Socialists and Fascists Have Always Been Kissing Cousins

By Bradley J. Birzer

In 1939, the same year the Germans and the Russians mutually consented to rape Poland, T.S. Eliot rather famously (or, I suppose for some, infamously) declared: “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.” Eliot, of course, could not have been more correct. In 1936, you had three choices: National Socialism, international socialism, or dignity.

In 2018, we find ourselves in similar circumstances, even if they aren’t quite as clear cut as they were in 1936.

Of all the disturbing developments in culture and ideas over the last several years—including violence against legitimate authority, violence against the average citizen, and violence against the very ideas that undergird the West—few have been more disturbing than the reemergence of communism and socialism.

Why is this happening now, as much of Western civilization lingers in its twilight state? Most likely, it has to do with three critical things. First, we scholars have failed to convince the public of just how wicked all forms of communism were and remain.

Most historians have focused their research and teaching on how “liberated” every form of eccentricity has become and how—in terms of race and gender—victims remain victims. Almost all historians ignore the most salient fact of the 20th century: that governments murdered more than 200 million innocents, the largest massacre in the history of the world. Terror reigned in the killing fields, the Holocaust camps, and the gulags.

Second, an entire generation has grown up never knowing such things as the Soviet gulags or even the Berlin Wall. Indeed, it’s been more than a full generation since communism existentially threatened sustained violence on a global scale. With America currently at the height of her power (militarily and economically, not spiritually or ethically), we are the bad guys of the world, if for no other reason than we stand—for the most part—above and alone.

Third, the five nations that remain officially communist—Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea and mainland China—seem to be relentlessly backward, mad, or capitalist. No one thinks about the first three countries anymore. North Korea looks like a loony bin. China seems more bent on profit and power more than anything it might profess officially.

Equally disturbing is that most younger defenders of communism buy into the oldest propaganda line of the Left—that real communism has never been tried and fascism is the polar opposite of communism. That the Nazis were actually “National Socialists,” these apologists argue, was merely a cynical ploy on the part of Hitler to gain the support of the working and middle classes of Germany. The term “socialism” meant nothing to Hitler. He was really a supporter of controlled corporate capitalism, not of the beautiful and compelling idea of socialism. Many of these young communism supporters go so far as to argue that those who label the Nazis “National Socialists” are either ignorant or willfully smearing a good word. While these new supporters have yet to proclaim those who call Nazis socialists as racists, they are coming close. A quick look at the social media response to a British conservative’s recent claim that National Socialism was—surprise!—socialist should be proof enough that communism is hardly dead and gone.

The young communists are more than convinced of their intellectual as well as their moral superiority. With dread certainty, they bully anyone who believes differently than they do. In other words, the Left is back and in full force, up to the same deceptions and tricks as it was in the 1920s and after.

That the National Socialists embraced socialism is factually accurate. Though they did not nationalize to the extent the Leninists wanted, they did nationalize very vital industry in Germany, even if by outright intimidation rather than through the law. In his personal diaries, Joseph Goebbels wrote in late 1925: “It would be better for us to end our existence under Bolshevism than to endure slavery under capitalism.” Only a few months later, he continued, “I think it is terrible that we and the Communists are bashing in each other’s heads.” Whatever the state of the rivalry between the two camps, Goebbels claimed, the two forces should ally and conquer. He even reached out to a communist in a personal letter: “We are not really enemies,” he offered.

Hitler admired Stalin, and the two willingly carved up Poland in 1939. One SS division named itself after Florian Geyer, a Marxist hero promoted by Frederick Engels in The Peasant War in Germany. Hitler actively recruited communists into the National Socialist movement, believing they were far more malleable than Christians.

The Italian fascists had even closer ties to the Marxists, with Mussolini having begun his career as a Marxist publicist and writer. A few Italian fascists even held positions in the Comintern. The only serious divide between the Italian fascists (or those who would become fascists) and Italian communists in the 1910s was their support, or not, of Italy’s participation in World War I.

SOURCE 

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The next two years: Trump will do his best while the unprincipled Left do their worst

By Patrick J. Buchanan

The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now. This is a fight to the finish.

A postelection truce that began with Trump congratulating House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — "I give her a great deal of credit for what she's done and what she's accomplished" — was ancient history by nightfall.

With the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, the long-anticipated confrontation with Robert Mueller appears at hand.

Sessions had recused himself from the oversight role of the special counsel's investigation into Russiagate. Whitaker has definitely not.

Before joining Justice, he said that the Mueller probe was overreaching, going places it had no authority to go, and that it could be leashed by a new attorney general and starved of funds until it passes away.

Whitaker was not chosen to be merely a place holder until a new AG is confirmed. He was picked so he can get the job done.

And about time.

For two years, Trump has been under a cloud of unproven allegations and suspicion that he and top campaign officials colluded with Vladimir Putin's Russia to thieve and publish the emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

It is past time for Mueller to prove these charges or concede he has a busted flush, wrap up his investigation and go home.

And now, in T.S. Eliot's words, Trump appears to have found "the strength to force the moment to its crisis."

His attitude toward Mueller's probe is taking on the aspect of Andrew Jackson's attitude toward Nicholas Biddle's Second Bank of the United States: It's "trying to kill me, but I will kill it."

Trump has been warned by congressional Democrats that if he in any way impedes the work of Mueller's office, he risks impeachment.

Well, let's find out.

If the House Judiciary Committee of incoming chairman Jerrold Nadler wishes to impeach Trump for forcing Mueller to fish or cut bait, Trump's allies should broaden the debate to the real motivation here of the defeated establishment: It detests the man the American people chose to lead their country and thus wants to use its political and cultural power to effect his removal.

Even before news of Sessions' departure hit Wednesday, Trump was subjected to an antifa-style hassling by the White House press corps.

One reporter berated the president and refused to surrender the microphone. Others shouted support for his antics. A third demanded to know whether Trump's admission that he's a "nationalist" would give aid and comfort to "white nationalists."

By picking up the credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta and booting him out of the White House, Trump has set a good precedent.

Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president.

John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying.

Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes. And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president's house, not the press's house.

Pelosi appears the favorite to return as speaker of the House. But she may find her coming days in the post she loves to be less-than-happy times.

Some of her incoming committee chairs — namely, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings — seem less interested in legislative compromises than in rummaging through White House files for documents to damage the president, starting with his tax returns.

To a world watching with fascination this death struggle convulsing our capital, one wonders how attractive American democracy appears.

And just how much division can this democracy stand?

We know what the left thinks of Trump's "base."

Hillary Clinton told us. Half his supporters, she said, are a "basket of deplorables" who are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it." Lately, America's populist right has been called fascist and neo-Nazi.

How can the left "unite" with people like that? Why should the left not try to drive such "racists" out of power by any means necessary?

This is the thinking that bred antifa.

As for those on the right — as they watch the left disparage the old heroes, tear down their monuments, purge Christianity from their public schools — they have come to conclude that their enemies are at root anti-Christian and anti-American.

How do we unify a nation where the opposing camps believe this?

What the Trump-establishment war is about is the soul of America, a war in which a compromise on principle can be seen as a betrayal.

SOURCE 

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Federal Judge Says It's Plausible That Andrew Cuomo Violated the First Amendment by Pressuring Banks and Insurers to Shun the NRA

The organization's lawsuit against New York's governor survives a motion to dismiss.

Last night a federal judge said the National Rifle Association may proceed with a lawsuit that claims New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is violating the First Amendment by pressuring banks and insurers to shun the NRA and "similar gun promotion organizations." U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy questioned Cuomo's claim that his messages about the wisdom and propriety of providing financial services to the NRA amount to nothing but legitimate regulatory oversight and protected government speech.

As I explained in my column today, and as McAvoy describes in his decision, there is strong evidence that Cuomo and Maria Vullo, superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), are in fact threatening banks and insurers that dare to do business with organizations that oppose the governor's gun control agenda.

In a press release last April, Cuomo said he was "directing the Department of Financial Services to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities." Vullo was more explicit, saying "DFS urges all insurance companies and banks doing business in New York to join the companies that have already discontinued their arrangements with the NRA."

