According to recent polling, because of the former president’s term in office and the bona fides of the America First agenda, the Trump coalition may very well be expanding right before our eyes. Against Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump is attracting the support of 51% of voters under the age of 30, 48% of the Hispanic vote, and 28% of the African American vote. These numbers pose a mortal threat to Mr. Biden’s wobbly candidacy. (WASHINGTON TIMES)
Alex Marlow and Steve Hilton were on FOX BUSINESS to discuss President Trumps excelling in the polls. This is with a hat-tip to BREITBART.
The below is a bonus and shows how this coalition spoken to above and the crumbling “lawfare” route the Democrts were banking on may produce a hearty win for Trump in 2024:
This is the first 19-minutes of BANNON’S WAR ROOM (3/16/2024 Episode 3467). If the trend holds that their “lawfare tactic” continues to erode, then trying to present winning ideas is also most probably an abject failure as well. Since no real accomplishments exist.
I saw this video a couple days ago. I thought to myself, “Arab accent, sleeper cells, border crisis — it’s only a matter of time.” I even thought this guy is probably n a watch list of some sort and will be identified. I would think the same thing immediately if he had said this in front of me. Which is why it baffled me when the guy filming brought up entitlement?
Entitlement? WTF? Even if not a clear [implicit] threat, what did that statement have to do with entitlement?
[Transcript slightly smoothed out from the video]:
POSSIBLE TERRORIST: If you are smart enough, you would know who I am. but you are not smart enough to know who I am, but soon you will know who I am.
CLUELESS FILMER: Wow. The entitlement. The entitlement.
POSSIBLE TERRORIST: No, believe me. I’m much better than that.
CLUELESS FILMER: The entitlement guy. Wow.
One of my boys sent this video today with a guy noting the high probability of this illegal immigrant coming across our border is an ACTUAL terrorist:
Tell me. Where can one go to find this, Movsum Samadov,
So I can ✂️ his 👳🏾♀️ off and post it on a stake for all his followers to see. pic.twitter.com/0QlqZlsXVK
This is what the Democrats are welcoming (and subsidizing) to invade our country.
Muslim ‘migrant’ says ‘You are not smart enough to know who I am. But soon you’re gonna know who I am.’
[….]
The above video video was reportedly taken at No More Death Camp, about 12 miles east from Sasabe, Arizona.
Movsum Samadov was been jailed for 12 years after being convicted of trying to overthrow the government. He was charged with plotting a terrorist act, illegal weapons possession, and attempting to seize power illegally.
Just to be clear, there were many before him and will be after. Until, that is, we get control of our border. Not a big fan of Grant Stinchfield, but he is one of the first to cover it well:
Stinchfield
Video has surfaced of the man believed to be Movsum Samadov, making threats against the United States. The once leader of The Islamic Party of Azerbaijan has a long history of ties to terrorism. The video was taken along the southern border of the United States. The man in the video appears to be Samadov chastising independent journalists on the ground for being, “not smart enough to know who i am, but soon you will know who I am.” That sounds like a threat. The question is where is Samadov now?
Here is what we know about Movsum Samadov:
On January 20th, 2011, Samadov was charged with “preparing a crime” (Art. 28 ACC), “preparing terrorism committed on preliminary arrangement by group of persons, by organized group or criminal community (criminal organization)” (Art. 214.2.1 ACC), “preparing terrorism committed with application of fire-arms or subjects used as a weapon” (Art. 214.2.3 ACC), “illegally purchasing, transferring, selling, storing, transporting, and carrying firearms, accessories, supplies, and explosives committed by organized group” (Art. 228.3 ACC), and “actions directed on violent capture power or violent deduction power” (Art. 278 ACC). He served 12 years in prison for those crimes. One year ago he was released from prison and now it seems he is free to roam about the U.S.
When he says, “Soon you will know who I am,” one can only wonder, what does he mean? My assumption is it is not good. May God Bless this nation that is under siege thanks to Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.
Federal authorities caught a terrorist at the U.S. southern border and released him into the country, where he roamed freely for nearly a year before being arrested in Minnesota just days ago, according to an internal federal memo exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The unnamed individual, who the memo only identifies as a member of the Somali terror group al-Shabaab, was released shortly after being caught illegally crossing the southern border near San Ysidro, California on March 13, 2023, according to the memo, which the DCNF is not publishing in order to protect the identity of a confidential source. The Terrorist Screening Center “deemed him a ‘mismatch’” after running his name through the terror watchlist, according to the memo, which was sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
However, on January 18, 2024, the Terrorist Screening Center “made a redetermination” that the individual was “a confirmed member of al-Shabaab” and was involved in the use, manufacture or transport of explosives or firearms, the memo states. Two days later, ICE nabbed the al-Shabaab member in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Border Patrol caught 172 terror watchlist suspects attempting to enter the U.S. illegally during fiscal year 2023. Former homeland security officials say the constant deluge of illegal immigrants hitting the southern border is making it easier for bad actors to slip into the country.
“Many within the Biden administration, including Secretary Mayorkas, have repeatedly assured us that the vetting process at the border is comprehensive and complete,” John Fabbricatore, a retired ICE field director who now sits on the National Immigration Center for Enforcement’s (NICE) board, told the DCNF. “However, we continue to witness alarming instances where terrorists are able to freely roam the United States for months after being released at the border before their criminal and terrorist histories come to light.”……..
Of course the Democrats think they are “saving Democracy”. In fact, Joe Biden says “Democracy is on the ballot!” As he tries to remove the #1 opposition to him from the ballot. Also, Democrats are trying more removals as well based on theories that the authors had zero intent for the use of:
….It’s only the latest effort targeting congressional candidates as Democrats seek to bar opponents as “insurrectionists” for questioning the election of President Biden.
