Russophobia

We have heard of Islamophobia and homophobia but those are not phobias.  They are not indicative of mental illness. But Russophobia seems to be.  The Left and to some extent the Right never stop talking about the Russian "danger" when Russia is absolutely no danger to the United States.  NOBODY in his right mind attacks a major nuclear power.  Even the Soviets did not do that. Yet in both Congress and in the media there is this obsession with Russia. Such an obsession does appear to me to identify Russophobia as a true phobia.

Let Vladimir Vladimirovich detail some of that irrationlity.  The video below starts with a long-winded "question" from an American woman in which she asks why Vladimir Vladimirovich does not speak more warmly of the USA.  After a couple of minutes of that we hear from Vladimir Vladimirovich.



The hook on which American commentators hang their hostility to Russia is his acceptance of the request from the democratically elected Crimean parliament for Crimea to become part of Russia.  Since Crimea is and always has been populated overwhelmingly by Russians, that made perfect sense.

It is customary among Russia's critics to criticize the elections for the Crimean parliament but all sorts of international observers were present -- including the ineffable Jimmy Carter -- and found no significant irregularities.  There are probably more irregularities in American elections -- with illegals voting.

Crimea became a problem in the aftermath of the Soviet implosion.  Hastily drawn lines were put on the map which did not always take proper account of the ethnicity of the people affected.  So adjustments were inevitable.

How would Americans feel if in the aftermath of some political problem, Florida were hived off and assigned to be part of Mexico?  That was exactly the sort of problem that Russia faced in Crimea and in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Vladimir Vladimirovich simply legalized a people's movement and won wide praise for it in Russia.

Particularly during the reign of King Obama, many conservatives liked a lot of what they heard about post-Soviet Russia.  Russians generally are intolerant of political correctness and that is reflected in the policies of their government.  It is certainly refreshing that Russians don't idolize sexual abnormality. Fortunately Mr Trump has come along to bring also to America critical thinking on many issues of political correctness.

Russia is a great country -- the largest country on earth by a long chalk.  And it has a vivid cultural life that we all to some extent can enjoy.  Below are two songs that are very popular in Russia,  Both are simple sentimental songs -- nothing warlike or aggressive about them

The first (Cranes) is sung by Dmitry Hvorostovsky, an excellent bass baritone who seems to be little known in the West. Spelling his name could be the problem! In the second Hvorostovsky combines with renowned Russian soprano Anna Netrebko to act out "Moscow nights".  Netrebko is a rather shy person when she is not belting out one of the great operatic arias and Hvorostovsky brought that out at the beginning by saying she was the girl he wanted.





Look at the audience.  They could be Americans if we did not know otherwise.  All Northern European peoples are essentially identical genetically. Any differences are tiny. Almost all differences are cultural.  Russians too are our people. They are not our enemies.

Finally, I am putting up a video of "Volga Boatmen" sung by the magnificent Russian bass Leonid Kharitonov.  Again there is  nothing aggressive about it.  It is basically a very simple sea shanty.  It does however remind us of the strength of Russia.  It basically tells of determination and endurance, essential Russian qualities, and Kharitonov conveys that very well



So that is my toe-dip into Russian culture -- in the hope that it may make some tiny contribution to friendly relations with a great country and a great people.

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Tiny bridge at the centre of the Venezuelan refugee crisis

Crossing the Rio Táchira river in the eastern Andes, the Simón Bolívar International Bridge is being clogged daily with thousands of refugees, who say they will die if they stay in their motherland.

They are trying to flee from Venezuela — a country which has essentially ground to a standstill as murderous gangs roams the streets and devastating food and medical shortages leave millions of residents fighting to survive.

To make matters even worse, the country has just been hit by its most powerful earthquake in more than a century.

The bridge connects the embattled socialist nation with relatively stable Colombia and the differences between the two towns on either side are stark.

Residents in Villa del Rosario in Colombia sometimes used to cross over to San Antonio del Táchira on the other side to visit shops and friends, but now the traffic is all one-way — as millions of Venezuelans clamour to escape their homeland which has descended into an economic basket case.

President Nicolás Maduro blames the country’s woes on “imperialists” in the United States and Europe for waging “economic war”. However, critics say it’s a simple case of economic mismanagement.

The United Nations says more than 2.3 million Venezuelans have already fled the country. That’s more than 7 per cent of the country’s entire population — making it one of the largest mass migrations in Latin America’s history.

More than a million of those desperate refugees have arrived in Colombia in the past 18 months and many of them have resorted to using the tiny Simón Bolívar International Bridge as their escape route.

Some of those passing through the clogged checkpoint, left warnings on Google reviews — saying the bridge has become “overwhelming, hot and hellish” in recent months as tens of thousands of refugees flee.

Many said to avoid it all costs as border guards struggle to contend with the constant exodus of poverty-stricken refugees, however some crossing the border were sympathetic with the overworked staff.

“Here even border guards looked compassionate and kind,” said one traveller who recently crossed the bridge “Must be tough having such spectacle under your very eyes every day.”

Many of those escaping are using Colombia as a bridge to Ecuador and Peru, where some believe they will have better luck finding jobs and applying for asylum.

More than a half million Venezuelans have entered Ecuador since January, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency. In Peru, officials recorded more than 5000 Venezuelan entries on a recent single day.

Now, both countries have announced dramatic rule changes which could see thousands of refugees stranded. Both revealed they would allow entry only to people with valid passports.

Venezuelans were previously able to enter using only paper ID cards. About half of those who have made the journey so far didn’t have passports.

But obtaining a passport in Venezuela is close to impossible. The country is struggling with shortages of paper and ink — so hardly any passports are printed, let alone issued.

The situation is becoming increasingly dire in the poverty-stricken country which — despite having the largest proven oil reserves in the world — has millions of residents dying from a lack of medicine.

Four in five Venezuelans now live in poverty and millions have to queue for hours every day to get their hands on basic food rations as inflation reaches terrifying levels.

Inflation now sits at 82,766 per cent — similar to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s — and experts fear it could exceed 1 million per cent by the end of this year.

The new border rules drew an immediate rebuke from authorities in Colombia.

Though his own country already imposed its own often ignored entry requirements for Venezuelans, Colombia Migration Director Christian Kruger warned that the new passport rule in neighbouring Ecuador could create a bottleneck at the Rumichaca International Bridge connecting the two countries.

Officials estimate over 4000 Venezuelans crossed from Colombia into Ecuador each day over the bridge earlier this month.

“We are immensely worried about the consequences this might present,” he said. “The exodus of Venezuelans from the country is one of Latin America’s largest mass-population movements in history,” William Spindler, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this month.

Colombia began requiring Venezuelans to present a passport or border card allowing for short trips into the nation earlier this year. But thousands still sneak in through hundreds of illegal entry points along the 2200km border with Venezuela.

Colombian officials recently agreed to provide legal status to 442,000 who participated in a registry for migrants without valid documents.

A border crossing from Venezuela into the Brazilian city of Pacaraima was closed earlier this month after a judge ruled it should be shuttered until a program to relocate Venezuelan refugees could keep pace with the hundreds arriving each day.

That decision was later reversed by an appellate court. Peruvian Interior Minister Mauro Medina said the passport requirement was needed to ensure an orderly migration.

“If something happens to them, we have a way to identify them,” he said. “Also, some bad apples — who don’t represent the majority, who are decent people — filter in and police should have the adequate tools to identify them.”

Peruvian migration officials estimate between 17,000 and 25,000 Venezuelans are now in southern Ecuador with the intention of heading on to Peru, Chile or Argentina. They will have until August 25 to enter without a passport.

Mr Kruger said the new passport rule is unlikely to stem the tide of migrants and called on Ecuador and other nations to work together on dealing with the crisis in crafting commonsense policies.

“Requiring a passport isn’t going to stop this migration,” Mr Kruger said. “This isn’t a migration of people leaving their country just because they want to. They’re leaving because they need to.”

SOURCE

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The latest Leftist attempt to destroy America

Some top Democrats running in Texas are calling for the decriminalization of illegally crossing the United States border.

Rep. Robert O’Rourke who is running against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate, declared that illegal entry should not be a criminal matter, while he was campaigning in southern Texas:

“These asylum seekers — penniless, at wit’s end, after surviving three weeks on the road, very often with their children — then attempt to do what I think any human would do, which is request asylum in between the ports of entry,”

“We should not criminalize that.” O’Rourke stated.

Cruz’s seat is solidly red, however that fact does not deter comical publicity stunts like this one. It is safe to make the educated assumption that this message does not coincide with the vast majority of Texans, however the race has gotten interesting.

Recent polling numbers suggest the race it tighter than Cruz would like which may be a significant result of the national attention and monies being spent on the O’Rourke campaign. The campaign has raked in $23.3 million based on recent reports.

Some other Democratic candidates identified similar feelings while on the campaign trail last weekend.

Veronica Escobar, who is running to fill O’Rourke’s seat said: “The United States has built a system on incarcerating migrants, we really have to evaluate the way that we’ve criminalized migration.” “When we treat asylum-seekers like criminals, the next step is we have to jail them, we have to incarcerate them,” Escobar continued. “It’s incredibly costly.”

