Leftists are basically all the same

Tasmania has just had an election in which the conservatives won. So how did the Tasmanian Left handle the defeat?  There is no doubt that the issues for tiny Tasmania, tucked away at the bottom of the world, are much less portentous than the issues for the great world power that is the USA.  So surely we could expect that the response of the Tasmanian Left would be much less embittered and rage-filled than the response of the American Left when Donald beat Hillary?

It was not to be.  The big issue in the Tasmanian campaign was the hardly earth-shattering question of whether gambling machines should be permitted.  Despite that, the defeated Tasmanian Left erupted in anger and bad grace, accusing the conservatives of not having won fair and square.

So this similarity of results between Tasmania and the USA despite very different circumstances confirms that we have to go down to the psychological level to understand the Left.  We have to face the fact that Leftists are born full of anger and hostility to the people around them.  Reality doesn't interest them.  They just hate it all.

Excerpt from a news report follows:


[Federal] Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has attacked the “extraordinarily ungracious” concession speech by Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White, calling Labor’s claims the Hodgman campaign was bankrolled by gaming companies as “sour grapes” and “absurd”.

Tasmania’s Hodgman Liberal government has been re-elected with a majority, after voters turned away from the Greens and shunned the Jacqui Lambie Network.

Ms White congratulated Premier Will Hodgman this morning after neglecting to do so in her concession speech last night.

“I’m incredibly proud of the Tasmanian Labor campaign, our candidates and the values and issues we fought for. We didn’t get there this time but we can hold our heads high.”


The Tasmanian Left too put up a woman for the top job, the blonde bombshell Rebecca White.  Once again the Feminist theory that women will vote for another woman falls flat

[Federal Leftist leader] Bill Shorten also added his congratulations, but not without throwing in a pointed barb.

“Rebecca White and her team ran a positive, issues-focused campaign that reflected the best Labor values, against the Liberals who were backed by well-resourced special interests,” the federal Labor lader said in a statement.

“Bec has shown herself to be an energetic campaigner, and a strong and effective leader with a bright future ahead of her.”

Earlier Mr Ciobo said he was disappointed by the Labor response to losing the Tasmanian election last night, calling the party hypocritical given the amount of campaign money it receives from unions.

“I also find it frankly quite extraordinary that the Australian Labor Party, who are effectively a bought subsidiary of the union movement, would for a second start accusing anybody else of throwing too much money at a problem or advertising in excess of the amount that they can advertise,” Mr Ciobo told Sky News.

“I mean seriously? That is probably the most absurd thing I have heard in quite a while from the Australian Labor Party.”

Mr Hodgman claimed victory at 10.30pm on Saturday, thanking voters for sticking with his government, providing it a second term in majority.

While his opponents claimed the government had been purchased by advertising paid for by poker machine interests, Mr Hodgman said voters had rewarded the Liberals for “kickstarting” the economy.

Opposition leader Rebecca White conceded defeat but failed to congratulate Mr Hodgman, instead praising voters for putting his government “on notice”.

“The Tasmanian people have put this Liberal government on notice: today marks a new era in Tasmanian politics,” Ms White said.

“People want transparent, good government that is going to benefit them and not somebody’s rich mate.”

She said the Hodgman government was “nearly defeated” and blamed the cashed-up campaign against Labor by poker machine interests for the party’s failure to secure a better result.

“The Tasmanian people should be represented by the best representatives; not the richest,” she said, accusing the Liberal Party of “buying” seats in the parliament.

SOURCE

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A war Europe cannot win

President Donald Trump has threatened to tax European cars after the EU warned it would retaliate if the US placed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

"If the EU wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the US," Trump said on Twitter on Saturday. "They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!"

Trump also complained about the trade deficit, attributing it to "our 'very stupid' trade deals and policies".

Trump on Thursday announced plans to slap tariffs of 25 per cent on all imported steel and 10 per cent on broad categories of aluminium imports, prompting trade partners to consider retaliatory measures. Trump later boasted that trade wars are "good, and easy to win".

European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein said the EU has been preparing for the situation "for a long time". Winterstein said a decision could be taken when top commission officials meet on Wednesday.

He said the EU will also stand ready to protect Europe's embattled steel market in case of a surge of imports as a result of the US tariffs. The EU will further seek to settle the dispute before the World Trade Organisation, he added.

SOURCE

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Manufacturing in U.S. Expands at Fastest Pace Since May 2004

U.S. factories expanded in February at the fastest rate since May 2004, indicating sustained strength in manufacturing as demand remains solid, figures from the Institute for Supply Management showed Thursday.

The latest advance extends a series of healthy readings in the survey-based measure of manufacturing that’s being fueled by improving global economies and firm business investment. It also comes on the heels of a late-year pickup in consumer spending, which advanced in the fourth quarter at the fastest pace in more than a year.

The purchasing managers group’s gauge of export orders was the strongest since April 2011. While orders and production were a touch weaker in February than the prior month, the readings are nonetheless robust.

The ISM report showed 15 of 18 manufacturing industries indicated growth last month, led by printing, primary metals and machinery.

SOURCE

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Booming: Yet Another Economic Indictor Hits Multi-Decade Best

As we noted earlier in the week, Americans are noticing that the country's economy is in strong shape, with consumer confidence spiking to the best level in 17 years.  Now the government has announced another data point that reinforces the string of good news.

These developments don't come in a vacuum; the economy has taken off because of the Republican and Trump administration policies of right-sizing regulation and cutting taxes.  Are Americans tired of winning yet?

U.S. filings for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in almost five decades, indicating the job market remains tight, Labor Department figures showed

Thursday...Overall, the employment picture remains solid, with payrolls continuing to increase and the unemployment rate at the lowest since late 2000. Job growth will help sustain consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy.

In another tax reform-related development, Wisconsinites are experiencing lower utility bills due to passage of the new law.  Consumers can thank House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Ron Johnson for these savings:

Customers of Wisconsin utilities are projected to save more than $275 million from the new lower rate for federal corporate taxes, based on estimates compiled by the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group. The corporate tax rate was lowered to 21% from 35% as part of the recent tax reform and tax cut legislation. Projected taxes are included as an expense when setting utility rates and the cost is passed onto customers.

The state's utilities were required to file their projected tax savings with the Public Service Commission last month. Energies electric customers are projected to save $97 million a year from the lower corporate tax rate based on the estimates...Several utilities have proposed giving customers a credit on their bills.

Badger State voters should remember that Sen. Tammy Baldwin voted 'no' on tax reform, as did every single Democrat in Congress.  Democrats have attempted to demonize the corporate tax cuts, but it's those very cuts that are allowing businesses all across the country to increase employee benefits, raise wages, pay bonuses, and pass down savings to customers (on top of the law's tax cuts for roughly 90 percent of taxpayers).

Improving America's global competitiveness is smart economics and helps people.  Public support for tax reform has jumped by 26 net points since December, according to New York Times polling, because reality is on the GOP's side.

SOURCE

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The Coming Trump Landslide

Wayne Allyn Root

I know Donny Deutsch only too well. A stereotypical, spoiled-brat, New York liberal.

The memory of my Donny Deutsch CNBC debacle came pouring back to mind yesterday because I saw Donny made news as a guest on MSNBC. Donny was asked about Trump’s re-election chances. For once I agree with Donny.

Deutsch said Trump will be re-elected in 2020 by a landslide because the economy is booming and Americans have more money in their pockets. Most Americans base their vote on pocketbook issues, explained Deutsch. It’s rare to hear truth from a liberal.

Then Donny spoke more raw truth. He said, “That’s why Trump must be removed from office now.”

My old pal Donny revealed what liberals are all thinking, deep down. Trump is a lock for re-election by a wide margin. As Deutsch admitted, that’s why he must be stopped now.

Crazed liberals scream for his removal…impeachment…even assassination. Because they know he is succeeding, he is effective, he is erasing Obama and fundamentally changing America back to a conservative, capitalist nation. They know they can’t stop him at the ballot box, so they have decided they have to stop him any other way they can- even resorting to violence, conspiracy and sedition.

