Trump wins again

Even the Leftist writer below has to acknowledge that

“60 Minutes” aired an interview with President Donald Trump — rare for its status as having appeared outside of Fox News or conservative media. Appearing the same weekend as First Lady Melania Trump’s appearance on “20/20,” this would seem to represent a new level of media blitzing on the part of an administration that’s already seen its head get plenty of free promotion during rallies broadcast on cable news. And, like Melania Trump’s utterly-on-message, relentlessly forward-moving TV interview, the president’s interview had effectively the same impact as a rally; it allowed him to bulldoze his chief enemy, the media, while airing his own points at ceaseless length. The lesson the media has evidently not learned yet is not to be sitting right there when he does it.

Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump was an undeniable get; he’d been scarce on mainstream media since around the time he appeared on tape with NBC’s Lester Holt and indicated he’d fired former FBI Director James Comey in part due to the Russia investigation. But the interview seemed governed by two motives, both of which played into the hands of a media-savvy president whose refusal to play by typical rules of engagement has been at the center of his rise.

First, Stahl seemed to want to conduct a definitive interview with Trump summarizing his presidency so far. In so doing, she skittered across the map of global and domestic issues, seeming to touch on every topic under the sun, from the ultra-current — the fate of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — to the more long-range. Questions about, say, North Korea, tariffs on China, climate change, and NATO were met with long bursts of Trumpian verbiage, spilling out so fast they seemed barely able to be edited. What fell away in editing, or what was barely allowed to happen in the time allotted, were many follow-ups.

And when follow-up questions did happen, they seemed to fall into the interview’s second trap: Trying to crack the code of Donald Trump, human being. “I wish you could go to Greenland,” Stahl mused in the brief portion of the interview dealing with climate change, “watch these huge chunks of ice just falling into the ocean, raising the sea levels.” Trump shouted her down, predictably unmoved by Stahl’s evident passion about a story imbued with dread. He won every segment of the interview because he was utterly unable to brook doubt — and, at this point, a broadcast dealing with a president who cannot face facts must be armed with real facts of their own. Stahl asked Trump about “the scientists who say [the effects of climate change are] worse than ever,” but was unprepared to cite one; knowing, now, that the human factor will not work on Trump, a broadcaster should be prepared to cite hard facts in a face-off with the president.

Not, of course, that those facts will change his mind or even elicit an unexpected answer from the Commander-in-Chief. But it felt like a missed opportunity that both so many ardent Trump fans and so many in the hazy middle tuned into an interview with the president and found so much of what was put to him phrased in loose, conversational terms. If he won’t deal with the realities of climate change (presented in this interview only in anecdotal terms of ice and hurricanes and in data, never explained, from “NOAA and NASA,” and not the recent, catastrophic United Nations report) or of abandoning NATO, the broadcaster should rush in to fill the gap. Instead, facts like these ones seemed to be assumed on the part of the viewership at home, and the silences were filled by Trump, who explained away why orthodoxies were wrong while Stahl struggled to break into his monologues. The one moment Stahl meaningfully challenged Trump was on his alliance with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un — presenting the president with a “resume” of his conversation partner’s misdeeds in his own country — but even then, the format demanded she move forward after Trump said the pair shared “a good energy.” Her next question was, verbatim, “China.” And Trump free-associated there, too.

So many of Stahl’s questions seemed premised on the notion that Trump could be brought to reason through earnest questioning that treaded somewhat lightly — but that signaled to viewers at home a certain set of values. This would have been a good playbook for a conservative-but-not-category-busting President Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, perhaps; all players could say their piece, and all could go home relatively unscathed. But even as Trump was unwilling to play along, the questions got no harder. Late in the interview, Stahl asked Trump what had been “the biggest surprise” and what he had learned as president, a question unworthy of the occasion and of time that might have been spent fleshing out answers elsewhere. (The surprise is that politicians are “vicious,” and the president went on.) Trump relentlessly talked over the follow-ups to a further question — why he didn’t bring the country together in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, seeking a moment of unity. That the president’s vanishingly rare appearance on a nonpartisan news program had resulted in a spectacle in which randomly assorted questions were bulldozed by a man eager to speak, and in which the interviewer generally left the viewers to decide what those answers meant without the benefit of meaningful follow-up, made the point clear.

By pushing through questions and by capitalizing on an interview approach seeking to synthesize his entire presidency into two segments of television, Trump effectively converted “60 Minutes” into a short rally. There are those who will see his rants as worthy, and those who will loathe them; whatever unity can be made to exist by the president exists only within those camps. That “60 Minutes” went looking for something greater is more proof than viewers needed that their approach to the president left them outmatched.

SOURCE 

For a conservative perspective on the interview, see here

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U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults — A Red Flag For Electoral Fraud

American democracy has a problem — a voting problem. According to a new study of U.S. Census data, America has more registered voters than actual live voters. It's a troubling fact that puts our nation's future in peril.

The data come from Judicial Watch's Election Integrity Project. The group looked at data from 2011 to 2015 produced by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, along with data from the federal Election Assistance Commission.

As reported by the National Review's Deroy Murdock, who did some numbers-crunching of his own, "some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America's adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud."

Murdock counted Judicial Watch's state-by-state tally and found that 462 U.S. counties had a registration rate exceeding 100% of all eligible voters. That's 3.552 million people, who Murdock calls "ghost voters." And how many people is that? There are 21 states that don't have that many people.

Nor are these tiny, rural counties or places that don't have the wherewithal to police their voter rolls.

California, for instance, has 11 counties with more registered voters than actual voters. Perhaps not surprisingly — it is deep-Blue State California, after all — 10 of those counties voted heavily for Hillary Clinton.

Los Angeles County, whose more than 10 million people make it the nation's most populous county, had 12% more registered voters than live ones, some 707,475 votes. That's a huge number of possible votes in an election.

But, Murdock notes, "California's San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138% registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters."

State by state, this is an enormous problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. Having so many bogus voters out there is a temptation to voter fraud. In California, where Hillary Clinton racked up a massive majority over Trump, it would have made little difference.

But in other states, and in smaller elections, voter fraud could easily turn elections. A hundred votes here, a hundred votes there, and things could be very different. As a Wikipedia list of close elections shows, since just 2000 there have been literally dozens of elections at the state, local and federal level decided by 100 votes or fewer.

And, in at least two nationally important elections in recent memory, the outcome was decided by a paper-thin margin: In 2000, President Bush beat environmental activist and former Vice President Al Gore by just 538 votes.

Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, won his seat by beating incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in 2008. Coleman was initially declared the winner the day after the election, with a 726-vote lead over Franken. But after a controversial series of recounts and ballot disqualifications, Franken emerged weeks later with a 225-seat victory.

Franken's win was enormous, since it gave Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate. So, yes, small vote totals matter.

We're not saying here that Franken cheated, nor, for that matter, that Bush did. But small numbers can have an enormous impact on our nation's governance. The 3.5 million possible fraudulent ballots that exist are a problem that deserves serious immediate attention. Nothing really hinges on it, of course, except the integrity and honesty of our democratic elections.

SOURCE 

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Stormy Daniels’ Defamation Suit Against Trump Dismissed: Daniels Ordered To Pay Trump’s Legal Fees

This is not a good day for Stormy Daniels and her creepy porn lawyer (CPL). A federal judge dismissed Daniels’ defamation suit against President Trump today.

Stormy filed a defamation suit against President Trump after he mocked her over a sketch of the man who allegedly threatened her–the man in the sketch looked eerily like her ex-husband.

The U.S. District Judge dismissed the case on grounds Trump’s tweet was “rhetorical hyperbole,” not defamatory as Stormy Daniels alleged.

President Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder released a statement saying the President is entitled to an award of his attorney’s fees against Stormy Daniels. The amount to be awarded to President Trump will be announced at a later date, Harder said.

SOURCE 

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Self-made billionaire and Minecraft creator Markus Persson says that the political left has “literally been taken over by evil.”

