Trump’s respect for voters confounds the Left

The Leftist commentor below gets an important point.  She says that, unlike the patronising Democrats, the president gives pride back to blue-collar Americans

I’ve begun to worry about the effectiveness of the barrage of indignation that people like me are directing at this president. The daily denunciations of him are cogent and passionate. I fear they are also, in their righteous fury, misunderstanding what it will take to oust or defeat him.

If liberal outrage was all that was needed, Trump would never have won. His opponents seem to think they only have to prove him a monster and a charlatan for his shamefaced supporters to admit they were wrong, and creep back into the Democrat fold. That ignores the basis for his success and why the vast majority of his base still back him.

Trump’s appeal to his voters isn’t just his promises of a better life; it’s something intangible and even more critical: respect. He promised more than great jobs, great health and a great America; he told his voters that they themselves were great. That resonated because he was mostly addressing people who feel neglected and overlooked by economic and social changes, and who fear they are losing jobs and status to immigrants and non-white Americans.

Trump’s message was so powerful because, as the Nobel prizewinning economist John Harsanyi said, “apart from economic payoffs, social status seems to be the most important incentive and motivating force of social behaviour”. Apes and chimps crave it and so do we. We are acutely aware of and affected by our individual standing and the standing of our group.

The lower we perceive our status to be, the more stressed and depressed we are, the less likely we are to perform well in tests, the likelier we are to get sick and to die early. As research by the American academic psychologist PJ Henry shows, low status also makes us angrier and more defensive because our position is so precarious that we are constantly watching out for social insults. Any decline in status is likely to affect us even more deeply since we will be agonisingly aware of the contrast between our past and our present.

Denunciations of the president miss the secret of his success
Trump offers his voters relief from this, which is why they are so loyal. His praise gives them something precious: pride and identity. It’s also genuine. I listened to Trump defending himself at his much-criticised Arizona rally and was struck by something besides dismay; the near-reverence with which he speaks of his voters. He told his audience that he only minded media attacks when they were aimed at his honest, hardworking supporters, “who love our nation, obey our laws and care for our people”. He did the same in Texas this week, telling his crowd: “We love you, you’re special, we’re here to take care”.

The observers who denounce his self-obsession are missing this critical connection. It stems from his own profound insecurity, and his identification as a resentful social outsider who has never had the respect he craves from America’s elite.

It electrifies his base because they are being respected by someone who embodies what they aspire to. The Californian academic Joan Williams, in her book White Working Class, makes clear just how much this group dislike salaried professionals and how they feel patronised and despised by lawyers, doctors and government employees. They are contemptuous of the anxious conformity of the professionally employed, infinitely preferring the rugged independence of people who are their own bosses and are free to speak their own minds.

They don’t want to change their culture. Their aspiration is to keep their own network of friends, family and way of life, but with added wealth. Trump, with his crudity, defence of civil war statues, fondness for gilt furniture, burgers and rewarding his family with high-powered jobs, represents their dream.

Everything that incenses liberals about that behaviour is further proof to this group that Trump is their man and that they are his team. Liberals’ denunciations of him are implicit criticisms of them, their values and their choices, and threaten their self-respect. They double down behind the president and blame the media or “the swamp” for any setbacks. Gallup reports that even after the chaos and scandals of this year, Trump’s support among Republicans has only fallen by 12 percentage points. Almost half his base would back him even if he shot someone.

Only a fool would assume that the accusations of Russia or racism will reverse the Trump tide. Michael Moore, the leftwing filmmaker and one of the few to predict Trump’s victory, is warning that he’s on track to win again in 2020. But so far the Democrats, who lost because they patronised or ignored the electorate in key states, delude themselves that moral superiority alone will win back the White House. They are offering nothing to those voters except condescension and denigration. If they cannot learn how to bind Americans together rather than divide them, I fear it is they who will be humiliated again.

SOURCE

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A chance for Congress to get its mojo back

by Jeff Jacoby

WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP last week started a six-month countdown clock to end his predecessor's executive order protecting immigrants who were brought illegally to America when they were children, the denunciations came fast, furious, and fevered. Angry outrage has become the standard reaction to almost everything Trump says and does, often with reason. But on the issue of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that fury is misplaced. Trump has created an opening that should gladden conservatives and liberals alike — one that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle should exploit.

For years, legislators have allowed presidents to push the limits of executive power, bypassing Congress on issues ranging from warrantless wiretaps to health care subsidies. Lawmakers, constantly battling each other, have failed to defend what should be their exclusive power to make the nation's laws. Unexpectedly, Trump has just handed them a chance to reclaim lost ground.

Barack Obama's DACA policy was a classic example of achieving an excellent end through terrible means. It offered to protect 1 million or so young people from deportation and allow them to work legally, so long as they stayed out of trouble, finished school, and registered with the government. More than three-fourths of eligible immigrants signed up for DACA status, and by all accounts they have been a productive and law-abiding cohort. Some have been downright heroic.

The problem with DACA is that it was imposed unilaterally by Obama in 2012. He claimed he had to take "action to change the law" by executive order because Congress had failed to pass a bill (the proposed DREAM Act) that would do so legislatively. At first he insisted that DACA was only a "temporary stopgap measure." But as hundreds of thousands of so-called "Dreamers" signed up, DACA became institutionalized. Two years later, Obama tried to expand it, sheltering not only Dreamers from deportation, but their parents — a population numbering more than 4 million. When a group of states sued to block the expansion, federal courts backed them up. Obama's action was "manifestly contrary" to existing immigration law, ruled the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and presidents cannot make immigration law by fiat.

But DACA itself remained in force, and there is no question that the policy is popular. An overwhelming 76 percent of voters, say DACA enrollees should be allowed to stay legally in the United States; only 15 percent want them deported. Majorities of Democrats (84 percent), independents (74 percent), and Republicans (69 percent) believe Dreamers should able to remain in America as permanent legal residents. Even among self-identified Trump voters, two-thirds think Dreamers should stay.

Trump himself has repeatedly expressed unwillingness to hurt Dreamers. "I have a love for these people," he said on Tuesday. "Hopefully, now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly."

That's exactly what Congress should do.

Even granting Trump's habit of saying "X" on Monday and "not-X" on Thursday, it seems plain that a clean bill giving Dreamers legal status is one he would relish signing — if only to tout it as an achievement only he could have engineered. "Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do)," Trump tweeted on Tuesday. "If they can't, I will revisit this issue!"

No one should miss the significance of Trump's surprising deference to Congress. Trump used to say he would end DACA the way Obama created it: unilaterally. In his campaign kickoff speech in the Trump Tower lobby two years ago, he vowed that if elected he would "immediately terminate President Obama's illegal executive order on immigration."

But he didn't. He hesitated for months on DACA — and when he finally moved it was because of a looming legal threat: A group of state attorneys general were about to challenge DACA in court. If Trump wanted DACA killed without having to pull the trigger himself, he could have invited that lawsuit and ordered the Justice Department not to oppose it.

Instead he is urging Congress to take the lead and "legalize DACA." To put it differently, Trump is urging the legislative branch to reclaim its proper constitutional authority — to take back a measure of power that Obama usurped.

In modern times, presidents of both parties have routinely overstepped their bounds. Obama arguably went further down that path than any previous president. "Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power," The New York Times observed last year, "Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history." It took a while for Obama to get over those "misgivings" — after all, he had sharply criticized George W. Bush's reliance on unilateral orders. But once he did, he pursued executive power without apology.

Improbably, Trump has now handed Congress a perfect vehicle to undo an act of presidential overreach and enhance its own authority. For Republicans, this is an opportunity to roll back one of Obama's most blatant acts of "pen-and-phone" aggrandizement. For Democrats, it is a way to deter Trump from engaging in overreach of his own — from, say, ordering a wall to be built along the Mexican border on the grounds that Congress hasn't acted. For both, it is a chance to pass a bill that Americans by a wide margin would welcome.