Liberals and the mainstream media (I know, I repeat myself) love to claim Trump’s ineffective. They say “He’s accomplished very little.” Liberal scholars recently rated Trump as the worst president in history. Really?

I consider The Heritage Foundation my “Bible of conservatism.” Heritage defines conservative. According to their ratings system, Trump is the most successful and effective conservative president in modern history. He scored far higher than my hero Ronald Reagan.

Trump may be unorthodox. He’s certainly not like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or John Kasich or Ted Cruz. But he beat all of them. Then he beat “the unbeatable” Hillary Clinton. Then he became, according to the authority on conservatism, the most effective conservative president in history.

In recent days Trump offered up a deal to keep DACA immigrants in the USA. Conservatives weren’t happy. But Trump won over some immigrants.

Then he offered up multiple gun control measures. Conservatives weren’t happy. But Trump won over suburban moms.

Then he offered up trade tariffs on China. Conservatives and Wall Street went on the warpath. But Trump won over working class Americans.

The most conservative president in history won the right to move towards the center on a few issues by building a foundation even more conservative than Reagan. That gave him room for just a little compromise. That's how you win elections by a landslide.

Trump turns out to be a brilliant political strategist. He’s expanding the GOP tent like no other Republican in history.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Donny Deutsch was right. Liberals had better remove Trump from office quickly-by hook or crook. Because the Trump train can’t be stopped any other way.

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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Trump's "trade war"

I have hesitated to comment on Trump's plans to put import duties onto steel and aluminium  -- but his plans have so few defenders that I think I should point out a few things that are being overlooked.  For a start, this is NOT a great departure from normal GOP thinking.  George Bush II did the same for a time. The steel business is a chronic political problem worldwide. I will say why below. And there is certainly nothing new about this from Trump.  He campaigned on a policy of using tariffs to protect American industry. So he has a very clear mandate for what he is doing.  And his rationale that small price increases on consumer goods are worth it to save communities applies here.

And Trump's own comment that trade wars are easy to win is instructive.  It suggests that his tariffs are just a bargaining tool and a temporary one at that.  So any long term damage is avoided.

And what about political damage?  He is such a big winner there that he could well be prepared for substantial damage in other directions.  The working class liking for Trump could now well become ecstatic in many quarters.

But to get back to economics, this is a well-known problem.  It is known as a "dumping" problem and Trump is being perfectly orthodox about it.  A dumping problem arises when a country produces more of a good than can readily be sold. And steel is almost continually in that situation.  Because it is such an icon of industrial maturity, almost every country everywhere wants to have a steel mill and governments everywhere support the building of them.  So steel is chronically in glut, oversupply.  China has a big surplus but so does Canada, Europe etc.

So what to do when nobody wants to buy your product?  Easy!  Discount it.  But you have to be careful about doing that or you may be selling your product for less than it costs to make. But with government support your home market is captive so you apply discounts only to stuff you sell overseas, leaving your home market as a survival revenue source.

So if China were selling Americans Chinese steel for less than it costs to make, you might think Americans would celebrate:  China is giving us a gift!  And some economists think we should look at it that way.  But nobody does. The Chinese steel will now be replacing steel made in America and the American steel millers will be up in arms.  They will demand that their government put a tax on all the imported steel so that any discounts are cancelled out.  And that is basically what Mr Trump is doing.  He is keeping out all that foreign steel so that American steel millers can sell their stuff.

But there are problems.  China has in fact been quite restrained and has not raided the American market.  It is those nice Canadians who sell most of the "foreign" steel marketed in America.  Do we really want to shaft them? If we do they could retaliate. They could, for instance, buy their military aircraft from Europe rather than America.  They have already cancelled their F35 order and the Super Hornets could be next. And the latest Saab Gripen E would make a very nice alternative.

But Trump is undoubtedly cooking up a deal of some sort so we will have to wait and see.  My best guess:  He will be "persuaded" to replace his new tariffs with a system of national quotas -- with the largest existing international suppliers getting the biggest quotas and the smaller suppliers getting no quota at all.  Good for Canada, bad for China, only a little bit bad for American consumers, great for the mid-terms.

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Ideology and Political Divisiveness

What Robert Higgs says below undoubtedly explains part of the problem but I think there is a lot more to it. I think we are looking at a change primarily on the Left. They have drifted Left almost to the point of insanity in recent years.  Reality no longer matters to them.  Why?  Because they have always been aimed in that direction.  They never ceased to defend the Soviets while that gory bunch were around.

For a long time, however, the need to get votes kept them cautious.  They risked a wipeout if they got too far from the centre.  Recently, however, they have realized that their 3 big rusted-on constituencies -- blacks, Jews and Hispanics -- will support them no matter what, so they need add only the fanatical end of the white Left to get into power. So they have moved to more extreme positions.  And such extremism is of course divisive.  You almost have to let go of your sanity to embrace it

In recent years, many politicians and political pundits have lamented what they perceive to be growing political divisiveness in the United States. Public-opinion polls have confirmed the reality of this growing divisiveness (Badger and Chokshi 2017; Hook 2017; Pew Research Center 2017). Nearly everyone who remarks on this phenomenon views it as regrettable, and many offer recommendations for alleviating it, especially by embracing a greater willingness to compromise in Congress and among the public. Not many commentators, however, have evinced an understanding of how the heightened divisiveness came about or of the necessary condition(s) for reducing it.

To understand recent trends in political divisiveness, it might help to recall the situation at an earlier time when such divisiveness was not so great—say, during the 1950s or perhaps even as recently as the 1990s. In those days, the two major political parties as a rule kept their squabbling between the forty-yard lines. They and their supporters among the public agreed on the fundamental political issues (e.g., anticommunism in foreign affairs, a sizable welfare state at home). Of course, even within the accepted bounds of political dispute, disagreements and conflicts might become heated from time to time in certain areas, yet, given the broad agreement on the nature of the regime, politicians and their supporters could fashion compromises that kept nearly all changes within the established bounds. Indeed, politicians could brag about and take credit for their capacity to forge compromises, and few held this flexibility against them or accused them of being sellouts.

In more recent times, however, as the government has grown and extended its involvement into more—and more important—areas of life (e.g., comprehensive health-care insurance coverage and broad-gauge financial-rescue operations such as those undertaken in 2008 and 2009), the perceived stakes have become greater in the minds of political actors. With more at stake, people’s willingness to compromise has declined: compromise may be too costly for them to tolerate. So as government grows, extending its scope and power into more corners of economic and social affairs, it pushes more and more people beyond their thresholds of acceptance.

Now, whenever the government grows, it does not simply take an action and push it onto an unwilling public or a large unwilling part of the public, telling those who oppose it to “like it or lump it.” Such an overbearing imposition is well-nigh guaranteed to increase and sharpen the existing resistance to the action and thus to make the implementation of the government’s new policy more difficult. To ease the imposition of an action on unwilling parties, the government and its supporters always clothe it in attractive ideological garb, claiming that it affords great benefits for the general public, necessary protections from foreign or domestic threats, and so forth. Some potential resisters are likely to be persuaded by such ideological cover stories—if they weren’t, the government’s propaganda would be pointless. So ideology, it turns out, plays an essential role in the conduct of any government’s operations, especially when it is expanding the scope of such operations.

More than thirty years ago I formulated a conception of ideology (a highly contested concept among scholars) that I have found helpful in analyzing the nature of government and its growth. In my conception, ideology is “a somewhat coherent, rather comprehensive belief system about social relations.” Such a system must have “four distinct aspects: cognitive, affective, programmatic, and solidary” (Higgs 1987, 37; for an extended discussion of ideology viewed in this way, see chapter 3 of the same source, “On Ideology as an Analytical Concept in the Study of Political Economy,” 35–56). The key connection between ideology and political action arises from the fourth aspect, solidarity among an ideology’s adherents. This solidarity establishes an identity because affiliation with an ideology defines the kind of person one is and wishes to be, and maintenance of this identity requires that a person act as a faithful comrade of others who identify likewise. An ideology thus defines and solidifies personal identity, but it simultaneously defines the enemy—as someone has said, it tells the ideological adherent whom to fear and whom to hate.