Persson, who is an award-winning video game programmer and designer, made the comments on Twitter during a discussion about how the left deploys ad hominem slurs and insults against its political adversaries.

Tweeting from his verified ‘@Notch’ account to 3.7 million followers, the 39-year-old Swede wrote, “I know people don’t like it when I point this out, but the left has been taken over by evil,” adding, “And I mean that literally.”

He went on to agree with another Twitter user that intersectional feminists were actively working to deprive other people of rights, remarking that such individuals are intent on “selfishness, greed, lying, and willingness to cause suffering.”

 Persson has proven himself willing to address political issues in the past, having previously tweeted “It’s ok to be white” while arguing that white privilege is a “made up metric.”

He also tweeted that there should be a “heterosexual pride day,” but subsequently walked back the comment.

SOURCE 

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House Majority Leader To Roll Out Fully Funded Border Wall Bill

A leading House Republican this week said under legislation he is introducing, Congress will finally build that wall.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Tuesday that he will call for full funding to build President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall between the United Sates and Mexico, Breitbart reported.

“Few things are more fundamental to a nation than a protected border,” McCarthy tweeted Tuesday. “Proud to introduce the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act.”

McCarthy is among those expected to make a bid for the post of House speaker, assuming Republicans maintain control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

Ohio’s Jim Jordan, a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, are also mentioned as possible GOP contenders for the speaker’s chair, Roll Call reported.

The bill McCarthy is proposing would allocate $23.4 billion towards wall construction. Congress has already approved $1.6 billion toward building the wall.

McCarthy’s proposal will address other immigration- and crime-related issues such as sanctuary cities and criminal gangs.

Trump last month vented his objections to the fact that Congress had not funded the wall.

“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms?” Trump tweeted. “Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!”

McCarthy said his bill is necessary to protect the nation. “For decades, America’s inability to secure our borders and stop illegal immigration has encouraged millions to undertake a dangerous journey to come here in violation of our laws and created a huge loophole to the legal channels to the immigration process where America welcomes immigrants to our country,” McCarthy said in a statement published by Breitbart.

“President Trump’s election was a wake-up call to Washington. The American people want us to build the wall and enforce the law. Maintaining strong borders is one of the basic responsibilities of any nation. For too long, America has failed in this responsibility,” McCarthy said.

But funding the wall has been a divisive issue ever since Trump took office, and outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan does not see that changing.

“We intend on having a full-fledged discussion on how to complete our mission to secure the border and yes, we will have a fight about this,” the Wisconsin Republican said Monday, according to the Washington Examiner.

SOURCE 

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Real Economics

Walter E. Williams
   
A widely anticipated textbook, “Universal Economics,” has just been published by Liberty Fund. Its authors are two noted UCLA economists, the late Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen. Editor Jerry L. Jordan was their student and later became a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, as well as the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Professor Alchian was probably the greatest microeconomic theorist of the 20th century, while Professor Allen’s genius was in the area of international trade and the history of economic thought. Both were tenacious mentors of mine during my student days at UCLA in the mid-1960s and early ‘70s.

“Universal Economics’” 680 pages, not including its glossary and index, reflect a friendly chat I had with Professor Alchian during one of the UCLA economics department’s weekly faculty/graduate student coffee hour, in which he said, “Williams, the true test of whether someone understands his subject is whether he can explain it to someone who doesn’t know a darn thing about it.” That’s precisely what “Universal Economics” does — explain economics in a way that anyone can understand. There’s no economic jargon, just a tiny bit of simple mathematics and a few graphs.

Chapter 1 introduces the fundamental issue that faces all of mankind — scarcity. How does one know whether things are scarce? That’s easy. When human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants, we say that there’s scarcity. The bounds to human wants do not frequently reveal themselves; however, the means to satisfy those wants are indeed limited. Thus, scarcity creates conflict issues — namely, what things will be produced, how will they be produced, when will they be produced and who will get them? Analyzing those issues represents the heart of microeconomics.

Alchian and Allen want your study of economics to be “interesting and enjoyable.” They caution: “You’ll be brainwashed — in the ‘desirable’ sense of removing erroneous beliefs. You will begin to suspect that a vast majority of what people popularly believe about economic events is at least misleading and often wrong.” The authors give a long list of erroneous beliefs that people hold. Here’s a tiny sample: Employers pay for employer-provided insurance; larger incomes for some people require smaller incomes for others; minimum wage legislation helps the unskilled and minorities; foreign imports reduce the number of domestic jobs; “equal pay for equal work” laws aid women, minorities and the young; labor unions protect the natural brotherhood and collective well-being of workers against their natural enemies, employers; and we cannot compete in a world in which most foreign wages are lower than wages paid to domestic workers.

One of Professor Alchian’s major contributions to economic science is in the area of property rights and its effect on the outcomes observed. The essence of private property rights contains three components: the owner’s right to make decisions about the uses of what’s deemed his property; his right to acquire, keep and dispose of his property; and his right to enjoy the income, as well as bear losses, resulting from his decisions. If one or more of those three elements is missing, private property rights are not present. Private property rights also restrain one from interfering with other people’s rights. Private property rights have long been seen as vital to personal liberty. James Madison, in an 1829 speech at the Virginia Constitutional Convention, said: “It is sufficiently obvious that persons and property are the two great subjects on which governments are to act and that the rights of persons and the rights of property are the objects for the protection of which government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.”

At the end of many of “Universal Economics’” 42 chapters, there’s a section named “Questions and Meditations.” Here’s my guarantee: If you know and can understand those questions and answers, you will be better trained than the average economist teaching or working in Washington, D.C.

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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Kanye West: The Trump Economy is Delivering The American Dream

It’s no secret Kanye is a fan of President Trump. Recently, he was greeted with boos for performing a pro-Trump riff as the closing musical act on “Saturday Night Live.” Kanye says his support for President Trump stems from the ability “to do the impossible,” but hardly the first prominent African American suggest as much.

While in law school, former President Barack Obama said that American’s commitment to “individual freedom and mobility” transcends race. Americans as a whole, he wrote, have such “unfounded optimism” their American Dream is to be Donald Trump. In a fateful twist of irony, Trump has done in two years what Obama could not achieve in eight — creating a climate of opportunity for minorities to achieve the American Dream.

Trump and Congressional Republicans have enacted significant tax cuts, repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate, reformed the banking system, and rolled-back a host of oppressive Obama-era regulations.  The outcomes speak for themselves: 4.2-percent GDP growth last quarter, wages are on the rise, and unemployment is at a 50-year low.

For minority communities, the booming economy has been nothing short of a miracle — the wand has been waived and jobs are coming back. African-American unemployment is 6.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is at 4.5 percent, and Asian-American unemployment is at an astonishing 2.7 percent. Cumulatively, these are some of the lowest unemployment numbers since race-based records began in the 1970s.

In a reboot of his 2012 “you didn’t build that” message to business owners, Mr. Obama has hit the campaign trail taking credit for Trump’s economy. With the mid-term elections on the horizon, it’s important for all minorities to take stock of the gains over the last two years and fully understand the platform Democrats are running on.

Mr. Obama said in a recent speech that Democrats are running on “good new ideas” like “reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts,” “putting a price on carbon” and “Medicare for all.”  These are not “good new ideas,” they are doubling down on old failed ideas.

Perhaps one of the most significant provisions of last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the permanent reduction of the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.  According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation “[e]conomic evidence indicates that it is workers who bear the final burden of the corporate income tax, and that corporate income taxes are the most harmful for economic growth – raising this tax rate is not advisable.”

The only thing egregious about the TCJA’s corporate income tax cut was that it was not done sooner.

With respect to pricing carbon, well it’s not a new idea at all. In 2009, Nancy Pelosi passed a carbon cap-and-trade bill out of the U.S. House of Representatives, but Harry Reid just couldn’t get the votes for it in the U.S. Senate despite his comfortable majority. This legislative failure didn’t stop Mr. Obama from attempting to regulate the energy industry at every turn.