Guidance memos that Vullo sent to banks and insurance companies that day communicated the same message, warning that "reputational risks...may arise from their dealings with the NRA or similar gun promotion organizations" and urging "prompt actions to manage these risks." The next day, Cuomo tweeted: "The NRA is an extremist organization. I urge companies in New York State to revisit any ties they have to the NRA and consider their reputations, and responsibility to the public."

The press release, memos, and tweet were quickly followed by consent degrees in which the companies that had managed and underwritten the NRA's Carry Guard insurance program in New York not only agreed to pay fines for violations of state law but promised to stop doing business with the NRA. During this period, according to the NRA, Vullo's department engaged in "backroom exhortations," warning "banks and insurers with known or suspected ties to the NRA that they would face regulatory action" if they failed to cut ties.

"The temporal proximity between the Cuomo Press Release, the Guidance Letters, and the Consent Orders plausibly suggests that the timing was intended to reinforce the message that insurers and financial institutions that do not sever ties with the NRA will be subject to retaliatory action by the state," McAvoy notes. "The allegations in the Amended Complaint are sufficient to create a plausible inference that the Guidance Letters and Cuomo Press Release, when read together and in the context of the alleged backroom exhortations and the public announcements of the Consent Orders, constituted implicit threats of adverse action against financial institutions and insurers that did not disassociate from the NRA."

Those threats had a noticeable impact, causing insurers and banks to either end existing relationships with the NRA or decline new business. One banker from upstate New York told American Banker that the "politically motivated" guidance memos put people like him in a bind: "If a business is a legal entity, how do I know who is going to come in disfavor with either the New York State DFS or a federal regulator, that they may say, 'Reputationally, you shouldn't be doing business with this company'? It's hard to know what the rules are." Other industry sources told the magazine "such regulatory guidelines are frustratingly vague, and can effectively compel institutions to cease catering to legal businesses."

Far from denying this chilling effect, Cuomo crowed about it. "If the @NRA goes bankrupt because of the State of New York," he tweeted in August, "they'll be in my thoughts and prayers. I'll see you in court."

Now that Cuomo has gotten to court, comments like that present a problem if he wants to deny that he is abusing his powers to pursue an unconstitutional vendetta against his political opponents. "The Guidance Letters and the Cuomo Press Release indisputably are directed at the NRA and similar groups based on their 'gun promotion' advocacy," McAvoy writes. "However controversial it may be, 'gun promotion' advocacy is core political speech entitled to constitutional protection. The Guidance Letters and Cuomo Press Release's comments directed to this protected speech provides a sufficient basis to invoke the First Amendment on these claims." Hence "the critical question here is whether Defendants' statements, including the Guidance Letters and Cuomo Press Release, threatened adverse action against banks and insurers that did not disassociate with the NRA." The answer seems pretty clear.

SOURCE 

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Mass.: Nasty local bureaucracy

Candles are now illegal for all in Cambridge? Enforcers are on scorched-earth campaign

If you lit a candle in Cambridge for any purpose within the past few weeks without first going to the fire department for permission, you have broken the law.

That’s because the fire department, with no public process, added something that at least looks like a law to its website saying so: “The Cambridge Fire Department does not allow the use of candles unless approved by the Fire Prevention Bureau.”

Department and city officials have been silent when asked about the unannounced addition to its website, but it was done in advance of a Wednesday disciplinary hearing before the License Commission over the use of candles at a North Cambridge wine bar and charcuterie.

Screen captures of the cached Web page shows how recent the addition is, and the order didn’t exist when the owners of the business, called UpperWest, researched whether candles were allowed in Cambridge restaurants – in fact, as recently as Sept. 4 the department was tweeting out candle safety advice and making no reference to the notion that it “does not allow the use of candles” without permission:

Meanwhile, fire and police officials have repeatedly cited a state law that they seemed to think proves UpperWest – and every other Cambridge restaurant and bar, dating back decades – cannot set out candles. The state statute does not show that.

UpperWest’s Kim Courtney and Xavier Dietrich were summoned to the disciplinary hearing in an Oct. 12 letter from the License Commission. Rather than the mysterious new law, the letter cites the same state statute cited in emails, official communications and visits to UpperWest about “portable cooking equipment,” such as a flame or heat source used for fondue. The candles at UpperWest aren’t used for cooking – they’re mood-setting tea lights, also referred to as votive candles, set out on the business’ bar and tables inside small glass containers.

Asked directly what statute that was being violated at UpperWest that drew fire inspectors Aug. 3 and then again Sept. 29, acting chief of the fire department Gerard Mahoney – who also makes up one-third of the commission with the police commissioner and a chairwoman – declined to answer because the “matter is currently under investigation.” When the question was appealed to the City Solicitor’s Office, city spokesman Lee Gianetti responded that “the fire department indicates that the use of candles in restaurants in Cambridge is governed by the Massachusetts Fire Safety Code.” Renewed requests for information last week were ignored.

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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Message from Germany

Something to keep in mind as we wring our hands and goo-goo over the "plight" of migrant caravans

NURSE IN GERMANY SENDS A MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

Just in case you don't think President Trump is doing the right thing! Read this!

"Yesterday, at the hospital, we had a meeting about how the situation here and at the other Munich hospitals is unsustainable. Clinics cannot handle the number of migrant medical emergencies, so they are starting to send everything to the main hospitals.

Many Muslims are refusing treatment by female staff, and we women are now refusing to go among those migrants!

Relations between the staff and migrants are going from bad to worse. Since last weekend, migrants going to the hospitals must be accompanied by police with K-9units.

Many migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we in Europe do not know how to treat.

If they receive a prescription to the pharmacy, they suddenly learn they have to pay cash. This leads to unbelievable outbursts, especially when it is about drugs for the children. They abandon the children with pharmacy staff with the words: So, cure them here yourselves!

So the police are not just guarding the clinics and hospitals, but also the large pharmacies.

We ask openly where are all those who welcomed the migrants in front of TV cameras with signs at train stations? Yes, for now, the border has been closed, but a million of them are already here and we will definitely not be able to get rid of them.

Until now, the number of unemployed in Germany was 2.2 million. Now it will be at least 3.5 million. Most of these people are completely unemployable. Only a small minimum of them have any education. What is more, their women usually do not work at all. I estimate that one in ten is pregnant. Hundreds of thousands of them have brought along infants and little kids under six, many emaciated and very needy. If this continues and Germany re-opens its borders, I am going home to the Czech Republic. Nobody can keep me here in this situation, not even for double the salary back home. I came to Germany to work, not to Africa or the Middle East!

Even the professor who heads our department told us how sad it makes him to see the cleaning woman, who has cleaned every day for years for 800 Euro's and then meets crowds of young men in the hallways who just wait with their hands outstretched, wanting everything for free, and when they don't get it they throw a fit.

I really don't need this! But I am afraid that if I return home, at some point it will be the same in the Czech Republic. If the Germans, with their systems, cannot handle this, then, guaranteed, back home will be total chaos.....

You - who have not come in contact with these people have absolutely no idea what kind of badly behaved desperadoes these people are, and how Muslims act superior to our staff, regarding their religious accommodation.

For now, the local hospital staff have not come down with the diseases these people brought here, but with so many hundreds of patients every day of this is just a question of time. In a hospital near the Rhine, migrants attacked the staff with knives after they had handed over an 8-month-old on the brink of death, who they'd dragged across half of Europe for three months. The child died two days later, despite having received top care at one of the best pediatric clinics in Germany. The pediatric physician had to undergo surgery and the two nurses are recovering in the ICU. Nobody has been punished.

The local press is forbidden to write about it, so we can only inform you through email. What would have happened to a German if he had stabbed the doctor and nurses with a knife? Or if he had flung his own syphilis-infected urine into a nurses face and so threatened her with infection? At a minimum he would have gone straight to jail and later to court. With these people so far, nothing has happened.

And so I ask: Where are all those greeters and receivers from the train stations? Sitting pretty at home, enjoying their uncomplicated, safe lives. If it were up to me, I would round up all those greeters and bring them here first to our hospitals emergency ward as attendants! Then in to one of the buildings housing the migrants, so they can really look after them there themselves, without armed police and police dogs, who, sadly today, are in every hospital here in Bavaria."

