Leftist Pollyanna-ism:  "The Boston Globe" as "Pravda"

Leftists always claim to do good.  So they have a strong motivation to assert that they actually achieve that.  And they most certainly wish to avoid acknowledging that there is anything wrong with what they do. That is why they try their damnedest to shut conservatives up -- because conservatives have this pesky attachment to reality.

So when Leftists gain control of a place, they tend to become Pollyannas, though not in the same sense as the original Pollyanna, who was a marvellous triumph of the human spirit. They become Pollyannas in the sense of refusing to see anything bad or faulty in their domain, their Reich.  For instance, Soviet newspapers such as  "Pravda" reported mostly good news, even if it was only a tractor factory fulfilling its quotas.

Most notable in the Communist countries of the last century was a failure to report airliner crashes if such reports could be avoided.  Though pesky American satellites often revealed the truth.  And it was the same in China.  And in both countries the result was the same.  In the absence of any public uproar about the negligence or inefficiency that had led to the crashes, nothing was fixed and there were a lot of crashes, far more than happened in the West.  It ended up with crashed Ilyushins scattered throughout Eurasia. The Ilyushin design bureau turned out very robust aircraft but Soviet maintenance was abysmal. If Soviet tank armies had ever surged Westward, most of them would probably have broken down.

So it's amusing that The Boston Globe reads rather like Pravda.  With Massachusetts having been under solid Democrat control for almost forever, anything that happens in Massachusetts is on the Democrat tab.  They are responsible for it so they have to wear it.  You could blame a lot on George Bush for a while but the age of Obama has pretty well nixed that.

But America is alive with all sorts of news media so you can't really hush much up for long.  So how does the Globe handle news about bad things happening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?  They mention it but downplay it and never mention it again if they can help it. They are Pollyannas.  Political problems are treated as minor or under control.  There is no raging at them or swingeing denunciations of them.  It is all "nice".  Rage is reserved for what happens in other parts of the USA, with Donald Trump being a Godsend for that at the moment -- as their recent much-noted front-page shows.

The Globe became one of my regular reads last year so it took me a while to "get" why the paper seemed so different.  But I can now encapsulate the difference.  It has a very "sunny" outlook.  All Massachusetts problems are small or under control. And when they can't avoid mentioning Pachyderms in rooms -- such as the abject failure of Romneycare -- they cover it in such a long-winded way  that it's hard to see the wood for the trees.  And all the detail tends to create the impression that the problem is being worked on.

There are many ways of lying and the Left have mastered them all.

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Trump: Primary process 'corrupt' on both sides

He's got a point

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday said the primary process on both the Republican and Democratic sides is corrupt.

Trump referenced Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who has won eight of the past nine Democratic contests, noting that people still say he doesn't have a path to the nomination.

"I watch Bernie. He wins, he wins, he keeps winning, winning and winning and then I see he's got no chance. They always say he's got no chance. Why doesn't he have a chance?" Trump asked during a rally in Rochester, N.Y.  "Because the system is corrupt. And it's worse on the Republican side."

"I'm not a fan of Bernie, I couldn't care less as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't care less about Bernie, but he wins and he wins, like me."

Trump went on to tout his own successes, saying he's won far more than rival Ted Cruz and has received millions and millions of votes, including from people who have never voted before and people who identify as Democrats.

Trump said he's up millions of votes on Cruz and has hundreds more delegates than the Texas senator.

He referenced Louisiana, which Trump won by a small margin. But he could end up with fewer delegates than Cruz, because the senator is likely to receive five delegates left behind when Marco Rubio dropped out, as well as the state's five unbound delegates - who can back a candidate of their choosing. Trump has in the past promised a lawsuit over the delegate allocation.

Trump said during the rally Sunday that there's some "nonsense" going on.  "And I say this to the RNC and I say this to the Republican Party: You're going to have a big problem folks, because there are people who don't like what's going on."

"We've got a corrupt system, its not right. We're supposed to be a democracy. We're supposed to be you vote and the vote means something ... and we've got to do something about it."

Trump said his campaign is "doing fine" and should have won it a long time ago. "But we keep losing where we're winning," he said. "Today winning votes doesn't mean anything."

"It's not right folks ... whether it's me or Bernie Sanders. When I look at it and I see all these victories that I have, all these victories that he's got. And then you look at the establishment and I want to tell you it's a corrupt deal going on in this country and it's not good and it's not fair."

Trump said that the system is disenfranchising people who "want to see America be great again."

"I think we're going to be fine. We're doing really well," Trump said, "but we've got to have a system where voting means something."