As government grows, pushing into more and more areas of social and economic life and evoking an ideological rationale to justify its action and attract supporters, it simultaneously causes its supporters to identify those who oppose the action as “the other” and even as “the enemy.” When people come to view each other in this stark fashion, social and political divisiveness is almost certain to increase. During the past several decades, as a harsh and unforgiving view of political opponents has grown, the fear and loathing of those who “are not with us” may well have been the main avenue along which the willingness to compromise has declined.

If such has been the case, it follows that a necessary condition for the alleviation of such divisiveness is the retardation or cessation—perhaps even the reversal—of the government’s growth. Even if meeting such a condition should be proposed or carried out, however, the problem is that a sort of Tullockian transitional-gains trap (Tullock 1975) may impede such a turnaround. Many individuals and groups have become deeply and variously embroiled in the government’s current scope and power, and they are likely to resist fiercely any attempt to reverse the process they helped to push forward in recent decades. They will fight any changes that would require them to surrender benefits, policies, and programs in which they are deeply invested not only materially but also ideologically. Such resistance constitutes one of the important aspects of the ratchet effect in the growth of government, whereby each major lurch toward greater government becomes at least in part irreversible (Higgs 1987, 57–74; 2012, 75–97)

SOURCE

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Obama Snubs Graham Tributes, Promotes His Presidential Library Instead

Obama never was a Christian

Barack Obama has chosen not to participate in any of the events honoring evangelist Billy Graham this week, but he did carve out time to make a surprise visit to a community meeting in Chicago to promote the building of his presidential library.

Graham met, and in some cases became close friends, with every president from Harry Truman to Obama during his tenure as America’s Pastor, which stretched from the 1940s to the 21st century. He in fact also earned the moniker of Pastor to the Presidents.

Trump was not able to meet with Graham as president, but was on hand to help celebrate the preacher’s 95th birthday in 2013.

Obama met Graham in the spring of 2010 at the evangelist’s home in Montreat, North Carolina.

As reported by The Western Journal, George W. Bush and his wife Laura traveled to Graham’s library in Charlotte on Monday to pay their respects to the late Christian leader.

Bush also came bearing greetings from his 93-year-old father George H.W. Bush — the nation’s 41st president — saying, “I know he wished he could come too, but he’s not moving around much these days, but his spirit and heart is here.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, also 93 and has experienced health challenges, sent his regrets.

Former President Bill Clinton, like George W. Bush, made the journey to Charlotte on Tuesday. Clinton told reporters that he first heard Graham preach in Little Rock, Arkansas, when the future politician was an 11-year-old boy. He said meeting him later as an adult was one of the most memorable events of his life.

Clinton noted that Graham demanded that his 1959 Little Rock crusade be integrated and threatened to pull out when city leaders resisted. The pastor also became a strong supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight for racial equality.

“The ground at the foot of the cross is level, and it touches my heart when I see whites standing shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the cross,” Graham said.

While the Washington, D.C., resident did not take the time to make the short flight to Charlotte or even the drive to the U.S. Capitol, where Graham’s body lies in repose, Obama did travel to Chicago on Tuesday to push for approval of building his presidential library on the city’s South Side.

He was participated in a town hall-style meeting to allay local residents’ concerns that his presidential center will cause housing costs to increase and be too disruptive to their neighborhood.

“A lot of times, people get nervous about gentrification and understandably so,” Obama said. “It is not my experience … that the big problem on the South Side has been too much development, too much economic activity, too many people being displaced because all these folks from Lincoln Park are filling into the South Side. That’s not what’s happening.

Obama tweeted about the event later Tuesday night, saying it reminded him of his days as a community organizer in the 1990s.

While Obama does not plan to attend any of the events honoring Graham, he did post a tweet regarding one of the 20th Century’s most influential people.

The 44th president wrote: “Billy Graham was a humble servant who prayed for so many – and who, with wisdom and grace, gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”

On Wednesday, President Trump spoke at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda lauding the life Graham led as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The president also plans to travel to Charlotte to attend Graham’s funeral service on Friday.

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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Trump the Terrible

One must not make too much of this but there are some interesting parallels between Ivan the Terrible of Russia and Donald Trump -- including one very thought-provoking possible parallel.

For a start, Trump wants to make America great again. Ivan DID make Russia greater.  He conquered several adjoining states and thus greatly expanded the territory of Russia.  We live in very different times now so that is not to be expected of Mr Trump but both men aimed at national greatness.  Mr Obama stood for national shrinkage as far as I can tell.

And Ivan was eccentric.  He was not "presidential".  He actually appears to have gone mad on a couple of occasions.  So Mr Trump's tweets are a minor eccentricity by comparison.

And Ivan was popular with the people but unpopular with the Russian establishment.  Ivan too had a big "swamp" that he had to drain.  And he did drain it.  Quite a few heads came off the "boyars" (elite).

But, as Mr. Trump has found, draining the swamp is not easy. So Ivan still found the swamp frustrating

So here's the thought provoking bit.  At one stage Ivan got so frustrated at the lack of co-operation from the elite that he took himself off to the countryside and told people he had abdicated. 

The Boyars were of course delighted -- for five minutes.  Then they realized that they couldn't do anything without Ivan to sign the paperwork.  They were also afraid that the people might revolt against them.  They knew that Ivan was popular and that they were not.  So they had to beg him to come back.  He did.  But his price was high.  He got a whole lot of things that he wanted out of them.

So could Trump do something like that?  Could he get so frustrated with the GOP not doing what they were elected to do --abolish Obamacare and build the wall -- that he retired to Trump Tower and refused to come out again until the GOP had sorted itself out?  Maybe even Trump is not radical enough to do that but it could work.  Go Ivan!

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Supreme Court Backs Trump… Massive Changes Underway For Illegal Immigrants

Immigrants detained for removal proceedings may be held indefinitely and are not entitled to a bail hearing, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling means that immigrant detainees, who are sometimes held for months and years on end, have no recourse to challenge their confinement.

Justice Samuel Alito delivered the opinion for the court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined most of Alito’s opinion, though they also wrote to say they do not believe the court had jurisdiction to hear the case.

In a rare move, Justice Stephen Breyer read part of his dissent in the courtroom during Tuesday’s proceedings. The justices only read their dissents from the bench when they mean to emphasize their disagreement with the majority.

SOURCE

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Government unions play politics with unconstitutional dollars

Jeff Jacoby

FORTY YEARS AGO, the Supreme Court ruled that where a union represents public employees, even workers who don't join the union can be forced to pay "agency fees" as a condition of the job. While the First Amendment shields nonmembers from having to subsidize a union's ideological or political activities, the court held in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, it allows them to be assessed their fair share for the neutral costs of collective bargaining.

As the ensuing decades made clear, however, when it comes to public-sector unions, there is no separation between collective bargaining and politics.

Virtually everything government unions do is political: They endorse candidates, undertake political campaigns, lobby legislators, and hold politics-drenched conventions. They make no secret of their partisan loyalties and clout. On its website, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, a prominent government union, boasts: "All across the country, at every level of government, candidates for public office [have] learned . . . to pay attention to AFSCME's political muscle." And thanks to Abood, much of that muscle has been bought with fees collected from unwilling state employees.

For a long time it's been obvious that Abood got it wrong. In Janus v. AFSCME, a case the Supreme Court took up this week, the justices have a chance to overturn that precedent and get the issue right.

Banning agency fees wouldn't eliminate unions from government workplaces, but it would mean that unions could no longer compel nonmembers to pay the equivalent of union dues for representation they never asked for. It would also mean states could no longer trample employees' First Amendment rights in the name of "labor peace."

On Monday, as the high court heard arguments in the Janus case, union leaders and Democratic officials held political protest rallies around the country, wailing that the sky will fall if Abood is overturned. The lawyer for AFSCME, David Frederick, raised a similar alarm during his oral argument in Washington.

"If the other side succeeds in persuading a majority of you to overrule Abood," Frederick said, "it will affect thousands of contracts. More importantly, it is going to affect the work of state legislatures, city councils, school districts, who are going to have to go back to the drawing board. . . . In many collective bargaining agreements, the fees are the tradeoff. Union security is the tradeoff for no strikes. And so if you were to overrule Abood, you can raise an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country."