Trump should be cheered, not cursed, for handing off DACA to Congress. For years, lawmakers of both parties have fumed as presidents have gotten away with wielding power unilaterally. Now Capitol Hill has a chance to do something about it, and with White House encouragement. Blow this opportunity, and they may never get another.

SOURCE

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2 Democrat Senators Show Hostility to Religion in Questions for Judicial Nominee

“Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” is an unusual and inappropriate question for a senator to ask a judicial nominee. In fact, the Constitution forbids it.

But that didn’t stop Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., from probing Notre Dame Law professor Amy Coney Barrett about her faith. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. D-Calif., also chided Barrett for being a practicing Catholic, proclaiming, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

Both senators appear to have forgotten Article VI’s admonition that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Officer or public Trust under the United States.”

The senators’ hostility to religion was loudly on display as Barrett and Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, having been nominated by the president to fill two federal appellate vacancies.

President Donald Trump nominated Larsen for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Michigan and Barrett for the 7th Circuit in Indiana. Both women have faced bitter scrutiny from the left. This makes sense, as both are brilliant, young, conservative, and female, making them serious contenders for a future Supreme Court vacancy.

After a delay, Democratic senators from both Michigan and Indiana have returned the nominees’ blue slips, allowing their nominations to move forward.

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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Fascism's forgotten philosopher

The myth that fascism and Nazism are phenomena of the right relies heavily on Americans not knowing what fascism and Nazism really mean, what those ideologies stand for. Leftists in academia and the media have worked hard to portray fascism and Nazism in terms of sheer demagoguery and generic authoritarianism, carefully concealing the ideological roots that would reveal fascism and Nazism’s true political colors.

Think about this: We know the name of the philosopher of capitalism, Adam Smith. We also know the name of the philosopher of Marxism, Karl Marx. So, quick: What is the name of the philosopher of fascism? Yes, exactly. You don’t know. Virtually no one knows. This is not because he doesn’t exist, but because the political left – which dominates academia, the media and Hollywood – had to get rid of him to avoid confronting fascism and Nazism’s unavoidable leftist orientation.

So let’s meet the man himself, Giovanni Gentile, who may be termed fascism’s Karl Marx.  Gentile was, in his day, which is the first half of the 20th century, considered one of Europe’s leading philosophers. A student of Hegel and Bergson and director of the Encyclopedia Italiana, Gentile was not merely a widely published and widely influential thinker; he was also a political statesman who served in a variety of important government posts. How, then, has such a prominent and influential figure vanished into the mist of history?

Let’s consider some key aspects of Gentile’s philosophy. Following Aristotle and Marx, Gentile argues that man is a social animal. This means that we are not simply individuals in the world. Rather, our individuality is expressed through our relationships: we are students or workers, husbands or wives, parents and grandparents, members in this or that association or group and also citizens of a community or nation. To speak of man alone in the state of nature is a complete fiction; man is naturally at home in community, in society.

Right away, we see that Gentile is a communitarian as opposed to a radical individualist. This distinguishes him from some libertarians and classical liberals, who emphasize individuality in contradistinction to society. But Gentile so far has said nothing with which conservatives – let’s say Reaganite conservatives – would disagree. Reagan in 1980 emphasized the importance of five themes: the individual, the family, the church, the community and the country. He accused the centralized state – big government – of undermining not merely our individuality but also these other associations.

Gentile now contrasts two types of democracy that he says are “diametrically opposed.” The first is liberal democracy, which envisions society made up of individuals who form communities to protect and advance their rights and interests, specifically their economic interests in property and trade. Gentile regards this as selfish or bourgeois democracy, by which he means capitalist democracy, the democracy of the American founding. In its place, Gentile recommends a different type of democracy, “true democracy,” in which individuals willingly subordinate themselves to society and to the state.

Gentile recognizes that his critique of bourgeois democracy echoes that of Marx, and Marx is his takeoff point. Like Marx, Gentile wants the unified community, a community that resembles the family, a community where we’re all in this together. I’m reminded here of New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s keynote address at the 1984 Democratic Convention. Cuomo likened America to an extended family where, through the agency of government, we take care of each other in much the same manner that families look out for all their members.

While Marx and Cuomo seem to view political communities as natural, inevitable associations, Gentile emphasized that such communities must be created voluntarily, through human action, operating as a consequence of human will. They are, in Gentile’s words, an idealistic or “spiritual creation.” For Gentile, people by themselves are too slothful and inert to form genuine communities by themselves; they have to be mobilized. Here, too, many modern progressives would agree. Speaking in terms with which both Obama and Hillary would sympathize, Gentile emphasized that leaders and organizers are needed to direct and channel the will of the people.

Despite Gentile’s disagreement with Marx about historical inevitability, he has at this point clearly broken with modern conservatism and classical liberalism and revealed himself to be a man of the left. Gentile was, in fact, a lifelong socialist. Like Marx, he viewed socialism as the sine qua non of social justice, the ultimate formula for everyone paying their “fair share.” For Gentile, fascism is nothing more than a modified form of socialism, a socialism arising not merely from material deprivation but also from an aroused national consciousness, a socialism that unites rather than divides communities.

Gentile also perceived socialism emerging out of revolutionary struggle, what the media today terms “protest” or “activism.” Revolutionaries, Gentile says, must be ready to disregard conventional rules and they must be willing to use violence. Gentile seems to be the unacknowledged ancestor of the street activism of Antifa and other leftist groups. “One of the major virtues of fascism,” he writes, “is that it obliged those who watched from the windows to come down into the street.”

For Gentile, private action should be mobilized to serve the public interest, and there is no distinction between the private interest and the public interest. Correctly understood, the two are identical. Gentile argued that society represents “the very personality of the individual divested of accidental differences … where the individual feels the general interest as his own and wills therefore as might the general will.” In the same vein, Gentile argued that corporations too should serve the public welfare and not just the welfare of their owners and shareholders.

Society and the state – for Gentile, the two were one and the same. Gentile saw the centralized state as the necessary administrative arm of society. Consequently, to submit to society is to submit to the state, not just in economic matters, but in all matters. Since everything is political, the state gets to tell everyone how to think and also what to do – there is no private sphere unregulated by the state. And to forestall resistance to the state, Gentile argued that the government should act not merely as a lawmaker but also a teacher, using the schools to promulgate its values and priorities.

“All is in the state and nothing human exists or has value outside the state.” Mussolini said that, in the Dottrina del fascismo, one of the doctrinal statements of early fascism, but Gentile wrote it or, as we may say today, ghost wrote it. Gentile was, as you have probably figured by now, the leading philosopher of fascism. “It was Gentile,” Mussolini confessed, “who prepared the road for those like me who wished to take it.”

Gentile served as a member of the Fascist Grand Council, a senator in the Upper House of Parliament, and also as Mussolini’s minister of education. Later, after Mussolini was deposed and established himself in the northern Italian province of Salo, Gentile became, at il Duce‘s request, the president of the Italian Academy. In 1944, Gentile was accosted in his apartment by members of a rival leftist faction who shot him at point-blank range.

Gentile’s philosophy closely parallels that of the modern American left. Consider the slogan unveiled by Obama at the 2012 Democratic Convention: “We belong to the government.” That apotheosis of the centralized state is utterly congruent with Gentile’s thinking. Only Gentile would have provided a comprehensive philosophical defense that the Democrats didn’t even attempt. In many respects, Gentile provides a deeper and firmer grounding for modern American progressivism than anyone writing today.

John Rawls, widely considered a philosophical guru of modern progressivism, seems like thin gruel compared to Gentile in offering an intellectual rationale for ever-expanding government control over the economy and our lives. While Rawls feels abstract and dated now, Gentile seems to speak directly to leftist activists in the Democratic Party, in the media, and on campus.

One might naively expect the left, then, to embrace and celebrate Gentile. This, of course, will never happen. The left has the desperate need to conceal fascism’s deep association with contemporary leftism. Even when the left uses Gentile’s rhetoric, its source can never be publicly acknowledged. That’s why the progressives intend to keep Gentile where they’ve got him, dead, buried and forgotten.