Former U.S. Customs agent and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, used her experience to argue that illegal immigrants are not a public threat. “The majority of people are not coming in to do harm,” she said said. “We still have to have some kind of checking and verifying, but I don’t think coming in here undocumented should be a criminal issue.”

SOURCE

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Arizona governor must pick a Republican to replace McCain under Arizona rules

Can we hope for Sheriff Joe?  He is very popular

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will make the appointment that will fill the seat of Sen. John McCain, who died Saturday after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Under state law the replacement must be of the same party as Mr. McCain, a Republican, according to election experts. That ensures the GOP will maintain control of the Senate — though given Mr. Ducey is a Republican as well, that was likely anyway.

Because the vacancy happened so late in the year, Mr. Ducey’s replacement will serve through the end of 2020, and the seat will next be on the ballot in November of that year. The winner would then serve out the final two years of the term Mr. McCain won in 2016 — his sixth.

Mr. Ducey’s decision could be tricky. Arizona’s other Senate seat, currently held by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, is up for election this year and the party primaries are on Tuesday. That race has turned into a bruising battle with an establishment-backed candidate in Rep. Martha McSally and two candidates from the right wing, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former state lawmaker Kelli Ward.

The conservatives are splitting the vote and Ms. McSally seems headed for a comfortable victory — but Mr. Ducey may face pressure from some corners of his state to name one of the others to fill Mr. McCain’s seat.

SOURCE

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Stadium Fever Makes Taxpayers Delusional

Attention, Sports Fans: That new stadium your city is talking about is likely costing you far more than you realize. In an op-ed at Forbes, Independent Institute Research Fellow Art Carden discusses the latest evidence: a study published last month in Economic Inquiry by two academic economists who studied hotel occupancy data from Charlotte, North Carolina, to determine the financial impact of various political and sporting events.

“Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations show incremental hotel‐tax receipts fall short of the debt service incurred in constructing and maintaining the city's sports venues,” write the economists, Craig A. Depken of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and E. Frank Stephenson of Berry College.

One extra cost that the public often ignores regarding public stadiums is extra policing, whether for a sports game or a political convention. Plus, the public often falls prey to the propaganda of developers and other special interests. “When construction starts on a new stadium or convention center, local leaders congratulate themselves like they’ve won some kind of great economic victory,” Carden writes. “They haven’t. They’ve simply fleeced the taxpayers for the benefit of construction companies, team owners, and other special interests by saddling them with white elephants for which they’ll pay for decades.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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52.1% of American Kids Live in Households Getting Means-Tested Government Assistance

This is not far off a Communist economy.  Those needing government assistance should be a small minority.  I am not even happy about school lunches.  In my childhood all kids brought their lunches in a a brown bag from home.  A school was a school, not a diner.  Nobody starved then even though most of the households  were quite poor by today's standards.

And we had a lot of minorities there too -- though they were minorities of European origin, mostly Italians.  And an Italian mother would have been deeply ashamed to send her kid to school with anything less that a magnificent and very tasty lunch.  The motto of every Italian mother is "Mangiare, mangiare"! (Eat, eat!).  I am very pleased to have grown up among Italians, heirs of one of the great European civilizations, but also very warm and sentimental people, with a great love of family

But not all  minorities are like Italians


Will they be called The Welfare Generation?

Today, they are Americans under 18 years of age growing up in a country where the majority of their peers live in households that take "means-tested assistance" from the government.

In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them — or 52.1 percent — resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

These included the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.

The Census Bureau published its data on the number and percentage of persons living in households that received means-tested government assistance in its Current Population Survey Detailed Tables for Poverty.

Table POV-26 indicates there were approximately 319,911,000 people in the United States in 2016. Of these, 114,793,000 — 35.9 percent — lived "in a household that received means-tested assistance."

That does not mean every person in the household received the aid themselves, only that one or more persons living in the household did.

When examined by age bracket, persons under 18 were the most likely to live in a household receiving means-tested government assistance (52.1 percent), while those 75 and older were least likely (18.8 percent).

But Americans in all the age brackets up to age 44 analyzed by the Census Bureau were more likely to be living in a household that received means-tested government assistance than the overall national rate of 35.9 percent.

But even when the Census Bureau excluded the school lunch program from its calculations, the percentage of those under 18 who lived in a household receiving means-tested assistance (44.8 percent) exceeded the percentage in any other age bracket.

Twenty years ago, in 1998, according to Census Bureau data, only 36.9 percent of Americans under 18 lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance. In 2008, the percentage broke 40 percent for the first time. In 2013, it broke 50 percent for the first time.

America has now seen four straight years — 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 — during which a majority of those under 18 lived in a household taking means-tested benefits.

The Census Bureau data indicate that people living in intact families are less likely to be on government assistance than people living in broken families. Nonetheless, the government-dependency rate is still high for intact families that have children under 18.

SOURCE

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Trump’s Character and Trump’s Presidency

David Horowitz below defends Trump's character.  His final paragraph makes a major point about that.  He reports some rather extraordinary behavior from Jonah Goldberg.  One would think that, unlike Leftists, conservatives could disagree without resorting to abuse and foul language.  It looks like Jonah is drifting over to the dark side

A few days ago, I had a dust-up on Twitter with National Review’s Jonah Goldberg. Our conflict was about Trump’s fitness to be president, a subject that has been broached millions of times on social media by other internet partisans. Twitchy posted the exchange and promoted it this way: “It’s On! Jonah Goldberg, David Horowitz Duke It Out Over Trump’s Character.” The donnybrook led to 500,000 impressions on my Twitter feed, including legions of anti-Trump zealots eager to demonstrate how creative they could be in devising insults to throw at me for defending Trump: beyond dumb, in need of psychiatric help, and probably receiving payments through offshore bank accounts.

As it happens, I’ve known Jonah for more than 20 years, admired his wit and insights, promoted his books, and put him on my platforms. I was distressed when he joined the NeverTrump chorus, but never wrote a critical word about him—hoping, I guess, that as Trump systematically undid the damage that the Obama regime had inflicted on the country, Jonah would return to his senses.

Other NeverTrump conservatives, on the other hand, just jumped to the other side. Bill Kristol even went so far as to collude with the Brennan-instigated witch-hunt by spreading talking points from the Steele dossier. It was easy to write these renegades off, though still wondering how they rationalized the betrayal of their lifetime principles, or were able to deny that they were doing so.

Afraid to Get Their Principles Wet

But a group of NeverTrumpers like Jonah adopted a less radical stance and conceded that many or even most of Trump’s policy actions were actually conservative, and ones they agreed with. What made them NeverTrumpers was his horrible, defective character. Most prominent among this group was Bret Stephens, whom I have also admired and promoted in the past. At the end of Trump’s first year, Stephens wrote a column for the New York Times—the position being an obvious reward for his defection—called “Why I’m Still A Never Trumper.” In it he praised Trump’s major policy actions since entering the White House. But then he attacked Trump’s bad character, which was unpresidential and indefensible. And averred: “I still wish Hillary Clinton were president.”

When I read his column, the first question that popped into my mind was: How can indefensible and unpresidential bad character lead to such admirable presidential decisions? I am not aware of any attempt by Stephens or Jonah or similar NeverTrumpers to provide an answer.

The posture of these NeverTrumpers is transparently self-serving. It preserves their intellectual credentials as “conservatives,” and simultaneously takes them out of the line of fire from an increasingly vicious Left whose goal is to destroy Trump and his presidency, and—incidentally—conservative America. Sitting on the fence affords them new career opportunities—appearances on CNN and MSNBC and columns in the New York Times. All that’s required is that they avoid taking sides in the political war that is engulfing the country. All this reminds me of a memorable Trotsky sneer about liberals, whom he accused of being reluctant to step into the stream of political conflict because they were afraid to get their moral principles wet.

So, when this tweet from Jonah appeared on my feed, I abandoned my self-restraint and answered it:

"Re-asking a question I've been posing for three years: Please come up with a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear."

This was followed by a retweet and a new comment:

"This is easily the most triggering question you can ask of Trumpist snowflakes"

‏I don’t know whether it was the snide-ness of this comment or its absoluteness that triggered me, but it seemed so pigheadedly self-righteous, so oblivious of the complexities of human character, not to mention the nuclear dimensions of the Left’s war against Trump that I responded—and in doing so walked into a hornets’ nest.

"He has an amazing family. He's loyal to a fault. He loves the country that gave him a privileged life, He works around the clock for ordinary Americans, & their security. He would never appoint a treacherous individual to head the CIA. Wake up Jonah.Its a war & u cant be neutral"

Which drew this retort:

"This is total nonsense David. He’s not loyal to a fault. He’s not loyal to his wives. Read up on how he treated Roy Cohn ffs. He doesn’t work around the clock. He won’t read and won’t stop watching TV. I can’t tell if your head is up your ass or his"

The nastiness of that last sentence shocked me. Evidently the hatred of Trump is so fevered it can burn through two decades of cordiality and acquaintance. I wonder if Jonah would be so hostile to someone who shared his view of Trump’s character but thought Trump’s policies were racist, and tyrannical.