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Capitalism at work

Capitalism  has an informal sequence for the testing and adoption of innovations -- as described above. Command (Communist) economies lack that so are very slow and inefficient at adopting anything new

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How Trump Is Toughening Asylum Rules for Immigrants

President Donald Trump’s administration is clamping down on asylum rules for immigrants coming to the United States, the White House announced Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department jointly issued a new rule requiring that immigrants seeking asylum along the southern border must present themselves lawfully at a port of entry.

Trump will sign a proclamation with specifics. The president last week announced his intention to do so.

The new rule is aimed at ensuring illegal immigrants who are subject to the terms of the proclamation that Trump issues are not eligible for asylum.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker issued a joint statement on the new policy.

Consistent with our immigration laws, the president has the broad authority to suspend or restrict the entry of aliens into the United States if he determines it to be in the national interest to do so.

Today’s rule applies this important principle to aliens who violate such a suspension or restriction regarding the southern border imposed by the president by invoking an express authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum.

Our asylum system is overwhelmed with too many meritless asylum claims from aliens who place a tremendous burden on our resources, preventing us from being able to expeditiously grant asylum to those who truly deserve it.

Today, we are using the authority granted to us by Congress to bar aliens who violate a Presidential suspension of entry or other restriction from asylum eligibility.

The new rule clarifies that anyone who illegally enters the United States will be ineligible for asylum.

The president is relying on the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states in part:

Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. …

Unless otherwise ordered by the president, it shall be unlawful for any alien to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States, except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the president may prescribe.

In June, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s broad statutory authority to implement entry restrictions in a ruling on the policy of extreme vetting that opponents characterized as a “Muslim ban.”

Under the proclamation, those who arrive at a port of entry will remain eligible for asylum. The Department of Homeland Security is deploying additional resources to ports of entry.

Illegal immigrants are often coached in advance to claim “credible fear” in order to claim asylum. Before 2013, about 1 in every 100 arriving immigrants claimed credible fear and sought asylum. Today, that has spiked to 1 in 10, according to the White House.

About two-thirds of immigrants claiming credible fear are from the Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and do not have valid asylum claims, but are released into the country because the existing asylum system has become overwhelmed, the White House said.

Last year, about half of the illegal immigrants who claimed credible fear did not show up for their assigned hearing or even file an asylum application.

In fiscal 2018, which ended on Sept. 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 612,183 inadmissible immigrants. Of those, 404,142 aliens entered illegally. About 98 percent of the latter—396,579—who entered illegally were apprehended by CBP along the southern border.

The total number of “credible fear” referrals for interviews increased from about 5,000 a year in fiscal 2008 to about 97,000 in fiscal 2018, the White House said.

SOURCE 

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The Welfare Generation: 51.7% Kids in 2017 Lived in Households Getting Govt Assistance/b>

The Census Bureau has released new data that strengthens the case for calling the current generation of American children “The Welfare Generation.”

Among American residents under 18 years of age in 2017, according to the Census Bureau, 51.7 percent lived in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

That was down slightly from the 52.1 percent of Americans under 18 in 2016 who lived in households receiving means-tested government assistance. (Also, because this new Census Bureau estimate is for 2017, it predates the significant economic and job growth the United States has seen in 2018).

But in each of the last five years on record (2013 through 2017), according to the Census Bureau, at least 51 percent of Americans under 18 have lived in households receiving means-tested government assistance.

In fact, the 51.7 percent in 2017 was the lowest percentage in any of the last five years on record.

The programs the Census Bureau includes in its estimate of how many people are living in households receiving means-tested government assistance include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Medicaid, public housing, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.

The data on the number of people living in households in which one or more persons received means-tested government assistance comes from Table POV-26 of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, 2018 Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The table enumerates, by various characteristics, “[p]eople who lived with someone (a nonrelative or relative) who received aid.”

“Not every person tallied here,” Table POV-26 says, “received the aid themselves.”

In 2017, the Census Bureau estimates, according to the table, that there were approximately 322,549,000 people living in the United States. Of these, 114,637,000—or 35.5 percent—lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance.

Of the 322,549,000 people in the United States in 2017, 73,356,000 were under 18 years of age. Of these children, 37,908,000—or 51.7 percent—lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance.

Even when the school lunch program was excluded from the group of means-tested government programs, there were still 32,467,000 people in America under 18 (or 44.3 percent of that demographic) living in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

The 51.7 percent of people under 18 on means-tested government assistance in 2017 was a slight declined from the 52.1 percent on means-tested government assistance in 2016.

In 2016, according to the Census estimate, there were 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States (compared to 73,356,000 in 2017) and 38,365,000 (compared to 37,908,000 in 2017) were living in households receiving means-tested government assistance.

The percentage of persons under 18 living in households receiving means-tested government assistance also varied by the type of household the person was living in, according to the Census data.

But it was above 40 percent even in married-couple families.

In married couple families in 2017, according to Table POV-26, there were 49,436,000 related children under 18. Of these, 20,230,000—or 40.9 percent—lived in households in which one or more persons received means-tested government assistance.

There were 5,330,000 related children under 18 living in households headed by a male householder with no spouse present. 3,371,000 of these children—or 48.7 percent—lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

There were 17,766,000 related children under 18 living in households headed by a female householder with no spouse present. 13,702,000 of these children—or 77.1 percent—lived in a household receiving means-tested government assistance.

After the 51.7 percent of children under 18 who lived in a household that received means-tested government assistance in 2017, the next most likely age group to live in a household that received means-tested government assistance were those 18 to 24. There were 29,363,000 in that age bracket and 11,855,000—or 40.4 percent—lived in a household getting means-tested government assistance.

The age group least likely to be receiving means-tested government assistance were people 75 and older. There were 20,713,000 in that age bracket in 2017 and only 3,894,000—or 18.8 percent—lived in a household on means-tested government assistance.

SOURCE 

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Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg Falls: Hospitalized After Fracturing Three Ribs

Heh!

It is being reported that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, has been hospitialized after taking a fall Wednesday night.

As White House Bureau Chief for VOA News Steve Herman reported, this is not Ginsburg’s first bout with health complications:

President Trump has already appointed two Supreme Court justices in his two years in the Oval Office. Democrats have been worried about liberal Ginsburg’s position due to her age and frail condition.

Politics aside, we all wish Ginsburg a speedy recovery.

SOURCE 

She will undoubtedly wish to hold out for 6 more years in order to block another Trump appointment but it seems unlikely that she will make it.

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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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Should blacks be white supremacists?

My heading above will of course expose me to a roar of accusations that I am a white supremacist.  I have certainly been accused of that before.  I have in print around a hundred academic journal articles on race and racism so I at least qualify as being a racist according to the Leftist lexicon -- which is anyone who mentions race or monkeys. I have mentioned both.

The Left throw around the term "white supremacist" with wild abandon so it is very hard to work out what they mean by it. So varied are the words that provoke such an accusation that it could mean a very wide variety of things.  Could it be synonymous with "Good old boy", for instance? It seems possible.

In fact, of course it is not meant to have any particular meaning.  It is simply a term of abuse, like S.O.B.  It sounds bad and that is enough.

So is there any point in trying to look at what it COULD mean?  I personally treat the meaning of words with respect so I think I should at least try.  I think there are two possible underlying meanings: Someone who thinks whites ARE supreme and someone who thinks whites SHOULD BE supreme.

And it is reasonable enough to think that whites are supreme in at least some ways.  Modern Western civilization and the innovations that drive it is almost entirely the creation of whites. And whites  tend not to be good runners or good rappers but in terms of high income and low crime incidence they generally excel in international comparisons.  China will no doubt catch up but they are not there yet.

So is there any problem in reporting that factual situation?  I can't see it.  But Leftists are not concerned with facts of course so I am presumably a villain just for mentioning the facts of the matter.

So then we come to the second type of possible white supremacist:  Someone who believes that whites SHOULD BE supreme.  But are there any such people?  Since whites already are supreme in important ways, what point is there in wishing for such a situation to come about?  You can't open a door that is already open.  So I can't think that there could be any whites in that category.

