmed to me via email that the center’s data “cover hate crimes reported to police at time complaint is made and is not dependent on how it is eventually charged.”)
A closer look at the statistics included in the report not only fails to bolster French’s claim, the data show that whites are the third-most frequently targeted group of victims, after black and LGBT people. Jews, Mexicans, and Muslims are less likely to be a victim of a hate crime than a white person, according to the study. Further—and highly relevant here—there is no proof that white supremacists committed most of the offenses noted in the study.
Then this: “We are forecasting a small to moderate increase for hate crime for 2017. Only a small number of agencies have partial year data for 2018, but most are down significantly… we are forecasting a significant national decrease in 2018 but only for the first half of the year.” (Emphasis added.)
So, despite the hysterical warnings from French and his collaborators in the media, there was only a small increase in hate crimes last year and those numbers dropped significantly in the first half of the year. This means there is no “surge” either in hate crimes or white supremacy. (The synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last month singularly will change that forecast for the year. Trump also has been blamed for that massacre by French’s NRcolleague, Jonah Goldberg, even though the shooter did not vote for Trump and criticized the president for being “surrounded by kikes.”)
[….]
…He slammed Breitbart and The Federalist for allegedly endorsing white supremacy. (The author of the Federalistpiece he misrepresents is Jewish.) Non church-going Trump voters are closet racists, French concluded, because not enough of them have “warm feelings” for blacks, according to one survey: “The white-supremacist surge is a symptom of a greater disease, and it’s a disease with no easy cure.”
[….]
…A greater threat to civil society, in reality, is contemptible pieces of writing like French’s, which are intended to malign innocent people based on race and political affiliation, and further divide the country he laughably claims to want to save.
Mind you this is after reading some articles and listening to talk radio and dissenting callers expressing their opinion. BUT RUSH LIMBAUGH is the boss of this! First of all, I wish to say, if the 45-people who left Congress for a variety of reasons did so in part because they believed the media in their “Blue Wave” supposition. Obviously many of these Republicans included ideas of their dislike of Trump, or that they were in leading positions and do not want to be “demoted,” but instead transition into the private sector, as well as spend time with family, also reading the tea-leaves about the “blue wave” (etc., etc.). And so, with the amount of GOP incumbent calling it quits for a variety of reasons, the Democrats won the amount of seats they did this election. They would have won MUCH less if these Republicans stuck through another couple years to the 2020 election. Here are some examples that show just how bad this first mid-term is for the party in power:
The most House seats ever lost by a president’s party in power was Obama in 2010. He lost 63. Next was Bill Clinton in 1994. He lost 52. In 1958, Eisenhower lost 48, as did Ford and Nixon in 1974. They lost 48. Lyndon Johnson in ’66, lost 47. Harry Truman in ’46 lost 45 seats. George W. Bush in 2006 lost 30. In 1950, Harry Truman lost 29. Reagan, in ’82, lost 26 seats, and in 2016 Trump is at 26 or 27 — and those are New York Times records. (RUSH LIMBAUGH)
UPDATE: More LIKE 37 seats.
So, my point is that what the GOP lost in the House yesterday, is FAR better than recent democrats as an example. AND, not only that, if the Republicans who left stuck around, the Democrats would have won less in the House. So to lose the amount we did was with thanks to Trump and keeping a natural cycle to a minimum. Very few midterm Presidents have added to the Senate during their tenure.
And WHY did Trump deem it important to spend time on the campaign trail for Senate races and not the House races? Because the Senate is where judges are confirmed — the Senate. So if say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies or retires, Trump/Mitch McConnell could nominate another Justice via a Senate with more Republicans who are more conservative than their predecessors. [UPDATE, and on cue]
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was seriously injured in a Wednesday evening fall in her chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The health of the 85-year-old justice and progressive favorite is much-watched, lest a sudden change of events give President Donald Trump a third appointment to the high court.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell in her office at the Court last evening,” the Supreme Court public information office said Thursday morning. “She went home, but after experiencing discomfort overnight, went to George Washington University Hospital early this morning. Tests showed that she fractured three ribs on her left side and she was admitted for observation and treatment. Updates will be provided as they become available.”