Two Episodes in Trump’s Favor

As it happens, I am well aware of the vulnerabilities of what I tweeted. I should never have written it and fallen into the Twitter trap. Tweets don’t provide enough space to account for the complexities of this subject or provide sufficient examples to make one’s case. “Character” is notoriously mercurial, and complex to judge. As it happens, in referring to Trump’s loyalty I had in mind two episodes. The first was the topic of the week, Omarosa. Why did he stick with such a wretched individual for so long, despite warnings from everyone around him that she was no good? Loyalty to a fault.

The second was when the Left showed its teeth in his first days in the White House, and maliciously attacked Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions as white nationalists and racists and even neo-Nazis. Any other Republican, freshly in office, would have thrown them under the bus, however false the accusations. Trump’s fortitude, his refusal to back down under withering fire, is also a character trait, and an admirable one—actually the key to his success where Bush and congressional Republicans had repeatedly failed. Loyalty.

Making Compromises, Keeping Promises

Since Jonah brings up Trump’s three marriages let me ask the question: who can see inside another person’s marriage? I thought, moreover, that since Reagan—who had two wives—entered the White House and performed as a conservative hero, Republicans would have gotten over their puritanical prejudices. All politicians have flawed characters. It’s the nature of the job, which requires compromises, prevarications, dirty deals, and the like. In Trump’s case, what is important is not his loyalty to his wives (and none of them seem to be complaining) but his loyalty to the cause he champions and the people who support him.

Has Trump kept his promises to his supporters? Has he stayed the course he set for himself of making America great again? That loyalty is the character trait that matters most in a leader, and should matter most in any assessment of Trump. He has taken great personal risks and incurred great personal costs. His reputation for example, was pretty good before he ran against Democrats and their media, who fueled an epidemic of hate portraying him as a racist and neo-Nazi.

I’m betting there isn’t another Republican who would not have wilted under these attacks. Who would have had the fortitude to stay the course, and keep his promises. That’s really good character. And it’s presidential.

SOURCE

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CNN Embarrassed When They Discover Americans Don’t Care About Manafort/Cohen Stories

CNN sent a reporter to a battleground state to speak with voters about the cases involving Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. The network was undoubtedly hoping voters would smear President Donald Trump, but CNN was completely embarrassed when people made it clear they could not care less about it.

As noted by The Daily Wire, CNN’s Jason Carroll made a trip to a county in North East Pennsylvania that voted for former President Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. He asked three Democrats, three Independents, and one Republican if the legal drama with Manafort and Cohen has changed their views on Trump.

Registered Democrat Anne Marie Lenahan told CNN that the economy is so strong under Trump that she has no problem overlooking allegations that Trump had an affair before becoming president, “unless the money came from campaign funds.”

Lenahan said it wouldn’t be good if Trump did break campaign finance laws, but said she still plans to vote for Trump again in 2020.

Carroll had similar luck with registered Democrats Richard and Eileen Sorokas, who said they voted for Obama twice and Trump in 2016.

When the CNN talking head tried his best to portray Trump has being complicit in the two cases, Richard and Sorokas said they are thrilled with the booming stock market, robust economy, and Trump getting rid of political correctness. They said they only see the Manafort-Cohen drama as a sideshow to how well the country is doing under the president.

Registered Republican Bob Sellon really let the CNN reporter have it, saying that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was supposed to be about alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign, and that there has been no evidence at all to support the claim.

Carroll then switched it up, perhaps trying to only ask a question that wouldn’t result in Trump getting overly praised. He asked the three Independent voters if Trump pardoning Manafort and/or Cohen would change their minds. They said it would, because Manafort was found guilty by a jury and Cohen pleaded guilty to committing crimes.

It’s actually quite amazing to watch how badly that backfired for CNN. Despite the network almost endlessly smearing the president and spreading doom-and-gloom every single day, voters appear to be unmoved in their support for Trump.

More importantly, the segment shows that voters are cutting through the noise of the mainstream media and seeing how prosperous America has been since Trump took office.

Trump’s administration has created just shy of seven million jobs; the stock market has been at an all-time high for nearly a year; unemployment has dropped across the board to historic lows, and the GOP tax cuts have resulted in roughly 90 percent of Americans keeping more of their hard-earned money this year.

Voters also are able to see that Manafort being found guilty on eight counts of fraud has nothing to do with Trump, given the crimes occurred nearly a decade ago. They also appear unconcerned by what Trump may or may not have done many years ago in his personal life.

CNN has been heavily invested in both of those stories, including Russia collusion. And voters made it clear that they do not care at all — and many said Trump will have their vote again in 2020.

SOURCE

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Leftist thuggery in Australia too

From the French Revolutiom onward, the Left have always been as  violent and vicious as they can get away with

The office of leadership challenger Peter Dutton has been targeted by vandals who hurled bricks through glass windows and doors.

The pavers were thrown with such force they left gashes in the walls of the former Home Affairs Minister's office after being propelled through the glass.

Despite smashing holes in reinforced glass windows and two glass doors, the vandals did not enter the office, in Strathpine, north of Brisbane.

Vandals also spray-painted anti-Dutton slogans on bike paths in the former Home Affairs Minister's electorate, including one reading 'deport Dutton'.

The 1.45am attack occurred just hours after Mr Dutton declared he had the numbers to challenge Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership.

Police are investigating the attack, but no arrests have been made over the attack, which left an estimated $10,000 worth of damage.

'Police are investigating significant damage caused to an office overnight in Strathpine,' Queensland Police said.

'Police were called to the Gympie Road address by a member of the public, to find brick pavers had been thrown at the windows causing extensive damage.'

Mr Dutton, a former Queensland police officer, tendered his resignation from Cabinet after challenging Mr Turnbull in a spill on Tuesday.

A former immigration minister, Mr Dutton has been targeted by Labor and the Greens for his hardline policies on asylum seekers.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Mrs Stalin speaks up

Human life didn't matter to Stalin either

For more than a month, local authorities and residents of a small rural community in Iowa thoroughly searched the surrounding area for Mollie Tibbetts, a young college student who’d gone missing while out for a jog.

A body that is believed to be hers was discovered in a corn field on Tuesday, not far from the woman’s hometown, pointed out to authorities by an illegal immigrant who confessed to police that he chased the young woman down and murdered her.

Unsurprisingly, many voices on the right immediately drew comparisons to the murder of Kate Steinle in California by an illegal immigrant — as well as thousands of other similar victims — and held up the horrific incident as proof that our nation needs to strengthen our border and immigration laws to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Also unsurprisingly, many on the left sought to quickly dismiss or even ignore the tragic death of Tibbetts — an MSNBC pundit dismissed her as “some girl in Iowa” who was unimportant — in light of what they viewed as larger and more significant problems that needed to be addressed.

One of those who seemingly dismissed the murder of Tibbetts as not being a highly important issue was Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who in an appearance Tuesday on CNN said the country needed to focus on “real problems” like the temporary separation of illegal immigrant families at the border.

To be sure, Warren did initially offer her condolences to the Tibbetts family. “I’m so sorry for the family here and I know this is hard, not only for the family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa,” she said.

“But one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are,” Warren added, implying that the murder of Tibbetts by an illegal alien was not a “real problem.”

“Last month I went down to the border and I saw where children had been taken away from their mothers, I met with those mothers, who’ve been lied to, who didn’t know where their children were, who hadn’t had a chance to talk to their children, and there was no plan for how they’d be reunified with their children,” Warren said.

“I think we need immigration laws that focus on people who pose a real threat, and I don’t think that mamas and babies are the place where we should be spending our resources,” she added. “Separating a mama from her baby does not make this country safer.”

Aside from the ghastly remark which implied that the murder of Tibbetts didn’t constitute a “real problem” worthy of much focus and attention, Warren also made a rather ignorant statement with regard to the temporary separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents at the border.

Those separations, tragic as they certainly are, are only temporary for the duration of the criminal proceedings the parents must endure after being caught illegally entering the country. Those families are later reunited once all is said and done, either here in America or back in their home country after deportation.

What Warren said that revealed her lack of self-awareness is in complaining about children being “taken away” from their mothers and the mothers who didn’t know where their children were or were unable to speak with them. While temporary for the illegal aliens, that separation is permanent for the mother of Mollie Tibbetts.

Tibbetts’ mother had her child permanently “taken away” from her by an illegal alien. She didn’t know where her missing child was for more than a month. She will never be able to speak with her beloved child ever again.

But, apparently, the concerns of illegal immigrant mothers temporarily separated from their children after they committed a crime is of more importance — a “real problem” — than the heartbroken concern of an American citizen whose child was permanently separated from the family by an individual who never should have been in the country in the first place.

In the end, we see that the Democrat talking point of being outraged over temporary family separations at the border takes precedence over the horrific murder of an American citizen by a criminal illegal alien.