But there could be some blacks.  What is true of comparisons between countries is also true of comparisons between cities.  And it is a byword about what behavioral sinks black-dominated cities in America are  -- with huge rates of violent crime, great poverty and urban decay generally. Think Detroit.

So it seems possible that there are some  blacks in such cities who would like whites to be fully in charge of their city and enforce white standards of behaviour.  There might even be some who pray for that.  It's not for me to say that they should but  if I were a black living in Detroit, I would -- JR.

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Trump did it

The Republican Party defied history in a powerful and commanding fashion in the midterm elections Tuesday by expanding its Senate majority and stopping highly touted, celebrity-backed Democratic nominees in their tracks.

The reason for Republican success is undeniable: President Trump proved to be our closer and our game-changer, making a quantifiable difference in key races across the country.

From Taylor Swift and P. Diddy, to Oprah Winfrey and President Obama, the collective power of both the left and celebrities could not overcome the power of the Trump endorsement, which defied historic trends and delivered Republican Senate victories.

With Senate pickups in Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota, Republicans will not only maintain our Senate majority but expand it by one to four seats when all Senate races have been decided.

This tremendous feat can only be fully understood when placed in the context of history. Over the past 80 years, the sitting president’s party has only picked up seven Senate seats collectively in midterm elections. In other words, picking up Senate seats for a sitting president is exceedingly rare and has only been achieved four times since 1934.

This shows that that the success of President Trump and the Republicans in Senate races is a monumental achievement that defies the historic odds.

In the House, although Democrats took back the majority, Republicans once again over-performed when compared to past midterm elections, despite a wave of retirements that made a hard task all the more difficult.

Democrats have only gained 27 House seats as of this writing. But going back to the 1800s, the party of first-term presidents has lost an average of 32 House seats in midterms.

Even if Republicans wind up losing a few more House seats when all races have been decided, their losses will still fall far short of President Obama’s 63-seat loss and President Clinton’s 54-seat loss in midterm elections when those two Democratic presidents were in office.

GOP over-performance is no coincidence. The Republican pickups are directly attributable to a sustained effort by President Trump to boost GOP candidates, aided by an unprecedented Republican National Committee ground game effort to deliver key victories.

Hosting 53 rallies in 24 states since January, President Trump outpaced President Obama’s rally totals by roughly three times. While Democratic candidates distanced themselves from Obama in midterm elections when he was in office, GOP candidates embraced Trump, welcoming the president to their states.

For example, President Trump’s rally on behalf of Republican nominee Marsha Blackburn for a U.S. Senate seat from Tennessee turned a 5-point deficit into a 9-point victory.

In Missouri, a Senate race in a dead heat resulted in a 6-point win for Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley, who defeated Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill after an election eve Trump rally.

In Florida, the president’s three rallies and continual support for Republican nominees delivered victories for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis and Republican Senate candidate Gov. Rick Scott. Both were down in the polls; both prevailed after Trump’s efforts.

Likewise, in Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz opened up his first double-digit lead of the fall after an October Trump rally, ultimately defeating the prolific fundraiser and the left’s megastar Robert “Beto” O’Rourke.

And in Georgia, a star-studded effort from Oprah Winfrey to boost Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams could not stop the Trump momentum, with a rally that pushed Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp 2 percent above his opponent in the vote total.

Similar scenarios played out in Indiana, Texas, Kentucky and Ohio, where the president’s rallies once again delivered identifiable, quantifiable, undeniable results.

With 87 percent support among Republican voters, President Trump has the highest approval rating from members of his own party of any president in modern history, with the exception of President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

President Trump’s extraordinary support in his party was on full display Tuesday as the base turned out in support of Republican candidates, showcasing the president’s ability to make the Trump voter a Republican voter.

President Trump did this to great effect, combined with the Republican National Committee’s unprecedented ground game. The RNC invested a record $275 million into the 2018 midterms, facilitating 2.6 billion voter contacts that mobilized support for GOP nominees across the country and outpaced 2016 investment.

As several analysts have noted, the blue wave crashed Tuesday. It crashed into a Republican Party more unified than ever before, thanks to President Trump.

There is simply no denying the political tailwinds of President Trump. They change the trajectory of races, reverse historical odds, and leave Hollywood and the left speechless. Results from the elections Tuesday proved that once more.

SOURCE

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There was no suburban female GOP problem in the 2018 midterms

One conventional wisdom headed into the 2018 midterms was that Republicans would have a very poor night and lose races they might otherwise win because females, specifically, suburban Republican females, were abandoning President Donald Trump and down ballot candidates.

There was only one problem. On election night, it didn’t actually happen. In states that are evenly divided, like Florida or Iowa, Republicans did about as well as Trump did in 2016.

According to 2016 CNN exit poll in Florida, Trump garnered 52 percent of men and 46 percent of women.

In a Nov. 2 St. Pete Polls survey that correctly predicted the outcome, Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), running for Senate against Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), did comparably well along gender lines. Scott got 53 percent of men and 46 percent of women. Almost exactly the same.

In the same poll, DeSantis — who overperformed the poll’s result when voting actually happened — garnered 49 percent of men and 44 percent of women.

If there was some exodus of suburban Republican women from the GOP, it should have proven fatal to Scott and DeSantis in Florida, a state that could not be more closely divided politically.

In similar, statewide outcomes, Republicans held governorships in Iowa, New Hampshire and Ohio, all closely divided states. Surely, a flight of Republican women or just women generally from the GOP would have killed Republicans in those races, too.

In an Emerson poll that correctly predicted Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) would be reelected by about 4 points, Reynolds garnered 57 percent of men and 43 percent of women. In the 2016 CNN exit poll in Iowa, Trump garnered 61 percent of men and 44 percent of women, practically the same.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H) garnered 56 percent of men and 45 percent of women in the last Emerson poll before the election. Sununu won. In the 2016 CNN exit poll, Trump got 53 percent of men and 41 percent of women. If anything, there, Republicans improved among both men and women since Trump got elected.

The Emerson poll in Ohio incorrectly predicted Richard Cordray would beat Mike DeWine, 49 percent to 46 percent. It was a bad sample that was too heavy-Democrat. It did show a drop off in support for Trump among men and women. There was just one problem. On election night, DeWine won handily, 50.7 percent to 46 percent. Trump won Ohio 51 percent to 43 percent in 2016. Pretty similar outcomes.

The same trend played out nationally, too, Manzanita Miller, an associate analyst with the Market Research Foundation, told me in an emailed statement, pointing to CNN’s 2018 exit poll.

“Of female voters who were already registered Republican, 93 percent of them voted GOP, and 6 percent broke for Dems. This is nearly equal to registered Republican men, where 94 percent voted GOP, and 6 percent broke for Dems,” Miller said, saying that she was “not seeing an indication of suburban females shifting to Dems at all.”

Which, it turns out, was better than Trump did nationally two years ago, where he garnered 89 percent of Republican men and 88 percent of Republican women in 2016, according to the CNN exit poll. No slippage there.

“The GOP won an equal share of suburban voters, and a greater share of rural households,” Miller added.

To be fair, there was some slippage overall, but it affected men and women equally. Whereas Trump got 52 percent of men and 41 percent of women nationally, Republican House candidates got 51 percent and 40 percent, respectively. The shift, if there was one, occurred among independents, where Democrats got 51 percent of independents who are men, and 56 of independents who are women.  Republicans got 44 percent of independent males, and 39 percent of independent females, compared to Trump’s 50 percent of independent men and 42 percent of independent women.

So, perhaps, there is some flight of suburban Republican women from the GOP that is hurting Republican candidates down ballot somewhere in America, it’s just that when you look for them in a poll or at the ballot box in 2016 and 2018, they’re nowhere to be found.

If the predictors are supposed to be party affiliation and gender, so far the phenomenon of Republican women leaving the GOP remains hypothetical.

They are certainly not appearing in some of the most closely divided and contested states with huge suburban presences that Republicans depend on to win where you would expect to see an impact.