The injury precluded Ginsburg from attending Thursday morning’s ceremonial investiture of Justice Brett Kavanaugh…
…With the Republican-led Senate rapidly considering and confirming many of his judicial nominees, Trump already has appointed 26 appeals court judges. That is more than any other president in the first two years of a presidency, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank, although he points out that there are more appellate judges now than in the past.
Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, appointed 55 in eight years as president.
Only four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican-appointed judges than Democratic selections.
The two appellate courts closest to shifting to Republican-appointed majorities are the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump already has made three appointments to the 11th Circuit, leaving it with a 6-6 split between Democratic and Republican appointees. The 3rd Circuit, to which Trump has made one appointment, now has a 7-5 Democratic-appointee majority, with two vacancies for Trump to fill.
[….]
here are currently 13 appeals court vacancies, six of them with pending nominees picked by Trump, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Both the 11th Circuit and 3rd Circuit have major cases pending in which Trump appointees could make their mark.
An 11th Circuit three-judge panel on July 25 revived a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state of Alabama’s move to prevent the city of Birmingham from increasing the minimum wage. Alabama has asked for a rehearing, which would be heard by the entire 12-judge 11th Circuit if the request is granted.
In the 3rd Circuit, the Trump administration has appealed a lower court decision blocking the Justice Department from cutting off grants to Philadelphia over so-called sanctuary city policies limiting local cooperation with federal authorities on immigration enforcement….
This is Yuuuge. The courts will have Constitutionalists influencing the Courts for generations.
Incumbent Senate Democrats in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination appeared to have paid a price on Election Day, with senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Florida’s Bill Nelson all suffering defeat.
In fact, every Democrat incumbent who opposed Kavanaugh in states rated “toss up” by Fox News lost their race. In contrast, the lone Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, won his race.
“Every Dem Senator in a competitive race who voted against Kavanaugh lost,” tweeted Tom Bevan, Co-founder of RealClearPolitics. Fox News polling offered evidence the Kavanaugh issue was a major problem for those battleground incumbent Democrats.
A Fox News poll from early October, just before the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, found 34 percent of North Dakotans said they would be less likely to vote for Heitkamp if she voted against Kavanaugh, with just 17 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her….
Josh Kraushaar compiled what he calls the progressive scorecard from last night. Note that it includes only seriously contested races. (Bernie Sanders won, as did the 29 year-old airhead from New York with the hyphenated name):
Arizona governor: Garcia loses
Florida governor: Gillum loses
Georgia governor: Abrams loses
Maryland governor: Jealous loses
Texas senator: O’Rourke loses
California 45th: Porter trails
Nebraska 2nd: Eastman loses
Pennsylvania 1st: Wallace loses
Virginia 5th: Cockburn loses
Dave Weigel adds three more to the scorecard:
Indiana 9th: Liz Watson loses
New York 24th: Dana Balter loses
Wisconsin 1st: Randy Bryce loses
This covers almost every region of the country. America isn’t quite ready for socialism yet.
…But then there were the midterm campaigns that weren’t gimmes, some very high profile, and high media-exposure ones: Joe Donnelly of Indiana for Senate. Bill Nelson of Florida for Senate. Andrew Gillum of Florida for governor. Stacey Abrams of Georgia for governor.
Those were the ones Obama went hoarse campaigning for, yelling and waving his arms, voice cracking, speeches described as fiery, telling voters to vote for these guys or die. With Gillum in particular, racial appeals were a factor and Obama’s presence was supposed to help. Gillum had a big media buildup about being a first black governor of Florida as an argument to draw votes, and he later cried racism to fend off corruption allegations. Adding Obama to campaign was obviously part of the appeal. This time, the race-politics identity card simply failed.
And Obama? What did he get? Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. The voters rather noticibly rejected the ex-president’s appeal for votes. Been there, done that.
A prized and coveted Obama endorsement, or campaign stop, obviously isn’t the election winner in a tight race it used to be. In fact, with these midterms, when it matters, Obama’s a bust. The lesson here that Democrats will surely notice is that it’s largely useless. …
My contention is that the crazies in the Democrat Party may end up helping Trump and Republicans come 2020.