SOURCE 

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There’s Nothing “Right” Or Conservative About Neo-Nazis

Like the original Nazis, the Neo-Nazis of Charlottesville and elsewhere are socialists

The establishment media, especially CNN, MSNBC and various other fake news purveyors have been working overtime to sell the idea that Neo-Nazis are part of the conservative movement and that the racism and hate they display is a pervasive sickness in American culture and politics.

No matter what label Neo-Nazis put on themselves, there’s nothing “right” or conservative about their ideas.

Indeed, as Dinesh D’Souza proved through his book and new movie, “Death of a Nation,” the ideas propounded by such white supremacist leaders Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer are thoroughly grounded in Leftist and Socialist ideology.

As D’Souza explained in a recent C-SPAN interview* “What I am contesting is the meaning of that event [the Charlottesville riot]. Because, from the left’s point of view this was right wing white supremacy, and that was the whole point for Trump to condemn it. I deny that. I deny that, and I deny it, based on a close analysis of who was there and who these white supremacists are, and in this book, “Death of a Nation, I go through the list.”

“Jason Kessler, the founder, the organizer of – of Charlottesville, turns out to be an Obama activist, and an Occupy Wall Street guy.”

“Think about this. Does it make sense, someone who is an Obama voter and supporter becomes a white supremacist? That makes no sense to me. You think the media would be, like ‘Let’s check this guy out,’ but there was a Charlottesville paper that did. It looked into his background, and it turns out he has a long left-wing history. They interviewed his girlfriend, and she goes ‘he broke up with me because I am too conservative.’ This guy, Jason Kessler.”

“Now, we move on to the poster boy of white supremacy, Richard Spencer. This guy is so controversial, that when he went to speak in Florida, the governor declared a state of emergency. So, I interview him and its riveting, it’s about four minutes in the movie. And I asked him a series of questions. It’s very illuminating.”

“Does he believe all men are created equal? ‘No.’”

“I say, ‘Does he believe in individual dignity? ‘No.’”

“Does he believe in the right to life? ‘No.’”

“Where do rights come from? He says ‘Well, they don’t come from God.‘”

“So, where to do they come from?  He said, ‘They come from the government.’”

“He is a statist. He believes the government gives you your rights.”

“And I ask him ‘What do you think of Reagan?’. He goes ‘Terrible president‘.”

“I go ‘Who are your favorite presidents?’ He lists a bunch of Democrats.”

“I go ‘Well, those are all Democrats.’. He goes ‘Yeah, I know. But it’s just a party.'”

“And, he’s naming people like Andrew Jackson, who was the founder of the Democratic Party. The point I’m trying to make is that the white supremacists are not conservative. They are not conservative in the modern, American sense of conservative. They are unrecognizable to a normal conservative, and that’s obvious from the movie, so what I’m doing really, through a combination of history, and investigative journalism, is contesting these prevailing narratives, but I’m doing it in a responsible and civil way.”

So how did these Leftists, who identify with Germany’s National Socialist Party become identified as being part of the Right or conservative movement?

The first and most important reason is that conservatives and Neo-Nazis are battling for the hearts and minds of America’s working class – the forgotten men and women that President Trump speaks of so often.

The Left’s urban elite have absolutely no interest in pursuing or serving the interests of these Americans – they are all about identity politics and long ago decided to bank their political future on serving the interests of illegal aliens and expanding immigration from Third World populations already grounded in the anti-constitutional ideologies of Islam and Socialism.

Thus the battle is for the hearts and minds of mostly young white people who believe the Republican and Democratic parties have ignored their legitimate complaints that free trade as practiced by both political parties isn’t free at all, and that the econometric view of American jobs as just one market in a global market has pitted elite policy-makers against the best interests and quality of life of their fellow Americans.

The Neo-Nazis are fighting for the allegiance of these working-class voters by blaming the loss of their upward mobility and quality of life on racial grievance, but their solution – government oppression of minorities – isn’t conservative at all.

However, it serves the political interest of Democrats to undermine President Trump and his conservative – populist agenda by pushing this guilt by association narrative and splitting the working men and women of America along racial and ethnic lines.

If African – Americans, especially in the Rust Belt – can be convinced that Trump and his white supporters are a bunch of racists then his policies of reducing regulations, raising wages by restricting immigration, rebuilding American manufacturing, renegotiating trade deals and protecting Second Amendment liberties must, through the magic of guilt by association, also be racist.

There’s nothing “Right” or conservative about the Neo-Nazis who gathered in Washington last weekend, but, just as it did in Nazi Germany, their movement will only grow if conservatives join the Left in undermining President Trump’s Make America Great Again economic agenda.

SOURCE 

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Jeremy Corbyn refuses to endorse tougher sanctions on Russia

It's a strange feeling to agree with the leader of the British Labour party but I agree with him on this

Jeremy Corbyn has refused to endorse calls for the UK to follow the United States and impose tougher sanctions on Russia, describing it as a "huge player on the world stage".

Speaking in New Lanark, Scotland, the Labour leader called for “serious dialogue” with Moscow.

It came after Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, used his first speech in the US to call for the European Union to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Washington over tougher sanctions on Russia.

Mr Corbyn said: "I think what we need is a serious dialogue with Russia, put the megaphones down, pick up the phone and make the arrangements to have serious meetings with Russia.

SOURCE 

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James Woods Dismantles Chuck Schumer Over His “Trump is a Dictator” BS

Conservative activist James Woods just dropkicked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over his “Trump is a dictator nonsense:”

 

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lashed out at President Trump’s decision to strip former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearance, arguing the move was driven by “spite and malice” and meant to silence a critic.

“The abuse of the powers of public office to silence critics, punish political enemies is exactly what goes on in dictatorships in banana republics and we’re not one of those, thank god,” Schumer said from the Senate floor.

SOURCE 

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Former Clinton Pollster Goes Rogue; Says HILLARY Broke Campaign Finance Laws, Not Trump

Now that the entire political left, the Democrats and their lickspittles in the media in the mainstream media are on cloud nine following former Trump attorney Michal Cohen’s accusing the president of violating campaign finance laws, one important idea must be entertained on the way to the impeachment tribunals.

Despite all of the sound and fury and despite Cohen’s turning rat to save his own skin, it’s not President Trump who is guilty as charged but rather the embittered loser of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton.

Yes, that’s right. By virtue of her exalted status as the matriarch of the Clinton global crime syndicate, crooked Hillary continues to receive a free pass from the feds, the media and most of all, the angry army of the Resistance.

But not from her former pollster who has just earned himself a bounty on his head from the Hillary dead-enders and the social media hate mobs.  Mark Penn has gone rogue and in breaking from the pack, has risked his safety, his future employment prospects and may very well end up on Silicon Valley’s watch lists.

In an editorial by the man who ran served as Slick Willie’s pollster before he was the chief strategist of Hillary’s doomed 2008 campaign, Penn let it rip by blasting the double standard of how Trump is treated in comparison to his former master as well as calling out Saint Bob Mueller for using Cohen to frame Trump.

And in what will prove to be an unforgivable sin, he scoffs at the idea that Trump’s alleged payments to smut queen Stormy Daniels constituted a violation of the law while Team Hillary’s payment to retain the slime for hire due of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele is ignored.

The usual procedures here would be for the FEC to investigate complaints and sort through these murky laws to determine if these kinds of payments are personal in nature or more properly classified as campaign expenditures. And, on the Daniels payment that was made and reimbursed by Trump, it is again a question of whether that was made for personal reasons (especially since they have been trying since 2011 to obtain agreement). Just because it would be helpful to the campaign does not convert it to a campaign expenditure. Think of a candidate with bad teeth who had dental work done to look better for the campaign; his campaign still could not pay for it because it’s a personal expenditure.

Contrast what is going on here with the treatment of the millions of dollars paid to a Democratic law firm which, in turn, paid out money to political research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele without listing them on any campaign expenditure form — despite crystal-clear laws and regulations that the ultimate beneficiaries of the funds must be listed. This rule was even tightened recently. There is no question that hiring spies to do opposition research in Russia is a campaign expenditure, and yet, no prosecutorial raids have been sprung on the law firm, Fusion GPS or Steele. Reason: It does not “get” Trump.

One has to applaud Mark Penn for daring to say that the emperor has no clothes.

SOURCE 

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Prize Democrat dummy Visits Coffee Shop Her Policies Helped To Close

Socialist New York congressional hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lamented the closing of her former employer but glided over the fact that it was closing because of the minimum-wage hikes she supports.

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez visited The Coffee Shop, a Union Square icon for years, to emphasize her familiarity with the lives of everyday workers. She cited her experience at the restaurant as a case study in bettering oneself and the future.

“The restaurant I used to work at is closing its doors. I swung by today to say hi one last time and kid around with friends like old times,” she said on Monday. “I’m a normal, working person who chose to run for office, because I believe we can have a better future. You can do it too. We all can.”