Which makes it unicorns. A fantasy, more or less. Or, a goal or hypothesis of Democrats of how to flip Republican women to vote Democrat because they’re supposed to be just so disgusted with the President.

Here’s an idea, maybe if Democratic leaders and pundits stop calling their husbands racists and sexists — just maybe — Republican women will consider voting for the Democratic candidate. Just a thought.

Narratives don’t vote. People do. Something to keep in mind as we head into 2020.

SOURCE

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DC Police Investigating Mob’s Protest At Tucker Carlson’s House As ‘Suspected Hate Crime’

D.C. police are investigating a left-wing mob’s protest at Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house Wednesday evening as a ‘suspected hate crime‘ with ‘anti-political’ motivations, according to a police report obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The mob, organized by the Antifa group Smash Racism DC, posted Carlson’s Washington address online and sent a mob to his house calling him a “racist scumbag” and demanded he flee the city. Carlson, a co-founder of The Daily Caller News Foundation, was at the Fox News studio when the mob arrived at his home.

A police report indicated that the incident was a “suspected hate crime” and that the case was still open. One box labeled “hate bias/motivation” was filled in “anti-political.”

Carlson’s wife, who was home alone at the time, reported that she heard loud banging and pounding on her front door, according to the police report. She called the police after witnessing a large group of people that had a bull horn and were chanting loudly outside the house.

“Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door,” Carlson told The Washington Post.

The police “arrived on the scene and found a group of approximately 20 people,” the report read. “It was discovered that unknown persons spray painted an anarchy symbol on the driveway. There were also signs left on the vehicles parked in the driveway as well as a sign left on the front door of the home.”

The vandalism to Carlson’s vehicles and front door made reference to Carlson’s political affiliation, according to the report

The police also seized six hand-written posters from the scene, according to the report. Video of the incident shows the protesters carrying signs and chanting, “Tucker Carlson we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

No arrests were made after police arrived on the scene, though there is an active investigation into the incident, Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Alaina Gertz told TheDCNF.

“MPD has allocated more patrols in the area as a response to this incident,” she told TheDCNF. She declined to comment further. It is unclear why no one was arrested.

It’s also unclear who partook in the doxxing and mobbing of Carlson’s house, but it appears that Smash Racism DC began planning the action weeks ago.

Smash Racism DC co-founder Mike Isaacson wrote on his blog Thursday that an active member of the group notified him that the personal information of Carlson and other “far right personalities” had been obtained.

Isaacson wrote that he hasn’t worked with Smash Racism DC for three years, but he wrote that he “probably should have seen [the protest] coming” and referred to the group’s active members as his “comrades.”

“SRDC has really been on fire with the doxxes as of late,” Isaacson wrote. “Anyway, last night my SRDC comrades engaged in what’s known as ‘grassroots lobbying’ – showing up at a powerful person’s doorstep, usually at night, and generally making as much noise as possible.

John Jay College fired Isaacson from his position as an economics professor after tweets surfaced of him promoting political violence and laughing at dead police officers.

Isaacson also appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in September 2017 where he justified the use of violence against political opponents, but said he “would never commit violence against” Carlson personally.

But Isaacson said in a tweet Thursday that he supported Wednesday night’s mob. Isaacson did not return a request for comment.

Carlson said he is now worried about leaving his family at home alone in the aftermath of the incident.

“It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat,” Carlson told The Post.

“They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said,” he said. “They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation. … They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”

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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You Won’t Hear the Media Say It, But Last Night Trump Made History

While Tuesday night’s elections gave Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives, the media will likely ignore President Donald Trump’s big win in the Senate, where the GOP held onto its majority and is just awaiting the results of extremely close races to see how big that majority is going to be.

Democrats, meanwhile, suffered a devastating loss in the Texas Senate race, with Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke losing to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Republicans gained three new Republican senators with outright wins in North Dakota, Indiana, Florida and Missouri and likely a fourth in Florida, where Republican Rick Scott appears to have defeated incumbent Bill Nelson, though the winner hadn’t officially been declared as of Wednesday afternoon.

Some of the Democrats who lost might have been hurt for voting against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

For example, support for incumbent North Dakota Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who lost to Republican Kevin Cramer, began slipping in the polls after her vote against Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

One thing we know for sure about these midterm elections is that Trump made history with his Senate gains — even if the media isn’t going to say it.

In Twitter posts early Wednesday, Trump quoted conservative political commentator Ben Stein, who had explained the historic significance of the Republican Senate victories Tuesday on Fox Business Network Tuesday night.

“There’s only been five times in the last 105 years that an incumbent president has won seats in the Senate in the off-year election,” said Stein, author of “The Capitalist Code.” “Mr. Trump has magic  about him.”

That’s a detail — and an opinion — that you won’t hear from the establishment media. But Trump was more than happy to publicize Stein’s take.

SOURCE 

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Republicans Maintain Majority of Governorships

All told, Tuesday featured 36 gubernatorial contests across the nation. All but a handful were relatively perfunctory affairs. It was the exceptions that are of particular interest, as is the fact that Democrats netted an overall pickup of at least seven governorships. Still not bad considering that Republicans were defending 26 of 36 posts.

In perhaps the most-watched race in the country, Democrat Socialist Andrew Gillum lost to Republican Ron DeSantis. Florida is a critical bellwether state, and DeSantis’s victory — combined with outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s win over incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson — is a welcome sign. And yet there’s a cloud. Also on Tuesday, Florida restored voting rights to 1.5 million felons, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Donald Trump won Florida in 2016 by a little over 100,000 votes.

Neighboring Georgia remains uncalled, as Democrat Socialist Stacey Abrams refuses to concede until “every vote gets counted,” but as we go to press, Republican Brian Kemp leads by nearly 100,000 votes out of almost four million cast. Two factors are at play in the race remaining uncalled. First, Georgia law requires the winner to exceed 50%, which Kemp currently does at 50.5%. Abrams is hoping that absentee and provisional ballots will pull Kemp under that 50% threshold and put the two in a December runoff. Second, and maybe more to the point, Abrams’s entire campaign was built on painting Kemp as a racist vote suppressor. As executive director of the New Georgia Project, she worked to flood Secretary of State Kemp’s office with voter registrations and then insisted he was racist for working to weed out the fraudulent ones. She’s dedicated to keeping that message going.

Notably, Barack Obama hit the trail for both Gillum and Abrams and appears to have come up empty.

Other notable races include Scott Walker’s defeat in Wisconsin. He won two terms and a recall, but he couldn’t keep the streak alive in a state that isn’t as red as Republicans once hoped. Likewise, Kansas turned blue, as incumbent Republican Kris Kobach couldn’t overcome the negative baggage of Sam Brownback’s administration, and Illinois ousted the worst Republican in the country, Bruce Rauner, opting for unified Democrat control under governor-elect J. B. Pritzker. Yet in the Northeast, Republicans held on in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, meaning they still hold four of 10 governorships in the region. And Republican Mike Dunleavy flipped Alaska, even after the incumbent independent dropped out and endorsed Democrat Mark Begich.

Much of the nation’s economic progress depends on state administrations, and Republicans will still control a majority of governorships.

SOURCE 

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1,834 Refugees Admitted in October: 77.7 Percent Christians

The first month of the new fiscal year saw 1,834 refugees admitted to the United States, more than three-quarters of them Christians, as agencies involved in resettlement began operating under the lowest refugee admission cap set by an administration since the Refugee Act was enacted in 1980.

Despite the 30,000 ceiling set for fiscal year 2019 – down from 45,000 in FY 2018 and 85,000 two years earlier – more refugees were admitted during October than during the same month last year (1,248), although significantly fewer than the numbers admitted in October 2016 (9,945) and October 2015 (5,348).

Of the 1,834 newcomers, 1,425 (77.7 percent) were Christians of various denominations, and 362 (19.7 percent) were Muslims (including Sunnis, Shi’ites and Ahmadis.) Ahmadi beliefs are deemed heretical by many mainstream Muslim clerics and outlawed in the criminal code of Pakistan – the country of origin of the 15 Ahmadi refugees admitted in October.