“Democrats couldn’t stop Trump, but they could slow him down and make life miserable for him,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “Subpoenas would be flying from Capitol Hill towards the White House as fast as they can print them out.” (THE HILL)
Geist described his theory as “counterintuitive,” but it actually makes perfect sense. Imagine the spectacle of frothing Dems at House hearings, of rabid Dem members fighting for TV time to air their overwrought accusations. What better thing to ramp up the Republican base?
As Willie said, this would be Kavanaugh times 1,000. And as most concur this morning, it was the Kavanaugh hearings that were largely responsible for galvanizing the GOP, leading to an expansion of the Republican Senate majority. Imagine what that spectacle, times 1,000, would do to create a wave of broken-glass Republicans in 2020.
WILLIE GEIST: Here’s a counterintuitive thought: President Trump would like nothing more than an impeachment investigation. Because it’s not going anywhere in the Senate, it’s dead, it’s a Republican-controlled Senate. And it’s the Kavanaugh situation multiplied times a thousand, which is Democratic overreach, and Donald Trump looks like the victim in the whole thing. He does not mind an impeachment investigation.
I touch on this story here on my PREVIOUS POST regarding the media and what this CEO of NPR did in his trying to understand “flyover country.” He changed his mind on a lot of issues, but here is on that is awesome – the 2nd Amendment. Here is the lead up to the below video by WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:
The former CEO of National Public Radio came back from a reporting trip on conservative America having changed his mind about the efficacy of gun control measures, he said on Tuesday.
Ken Stern appeared on “Morning Joe” to discuss his new book, Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right. Stern, a Democrat, wrote he realized he was cordoned off in a liberal bubble and set off into conservative enclaves of America to expose himself to new ideas.
Co-host Willie Geist asked him if he altered his views on any key issues as a result of the book. Stern said he had changed them on guns, and it began with a notion he hadn’t thought of before: that gun homicides have declined significantly over the past 25 years.
“The most extraordinary trend in modern American criminal history,” Stern said. “At the same time, the number of guns have gone up. Those two things aren’t correlated, but it’s clear we know how to drive down gun murders without gun control, and the question is why are we talking about gun control when there’s other things that we’ve been doing for 25 years that actually have reduced murders in this country by an extraordinary amount.”…..
Here is an interesting conversation about the 2nd Amendment — CHANGE MY MIND:
Here are two examples of CNN’s Alisyn Camerota trying to fish out some negativity towards Trump. One with a panel of persons regarding Trump’s Charlottesville response. The other a Goldstar mom after the “call indecent“…
(Above) CNN featured a panel of six Trump supporters (three men, three women) Wednesday morning and despite host Alisyn Camerota’s surprise, they all defended the president and expressed their distrust of the media. (DAILY CALLER)
(Above) That’s the thing about Gold Star families. It’s not about politics to them. They just want their brave relative to be remembered. They don’t all need a call. They don’t all even care about that. Alisyn Camerota really needs to get it together. This is like the millionth time she has had someone on TV with the goal of bashing Trump and it has backfired. (AMERICAN NEWS)
Here is another example similar to the above that is the reason more-and-more people are going to vote GOP next Presidential election. The Democratic (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez said the following:
“We have the most dangerous president in American history and one of the most reactionary Congresses in American history,” (YAHOO NEWS)
All these posts by people from the Left on social media, leaders in the Democrat Party, and the Media Complex, calling into question motives of regular people — as they relegate any disagreement as based in white supremacy, racism, bigotry, or some phobia… all they are doing is chasing people to the GOP.
My suggestion to the media and others is to do what former former NPR CEO Ken Stern did (NEW YORK POST)… get out of the New York, D.C. bubble and know the audience you are speaking of.
Most reporters and editors are liberal — a now dated Pew Research Center poll found that liberals outnumber conservatives in the media by some 5 to 1, and that comports with my own anecdotal experience at National Public Radio. When you are liberal, and everyone else around you is as well, it is easy to fall into groupthink on what stories are important, what sources are legitimate and what the narrative of the day will be.
This may seem like an unusual admission from someone who once ran NPR, but it is borne of recent experience. Spurred by a fear that red and blue America were drifting irrevocably apart, I decided to venture out from my overwhelmingly Democratic neighborhood and engage Republicans where they live, work and pray. For an entire year, I embedded myself with the other side, standing in pit row at a NASCAR race, hanging out at Tea Party meetings and sitting in on Steve Bannon’s radio show. I found an America far different from the one depicted in the press and imagined by presidents (“cling to guns or religion”) and presidential candidates (“basket of deplorables”) alike.
