Democrats And Race: Seems Like Old Times

Wayne Allyn Root

On January 14, 1963, Alabama’s Democratic Governor George Wallace delivered his inaugural address that included the infamous line, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” As unimaginable as it seems to us now, that was the Democratic Party’s position just 57 years ago. While modern Democrats denounce the bluntness of Wallace’s speech, the sentiment behind it remains the key to their power.

I’m accusing Democrats of being white supremacists, as they were then, but they are still the party of segregation. Gone are the politicians standing in the doorway of a college, blocking entry to minority students, as Wallace did, now they stand there in the name of “diversity,” still separating people by their differences.

If you watched any of the Democratic primary debates (which ratings for most of them suggest you haven’t), you’ve seen all the candidates, at one point or another, declare their plans to “help” people based on immutable characteristics. In other words, to treat people differently based on things about them over which they have no control.

This is the cornerstone of bigotry – that people are different and should be treated differently because of their skin tone, sexuality, etc. Democrats a generation ago found their path to power through preaching the superiority of one group over another. Whether they all believed it or not is a question for history to answer, it was simply a tactic that worked.

When that position became electorally untenable, the party flipped. Or so it seemed.

Segregation was a powerful motivator for voters in the South. Democrats, in the name of power, merged their desire for it with the path of least resistance for obtaining it. It wasn’t a difficult move, the Democratic Party was the party of slavery; when Republicans banished that to the dustbin of history, they created segregation and Jim Crow Laws to keep its sentiments in place. When that fell out of favor, they adapted to what they are today.

Each of these tactics have the same result – dividing people to make it easier to manipulate them.

After the legal destruction of Democrats’ segregation, the United States was on the path to becoming a “melting pot,” where individuals were treated as such; where Americans were Americans, regardless of ancestry. This tended not to favor Democrats.

The popular narrative of the left is this idea that all the Southern racists suddenly, after Civil Rights legislation, switched to the Republican Party. That’s not true. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” is credited with this conversion. But the South didn’t switch to GOP control until 1994, and only 2 elected Congressional Democrats actually switched parties in the years following the Civil Rights Act. Jimmy Carter won the South, as did Bill Clinton.

It took Democrats some time to reconstitute itself after the Republican Revolution in 1994, after years adrift following the collapse of their segregation tactic, but now they have. And if it seems like old times, that’s because it is. It’s segregation again.

Separate dorms for students based on skin color, sexuality, or national origin. Separate graduation ceremonies, separate admission and hiring standards, etc. “Tolerant” leftists promise and implement targeted government spending and programs based on those same characteristics. The phrase “especially (X group) of color” is uttered with regularity on the campaign trail. We’re being taken from a melting pot to a series of chafing dishes.

People separated – trained to identify with people they don’t know because they look like them – are easier to manipulate. The word “community” has been redefined to apply to immutable characteristics and not geography. Your neighborhood, all manner of people around us, were our community; now the left would have you care more about what happens to someone on the other side of the country because they happen to share your ethnic heritage, than what happens to someone living across the street who doesn’t.

The target of this new “tolerance” is young people; millennials. It’s easier to instill in people the fear and hatred necessary for this tactic to work than it is to change the minds of people who instinctively know it’s garbage. That’s why the protests, the chants, the screaming of victimhood emanate from there. It’s also why fake hate crimes do too.

I wrote in my book about the phenomenon of fake hate crimes and why they are so prevalent. The kids reporting them have been inundated with the idea of this grand conspiracy; an omnipresent hidden hand working to oppress them. They set out to destroy it, but can’t find it because it doesn’t exist. But they’ve been told by people in positions of trust that it does exist. Rather than question what they’ve been told, they create it so they can expose and fight it. Buying a can of spray paint and writing slurs on walls is much easier than accepting you’ve been lied to.

But they have been lied to. America is not a “fundamentally” insert your favorite “ist” or “phobic” word here country. When a college student stands up to announce there are too many white people in the new multicultural student center and it’s making her feel uncomfortable, this is the fruit of that poison tree . That it wasn’t roundly condemned for the racism it was is fertilizer.

Democrats need people divided, groups of people are easier to manipulate than large numbers of individuals. The alternative would be trying to win people over with failed policies that empower elites at the expense of individuals, and that’s still a tougher sell.

In pursuit of power, Democrats have always been willing to do anything. Gone is the dream of Martin Luther King that his children would be judged not on the color of their skin, but the content of their character; replaced with “anything for a vote.”

Democrats have gone from separating people by irrelevant characteristics in the name of hatred to separating people by irrelevant characteristics in the name of tolerance. The tactics have changed, the objective never has. It was racist in the past, and it’s racist now.

SOURCE   

**********************************

Obama didn’t build that. Trump will be judged by the present state of the economy in 2020

“Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.”

That was former President Barack Obama in a Feb. 17 tweet touting and crediting his administration’s policies with enabling the recovery of the U.S. economy from the financial crisis and Great Recession more than a decade ago.

President Donald Trump responded the same day, tweeting, “Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration. He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing.”

This naturally led to a news cycle debating whether President Trump could take credit for any of the economic successes being seen right now—sustained growth, the lowest unemployment in 50 years, rising wages, etc.