Rounding out the October refugee admissions were 47 non-Christian and non-Muslim refugees, including 17 Buddhists, five animists, four Hindus, three Jews, and several others who gave their religious affiliation as “other” or “none,” according to State Department Refugee Processing Center data.

The countries accounting for the largest contingents of refugees arriving in October were the Democratic Republic of Congo (612 refugees, all but 33 of them Christians), Eritrea (358 refugees, including 107 Muslims), Ukraine (345 refugees, all Christians bar three Jews) and Burma (304 refugees, mostly Christians but including 131 Muslims, 13 Buddhists, five animists and three Hindus.)

The countries of the Central American “northern triangle” accounted for just 28 refugees – 23 from El Salvador, three from Guatemala and two from Honduras. Twenty-five of the 28 were Christians.

From key Islamic countries, October’s arrivals included 34 refugees from Afghanistan (including one Christian and six refugees with “no religion”), 24 from Pakistan (including the 15 Ahmadis and four Christians), six Iraqis (all Muslims), five from Sudan (all Muslims), three from Somalia (all Muslims), two Syrians (both Muslims) and one refugee from Iran (a Christian).

Early last month President Trump signed an executive order setting the ceiling for refugee admissions in FY 2019 at 30,000.

The regional breakdown for the allocations was: 11,000 from Africa, 9,000 from the Near East/South Asia, 4,000 from East Asia, and 3,000 each from Europe/Central Asia and Latin America/Caribbean.

(The order does authorize unallocated places from any region being used to accommodate refugees from other regions.)

According to a report to Congress on proposed refugee admissions for FY 2019, individuals suffering religious persecution in the ten countries currently designated by the State Department as “countries of particular concern” (CPC) for egregious religious freedom violations may be eligible for “priority one” referral by a U.S. Embassy or the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR..

The ten CPC countries are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Pakistan, which the Trump administration last year placed on a second-tier watch list that falls short of CPC designation, is added to the ten, the report states.

(“Priority one” does not affect the order in which cases for refugee status are processed. Applications in all three “priority” groups undergo the same processing steps.)

A common theme running through the CPCs (and Pakistan) is persecution of religious minorities at the hand of the state and/or hostile religious majorities. Victims include Christians of various denominations, Muslims (including Rohingya, Shi’ites and Ahmadis), and in China, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong adherents.

The last fiscal year saw the U.S. admit a total of 22,491 refugees, well below the 45,000 ceiling and the smallest number in the history of the modern refugee resettlement program established in 1980.

By contrast, the Obama administration resettled numbers ranging from a low of 56,424 refugees in FY 2011 to a high of 84,994 refugees in FY 2016.

Even under the Trump administration, the U.S. admitted more refugees – 33,368 – in calendar year 2017 than any other country. The next biggest intakes of refugees that year were in Canada (26,600), Australia (15,100), Britain (6,200) and Sweden (3,400).

SOURCE 

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Routine Election Monitoring Spurs ‘Suppression’ Claims From Left

In a routine pre-election action, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will monitor polling sites in a total of 35 jurisdictions in 19 states.

Some left-leaning websites cast the move as a voter-suppression effort because the attorney general’s announcement talked about voter fraud. In a press release Monday, Sessions said voter fraud “corrupts the integrity of the ballot.”

President Donald Trump later tweeted that fraudsters at the polls would face “maximum criminal penalties.”

The Obama administration’s Justice Department sent out nearly identical press releases about plans to monitor election sites ahead of the four national elections in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.

Each press release from the Obama administration talked about prosecuting fraud in the context of enforcing elections laws and the right to vote.

This year, the Justice Department said it will send monitors to election sites in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

The total of 19 states actually is scaled down from 2016, when the Justice Department monitored 67 jurisdictions in 28 states. In the preceding national election in 2014, the Justice Department monitored 28 jurisdictions in 18 states, slightly less than this year.

Nevertheless, The Daily Beast warned about a “last-ditch effort of voter suppression” in a story that combined the press release and Trump tweet.

The news and opinion website noted: “The DOJ plans to send officials to 35 jurisdictions in 19 states in an effort to monitor the vote on Tuesday—especially in places Republicans would ordinarily win, like North Dakota and Georgia, who’ve already experienced suppression efforts at the polls.”

The Washington Post appeared alarmed, reporting:

But the statement from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the department plans to investigate voter fraud, something President Trump has claimed, without evidence, to be a huge problem since he was a candidate. … The statement doesn’t say what specific fraud-related issues the Justice Department personnel will be looking out for, and how much of their time will be spent investigating impediments to voting as opposed to claims of fraud.

The website AlterNet said: “Jeff Sessions is bending to Donald Trump’s false accusations of voter fraud.”

A database maintained by The Heritage Foundation contains 1,178 proven instances of voter fraud. They include 1,020 criminal convictions, 48 civil penalties, 81 diversion programs, 14 judicial findings, and 15 official findings.

“Voting rights are constitutional rights, and they’re part of what it means to be an American,” Sessions said in his statement Monday, adding:

The Department of Justice has been entrusted with an indispensable role in securing these rights for the people of this nation. This year we are using every lawful tool that we have, both civil and criminal, to protect the rights of millions of Americans to cast their vote unimpeded at one of more than 170,000 precincts across America.

Citizens of America control this country through their selection of their governmental officials at the ballot box. Likewise, fraud in the voting process will not be tolerated. Fraud also corrupts the integrity of the ballot.

Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is charged with enforcing federal voting rights laws.

“This is nothing unusual,” Han von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation and a former Justice Department lawyer, told The Daily Signal. “The Civil Rights Division has been doing this on a regular basis. They always send out press releases, usually announcing where the monitors will be.”

SOURCE 

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Skin in the Game

By Walter E. Williams

In describing the GOP tax cuts, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that they and bonuses American workers were getting were "crumbs." They were "tax cuts for the rich." Some argued that the tax cuts would reduce revenues. Pelosi predicted, "This thing will explode the deficit." How about some tax facts?

The argument that tax cuts reduce federal revenues can be disposed of quite easily. According to the Congressional Budget Office, revenues from federal income taxes were $76 billion higher in the first half of this year than they were in the first half of 2017. The Treasury Department says it expects that federal revenues will continue to exceed last year's for the rest of 2018. Despite record federal revenues, 2018 will see a massive deficit, perhaps topping $1 trillion. Our massive deficit is a result not of tax cuts but of profligate congressional spending that outruns rising tax revenues. Grossly false statements about tax cuts' reducing revenue should be put to rest in the wake of federal revenue increases seen with tax cuts during the Kennedy, Reagan and Trump administrations.

A very disturbing and mostly ignored issue is how absence of skin in the game negatively impacts the political arena. It turns out that 45 percent of American households, nearly 78 million individuals, have no federal income tax obligation. That poses a serious political problem. Americans with no federal income tax obligation become natural constituencies for big-spending politicians. After all, if one doesn't pay federal income taxes, what does he care about big spending? Also, if one doesn't pay federal taxes, why should he be happy about a tax cut? What's in it for him? In fact, those with no skin in the game might see tax cuts as a threat to their handout programs.

Whenever tax cuts are called for, it's not long before they are called tax cuts for the rich. Let's look at who pays what in federal income taxes. Using IRS data for 2015, the latest year available, the Tax Foundation reports that the top 1 percent of earners made about 21 percent of the nation's income, but their share of federal income taxes was 39 percent. They paid more in income taxes than the bottom 90 percent, who paid 29.4 percent of federal income taxes.

In 2015, the top 50 percent of taxpayers paid 97.2 percent of all individual income taxes. Also, the top 1 percent had an income tax rate of 27 percent, while the bottom 50 percent had a tax rate of less than 4 percent. It turns out that 892,420 households — out of roughly 34 million total households — paid 39 percent of federal taxes that year. Most Americans have little or no federal income tax obligation, so how in the world is it possible to give a tax cut to them?