It's a hollow threat. And there is empirical evidence to prove it.

Since 2012, six states have adopted right-to-work laws, bringing to 28 the number of states in which no employee (private or public) can be forced to join or support a labor union as a requirement of the job. Under the new rules, agency fees dried up and some (not all) unions lost members. But none of the states that moved into the right-to-work camp were paralyzed by the "untold specter of labor unrest" that AFSCME and its allies are now warning of.

"The record in Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and elsewhere is that it is not a huge burden," says Daniel DiSalvo, a professor at City College of New York and expert on public-sector labor issues. Of course there have been some transitional wrinkles, "but you'd be hard pressed to find any evidence that the new laws were hard to implement or that they caused all kinds of problems."

Not only are agency fees already barred in the 28 right-to-work states, they are forbidden in the federal workplace too. None of the 2.7 million Americans who work for Uncle Sam can be coerced into paying tribute to a labor union against their will. Plainly, labor peace does not depend on compelled speech by reluctant government workers.

Abood should be overruled because it egregiously tramples government workers' rights — regardless of the impact on public-sector contract bargaining. But the justices can rest easy: The impact will be trivial. States, state workers, and the Bill of Rights will all be better off. And unions will be free to go on politicking. Just as long as they keep their paws out of nonmembers' paychecks.

SOURCE

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Exploiting Teenager Rage

The school shooting in Parkland, Florida, shows how quickly our media elites move horrors from tragedy to political opportunity.

They amplified the loudest voices of the shooting aftermath: teenage survivors who demanded gun control "solutions" like banning all semi-automatic assault weapons. These teenagers might accomplish in one week what the anti-Second Amendment crowd, led by these same media elites, has failed to do for decades.

Survivors of failed abortions (like Gianna Jessen or Melissa Ohden) have never held their attention for five seconds. That conflicts with the narrative.

Liberal journalists have openly discussed how these teenage advocates could be a crucial factor in defeating the gun-rights lobby. They could become the key to the kind of turnout necessary for putting Democrats in the majority in Congress. So they gave them every opportunity to push for liberal victory without any need to be civil.

David Hogg, the most prominent student survivor, went on CNN and proclaimed politicians shouldn't take money from the National Rifle Association because they are "child murderers." CNN morning anchor Alisyn Camerota didn't correct him — or condemn his statement, regardless of the fact that he'd just stained the reputations of millions of NRA members by labeling them killers. She said nothing. She was satisfied — pleased, in fact. CNN.com happily posted the clip with the headline "Shooting Survivor Calls NRA 'Child Murderers.'"

CNN hosted a "town hall" full of leftist rage against anyone who believes in Second Amendment rights. Their agenda was obvious from the program's title: "Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action." They used the hashtag #StudentsStandUp to promote it. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch were verbally slashed by the students without mercy.

Survivor Cameron Kasky stood a few feet from Rubio and smeared him on national television: "it's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is you're here, and there are some people who are not." Kasky also said he wished he could have questioned "the NRA lady" (Loesch), since he "would ask her how she can look in the mirror, considering the fact she has children, but, you know, maybe she avoids those."

In the next hour, when Loesch was on, people in the audience shouted "murderer," and "burn her," and student survivor Emma Gonzalez lectured her that she would be a better mother: "Dana Loesch, I want you to know that we will support your two children in the way that ... you will not."

Moderator Jake Tapper allowed the audience to be as immoderate as it wanted. He tweeted afterward: "People freestyled a bit" — a bit? — "and I wasn't inclined to reprimand a school shooting survivor or parent who lost a child for expressing him or herself in a question — even if aggressively."

But this is the most amazing part. In the aftermath, no one in television "news" replayed the students' rudeness as a storyline worthy of condemnation, or even comment. It matched their own political agenda and emotional temperature. When Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, "You lie!" at then-President Obama in 2009, these networks all angrily replayed it ad infinitum as a national disgrace. They called it "infamous." CNN's headline on the video clip read "The Heckling Heard 'Round the World."

Even Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito shaking his head at the 2010 State of the Union was projected as inappropriate.

Remember these student hecklers when CNN and their colleagues decry how President Donald Trump has single-handedly ruined civil discourse. Trump mocking CNN as "fake news" caused far more media outrage than Hogg calling the NRA "child murderers."

It will happen again and again. They are hell-bent on ridding this country of the Second Amendment, one tragedy at a time.

SOURCE

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Workers Defeat UFCW

In recent years, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) has experienced a number of setbacks. Since 2001, the union has lost over 100,000 members. In addition to declining membership, the union has experienced unwanted press attention over the past few years. For example, after a 2015 indictment, UFCW’s organizing coordinator for the marijuana industry was sentenced to prison for fraud and other crimes late last year.

Another UFCW boss, Mickey Kasparian, has been mired in a scandal involving sexual harassment and discrimination for over a year. In January, two officials at two different UFCW locals were indicted for crimes, including racketeering; both men are alleged to have had ties to the Mafia.

On February 7th, the UFCW suffered another setback. On that day, there was an ambush unionization election at a co-op grocery store in Northfield, Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning city about 40 miles south of Minneapolis. While the workers who supported unionization had the backing of UFCW Local 1189, the workers who opposed the union were on their own. The co-op’s management remained neutral; and no third-party organization intervened. In the end, however, the union’s opponents didn’t need help; they were able to defeat the UFCW — one of the largest and wealthiest unions in the country — with over 55% of the vote.

The secretive unionization effort began last summer, but it took until last month for the union to finally collect the 12 signatures that it needed for an election. Pathetically, the unionization campaign still resorted to using dishonest tactics to gather these few signatures. For example, some co-op employees were told that signing a union authorization card only meant that they wanted more information. (In actuality, signing such a card gives a union the right to represent an employee.) Co-op workers were also falsely told that over two-thirds of the staff had already signed the cards.

Many co-op employees were unaware of the UFCW’s campaign until the posting of the Notice of Petition for Election in January. There was no agreement among union supporters as to why exactly the store needed a union. Some workers wanted higher pay, while others claimed the co-op had engaged in unspecified unfair labor practices. The union organizer claimed the co-op was hiding money from its workers and could afford to pay them more. It’s unclear how she would know this.

Several co-op employees decided to fight the union. One of the union’s opponents, Bob N., managed to get a copy of the contract that the UFCW negotiated with a Minneapolis co-op grocery store. Bob posted this contract in his store’s break room. It turns out that the Northfield co-op’s wages and benefits were as good as — and in some ways better than — the compensation package that the UFCW had negotiated with the co-op in the much larger city. Of course, unlike the employees of the Minneapolis store, the workers at the Northfield store don’t have to pay union dues. Bob also wrote several newsletters and put up a number of posts from the UFCWMonitor.com, a blog that chronicles the activities of the union, for his co-workers to read.

Although the UFCW had the advantage of both time and resources, it still lost the ambush election. It appears the UFCW would like to try to unionize the Northfield co-op again next year. The good news is that next time, the union’s opponents will have had an entire year to prepare for the election, rather than less than three weeks. Bob and his co-workers who opposed the UFCW are a great example of how regular people, with very little time to organize, can still defeat a powerful union when they’re armed with the facts.

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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Dennis Prager: 'If We Don’t Defeat the Left, America Loses'

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host, author, columnist and creator of PragerUniversity.com, Dennis Prager, while giving an address to the Council for National Policy in February 2018 suggested that the differences between the right and left today are greater than the South and North in the Civil War, saying, “If we don’t defeat the left, America loses.”

“I never call for unity because it’s not valid,” stated Dennis Prager. “Either— This is terrible. It bothers me to say, but if we don’t defeat the left, America loses. That is what it amounts to.”

Below is a transcript of Dennis Prager’s remarks from the Council for National Policy event:

“The United States of America is engaged in a Civil War. I have described it as a Civil War for years now. I thank God that it is overwhelmingly peaceful, but it is as much a Civil War, and in some ways more so, than the one in the Nineteenth Century, in the 1860s.