We have become a nation of Madame Defarges — eagerly knitting names of those to be subject to arbitrary justice.
Former congressional candidate Gene Stilp, who’s previously made headlines by burning MAGA flags with swastikas outside courthouses, filed the challenge.
Using the 14th Amendment to disqualify candidates like Perry is consistent with Stilp’s signature flag-burning stunts.
But what’s chilling is how many support such efforts, including Democratic officeholders from Maine’s Secretary of State to dozens of members of Congress.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory for challenging the election before Jan. 6, 2021.
Similar legislation from Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres and “Squad” members Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
When Maine’s secretary of state disqualified Trump, three in the state’s congressional delegation — Sens. Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) and Rep. Jared Golden (D) — condemned the decision. But others supported the antidemocratic action.
The grounds were virtually identical to those of Stilp. He accuses Perry of supporting challenges to Biden’s election and opposing its certification.
Of course, he ignores Democratic members who sought to block certification of Republican presidents under the very same law with no factual or legal basis.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election.
Jan. 6 committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted to challenge it in the House.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result — particularly ironic since he’s a leading voice calling for Trump to be disqualified.
He insisted last week on CNN that the effort to prevent citizens from voting for Trump is the very embodiment of democracy: “If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.”
That is akin to treating every criminal charge as a consensual act of incarceration because the accused chose his path in life.
This is also being played out in state races.
The filing against Perry came the same day Pennsylvania Democratic state Sen. Art Haywood made public a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee against his Republican colleague Doug Mastriano accusing him of playing a role in the plot to overturn the election.
Notably, in his effort to “hold insurrectionists accountable,” Haywood admitted he relied on the same evidence from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that was used in the Colorado case.
“Insurrectionist” is the newest label to excuse any abuse.
During the McCarthy period, individuals were accused of being Communists or “fellow travelers.”
Now you have Stilp accusing Perry of being “supportive of insurrectionists.”
Democrats and pundits have claimed civil libertarians and journalists who have testified against the government’s growing censorship efforts are enablers of insurrectionists and even “Putin lovers.”
Figures like Stilp are wrong on the law but right about one thing: There are few real limits once you embrace this theory.
[….]
With the support of elected officials across the country, they can then join Stilp in moving from burning flags to torching the Constitution in a fit of exhilarating rage.
In fact, Democrats as a whole are impartial to this ridding themselves of competition. You see it in business with “crony corporatism,” you see it in the electorate (as this post notes), and the like. In yesterdays post I noted a “slightly dated” article in the ATLANTIC(see more in my first post on this 14th Amendment “witch hunt”), where David Frum said this:
Consider the scenario in which Section 3 is invoked against Trump in 2024. Although he has won the Republican nomination, Democratic secretaries of state in key states refuse to place his name on their ballots, as a person who engaged in insurrection against the United States. With Trump’s name deleted from some swing-state ballots, President Joe Biden is easily reelected.
But only kind of reelected. How in the world are Republicans likely to react to such an outcome? Will any of them regard such a victory as legitimate? The rage and chaos that would follow are beyond imagining.
And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?
What are red states doing in case of a successful removal of Trump from their ballots disenfranchising voters choice?
Where do the regular Democrat voter position themselves in all this? RED STATE has an article answering that:
Ever since Donald Trump came down the golden escalator in 2015, Democrats have been shrieking about how he is a “danger to democracy” and how MAGA threatens the very foundations of our republic. Listen to President Joe Biden Friday angrily rail on about how Trump wants to destroy America as we know it.
But in the real world, it appears that most Democrats don’t truly believe in democracy, or at least how it’s actually supposed to work. A new CBS News/YouGov poll shows that an astonishing 81 percent of Dems think that Trump’s name should be removed from ballots this presidential election, presumably because they think he’s guilty of violating the 14th Amendment by inciting an insurrection on J6.
[…]
[…]
The former president has neither been charged with nor convicted of insurrection, so how could they possibly think that his name should be removed? Quite simply, they want to win, and win at any cost, and they don’t care about what damage it does to our system.
The Supreme Court will decide in short order on cases in Maine and Colorado about the efforts to remove Trump’s name from the GOP primary ballot.
[….]
However, one question I don’t see is, “Why do you consider our democracy to be threatened?” Since it’s a CBS poll, you can assume that they thought everyone who felt it was threatened thought Donald J. Trump was the reason behind their concern. But the reality is, a large number of that 70 percent is likely voters like me, who consider the tyrannical current president, his corrupt, weaponized Department of Justice, and people like the 81 percent who think a presidential candidate should be taken off ballots simply because they don’t like him represent the true threats to our republic.
Hamas’s 10/7 attack is something like Israel’s 9/11, only worse. Israel’s death toll has hit more than 350. Adjusting for population and measuring by the deaths inflicted so far, Israel has suffered (is suffering) an attack that is something like three times more damaging than 9/11.
Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization. It is waging war by atrocity, as it always does. The fire this time should be its last.
As I write on 10/8, Hamas’s attack continues and deaths mount. Israel seems not yet to have concluded the fighting on its own territory.
The Israeli intelligence, defense, and political establishments were caught napping. The complete failure of intelligence is comparable to the one that preceded the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago.
Speaking of the Yom Kippur war, we can infer that the attack was timed to coincide with its 50th anniversary. Given the planning and preparation that preceded the attack, disruption of Israel’s possible peace with Saudi Arabia must constitute an added benefit rather than its immediate object.
By comparison with the Yom Kippur War, it seems to me that the consequences of this war are more dire and the effects more difficult to contemplate. Last night Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Hamas would be destroy Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities. What happens next?