Another part of the Trump tax cuts was with corporate income — lowering the rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. That, too, has been condemned by the left as a tax cut for the rich. But corporations do not pay taxes. Why? Corporations are legal fictions. Only people pay taxes. If a tax is levied on a corporation, it will have one or more of the following responses in order to remain in business. It will raise the price of its product, lower its dividends to shareholders and/or lay off workers. Thus, only flesh-and-blood people pay taxes. We can think of corporations as tax collectors. Politicians love our ignorance about this. They suggest that corporations, not people, will be taxed. Here's how to see through this charade: Suppose a politician told you, as a homeowner, "I'm not going to tax you. I'm going to tax your land." I hope you wouldn't fall for that jive. Land doesn't pay taxes.

Getting back to skin in the game, sometimes I wonder whether one should be allowed in the game if he doesn't have any skin in 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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Voter ID Laws Approved in Multiple States

The claim that they disenfranchise blacks is pure racism.  It is a claim that blacks are too dumb to get and use photo ID

Amid competing claims over whether voter ID laws protect the voting process or disenfranchise minority citizens, both Arkansas and North Carolina voters have approved ballot propositions to create voter ID laws.

Arkansas currently requires ID to vote, but the proposal listed as Issue 2 on the ballot would require specific forms of identification.

Voter Eddie Bethany said the proposal made sense. “I think everybody should have a voter ID card, driver’s license, some form of photo ID, preferably a driver’s license,” said Eddie Bethany, a voter.

“It doesn’t make any difference to me if it goes into the constitution or not, it’s something that should be required by law,” Bethany said.

Arkansas has been trying to put a voter ID law in place since 2013, but court decisions have sidetracked implementation. The ballot question would end questions over the law by making it part of the state’s constitution.

In North Carolina, the debate has centered over whether a voter ID law is needed to address voter fraud, or whether it is designed to turn away voters.

“To me, it’s about making sure that every vote counts — one full vote — and that no one’s vote is diluted by votes which are cast either inaccurately or illegally,” said Republican state Rep. John Szoka, the Fayetteville Observer reported.

“This amendment, which we have been calling the ‘voter restriction amendment,’ we think would compromise access to the vote,” said Jen Jones, a spokeswoman for the Democracy North Carolina voting rights organization.

She said that when North Carolina’s voter ID law was in effect in 2016 before being struck down by the courts, legitimate voters were turned away from the polls.

Thirty-four states require ID at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, according to The Washington Post.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it believes voter ID laws exist to keep away minority voters, according to ABC.

“These types of requirements, these document requirements, they have a disproportionate burden on people of color, the elderly the poor the young and voters with disabilities,” Lakin said. “It is interesting that the voters affected by voter ID requirements and similar things we were seeing… had a disproportionate impact on voters who also turned out in unprecedented numbers in the 2008 election.”

President Donald Trump, however, has said that because of widespread voter fraud, voter ID is a no-brainer. “The time has come for voter ID like everything else,” Trump said at a recent Florida rally.

“Just take a look,” he said recently, according to The Washington Post. “All you have to do is go around, take a look at what’s happened over the years, and you’ll see. There are a lot of people — a lot of people — my opinion, and based on proof — that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally. So we just want to let them know that there will be prosecutions at the highest level.”

SOURCE 

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‘Build the wall’ remains Republicans’ priority

With the House lost, legislation in the "lame duck" period may be the only hope of getting more funding for the wall

When President Trump signed a March 2018 spending bill into law, Congress allocated $1.6 billion for border wall construction and $400 million for repairing and replacing existing border fences. At the time, Trump referred to this as a “down payment” to begin wall construction, with more coming in the months ahead.

That money has already been put to good use.

Last week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristjen Nielsen unveiled a newly built 30-foot border wall along the border of California and Mexico. During her visit to the wall she reinforced her support for the president’s policy, “Let me be clear: Walls work. That’s not my opinion, it’s not a tagline, it’s not a political statement — it’s a fact. We have seen the success of walls in El Paso, in Yuma, in San Diego, and in the past right here in the El Centro sector”

But she continued to note that the President cannot do this alone and more action is needed by Congress, “It wasn’t just this physical barrier that led to decreased apprehensions, it was a combination of infrastructure, improved technology, and additional manpower. Together these attributes compromise a successful border wall system, this is the wall system we are requesting Congress to fund.”

Now more than ever, Republicans are needed to continue funding the border wall and build on the success they have achieved thus far.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has already introduced a bill that provides $23.4 billion to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, with $5.5 billion in funding available immediately. While a lame duck push is expected on the issue, a Republican majority in the 116th Congress could ensure our border is secured long term.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has already made it clear she does not support a border wall and does not see any Democrats voting for wall funding anytime soon, meaning a Democratic majority might destroy our chances of having a secure border before 2020.

This is particularly pressing as a caravan of several thousand illegal immigrants march toward our southern border demanding entry into the United States. Trump has said he is deploying the military in the meantime to deter the caravan.

Hill contributor Jen Kerns explains, “Humans aren’t the only entity streaming across the border — drugs are, too — at the hands of the Mexican drug cartels and others. In fact, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data for fiscal 2018 show that seizure of illegal drugs along the border have consistently increased in the past five years. This election season, as U.S. politicians wrangle with whether or not they want to support full funding for a border wall and increase number of border agents, they might also want to consider these other intruders coming uninvited over the border.”

Kerns reminds the American people that in just the first five months of 2018, customs officials and border patrol agents seized 1,060 pounds on fentanyl, a lethal opioid becoming common in the U.S., at the border.

A border wall is necessary to slow the stream of these drugs into the U.S.

While the down payment for the wall has already been received, much more will need to be done to ensure the border is truly secure and if Republicans lose the House on Tuesday, this might be one of the reasons why. If the American people want the wall built, they must realize that will probably never happen if Democrats control Congress.

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Snopes Gets Its Own Scathing Fact-Check, Learns the Hard Way Not To Mess with Conservative Media

Snopes is a verified fact checker for Facebook, which should tell you all you need to know about the state of social media in 2018. Few news organizations tilt so far to the left as Snopes does, and it’s supposed to be the site news organizations use to find out if a story is true. Ay dios mio.

Conservative writers and websites are pretty much used to the site’s bias; in fact, to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse in conservative media than being assailed by Snopes is not being assailed by Snopes. It’s a sign that you’ve made it. Or, at least I think so, since I’ve been the subject of what I thought was one of its more eye-rollingly iffy pieces about a ridiculous essay that tried to draw a profoundly tenuous parallel between last summer’s solar eclipse and institutional racism. (Without going into specifics of why Snopes was wrong, let me just say this: Try harder next time, guys, and get a sense of humor.)

I don’t remember receiving any inquiries from Snopes about the piece in question, however. Apparently, that’s now a thing, since Snopes is demanding to know where Breitbart got images of members of the New Black Panther Party campaigning for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a Democrat.

“Over the weekend, Breitbart News — among other media outlets — published explosive photographs of armed Black Panthers campaigning for Abrams, holding up her campaign sign while also holding up various guns,” Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle reported Monday.

“In the story, Breitbart News
included a quote from the campaign of her GOP opponent, Brian Kemp, calling on her to denounce the radicals campaigning for her.”
"Stacey Abrams needs to denounce these armed thugs, but she won't. She agrees with the racist New Black Panther philosophy"

The story went viral and got picked up by a number of mainstream media outlets. This prompted Snopes to send a series of questions to Breitbart regarding the photos it had obtained.

“On Monday, a self-identified ‘reporter’ for Snopes, Bethania Palma, reached out to Breitbart News with a series of questions about the Black Panther report,” Breitbart reported.

“None of the questions implies anything was inaccurate about the report,” it said. “Facebook relies on Snopes as an official ‘fact checker’ to detect fake news and misinformation on the platform, along with a small group of other primarily left-wing organizations including Politifact.”

Here were some of Palma’s questions:

“The story says Breitbart ‘obtained’ images of the Black Panthers. Where did Breitbart obtain the images from?”

“Why does Breitbart quote the Kemp campaign with no obvious effort to get comment from the Abrams campaign?”

“Why did Breitbart use the term ‘lobby’ in the headline?”

“Breitbart normally takes a pro-gun stance. Does Breitbart maintain that stance when the gun owners are black?”

“Did anyone at Breitbart make an effort to contact the New Black Panther Party for comment?”