“The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of American Left,” Dinesh D’Souza’s stunning new explanation of what makes the the leftists in America tick, is now available at the WND Superstore.

SOURCE

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Appeals court reinstates Texas voter-ID law

The courts have watered down the law to the point where it is zero deterrent to illegal voting.  This is no triumph. Now all anybody needs to do to vote illegally is to SAY they are entitled to vote.  What a joke!

A federal appeals court revived Texas’s voter ID law Tuesday, saying the state’s updated version does enough to protect the right to vote for everyone in the state.

In backing Texas, the court said the state accommodated voters by allowing those without an ID to cast a ballot as long as they swear under penalty of perjury that they are legal voters.
That, the court said, would solve the problems for each of 27 different voters who had said they lacked ID.

The judges said that with elections looming, it made sense to stick with the existing law rather than change things up. “A temporary stay here, while the court can consider the argument on the merits, will minimize confusion among both voters and trained election officials,” the judges said.

Texas had enacted one of the stiffest voter-ID laws in the country but Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, an Obama appointee to the district court, blocked it in 2014, finding Texas intended to discriminate.

Texas added its new attestation provision to try to solve her complaints, but late last month she ruled the law was still too harsh.

The appeals court Tuesday delivered a bit of a spanking to Judge Ramos, saying she “went beyond” the limited scope of what she was supposed to be decided by looking at Texas’s updated changes.

The U.S. Justice Department, which under President Obama had opposed Texas, sided with the state now that President Trump is in office.

A Justice Department spokeswoman cheered Tuesday’s decision.
“Preserving the integrity of the ballot is vital to our democracy, and the Fifth Circuit’s order allows Texas to continue to fulfill that duty as this case moves forward,” the spokeswoman said.

SOURCE

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REPORT: Out-Of-State Voters Changed The Outcome Of U.S. Senate Race

For years, the mainstream media has ignored the problem of voter fraud and belittled those of us who are trying to do something about it. And when secretaries of state like me identify cases of fraud, we are told that the number of incidents of voter fraud is too insignificant to matter.

Now, however, facts have come to light that indicate that a pivotal, close election was likely changed through voter fraud on November 8, 2016: New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate Seat, and perhaps also New Hampshire’s four electoral college votes in the presidential election.

New Hampshire is one of fifteen states that allow same-day voter registration. The benefit of same-day registration is that it allows a person who has procrastinated or has forgotten to register to nonetheless cast a ballot on election day. The downside of same-day registration is that it does not allow the state time to assess the eligibility of the voter. A volunteer poll worker simply accepts a modicum of identification and takes the voter at his word that he’s a U.S. citizen resident of the state who is eligible to vote.

New Hampshire is also a battleground state. Unlike neighboring Massachusetts and Vermont, which reliably vote for the Democrat in presidential elections, New Hampshire can swing either way. It has long been reported, anecdotally, that out-of-staters take advantage of New Hampshire’s same-day registration and head to the Granite State to cast fraudulent votes.

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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Hooray!  I have been censored

I was beginning to feel neglected.  I frequently write relentlessly factual things about race, IQ and social class -- and they must be the big trifecta of political incorrectness.  If those topics don't get me censored what would?  Actually there IS one thing more likely to get me censored:  Praise for Donald Trump.  And I do a lot of that.  I am as Trumpian as you can get.

And I think that is what lies behind the ban that has been placed on me.  I spend more time than I should reading the questions and answers on Quora.com.  Most of the questions there are puerile but some of the answers are interesting.

The answers I have myself been putting up there have all however been very brief, usually only a few words.  For instance, in answer to the question "What would you do if someone threw a basketball to you?" my answer was "Dodge". And in answer to "Who is the most influential person in history? Why?", I wrote "Hitler. People will never get over him".  And in answer to "If first contact was established with aliens, what one person, dead or alive, would you use to represent the human race?", I answered "Trump. He speaks in simple sentences"

And in my answer to "Why does Ernest Adams hate social conservatives so much?" I wrote "He was born that way".  And that seems to have torn it.  That answer was apparently so incorrect that I was banned from putting up any more answers or asking any questions.

For background Adams is a Quora heavyweight and a very supercilious Leftist.  He is absolutely full of himself and conservative Quorans do criticize him for that at times.

So why was my answer so bad?  It is a common research finding  that political dispositions are highly hereditary so my answer was highly factual.  It's not the political opinions by themselves that are inherited so much as the underlying psychology that determines those positions. Basically, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the angry people.  And that has a big impact on your policy preferences.  Leftists want to attack whatever they are angry about and conservatives want stability.

And where you stand on the happiness/contentment scale has repeatedly been found to be very much inborn.  Some people will be happy no matter what and some will be miserable no matter what.  So both the actual opinions and the underlying psychology have been found to be hereditary.

So Quora penalized me from giving a scholarly and well informed comment.  To them it was so wrong that it couldn't be right.  I have no idea of the details of their angry thinking but I suspect that their objection was really a pretext.  My constant praise of Trump would undoubtedly have jarred them.  It was that which really lay behind my banning, I suspect.  It is a very Leftist site.

I won't protest my banning. Matthew 7:6 tells you why.

Footnote:  If you doubt that Leftists are the angry people and conservatives are the contented people, just ask any Leftist what he thinks of Mr Trump!  And if you doubt that conservatives are the contented people ask yourself why the Congressional GOP has done so little to give Mr Trump the changes he wants.

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House Republicans Unhappy That Trump Siding With Democrats on Debt Ceiling

It was only a minor concession that Trump made to the Donks but it is a big shot across the bows of the shilly-shallying GOP. There is a big tradition in American politics of "log-rolling" -- an exchange of favors. So Trump could leave the GOP to stew while he did deals with the Donks.  He could, for instance make concessions to the "dreamers" in exchange for border wall funding. With solid Donk support plus a few RINOs he could get a lot done. And the Obamacare vote told us who the RINOs are, The "Tuesday Group".  If they can vote once with the Donks they can do it again


President Donald Trump’s decision to side with Democrats in their push to attach a three-month debt ceiling increase to must-pass hurricane relief funding is not sitting well with House Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., all advocated a longer debt limit extension. But the president opted to concede to Democrats’ request, a source briefed on leadership’s meeting with the White House told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday.

McConnell, Ryan, McCarthy, and Mnuchin were all in favor of raising the debt ceiling longer than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wanted, the source said. Republican leadership in Congress pitched the president on an 18-month, and later a six-month, raising of the debt ceiling, which Schumer and Pelosi refused to accept.

Both Republican and Democratic leadership at the meeting were going to agree to disagree when the president unexpectedly sided with the Democrats, the source said.

Instead of aligning with members of his own party and his administration, Trump agreed Wednesday afternoon to raise the debt limit and fund the federal government through mid-December, allowing members of Congress to deal with the federal budget in the coming months.

Trump’s decision directly conflicts with Ryan’s call for a long-term debt ceiling increase. He referred to Pelosi and Schumer’s proposal as “ridiculous and disgraceful” during his press conference ahead of the White House meeting.

The Wisconsin Republican alleged that Democrats were playing politics, arguing the three-month increase put the areas affected by the hurricanes at risk of not receiving the Federal Emergency Management Agency funding needed to begin recovering from the storms.

While GOP leadership supported combining long-term debt ceiling language with Harvey funding, conservative members—who have long pushed for spending cuts to a debt ceiling bill—blasted the idea, arguing that linking the two politicizes disaster funding, which would easily pass on its own. The Senate is slated to add language on the debt ceiling to the House-passed, stand-alone aid package before sending it back to the lower chamber.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker, R-N.C., said he currently doesn’t think he can vote in favor of the deal.

“I’m hearing about it, my initial impulse is I’m not very pleased with it,” Walker said. “We will need to know a little more information, but just on the surface, obviously coming out of a classified hearing, but my first glimpse is I don’t know that I can support it.”