“As odd as this sounds, but I took a vow when I started broadcasting never to exaggerate because credibility is all you have, so I’m not exaggerating when I say the differences between right and left in America today are greater than the differences between the South and the North in the Civil War. They differed, really, about one thing. That one thing was very, very big – no question. It’s one of the great moral versus immoral ideas in human history. But beyond that, they both loved America. They both loved liberty, at least, for nonslaves, and so on. I mean, they shared values.

“But there is— The gulf between right and left in America is unbridgeable, and that’s why I have reached the sad conclusion that calls for unity are naïve. Anyone who calls for unity, in any event – I learned this very early in my career – almost everyone who calls for unity isn’t being intellectually honest because they really, anyone who does, wants unity on their terms.

“I’ll never forget. I learned this in a completely nonpolitical way. My first radio show, was the moderator of the ABC radio in Las Angeles. I was the moderator, priest, rabbi, minister each Sunday night for two hours. It was an extremely popular show. Different priests, different rabbis, different ministers each week. And every so often, the rabbi would call for Jewish unity or the priest would call for Christian unity and the pastor would call for Christian unity. But whenever I pressed them, it was unity on their terms. When Orthodox rabbis called for unity, they wanted all Jews to be Orthodox. When non-Orthodox Jews wanted it, they wanted all Jews to be non-orthodox. When Protestants said it, they weren’t prepared to recognize the Pope. Let’s have Christian unity as Protestants. And Catholics were not prepared to give up the Papacy for unity with Protestants.

“So it was bologna. Everybody calling for unity meant: let’s all unite around my values. And so, I don’t blame these people. I would love everybody to unite around my values, but I never called for unity because it’s not valid. Either— This is terrible. It bothers me to say, but if we don’t defeat the left, America loses. That is what it amounts to.

“And let me tell you, a very important thing to say to your relatives. By the way, raise your hand if you don’t have any liberal relatives. Oh, that’s my wife raising her hand. You have to understand. She doesn’t include my family. I’m not talking blood, just family – really, seriously. Everybody does. Let’s be honest, okay?

“So, there is a very important thing you can do, and it’s totally honest. It’s not a gimmick, but it’s very powerful. You must ask your relative or friend: Are you a leftist or a liberal?

“There is nothing in common between liberalism and leftism, except big government. They have no other values in common. I am much closer to a liberal than I am to a leftist. With a liberal I can dialogue. I don’t have to defeat liberals. I have to defeat leftists. And here is a classic example: liberalism believed in racial integration; liberalism believed that race does not matter; leftism believes that race matters; leftism believes in black dorms, black graduations. Liberals didn’t. That was called segregation. Segregation was considered racist. Liberalism hated racism. Leftism thrives on racism. That is the difference on every issue, on every issue.

“Franklin Roosevelt was a liberal, a very far liberal, but a liberal. He spoke regularly of the need to defend Western Civilization, even Christian Civilization. That’s what liberalism believed in – Western Civilization. When President Trump spoke about defending Western Civilization in Warsaw, the entire left, I mean LA Times, New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, NBC, ABC, CBS, the whole gamut said this was a dog whistle to white supremacy. The idea of defending Western Civilization is dismissed as a white supremacist idea by the left. Liberals love, or loved, Western Civilization. The left despises it.

“So, there are many differences, and you make this clear to your relative and friend.

“Alan Dershowitz is a prominent liberal – Harvard Law School professor, Hillary Clinton supporter, life-long Democrat. He said to me— It is on film, on video, just two months ago in his apartment in New York City because we were making a film with Adam Corolla called ‘No Safe Spaces,’ which will be out at the end of this year about what is happening at our universities. This is Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School, life-long liberal Democrat. ‘My enemy is the left, not conservatives.’ Because he’s a liberal.

“Liberals, unfortunately, are weak. They are not bad. They’re weak. They don’t understand what Dershowitz does. Their enemy, the enemy of liberalism is leftism. The friend of liberalism is conservatism. We believe in open. We believe in free speech. We believe in free markets. We believe in Western Civilization. We believe in tolerance. The left doesn’t believe in any of those.

“So just, you must keep that in mind in fighting. If it’s not good enough to have the right values, you have to know how to fight for them. It’s as simple as that. Wanting to win doesn’t bring victories. Knowing how to win brings victories.”

SOURCE

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Another Liberal-Created Failure

Walter E. Williams

A liberal-created failure that goes entirely ignored is the left's harmful agenda for society's most vulnerable people — the mentally ill. Eastern State Hospital, built in 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the first public hospital in America for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Many more followed. Much of the motivation to build more mental institutions was to provide a remedy for the maltreatment of mentally ill people in our prisons. According to professor William Gronfein at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, by 1955 there were nearly 560,000 patients housed in state mental institutions across the nation. By 1977, the population of mental institutions had dropped to about 160,000 patients.

Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, titled "Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill," shutting down mental hospitals didn't turn out the way advocates promised. Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings). They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless.

We often encounter these severely mentally ill individuals camped out in libraries, parks, hospital emergency rooms and train stations and sleeping in cardboard boxes. They annoy passers-by with their sometimes intimidating panhandling. The disgusting quality of life of many of the mentally ill makes a mockery of the lofty predictions made by the advocates of shutting down mental institutions and transferring their function to community mental health centers, or CMHCs. Torrey writes: "The evidence is overwhelming that this federal experiment has failed, as seen most recently in the mass shootings by mentally ill individuals in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. It is time for the federal government to get out of this business and return the responsibility, and funds, to the states."

Getting the federal government out of the mental health business may be easier said than done. A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Olmstead v. L.C. held that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals with mental disabilities have the right to live in an integrated community setting rather than in institutions. The U.S. Department of Justice defined an integrated setting as one "that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with non-disabled persons to the fullest extent possible." Though some mentally ill people may have benefited from this ruling, many others were harmed — not to mention the public, which must put up with the behavior of the mentally ill.

Torrey says it has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. But that's not true. Torrey says: "Altogether, the annual total public funds for the support and treatment of mentally ill individuals is now more than $140 billion. The equivalent expenditure in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy proposed the CMHC program was $1 billion, or about $10 billion in today's dollars. Even allowing for the increase in U.S. population, what we are getting for this 14-fold increase in spending is a disgrace."

The dollar cost of this liberal vision of deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people is a relatively small part of the burden placed on society. Many innocent people have been assaulted, robbed and murdered by mentally ill people. Businesspeople and their customers have had to cope with the nuisance created by the mentally ill. The police response to misbehavior and crime committed by the mentally ill is to arrest them. Thus, they are put in jeopardy of mistreatment by hardened criminals in the nation's jails and prisons. Worst of all is the fact that the liberals who engineered the shutting down of mental institutions have never been held accountable for their folly.

SOURCE

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A good summation of Trump from black media figure Armstrong Williams

The president is just so transparent. He’s so authentic. He’s so real until it gets him in trouble with the media elite and their establishment. They find him embarrassing. They’re haughty in their ways, and they just cannot believe that this guy can get away with this. Why? Because the American people get up in the morning and can’t wait to see the president take them on, put them in their place. It’s just another form of entertainment, and he does it so well.

SOURCE

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NRA's Dana Loesch: Liberals 'Call Trump a Tyrant’ But Want Him to Confiscate Our Firearms – ‘Figure That One Out!'

In her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, conservative author, radio host, and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch noted that in many criminal incidents, including the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Fla., "the government has proven that they cannot keep you safe."

Ironically, she added,  the same people who "call Trump a tyrant " also want to confiscate our firearms. Try to figure that one out!"

“I want to make this super obvious point," said Loesch.  "The government has proven that they cannot keep you safe, and yet some people want all of us to disarm. You heard that town hall [on CNN] last night -- they cheered the confiscation of firearms, and it was 5,000 people."

"I had to have a security detail to get out," she said. "I wouldn’t have been able to exit that if I did not have a private security detail. There were people rushing the stage and screaming ‘burn her.’ I came there to talk solutions and I am going to continue to talk solutions as the NRA’s been doing since before I was alive."