SOURCE

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Trump's YOOJ Advantage in NY

Donald Trump has a "yooj" advantage in his home state. Polls suggest that before he's even started campaigning, he's at over 50 percent:

Donald Trump is leading his rivals among with over 50 percent support among New York voters heading into the Empire State’s primary, according to a new poll out Wednesday.

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University polling institute, said in a press release, “if this result holds in every single congressional district, Trump will walk away with nearly all of New York State’s delegates.” New York has 95 delegates up for grabs.

In the poll Trump leads with 52 percent, in second is Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 25 percent, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is last with 17 percent support.

The media would have you believe that most of Trump's supporters are economically displaced, uneducated white men. That's obviously not most of New York State, a wealthy state where Rockefeller Republican moderates and Democrats have ruled the roost for better part of a century.

But New York City's suburbs and outer boroughs are politically displaced. The state's Republican party treated taxpayers like a piggy bank for their massive patronage mill and handpicks every candidate down to the local level.

The Democratic party's priorities are dictated by the priorities of hyper liberal New York City, and have little to do with those of moderate, overtaxed, overregulated suburbanites. Desperate upstate New Yorkers from communities that make the Rust Belt look like solid gold have absolutely no one to turn to.

Basically, moderate New Yorkers have been between an electoral rock and a hard place.  In Trump, these people may have found someone who's intimately aware of the mountains of red tape, taxes, and malfunctioning governance that has many of their neighbors fleeing for places like Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, a man that speaks their language.

The alternatives? John Kasich, who has no chance of winning, and Ted Cruz, a man who thinks New York values(patriotism, entrepreneurship, and brutal honesty) are evil.

Anyone but Trump winning New York? Fuhgeddaboutit.

SOURCE

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New Guidance Warns Landlords They Could Face Discrimination Charges For Turning Down Tenants With Criminal Records

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is warning landlords they could face discrimination charges for turning down prospective tenants with criminal records – if the decision has an “unjustified discriminatory effect.”

A Republican senator described new HUD guidance issued this week as yet another move by the Obama administration to support convicted criminals.

The 10-page document states that “where a policy or practice that restricts access to housing on the basis of criminal history has a disparate impact on individuals of a particular race, national origin, or other protected class, such policy or practice is unlawful under the Fair Housing Act.”

The Fair Housing Act applies to federally-funded and private sector housing.

Landlords will have to show, if challenged, that they are not turning away tenants “based on generalizations or stereotypes,” the guidance says.

Although the guidance notes the importance of landlords protecting their safety and property, landlords are expected to provide evidence that a policy of basing decisions on criminal history “actually assists in protecting resident safety and/or property.”

“Bald assertions based on generalizations or stereotypes that any individual with an arrest or conviction record poses a greater risk than any individual without such a record are not sufficient to satisfy this burden.”

The new guidance states that the U.S. prison population is “by far the largest in the world,” that a disproportionate number of African Americans and Hispanics are incarcerated, and therefore have a criminal record that could limit access to housing.

“Because of widespread racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal history-based restrictions on access to housing are likely disproportionately to burden African Americans and Hispanics.”

In one example, the guidance says a landlord who rejects a Hispanic tenant on the basis of criminal history but admits “a non-Hispanic White applicant with a comparable criminal record,” could be violating the act.

The only crime specified in the guidance as a justified reason to deny housing is conviction for drug manufacturing or distribution. An HUD official told CNSNews.com that is an exemption that is in the act itself.

Apart from that, the department won’t say which past criminal activities are considered acceptable, and which are not, in turning away a prospective tenant.

“We’re not specifying the types of criminal records that would or would not justify the denying of housing,” the official told CNSNews.com.

Responding to the HUD guidance, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement, “There are no lengths to which this administration won’t go to support convicted criminals.”

“While those who have served their debt to society and completed the rehabilitation process deserve a second chance, it should not be at the expense of law-abiding citizens,” he said.

“Whether releasing violent felons early from prison, preventing employers from asking about an applicant’s criminal record, or now blocking landlords from deciding whether to rent to someone who may pose a threat to their property and the surrounding community, these policies are part of a disturbing pattern,” Cotton said.

“The United States is a nation of laws,” he said, “and we should be looking for ways to better protect those who abide by those laws, not reward those who break them.”

A New Orleans-based organization, the Fair Housing Action Center, welcomed the new guidance.

“Overwhelmingly high incarceration rates in Louisiana and the New Orleans area create tremendous barriers for families seeking stable housing,” said the group’s executive director, Cashauna Hill, in a statement.

“Further, our investigations have found that criminal background screening policies are often applied unequally to keep people of color out.”

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- with news about Muslim immigration and such things

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