I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.
At Urbana, I met dozens of people who were dedicating their lives to the mission, spreading the good news of Jesus, of course, but doing so through a life of charity and compassion for others: staffing remote hospitals, building homes for the homeless and, in one case, flying a “powered parachute” over miles of uninhabited jungle in the western Congo to bring a little bit of entertainment, education and relief to some of the remotest villages you could imagine. It was all inspiring — and a little foolhardy, if you ask me about the safety of a powered parachute — but it left me with a very different impression of a community that was previously known to me only through Jerry Falwell and the movie “Footloose.”
Early this year, I drove west from Houston to Gonzales, Texas, to try my hand at pig hunting. It was my first time with a gun, and the noticeably concerned owner of the ranch at first banished me to a solitary spot on the grounds. Here, he said, the pigs would come to me and I could not pose a danger to anyone else. It was a nice spot indeed but did not make for much of a story, so I wandered off into the woods, hopefully protected by my Day-Glo hunting vest.
I eventually joined up with a family from Georgia. The group included the grandfather, Paps, and the father, CJ, but it was young Isaac, all of 8 years old, who took on the task of tutoring me in the ways of the hunt. He did a fine job, but we encountered few pigs (and killed none) in our morning walkabout. In the afternoon, with the Georgians heading home, I linked up with a group of friends from Houston who belied the demographic stereotyping of the hunt; collectively we were the equivalent of a bad bar joke: a Hispanic ex-soldier, a young black family man, a Serbian immigrant and a Jew from DC.
None of my new hunting partners fit the lazy caricature of the angry NRA member. Rather, they saw guns as both a shared sport and as a necessary means to protect their families during uncertain times. In truth, the only one who was even modestly angry was me, and that only had to do with my terrible ineptness as a hunter. In the end though, I did bag a pig, or at least my new friends were willing to award me a kill, so that we could all glory together in the fraternity of the hunt.
I also spent time in depressed areas of Kentucky and Ohio with workers who felt that their concerns had long fallen on deaf ears and were looking for every opportunity to protest a government and political and media establishment that had left them behind. I drank late into the night at the Royal Oaks Bar in Youngstown and met workers who had been out of the mills for almost two decades and had suffered the interlocking plagues of unemployment, opioid addiction and declining health. They mourned the passing of the old days, when factory jobs were plentiful, lucrative and honored and lamented the destruction and decay of their communities, their livelihoods and their families. To a man (and sometimes a woman), they looked at media and saw stories that did not reflect the world that they knew or the fears that they had.
Over the course of this past year, I have tried to consume media as they do and understand it as a partisan player. It is not so hard to do. Take guns. Gun control and gun rights is one of our most divisive issues, and there are legitimate points on both sides. But media is obsessed with the gun-control side and gives only scant, mostly negative, recognition to the gun-rights sides…..
[….]
….None of this justifies the attacks from President Trump, which are terribly inappropriate coming from the head of government. At the same time, the media should acknowledge its own failings in reflecting only their part of America. You can’t cover America from the Acela corridor, and the media need to get out and be part of the conversations that take place in churches and community centers and town halls.
I did that, and loved it, though I REGRET WAITING UNTIL WELL AFTER I LEFT NPR TO DO SO. I am skeptical that many will do so, since the current situation in an odd way works for Trump, who gets to rile his base, and for the media, which has grown an audience on the back of Washington dysfunction. In the end, they are both short-term winners. It is the public that is the long-term loser.
(originally posted in August 2007 on my old blog;
here originally in May, 2010; Updated April, 2015)
Agree or Not?
This is a combination of two posts, the first was a question I posed to someone in a forum. Below you see what that question was and where I led that person. The second is a bit of political science. Both repeat some of the same idea, but both are different.