“But the government can’t keep you safe and some people want us to give up our firearms and rely solely on the protection of the same government that has already failed numerous times to keep us safe," said Loesch. 

SOURCE

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Trump is a real man, unlike the pussies on the Left

Democrats, true to ignorant form, are once again frivolously giggling at President Trump for suggesting he would have entered the Parkland school building unarmed during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. At a meeting with governors to discuss school safety measures, Trump explained, “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon. And I think most of the people in this room would’ve done that too.”

Trump’s opponents on the Left quickly pounced. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane posted a GIF image of President Trump apparently showing fear as a bald eagle nearly bit him. 1970s film star Mark Hamill tweeted, “#ItsFunToPretend.” Twitter user Bryce Tache wrote, “You’ll never be the hero. Never.”

Trump’s lightly-educated critics ignore history, including a 1991 incident in which The Donald rush to stop a mugging in New York and chased the armed assailant away, despite lacking any weapon himself. As James Rosen reported at the time in the New York Daily News, “When he saw ‘a big guy with a big bat’ bashing another fellow, Donald Trump did what any self-respecting billionaire would do: He ordered his driver to pull over.” Trump confronted the armed assailant, who recognized him and claimed not to have done anything wrong. Trump reportedly asked the mugger, “How could you not do anything wrong when you’re whacking a guy with a bat?” The mugger then ran away.

Lest readers write the story off as mere Trumpian fiction, Rosen adds that a witness corroborated the account. “All of a sudden, a big long limousine pulls up on an angle, and Donald Trump pops out with the blond too,” the witness recounted. “Trump yelled, ‘Put that bat down. What are you doing?’ The guy dropped the bat, came over and started talking to him.” Rosen compared the incident to the brutal mugging of Trump’s elderly mother the previous month, which also was stopped thanks only to the intervention of a helpful stranger.

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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President Trump might be the most conservative president in our lifetime

By Robert Romano

On Feb. 23, President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for the second year in a row as president, after not attending in 2016 during the campaign. At the time, he was still busy building his constituency in the Republican primary and for the general election, where he would ultimately prevail on a very conservative platform of putting America and the American people first in governing.

Now, Trump is the leader of the conservative, center-right party in the U.S. and of the executive branch. After one year in office, he has a record he has delivered on: lower taxes, fewer regulations and an opening the doors for economic expansion. ANWR has been opened for drilling. The Keystone XL pipeline is being built. The Obamacare individual mandate has been repealed.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. He ended the so-called Clean Power Plan. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is looking to revamp NAFTA or else pull out of that one, too. Trump ran on fair and reciprocal trade, and that’s what he’s delivering. At CPAC, Trump declared, “the era of economic surrender is over.”

By enforcing trade agreements through the exercise of the President’s power over foreign relations, Trump is enforcing what are essentially contracts. Ignoring the terms of contracts, and allowing trade partners to cheat, is not conservative. It is corrupt.

Where one might quibble about Congress’ spending record in Washington, D.C., there is a president who is getting what he can done on behalf of the American people who elected him. He set a priority to rebuild the military and put the nation’s security first. Agree or disagree with the simultaneous increase of domestic spending — Trump’s own budget called for $4.5 trillion of spending cuts over 10 years while simultaneously increasing military spending — Trump made his promise on behalf of the nation’s fighting men and women, and like Reagan before him, he’s keeping it.

Trump is handing matters back to Congress and not ruling by edict. For example, agree or disagree with Trump’s decision to put DACA back onto Congress, pass or fail, that’s where the matter belongs. In the process, he is using his decision to end DACA in March as leverage, to fight for an end to extended family chain migration and the visa lottery, moving to a more merit-based model of economic priority.

President Trump is restoring limited government. And he’s doing it despite all expectations from the pathetic #NeverTrump in 2016 that said he was no conservative. He may be the most conservative president in our lifetime.

At CPAC, Trump quipped, “Remember when I first started running?  Because I wasn’t a politician, fortunately.  But do you remember I started running and people would say, ‘Are you sure he’s a conservative?’  I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative, right?”

Trump has. In spades. He put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and has put 13 constitutionalist judges on the federal circuit courts and another 10 on the district courts. Another 58 are awaiting confirmation.

Trump is restoring the rule of law, cracking down on violent illegal alien offenders, gangs and ending the war on police. He’s building the wall. He has made the opioid crisis front and center, and continues his focus on securing the nation’s borders.

Trump is taking on a rogue administrative state that thinks it is the legitimate government, including deep state actors who would seek to overturn the result of the 2016 election with false claims of the Russia treason plot. It’s hard to imagine anyone else collapsing under that pressure, but not Trump. He is fighting to preserve the institution of the presidency in Article II of the Constitution from an illegitimate threat to the consent of the governed.

In the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, the President called for self-defense not gun control. Let gun-owners carry, and shooter will think twice.

Trump recognized Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, something no other president had done.

Trump even took on some issues outside the governmental arena, including respect for the American flag and the National Anthem, demonstrating conservative leadership in a cultural area such as professional sports — and winning.

Trump has a record he can defend. A conservative one. In 2020, it may be enough to win reelection.

But in 2018, the President realizes there are other forces at play. In uncharacteristically frank remarks on the prospects of the midterm elections, Trump noted, “And now only two years — that’s a very short period. And by the time you start campaigning, it’s a year. And now you got to go and fight again. But you just won. So nobody has that same drive that they had. So you end up not doing that well because the other side is going — they’re crazed.”

Statistically, Trump is spot on. The White House incumbent party tends to lose House seats in midterm elections 89 percent of the time dating back a century, with losses averaging 35 seats. The exceptions were 1934, 1998 and 2002. In the Senate, the incumbents tend to lose Senate seats about 71 percent of the time, with losses averaging about 6 seats. However, there are more exceptions where seats were either gained or none lost: 1906, 1914, 1934, 1962, 1970, 1982, 1998 and 2002.

So, what to do? Trump had some words of advice for his supporters at CPAC, warning, “Don’t be complacent… The fact is, we need more Republicans to vote.  We want to get our agenda.” He’s right. But to rally in 2018, the President needs to get the wind at his back. So far, he’s off to a good start, with his tax cut plan now in effect, a rousing State of the Union Address and now his CPAC heart to heart with his supporters.

Midterms are by no means determinative of presidential reelections. Former Presidents Clinton and Obama rebounded after catastrophic losses in Congress. But they can help. Reagan kept a Republican Senate majority in 1982 and went on to one of the largest landslides in electoral history in 1984. Nothing is set in stone, but for President Trump to continue implementing his conservative agenda in Washington, D.C., one fact is unmistakable: he needs a conservative, limited government majority in Congress.

SOURCE

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President Trump delivered an epic speech to CPAC, and it left the #NeverTrump gang squirming

Proud to be deplorable Trump began his remarks with a throwdown* to his critics in the Republican establishment:

I’m thrilled to be back at CPAC, with so many of my wonderful friends and amazing supporters and proud conservatives. Remember when I first started running? Because I wasn’t a politician, fortunately, but do you remember I started running and people said, are you sure he’s a conservative? I think I proved I’m a conservative.

And Trump was right – while no one would argue that he has internalized movement conservative philosophical principles or claim Trump has lived his life according to Biblical principles, as President he has pursued, and accomplished, a surprisingly conservative agenda.

What’s more, the President summed-up in one short sentence why he is different – in a good way – from most other recent Republican presidential candidates and presidents: Year after year, leaders have stood on this stage to discuss what we can do together to protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.

Has any other Republican come before a national audience and talked about protecting our heritage?

Year after year Republican presidential candidates, and two Presidents Bush, went to CPAC to talk, but they rarely produced meaningful results on the conservative agenda, and, often as not, many CPAC attendees were opposed to them and their policies.

Certainly in the early years of CPAC its purpose was to advance the conservative takeover of the Republican Party, not serve as a platform for the Republican establishment to try to sell itself as part of the conservative movement.

Donald Trump, the patriotic businessman, is the only President to join President Reagan in coming before CPAC to talk about his commitment to what motivates grassroots conservatives:  protect our heritage, to promote our culture, and to defend our freedom.