Thanks in part to President Trump’s regulatory rollback in the energy sector; the United States is now the world’s top producer of oil, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. This is more welcome news for minority communities. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that in this pro-development climate the oil and gas industry will create another 444 thousand jobs for minority workers by 2025.

As for Medicare for all, well that’s a $32 Trillion boondoggle that is unmoored from economic and political realities.   The fact remains all of these “new ideas” from Democrats would expand the size and scope of government – which has been shown to negatively impact economic growth – and return the United States to the old “new normal” of continual stagnation of the Obama years.

Kanye’s right, President Trump is doing the impossible and for the first time since the Great Recession, “unfounded optimism” has transcended race and faith in the American Dream has been restored.  Mr. Obama’s rhetoric may have provided hope in the past, but Trump’s actions delivered on the change.

SOURCE 

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Socialism Destroys

John Stossel
   
Socialism is hot. Famous actors recently made a commercial proclaiming that “democratic socialism” creates some of the best parts of America. It’s “your kids’ public school” (says Susan Sarandon), the “interstate highway system” (Rosario Dawson), “public libraries” (Jay Ferguson), “EMTs” (Ethan Embry), “workers who plow our streets” (Max Carver) and “scientists” (Danny DeVito).

Wow. I guess every popular thing government does is socialism.

The celebrities conclude: “We can do better when we do them together.”

There is sometimes truth to that, but the movie stars don’t know that America’s first highways were built by capitalist contractors. They also probably didn’t notice that the more popular parts of government — public schools, EMTs, snow plowing, libraries, etc. — are largely locally funded.

“They should wake up,” says Gloria Alvarez. She is from Guatemala and says, “I’ve seen the impact of socialism. My father escaped Cuba. My grandfather suffered under Communists in Hungary before escaping.”

This week I turn my video channel over to Alvarez so she can give her perspective on democratic socialism’s new popularity.

“As a child, I was taught to mock socialism,” she says, “but democratic socialism sounded OK. It made sense that government should take care of the economy. Then I watched democratic socialism fail in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay. I learned that every time a country started down the socialist path, it fails.”

But every time a country tries it, even just a little of it, people applaud. When Castro came to power, people cheered because he was going to help the poor and make everyone equal.

But governments can’t plan things efficiently without the prices and constant individual decision-making that free markets provide.

The result in Cuba was economic stagnation and horrible loss of freedom.

Cuban refugees who now live in Miami’s “Little Havana” neighborhood warn Americans about socialist promises. Michel Ibarra told Alvarez, “You don’t see any future. Everything is stagnated. Health care, education — nowadays they’re in ruins.”

Venezuela didn’t learn from Cuba’s problems. They voted in Hugo Chavez when he said that “capitalism is the realm of injustice” and promised wealth would be distributed equally.

But when there was no more money left to take from rich people, he did what many governments (including our own) do: He printed more. That’s caused inflation approaching 1 million percent.

When business owners raised prices to try to keep up, Chavez and his successor just seized many of them. Again, Venezuelans applauded. Taking from the rich is popular. Ramon Muchacho, a former mayor in Caracas, told Alvarez that when Chavez seized businesses, people were “clapping so hard. They were like, ‘Oh, finally there is somebody here making social justice!’”

But government grabbing private businesses creates shortages. Governments aren’t good at running supermarkets. One Venezuelan refugee told Alvarez, “It’s like the apocalypse. No food. No medicine.”

But in the U.S., socialism still holds appeal.

“Plenty of (socialist) countries are nothing like Venezuela,” says comedian John Oliver.

“When I talk about democratic socialism, I am not looking at Venezuela,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders, “not looking at Cuba. I’m looking at countries like Denmark, like Sweden.”

So many American politicians now cite Denmark as a socialist paradise that Denmark’s prime minister felt compelled to go on TV to say, “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

Exactly. Socialism, democratic or tyrannical, means government owns or controls businesses. In Scandinavia, business is largely left alone. Governments don’t even set a minimum wage. Economic freedom rankings give Scandinavian countries high scores on property rights and business freedom.

Those countries do have big welfare programs, but they are funded by thriving free enterprise. In addition, many cut back on their welfare programs after they discovered they were unsustainable or discouraged work.

Think about that the next time you hear celebrities saying “Sweden” and praising socialism.

As one Venezuelan refugee told Alvarez, “You don’t need the government to dictate how to live your life, how much money you should make, how your family should be treated.”

Increased government control rarely helps people. It wrecks economies. It wrecks lives

SOURCE 

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How Democrat Rage is Destroying America

A deranged radical movement gets high on its own fury.

“Use the rage,” former Attorney General Eric Holder scream-tweeted. “Get people out to vote and be rid of these people.”

Had President Trump urged his supporters to channel their rage into politics, the quote would have been good for a week of sanctimonious media lectures about his destruction of democratic norms. Not to mention his dangerous divisiveness, the risk of violence and the high price of tea in Outer Mongolia.

But the media has neither the interest nor the inclination to even note Holder’s ‘rage’ tweet. It’s too busy preaching anger, fury and hatred to the same shrieking choir of maddened lefties screaming at the sky, having meltdowns on social media and clawing madly at the doors of the Supreme Court.

"We need to stay angry about Kavanaugh," E.J. Dionne Jr. fulminates in the Washington Post. But that’s nothing compared to the New York Times where the old gray lady is frenziedly distempered all the time.

"Get Angry, and Get Involved," an op-ed screeches. "Tears, Fury or Action: How Do You Express Anger?", an op-ed from a few days before shrills. “Fury Is a Political Weapon And Women Need to Wield It,” a third howls.  That’s a lot of anger from the megaphone of the privileged wealthy northeastern left.

There hasn’t been this much peevishness on Martha’s Vineyard since they raised the yacht docking fees.

The New York Times and the Washington Post are echoing Holder’s call for political anger. Rage will solve all of America’s problems. If the Democrats stay angry, they’ll take over the government and be truly ready to unleash their rage on “these people”. Otherwise known as the rest of the country.

Even as the media preaches the virtues of leftist rage, it warns about the threat of Republican anger.

"Brett Kavanaugh's Anger May be Backfiring," the Washington Post had hopefully speculated earlier. "Judge Kavanaugh is One Angry Man," the New York Times spat. "Kavanaugh Borrows From Trump's Playbook on White Male Anger," it threw in.

But there’s a fundamental difference between Kavanaugh’s anger and that of the media left.

Brett Kavanaugh was angry because he had been falsely accused of rape by the media, with no actual evidence. His life was torn apart. His family, as he testified, had been “destroyed”. Democrats demanded that a 53-year-old man account for every detail of his high school and college years.

His accuser was held to zero standards while he was told to disprove an accusation lacking basic essentials like a specific time, place and witnesses. Had a black teen in the ghetto been hit with equally flimsy charges, the left would have gone into a rage tantrum in support of the accused rapist.

But, unlike Brett, the left wasn’t angry because it had been personally abused. Despite the efforts to pass off paid leftist activists as “sexual assault survivors”, the progressive bilious bile was purely political.

Kavanaugh was angry because his life had been destroyed. The left is angry because it wants power.

Leftist political anger inflicted sadistic torments on Brett Kavanaugh for political reasons. And the media pretends that this political anger is somehow more worthy than that the outrage of its victim.

Obama activists, Senate Dems, Soros social justice flunkies, sleazy lawyers and fake news reporters put a decent man through hell so that they could, as Holder tweeted, “use the rage” in the midterm elections.

The media left demanded to know what right Brett Kavanaugh had to be angry. They mocked his pain, ridiculed his suffering with the venal contempt and snarky hatred that now passes for leftist comedy.

But a better question would be what right does the left have to its endless anger?

Eight years of running the country didn’t leave it any more generous toward its opponents, any less hungry for power, or any less tribal, partisan and furious than it had been in 2007. The left isn’t angry because it cares about rape victims. Not when it’s lining up to buy tickets to Bill and Hillary’s latest tour.