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said that, while a longer timeframe would be more beneficial to the country, he believes the legislation will pass the lower chamber.

“In the broader interests of raising the debt ceiling, a longer time period gives the markets more certainty,” he told reporters. “But look, the White House and the president made a decision and I think we can be able to get this, we can get this done very quickly with very little drama.”

SOURCE

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More Leftist hate

Hurricane Irma is massive, killing dozens and destroying homes as it barreled through the Caribbean on its way to Florida.

And that's just how one leftist website would have it. In fact, DeathandTaxes.com, which says it's "for lovers of news, culture, and politics" and "produces some of the best-loved social content on the web," hopes the deadly hurricane does more destruction.

"If it’s any consolation, Hurricane Irma might fuck up Trump’s Caribbean mansion," the website wrote on Tuesday, before the storm ripped through St. Martin.

The only silver lining is that while Irma ravages the Caribbean, one building at risk is the president’s $16.9 million, 11-bedroom compound on Plum Bay in the French territory St. Martin.

According to the Washington Post, the estate is named Le Château des Palmiers (“Castle of the Palms”) and sports two villas, a tennis court, marble floors, gold curtains, gold-hued wallpaper, and a two-story master suite. Despite ethics concerns, Trump’s been trying to sell the thing for months and recently cut the price by 40% because nobody is biting. It’s located directly in Irma’s path and will likely get destroyed.

Yesterday, the Post confirmed the estate had suffered damage, saying "one of the causalities has been President Donald Trump’s vacation home, Le Chateau des Palmiers on the island of St. Martin."

While the extent of the damage is not known, officials that control the side of the island where Trump’s beachfront property is located, told the Washington Post that the territory suffered widespread destruction.

“We know that the four most solid buildings on the island have been destroyed, which means that more rustic structures have probably been completely or partially destroyed,” French Interior Minister Gerard Collomba told AFP.

The Post also ran its own destruction watch on Trump properties.

After barreling across the Caribbean, Hurricane Irma is headed for South Florida, potentially threatening Trump’s signature Mar-A-Lago club and three golf courses he owns in Doral, West Palm Beach and Jupiter. Forecasters said it is too soon to know whether they will be in the direct path of the hurricane, but all are likely to face tropical storm conditions, at minimum.

SOURCE

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President Donald Trump took his crusade for tax reform to North Dakota Wednesday

Though he said the tax reform plan will boost prosperity and make America more competitive during the remarks at the Andeavor Refinery in Mandan, North Dakota, Trump jokingly singled one industry that wouldn’t grow under a reformed and simpler tax code.

“A staggering 94 percent of families need professional help to do their taxes, they have to get it, which is why the tax preparation industry generated $10 billion in revenues last year. That’s one business I want to drive down,” Trump said. “H&R Block will not be supporting Donald Trump.”

He said tax forms can run for 241 pages. But, under his plan, Trump claimed, 95 percent of taxpayers could file on a single page.

“We’re giving hardworking Americans their time back and we’re giving them their money back,” Trump said.

This is the second time in two weeks Trump has taken his push for tax reform on the road. He hit Springfield, Missouri, last week.

“All told, it will be the greatest tax reduction in the history of our country, greater than ever before, so that’s going to be something. You’ll see a rocket ship. You will see something happen like you’ve never seen.”

Trump said the current system punishes companies for investing in the United States and rewards investment abroad.

“Our painful tax system has become a massive barrier to America’s economic comeback. It costs us millions of American jobs, trillions of dollars, and billions wasted on paperwork and compliance. Our tax code is a giant economic self-inflicted wound,” Trump said.

Capitalizing on his anti-establishment theme, Trump framed the reform as tackling special interests.

“We no longer have to accept a tax code that lets special [interests] win at the expense of the middle class. We no longer have to accept a rigged system,” Trump said. “We talked about that a lot in the campaign.”

Trump earlier called several North Dakota officials to the stage, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, saying, “Everybody’s saying: What’s she doing up here?” Trump added, “I hope we’ll have your support”

He also called Heitkamp, who flew to her state with Trump aboard Air Force One, “a good woman.”

Then later, as if to add a little more pressure, Trump noted Democrats have backed tax reform before.

“Both of the Reagan tax cuts were passed by a Democratic majority in the House, a Democratic speaker, and a vast majority of Democrats in the Senate, including a Democratic senator from the great state of North Dakota,” Trump said. “So it can happen. Are you listening, Heidi?”

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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Give Max the boot?

Max Boot has some record as a conservative but his writing below shows him as a typical Leftist.  As a NY Jew that is no surprise.  American Jews voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Again as a Leftist, he has no respect for the truth at all. He does the typical Leftist trick of misrepresentation by omission.  It would be tedious to fisk his whole outpouring but let me mention a few of his misrepresentations.

He mentions that he received some antisemitic abuse recently and probably hopes to persuade us that antisemitism is now common in America and that it comes from conservatives.  He offers no proof of either of those things.  It is true that in the last decade or two there has been a gradual upwelling of antisemitism in America -- from the Left.  Many Leftists joyously particpate in the BDS movement, for instance, which aims at eradicating the State of Israel.  No matter what spin they put on it, it's essentially modern-day Nazism.  Max mentions none of that.

He says:  "Trump came to office vilifying Mexicans and Muslims".  He did no such thing.  He advocated more control of illegal immigration and immigration from terrorist infested nations.  Most Muslim nations were NOT subject to his restrictions.  Max is quite simply lying -- deliberately ascribing motivations to certain actions without any evidence that such motivations were in play.

Max says that Trump praised the Charlottesville protesters.  He did not.  He said of both the marchers and their attackers that they included good people on both sides.  He gave no blankret approval to anyone.

Max criticizes the pardoning of Sheriff Joe, without mentioning that Sheriff Joe was simply doing his job despite obstacles to immigration control created by Obama.  Obama was by far the real lawless actor in the matter.

But what seems to have set Max off is the withdrawal by Trump of the DACA regulations promulgated by Obama with no legislative authority. That Trump is simply reasserting the rule of law that Obama undermined he does not mention.

Max could well mislead less informed people by his lies so we conservatives do need to combat them but it is a weary task. Lies just seem to flow of of every pore of Leftists. Lies are essentially all they've got.


I am white. I am Jewish. I am an immigrant. I am a Russian American. But until recently I haven’t focused so much on those parts of my identity. I’ve always thought of myself simply as a normal, unhyphenated American.

Ever since I arrived here, along with my mother and grandmother, from Russia in 1976 at age 7, I have been eager to assimilate. And I’ve done a pretty good job of it.

Last year I experienced the first sustained anti-Semitism I have ever encountered in the United States. Like many other anti-Trump commentators, I was deluged with neo-Nazi propaganda on social media, including a picture of me in a gas chamber, with Herr Trump in a Nazi uniform pulling the lever to kill me. This was accompanied by predictable demands that I leave this country to “real” Americans and go back to where I came from — or, alternatively, to Israel.

At one time it was easy to dismiss such sentiments as the ravings of a handful of marginal losers. That’s harder to do now that the president of the United States has embraced the far-right agenda. Trump came to office vilifying Mexicans and Muslims. As president, he has praised the protesters who marched with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people” and come out against taking down Confederate monuments, symbols of white supremacy. He has pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, who became a symbol of racism and lawlessness for locking up Latinos, in defiance of a court order, simply on the suspicion that they might be undocumented immigrants. And now Trump has set in motion the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents 800,000 law-abiding people from being deported because their parents brought them to the United States illegally.

SOURCE

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How bureaucracy destroys research in U.S. hospitals

There is a long article here which gives a blow by blow account of a doctor trying to get permission to do a research study -- a study that seemed to need doing.  He spent years dealing with the bureaucracy only to be defeated by all the nitpicking in the end.  He was not able to do a perfectly reasonable study.