So let’s highlight the first question by a court case that has, well, institutionalized the “post-modern” society. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1996), the 9th District Appeals Court wrote:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”
In other words, whatever you believe is your origin, and thus your designating meaning on both your life and body is your business, no one else’s. If you believe that the child growing in you – no matter at what stage (Doe v. Bolton) – isn’t a child unless you designate it so. You alone can choose to or not choose to designate life to that “fetus”. It isn’t a “potential person” until you say it is first a person. Understand? That being clarified, do you agree with this general statement:
“If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality…”
Sounds really close to the 9th Courts majority view doesn’t it. The above is basically saying that your opinion is just as valid as another persons opinion because both are your’s and the other persons perspective on something is formed from influences from your culture and experiences. So someone from New Guiney may have a differing view or opinion on eating dogs than an American.
Let’s compare a portion from both statements:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life…”
“…the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality…”
Whether you’re an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, it doesn’t matter. Your reality is just that… your reality, or opinion, or personal dogma. I want to now complete one of the quotes that I left somewhat edited, not only that, but I want to ask you if you still agree with it after you find out who wrote it.
Ready?
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999), by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.
Does the Left = Communism?
And The Right = Fascism?
This blog will jump around just a bit, but the main point will be this: Fascism has nothing to do with conservatism, or the right.
First of all, let me start this blurb by stating emphatically that true fascism during WWII lived in Italy with Mussolini, who himself had a philosophy degree and even published a book (and whose son, incidentally, is a great jazz player!). Mussolini even quantified what fascism is, and you could almost take his definition and lay it over a particular political spectrum today:
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
(Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999, by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.)
(Relativism is a philosophical theory asserting that there is no absolute truth, only truth relative to the individual, or to a particular time or culture, or both. To put it another way, relativism may be defined as the radical denial of objectivity.) So fascism is almost misdefined in today’s apathetic terms, and definition is very important to not forget history and thus repeat it. Anti-Semitism is also misdefined in that it not only takes a strong-form, but a weak-form is also prevalent in today’s modern culture that should be pointed out.
Anti-Semitism can come in many forms; I would argue that when a news organization is very unbalanced in their coverage of the currant Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they are showing a bias that is feeding unhealthy views about the Semitic people and their history.
For instance, NPR: 18,321 words in pro-Arab only segments, 4,934 words in pro-Israel segments. Bias in number of Arab-only vs Israeli-only segments: 63-percent Palestinian/pro-Arab only segments, 37-percent Israel/pro-Israel segments. (CAMERA)
NPR is a left leaning, tax payer funded (government supported), radio program. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
Many years ago at a tire shop an older couple had their elderly mother with them and I noticed a number on her arm. This survivor and I talked for a straight forty-five minutes about history and politics. She said something that made me cringe. She said that in the early days of the rise of the Reich, it became immoral to kill rodents, but okay for abortion and euthanasia as moral choices. She applied that to our currant culture better and more forcefully than any author I have read. She mentioned also that one of the tactics of the socialists then were to shout down at public meetings any dissenters, or try and ban their freedom of speech while protecting theirs. This conversation has opened my mind up a bit more than it was previously. For instance, I now cringe when I see certain authors banned from being, well, even recommended.
For instance, a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
The Ohio State University, an agency of the State of Ohio, is investigating a librarian for recommending a book.
Scott Savage, who serves as a reference librarian for the university, suggested four best-selling conservative books for freshman reading in his role as a member of OSU Mansfield’s First Year Reading Experience Committee. The four books he suggested were The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian, The Professors by David Horowitz, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or, and It Takes a Family by Senator Rick Santorum. Savage made the recommendations after other committee members had suggested a series of books with a left-wing perspective, by authors such as Jimmy Carter and Maria Shriver.
Savage was put under “investigation” by OSU’s Office of Human Resources after three professors filed a complaint of discrimination and harassment against him, saying that the book suggestions made them feel “unsafe.” The complaint came after the OSU Mansfield faculty voted without dissent to file charges against Savage. The faculty later voted to allow the individual professors to file charges.
The political commentators of a conservative political philosophy, when on campuses, are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm; leftist viewpoints in the same arena are NOT shouted down, and these left leaning guests do not need bodyguards. But when people like Ann Coulter or David Horowitz go on campus, Democrat and leftist students ramp up the death threats and attempted takeover of the mic and stage. When people like Cindy Sheehan or Maureen Dowd go to a university campus, they are treated like heroes and no personal security is needed.
The extreme Castroite left shows its love for open dialogue:
“Music that seemed to come from somewhere in the raucous audience that packed the Jorgensen Center at the University of Connecticut Wednesday night brought Ann Coulter’s speech to an abrupt end about 15 minutes after she started.