Trump’s speech, while not nearly as eloquent as a typical Reagan speech, was packed full of what connects him to the grassroots conservative – populist base of the Republican Party. And the first-year accomplishments to back it up.

But there was another element to Trump’s speech that made the #NeverTrump gang squirm: it was fun and entertaining.

You could see the prune-faced looks on some during Trump’s self-deprecating aside about his hair in the middle of a paragraph about judicial appointments:

For the last year with your help, we have put more great conservative ideas into use than perhaps ever before in American history. What a nice picture that is. Look at that. I would love to watch that guy speak. Oh, boy. Oh, I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks. I work hard at it. Doesn’t look bad. Hey, we’re hanging in. We’re hanging in. We’re hanging in there, right? Together we’re hanging in. We have confirmed a record number, so important, of circuit court judges and we’re going to be putting in a lot more.

And likewise his takedown of the lone protester to interrupt his remarks:

How did he get in here, Matt? Boy. Okay. Just for the media, the fake news back there, they took very good care of him. They were very gentle. He was very obnoxious. It was only one person. So we have thousands of people here. So, listen, tomorrow the headline will be protesters disturb the Trump — one person, folks. Doesn’t deserve a mention. Doesn’t deserve a headline. The headline tomorrow, disrupters of CPAC. One person. And he was very nice. We looked at him, he immediately left. Okay. Now, I’ve heard it too often.

You’ll have one person and you can hardly even hear. The biggest disturbance are you people. You know why? He’ll say something, nobody hears him, because — and then the crowd will start screaming at him and then all of a sudden we start — and that’s okay. You have to show your spirit, right? You have to show your spirit. It is true.

“Unpresidential” some would sniff. And they sniffed again over President Trump’s comments about the role past immigration policies have played in the rise of the vicious Hispanic gang MS-13:

These are animals. They cut people. They cut them. They cut them up in little pieces, and they want them to suffer. And we take them into our country. Because our immigration laws are so bad, and when we catch them, it is called catch and release. We have to, by law, catch them and then release them. Catch and release. And I can’t get the Democrats and nobody has been able to for years to approve common-sense measures that when we catch these animal killers, we can lock them up, and throw away the keys. In 2017, our brave ICE officers arrested more than 100,000 criminal aliens who have committed tens of thousands of crimes. And, believe me, these are great people. They cannot — the laws are just against us. They’re against — they’re against safety. They don’t make sense.

Perhaps an even better example was President Trump’s demolition of the Paris climate agreement.

Trump didn’t get down in the weeds and try to debate the details of what has been shown to be the phony science behind Obama’s surrender of American sovereignty and economic growth – a surrender happily embraced by many establishment Republican – he simply said what Americans outside-the-Beltway have known for years:

Other countries, big countries, India, and others, we had to pay because they considered them a growing country. They were a growing country. I said, what are we, are we allowed to grow too? Are we allowed to grow? They called India a developing nation. They called China a developing nation. But the United States, we’re developed, we can pay.

So, folks, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you what, it is amazing how many people understood the Paris accord because it sounds so good. It is like some of the environmental regulations that I cut. They have the most beautiful titles. And sometimes that’s — look, I’m going to close my eyes and sign this, because, you know what, I’m going to get killed on this one. I get so much thanks. The country knows what I’m doing.

We couldn’t build, we couldn’t farm. If you had a puddle on your land, they called it a lake for the purposes of environmentals. It is crazy. It is crazy. And I signed certain bills, I would have farmers behind me and have house builders, home builders behind me. And these are tough people. Strong people. They fought hard. They worked all their lives hard. And half of them would be crying. Because we gave them their property back. We gave them the right to earn a living. They couldn’t do it.

They couldn’t do what they had to do. We gave them their property back, we gave them their dignity back.

But perhaps the best part of the speech was when he spoke of the victims of the Muslim terrorist who used a truck to attack pedestrians along Manhattan’s Westside Highway:

Nobody talks about that. Nobody ever talks about the people that have been so horribly injured, who lose legs and arms in Manhattan where I used to spend my time. I know it very well, this stretch along the west side highway, people run in order to stay in shape, they want to — they want to be healthy, they want to look good, they run, they run, all the time, I see it. They run. We work in different ways. But they run. But think of this, they run. And they’re so —they want to be fit. They’re proud people. They want to be fit. And they’re running up and down West Side. It is beautiful. It is a beautiful thing. And this maniac takes a car going down the highway and just turns to the right and he kills eight. He really badly wounded 12 to 14 other people.

So somebody, think of it, runs to stay in shape, leaves the house, is jogging along, working hard, ends up going home, two months later with no leg or with no arm or with two legs missing. Nobody ever talks about them. They talk about the people rightfully that were killed. But they don’t talk about the people that — whose lives have just changed. Just changed. They don’t talk about that. This guy came in through chain migration. And a part of the lottery system. They say 22 people came in with him. In other words, an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather, a mother, a father, whoever came in. A lot of people came in. That’s chain migration. Let’s see how those people are doing, by the way. We have got to change our way. Merit system. I want merit system.

While the #NeverTrump gang squirmed and made their prune faces, millions of grassroots conservative – populist voters understood that nobody ever talks about the victims of our current immigration system – except Donald Trump.

President Trump also reprised of one the staples of his campaign stump speech, a recitation of the “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr., a minor soul hit performed by Al Wilson in the 1970s.

"I saved you, " cried the woman
"And you've bitten me, but why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die"
"Oh shut up, silly woman, " said the reptile with a grin
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”

From “The Snake” by Oscar Brown Jr.

Establishment Republicans and Democrats hated it when Trump read or referred to “The Snake” on the campaign trail because its simple wisdom proved he was right, especially about Muslim immigration.

The intelligentsia of the Right and Left and establishment Republican politicians and media personalities will continue to talk down Donald Trump and claim his remarks to CPAC just weren’t up to presidential standards. What they don’t understand is Trump’s stream of consciousness asides are exactly were he connects with the voters and what differentiates him from the inside-the-Beltway political class that voters despise.

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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In Donald Trump, Evangelicals Have Found Their President

By DAVID BRODY

Last August, President Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and looked me straight in the eyes. With a look of reflection and purposefulness, he discussed his upbringing and fondly recalled a vivid childhood memory from the 1950s: watching Billy Graham sermons on television with his father. “My father was a fan of Billy Graham,” the president said. He recalled how his father, Fred, attended the historic 1957 New York City Crusade.

Mr. Graham, who died last week at 99, brought both evangelism and evangelicalism into the mainstream of American culture. Meanwhile, young Donald grew to be successful, wealthy and famous — culminating with his becoming the leader of the free world. In the process, he too brought evangelicals somewhere, a place so many would have never imagined: an embrace of Donald Trump.

Of all the questions surrounding the current president, perhaps the most perplexing is this: How could evangelicals get behind a man like Mr. Trump, especially well-known conservative leaders who both treasure and champion morality? Constant news reports paint a picture of an out-of-control, angry, mentally unstable, reckless president who is prejudiced against all of humanity except white people with modest incomes and out-of-date values. But after interviewing scores of evangelical leaders, I have developed a different perspective.

Most of the world, and even most reporters, know only the public side of President Trump. In private, evangelical leaders have come to recognize a more compassionate side.

For example, Mr. Trump took a car ride with Mike Pence along with Billy Graham’s son Franklin and Tony Perkins, a leading figure on the Christian right, during the Louisiana floods of 2016. Impressed by what Franklin Graham’s Christian ministry had done for flood victims, Mr. Trump told him that he was writing it a six-figure check, which Mr. Graham told him to send to Mr. Perkins’s church. Both men were moved by his impulsive kindness, and a bond was formed.

Another story involves Mr. Trump and the televangelist James Robison praying together inside an S.U.V. on the airport tarmac in Panama City, Fla., during a campaign stop. When Mr. Trump exited the car, he gave Mr. Robison a hug, pulled him up against his chest firmly and said, “Man, I sure love you.” A small gesture, perhaps, but heartfelt, real and so unlike the caricature of the president most of us see. And practically every evangelical leader I interviewed has a similar story.