Hamas has taken numerous hostages and removed them to Gaza. The Israeli embassy to the United States is reporting that 100 soldiers and civilians have been kidnapped. So long as Hamas holds these hostages, it will necessarily constrain Israel’s freedom of action to achieve its stated objectives, as does Israel’s meticulous compliance with the laws of war. The IDF is not free to combat savagery with savagery.
As Elliott Abrams puts it at NRO: “There is no way around the fact that Hamas has new assets and that future negotiations over the captured Israelis will be excruciating. That is one reason a government of national unity is called for — to stop opposition parties from politicizing tough decisions by making them partly responsible for Israeli policy in the coming months.”
Hezbollah aggravates Israel’s military challenge at present. Their forces and their arsenal exceed Hamas and hold Lebanon in thrall.
The intelligence and readiness failures underlying Yom Kippur War brought down the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces the same after a commission of inquiry does its work.
Iran is of course behind this war: Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad tells the BBC that Iran gave its support to the Palestinian terror group to launch its surprise multi-front attack on Israel on Saturday. Yet the Biden administration remains in doubt about that.
Which raises the question of our own failure of intelligence. Thus spake National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan only a few days ago. This didn’t age well. Unfortunately, these people are incapable of shame.
When a country is attacked, the only appropriate course is to respond with massively disproportionate force, as we did against the Japanese in World War II. Israel should treat Gaza as the Allies treated Dresden and other German and Japanese cities to end that war. Israel made a mistake in withdrawing from Gaza, and Gaza has been a thorn in its side ever since. This should be the last time.
…. the FEDERALIST discusses overwhelming power to unconditional surrender. Here is a good addition by them:
What does unconditional surrender look like? Let history be our guide. As Allied forces swept into Germany in 1945, tin plates bearing this proclamation from Gen. Eisenhower were nailed to posts and walls in both English and German:
I, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, do hereby proclaim as follows:
The Allied forces serving under my command have now entered Germany. We come as conquerors, but not as oppressors. In the area of Germany occupied by the forces under my command we shall obliterate nazism and German militarism. We shall overthrow the Nazi rule, dissolve the Nazi party and abolish the cruel, oppressive and discriminatory laws and institutions which the party has created. We shall eradicate that German militarism which has so often disrupted the peace of the world. Military and party leaders, the Gestapo and others suspected of crimes and atrocities will be tried and, if guilty, punished as they deserve.
Supreme legislative, judicial and executive authority and powers within the occupied territory are vested in me as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces and as military governor, and the military government is established to exercise these powers under my direction. All persons in the occupied territory will obey immediately and without question all the enactments and orders of the military government. Military government courts will be established for punishment of offenders. Resistance to the Allied forces will be ruthlessly stamped out. Other serious offenses will be dealt with severely.
All German courts and educational institutions within the occupied territory are suspended. The Volksgerichtshof, the Sondergerichte, the SS police courts and other special courts are deprived of authority throughout the occupied territory. Reopening of the criminal and civil courts and educational institutions will be authorized when conditions permit. All officials are charged with the duty of remaining at their posts until further orders and obeying and enforcing all orders or directions of military government or the Allied authorities addressed to the German Government or the German people. This applies also to officials, employees and workers of all public undertakings and utilities and to all other persons engaged in essential work.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, General, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force
Not only that, but you know there are non-thinking Lefties in the Biden administration’s Office of Palestinian Affairs when they deleted a post advising Israel not to retaliate after Saturday’s massive attack by the Islamist group Hamas, according to multiple reports.
The United States’ Office for Palestinian Affairs has deleted a post from their X account that called for Israelis to “refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks” in response to Hamas attacking Israel.
The post on X had said “We unequivocally condemn the attack of Hamas terrorists and the loss of life that has incurred. We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.”
Of course the anti-Israel schills on the media (MSNBC, CNN) are saying the quite part out load. But the DEMOCRAT SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA take the cake (BREITBART):
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will host an “All Out for Palestine” rally in New York’s Times Square on Sunday, gathering in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that has claimed more than 500 lives and left several thousand more injured.
[….]
“The NYC-DSA is revealing itself for what it truly is: an antisemitic stain on the soul of America’s largest city.”
THE NEW YORK POST notes that the organizers are telling people “Wear a mask so you’re not recognized.” Kinda like the KKK. They go on to rightly note that “The DSA is the party of Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Rashida Talib — and oh yes, New York’s very own Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal ‘Fire Alarm’ Bowman.” RED STATE has a good post on this, and put the onus on these far-Left Democrats in office:
In case that isn’t clear, they’re not advising wearing a mask for COVID protection; they’re advising masks and not posting pictures so they can’t be identified by the police when the “action” starts to go potentially criminal.
So here’s a good question for reporters: Ask AOC and her other DSA-associated brethren in Congress their opinion on this “action” by the DSA. Put them on the spot and hold them accountable for such actions. Ask if they will renounce this group that is now explicitly supporting such attacks. I doubt you will get any kind of honest response. Many people called out the association with the Democrats and called out this “protest.”
Healthy debate has been replaced by activist hysterics. Speech is declared violence, while violence is excused as speech. Masculinity is condemned as regressive, while men in skirts and heels are celebrated in the public square.
It’s easy to laugh at these outbursts as the ravings of a small but vocal minority, but the compromised health of our body politic is not a trivial concern. A strange, new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated our most prestigious institutions, our corporate bureaucracies, and the highest offices in the land.
In short, we’re sick. Our society is out of balance. We’ve been consumed by a cluster of disorder that appeals to our worst instincts and deranges our most important social functions.
We need to recover our sanity. But to do so, we must first know exactly what we’re dealing with: the emergence of a Cluster B Society.