It’s angry because, as Holder tweeted, it wants power.

And it’s willing to destroy every political, civic, cultural, social and moral norm to get it. The left doesn’t believe in norms because it doesn’t believe in any compromise or standard. All it has is its will to power.

Some people have the right to win elections (Hillary Clinton) and others (Donald Trump) don’t. Some justices have the right to be confirmed without campaigns of personal destruction (Democrat nominees like Kagan and Sotomayor) and others (Republican nominees like Bork, Thomas and Kavanaugh) don’t.

And some people have the right to be angry (New York Times and Washington Post readers) and others (Trump supporters and Front Page Magazine readers) don’t. The entitlement of double standards is essential to the leftist quest for power which is about manufacturing perceived inequality in order to administrate mandates of total inequality. Disparate impact justifies affirmative action. If black workers or students underperform, then poor white workers and students must go to the back of the line.

But if replacing the norms of political discourse with livid tantrums is bad, then it’s bad for everyone.

There’s no way to mandate anger as affirmative action. If you insult, deprive and oppress people, they will become angry. And the only thing you can do is get angry right back or outlaw their anger.

The choleric left is working on the latter. But in its conniption fits, it’s settling for the former.

It deprives people of their rights and it responds to their anger with more anger. In its rage, it wipes out every political and social norm it can manage until its opponents are being hounded out of restaurants, fired from their jobs, assaulted on the street, shot at charity baseball games, smeared as rapists, doxed by reporters and staffers, censored on the internet and eavesdropped on by corrupt federal agencies.

There isn’t a legal or political norm that Obama didn’t violate during his time in office. Reporters were spied on. So were Republicans. The IRS and the FBI were used to target political opponents. A man was sent to jail for making a YouTube video. The DOJ was used to go after folks who mocked Obama.

After eight years of political terror, the Democrats have settled into accusing their political opponents of treason and demanding their imprisonment, everything from intimidation to death threats to attempted murder, and trying to destroy a Supreme Court nominee based on the most baseless allegations.

This is what leftists have done to our political norms. And what enrages them about Kavanaugh is not any feigned concern for our political norms, but that our norms survived their tantrums and dirty tricks.

The media claimed that Brett Kavanaugh should not sit on the Supreme Court by reason of his temperament. That’s rich coming from a deranged political movement getting high on its own fury.

"If you're not angry yet, you should be," a riled New York Times editorial yelps. A forum for readers discusses their struggles “expressing rage” and urges them to turn “anger into action”.

The media used to believe that basing national politics around anger was destructively bad. Now it’s been radicalized enough that it celebrates hate, rancor and rage. As long as it’s leftist rage.

Love can be one-sided. But anger rarely is.

When the media riles up leftist fury, it’s also rousing Republican anger. The Kavanaugh hearings are a clear example of how rage-driven abuses by the left lead to a wrathful reaction on the right.

The Democrats and their media allies furiously preach anger, and their rage is tearing apart America.

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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America's Insulated Elites

They protect themselves from the consequences of polices and ideas they inflict on the rest of us

Few things are more worthy of disdain than America’s elites and their penchant for insulating themselves from the consequences of polices and ideas they inflict on the rest of us.

In 1986, our elitist class determined that unambiguous amnesty for 2.7 million illegal aliens — in exchange for shutting down the border and cracking down on businesses who hired illegals going forward — was the way to go. Americans were also assured this was the last time they would have to endure what amounted to the elevation of political expediency over the Rule of Law.

It was all lies.

During the Obama administration, the lying got worse. Years of record-breaking border surges were sold to the American public as another Democrat “what about the children” effort, and the term Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) became part of the Democrat-Leftmedia lexicon, with all the attendant implications that anyone who would resist allowing illegal children to flood across the border was xenophobic and heartless.

Again, it was all lies. In 2017, it was revealed that nearly 30% of the UACs being held by the U.S. in dormitories were teens with gang ties. “Operation Matador,” an effort by law enforcement officials aimed at combatting transnational gangs in Long Island, the New York City metropolitan area, and Hudson Valley, precipitated 475 arrests. Of those arrests, 227 were criminal arrests and 248 were “administrative immigration arrests,” as in those made to combat terror or control illegal immigration. MS-13 gang members comprised 274 of the arrests and most were apprehended in Nassau and Suffolk counties. During a May 2017 meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini revealed that the MS-13 gang was linked to 38% of all the homicides in that county over the preceding 16 months, and that 4,624 UACs had been placed in the county since 2013.

Now one might think the upsurge in the brutal gang violence that is an MS-13 speciality — including reports the gang has called for assassinating law enforcement officials — might precipitate a reassessment by our elites regarding sanctuary policies. Yet the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island has declared itself a “sanctuary diocese,” using its 129 churches to shield illegals from arrest and deportation. Nassau County sanctuary policies protected a previously deported illegal now accused of raping a woman. And Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent a “cease and desist” letter to ICE, insisting its raids netting 225 suspected illegals — 180 of whom had criminal convictions — were unconstitutional and “un-American.”

The same Andrew Cuomo is routinely surrounded by armed security.

Other New York elites are securing themselves as well. While ordinary folk on Long Island remain completely vulnerable to MS-13 brutality, billionaires who vacation in places like the Hamptons are turning their mansions into de facto fortresses, replete with luxury “panic” rooms. “People used to open up their garages and show off their Lamborghinis,” explains Herman Weisberg, managing director of the personal-security firm Sage Intelligence Group. “Now they take guests to the wine bar in their safe room.”

And while the safe rooms go up, so does the influx of MS-13 gang members. According to Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector Chief Manuel Padilla Jr., the number of arrests of MS-13 gang members in his sector has increased by well over 200%.

How many others evaded arrest?

East Coast elites aren’t alone. “I finished a [security] system for $100 million,” said Al Corbi, president of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments), in reference to a project he recently completed on the West Coast. “That sounds like a lot but there is nothing I know of, human or manmade, that could possibly harm this family for three generations, including global nuclear holocaust, a pandemic, or a second Ice Age.”

For other elites, domestic fortresses are insufficient. Seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have purchased bunkers and placed them in New Zealand. “New Zealand is an enemy of no one,” said Gary Lynch, general manager of the Rising S Co. that produced the bunkers. “It’s not a nuclear target. It’s not a target for war. It’s a place where people seek refuge.”

Refuge, or escape from the consequences of their own policies? “The communications kingpins of California have no allegiance to ordinary Californians — or ordinary Americans, for that matter,” asserts columnist Edward Ring. “To them, ordinary people are Pavlovian proles, expendable parasites that pollute the environment. To the extent these kingpins have compassion, it is to profitably create for the expendable multitudes a benign zoo; smart cities of high rises, contained in areas as geographically minute as possible, so that only wild nature, corporate farms, and private estates of the super-rich exist outside the urban containment boundaries.”

On almost every issue that roils the nation, there is a gargantuan disconnect between elites and ordinary Americans. Those who yell loudest for gun control live in gated communities and/or are surrounded by armed guards, even as they produce ultra-violent cultural sewage for the masses to consume; those who speak in glowing terms about a globalist economy and open borders don’t go near “flyover” America’s economically ravaged towns and cities that bear the brunt; those who rail about the ravages of global warming travel in private jets, and live in huge mansions; those who would turn you and your children into social media addicts prevent their own families from getting addicted; those who champion public education put their own children in private school.

And if you don’t like who the “little people” elected as president? Attempt to precipitate a coup d'etat.

That every bit of it reeks of rank hypocrisy? Communication titans make sure most Americans are too distracted and angry to notice. “If you watch TV news or read most mainstream media, you would believe our country is in meltdown,” writes columnist Salena Zito. She wrote her column while visiting Western Pennsylvania, where she spoke with Green Party mayoral candidate, and black American, Darcelle Slappy, who has it exactly right. “Unlike Washington, we are all just a few notches from each other in either direction,” Slappy asserts, referring to her community where people differing political persuasions — and ethnicities — somehow manage to get along. “We have much more that draws us together than divides us, she adds. "The real division is between the elites and us.”