After waiting with her bodyguard on stage for several minutes for the music to stop while a section of the audience chanted ‘You suck, you suck,’ an irritated Coulter said she would not finish her speech.”
Deaniac types love to brand everyone to the right of Ted Kennedy a fascist. If you are critical of blank-slatism, oppose open borders, affirmative action, welfare payments, same-sex marriage, or on-demand abortion, you’ve likely been hit with the label. Here’s the pertinent part of the definition:
“Suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship… oppressive, dictatorial control.”
Who’s the fascist? A more effective way to disparage speakers (and retain an element of probity) was demonstrated by those outside the auditorium holding signs and pictures. Disagree vehemently, but don’t try to mute those with whom you disagree.
Coulter was invited by the University of Conneticut to give a speech followed by a Q&A two days after far left activist Cindy Sheehan (who was not shouted down or interrupted) did the same.
So, what are some similarities to the above? Let us delve into how a charasmatic figure like Hitler came to power:
The Sturmabteilung (SA)…. (Storm Detachment or Assault Division, or Brownshirts) functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their main assignments were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of the opposing parties … and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists and Jews (e.g. the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses).
(Wiki)
Remember when the State capital and the Governors mansion was taken over in Wisconsin? Violence and threats to Republicans in this fight to shrink government? SUVs are burnt by lkeftists, Occupy Walstreet threatens civility, on and on. FIRE notes that universities pay people to disrupt freedom of thought:
Washington State University’s web site calls the school “an ideal place to live and learn” and promises prospective students that instead of “smog or traffic jams,” they will find “an easy-going pace and eclectic college-town atmosphere.”
Here’s something else WSU students don’t find much of on the Pullman campus – freedom of speech. Hecklers who shout down speakers at WSU sometimes do so on tax dollars. Hitler used Nazi thugs called “Brown Shirts” to silence opponents as he sought power in pre-war Germany. Today at WSU, the people paying the hecklers are called “administrators.”
Here are the basic facts of this incredible event: Black student playwright Chris Lee staged his intentionally provocative production of “Passion of the Musical” at WSU April 21. He warned potential ticket buyers beforehand the play was likely to offend everybody because, as he later said, “the whole point of the play was to show people that we’re not that different, that we all have issues that can be made fun of.”
Sure enough, a group of Mormon students peacefully protested the production outside the theatre, but inside the First Amendment took a beating as 40 mostly Black protestors repeatedly shouted “I am offended” and threatened audience members and the cast. Guess who paid for the protestors’ tickets? WSU’s Office of Campus Involvement (OCI).
At one point, Lee took a microphone and asked campus security to remove the protestors. The officials declined to do so and suggested instead that Lee change the lyrics to one of the play’s songs that especially drew the ire of the hecklers….
This refusal to allow free speech on a place where freedom of thought should be paramount is an action of the Left, not the right.
★ If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation. ★ If you are a conservative Republican you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO.
Political Correctness plays a revolutionary role in this matrix of leftist ideology:
(Leon Trotsky is another example of a guy who led the way in silencing the opposition in order to install a dictator, Lenin [Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov].) Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph.
Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):
However, the founding fathers wanted nothing to do with a democracy no matter how many times a New York Times editorialist or you’re teacher says we are in one:
James Madison (fourth President, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the father of the Constitution) Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general; been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
John Adams (American political philosopher, first vice President and second President) Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration): “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”
Fisher Ames (American political thinker and leader of the federalists [he entered Harvard at twelve and graduated by sixteen], author of the House language for the First Amendment): “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will provide an eruption and carry desolation in their way…. The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.”
Governor Morris (signer and penman of the Constitution): “We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism. Democracy! Savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
John Quincy Adams (sixth President, son of John Adams [see above]): “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
Noah Webster (American educator and journalist as well as publishing the first dictionary): “In democracy there are commonly tumults and disorders.. therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence): “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
Zephaniah Swift (author of Americas first legal text): “It may generally be remarked that the more a government [or state] resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”
The Founders obviously knew what a democracy was, which is why in Article IV, Section Four of the Constitution, it says:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.
The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):
In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.