Her former employers announced the closure of the eatery in July, blaming in part the policies that Ocasio-Cortez has campaigned on. The Coffee Shop co-owner and president Charles Milite told the New York Post that escalating rents as well as New York’s minimum-wage hikes were to blame for shuttering the company, which employed 150 workers.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Explaining the Left: Part II

Dennis Prager correctly highlights the Leftist hate of America below -- JR
   
The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, did Americans a favor last week. He provided that which is most indispensable to understanding anything: clarity.

“America … was never that great,” he announced.

In one sentence, the governor revealed the left’s true view of America. This is rare — because leftists are masters at hiding what they really believe.

For example, the left’s low regard for nonwhites is well-hidden under a mountain of “anti-racist” rhetoric. But people who consistently advocate lowering standards for blacks obviously do not think highly of blacks, and people who believe in separate black dorms and separate black graduation ceremonies obviously believe in a pillar of racism: racial segregation.

Another generally denied — if not hidden — left-wing belief is contempt for America. On a daily basis, the left describes America as xenophobic, misogynistic, imperialist, greedy and homophobic. And that’s on a slow day at The New York Times, MSNBC or your local university. Just last week, a New York Times column added “barbaric” to the left’s view of America.

But for some reason, the average American does not see all this as proof of the left’s contempt for America.

So, we have to rely on the occasional unguarded and unambiguous statement to know what the left really thinks.

Michelle Obama provided such a statement when, as her husband began racking up victories in early-voting states in the 2008 primary season, she proclaimed, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”

Hillary Clinton provided her example during the 2016 election when she described half of her fellow Americans as “deplorables.”

Then-President Barack Obama provided his example in 2015 when he spoke about racism being “part of our DNA.” Now, you might argue that he was merely stating a truth, not expressing contempt. But that argument fails for three reasons:

First, America has developed into the least-racist multiracial, multi-ethnic country in history. Those who deny this have contempt for truth as well as for America. So much for DNA.

Second, can Barack Obama or anyone else on the left name a country or group in history that interacted with other races and was free of racism? Of course not. So, singling out America as having racist DNA is an expression of contempt for America specifically.

Third, how would Barack Obama or anyone else on the left react to someone saying, “Islamic civilization has racism in its DNA”? They would not only emphatically deny it; they would charge whoever said it with being Islamophobic. In other words, if one tells the truth about centuries of horrific treatment of blacks under Islamic rule, one is bigoted against Islam. But if one says America has racism in its very essence, racism that is still being passed unconsciously from one generation to the next, one is not an Ameriphobe?

And now, Cuomo tells an audience that “America … was never that great.”

Cuomo said publicly what virtually every leftist believes. No one — left, right or center — thinks the comment was idiosyncratic. If Cuomo had said, “America was never a sports-loving nation,” everyone would have assumed this was just an odd comment representing no one but him. The reason this comment hit such a powerful chord in American life is that just about everyone suspects he was saying what all his fellow leftists believe.

After all, we all know what young people are taught from elementary school through graduate school by their left-wing teachers: America is a racist country founded by racists; Americans committed genocide against the American Indians; whites have unique privileges because of America’s “systemic” racism; in the words of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … front to back”; police are racist — both white and black cops shoot blacks because of racism; and “American civilization” and “Western civilization” are no more than euphemisms for white supremacy.

Now, why would anyone think the left has contempt for America?

Contempt for America is so central to leftism that there would be no leftism without it. Yet there remains an even more important question: Why? Why does the left — not liberals, who traditionally revered America — have such disdain for America? I will address this question in a future installment of this series explaining the left. America and the West cannot be saved unless those who cherish them understand what motivates those who wish to see them end.

SOURCE 

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Immigration Problem? Put Some ICE on It

President Donald Trump hosted an event at the White House Monday honoring the men and women of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Protection agencies.

"You are the patriots and you are the heroes," Trump told the assembled agents and agency personnel. "You keep us safe and you keep us free. I am honored every single day to serve as your commander-in-chief. I will never leave your side; I will never leave the fight."

It's a good thing, too. Both agencies are increasingly under fire by the Left and the media as the debate simmers over illegal immigration and how the government is supposed to handle it. According to leftists, the government shouldn't do anything at all about illegal immigration. In fact, they are calling for the outright abolition of ICE.

Don't underestimate the power behind that challenge. The proposal to dismantle ICE may have started as an offhand remark by Bernie Sanders's socialist padawan Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it is now a mainstream Democrat plank. Likely 2020 presidential candidates such as Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris have all joined the call. And three House Democrats introduced legislation to follow through.

Leftists claim that U.S. border policies are harsh and inhumane, and their media lackeys dutifully go along, bending stories any way they can to fit that narrative. Take, for instance, the widely reported story of the illegal immigrant picked up by ICE while taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to have her baby. Conveniently left out of the reporting by virtually every major news outlet — at least the headlines or flashing TV alerts that most people see — was that the man was ducking an outstanding warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico on homicide charges.

Stories like this are meant to cast ICE as the villain, which then leads to further attacks against the agency. What many don't understand, however, is that ICE is the backbone of America's immigration enforcement. There would be (even more) chaos without it.

ICE is the principal agency for enforcing immigration laws inside the U.S., including the apprehension of illegal immigrants who have slipped past the Border Patrol; combatting the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and people into the country; and investigating immigration fraud schemes. ICE also protects immigrant communities by cracking down on criminal activity that takes place there. Gangs and other bad guys generally commit crimes in the communities in which they reside, making legal immigrants the victims.

There are other agencies that also handle some of these tasks, but they are already stretched beyond their limits. The sheer volume of cases is more than any single law enforcement agency can bear. Consider that last year over 700,000 people overstayed their visas. That is 300,000 more people than the number apprehended while trying to illegally cross the U.S. border with Mexico during that same period.

Take ICE out of the picture, and the whole immigration system would quickly unravel — which is exactly what the Left wants.

It has been said that Democrats and the Left care more about illegal immigrants than they do about American citizens. But even that's a stretch because they don't care about illegal immigrants, either. The leftist call for open borders is an attempt to break down American society by overwhelming our communities and our culture with bad people from foreign lands. Leftists discourage assimilation and the learning of English to help further that goal. Democrats see a fresh batch of voters they can hook onto the government dole and keep leftists in office.

But is this a political winner for Democrats? Not necessarily. As W. James Antle III notes, "House Republicans brought a pro-ICE resolution up for a vote to dare Democrats to vote against it — just 34 did, though 133 voted 'present' — while Trump brings it up often on the campaign trail."

People need to look beyond the rhetoric that demonizes ICE and support the agency's work to protect American communities from fraud, crime, and terrorism. Without ICE, American streets will not be safe. And that's why Trump's celebration yesterday was welcome.

SOURCE 

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Security clearances should terminate with government employment

I have always thought this.  It's usual in the private sector -- JR

The understandable furor ignited by the president’s latest Nixonian vendetta should not distract from a larger question: How is it that former officials retain privileged access to state secrets in the first place? Who benefits from this well-established practice?

The nation itself benefits, we are told. The argument goes like this: Allowing such individuals, now typically employed by universities, think tanks, and lobbying firms, to retain their clearances keeps them in the know should current officials wish to draw on their experience and expertise. Yet this, to appropriate a term that ex-CIA director John Brennan included in a New York Times op-ed penned in response to Trump terminating his own clearance, is “hogwash.”

In the unlikely event that current CIA director Gina Haspel needs Brennan’s advice on a question that her agency’s 21,000 employees can’t answer, all she needs to do is give him a call. Even without a clearance, he still has a phone. In the even more unlikely — make that wildly improbable — event that national security adviser John Bolton wishes to avail himself of the wisdom of Susan Rice, who held his job during Obama’s second term, he need only turn on the television or check newspaper opinion pages. As was the case when Bolton himself was pontificating on Fox News, her views are readily available, free of charge. And they will continue to be available even if, as reported, she is among those in line to have their clearances revoked.

So let’s have done with the pretense that allowing former officials access to classified information enhances national security. In reality, the practice has everything to do with the allocation and perpetuation of privilege.

According to the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.” As a general proposition, that may be true. Yet in policy circles, men and women enjoying access to state secrets are more equal than the rest of us. Clearances confer status, readily convertible into access, influence, and opportunity, monetary and otherwise. The more exotic the clearance — up in the realm beyond Top Secret, for example — the greater the access and influence and the more attractive the opportunities.

To retain a security clearance after leaving government is to display an invisible badge declaring of the bearer: Although now on the outside, I’m still an insider. Whether intended or not, this arrangement divides citizens into two camps. In the one camp are those ostensibly in the know: members of the policy elite. In the other camp are the rest of us, knowing what we read in the papers, otherwise kept in the dark, and expected to comply.

If evidence exists to show that this arrangement yields more effective policy, I have yet to see it. Certainly the record of US policy in recent decades suggests otherwise. I am, however, certain that an arrangement allowing the few to have a say while casting the great majority in the role of spectators is antithetical to democracy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A hallowed principle supposedly governs access to classified information. It’s called “need to know.” Under the terms of this principle, individuals are allowed access only to information that is essential to the performance of their assigned duties. But former officials have no official duties. Therefore, they have no “need to know.”