Critics say that the Trump-evangelical relationship is transactional, that they support him to see their agenda carried out. In fact, evangelicals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dispute that Mr. Trump may need a little more grace than others. But evangelicals truly do believe that all people are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the president?

This is more than a biblical mandate. The Bible is replete with examples of flawed individuals being used to accomplish God’s will. Evangelicals I interviewed said they believed that Mr. Trump was in the White House for a reason.

Bishop Wayne Jackson, who is the pastor of Great Faith Ministries International in Detroit and calls himself a lifelong Democrat, remembers Mr. Trump’s campaign visit to his church. He told me that the moment Mr. Trump got out of the car, “the spirit of the Lord told me that that’s the next president of the United States.”

Evangelical leaders also see a civic obligation to speak godly counsel to him, on policy and personal matters. He is, after all, the president. And it’s paying off. I’ve watched Mr. Trump through the lens of the faith community for years, and he has delivered the policy goods and is progressing on the spiritual ones.

My reporting suggests Donald Trump is on a spiritual voyage that has accelerated in recent years, thanks to evangelicals who have employed the biblical mandate of sharing and showing God’s love to him rather than shunning him. President Trump told me that he “was exposed to a lot of people, from a religious standpoint, that I would’ve never met before. And so it has had an impact on me.”

This president’s effect on our cultural norms has been shocking. His critics would call it appalling; evangelicals say it’s immensely satisfying: They’ve seen a culture deteriorate quickly in the past decade, and they’re looking for a bold culture warrior to fight for them. Showing that God does indeed have a sense of humor, He gave them Mr. Trump. Yet in God’s perfection, it’s a match made in heaven. Mr. Trump and evangelicals share a disdain for political correctness, a world seen through absolutes and a desire to see an America that embraces Judeo-Christian values again rather than rejecting them.

Finally, why in the world wouldn’t evangelicals get behind and support a man who not only is in line with most of their agenda but also has delivered time and time again? The victories are numerous: the courts, pro-life policies, the coming Embassy in Jerusalem and religious liberty issues, just to name a few. He easily wins the unofficial label of “most evangelical-friendly United States president ever.”

Does Mr. Trump have moral failings? Yes. Critics will suggest a hypocrisy coming from evangelical leaders who are quick to denounce the ethical failings of others who don’t have an “R” next to their name. But the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture, not to get mired in the moral failings of each and every candidate. For evangelicals, voting in the macro is the moral thing to do, even if the candidate is morally flawed. Evangelicals have tried the “moral” candidate before.

Jimmy Carter was once the evangelical candidate. How did that work out in the macro? George W. Bush was the evangelical candidate in 2000: He pushed traditional conservative policies, but he doesn’t come close to Mr. Trump’s courageous blunt strokes in defense of evangelicals.

Evangelicals have found their man. It may seem mystifying to outsiders, but for someone like me, with a front-row seat to an inside view, it makes perfect sense. Maybe they’re taking their cue from Billy Graham, embracing presidents with moral failings rather than rejecting them.

SOURCE

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Trump Hits 50%!

In the Rasmussen Poll, the only survey that polls actual voters, President Donald Trump has moved up steadily since the new year and has now reached a new plateau of 50 percent job approval with only 49 percent disapproving.

SOURCE

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NRA Tears Apart Boycott Talks… Slams Corporate Sponsors Cutting Ties in Brutal Statement

The National Rifle Association has struck back after multiple corporate sponsors cut ties with the gun rights organization following the mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead.

As The Western Journal reported, over a dozen companies have ended their partnerships with the NRA due to pressure from liberal gun control activists.

Delta Airlines, MetLife, United Airlines, Hertz and First National Bank are among the companies that have ended discounts programs, NRA-related credit cards or any other program that might have supported the group.

But in a Saturday statement, the group defended itself, noting that NRA membership is being punished “in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice,” while also pointing out multiple institutional failures that allowed the suspected gunman to perpetrate the shooting.

“The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement,” the NRA’s statement read.

“Despite that, some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice,” the statement added. “In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve.”

The more than five million law-abiding members of the National Rifle Association have enjoyed discounts and cost-saving programs from many American corporations that have partnered with the NRA to...

Despite the loss of partnerships, the NRA said it is confident its members won’t be deterred from taking advantage of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

“Let it be absolutely clear,” the group said. “The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

The NRA has been the subject of intense criticism in the wake of the Florida shooting, as gun control advocates have blamed the group’s campaign donations on politicians’ supposed inaction regarding this issue.

But the group, which represents close to 5 million Americans, has refused to cave in the face of this backlash, and even offered to help keep schools safe following the Florida mass shooting.

Speaking Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre said his organization will offer free help to campuses who want to boost their armed security.

Despite calls for stricter gun laws, he thinks better protection, not more firearm regulations, is the answer.

“Our banks, our airports, our NBA games, our NFL games, our office buildings, our movie stars, our politicians — they’re all more protected than our children at school. Does that make any sense to anybody?” he said, according to The Washington Times.

LaPierre also emphasized the need to “harden” America’s schools.

“Evil walks among us, and God help us if we don’t harden our schools and protect our kids,” he said, as reported by LifeZette.

“In every community in America … they all must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools, including effective, trained, armed security that will absolutely protect every innocent child in this country,” LaPierre added.

SOURCE

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Report: MS-13’s Dangerous Rise To Power Links Back To 1 Flawed Obama Decision

The vicious transnational gang MS-13 has enjoyed a resurgence across the U.S. thanks in part to reduced enforcement of illegal alien gang members and permissive policies toward resettling unaccompanied teenagers who arrived at the southwest border, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

Though it was founded in Los Angles by Salvadoran illegal immigrants, MS-13 today is based primarily in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Under the former President George W. Bush’s administration, the gang’s growth in the U.S. was kept in check by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who worked with local law enforcement to arrest suspected members on administrative immigration violations.

That changed under former President Barack Obama’s administration, which directed ICE offices to make arresting members for immigration violations or minor crimes a lower priority and concentrate instead on major conspiracy cases, according to the analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies.

Overall, ICE gang-related arrests fell from about 4,600 in 2012 to about 1,580 in 2014, the CIS report says.

At the same time it was de-prioritizing immigration enforcement of MS-13, the Obama administration faced a surge of unaccompanied alien children and family units across the southwest border, mostly from Central American countries. During the surge, which began in 2012 and lasted into 2016, Border Patrol agents arrested more than 300,000 UAC and family units.

Because U.S. immigration law requires alien minors to be released from immigration detention without “unnecessary delay” and placed in the “least restrictive setting” possible, most of the Central American teens were released with immigration hearings pending in the distant future.

The placement of so many Central American UAC in the interior of the country, often with relatives who were themselves illegal immigrants, gave MS-13 a pool of fresh candidates from which to recruit.

Increased MS-13 activity is correlated with the resettlement of UAC in certain metro areas, according to the CIS analysis, which documented more than 500 cases of MS-13 members arrested or charged with crimes since 2012.

“The parts of the country that have experienced an increase in MS-13 activity correspond roughly to the areas where there have been the largest number of UAC resettlement placements by the federal government,” Jessica Vaughn, CIS director of policy analysis, wrote in the report.

“This makes sense; about 15 years ago, MS-13 made a push to expand from Los Angeles to other parts of the country with sizeable Central American communities, including many illegal aliens.”

As Vaughn’s analysis notes, states that saw heavy UAC resettlement under Obama were also those that had the most arrests of MS-13 gang members.

California, Maryland, New York, Virginia and Massachusetts were the top five among 22 states where an MS-13 member was arrested or charged since 2012.

Those five states accounted for 320 of the 506 — about 63 percent — of the cases documented by CIS. In addition to laws covering alien minors, local sanctuary city policies have disrupted cooperation between police and immigration agents that could lead to tougher enforcement of MS-13, Vaughn says.

“Many of the hotbeds of MS-13 activity are also places where local officials have adopted sanctuary policies,” she wrote, noting that 222 of the 506 cases documented by CIS occurred in sanctuary jurisdictions.

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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