Which Do You Prefer?? Liberal Democrats want more government control, Conservative Republicans want less. In a discussion, I exemplified that minimally “fascism” is growth of government in this way:
I say “fascism” because it is government wanting to make policy based on false science, big-government, while labeling a large swath of it’s opposition/electorate inferior to make choices (deniers, anti-science, homophobic, bigoted, racist, etc).
Out of all of the above, the continual growth of government makes this an issue that should be important to those that know history. Out of his series on the subject, R.J. Rummels third book, “Death By Government” documents why this should raise alarms.
It is something the Founders warned of ~ and now a bunch of very left leaning — well respected — legal scholars… even going as far as saying the Constitution was written to stop men like Obama. Leftists, not Rightists saying that.
Leftist Professor of law Jonathan Turley:
Even Obama’s professor at Harvard, himself a leftie, notes the following:
Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University and former mentor to Barack Obama, said in an article last week that the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 22, Tribe asserted that as a father and grandfather he wants “to leave the Earth in better shape than when I arrived”, but that he nonetheless has filed comments with the EPA urging the agency to withdraw the Clean Power Plan. “Coping with climate change is a vital end, but it does not justify using unconstitutional means,” wrote Tribe.
Tribe was retained by Peabody Energy to perform independent analysis of the EPA’s proposed rule. He defended his opinion saying it reflects his “professional conclusions as an independent legal scholar”, and that he only says what he believes, whether he works “pro bono, or in this case having been retained by others”.
“After studying the only legal basis offered for the EPA’s proposed rule,” Tribe wrote, “I concluded that the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.”
He further noted that the Clean Power Plan would “effectively dictate the energy mix used in each state and leave the state with essentially no choice in implementing its plan,” a move that would be in direct opposition to Supreme Court precedent that holds “such federal commandeering of state governments defeats political accountability and violates principles of federalism that are basic to our constitutional order”.
Tribe continued by saying that, like every government agency, the EPA is “constitutionally forbidden to exercise powers Congress never delegated in the first place,” and that “frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard”.
In fact, many that have come from the Eastern European satellite countries of the old U.S.S.R., and holocaust survivors notice a closeness to how large government is getting and the fascism/Communism they lived under.
For instance, Anita Dittman, Holocaust survivor makes parallels between them. East German survivor, Elke, also warns America Communism doesn’t work. They both speak of charismatic people talking about redistribution of wealth, make it impossible for private businesses to prosper, nationalizing things like healthcare, gun control, a growing anti-Semitism, they force secularism (non-God) on people, etc.
Only two parties in America have an ethos, a base, that want certain things. The question is… on the scale of political ideology [it’s base], where do they fall?
To expand a bit on the Rummel book mentioned above… he shows that both the citizenry and free countries are dealt heavy hands and dedath in greater numbers as the government grows larger. Conservatives want to decrease governments size. Progressives want to increase the size of government.
Which is why I shake my head when I hear about people talking about the libertarian Koch Brothers influencing politics. They are for same-sex marriage as well as wanting to make government smaller, in other words, MORE CONSTUTUTIONAL. When people like billionaire coal magnate Tom Steyer gives millions of dollars to Democrats to increase the size of government, he is praised as a hero. The same goes for George Soros.
The bottom line is that leftist billionaires/millionaires who support more control by government over the affairs of men [like Tom Steyer, George Soros, Bill Gates, etc] are participating in the exponential growth in the chance of it’s citizenry to be killed in order to implement all these new legislative laws and powers that go along with the growth of government. By growth of government the ease to nationalize things becomes easier. Like Obama’s Harvard professor pointed out, above.
Here is a more Constitutional look (clip) at government:
A government powerful enough to give you homes is powerful enough to take them from you:
…Twenty-two of the network’s Cairo staff resigned on Monday. According to Gulf News, anchor Karem Mahmoud of Al Jazeera’s Mubasher Misr channel announced that the resignations were motivated by what he called “biased coverage” of the events leading up to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned former President Morsi.
The news anchor revealed that Al Jazeera management would instruct each staff member to favor the Muslim Brotherhood in their broadcasts. According to Gulf News, Mahmoud said that “there are instructions to us to telecast certain news”.
[….]