Allow me to propose another principle: Clearances should terminate with government employment, plain and simple. Adherence to this principle will deprive Trump (and his successors) of the opportunity to play politics with matters that should be above politics. If only in a small way, it will also contribute to restoring our democracy.

SOURCE 

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Yet Another Study Finds That Economic Freedom Improves Lives

A new metastudy by Serbian think tank Libek confirms that countries wishing to increase their economic growth—and reap the many rewards that come from doing so—need to focus on advancing the economic freedom of their people.

Libek looked at 92 scholarly research studies that considered the relationship between economic freedom and economic growth. Eighty-six of them (93.5 percent) found a positive relationship.

That is not surprising, considering that economic freedom—the ability to direct one’s own life and make economic decisions for oneself—encourages and empowers people to make a better life for themselves and for their families.

The increased economic activity they produce shows up in measures of economic growth.

Still, the point cannot be made frequently enough, because economic freedom is still repressed in so many parts of the world.

The authors of the Libek metastudy think their findings are particularly relevant to their native Serbia.

The increase in economic-growth rates is very important for the Serbian economy. Serbia is the slowest-growing economy in the Balkans: Average growth rate in the decade after the recession (2008-2016) was only 0.83 percent annually.

At the same time, the unweighted average growth rate for other Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Romania) was nearly double that number, reaching 1.58 percent.

All but two of the other Balkan countries score higher than Serbia in The Heritage Foundation’s 2018 Index of Economic Freedom.

In fact, Heritage’s Index shows that on average, countries with the greatest increase in economic-freedom scores over 5-, 10-, and 20-year periods also have the greatest average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

The Serbian think tank’s findings are not surprising, and policymakers in Serbia and around the world should take them to heart.

Advancing economic freedom is key to generating economic prosperity for the greatest number of people—in Serbia and everywhere else.

SOURCE 

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Socialist logic

 

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Manafort guilty of what?

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to the Paul Manafort verdict:

“Paul Manafort may have been guilty of crimes ten years ago, but the one thing he was not found guilty of was conspiring with Russia on the hack of the DNC and Podesta emails during the 2016 election, the only justification for the Special Counsel investigation.

There was no collusion. Now that this trial is over, it is time for Mueller to wrap up his investigation and turn his findings over to the Justice Department.”

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Explaining Trump Hatred
   
The article below offers some reasonable thoughts but I think the reason behind the Trump hatred is rather simple.  In a "slowly, slowly" manner, the Left had got all of America to acquiesce to their ideas.  Even the GOP offered just a watered down version of Leftism.  Any shadow of patriotism, for instance was likely to be branded as "racism". And the Left insisted that America had a lot of problems needing big money to fix -- black education, for instance.  So Leftist hatred of their own country was well on the way to crippling America and reducing respect for it worldwide.  America as a punching bag was their aim and they were well on the way to achieving it.

Trump instantly overturned those hard-won "gains".  It was once again OK to celebrate America and remove the regulatory shackles that the Left had imposed on American business.  Trump revived real, traditional conservatism and insisted on a fair shake for America in trade, defense and much else.  No wonder the Left were outraged!  He had instantly undone decades of their work.

The cauldron of hate towards their own country that they always had in them now had one outlet and one focus, Donald J. Trump.  And we see daily what a cauldron of hate spills out of them.  The mask is off.  These people are not compassionate or tolerant.  That was always just a mask. They are vicious beasts, the children of the Devil


On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks entered the Senate chamber and approached Charles Sumner, who was sitting at his desk applying a postal frank to copies of his “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he excoriated Sen. Andrew Butler for embracing “the harlot, Slavery.” Brooks beat the unsuspecting Sumner senseless with a dog-whip cane, sending him into convalescence for the next three years and ending what remained of “reasoned discourse” in the Senate. A half-decade later, the nation plunged into the Civil War, settling disputes on the battlefield that could not be addressed by a civilized exchange of views, which had been crushed by passions of the time.

Today’s passions explode from elites embracing harlots of hatred and denunciation sufficient to shock the sensibilities of any antebellum orator: Fake severed heads, assassination threats, enough F-bombs to obliterate America’s enemies, along with endless verbal assaults against President Trump saturate progressive bellowing. All of which is insane, of course: If only H. P. Lovecraft (Mountains of Madness) were around to help us cope. Absent that, we always have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, though its entries apply to individual cases and not to entire categories of people losing their minds. What, then, can be said? What explains such unbridled hatred of President Trump? Here are a few suggestions.

* Trump is an outsider. Trump is not a normal Republican, or a normal Democrat, or a normal anything. He burst into the political scene late in his life, with few political obligations to anyone, least of all to entrenched elites in both political parties. Progressives have been accustomed to milquetoast Republicans for many decades; even Ronald Reagan didn’t depart from the script in ways that threatened the established order. And both Bushes, regardless of their occasionally bellicose policies, were eminently manageable; Bush I reneged on his No New Taxes pledge in a heartbeat and Bush II even expanded Medicare. Of course, both were still vilified, but, hey, that’s the leftist script. Plus, like most Republicans, they didn’t complain too much. Heck, they’re almost one of us! Trump isn’t.

* Trump fights back. The last thing leftist mudslingers expected was a Republican who would bring a cannon to a gunfight. In fact, President Trump’s loose twitter lips have punctured enough egos among his opponents to prod battalions of leftist potty-mouths to sue for copyright infringement. Donald Trump’s intemperate (and often ill-advised) responses to filthy onslaughts against him has had the effect of tarnishing his opponents’ brand names — especially in the media — by triggering even more extreme attacks. Before Trump, ideological hemophiliacs on the Left bled fashionable resentment with every minor cut, every perceived slight; now, here comes a guy who declares elite media as the “enemy of the people.” His denouncers are in full Keith Olbermann mode, now competing for an award that celebrates obscenity-screeching madness. Would be entertaining if it were not so sickening, so pathetic. And dangerous.

* Trump loves America. He loves the country, that’s it. No apologies, no equivocations, no “on the other hands” — he stands up for America, for ordinary citizens, for every skin color, from sea to shining sea. He stiffs welfare-state-besotted Euro-weenies, demands a level playing field in trade, and insists that government’s main concern should be for American citizens and not foreign lawbreakers either in China or across the Rio Grande. Progressives have contempt for America. They spit on the flag, despise at least half of our citizens, trash our history, sneer at capitalism, denounce our founders, the Declaration, the Constitution, and dismiss most Americans with a blizzard of acronyms. And then they wonder why Trump won. Go figure.

* Lib-Progs are spoiled rotten. They’ve had their way for the past half-century without serious interruption and still fully expect to transform the rest of the country to conform to the one-party systems they’ve clamped onto academia. A transformed America has no guns, no free speech, no boundaries, no conservatives, no Christians, a strictly controlled economic system, and a monstrous government in thrall to Lib-Progs’ lunatic climate cult and its grotesque commitment to infanticide. In short, totalitarianism. And then along came Trump.

* Lib-Progs’ entitlement complex. Nothing in life is a matter of merit, achievement, or individual responsibility; everything is a matter of administratively determined entitlement, with an arc of history thrown in. Both ensure that the country rumbles along in a direction culminating in rule by an elite corps of platonic guardians — liberal progressives controlling government, media, entertainment, academia, everything. In short, the country, history, owes them. And then along came Trump.

Although these suggestions offer hints to solving the Trump-hatred puzzle, one may still be left with a sense of incompletion, that something else still needs to be understood, an overlooked variable. Unfortunately, we may never understand such hatred completely, and even if we did, this knowledge may not thwart leftist plans for America. Normal cycles of politics will return liberals to government eventually; perhaps then, greater numbers of Americans besides the “deplorables” will more fully grasp what their self-described betters have in mind for them.

The only question is whether such a realization will arrive in time to save the country from those who despise Donald Trump and everything he stands for.

SOURCE

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Trump warns of 'terror, bloodshed and suffering' from the  Abolish ICE movement

President Trump lashed out at the Abolish ICE movement Monday and warned state and local leaders they must choose between anarchy or law and order as they pick sides in the fight.

He said those who continue to criticize U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, are inviting “terror, bloodshed and suffering” upon their communities. And he particularly blasted officials in Portland, Oregon, where ICE officers say the mayor ordered his police to stand down as anarchist protesters blockaded the agency’s building in June, endangering employees and shutting down work.

“I ask you to join me in publicly expressing your support for the men and women of ICE and CBP,” the president said in an open letter to governors, mayors, state legislators and other officials.

He is slated to hold an event at the White House later in the day thanking ICE and CBP employees for their efforts in the face of growing criticism from the left.

Immigrant-rights activists have called for ICE to be abolished, erroneously blaming it for the family separations that resulted from the chaos surrounding the administration’s zero tolerance border policy this spring.

Some Democratic politicians have joined the activists in their call — though party leaders have avoided going that far, saying instead that the agency needs reforms.