The article had a particular resonance to me because what he wanted to do -- a questionnaire survey -- was something I did many, many times in my research career.  And I never asked ANYBODY for permission.  I just did it.  So how come the difference?  Several possible reasons:

I did my research in the '70s and '80s.  Things may have tightened up more by now.

I also did my work mostly in Australia, a much less uptight country than the USA.  Many of my fellow academics, including the head of school, would have had a pretty good idea of what I was doing but trying to rein me in would have needed effort and they just could not be bothered with that

But perhaps the key factor was that I did not ask.  I did not set the bureaucratic machinery in motion. The bureaucracy just did not know of me. I was below their horizon.  I had not foolishly set their rumbling machinery into motion.  "Just do it" was an old piece of Hippie advice from the '60s and I was there in the '60s.

So with my experience I read with great horror what this guy experienced.  But he makes the correct point that bureaucracy does that.  The job of the bureaucracy is to say "No" to anything that might conceivably be dangerous in some conceivable world and it takes a lot to get around that.  And sometimes you can't.

And the end result?  I had 200+ academic journal articles published whereas this guy had none.  What a waste!

I think his final comments are worth reproducing:


"I sometimes worry that people misunderstand the case against bureaucracy. People imagine it’s Big Business complaining about the regulations preventing them from steamrolling over everyone else. That hasn’t been my experience. Big Business – heck, Big Anything – loves bureaucracy. They can hire a team of clerks and secretaries and middle managers to fill out all the necessary forms, and the rest of the company can be on their merry way. It’s everyone else who suffers. The amateurs, the entrepreneurs, the hobbyists, the people doing something as a labor of love. Wal-Mart is going to keep selling groceries no matter how much paperwork and inspections it takes; the poor immigrant family with the backyard vegetable garden might not.

Bureaucracy in science does the same thing: limit the field to big institutional actors with vested interests. No amount of hassle is going to prevent the Pfizer-Merck-Novartis Corporation from doing whatever study will raise their bottom line. But enough hassle will prevent a random psychiatrist at a small community hospital from pursuing his pet theory about bipolar diagnosis. The more hurdles we put up, the more the scientific conversation skews in favor of Pfizer-Merck-Novartis. And the less likely we are to hear little stuff, dissenting voices, and things that don’t make anybody any money.

There are so many privacy and confidentiality restrictions around the most harmless of datasets that research teams won’t share data with one another (let alone with unaffiliated citizen scientists) lest they break some arcane regulation or other. Closed access journals require people to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees before they’re allowed to read the scientific literature; open-access journals just shift the burden by requiring scientists to pay thousands of dollars to publish their research. Big research institutions have whole departments to deal with these kinds of problems; unaffiliated people who just want to look into things on their own are out of luck.

SOURCE

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Obama Rages Against the Constitutional Machine

President Donald Trump acted Tuesday to rescind Barack Obama's controversial and unconstitutional 2012 executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Trump emphasized, "I am not going to just cut DACA off, but rather provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act. We will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion — but through the lawful democratic process — while at the same time ensuring that any immigration reform we adopt provides enduring benefits for the American citizens we were elected to serve."

Unlike former presidents who have had enough personal humility and respect for this nation, its history and the office to refrain from directly criticizing their successors, Obama sees himself as being above such decorum. Following Trump's DACA announcement, Obama took to Facebook, raging that Trump's decision is "cruel" and a violation of "basic decency." Worse, he scolded the president with his favorite moralizing cudgel, "It's about who we are as a people." Which prompts the question: Is Obama's view of America one of a nation where law and order are merely subjective suggestions that lack any real meaning or limiting power? A country without laws is no country at all.

Obama also explained his own decision, saying, "I asked Congress to send me such a bill. The bill never came. And ... my administration acted." That's not how our constitutional system works. You'd think a "constitutional law professor" would know better. He did once upon a time, and then political gain came knocking.

In 2013, he taunted, "You don't like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election."

Well, Trump did.

No, Mr. Obama, it is not Trump who lacks "basic decency" on this issue, it is you. It is you who lack a basic respect for the Rule of Law and the borders that define this great nation, which were designed to protect American citizens first and foremost. It was you, Obama, who thumbed your nose at American citizens and our laws in order to promote your own globalist social agenda. And now you're upset that Trump wants to restore constitutional order to how laws are made. How pathetically cynical.

SOURCE

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Majority of Minorities Suffer No Discrimination

A recent study finds that only 25% of Americans say they have ever experienced discrimination. The study, conducted by Brian Boutwell, a criminology professor from Saint Louis University, surveyed 14,000 Americans across all racial backgrounds. He found that 27% of Hispanics, 31% of blacks, 23% of whites and 18% of Asians surveyed claimed to have experienced discrimination "sometimes" or "often." The findings suggest that discrimination is less prevalent than is often assumed, especially in light of today's polarized political climate and raging debate over DACA in particular.

Boutwell cautioned, "People have rightly pointed out that 25 percent of the population is a lot of people. That's still millions of people. That's far higher than what we'd like to see." Most people surveyed believed that "race" was the largest motivating factor behind unfair treatment. Boutwell noted that another potentially growing factor may be political beliefs. He states, "If anyone feels that their political alignment creates blowback for them in daily life, that's one possibility ... a reasonable one, given the data on political polarization."

Certainly Dennis Prager thinks this is true, writing, "Millions of Americans who hold conservative and/or pro-Trump views rationally fear ostracism by their peers, public humiliation, ruined reputations, broken families, job loss and the inability to work in their field. Under these circumstances, they have decided that coming out as conservative or pro-Trump is not worth the persecution they would endure."

It's also worth noting that surveys like this rely on data that is obtained via the subjective perception of individuals' experiences. What someone perceives may not accurately reflect the reality of what they have experienced. However, contrary to what is preached by race hustlers and social justice warriors, America is a broadly accepting and Liberty-loving nation. Americans' recent response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey typifies this spirit more than fascist malcontents rioting in the streets.

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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Republican Senator On DACA Fallout: President Obama Created This Unconstitutional Mess

Is the RAISE act a solution?

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that originated under Obama is winding down. Liberals are freaking out—and Congress now has to deal with this as they return from August recess.

The executive action has been controversial, with many making the argument that it’s an unconstitutional overreach from the White House on immigration policy. In fact, the Trump administration’s lawyers felt it was indefensible in its current form, while the Department of Homeland Security was adamant that an act of Congress was needed to keep DACA as it stands today.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), along with Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), proposed the RAISE Act, which was one of the most extensive overhauls in our green card policy, placing an emphasis on language and skills requirements. It’s aimed to protect American workers. Now, with the fate of the so-called DREAMers in Congress’ court, there could be a window to pass the RAISE ACT, along with legalizing the 800,000 DACA recipients who are vulnerable to deportation.

Cotton is certainly in favor of this, though reminded everyone on Hugh Hewitt today that DACA is one giant constitutional mess that was created by Obama and left in the lap of the Trump White House

HUGH HEWITT: Senator, will you agree with me to stipulate to get this started, DACA is un-constitutional, and but for the President’s six month action, which adds a ripeness element, the state attorneys general who were about to challenge it would have been successful, in my opinion, and that the President did a favor to every DACA kid by giving a ripeness argument to every court to delay ruling it un-constitutional?

TOM COTTON: Hugh, those points are almost undisputable. President Obama created this mess. And it’s landed in President Trump’s lap and our lap in the Congress. The reason we know it’s unlawful is President Obama himself said it was unlawful in 2010 and 2011 when he was asked to take these steps and did not. But he did so in 2012 in the middle of his reelection.

I don’t know if any capable and forthright lawyer who argues that the administration can defend this proposition in court. They certainly have weaker ground to stand on than President Obama did when he refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act a few years ago in court. So it’s just not, this is all a mess of President Obama’s making.

HEWITT: And President Trump has done a favor to the Dreamers by giving a six month order which will cause courts to pause. Now the next question is will Democrats give up what they perceive to be a political advantage in having the Dreamers screwed to work with you and Senator Perdue and others to come up with a comprehensive bill that combines protections for DACA Dreamers with reform of immigration to make it more coherent?

