The Senate Is an 'Unfixable Crime Against Democracy'?

Brent Bozell makes some good points below and both he and I have written previously on why the last electoral college vote has been greatly misrepresented by the Left, but I think I can make some further points relevant to the present Lefist shriek.

For a start, the shriek implies a very simplistic definition of democracy.  The implied definition -- that a democracy is ruled by the majority vote of the population -- rejects most of the democracies of the present world and of history as not being democracies. To take just two reference points:  The most famous democracy of history -- ancient Athens -- was not a democracy by that definition.  Only about a third of the Athenian population had a vote. And to take a much more recent example, Bill Clinton fell well short of getting a majority of the popular vote in 1992 -- at 43%.  And in Europe it is almost unprecedented for a leading party to gain a majority of the popular vote.

So what is going on?  The plain fact is that people's political beliefs are all over the place in any democracy, including some very wacky befiefs.  So you have to have a way of deriving a parliamentary majority out of that confusion. And doing that can be quite precarious.  There is no doubt that proportional representation is the fairest way of putting into parliament a clutch of politicians who mirror the range of views out there but that almost never leads to simple majority rule.  In Germany and Australia, for instance, the party with the biggest share of the popular vote generally gets to form government but that party can still have a hell of a job of getting any new legislation through their parliament.  Yet it all works, sort of.

The American system deals with the same difficulty in a different way:  It cuts down your choice to just two parties -- leaving voters who like neither party out in the cold.  And there are quite a lot of Americans who like neither party -- as is shown by the low voting turnout.  So a big majority of the popular vote will always be a small minority of the qualified voters.  There is no way that can reasonably be seen as fair but it all works, sort of.

And there is in the American system another deliberate distortion:  Both the electoral college and the Senate are designed to privilege inhabitants of the smaller States.  There is no way that is fair either but it all works, sort of.

Why are the smaller states given enhanced representation?  It goes back to the days when America really was a federation -- something Abraham Lincoln put a stop to.  In those palmy days of independence, States could possibly have refused to join the new Federation of States.  And many considered it.  The smaller States in particular were wary that by joining a federation, they might end up being ruled by the bigger states in ways that were inimical to their own best interests.  So to create the United States of America, the smaller states had to be assured that they would have a voice in decisions that was nearly as strong as the bigger States.  And both the electoral college and the Senate do just that.  And if you now tried to take any of that protection away, you would energize a huge bloc of votes against your party.  It would be electoral suicide.  So it all works, sort of.

So the U.S. system is just one of the many flavors of democracy.  There is no perfect system.  They all have their strengths and weaknesses -- JR


MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell revved up his Outrage Machine on Friday night once it became apparent that Brett Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. There was a new crime against democracy — or rather, there was a very old crime. It's called the Senate.

Come again? Senators are elected, but since they voted to give President Trump a narrow victory, it can't be democracy. The Founding Fathers designed a Senate that wasn't elected by the people but by the state legislatures. (Some regret that the 17th Amendment changed that.)

O'Donnell lamented that America's never been worse: "And so the Senate is now deeply undemocratic and getting worse every single day. People who live in countries that have never really pretended to be fully democratic don't feel the disappointment and sickness that Americans feel when democracy so obviously fails."

Someone get O'Donnell a handkerchief, and perhaps a textbook on how a republic operates. Like many Democrats, O'Donnell feels that the popular vote should prevail on everything. The Electoral College must be scrapped because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote — she should be president.

Using the same peculiar calculations, liberals claimed that there are now four Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents who didn't win the popular vote. Those geniuses forgot that George W. Bush nominated two justices after he won the popular vote in 2004.

But let's return to O'Donnell just making things up, like John Belushi's "Animal House" rant about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor. He blathered: "An American realist knows that the federal government has never even tried democracy, not for one day. And so today in the United States Senate, the senators who represent 55 percent of the American people lost an important Senate vote — again."

The MSNBC host was parroting a survey paid for by Marist and the taxpayer-subsidized liberals at NPR and PBS that found the 49 senators who opposed Kavanaugh represented 55.8 percent of the public.

This sentiment was ably mocked on Twitter by New York Yankees fans.

In the 1960 World Series, the Yankees outscored the Pittsburgh Pirates 55 runs to 27... and lost the World Series. Their wins were blowouts. Theirs losses were close games. O'Donnell mourned that he used to be proud to work in the Senate a while back for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but it slowly dawned on him that the Senate is "an unfixable crime against democracy" perpetuated by a group of racist, sexist Founding Fathers. He lectured his liberal viewers to get out and vote, "the vote for United States Senate that the Founding Fathers never wanted you to have."