ORIGINALLY POSTED OCT 3, 2013 — JUST UPDATED “DEAD” MEDIA
I wish to post some ideas and thoughts by others here that will allow a framework to reply to such a challenge. Many professors will infect young minds with this idea, which is, “you cannot criticize Marxism, socialism, or the like because its ‘pure form[s]’ have never been implemented on earth.” To which I would reply to said professor that he then would not be able to criticize Christianity, Republicans, Capitalism, etc…. because the ideal they hold has never been purely implemented on earth. [In Christianity I would note that the faith was modeled perfectly in the man of Christ Jesus.]
So if you have a professor who is harping on Capitalism, Bush, Republicans, Reagan, Newt, Ted Cruz, whomever…, you just need to point out that since FDR’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “Great Society” all they are really criticizing is regulation and redistribution. Because we are far from a truly free-market.
So, what are some good resources to build a cumulative case or allow deeper — non-sophomoric thinking as the author of The Politically incorrect Guide would say — on this subject? While I responded to the person where I work with the quick answer of, “that is essentially copping out of dealing with what is produced by such beliefs,” my thinking on the matter goes beyond how I could or can express it in the work environment. This frustration of quick interactions has led me partly to blog on various topics so not only myself, but others can access this “nugget” if-you-will for both personal edification and learning or linking to friends, co-workers, and family that you discuss this issue with. Especially young people at university.
I do wish to note that just because I am posting items by others below, it does not imply I fully agree with their position stated or worldview. For instance I use Student of Objectivism’s (SO) video (spliced with a quick “baked in the cake” precursor), while I enjoy and agree with Ayn Rand on many points… on many others I disagree. I CAN recommend wholeheartedly — for the lover of theology that really wishes to understand the political divide — a book by Thomas Sowell entitled, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. While this is a must read for any political junkie, it is all the more powerful for one who believes in The Fall of mankind, objective grounding of ethics, man’s spark of life/creativity as well as mankind’s depravity. So to all the pastors and apologists that read this… add that book into your reading hopper.
Okay, I wanted to begin with this chapter, at least the opening pages of it, the chapter can be seen below.
In it the author notes that “baked into” socialism is serfdom… by violence if necessary. Scott Huber of Brightlight Books comments well on this idea and the book:
Williamson ended Chapter 1 (see that summary here) with the observation (from Hayek) that socialist planners always lead an economy on the “road to serfdom”. This is because socialist economic planning cannot work because the planners cannot have enough information or knowledge to make the proper economic decisions. So, in lieu of having enough knowledge to properly make economic decisions, they opt for varying and escalating levels of coercion to enforce their Plan.
In Chapter 2, he begins by refuting what he calls the high school debater’s trick of claiming that socialism in “theory” is great (and true and just and compassionate, etc.) but it just gets screwed up in practice.
Not so, he says:
In truth, the theory behind socialism is deeply flawed: it is intellectually narrow, inhumane, and deeply irrational in that it fails to account for the ways in which knowledge works in a society. Socialism in theory is every bit as bad as socialism in practice, once you understand the theory and stop mistaking it for the common and humane charitable impulse.
Here is a key question? How is economic value determined? Next, we can ask a slightly different set of questions: How should economic value be determined and, perhaps more importantly, by whom?
Williamson argues that on the issue of determining economic value Marx (and every socialist) is a moralist. How so?
Because for Marx, and every other socialist, the value of economic activity, which is to say the value of any product or service, is (or more precisely should) be objectively related to the labor of the worker who produces it. This contrasts with the subjective approach of the capitalist marketplace which basically says that the value of a product or a service is related to how people in the marketplace subjectively value it.
In other words, let’s say you spend a lot of time, human labor, and other resources to produce something. The socialist approach to value says that your product is, at least roughly, worth the sum of the costs required to produce it especially the labor costs. To price it higher or lower is an injustice.
Marx’s analysis is morally normative [i.e. what should be] in that he insists that, since labor is the measure of value, wages must equal the price of the product. The mere existence of profits – squeezing economic value out of a product beyond what workers are paid – for Marx was proof of capitalist’s exploitation of workers. It was indistinguishable from outright theft.
And, according to Williamson, it’s this moral (and moralizing) context that fuels Marxists’ and other socialists’ revolutionary fervor. Note Marx’s most famous quote: The point of philosophy is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. And at the point of a gun if necessary, which it usually is since free people do not readily cooperate with the revolution.
“Communism is a great idea, it just hasn’t been tried properly.” Leftist fellow travelers rush to embrace every Marxist experiment, champion the system and agitate for it to be copied in their own country. …and then walk away when it inevitably fails; searching once again for the next soon to fail utopia. Communism has been tried over 40 times in the last 100 years and has produced egregious results in every iteration. This video shows every application and deep dives into half a dozen examples, comparing before and after Communism was tried as well as comparing examples directly with free and mixed market neighbors.(Via VOTE NIXON)
And one should note that ALL of the above have a current application to what we are seeing the Democrats implementing. Socialized Medicine. And who better to explain this to us that the Gipper himself:
Walter Williams makes this real for us in a way that should perk the interest of those who love and cherish freedom:
…Mao Zedong has been long admired by academics and leftists across our country, as they often marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving his little red book, “Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung.” President Barack Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, in her June 2009 commencement address to St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral, said Mao was one of her heroes.
Whether it’s the academic community, the media elite, stalwarts of the Democratic Party or organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club and the Children’s Defense Fund, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism — a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.
Today’s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from those of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist mass murderers. One does not have to be in favor of death camps or wars of conquest to be a tyrant. The only requirement is that one has to believe in the primacy of the state over individual rights.