Sultan al-Qassemi, a widely-followed media commentator from the United Arab Emirates tells the Daily Star, “Al-Jazeera Arabic in 2011 was squarely on the side of the anti-government [anti-Mubarak] protesters, today the channel is notorious for being the mouthpiece of the Brotherhood party.”
Some other news Corps around town SHOULD be taking notes:
(Via Breitbart) Jeff Cohen has been all over cable news as a contributor, but for a time he worked as a senior producer for MSNBC. Monday, in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, Cohen lashed out at his former employer as the “official network of the Obama White House.”
When it comes to issues of U.S. militarism and spying, the allegedly “progressive” MSNBC often seems closer to the “official network of the Obama White House” than anything resembling an independent channel. With a few exceptions (especially Chris Hayes [10]), MSNBC has usually reacted to expanded militarism and surveillance by downplaying the abuses or defending them.
Had McCain or Romney defeated Obama and implemented the exact same policies, treating whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden as foreign espionage agents, one would expect MSNBC hosts to be loudly denouncing the Republican abuses of authority.
The World War I vintage Espionage Act, originally used to imprison socialists for making antiwar speeches, has been used by the administration against whistleblowers with a vengeance unprecedented in history: eight leakers have been charged with Espionage under Obama, compared to three under all previous presidents.
More than all other presidents! Let that sink in… that’s MSNBC, how bout NPR? Bernie Goldberg helps us with this question:
$$$ QUOTE
Maybe Nina wished Tony Snow would get cancer as retribution from “the Good Lord.”
…consider this statement made by the co-host of NPR’s On the Media:
“If you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd.”
In the “overwhelmingly” liberal bubble that is NPR, executives were appalled at Juan Williams comment to Bill O’Reilly that ““When I get on a plane … if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried, I get nervous.
This was so bigoted, in their view, that they had to fire Mr. Williams. In a statement explaining why they did it, NPR said: Williams’ words “were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”
But these same sensitive liberal souls let Nina Totenberg, NPR’s Legal Affairs correspondent, go on a Sunday talk show each week and spout all sorts of liberal nonsense. Who could forget her shot at then Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a comment for which she later apologized. If there was “retributive justice,” in the world, Ms. Totenberg said, Jesse Helms would “get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.”
Inside the liberal bubble Juan Williams is a bigot. Nina Totenberg isn’t.
That’s one of the many reasons it matters if a newsroom is “overwhelmingly” liberal – or conservative.
GLASS: As somebody who works in public radio, it is killing me that people on the right are going around trying to basically rebrand us saying that it’s biased news, you know, it’s left-wing news, when I feel like anybody who listens to the shows knows that it’s not, and we are not fighting back. We’re not saying anything back. I find it completely annoying, and, and I don’t understand it.
BOB GARFIELD, ‘ON THE MEDIA’ CO-HOST, NPR: Okay, so this gets back to not only Brooke’s problem, finding a metric to report on this story, but it’s especially difficult when you and I both know that if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and all of the member stations, you would find an overwhelmingly progressive, liberal crowd. Not uniformly, but overwhelmingly.
Finally! NPR is showing its true colors again at the very top with the embedded liberalism (see firing of Juan Williams) of its “news” organization. This from NewsBusters:
In the wake of a video sting showing NPR executives making disparaging comments towards conservatives, National Public Radio announced Wednesday morning that it had accepted the resignation of its president Vivian Schiller. “The Board accepted Vivian’s resignation with understanding, genuine regret and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past 2 years,” said Board Chairman Dave Edwards.
The hidden-camera video, released Tuesday, showed NPR exec Ron Schiller, no relation to Vivian, calling the Tea Party “racist” and “xenophobic” and insisting that NPR would be “better off in the long-run” without the federal dollars that congressional Republicans have been seeking to rescind. A pair of NPR statements disavowed Ron Schiller’s comments, and specifically rejected his claims regarding NPR funding.
Vivian Schiller was also the target of criticism for her handling of the firing of Juan Williams from NPR for comments he made about Muslims that the station considered inappropriate. Schiller acknowledged in a speech at the National Press Club on Monday that the firing was not handled correctly.
Williams appeared on the Fox News Channel, where he is a contributor, on Tuesday night to denounce NPR for the revelations in the undercover video. “They prostitute themselves for money,” he had told Fox Nation earlier in the day.