Jim Geraghty at National Review pointed out more flaws in this analysis, writing: "The second-least populated state in the union is Vermont ... the 45th is Delaware; the 43rd is Rhode Island; and the 40th is Hawaii ... All of those states have two Democratic senators."

In fact, election expert Jeff Ditzler of Decision Desk HQ tweeted that the top 10 states by population (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan) have elected 11 Democratic senators and nine Republican senators, and the bottom 10 states (Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire) have elected ... 11 Democratic senators and nine Republican senators.

It's obvious that Friday night felt a lot like election night 2016 to liberals. What's so upsetting to them is that the liberal media can't successfully engage in mind control and run the country by chanting their baloney into the television set. MSNBC just hates that democracy in America doesn't have enough of a liberal bias.

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Democrats Don't Embrace the Mob; They Are the Mob

Having convinced themselves that Trump is apocalyptic, they've resorted to rank fascism

“Go to the Hill today. Get up and please get up in the face of some congresspeople.” —Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), July 28

Like so many of his Democrat colleagues and their supporters, Booker endorses thuggery and intimidation as a legitimate expression of political dissent. And having convinced themselves that President Donald Trump is apocalyptic, they and their equally contemptible media allies have fully embraced an “ends justify the means” approach to politics that is nothing less than rank fascism, masquerading itself as a commitment to “social justice.” One of the newer weapons in their wannabe totalitarian arsenal? Doxxing.

For American who may not be familiar with the term, “doxxing” is about searching for, and publishing, a person’s private information on the Internet, almost invariably with malicious intent. Not content with harassing Republicans and members of the Trump administration — even in restrooms — leftists have taken to publishing the personal information of several Republican senators in the hope that protesters will surround their homes and intimidate not just the senators themselves but members of their family, including children, as well.

Last Tuesday, one of the alleged perpetrators of this tactic was arrested. Jackson Cosko, 27, was caught in the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) by one of her staffers, who called the U.S. Capitol Police. At his arraignment last Thursday, Cosko was charged with making public restricted personal information, witness tampering, threats in interstate communication, unauthorized access of a government computer, identity theft, second-degree burglary and unlawful entry. Specifically, he’s accused of posting to Wikipedia the personal information of Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch, as well as two other senators who remain unnamed.

According to prosecutors, Cosko was caught “at a computer.” They also allege that one senator’s Wikipedia page contained threats of future doxxing, as in the assertion “it’s my legal right as an American to post his info,” posted on the same page.

Cosko allegedly logged onto the computer using the credentials of the staffer who caught him. Police allege that staffer received a threatening email. “If you tell anyone I will leak it all. Emails signal conversations gmails,” Cosko allegedly wrote. “Senators children’s health information and socials.”

Cosko was a former congressional staffer in his own right — working for Hassan “from January 2017 until May 2018 as a legislative correspondent/systems administrator,” according to a spokesperson for the senator.

Hassan apparently knows how to “pick ‘em” as it were. Another of the senator’s interns, Caitlin Marriott, was the woman who shouted, “Mr. President, f—k you!” across the Capitol Rotunda at Trump on June 19.

Cosko has also worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and former Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer.

His most recent Capitol Hill job is cause for curiosity. His position was initially described as that of an “unpaid intern” for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), whose office says he has been terminated. Yet according to his own lawyer, Cosko was a far more important “fellow in her office,” one “paid by an outside institution,” Fox New reports. What outside institution? Perhaps Rep. Jackson Lee, whose office insists they’re fully cooperating with the police, could enlighten us. No doubt by sheer coincidence, Cosko allegedly posted all the personal info shortly after Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Unsurprisingly, the media has attempted to shape The Narrative. “Kentucky’s Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul joined a growing group of D.C. lawmakers who have had their private information leaked to the public,” reports the Louisville Courier Journal.

Not DC lawmakers. Republicans, three of whom sat on the Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Moreover, Republican senators needed police escorts to shield them from protesters unlawfully demonstrating in Senate offices. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and John Kennedy (R-LA) were swarmed by protesters demanding they block Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Court.

So how did CNN Political Commentator Sally Kohn view the orchestrated chaos? “This, my fellow Americans, is what democracy looks like,” she insisted.

No, this is what Brownshirt thuggery, replete with more than 300 arrests, death threats aimed at GOP senators and their families, and Kavanaugh and his family, looks like, Ms. Kohn.