These elites continue cultivating those divisions with as much relish as they can muster. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” declares former Democrat Party standard-bearer Hillary Clinton. “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”

No power, no civility? Clinton has issued a clarion call to the same useful-idiot mob that made an utter mockery of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. And if her extortionist drivel precipitates widespread violence?

Clinton, like all her fellow elites, will remain safe and sound.

SOURCE 

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The Party of Evil
   
The Democrats and their parrots and lapdogs in the liberal media never stop accusing people on the right of being racists, sexists and homophobes.

But if you pay even the slightest attention to what the left says and does, you know that they are the real bigots.

They’re the ones who thought it was real funny - and perfectly OK - when a “Saturday Night Live” skit on the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings last weekend used the word “queen” and other gay-world references to imply that Republican Senator Lindsay Graham was secretly gay.

The left are also the ones who didn’t complain the other night when Don Lemon laughed along with his panel of CNN nobodies as they mocked Kanye West for being President Trump’s “token Negro.”

If any Republican or Fox News host ever referred to someone like Lemon “queen” or called him CNN’s “token Negro,” they’d be branded a racist homophobe by the liberal media and forced off the air forever.

The latest example of the left’s devious wordplay is its new definition of the word “mob.”

Tucker Carlson, who said the mindless anti-Kavanaugh protesters banging on the Supreme Court’s doors last week reminded him of zombies from the Netflix series “The Walking Dead,” correctly called them a “mob.”

But CNN and their liberal ilk disagreed.

As far as they are concerned, only right-wingers can become a dangerous mob - like the angry Tea Party activists who showed up and shouted at political meetings back in 2010.

Creepy Antifa kids disrupting traffic and harassing old folks in Portland?

Gangs of progressive screamers showing up in restaurants to publicly harass Republican officials or politicians?

The leftwing media say they are not really “mobs.”

They’re principled, youthful protestors trying to build a kinder, gentler, socialist world for every American who’s not rich enough to buy their own car.

The voting public is not fooled by this double standard in the liberal media.

They know it’s not Republicans who are telling their people to chase politicians or pundits out of restaurants.

They know it’s Democrats like Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Irresponsible Democrats like her are going to get someone killed - a Republican someone.

It almost happened last year when their attacks on President Trump and Republicans incited some “progressive” nut ball to start shooting Republican congressmen practicing at a Washington baseball field.

Now, thanks to the Democrats’ ugly smear campaign against Judge Kavanaugh, Republican senators like Susan Collins and Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders need security guards 24/7.

It’s not the new Supreme Court Justice who’s evil.

It’s the Democrat Party and the nasty “progressives” who’ve taken it over and are willing to say or do anything or destroy anyone to bring down President Trump.

Maybe this is not something new. Maybe the Democrats have always been this evil.

Maybe my father foresaw the future when he said in the early 1960s that he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the party left him.

Where are the Hubert Humphreys, Scoop Jacksons and Daniel Moynihans? Where are great Democratic statesmen of yesterday? They don’t exist.

The Democrat Party is no longer the Party of FDR. It’s the party of destruction.

Sometimes it almost makes me glad that my father is not alive to witness this sad state of our politics - or FDR. Or Lincoln. Or the Founding Fathers.

SOURCE 

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Alaska GOP Considering Whether To Throw Murkowski Out Of GOP For Opposing Kavanaugh

The Alaska Republican party has requested that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) submit any information she has that might dissuade them from reprimanding her for opposing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

As AP reports, “Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock says the committee could decide to issue a statement. Or he says it could withdraw support of Murkowski, encourage party officials to look for a replacement and ask that she not seek re-election as a Republican.”

Babcock noted that the Alaska GOP has, in the past, withdrawn support for other Republicans who caucused with Democrats.

After Murkowski voted against cloture last Friday, indicating she would vote against Kavanaugh in the Senate vote for confirmation to the Supreme Court, Babcock said he was "surprised." He added, "It's significant enough that I'm going to convene the whole state central committee, which is about 80 grassroots volunteers around the state, and we'll start drafting what our response should be.”

SOURCE 

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The Democrats’ Kavanaugh Backfire

Republicans have been so angered by the Democrat’s anti Kavanaugh antics that they look to be motivated to prevent any ‘blue wave’ in next month’s mid-term elections.

The Federalist Papers reports:

Democrats seem to expect a “blue wave” that puts them in control of the House and maybe even the Senate. The latest poll however might put a damper on Democrats expectations and has good news for Republicans:

After a blistering confirmation battle, Justice Brett Kavanaugh will take his seat for oral arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court with a skeptical public, a majority of which opposed his nomination.

However, Democrats may not be able to exploit this fact in the upcoming elections as much as they hope, because the independent voters overwhelmingly disapprove of their own handling of the nomination by a 28-point margin, a new CNN/SSRS poll finds.

Overall, just 41 percent of those polled said they wanted to see Kavanaugh confirmed, compared to 51 percent who said they opposed his confirmation. In previous CNN polls dating back to Robert Bork in 1987, no nominee has been more deeply underwater.

What’s interesting, however, is even though Democrats on the surface would seem to have public opinion on their side, just 36 percent approved of how they handled the nomination, compared to 56 percent who disapproved. (Republicans were at 55 percent disapproval and 35 percent approval).

A further breakdown finds that 58 percent of independents disapproved of the way the Democrats handled the nomination — compared to 30 percent who approved. (Independents also disapproved of Republicans handling of the matter, but by a narrower 53 percent to 32 percent margin).

SOURCE 

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Media Research Center Reports That 92% of Stories on Donald Trump Are Negative

We see why Trump has to be his own news organization

In a Wednesday morning tweet, President Donald J. Trump referenced a Media Research Center study by Rich Noyes of NewsBusters that shows, as Trump stated, “92% of stories on Donald Trump are negative.”

“Despite so many positive events and victories, Media Research Center reports that 92% of stories on Donald Trump are negative on ABC, CBS and ABC,” wrote President Donald J. Trump on his Twitter page. “It is FAKE NEWS! Don’t worry, the Failing New York Times didn’t even put the Brett Kavanaugh victory on the Front Page yesterday-A17!”

According to the Media Research Center study by NewsBusters, “Over the summer, the broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a President in TV news history — 92 percent negative, vs. just eight percent positive.”

MRC analysts reviewed all 1,007 evening news stories about President Trump’s administration on ABC, CBS and NBC from June 1 to September 30 for the report. That’s 1,960 minutes of airtime.

“[O]ver the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia,” notes the study. “The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one percent of the four-month total).”

The Russia “collusion” investigation saw the most coverage during the time-span of the study, with 342 minutes and was 97 percent negative. Next was immigration policies, making up 308 minutes of the coverage, 94 percent of which was negative. Coverage of then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh was third with 291 minutes at 82 percent negative coverage. Coming in fourth was North Korean diplomacy with 179 minutes of coverage, 90 percent of which was negative. Lastly, relations with Putin’s Russia saw 151 minutes of coverage with 99 percent of the coverage being negative.

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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The Left is promising to abuse power if they win; voters should take them seriously

In 2005, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Kelo v. New London, diminishing Americans’ property rights. The ruling said that governments can seize your home through eminent domain, even if their intention is merely to hand the land over to private developers.

Conservatives saw this as one more bad ruling from a Supreme Court that issued a whole lot of them. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was a bit more sanguine, and her famous response exemplifies the respect and reverence that liberals once had for the Supreme Court, just so long as it was influencing culture and moving the national conversation in a way they liked.

“It is a decision of the Supreme Court,” she said, emphasizing its finality. “If Congress wants to change it, it will require legislation of a level of a constitutional amendment. So this is almost as if God has spoken.”