The unspeakable horrors of Nazism didn’t happen overnight. They were simply the end result of a long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.”…
Social Justice. This social justice always leads to repression, from the NAACP asking the rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask to be investigated, to, Dr. Benjamin Carson being audited after his prayer breakfast speech by the IRS. These are murmurings of the greater end that always ends in violent repression. From pro-lifers being threatened on university campuses, to suppression of free speech, to… eventualy, the outgrowth — naturally — to violent repression. The difference between Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and Fascism, is a matter of degrees, only:
✯ A Marxist will scream at you, argue and fist-fight you down the road to his dream, as he carries your belongings and says, “They belong to the collective”.
✯ A Socialist will grab you by the hand or the hair, and beat you on the head with a stick and drag you along, as they make you carry your own belongings and tell you they, “Belong to the collective”.
✯ A Communist will get behind you and make you carry your own belongings to his dream, as he points a gun to the back of your head, and kicks you in the back and screams at you, “They belong to the State”… as in the collective.
✯ A Fascist will will have your neighbor carry your belongings, and shoot you if you do not agree with his dream of “Centralized Authority, and it all belongs to the State”,… the collective”.
…a matter of degrees.
(I cry every time I watch the beginning of this.) This footage is a great example of how Democrats are joined at the hip with radicals. The example comes by way of the two radical Democrat women making my point:
Question is, which is our temperature to stop this from going further in our country?
And any person should acknowledge why someone should “fear” government more than business. In fact, I made this point on my FB outgrowth of this blog in talking to my liberal friend:
…the point was to show how the Obama admin is stacking the books with GM. You see, when the government chooses winners-and-losers instead of getting contracts with private companies (like Ford, GM, etc.), they are invested to [i.e., forced to] only choose a government run business and stock their fish (so-to-speak) with GM fleets… leaving the non-government company to flounder.
This next audio deals with the differences of the Koch brothers, in comparison to the Left’s version of them, Soros. There are many areas that one can discuss about the two… but let us focus in on the main/foundational difference. One wants a large government that is able to legislate more than just what kind of light-bulbs one can use in the privacy of their own home. Soros wants large government able to control a large portion of the economy (see link to chart below), and he has been very vocal on this goal. The other party always mentioned are the Koch brothers. These rich conservatives want a weak government. A government that cannot effect our daily lives nearly as much (personal, business, etc) as the Soros enterprise wants. And really, if you think about it, what business can really “harm” you, when people come to my door with pistols on their hip… are they a) more likely to be from GM, or, b) from the IRS?
The possibility of them being from the IRS is even more possible with the passing of Obama-Care [i.e., larger government]. So the “fear” (audio in next comment) I think the Left has of “Big-Business” is unfounded, and the problem comes when big-business gets in bed with big-government. Here I am thinking of (like with the penalties that were found to be Constitutional in the recent SCOTUS decision) a government that can penalize you if you do not buy a Chevy Volt, or some other green car in order to save the planet. When this happens, guys coming to my door because of unpaid (hypothetical… but historical examples abound of the tax history of our nation) “fines” are likely to be IRS agents because of a personal choice made in the “free-market.”
Appendix: If the above example didn’t inspire any liberal fear (forced to go green or be penalized), maybe this one will?
…First, the government needs to issue a mandate that all households must own at least one firearm. We will need a federal agency to ensure that people aren’t just buying cheap BB guns or .22 pistols, even though that may be all they need or want. It has to be 9mm or above, with .44 magnums getting a one-time tax credit on their own. Let’s pick an agency known for its aptitude on firearms and home protection to issue required annual certifications each year, without which the government will have to levy hefty fines. Which agency would do the best job? Hmmmm … I know! How about TSA? With their track record of excellence, we should have no problems implementing this mandate.
Don’t want to own a gun? Hey, no worries. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says citizens have the right to refuse to comply with mandates. The government will just seize some of your cash in fines, that’s all. Isn’t choice great? Those fines will go toward federal credits that will fund firearm purchases for the less well off, so that they can protect their homes as adequately as those who can afford guns on their own. Since they generally live in neighborhoods where police response is appreciably worse than their higher-earning fellow Americans, they need them more anyway. Besides — gun ownership is actually mentioned in the Constitution, unlike health care, which isn’t. Obviously, that means that the federal government should be funding gun ownership….
The Pilgrims could have benefited from sound theology which would have dissuaded their (and should ours) experiment with “communal” activities:
Many Americans believe socialism to be a form of social kindness by the government. But true socialism isn’t a social safety net. It is when the government controls most prices, businesses, property, and other aspects of economic life. The historical record of socialism has been wrecked or stagnating economies and flagrant human rights violations. The truth borne of a hundred years of hard experience is that people do not prosper in socialist countries.
A. PRIVATE PROPERTY
According to the teachings of the Bible, government should both document and protect the ownership of private property in a nation.
The Bible regularly assumes and reinforces a system in which property belongs to individuals, not to the government or to society as a whole.
We see this implied in the Ten Commandments, for example, because the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15), assumes that human beings will own property that belongs to them individually and not to other people. I should not steal my neighbor’s ox or donkey because it belongs to my neighbor, not to me and not to anyone else.
The tenth commandment makes this more explicit when it prohibits not just stealing but also desiring to steal what belongs to my neighbor:
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exod. 20:17).
The reason I should not “covet” my neighbor’s house or anything else is that these things belong to my neighbor, not to me and not to the community or the nation.
This assumption of private ownership of property, found in this fundamental moral code of the Bible, puts the Bible in direct opposition to the communist system advocated by Karl Marx. Marx said:
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.
One reason why communism is so incredibly dehumanizing is that when private property is abolished, government controls all economic activity. And when government controls all economic activity, it controls what you can buy, where you will live, and what job you will have (and therefore what job you are allowed to train for, and where you go to school), and how much you will earn. It essentially controls all of life, and human liberty is destroyed. Communism enslaves people and destroys human freedom of choice. The entire nation becomes one huge prison. For this reason, it seems to me that communism is the most dehumanizing economic system ever invented by man.