As for doxxing, it would be useful if Kohn herself experienced what Rand Paul’s wife, Kelly, has detailed in an open letter directed at Cory Booker, regarding how she and her husband are currently forced to live:

“It’s nine o'clock at night, and as I watch out the window, a sheriff’s car slowly drives past my home,” she writes. “I am grateful that they have offered to do extra patrols, as someone just posted our home address, and Rand’s cell number, on the internet — all part of a broader effort to intimidate and threaten Republican members of Congress and their families. I now keep a loaded gun by my bed. Our security systems have had to be expanded. I have never felt this way in my life.”

Mrs. Paul then reminds the Sally Kohns of the world that Rand was present at the congressional baseball practice when Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer James Hodgkinson — who had a list of Republican names in his pocket — nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise, and that Rand himself had six ribs broken by a neighbor “leaving him with lung damage and multiple bouts of pneumonia.”

“The thing I don’t understand is, why do Democrats like Cory Booker, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, etc., think they are the only ones who can use violence to advance their cause?” asks columnist John Hinderaker. “Do they not understand what a whirlwind they will unleash if they try to use political violence as a path to power?”

Democrats have already unleashed the whirlwind. From the purposeful chaos they created on first day of Kavanaugh’s judicial hearing, right through the end of the seventh FBI investigation they insisted was insufficient, Democrats — in lockstep with a corrupt media lending credence to maliciously outlandish accusations — made sure their ideological allies remained in a heightened state of hysteria. Allies like Jackson Cosko and others who believe it is their “duty” to make America’s lawmakers and their families as vulnerable as possible to the mob.

Allies who, if guilty as charged, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

“There are no random events,” writes columnist Michael Goodwin. “It is a straight line from the unprecedented plot by President Barack Obama’s administration to infiltrate and wiretap the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 to the scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh.”

It’s what happens where leftists believe they are entitled to run the country, even when the electorate says otherwise. And it’s easy to understand how Democrats can convince a certain segment of the public to act like a hate-filled, braying, anti-democratic mob:

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” —George Orwell, Animal Farm

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Pompeo hails 'another step forward' after 2-hour meeting with Kim Jong Un

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday in what he called a "good, productive conversation."

The top US diplomat met with Kim in Pyongyang for two hours before Pompeo flew to South Korea Sunday afternoon for a two-day visit.

In South Korea, Pompeo appeared alongside President Moon Jae-in, who said the world wanted to know the results of the Pyongyang meeting, "so if the secretary can disclose the results, please tell us."

"I don't have much to add," Pompeo replied. "I will surely tell you in private about our conversation. I thought we had a good, productive conversation, and as President Trump has said, there are many steps along the way, and we took one of them today, another step forward."

The secretary of state added that South Korea has been an integral part of negotiations aimed at denuclearizing North Korea, and he passed along Trump's gratitude for the country's efforts.

On Sunday, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement that "Chairman Kim invited inspectors to visit the Punggye Ri nuclear test site to confirm that it has been irreversibly dismantled."

Nauert said Pompeo "held productive discussions" with Kim on Sunday. The statement said the two leaders "discussed the upcoming second summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim and refined options for the location and date of that next summit."

Moon said he hoped that Pompeo's visit and a second US-North Korea summit would provide a chance to take "a decisive step forward in the denuclearization and peace process on the Korean Peninsula."

In Tokyo on Saturday, Pompeo promised he would bring up Japan's concerns about North Korea's alleged abductions of Japanese citizens and its nuclear ambitions.

Pompeo said he wanted "a fully coordinated, unified view of how to proceed, which will be what is needed if we are going to be successful in denuclearizing North Korea."

According to pool notes from Pompeo's early Sunday visit to Pyongyang -- the secretary's fourth -- Pompeo and Kim emerged from their meeting and had lunch together before Pompeo left for South Korea.

"I am really pleased for this opportunity. After having a nice meeting we can enjoy a meal together," Kim told Pompeo as they walked down a hallway toward a guesthouse dining room.

Later Kim said, "It's a very nice day that promises a good future" for both countries. Pompeo told reporters in Pyongyang the two "had a great, great visit" and that Trump sent his regards.

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A classic piece of Leftist projection

"You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about," Hillary Clinton, who's never been civil, insisted Tuesday. "That's why I believe, if [Democrats] are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength."

More HERE

Note that Christ knew of projection long before Freud did -- Matthew 7: 4,5. And his words fit very well in this instance.

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