ICE handles detention and deportation of illegal immigrants, as well as cybersecurity, counterfeit merchandise and combating child pornography. No firm ideas have been offered for how those responsibilities would be restructured if ICE were to be abolished. The leading Democratic bill calls for a commission to study the matter.

Mr. Trump has seized on the calls, predicting they will hurt Democrats in November’s congressional elections.

In his letter Monday he asked state and local officials to write letters, issue public statements and otherwise “give voice to our nation’s longstanding tradition of honoring the public servants who protect our communities and our way of life.”

He also asked those states and localities who refuse full cooperation with federal immigration officials to rethink their stand.

And he expressed aversion to the anti-ICE demonstrations some communities have hosted.

“Innocent Americans have watched as organized agitators defaced public property, obstructed the execution of our laws, slandered law enforcement personnel, blocked civilian access to public spaces and created a hostile environment for our officers, agents and support personnel,” Mr. Trump wrote.

SOURCE

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Pollster Who Predicted Trump’s Election Has Bad News For Democrats

Just about everyone in the mainstream media predicted that Hillary Clinton would easily win the 2016 presidential election over Donald Trump. Only a select few media pollsters and “experts” were able to see the silent majorities rising across the country for Trump — and one of them was Anthony Salvanto.

Salvanto, who serves as CBS News’ director of elections and surveys, accurately predicted that Trump would win the 2016 election — and he’s got bad news for Democrats hoping to retake the House of Representatives in November’s midterm election.

During an interview with the New York Post, Salvanto said he’s identified a major trend that Democrats will not like: The “blue wave” they are promising is increasingly looking less and less likely. In other words, he’s predicting Republicans will keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.

Salvanto told the Post that he has been focusing on trends rather than random surveys generated by media websites after a big event takes place. He explained that doing so allows him to focus on patterns, and what issues are either maintaining momentum or losing interest among large groups of demographically diverse people over a longer period of time.

Here’s what the Post reported:

For 2018, the CBS News Battleground Tracker has gathered a panel of nearly 5,700 registered voters. Almost all of them live in the 50 to 60 districts that might switch from Republican to Democrat, or vice versa, in November — the only races that matter, when it comes to control of Congress. Salvanto’s polling currently indicates that few House seats will change hands in November — and that the GOP could very well hold its majority in the House.

Of the nation’s 435 House districts, fully 85 percent will almost certainly stick with its current party affiliation come November, Salvanto projects.

Salvanto told the Post that the GOP will more than likely fend off the “blue wave” and keep their majorities in both the House and Senate.

“Right now I think this election looks like a toss-up. We see a Democrat pickup in the House of Representatives in the 20-odd seat range, but Republicans could certainly hold on to the House. Even though Republicans have not fared well in special elections so far this cycle, it does look like they will be turning out for the midterms. So far we do not see a large number of Republicans saying they will flip and vote for a Democrat.”

Salvanto said Democrats biggest problem is that they have nothing to run on aside from obstructing President Donald Trump. Salvanto’s horrible news for Democrats comes as the economy is booming under Trump.

The GOP tax cuts have played a big role in the millions of new jobs created, the stock market roaring, unemployment dropping to historic lows, and giving the president leverage to negotiate with other nations to solve many of America’s trade imbalances.

The tax cuts have also been very popular and helpful to American families across the country. Numerous studies have shown that roughly 90 percent of Americans will see an increase in their paychecks this year. The markets are at all-time highs, more than 6.6 million jobs have been created, and the U.S. in on pace to hit 3 percent GDP growth for the entire year for the first time in decades.

All of that coupled with Democrats being nothing but obstructionists is why the GOP will keep their majorities.

SOURCE

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Media Omit Key Detail About ICE Arresting Man Who Took Wife To Hospital For C-Section

On Saturday, dozens of media outlets reported that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested an illegal alien who was taking his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby — but they conveniently left out one key detail: the man was a wanted murder suspect.

Agents arrested murder suspect Joel Arrona-Lara when he stopped to get gas while taking his wife, Maria del Carmen Venegas, to the hospital so she could give birth.

Many media outlets ran with misleading headlines that conveyed a sense of brutality and inhumanity as the political Left is currently trying to demonize ICE. Many publications didn't even include the fact Arrona-Lara was a homicide suspect in their reports.

One of the only media outlets to report that Arrona-Lara was a murder suspect in the title and in the report was NBC News, which reported that ICE specifically noted that Arrona-Lara was arrested because of an "outstanding warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico on homicide charges."

The timing of the media's latest deception to demonize the Trump administration for political gain comes just two days after more than 350 newspapers wrote op-eds bemoaning President Donald Trump's attacks on the media for inaccurately covering news stories and for sometimes reporting blatantly false information.

SOURCE

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Bill Maher Asks Brutal Question Cakeshop Critics Can't Answer: `Is There Only 1 Bakery in Colorado?'

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. HBO comedian and liberal pundit Bill Maher proved that adage correct in an episode of his "Real Time" on Friday.

Maher first lamented the far-left denouncement of free speech in a surprising defense of polarizing Infowars host Alex Jones. "Everybody gets to speak," Maher said.

Maher's next bout of enlightenment may have been accidental. In a monologue that was meant to elicit laughs, Maher actually asked a question (whether in jest or not) that many people lambasting the Masterpiece Cakeshop would struggle to answer.

After the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips went all the way to the Supreme Court, he is in yet another asinine legal battle after refusing to bake a cake celebrating a person making a transgender conversion.

Note that Phillips has never refused service to customers based on their sexuality, or anything else. He refuses to bake a cake that would celebrate an event that conflicted with his beliefs - which includes same-sex marriage cakes, divorce cakes, Halloween cakes, etc.

"Remember the baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for the gay couple, it went all the way to the Supreme Court? Now he's back in court because he wouldn't bake a cake for a couple celebrating - or somebody celebrating gender transition," Maher explained in his monologue.

He then went for some laughs despite the biting truth behind his quip. "Is there only one bakery in Colorado?" Maher asked. He also joked about "the big business opportunity" of opening his own liberal-themed bakery in Colorado.

But his question is actually spot on. How is it, exactly, that this one particular bakery has become embroiled in controversy again? A cursory search of bakers in Lakewood, Colorado (where Masterpiece Cakeshop resides) yields many alternatives for those needing to satisfy their bakery needs. Kogler's Bakery, Elegant Bakery, Sweet Ride Bakeshop, Cakes by Karen, Azucar Bakery, Designer Cakes Co., and Valhalla Cakes all make cakes in the Lakewood area.

And that was the simple result of a quick Google search. If a gay couple or someone celebrating a gender transition wanted a cake to specifically celebrate what they want, even the most rudimentary of online searches would've yielded countless other alternatives. If the effort to type in a quick search on their smartphone is too much effort, they have far more significant problems than a bakery refusing to make them a cake.

Based on the number of other bakers in the immediate area, it's hard to think of Masterpiece Cakeshop's woes as anything other than a targeted witch hunt against someone whose religious beliefs don't conform to far-left ideologies.

So to answer Maher, no, there isn't just one bakery in Colorado. Which makes it pretty obvious that people are specifically targeting Masterpiece Cakeshop.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Even Democrat "jokes" are hate expressions

Florida Democratic representative Alcee Hastings made a disturbing joke about no one trying to save a drowning President Donald Trump during a rally on Sunday.

Hastings was speaking at a rally in Sunshine, FL when he repeated a joke he heard from Ari Silver, the son of former Florida state legislator Barry Silver.

“I will tell you one joke,” Hastings said. “Do you know the difference between a crisis and a catastrophe?”

“‘A crisis is if Donald Trump falls into the Potomac River and can’t swim,'” Hastings said, retelling the joke. “‘And a catastrophe is anybody saves his ass.'”

The crowd cheered and whooped in delight at the joke.

SOURCE 

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Youth Unemployment Hits 50-Year Low Under Trump Admin

Before the 2016 presidential election, countless “experts” predicted economic doom and gloom if Donald Trump were to win.

Now, coming up on two years since President Trump took office, a chain of positive economic news could be summarized in four words: Experts are often wrong.

First, even the president’s opponents were forced to admit that everything didn’t fall apart the moment he took office. As Trump has frequently reminded his critics, unemployment numbers for blacks and Hispanics are near record lows, even as he’s attacked as an enemy of minorities.

Now, there’s even more good news for the Trump economy. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that young people are doing very well on the job front.

“From April to July 2018, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 2.0 million to 20.9 million,” the BLS said.

“The unemployment rate among young Americans fell to its lowest level in more than 50 years this summer,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump himself proudly shared that information via Twitter on Friday, in a post that was “liked” over 84,000 times.

Perhaps the most interesting observation is that many of the groups who have been reluctant to vote for Trump — black Americans and young people, for instance — are benefiting the most from his presidency.

The majority of millennials, 55 percent, voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election, according to an analysis of exit poll data from USA Today.

At the same time, a stunning number of younger Americans seem enamored by political promises that would almost certainly be disastrous for jobs and the country overall.