COTTON: Well, Hugh, I certainly hope the Democrats will focus on the art of the possible here, what kind of agreement we can reach to achieve the President’s own stated goals. He has said repeatedly that he wants to “take care” of the DACA recipients. I have no objection to that. But we have to recognize there are going to be two negative consequences of that action.

One, we create a new opportunity for citizenship through chain migration for their parents, the very people who violated the law by bringing them here as children in the first place.

And two, we encourage other people around the world to bring their children here illegally. So we have to do something to stop chain migration. My bill does that, and we have to do something to enhance enforcement. That’s a very simple, logically-coherent legislative package. It’s not comprehensive reform. It’s not the Gang of 8 bill. It’s not trying to blow ocean. It’s trying to take the action that Democrats say they want, which is to give legal status to approximately three-quarters of a million of these people in their 20s and 30s while also mitigating the consequences of that action.

When asked about the prospects of Congress acting on legislation to reform immigration, Cotton was “optimistic,” while also saying he’s not just for blanket amnesty for the DREAMers.

“Hugh, I’m pretty optimistic. You know, the Democrats have said for years they want to give legal status to these people. The President says he wants to, but he also knows that we have to control the consequences of that,” said Cotton, “and there’s a very, like I said, logically coherent, straightforward, relatively small package that can be negotiated here. That’s what I’m going to work on. I’m not going to support just a blanket amnesty with nothing to control the consequences of it, or some kind of rebate Gang of 8 legislation. I’ll be an opponent of that.”

SOURCE

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There Is No Such Thing As a 'Deserving DREAMer'

Since when did DACA become the Depression and Anxiety Cure for Amnesty-seekers?

It's this insatiable appetite for collective entitlement that demonstrates the perils of blanket amnesty. Give a privileged political class an inch and they'll take, take, take until feckless public servants give away their country.

The proper response to illegal alien activists demanding that Washington act "NOW!" to preserve their comfort, allay their anxieties and extend their unconstitutional protections indefinitely is this:

Five million American young people between 16-34 were unemployed last year and 50 million more are not even in the labor force. Imagine their anxiety.

Hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people from around the world are waiting patiently for their backlogged visa and green card applications to be reviewed. Imagine their frustration.

Why don't their dreams come first?

Nancy Pelosi called on House Republicans to help her "safeguard our young DREAMers from the senseless cruelty of deportation and shield families from separation and heartbreak."

Never has this Bay Area elitist called on House Republicans to join her in shielding native-born and law-abiding immigrant families from the senseless and preventable violence committed by criminals in this country illegally who've caused immeasurable heartbreak for decades in her overrun California sanctuary.

Jamiel Shaw Sr., whose son was mercilessly shot to death by a sanctuary-protected gang member living in outlaw-coddling Los Angeles illegally, administered a bracing reality check:

"You want to talk about families being separated? Try spending your holidays talking to a grave!"

The left-wing DREAM racket is a self-perpetuating political marketing machine. Its primary contribution to American society? Lashing out at how cruel, racist, ignorant and ungrateful the rest of us are for not bowing down before the hallowed angel children of the Obama administration's amnesty program. It's no coincidence that the publicity-hungry leaders of the DREAMer movement are full-time fulminators in government-funded academia, community organizing outfits, immigration law foundations and the grievance-nursing media.

A deserving DREAMer would respect the sovereign right of an independent nation to determine who stays and who goes based on its national interest and constitutional obligations to put its citizenry first.

The deserving DREAMer, in other words, would admit he or she is owed nothing and deserves nothing. There is no such thing as a "deserving DREAMer."

SOURCE

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Conservatives in America -- Like Marranos in Medieval Spain

For those unfamiliar with the term, Marranos was the name given to Jews in medieval Spain and Portugal who secretly maintained their Judaism while living as Catholics in public, especially in the 15th century during the Spanish Inquisition.

There is, of course, no Spanish Inquisition in America today -- no one is being tortured into confessing what they really believe, and no one is being burned at the stake. But there are millions of Marrano-like Americans: Americans who hold conservative views -- especially those who hold conservative positions on social issues and those who voted for Donald Trump for president.

Millions of Americans who hold conservative and/or pro-Trump views rationally fear ostracism by their peers, public humiliation, ruined reputations, broken families, job loss and the inability to work in their field. Under these circumstances, they have decided that coming out as conservative or pro-Trump is not worth the persecution they would endure.

In terms of the percentage of the population effected, there is no parallel in American history. Coming out as a homosexual prior to the 1960s and 70s, or publicly announcing oneself as a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s would have often led to similar dire consequences in one's social, work and family life. But gays and Communist Party members comprised a tiny percentage of the American population. And Communists supported true evil.

I wish I could share all the emails sent to me from professional musicians who play in some of the premier orchestras in America. They wrote to me following the nationally publicized attempts by left-wing members of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra and the Santa Monica city government to prevent me from conducting a Haydn symphony at the Walt Disney Concert Hall three weeks ago. These people publicly called on members of the orchestra to refuse to play and members of the public to refuse to attend.

These people wrote to encourage me and tell me how they are compelled to hide their conservative views -- how, in effect, they live as Marranos.

A violist with one of the most prestigious orchestras in the country (I figured out which orchestra using the internet; she was even afraid to tell me wrote to me last week about how quiet she is about her conservatism. While she could not be fired for it, she said, she would be socially ostracized within the orchestra for which she has played for decades.

A middle-aged professional musician told me that he wears his hair very long in order to appear hippie-like and camouflage his conservative politics. He is no more likely to tell fellow musicians that he supports President Trump than a Marrano in medieval Spain would have been to go public with his Jewish beliefs.

One musician in Minnesota wrote to me: "I was a professional musician from the age of 17. I wanted you to know that I, too, lost my career because of my views. My choice, actually; I just could no longer take the abuse."

I'm fortunate. As a radio talk-show host and columnist, I'm paid to express my opinions. As for my avocation of conducting orchestras, I'm lucky there, too. Because the permanent conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra's board remained principled, and because so many people support me and my values, the efforts to thwart me failed. The Disney hall, with 2,000-plus seats, was sold out -- a first for a community orchestra in that venue.

Of course, American conservative Marranos don't just live in the world of music. They are in every profession. We know about the high-profile cases, the conservatives whose careers have been ruined by saying the "wrong" thing, or supporting the "wrong" candidate or ballot proposition; we know about the conservative speakers who have been physically attacked and prevented from speaking on college campuses. But we don't know about the millions who are just afraid to speak up, who remain silent in a business meeting or at a dinner party when someone casually expresses a view with which they strongly disagree. These Americans live in fear, legitimately so in many cases, that if they do speak out, there will be severe consequences -- a job lost, a promotion not given or even a child who will no longer speak to them.

This is all new in our country.

Had anyone predicted that in America -- the land more renowned than any other for liberty and free speech -- the word "Marrano" would ever accurately characterize citizens, let alone close to half the voting population, that individual would have been regarded as a charlatan.

But given the intolerance and hatred on the left, and its dominance over almost every area of American life, that individual would have been a prophet.

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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Union Bosses Have Too Much Control. It’s Time to Protect the Rights of American Workers

Rep. Phil Roe

For the past eight years, union bosses have held the upper hand over East Tennessee workers, as the previous administration tried to stack the deck in favor of unionization.

The National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor combined to pursue an agenda that put union bosses and special interests ahead of the rights of individual workers and job creation.

If there was any doubt the Department of Labor was pushing a partisan agenda, just look at former Labor Secretary Tom Perez’s new job: head of the Democrat Party.

It is time to restore employee rights and create a pro-growth, pro-employee environment within the workplace, and I am pleased to already see the new administration working aggressively to create jobs by undoing job-killing regulations.

I’ve said time and time again that promoting fair and free labor policies in the workplace have nothing to do with whether or not you are pro- or anti-union, and everything to do with the rights to which every American worker is entitled.