Today, the Left is in a panic because they fear that God’s voice (and perhaps even his wrath) are about to turn against them. And it is making them very dangerous. The Supreme Court’s composition is changing, and they have responded like cornered animals, with their vicious and desperate campaign of slander and political dirty tricks during the confirmation process of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Liberals are so accustomed to getting their way that they cannot control themselves. They fear an era is coming to an end, and they want to prevent this. So before the newly reinforced, John Roberts-led court has heard a case or issued a single ruling, they are already doing everything in their power to delegitimize the institution they once looked upon as almost God.

The Left has vilified the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of our legal system and an indispensable moral principle as well. For even outside of criminal court, decent people simply don’t brook accusations that are presented without even the hint of corroborating evidence. Without proof, it is gossip, and especially so when the story is inconsistent and lacks basic details that could lead to proof one way or the other. The organizers of the not-insignificant Women’s March are assailing Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as a rape apologist for merely adhering to this time-tested principle. This is how they treat anyone with whom they disagree.

The death threats and vile messages that progressive activists have aimed at Kavanaugh and his family, as well as at Republican senators’ offices and homes and families, is a clear statement of who they are, and why the nation will suffer if they are ever returned to power.

The Democrats who caused and put on the entire Kavanaugh farce are already promising to abuse their power further, if the voters will only give more of it to them. They are promising a scurrilous impeachment of Kavanaugh, and also to pack the Supreme Court if given the chance. Why? Because they are angry, and they don’t respect the rules and norms of government, and they are not mature or clever enough to wait to reveal this until they have power.

The same party that originally went nuclear on judicial confirmations — a temptation Republicans resisted ten years earlier in the same circumstances — have also brainwashed themselves into believing that they played no role in the breakdown of comity in our institutions of government. This makes them especially dangerous. Having failed to accept the outcome of the 2016 election, they are now trying to place an asterisk next to a lawfully and constitutionally confirmed Supreme Court justice.

In truth, the only cloud over Kavanaugh is the one that they worked hard — but not hard enough — to put there. When they promise to abuse power, and to be even more ruthless next time (it’s hard to imagine how they could do that without physical violence), voters should take them seriously

SOURCE

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Amid Pressure From White House, Turkish Court Frees Evangelical Pastor Andrew Brunson

"Working very hard on Pastor Brunson!" President Trump tweeted Friday morning, just as news reports said a Turkish court has finally freed Brunson from house arrest. "My thoughts and prayers are with Pastor Brunson, and we hope to have him safely back home soon!" the president said in a second tweet.

And a short time later, a third tweet from Trump: "PASTOR BRUNSON JUST RELEASED. WILL BE HOME SOON!"

Pastor Andrew Brunson, an evangelical preacher from North Carolina, was arrested two years ago, after two decades of living and ministering in Turkey. He was charged with terrorism and espionage, charges that both he and the U.S. government refute.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative civil liberties group that represents Brunson and has worked for his release, quoted the pastor as saying, "This is the day our family has been praying for – I am delighted to be on my way home to the United States.”

"Pastor Brunson is now en route to the United States," the ACLJ said in a news release.

"President Trump and his team have been tenacious in seeking the release of Pastor Brunson,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “We’re grateful to the President, members of Congress and diplomatic leaders who continued to put pressure on Turkey to secure the freedom of Pastor Brunson. The fact that he is now on a plane to the United States can only be viewed as a significant victory for Pastor Brunson and his family.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who visited Brunson in jail and spoke directly to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the case, called this a "great day," but he said he'll wait until Brunson is back in the USA to celebrate. "When he gets home, I'll feel better," he said.

SOURCE

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Team Trump is protecting America’s vital manufacturing, defense industrial base from big risks

This is fairly orthodox economics

America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base – vital to ensuring our national security – is under significant threat at a time when the military capabilities of China, Russia, and our other strategic competitors are growing. This is an enormously important issue that has received far less attention in the news media than it deserves.

Fortunately, President Trump has long recognized that to be strong and secure our nation must be able to rely on U.S. companies to manufacture products needed for our national defense. He understands that we must never become dependent on foreign nations to design, produce and maintain the aircraft, ground combat vehicles, ships, munitions, components of our nuclear arsenal, and space capabilities that are critically important to our nation’s defense.

Additionally, manufacturing remains a key source of jobs and our economic strength. While President Obama was content to see manufacturing jobs exit the U.S. for other nations, President Trump’s wise America First policies are strengthening American manufacturing and creating well-paid jobs for hardworking Americans.

President Trump signed an executive order in July 2017 directing the secretary of defense to assess what must be done to strengthen our manufacturing and defense industrial base. The report giving this assessment was recently released and reveals hundreds of gaps and vulnerabilities that demand immediate attention. Under this administration, they will get that attention.

This landmark report outlines ways to harness the capabilities of industry and government to work together to defend our country effectively and efficiently, ensuring that taxpayer dollars are spent frugally and wisely.

President Trump understands that that best way to deter our enemies and prevent war is for America to have the strongest military in the world – a goal he has achieved with increased investment in our nation’s defense. And he knows that if we are forced into a conflict, we must give the brave men and women in our armed forces what they need to prevail overwhelmingly.

Under the Obama administration, years of dangerous cuts in America’s defense budget put our national security at risk and failed to give members of our military what they needed to protect us.

To Make American Great Again we must Make American Manufacturing Great Again – something President Trump realized long before he declared his candidacy for the presidency. He has been acting on that since the day he entered the Oval Office.

Overregulation, too much bureaucratic red tape and outdated defense purchasing practices have made it hard for manufacturers to supply us with the vital equipment our military needs and have discouraged innovation by these suppliers.

And past administrations have allowed China and other nations to steal the intellectual property that American companies have worked years to develop.

All of this has contributed to the exodus of American jobs and American manufacturing capabilities to other nations – an exodus President Trump is reversing.

The new Defense Department assessment also identifies alarming shortages in the number of American workers needed to keep our manufacturing and defense industrial base strong and healthy. This points to the need for our country to educate and train more Americans to fill jobs – from software engineers to industrial welders – that will provide them with secure long-term employment and make our nation more secure as well.

A recent survey found nearly 73 percent of American manufacturing firms say the inability to find and retain workers with critical skills is their top challenge. This is unacceptable and must change.

To Make American Great Again we must Make American Manufacturing Great Again – something President Trump realized long before he declared his candidacy for the presidency. He has been acting on that since the day he entered the Oval Office.

And it’s important that we have multiple American manufacturers to supply our defense needs – so the Defense Department need not be dependent on a sole supplier for crucial military equipment.

Competition leads to greater efficiency and innovation by manufacturers and holds down prices – benefitting the American taxpayer. And if we are dependent on only one company to make military equipment and that company goes out of business or decides to stop making the equipment, we are in trouble.

This is not a theoretical risk – it is something we are faced with today on a number of fronts.

For example, “sole source purchasing” risk exists with large-caliber gun barrels for armored vehicles and mortar tubes, which the Army buys from only one government-run arsenal.

“Single source risk,” in which the Defense Department has only one qualified supplier, manifests itself in the production of ammonium perchlorate – a chemical widely used by the Defense Department as a propellant for rockets and missiles.

Similarly, the problem of a “fragile supplier” occurs when only one company manufactures a product. This is true in the case of the rotor blade castings required for the manufacture of a Marine helicopter capable of lifting very heavy loads. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

In addition, “fragile market” risk exists for products that have no commercial applications outside of our military. This is the case with strategic radiation-hardened microelectronics – a critical component of our nuclear deterrent designed to withstand short bursts of intense radiation.

“Product security” risk threatens the physical security and cybersecurity of the manufacturing and defense industrial base. Cyberattacks on manufacturers in the defense sector are skyrocketing – nearly doubling from 2014 to 2015. You can be sure the number of these attacks will increase.

A key finding of the Defense Department assessment is that China’s increasing manufacturing dominance represents a growing risk to our military-industrial capabilities ranging from critical materials to electronics.

China’s civil-military doctrine continues to exploit areas of vulnerability through economic and cyber actions, creating a further erosion of trusted supply chains vital to manufacturing for our defense sector.