“(M)ore Millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country (44%) than in a capitalist one (42%). … The percentage of Millennials who would prefer socialism to capitalism is a full 10 points higher than that of the general population,” said a 2017 Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation/YouGov survey, which we reported on last year.

“It seems that the majority of America’s largest generation would prefer to live in a socialist or communism society than in a free enterprise system that respects the rule of law, private property, and limited government,” the foundation said.

Maybe it’s a cliched statement, but the youth in America might not know how good they have it. By almost every measure, life for Americans of all backgrounds is better than it has ever been and offers dramatically more opportunities compared with world standards.

The simple fact is that there are plenty of jobs for young people who want to make money and countless career options for almost anyone who is willing to show up and apply themselves.

Why so many young Americans are jaded and disenchanted despite living in a time of peace and opportunity may come down to a matter of messaging. If conservatives want to advance their ideas, communicating the principles that have made America great to the next generation is extremely important.

That may take a while … but pointing out how good things actually are in 2018 is definitely a strong start.

SOURCE 

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Fox News Breaks New Viewer Record, Swamps CNN’s Entire Brand

Though far from perfect, Fox News has nevertheless set itself apart from the rest of the mainstream media by providing more balanced and fair coverage of the political scene than their blatantly left-leaning competitors.

And it looks like they have been rewarded for that by American news consumers.

Fox News has been crushing their cable competition consistently for years, but especially within the past several months. Now, that domination appears to have been expanded to the internet side of American media consumption, where Fox has typically lagged behind its competitors.

In a news release from Fox, it was revealed that the network’s website outperformed that of chief rival CNN in terms of total page views for the first time ever.

On top of that, it was also revealed that FOXNews.com beat out other top brands such as CNN.com, NewYorkTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com in terms of engagement and time spent on the site by individual readers.

That revelation came from analytics data compiled in July 2018 by comScore, which showed that Fox had obtained roughly 1.5 billion total multi-platform views as compared to 1.4 billion garnered by CNN.

In addition, Fox also bested CNN for the fourth month in a row in terms of total page views, as Fox received about 1.45 billion compared to CNN’s approximately 1.22 billion total page views.

The release noted that FOXNews.com’s total multi-platform page views have increased by about 21 percent year-over-year, which now has them outperforming traditional legacy media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

To that point, Fox beat the website of The Times for the 7th consecutive month, this time by 457 million total page views.

Likewise, Fox beat The Post’s website for the 11th consecutive month by a margin of 887 million more total page views.

The FOXNews.com website now ranks third overall in terms of total unique visitors to the site — with 89.5 million unique visitors in the month of July — ranking higher than competitors such as The Times, The Post and CBSNews.com in terms of being a top-rated online news destination.

In this respect, Fox still trails CNN Brand and CNN.com, though Fox’s unique visitors total was up nine percent over this time last year.

However, Fox beat both versions of CNN in terms of time spent on the website by those visitors, as Fox ranked number one with almost 2.7 billion minutes, beating CNN Brand by 262 minutes and CNN.com by 491 million minutes.

The Fox release made it a point to highlight that they are the “most trusted source in news,” as per a recent Suffolk University/USA Today survey, and was the top-cited outlet as being the “most objective news source” in a 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey.

On top of that, the Fox News Channel consistently rates as a top-five cable network overall and has maintained their iron grip on the title of most watched cable news channel for 16 years running.

Based on the numbers of TV viewers and website readers, Fox is clearly dominating their competition, and they are doing so by living up to the mantle bestowed on them as being the “most objective” and “most trusted.”

Now, if only “fake news” outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the rest of the alphabet broadcast networks and legacy newspapers like The Times and The Post would consider being a bit more “objective” and trustworthy in putting out fair and balanced news reports like Fox, they may be able to reclaim the top spot in the media rankings from their better rival.

SOURCE 

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Ben Carson Calls Out Zoning Regulations for Driving Up Housing Costs

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), wants to pare back Obama-era housing regulations that he says do not do enough to address the real driver of housing costs: zoning regulations.

On Monday, Carson announced that he was looking to revise the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which sought to combat housing segregation by requiring local governments to perform extensive (and expensive) reviews on how concentrated their neighborhoods were along class and racial lines, and then to develop action plans to create more "balanced and integrated living patterns." Local governments that failed to fulfill either requirement would be cut off from a number of federal housing grant programs.

Carson said on Monday that he wants to replace the 2015 AFFH with new rules that focus on increasing the overall supply of housing.

"I want to encourage the development of mixed-income multifamily dwellings all over the place," Carson told The Wall Street Journal, saying, "I would incentivize people who really would like to get a nice juicy government grant" to reform their zoning codes.

According to the Journal, Carson specifically called out Los Angeles for its strict single-family zoning rules that limit the number of housing units that can be built in the city. "Of course you're going to have skyrocketing prices that no one can afford," he said.

That Carson would want to reform the AFFH rule is not terribly surprising, given that he has been a critic of it long before he was appointed HUD secretary. As far back as 2015, Carson criticized the AFFH rule as an example of "social engineering" and "failed socialism." As HUD secretary, he has already taken steps to weaken it, such as pushing back compliance deadlines for local governments until 2020.

What is surprising, however, is Carson's suggestion that the AFFH be retooled to tie HUD grants to localities loosening their zoning regulations.

This is a complete 180 from Carson's 2015 criticism of the AFFH rule, in which the then-presidential candidate fretted that the Obama administration's focus on housing desegregation would do too much to undo local zoning laws.

"The [AFFH] rule would fundamentally change the nature of some communities from primarily single-family to largely apartment-based areas by encouraging municipalities to strike down housing ordinances that have no overtly (or even intended) discriminatory purpose—including race-neutral zoning restrictions on lot sizes and limits on multi-unit dwellings," wrote Carson in a 2015 Washington Times op-ed.

Carson's change of heart has raised eyebrows and even caused some commenters to question the sincerity of his new talk about tackling restrictive zoning rules.

Nevertheless, the shift in thinking at HUD—even if it is just a rhetorical shift at the moment—is still cause for cautious optimism, says Vanessa Brown Calder, a housing policy expert at the Cato Institute.

"I do think that shift in attitude at HUD is huge, and I hope that it translates into educating local municipalities that these things are related, zoning restrictions and housing affordability," says Calder. "It does sound like there is going to be some attempt made to connect HUD subsidies to relaxing or reforming zoning regulations, so that I think that could be really important."

That this might come in conjunction with a paring back of the Obama-era AFFH rule is heartening as well, says Calder, given both the costs and shaky legal foundations of the 2015 regulation.

The original AFFH, she notes, cost cities some $55 million in compliance costs. Indeed, these costs were burdensome enough that many localities decided it would be cheaper to just not comply with the rule and forfeit HUD funding.

The legal basis for the 2015 AFFH rule—which is based on the 1968 Fair Housing Act—is also pretty thin, says Calder. The 1968 law, she notes, is focused on eliminating racial discrimination by landlords, not on creating a delicate racial and income balance across whole cities, as is called for in the Obama administration's 2015 rule

"Zero times in the Fair Housing Act do they talk about segregation. That seems kind of damning considering that's what [the AFFH rule] is all about," Calder tells Reason.

Carson has so far avoided calling for an end to the AFFH rule altogether, instead suggesting that it be revised so as to reduce the overall regulatory burden on local governments. That approach is in line with many of the Trump administration's other deregulatory actions, which emphasize reducing and streamlining federal regulatory burdens, rather than eliminating rules in their entirety.

Nevertheless, any reduction in the regulatory state is welcome, as is anything that draws attention to restrictive zoning laws that have reduced supply and raised prices in cities across America.

SOURCE 

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Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is hailing President Donald Trump's decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But the Kentucky Republican doesn't think the president should stop with Brennan.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accused Brennan, who led the CIA for most of former President Barack Obama's second term, of "lying." Brennan's "recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary," Sanders said, "is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets."

Sanders' remarks echoed the sentiments of Paul, who has spent weeks calling for Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, to lose his clearance. Late last month, Paul wrote on Twitter that "Brennan and other partisans" should be stripped of their security clearances. He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head.

So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan's security clearance. "I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan's nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information," Paul said in a statement. "He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure."

In an interview yesterday with WKU Public Radio, Paul said he wants other ex-Obama administration intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to lose their clearances as well.

According to the Kentucky Republican, Clapper lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was asked in March 2013 by Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) if U.S. intelligence was spying on American citizens. "When he was asked by Sen. Wyden if the NSA was collecting information on Americans, private information, he said no and that was a lie," Paul said. "Later, Edward Snowden revealed that they were collecting all Americans' phone information."

Paul has previously come down hard on ex-Obama administration officials. Last month, he suggested that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were "bad apples that need to be dismissed from the swamp of Washington." And in April, Paul accused Rice of committing a crime by unmasking the identities of associates to Trump.

While Paul wants Trump to keep stripping security clearances, many former officials are making the opposite case. On Thursday, a dozen ex-intelligence officials blasted Trump's "attempt to stifle free speech." According to the officials: "Decisions on security clearances should be based on national security concerns and not political views."

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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