That last one is a doozy, because if there’s anything that’s going to make this story look better, it’s a quote from the equable folks at the New Black Panther Party.

However, Breitbart noticed some interesting things about Palma.

“Just a quick glance at Palma’s Twitter account or at her history of writing for radical leftist outlet Alternet shows a hard leftist mentality, one quick to accuse Trump of being ‘racist’ (the latest is a series of tweets attacking the president’s campaign ad on the migrant caravan as such) or linking Trump to the Ku Klux Klan any way she can — a history dating back years, as Breitbart News has reported about Palma before,” the publication said.

So, Breitbart had a few questions for Palma, which thus far have gone unanswered:

“1.) Why can anyone trust Snopes to be an independent authority on fact-checking when you personally are so clearly biased in favor of leftists?

“2.) You implied in your questions to us that our story had something to do with race. The story clearly did not. What made you think that? Please be specific.

“3.) In your questions to us, you did not indicate that there was anything even close to inaccurate in our story. So, again, please be specific: what exactly are you ‘fact checking’?

“4.) Do you send similar lists of questions to outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and others on their reporting?”

I’m sure the temptation to include that emoji with the smiley-face stroking its chin was very, very tempting.

We don’t need the answer to any of these questions, mind you, nor are they important. What they do is make a point: Snopes is supposed to be about fact-checking. None of what Palma asked had to do with the facts behind the pictures. It was an attempt to smear Breitbart by questioning its sources (I don’t remember Snopes taking a hard-line stance regarding anonymous sources in the past; quite to the contrary, if my desultory reading of the website wasn’t mistaken) and implying that Breitbart was against the New Black Panther Party because of race and not because it’s a revolutionary fringe organization with a history of voter intimidation inserting itself into a campaign.

“Palma has not replied to our request for comment before publication,” Breitbart dryly noted. I wouldn’t be counting on that email, but I’m sure an article “debunking” its piece is on its way.

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The old, old folly of Rent Control

It's bad for both landlords and tenants

Californians have just voted on Proposition 10, which would allow local governments to impose and expand rent control laws. Consider the long-term harms the measure would inflict on housing quantity, quality, and affordability.

Rent control is a textbook example of a price ceiling, in which prices are capped below market rates (i.e., where supply and demand are left free to interact). As those Econ 101 textbooks will show you, many more people will demand housing at these lower prices, but fewer landlords will be willing to provide them at those rates. This leads to a shortage of housing, which only exacerbates the affordability problem. Furthermore, diminished landlord profits and a glut of prospective renters lead to less investment in maintaining properties and offering amenities, thereby reducing the quality of rental housing.

This is well understood among economists. Though they struggle to agree on many issues, an astonishing 93 percent of economists in a 1992 survey of American Economic Association members agreed that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.”

And yet, here we have Prop. 10, which would roll back a 1995 law that curbs rent control. The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act prohibited local governments from implementing rent control for housing built after January 31, 1995. It also exempted condos and single-family homes from rent control laws and allowed landlords to bump prices back up to market rates once a tenant left.

Santa Monica, one of the early adopters of rent control, is champing at the bit to double down on the policy if Prop. 10 passes, and property-owners and developers have taken notice. The number of multifamily rental properties up for sale in the city is at the highest level in 20 years—with about 80 percent more listings than usual—and developers are holding off on land deals, the Wall Street Journal noted in May, as they fear plunging property values if the measure passes.

But if rent control is so harmful an economic policy, why is it still being pursued with such vigor at the ballot box? Because it is all about politics. As journalist Henry Hazlitt asserted in his book, Economics in One Lesson, “[t]enants have more votes than landlords.” In an even more sobering analysis, Hazlitt observes: “The more unrealistic and unjust the rent control is, the harder it is politically to get rid of it.” In effect, you have created a group with strong personal interests that feels forever entitled to such subsidies. The truth of this can be seen in any attempt to reduce—or even slow the growth of—any government welfare program.

The best way to improve housing affordability across the state would be to eliminate the laws and regulations that restrict supply and keep it from meeting demand. But this is much more difficult politically than blaming “greedy” landlords, wealthy tech workers in the Bay Area, and “gentrification.” After all, powerful unions want their prevailing wage laws, environmentalists want to prevent development to keep the environment in a “pure” state (and preserve their hiking and biking trails), neighborhood busybodies want to impose “smart growth” and prevent people from developing their own property to “preserve the character of the neighborhood,” and local governments want to impose high development fees and extract concessions from developers to pad city coffers and get others to pay for their priorities.

It is no wonder, then, that California produces 100,000 fewer housing units than it needs each year, particularly in coastal communities, according to a March 2015 Legislative Analyst’s Report, and why California home prices have gone from 30 percent above the national average in 1970 to 80 percent above average in 1980 to two and a half times the national average in 2015 (not to mention rents that are 50 percent higher).

The slogan should not be “The rent is too damn high!” It should be “The government is too damn big!”

It is dishonest for proponents of Prop. 10 to promise that rent control will deliver affordable rents for all. If they were more forthright, they would say, “We are going to violate people’s property rights and right of contract to force them to offer below-market rents, and only a small portion of you will actually benefit from it, while most of you will have to pay even higher prices for a smaller choice of more poorly maintained housing, or move farther away to areas without rent control.” But that requires longer-term thinking—and doesn’t work so well on a bumper sticker or a protest sign.

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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Perspective: Biggest Midterm House Losses Since WWII: Obama (-63), Truman (-55), Clinton (-54)

Very hard to hold the House in mid-term elections

In 2010, when Obama was in his first term and had signed the Obamacare law, the Democrats lost a net of 63 House seats. In 1946, after Truman had succeeded the late Franklin Roosevelt (who died in April 1945) and real GDP was declining by 11.6 percent, the Democrats lost 55 seats. In 1994, when Clinton was in his first term in which his signature proposal was Hillarycare (a “universal healthcare plan"), the Democrats lost 54 seats.

These losses exceeded the 48 seats the Republicans lost in the 1974 midterm, which took place three months after President Richard Nixon resigned because of the Watergate scandal and in a year when real GDP contracted by 0.5 percent.

SOURCE 

Democrat Joe Manchin Wins Re-election in Trump Country After Voting To Confirm Kavanaugh

An old-style Democrat

Despite siding with President Donald Trump on a number of key issues, Democrats cheered when networks announced that Sen. Joe Manchin would win another term representing West Virginia in the U.S. Senate.

According to The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick, a joyous uproar could be heard at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after Manchin was declared the predicted winner in his race against Republican challenger Patrick Morrisey.

SOURCE 

GOP Projected To Hold Senate, win some governor races

GOP Picks Up ND Senate Seat as Cramer Defeats Heitkamp

GOP Take IN Senate Seat from Democrats as Braun Defeats Incumbent Donnelly

Mike Braun Unseats Democrat Joe Donnelly in Indiana Senate Race

GOP Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas wins 2nd term

Wyoming Governor Seat Goes to Republican Mark Gordon

Republican Asa Hutchinson Wins Second Term as Arkansas Governor, Defeating Democrat Jared Henderson

Blackburn Defeats Bredesen, Keeps TN Sen. Seat in GOP Column

GOP Picks Up MO Senate Seat as McCaskill Loses to Hawley

Scalise Defeats Dem. Opponent, Holds Louisiana Seat for GOP

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Thank goodness! Ted Cruz Projected to Defeat Beto O’Rourke in Senate race

Senate looking good for GOP

Money flowed freely into this race as liberals and conservatives poured campaign donations into the contest. Even before the end of October, the race had broken the $100 million barrier, The Texas Tribune reported.

Although Cruz came into the race with an aggressive fundraising operation honed by his initial campaign for Senate and his 2016 attempt to capture the Republican presidential nomination, O’Rourke was the king of fundraising, leading Cruz throughout the campaign.

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Great!  Gillum down

Republican Ron DeSantis has defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in the hotly-contested race for Florida governor, The Western Journal projects.

The contest between Gillum, who is the mayor of Tallahassee, and DeSantis, who currently represents Florida’s Sixth District in the House, has been a high-profile battle for a state that is pivotal in every presidential election.

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