The Trump administration, with bipartisan support from the Congress, has already taken important steps to strengthen America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base.

Examples include passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, providing near-term budget stability through the 2019 fiscal year. Another example is the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $200 million to shore-up small and medium suppliers in our submarine industrial base.

The 2018 Defense Authorization Act also provides critical modernization for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Together with actions taken under the Trade Act of 1974, these changes will help defend our national security from foreign acquisition of American intellectual property and technologies.

Recent updates to the Trump administration’s conventional arms transfer policy and unmanned aerial systems export policy also support U.S. industrial base competitiveness and strengthen international alliances and partnerships.

In addition, the Defense Department is working with the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – our partners in the National Technology Industrial Base – to determine how to increase cooperation to address areas of mutual concern across global supply chains.

On top of these actions, the new Defense Department assessment lists a comprehensive set of actions government and manufacturers can take to work together to address identified risks and vulnerabilities across the range of hardware, software and workforce needs to maintain the technological superiority that protects our national security.

The Defense Department will move swiftly to address problems identified in its report with a series of reforms.

Title III of the Defense Production Act allows the president to direct already appropriated dollars to lower tiers of the supply chain providing defense-critical capabilities, oftentimes ones that lack a commercial market and are in considerable distress.

Title III is a critical tool for ensuring that the United States retains the type of capabilities our warfighters require, from specialized fuel cells for antisubmarine warfare to lithium seawater batteries used in the Navy’s future unmanned underwater vehicles.

A Labor Department task force on apprenticeship is already working to increase the number of Americans trained for skilled jobs needed for our national defense.

In addition, the Defense Department’s enhanced use of the National Defense Stockpile program will provide a buffer against sudden or severe shocks that would otherwise create supply disruptions for strategic and critical materials. Modernizing the arsenals, depots and public shipyards that provide for the readiness of our armed forces will ensure ongoing support for current and future national defense operations.

Together, all these actions embody one of the most important principles of the Trump administration: economic security is national security. As President Trump stated in his National Security Strategy issued last December, a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector and a robust and resilient defense industrial base are national strategic priorities of the highest order.

SOURCE

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The Democrats Politics of Destruction Against the GOP’s Politics of Results

It’s “shameful to say Republicans do not care about women,” Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Tuesday, blasting Democrats’ efforts to infuriate women voters.

In a Fox News Channel interview, McDaniel implored Democrats to abandon their destructive, divisive strategy: "This is what Democrats do. They try and divide our country. They try and incite anger. That is just shameful to say Republicans do not care about women. I am a woman. I am a mother of a 15-year-old daughter. Please don't go there.”

McDaniel said that American women are seeing through the Democrats false, incendiary claims because they see that Republican policies are producing results for women and minorities:

“But that is where they are going. Because it is destroy, it's distract, it's divide our nation - let's make women so angry. Women are smarter than that. We are delivering results right now at the Republican Party from our President: 3.7% unemployment, the lowest in history for African-American and Hispanics, a 65-year low for women.

“We are a Party that is making lives better for families across this country. So Democrats will continue the politics of destruction, and we are going to continue the politics of results."

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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The Senate Is an 'Unfixable Crime Against Democracy'?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE

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A classic piece of Leftist projection

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

More HERE

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

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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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Democrats Have Become A Dangerous Threat To Our Institutions

When modern Democrats talk about preseving “norms,” traditions,” or even the “Constitution,” they’re really talking about preserving their preferred policies. We know this because “liberals” have shown themselves not only willing to destroy the legitimacy of institutions like the presidency, the Senate ,and Supreme Court to protect those policies, they’re willing to break down basic norms of civility, as well.

Take the example of Hillary Clinton. In the very first sentence in her new scaremongering essay, which makes the case that America’s “democratic institutions and traditions are under siege,” she attacks our democratic institutions and traditions. “It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States,” the piece begins.

The intimation, of course, widely shared by the mainstream left, is that Trump isn’t a legitimate president even though he won the election in the exact same way every other president in U.S. history has ever won election. According to our long-held democratic institutions and traditions, you become president through the Electoral College, not the non-existent popular vote.

So when Clinton, or writers at Vox, or The Atlantic, or Politico, or new liberal favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say it’s “well past time we eliminate the Electoral College, a shadow of slavery’s power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic,” you’re either tragically ignorant about our system or cynically delegitimizing it. Or maybe it’s both.

The Electoral College isn’t ornamental; it exists to undercut the tyranny of direct democracy and ensure the entire nation is represented in national elections. When you attack it, you’re not condemning Trump, you are, in a very palpable way, attacking a core idea that girds much of our governance.

With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the anti-majoritarian Senate is also suddenly problematic for many Democrats. When a NBC reporter, commenting on a Washington Post article, says “the idea that North Dakota and New York get the same representation in the Senate has to change,” he’s probably not ignorant about why the Founders implemented proportional voting, or why there is a difference between the House and Senate, or why the Tenth Amendment exists. He simply favors a system he thinks would allow liberals to force others to accept his preferred policies.

That’s the thing, of course. North Dakotans can’t make New Yorkers ban abortion, even if Roe v. Wade is overturned. They can’t make New Yorkers legalize “assault weapons” if Heller is upheld. But New Yorkers are perfectly content to force North Dakotans to accept both abortion and gun control. So, then, surely nothing could be more frustrating to the contemporary liberal than the existence of an originalist court that values the self-determination of individuals and states.

That is why the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh wasn’t only about the nominee, but the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. When you can’t corrode constitutional protections by seating justices that simply ignore the words and purpose of the founding documents, you can proactively smear the people whose decisions do uphold those values.

When Sen. Mazie Hirono, who rejected basic tenets of due process throughout the Kavanaugh hearings, argues Kavanaugh “is going to be on the Supreme Court with a huge taint and a big asterisk after his name,” she, like many others, is giving her followers a pretext to ignore the court.

If there is a “taint,” a proper constitutionally mandated solution exists: provide evidence and impeach him. Otherwise, there is no asterisk. Republicans didn’t break any constitutional norms. Trump nominated a candidate with a blemish-free ten-year record on the DC appellate court.

Republicans in the judiciary committee had hearings in which Democrats could question the nominee. Republicans even added additional hearings after Democrats leaked uncorroborated accusations. Republicans then asked for a seventh FBI investigation into the nominee before voting. Then the entire Senate voted. There is no asterisk.

Of course, if Democrats had been in charge of the Senate, they would have been free to shelve that nomination just as Republicans had done with Merrick Garland, when they also decided adopt the “Biden Rule.” If Democrats had followed the norms of the Senate in 2013, rather than using the nuclear option, they might have been able to filibuster Kavanaugh. They didn’t.

Instead, during this entire constitutionally mandated process we just went through, Democrats demonstrated a malicious disregard for the institution, not only by slandering those they disagreed with, and by leaking uncorroborated accusations, and by attacking the principles of Fifth and Sixth Amendments, and by ignoring long-held Senate rules during the proceedings in their Spartacus moments, but by preemptively declaring the pick illegitimate the day the president announced it.

According to liberals, every conservative-run institution is illegitimate. Working out how it’s illegitimate is the only question.

Even the questions in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote point to misunderstanding of process. Did Democrats “fight hard enough” to stop a nomination? What does that even mean? You fight by winning the argument, and by appealing to a large swath of Americans to win the Senate, and by winning the vote. In a decent nation, you don’t win by smearing your political opponents as gang rapists, and you don’t win by acting like a mob and screaming at your fellow citizens in restaurants and elevators.

After all, Hillary, and others who write about Trump’s supposed annihilation of our institutions, seem wholly concerned about aesthetics, manners, and policy, not procedure or institutions. Civility is a worthwhile issue, but it is a separate issue. You might find immigration and environmental policy of primary importance, but not getting your way isn’t a constitutional crisis. When they act like it is, liberals—and it’s getting progressively difficult to give them that descriptor—are destabilizing the institutions they are claiming to save.