Still, current law does not accurately reflect the 21st century we live in today. In fact, these laws have remained largely unchanged since the National Labor Relations Act was passed 70 years ago.

A striking statistic finds that 94 percent of workers represented by a union today never voted for that union to represent them. Today, labor unions’ membership is down to about 11 percent of the workforce as more and more employees have opted for a free-market economy.

For this reason I introduced the Employee Rights Act.

The Employee Rights Act is a comprehensive labor law update that will allow places of employment to serve the interest of their employees—not unions or other special interests.

The Employee Rights Act would ensure the right to a secret ballot is always protected.

It would also require permission from union members for the use of their dues for any purpose other than collective bargaining, ensuring union members’ dues cannot be used for political purposes without members’ knowledge or permission.

The bill requires periodic recertification of union elections so every employee has a chance to weigh in on whether or not they wish to be represented by a union.

Finally, the Employee Rights Act requires a majority vote of all employees—not just those present—to decide whether to unionize or strike.

These are commonsense protections every worker deserves.

The right to a secret ballot is one of the most fundamental protections of American democracy. It’s how we elect our presidents, our representatives, and our local leaders.

A secret ballot protects employees from intimidation during union elections—from both sides. Further, requiring employees to recertify their union regularly will keep union leaders attentive to the needs of workers.

This commonsense measure will help protect employee privacy and create safeguards for the American worker, and I look forward to working with the Trump administration to ensure worker rights are protected.

SOURCE

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In a World of Real Evil, the Left Fights Fake Evil

Dennis Prager

All my life, I have known this rule about people: Those who don’t fight the greatest evils will fight lesser evils or make-believe evils. This happens to be the morally defining characteristic of the left.

During the Cold War, many liberals and nearly all conservatives fought communism, but the left fought anti-communism.

The left opposed American military buildups and regarded the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union as nothing more than two scorpions in a bottle fighting to the death. It loathed Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, not Communist Party Secretary-General Leonid Brezhnev.

It regarded Reagan’s labeling of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” with contempt.

Typical was the reaction of one of America’s best-known intellectuals, Henry Steele Commager, then a professor of history at Amherst College. He said, “It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I’ve read them all.”

With regard to fighting communism—which, aside from Nazism, has been the greatest evil in the modern world (it killed and enslaved far more people than Nazism)—the left was an obstacle, not an ally.

The left in the West and elsewhere did far more to enable communist evil than to stop it.

The same holds true with regard to the greatest evil in the world at this time: totalitarian Islam, or Islamism.

The left is doing precisely what it did during the war against communism: It’s fighting the anti-Islamists, not the Islamists. Just as it labeled anti-communists “cold warriors” and other derisive epithets, the left labels those fighting Islamism as “Islamophobes” and, of course, “racists.”

In the moral order as perceived by the left, it is the anti-Islamists who are the enemy of the good.

In this battle, the left fights American conservatives—and Israel, the country in the front line against Islamism. In a nutshell, rather than fighting evil, the left fights those who fight evil.

Therefore, if you have moral clarity, you are not on the left. If you have moral clarity, you can be a liberal, a conservative, a centrist, an atheist, a believer, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a black, a white, a Latino, an Asian, a Native American, a gay, a straight, or a bisexual.

But you cannot be a leftist.

The problem, however, is that people want to feel morally good about themselves, and no one wants this more than the left. It has written the proverbial book on moral self-esteem. Therefore, it does not merely believe that it is morally superior to all others; it knows it is.

Leftists know they are more compassionate, more enlightened, more intellectual, and more intelligent than conservatives. And they know that they care more about the “downtrodden,” the “marginalized,” and the “disenfranchised” than conservatives.

But to feel good about yourself, you have to fight against something bad. Since the left doesn’t fight real evil (that would take moral courage in addition to moral clarity), it has to fight lesser evils or made-up evils.

For example, the left relentlessly fights racism in America, even though America is the least racist multiracial society in history; it relentlessly fights sexism in America, the country that has afforded unprecedented equality and liberty to women (but it does not fight the terrible sexism that pervades the world’s most women-suppressing societies—those in the Muslim world); and, of course, it fights Nazis and white supremacists—who, though evil, constitute an utterly negligible threat to America today.

Fighting Nazis in Germany between 1933 and 1945 was an act of moral heroism. Given their negligible numbers and nonexistent power, fighting Nazis in America in 2017 is an act of moral onanism.

There’s a lot more on the list of made-up or lesser evils that the left fights instead of fighting real evil.

It fights religious Americans, specifically religious Christians and especially evangelicals. Now that’s an enemy worth fighting—those mean Christians (and Jews) on the religious right. And it fights conservatives, or at least the conservatives who fight them.

And, of course, it fights global warming. Leftists have convinced themselves that the real fight against evil in the world today is not against Islamism; it’s against carbon emissions.

And now, we can add statues to the list. The left was AWOL against communism, and it’s AWOL against Islamism. But it’s in the vanguard of fighting statues.

SOURCE

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Leftist hate never falters
   
The nation’s eyes are fixated on dramatic flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, where the death toll (so far) is thankfully small compared to flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The government response on all levels seems to be fairly effective, and unlike with Katrina, the press coverage hasn’t been dominated by accusations of racism or inhumanity in the rescue effort.

There’s one obvious exception: cartoonists for the Left. Politico tweeted an image by radical artist Matt Wuerker in which he mocks Christian wackos wearing Confederate flag shirts. A man being rescued from his rooftop declares: “Angels! Sent by God!” A Coast Guard pilot is shown correcting him. “Er, actually Coast Guard … sent by the government,” he says.

After mocking the victims still suffering from a hurricane as stupid religious folks, Wuerker tried to dig himself out of a hole on Twitter. He lamented: “Just trying to point out times like this we’re lucky to have rescue services. Don’t see how this takes away from private individuals heroism.” Then he added: “Respectfully — it’s making fun of the Secessionist movement. Not at all aimed at all Texans.” Politico soon deleted its promotional tweet, but not the cartoon.

A poll taken in 2016 (by Democrat pollsters) showed that 59 percent of Texans opposed secession, and only 26 percent expressed support. Wuerker claimed that his job is to prod people into considering “the ironies and subtleties of the world we live in,” but cartoons like this aren’t ironic or subtle. They’re ham-fisted and ignorant.

Wuerker also felt it was safe to mock conservatives. “Times like this it’s ironic to say that the government is the enemy,” he said. It’s not conservatives who have protested the front-line heroes of local government but leftist street agitators who have endlessly denigrated the police as racist child killers.

Then there’s the scabrous French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose latest cover shows a bunch of Nazi flags mostly underwater and a few white hands sticking out of the water in the “Heil Hitler” salute. The cover text in French translates to “God Exists! He Drowned All Neo-Nazis of Texas!”

To liberal elites, all Texans are somehow bigoted white Christian males. Even a hurricane can’t restrain their rage about their satirical targets having any power in America. Cartoons like these strongly underline why so many Americans find that the secular-progressive media are either tone-deaf or blatantly hostile toward what (and Who) they hold dear.

SOURCE

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By their deeds shall ye know them



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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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America's melting pot and America's Muslims

Jeff Jacoby notes below that in opinion surveys American Muslims are very tolerant and pro-American.  He draws much comfort from that. Although their religion is very authoritarian -- preaching Islamic supremacism -- Jeff believes that they are peaceful pussies.

I spent 20 years doing opinion surveys for academic purposes so I think I can offer an informed perspective on that.  I will start out by making a very old comment:  "Deeds, not words". What people say in response to surveys is often not what they think and is certainly not what they do.  The attitude/behavior discrepancy is a well-known problem in psychology.  I am one of many who have researched it.

Let me give a glaring example.  Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian. Even Friedrich Engels (co-author of Karl Marx) recognized that.  Let me quote him:


"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists"

The whole point of Leftism is to change society and you can only change society by changing what people do. Leftists proceed from a perception of fault in the world to a conviction that they are entitled to abolish that fault.  They think, for instance, that inequality is wrong and proceed from that to think that they have the right to abolish it.  Conservatives, by contrast, are much more humble.  They see inequality too but have no fantasy of their right or ability to change it.  They just try to work around it  -- by charitable giving, for instance.