Other passages of Scripture also support the idea that property should belong to individuals, not to “society” or to the government (except for certain property required for proper government purposes, such as government offices, military bases, and streets and highways). The Bible contains many laws concerning punishments for stealing and appropriate restitution for damage of another person’s farm animals or agricultural fields (for example, see Exod. 21:28-36; 22:1-15; Deut. 22:1-4; 23:24-25). Another commandment guaranteed that property boundaries would be protected: “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess” (Deut. 19:14). To move the landmark was to move the boundaries of the land and thus to steal land that belonged to one’s neighbor (compare Prov. 22:28; 23:10).
Another guarantee of the ownership of private property was the fact that, even if property was sold to someone else, in the Year of Jubilee it had to return to the family that originally owned it:
It shall be a Jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan (Lev. 25:10).
This is why the land could not be sold forever: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23).
This last verse emphasizes the fact that private property is never viewed in the Bible as an absolute right, because all that people have is ultimately given to them by God, and people are viewed as God’s “stewards” to manage what he has entrusted to their care.
The earth is the LORD’S and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein (Ps. 24:1; compare Ps. 50:10-12; Hag. 2:8).
Yet the fact remains that, under the overall sovereign lordship of God himself, property is regularly said to belong to individuals, not to the government and not to “society” or the nation as a whole.
When Samuel warned the people about the evils that would be imposed upon them by a king, he emphasized the fact that the monarch, with so much government power, would “take” and “take” and “take” from the people and confiscate things for his own use:
So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam. 8:10-18).
This prediction was tragically fulfilled in the story of the theft of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite by Ahab the wicked king and Jezebel, his even more wicked queen (see 1 Kings 21:1-29). The regular tendency of human governments is to seek to take control of more and more of the property of a nation that God intends to be owned and controlled by private individuals.
Here is the Tavis Smiley video (thanks HOTAIRfor the h/t):
(Description from YouTube Channel) Via Hengler, this seems so off-the-grid stupid that it makes me paranoid that I’m misunderstanding it. Hirsi Ali’s talking about jihad here, i.e. religiously-motivated murder by Muslims, and his comeback is that, well, Christians kill people too. In fact, in America, many more Christians commit murder than Muslims do. Which is no doubt true since the ratio of the former to the latter is, um, like, 75 to 1. What that has to do with her view of each faith’s capacity to motivate its followers to kill is beyond me (and beyond even nonpartisan sites like Mediaite). Either he’s missing her point so wildly that they’re having two different conversations or he seriously believes that a guy who shoots up a post office after, say, getting laid off is necessarily committing an act of religious terrorism in the name of whatever faith he follows. Off the grid, I say.
Here is my upload dated the same, moved to my RUMBLE:
This is a FLASHBACK to May 2010 and is an exchange between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tavis Smiley on PBS. The interview was May 25th, 2010. Dennis Prager exemplifying how Leftism makes a person dumber.
…..The irony here is that the planned protests were hosted by the Zinn Education Project, whose approach to history is based on Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States. Published in 1980, the book became extremely popular and still dominates our nation’s classrooms. Zinn maintained that teaching history “should serve society in some way” and that “Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable.” When called on the carpet for writing a history book that played very fast and loose with the facts, the author freely admitted it, saying that his hope in writing the book was to cause a revolution.
At least Zinn was honest enough to admit that he was a liar. There’s no indication that the union troofers will go that far. Or perhaps they really believe that their lies are the truth. Either way, the troofers’ actions are very much akin to those of the Big Bad Wolf, and the nation’s children are Little Red Riding Hoods. That story had a happy ending, but the current version has yet to reach its climax.
First and Foremost, all the videos I add are to lead up to — or compliment — Bull Brand’s excellent video via his channel. All videos used I stamp the time they start and the date they were uploaded by said YouTube Channel or site.
A video of some of the first individuals into the Capitol Building was uncovered that shows what appear to be the first individuals into the Capitol. These individuals appear to be from Antifa or BLM. These were not Trump supporters (GATEWAY PUNDIT). When they open the center door, that is when “horn boy” (Jacob Chansley) enters. Remember, just because I point out the first group of people into the Capitol were Antifa/Black Bloc, or that they were a heavy part of the violence, does not mean I deny Trump supporters were just as unlawful. I believe anarchists (right side of the political spectrum), like the pagan anarchist believer [Jacob Chansley — horn guy for example] who supported Trump – and – entered the Capitol building illegally.
And?
But then, you would have to admit Neo-Nazi Ukrainians (Sergai Dybynyn), i.e., “socialists” were in the violent mix as well…
left-hand side of the political spectrum [anti-Israel/anti-Semitic; BIG Government/Universal Healthcare; etc.] — anti-Trump policies in other words:
(The grey area are differing forms of Democracy)
…Right?
Here is video of the initial break-in at this part of the Capitol:
The lessons from Portland are simple—if destructive protests aren’t stopped and if career protestors aren’t leveled with serious charges and bails, those that participate in these attacks can easily move on to the next city and take their tactics and practices with them. This means that the violence occurring in one city can be quickly duplicated across the country.
Bottom line: don’t go to an Antifa protest where you can put yourself in that situation. And if you find yourself in that situation, expect them to employ tactics that take away your situational awareness, and complicate the use of force continuum.
DEFINITION: To kneel and touch the forehead to the ground in expression of deep respect, worship, or submission, as formerly done in China…. To show servile deference. synonym: fawn.