How many times did a Democrat even mention the Constitution during the Kavanaugh hearings? I imagine, if we’re lucky, a perfunctory handful. Trump, far more than the previous administration, has strengthened proper separations of power. One of the ways he’s done it is by his judicial appointments. And Democrats’ inability to make any distinction between the neutral processes of governing and their partisan goals makes them, to this point, a far bigger threat to constitutional norms than the president.

SOURCE

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America hits best unemployment rate in 49 years

The September jobs report released today shows a continuation of the booming labor market, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.7 percent, the lowest in 49 years. Average weekly wages rose at an impressive 3.4 percent over last year. These are the pocketbook issues that actually make a difference in the lives of voters. If Republicans can make the case that their policies are largely responsible for this increased pay and improved job prospects, they can maintain control of Congress in midterms.

So far this year, the average number of jobs created each month is 16 percent higher than last year, suggesting that the tax cuts that took effect this year are boosting the labor market. This is the sixth straight month the unemployment rate has been at or below 4 percent, the best in a half century. Black and hispanic unemployment rates hover near record lows. In addition to the unprecedented number of job opportunities, wages are increasing at their quickest pace in a decade, rising about 50 percent faster than during the second term of President Obama. But the legacy media continues to stick to its “stagnating wages” talking point.

What makes this wage growth even more impressive is that it has coincided with a significant influx of less skilled workers into the job market. Since the 2016 election, the unemployment rate has fallen by 20 percent. Hundreds of thousands of people, who had quit looking for work altogether, have returned to the workforce to take advantage of this historic opportunity. Over the last couple years, the labor market has grown far faster than the long running trend would have suggested.

This top line wage growth figure only takes into account wages before taxes. Wages after taxes are growing even faster as tax cuts have reduced the amount of federal withholding taken from paychecks. Americans are receiving higher take home wages because of a doubled standard deduction, doubled child tax credit, and lower tax rates that took effect this year. The new 20 percent small business tax deduction is contributing to this historic labor market. This is strengthening the economic backbone of the country by allowing them to protect a fifth of their earnings from taxes and reinvest it in their operations and employees.

SOURCE

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Good news about Obamacare premiums can't hide long-term pain

Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently announced that premiums for a benchmark Affordable Care Act 2019 plan on the federal exchange will drop 2 percent nationally compared with 2018 premiums — the first reduction since the law's implementation.

While this is encouraging news, it is no cause for a major celebration. When Obamacare's exchanges open for business in just a few weeks, on Nov. 1, many consumers will still find exchange plans unaffordable. Rates will soar by double digits in many states. Despite the slight decline in the national average premium, the typical 2019 plan sold through the HealthCare.gov exchange will still likely cost more than twice as much as the average individual market plan in 2013, the year before most Obamacare provisions went into effect.

Until Obamacare's incoherent rules and regulations are loosened, there will be no sustained relief for everyday Americans.

Hefty premium increases are the new normal. Americans who shopped for Obamacare-compliant coverage off the exchanges fared just as poorly as those who watched rates soar on the exchanges. The average individual market plan sold through eHealth, an online insurance marketplace, cost $197 per month in 2013. In 2018, the average plan on eHealth was $440 per month — a 123 percent increase.

Republicans are lessening premium pain
Consumers won't get much relief this enrollment cycle. But at least they won't be penalized for going without coverage, as Republicans reduced the fine for violating the individual mandate to zero.

Premiums for the benchmark 2019 silver plan in Burlington, Vermont, will rise 23 percent relative to 2018. In the nation's capital, they're going up 21 percent. In Seattle, premiums are jumping 12 percent.

These hikes are the inevitable result of Obamacare's premium-inflating mandates.

The law requires all plans to cover 10 essential health benefits, from prescription drugs to pediatric dental care. Insurers have raised prices in response. As much as 11 percent of Pennsylvania's premium increases and 8 percent of Georgia's were due to the essential health benefits mandate, according to a McKinsey study.

Obamacare also forbids insurers from denying coverage to customers based on their health status or charging sicker enrollees more than healthy ones. And it bars insurers from charging older enrollees more than three times what they charge younger enrollees, even though older people are five times costlier to insure.

SOURCE

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The Left’s Pattern of Overlooking Due Process



The notion that certain Americans are pre-emptively guilty of wrongdoing, whether there’s any corroborating evidence to back up an accusation or not, isn’t reserved for conservatives who happen to be in contention for a Supreme Court seat.

In the hierarchy of progressive values, due process is a bottom dweller.

Over the past decade, you could see the illiberalism evolving on college campuses, where Democrats subverted basic standards of justice.

It was the Obama administration that demanded schools judge cases of alleged sexual assaults under a “clear and convincing evidence” standard rather than on a “preponderance of evidence” standard, allowed accusers to appeal “not guilty” findings, and permitted the meting out of punishment before any investigation was even conducted, among other big problems.

Democrats are simply shepherding those corrosive standards into the real world.

Another area of American life where we continue to see egregious attacks on the presumption of innocence is gun ownership. You might remember that a couple of years ago, Democrats engaged in a much-covered congressional “sit-in” to support legislation that would have stripped Americans on secret government watchlists—hundreds of thousands of people who had never been accused, much less convicted, of any crime—of their constitutional right to bear arms.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in fact, proposed legislation that would have restricted not only American citizens on faulty watchlists but anyone who had been on any watchlist at any time during the previous five years and anyone who had traveled to select Middle Eastern countries.

Apparently, Democrats believe limiting the number of refugees from Syria is unconstitutional but explicitly restricting the constitutional rights of Syrian immigrants here legally is just fine.

Then again, the entire effort was a frontal attack on about half the Bill of Rights. At the time, even the American Civil Liberties Union, which has increasingly turned away from its guiding principles, argued that policies based on flawed terror lists would undermine civil liberties.

In much the same way they are attempting to sink the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, Democrats relied on theatrics, bombastic rhetoric, and a compliant media, which framed the issue exactly how they had hoped.

You can imagine such bills will reappear when they’re back in charge. Until then, though, Democrats have been doing some gun grabbing—and I don’t mean it figuratively—on the local level.

California, a state that already features the strictest gun control laws in the country, just enacted a law that raises the allowable age to buy a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21.

The United States might be willing to hand weapons to young men and women who volunteer to protect their country, but Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t believe those young men and women should be able to protect their own property or families.

An even more outrageous new law bans Californians who’ve been hospitalized more than once in a year for mental health issues from owning a gun.

Federal law already prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective.”

Until now, a person had an option to appeal the ban and show “a preponderance of evidence” that he would use firearms in “a safe and lawful manner.” Now California bans one-time patients from owning firearms for the rest of their lives.

This is an excellent way to stigmatize people who suffer from maladies that often have nothing to do with violence or criminality.

Now, I was going to ask the reader to imagine an alternate scenario in which Republicans pushed a bill prohibiting those who have been in hospitals—for, say, nervous exhaustion or an addiction—from being able to freely express their opinions in public ever again.

If a law-abiding American can be stripped of his Second Amendment rights, then why not his First Amendment rights? But then, these days, I imagine many Democrats would simply answer, “It depends on what the person is going to say.”

Another California law allows police to verbally ask to confiscate a gun rather than make their case in a written request. Under “red flag laws,” guns can be confiscated from citizens who’ve never been charged with, much less convicted of, breaking any law. And it’s getting easier and easier to do it.

All it takes in many states is for a family member, neighbor, or co-worker to accuse you of a pre-crime. One of Maryland’s many new laws (signed by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan) allows the police to confiscate weapons for up to a year—or until the next person accuses you of a crime you are only yet to commit.

There is risible evidence that these new regulations will stop mass shootings or lower gun crime. But as William Rosen, deputy legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety, explains, “red flag laws” are needed to “step into that gap.”

What gap? You know, the pesky space between protecting the ideal of presuming innocence and completely ignoring it when you feel like it.

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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