Leftists of course are not always able to implement their plans and wishes.  It is only when a society is in a very disordered state -- due to war or some other cause -- that they can seize complete power.  You then see how authoritarian they really are.  As Engels foresaw, they then have to become practitioners of terror and mass murder.  And, sadly, a large part of the world's  population has experienced that:  Russia, China etc.

In the USA and the Anglosphere generally, democratic traditions obstruct what Leftists can do so they have to be content to nibble at the edges of society -- as we saw from the torrent of destructive regulations that emanated from the Obama regime.  But in all cases Leftism is about forcing change upon society. And if that is not authoritarian, what would be?

From all that, one would expect Leftists to have very authoritarian, pro-authority attitudes.  They should enthusiastically proclaim the wonders of government power. They should exult in the subordination of the many to the few.

But they do not. I did many surveys of authority attitudes during my 20 years as an academic researcher and I routinely found that Leftists were no more likely to express acceptance of authority than anyone else. Their attitudes to authority were completely compartmentalized, to use Freud's term. They could reject authoritarianism in their attitude statements while also voting for it and working towards it. It was the same in Engels' day. His fellow revolutionary Leftists were condemning authority while also being prepared to exercize it to an extreme degree. His essay on the matter is well worth reading to this day

So if attitude statements tell you nothing about Leftist behaviour, why would we think that attitude statements tell us anything about Muslim behaviour?  And we do know about Muslim behaviour. Like Leftists who get full power, they are mass murderers of the innocent.  That goes on all the time in the Middle East and other Muslim lands.

And it goes on on our countries too.  Muslims have very little power to change anything in our countries so it is only a small minority who can achieve authoritarian Muslim aims -- usually by sacrificing their own lives in a shooting or bombing spree.  And even Muslims are wary of sacrificing their own lives so it is usually socially marginal Muslims who go on such sprees. They feel that their lives are useless so why not give up that life for Allah?

So I think Jeff Jacoby below is totally naive.  What Muslims say is no guide to what they really think and may well do.  They are a dangerous element in a our society and should be sent back to their ancestral lands where they can vent their violent urges  onto one-another.

Just to expand a little on that last point:  The Left erupt into a febrile rage about largely imaginary white supremacists but completely ignore Muslim supremacism. You just have to read the Koran or listen to Muslim preachers to be left in no doubt about the supremacist nature of Islam.  Is it only imaginary threats that the Left can deal with?  Do real threats simply have to be blocked out?  It would seem so.  What might be called "cognitive management" seems to be essential to Leftism


THE STORY of American pluralism began with the migration of Puritan separatists, who came to the New World seeking a haven where they could practice their faith as they saw fit. The Puritans didn't show much tolerance toward subsequent newcomers practicing other faiths, such as Quakers and Baptists. But those religions put down roots, and the intolerance evaporated over time.

That became the pattern. Though religious diversity is one of the hallmarks of American life, believers from less-familiar traditions typically start out facing resentment and mistrust. After a while, however, those minority creeds and churches grow accepted and comfortable and become part of the nation's religious and cultural mosaic.

We don't often think about it, but it's an amazing phenomenon. In a world torn by religious bitterness, the United States has repeatedly managed to assimilate clashing faiths. It was true for Quakers and Baptists in the 18th century, for Catholics in the 19th, and for Mormons and Jews in the 20th. It is proving true yet again in this century for American Muslims.

The Pew Research Center recently released the results of a detailed survey of Muslims in the United States — the third it has conducted since 2007. It is no secret that many Americans, especially since 9/11, have come to regard Muslims with fear or suspicion. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump fueled that animus, decrying the "great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population" and demanding a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the United States.

Yet for all that, the Pew surveys make clear, US Muslims are replicating the age-old trajectory of religious minority communities: They adopt American values, reject fundamentalism, and form ties of friendship and love across religious lines.

In the latest poll, an overwhelming 92 percent of Muslims agree with the patriotic statement "I am proud to be an American." When asked how much they feel they have in common with most Americans, 60 percent of Muslims say "a lot" and another 28 percent say "some." Only 36 percent say that all or most of their friends are fellow Muslims, a striking drop from the 49 percent who said so in the 2011 survey — and far less than the 95 percent of Muslims who say so in other countries.

Islamist fanaticism and terror have been among the world's intractable problems for decades; the scholar Daniel Pipes has estimated that as many as 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support radical Islam. There is no simple solution to the problem of militant Islamist extremism, and too many Americans — from Boston to Fort Hood to San Bernardino to Orlando — have been among its victims.

But as the Pew data show, the Muslim community in America is the most religiously tolerant and socially liberal Islamic population in the world. And Muslims in America, far from sanctioning deliberate violence against civilians, are actually more likely than the general public to oppose it in all circumstances.

In Pew's latest survey, 59 percent of Americans overall said that targeting or killing civilians for a "political, social, or religious cause" can never be justified. Opposition among US Muslims, however, was 17 percentage points higher — three-fourths of Muslim respondents opposed such killings. The Cato Institute's David Bier suggests that American Muslims are so strongly opposed to religion-based terrorism for the obvious reason that Muslims worldwide are its most frequent victims.

Perhaps it is for the same reason that Muslims in the United States are considerably more likely to reject fundamentalist or monolithic interpretations of Islam.

While many U.S. Muslims attend mosque and pray regularly, majorities say that there is more than one way to interpret their religion and that traditional understandings of Islam need to be reinterpreted to address contemporary issues.
About 43 percent of US Muslims say they attend religious services at least once a week; 65 percent say religion is very important to them. For US Christians, the numbers are comparable — 47 percent say they go to church at least weekly, and 68 percent consider their religion very important in their lives. Contrary to the popular view of Muslims as dogmatic, however, a large majority of those living in America take a latitudinarian approach to Islam and the Koran. Pew found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) "openly acknowledge that there is room for multiple interpretations" of their religion" and just over half of all US Muslims agree that "traditional understandings of Islam must be reinterpreted to reflect contemporary issues." Polls of Muslims worldwide have found overwhelming majorities supporting a literal interpretation of the Koran; in America, less than half of Muslims do.

Similarly, a majority of Muslims in this country reject the view that Sharia should be a source (let alone the source) for national legislation. In France and Britain, by contrast, majorities of Muslims insist that Sharia should be the primary law of the land. When asked if there is "a natural conflict between the teachings of Islam and democracy," 65 percent of American Muslims say no.

All this is a wonderful affirmation of the power of the American melting pot — E Pluribus Unum. It is a reminder of the fundamental difference between the blood-and-soil nationalism that prevails in Europe and the American conviction that nationhood is grounded in equality and natural rights.

During the debate on independence in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia declared that liberty in America must be universal, embracing "the Mahomitan [Muslim] and the Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion." The potency of that embrace has not diminished. Immigrants of every faith still come to America, and become Americans.

SOURCE

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Donald Trump's response to Hurricane Harvey has been exemplary

Even the fiercest of Donald Trump's critics would have to concede that he has performed well after the last few days. Given the devastation which has befallen Texas, it would be crass to say the president has had a "good hurricane",  but the US media and political establishment will inevitably analyse his performance from that perspective anyway. And it would be churlish to ignore the fact that he has, as it happens, shown leadership.

Trump has tweeted to good purpose, cajoling people to get to safety, encouraging and praising those on the ground. He has been refreshingly non-partisan, hailing the performance of John Bel Edwards, the Democrat governor of Louisiana as well as his Republican counterpart in Texas, Greg Abbott.

The president has not pretended to be King Canute, but has let the professionals get on with the job while pledging they will get the resources they need.

SOURCE

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Just when you think you've heard the dumbest comment ever made... Maxine Waters does her best to lead us all into peace and prosperity



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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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