Vietnamese mandarins kowtowing before the Governor-General of Tonkin
AMERICAN THINKERhas an intro to the below Tucker Carlson video I wish to excerpt from before you watch the video:
…Back in the 1960s, authority figures also collapsed before the black mob. Shelby Steele, in WHITE GUILT, describes how his college president, the quintessential white liberal who gave to all the Civil Rights causes, backed down like a deflated balloon:
Dr. McCabe simply came to a place where his own knowledge of American racism—knowledge his personal integrity prevented him from denying—opened a vacuum of moral authority within him. He was not suddenly stricken with pangs of guilt over American racism. He simply found himself without the moral authority to reprimand us for our disruptive behavior. He knew that we had a point, that our behavior was in some way connected to centuries of indisputable injustice. So he was trumped by his knowledge of this, not by his remorse over it, though he may have felt such remorse. Our outrage at racism simply had far greater moral authority than his outrage over our breach of decorum. And had he actually risen to challenge us, I was prepared to say that we would worry about our behavior when he and the college started worrying about the racism we encountered everywhere, including on his campus.
And this is when I first really saw white guilt in action. Now I know it to be something very specific: the vacuum of moral authority that comes from simply knowing that one’s race is associated with racism. Whites (and American institutions) must acknowledge historical racism to show themselves redeemed of it, but once they acknowledge it, they lose moral authority over everything having to do with race, equality, social justice, poverty, and so on. They step into a void of vulnerability. The authority they lose transfers to the “victims” of historical racism and becomes their great power in society. This is why white guilt is quite literally the same thing as black power.
Steele, Shelby, White Guilt [Kindle Locations 370-374]. HarperCollins; emphasis mine.
In the 1960s, thanks to Jim Crow and endemic racism in the Northeast, whites had good reason to feel guilty.
But what about whites in 2020? Well, that’s where the Big Lie comes in….
Why Are Americans Surrendering To Violent Mobs? Because They’ve Been Told They Have To
Here is an excellent CITY-JOURNAL article that Heather Mac Donald draws sensible reactions to these outliers:
…Many protest supporters have expressed frustration with the attention being given to a relative handful of agitators driving the violence and looting—behavior, they say, that distorts the image of what is largely a peaceful movement. Their frustration is understandable but also ironic: the narrative that has driven thousands into the streets is itself a distortion. Just as the violence that has alarmed the American public does not represent the peaceful protesters exercising their right to air their grievances, the police violence depicted in viral videos does not characterize the institution of law enforcement.
This is not to say that police are perfect, or that officers never abuse their power; they are not perfect, and some do succumb to what can be an intoxicating sense of authority. This is a truth I’ve personallyexperienced. Nor is it to say that there is no room to improve policing and to make police-citizen encounters both safer and less fraught. But if there is to be any hope for peacefully bridging the gap so strikingly represented by the glass-covered asphalt separating rioters and police, destructive hyperbole needs to be recognized for what it is.
[….]
This is in line with other data I highlighted in these pages two years ago—namely, a 2018 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, which analyzed more than 114,000 criminal arrests made across three midsize police departments, finding that more than 99 percent of arrests were carried out without the use of physical force. In 98 percent of the cases in which those officers did use physical force, suspects “sustained no or mild injury.”
Historical context is important, too. In 1971, New York City Police discharged their firearms 810 times, wounding 221 people and killing 93. By 1990, those numbers were down to 307, 72, and 39, respectively. In 2016, police discharged their weapons just 72 times, wounding 23, killing 9. This is real progress; but it would come as news to anyone observing the mobs that have spent the last few days hurling insults, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at exhausted and demoralized members of the NYPD.
As troubling as cases like that of George Floyd are, we must remember that they are outliers. That knowledge won’t bring comfort or justice to those harmed or killed by police who use unjustifiable force, or their families; but it can help lower the temperature in an environment that is about as inhospitable to reasonable discussion as can be imagined. …
THE DAILY CALLER weighs in:
…However, this destructive delusion has been completely demolished by a recent study that demonstrates there is no epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black people, that black citizens are not more likely to be shot by white officers, and that the shooting of unarmed people of any race is extraordinarily rare. In fact, an individual American citizen is substantially more likely to be struck by lightning than he is to be shot by the police while unarmed.
In the article, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Joseph Cesario of Michigan State University and David Johnson of the University of Maryland assess hundreds of fatal police shootings since 2015. Their groundbreaking study exposes what is, at least for the anti-police mythmakers, an inconvenient truth indeed — that police shootings of citizens are not motivated by race or racism.
Here are the facts: 55% of all people fatally shot in America by the police are white — more than double the number of black (27%) or Hispanic (19%) individuals. Those police critics who accept at least this fact are generally quick to point out that black citizens are 27% of the people shot and killed by the police despite making up only 14% of the U.S. population. They say this disparity provides statistical proof of “systemic racism and bias,” but this superficial explanation doesn’t stand up. There are racial disparities in police shootings, but the disparities are not caused by racism.
According to Cesario and Johnson, who analyzed crime data from more than 200 U.S. counties, the strongest predictor of being shot by the police isn’t a person’s race, but whether the person is engaging in violent criminal behavior. Disparities across the major races in rates of police shooting are almost entirely consistent with the rates at which members of these different races are accused by victims of committing violent crimes. In other words, the greater the number of crimes committed by white individuals in a county, the more likely a white person will be shot by the police. And poor white Americans in Appalachia, for example, often are involved in police shootings. But, the greater number of crimes committed by black individuals in a county, the more likely it is that a black person will be shot by the police. The same is true for Hispanic individuals.
It’s not “systemic racism” that makes it more likely that a person will be shot by the police; it is how mathematically likely that person is to be committing crime. An individual’s behavior, not his race, is the determining factor.
The claim that racial bias on the part of individual officers is the cause of racial disparities in police shootings was also specifically found to be untrue. The researchers determined that: “The race of the officer doesn’t matter when it comes to predicting whether a black or white citizen will be shot.” White officers are no more likely to shoot a black person than are black or Hispanic officers. Not only is racial bias on the part of individual officers not a significant predictor of police shootings of black people, but also, remarkably, police officers off all races are statistically less likely to shoot a black than a white person under the same circumstances….
Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.
By Heather Mac Donald June 2, 2020
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist. On Friday, Barack Obama tweeted that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal.’ ” Mr. Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal,” in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts.”
Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home.” That echoed a claim Mr. Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz denounced the “stain . . . of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement during a Friday press conference. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.
In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued—a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day. This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was PUBLISHEDin August 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police,” they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilization-destroying violence. If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighborhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested George Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics. But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
JONATHAN TURLEY writes on his website about the tradition Nancy trampled on:
…Forty-four years ago, I walked on to the floor of the House of Representatives as a new Democratic 15-year-old page from Chicago. I stood and marveled at the beehive of activity on the floor in the People’s House. I can still remember that moment because it forged a bond and reverence that has never weakened for me. As a Democratic leadership page during the speakership of Tip O’Neill, I watched some of the most passionate and important debates of the generation from the Neutron Bomb to civil rights legislation to sweeping national park bills. The country was deeply divided, but both parties maintained the tradition of civility and decorum. I was struck how members, even in the heat of furious debates, would not attack each other by name and followed rigid principles of decorum. They understood that they were the custodians of this institution and bore a duty to strengthen and pass along those traditions to the next generation.
That is why I was (and remain) so offended by this display. I believe that President Trump himself is worthy of criticism for not shaking the hand of Pelosi. I also did not approve of aspects of his speech, including bestowing the Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh in the gallery like a reality show surprise scene. There was much to object to in the address, but presidents often make comments that enrage or irritate speakers.
However, none of that excuses Pelosi. At that moment, she represents the House as an institution — both Republicans and Democrats. Instead, she decided to become little more than a partisan troll from an elevated position. The protests of the Democratic members also reached a new low for the House. Pelosi did not gavel out the protest. She seemed to join it.
It was the tradition of the House that a speaker must remain in stone-faced neutrality no matter what comes off that podium. The tradition ended last night with one of the more shameful and inglorious moments of the House in its history. Rather than wait until she left the floor, she decided to demonstrate against the President as part of the State of the Union and from the Speaker’s chair. That made it a statement not of Pelosi but of the House.
For those of us who truly love the House as an institution, it was one of the lowest moments to unfold on the floor….
…The House has its share of infamies, great and small, real and symbolic, and has been the scene of personal infamies from brawls to canings. But the conduct of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at the State of the Union address this week will go down as a day of infamy for the chamber as an institution. It has long been a tradition for House Speakers to remain stoic and neutral in listening to the address. However, Pelosi seemed to be intent on mocking President Trump from behind his back with sophomoric facial grimaces and head shaking, culminating in her ripping up a copy of his address.
Her drop the mic moment will have a lasting impact on the House. While many will celebrate her trolling of the president, she tore up something far more important than a speech. Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum and civility that the nation could use now more than ever. The House Speaker is more than a political partisan, particularly when carrying out functions such as the State of the Union address. A president appears in the House as a guest of both chambers of Congress. The House Speaker represents not her party or herself but the entirety of the chamber. At that moment, she must transcend her own political ambitions and loyalties.
Tensions for this address were high. The House impeachment managers sat as a group in front of the president as a reminder of the ongoing trial. That can be excused as a silent but pointed message from the Democrats. Trump hardly covered himself with glory by not shaking hands with Pelosi. I also strongly disliked elements of his address which bordered on “check under your seat” moments, and the awarding of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom inside the House gallery like a Mardi Gras bead toss. However, if Trump made the State of the Union look like Oprah, then Pelosi made it look like Jerry Springer.
What followed was an utter disgrace. First, Pelosi dropped the traditional greeting before the start of the address, “Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.” Instead, she simply announced, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.” It was extremely petty and profoundly inappropriate. Putting aside the fact that this is not her tradition, but that of the House, it is no excuse to note that the president was impeached.
Such an indignity was not imposed on President Clinton during his own impeachment proceeding, and anyone respecting due process would note that Trump has been accused, not convicted, at this point in the constitutional process. Pelosi proceeded to repeatedly shake her head, mouth words to others, and visibly disagree with the address. It was like some distempered distracting performance art behind the president.
My revulsion over this has nothing to do with impeachment. Ten years ago, I wrote a column denouncing Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito for mouthing the words “not true” when President Obama used his address to criticize the court for its decision in the Citizens United case. I considered his response to be a disgrace and wrote a column criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts for not publicly chastising Alito for breach of tradition. Instead, Roberts seemed to defend Alito in criticizing Obama for his “very troubling” language and saying that it was unfair to criticize the court when the justices, “according to the requirements of protocol,” have “to sit there expressionless.” That was not unfair. That was being judicious.
[….]
Pelosi has demolished decades of tradition with this poorly considered moment. Of course, many will celebrate her conduct and be thrilled by the insult to Trump. However, even those of us who disagree with his policies should consider what Pelosi destroyed in her moment of rage. She shredded the pretense of governing with civility and dignity in the House. Notably, she did not wait to rip up her copy of the speech until after she left the House floor. Pelosi wanted to do it at the end of the speech, in front of the camera, with the president still in the chamber.
That act was more important to Pelosi than preserving the tradition of her office. In doing so, she forfeited the right to occupy that office. If Pelosi cannot maintain the dignity and neutrality of her office at the State of the Union, she should resign as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