But why can Obama take credit for his first few years in office but not Trump?

Here’s the truth.

Incumbents are always judged by the present state of the economy. It’s how the American people hold politicians accountable. Just ask Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush if they think the economy had any bearing on their political fortunes. Both had recessions occur during their first terms in office, which turned out to be their last. No amount of blaming their predecessors would have made a difference.

If the economy were to have entered a recession during President Trump’s watch — recall the headlines from last summer when short term interest rates briefly inverted with long term interest rates — you can bet that President Trump would have been blamed for it.

It stands to reason then that with the economy doing so well, and Americans becoming wealthier, that Trump will undoubtedly receive the lion’s share of the credit when the American people go to vote in November. Voters will likely point to the President’s policies on tax cuts, deregulation and America first trade with new fair and reciprocal trade deals with Mexico, Canada, China, South Korea and Japan as playing a key role.

Obama didn’t build that.

At this point in 2012, the U.S. economy had not produced a single job during the former President Barack Obama’s administration from when he took office in Jan. 2009. It was still down 568,000 jobs, and yet Obama would go on to win the 2012 election.

Was it because Americans blamed Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, for the state of the economy and the 8 million jobs that had been lost in the Great Recession?

Possibly, but the fact is, as tepid as the recovery following the Great Recession were, by 2012, the charts were pointed in the right direction. From the low of 138 million Americans employed in Dec. 2009, by Jan. 2012, it was up to 141.5 million Americans with jobs — a jump of 3.5 million.

If the numbers had kept on sinking throughout Obama’s first term, it might have easily only been a one-term proposition. But things were getting better, albeit slowly, and Obama was reelected fairly easily.

Comparatively, since Jan. 2017 when President Trump took office, the economy has produced 6.5 million jobs in the household survey compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and unemployment remains at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent.

The biggest gains have been made by working age adults, [LNS11300060]with labor participation for prime working age 25-54-year-olds jumping from 81.5 percent when Trump took office to 83.1 percent today, representing an additional 2 million prime working age Americans in the economy than would have been had participation remained the same. That same participation rate for 25-to-54-year-olds had dropped every single year during the Obama administration until it finally bottomed at 80.7 percent in 2015. There was some recovery in 2016, and then most of the gains occurred starting in 2017 to present.

But somehow, like contortionists, the American people are supposed to discount the gains made during the early Trump years because those were really Obama’s accomplishment, even as Obama takes credit — and took credit on the campaign trail in 2012 — for the jobs created since the Dec. 2009 low, attributing it to the legislation he signed into law.

The fact is the American people will be judging President Trump on the present state of the economy when they go to the polls in November, not former President Obama.

The only question that matters is as Ronald Reagan once put it: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

And Trump has a good story to tell in 2020 about the economy. Is that really surprising to anyone who follows politics? When things are bad, the incumbents get blamed. When they’re good, they get credit.

Which is exactly what’s happening now. The latest Real Clear Politics average of recent polls has President Trump’s job approval on the economy above 55 percent. And that’s even before all of the early primaries for the Democratic nomination have even been completed. That leaves Trump in commanding position in the presidential race as the blue-collar economic boom taking place continues. Stay tuned.

SOURCE   

************************************

IN BRIEF

COUNTERATTACK: President Donald Trump slams Michael Bloomberg at Phoenix rally, pushing MAGA message during Democrat debate (Fox News)

ECONOMIST/YOUGOV SURVEY: Trump takes 2020 lead, 52%-48%; all Democrats "probably lose" (Washington Examiner)

REMINDER: Denmark tells Bernie Sanders it's had enough of his "socialist" slurs (Investor's Business Daily)

PURGE CONTINUES: John Rood, top Defense Department official who contradicted Trump on Ukraine, latest to be ousted after impeachment saga (The New York Times)

DEFAMATION: A group of Covington Catholic High School students are suing nine media personalities over tweets and commentary about the incident at the Lincoln Memorial last year (Cincinnati Enquirer)

SCOTUS BOUND? A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday it was unconstitutional to force Florida felons to first pay off their financial obligations before registering to vote, siding against state Republican lawmakers who imposed the restriction last year (Tampa Bay Times)

SOME 200 VICTIMS: Pennsylvania diocese, facing more abuse claims, files for bankruptcy (The New York Times)

POLICY: Reconciliation with Turkey should only come with a price (Washington Examiner)

**************************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

ICE Throws Down the Gauntlet, Arresting Two Illegal Aliens in a California Courthouse

ICE agents arrested two illegal aliens in a courthouse in Northern California, defying a state law that says they needed a warrant from a judge to do so.

ICE flouted a new state law that requires the warrant before arresting an illegal on courthouse grounds. After the predictable outcry from courthouse officials and others, ICE calmly gave their rationale.

Los Angeles Times:

ICE said in a statement that California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” David Jennings, ICE’s field office director in San Francisco, said in the statement.

In other words, ICE is telling critics to go climb a tree.

ICE's actions follow the deployment of Customs and Border Patrol agents to sanctuary cities and states. The state government of California bitterly criticized that move, but find themselves unable to do anything to prevent it. The Department of Homeland Security, the agency under which ICE and CBP operate, can send its personnel anywhere they see fit to send them.

Critics of the arrests dragged out the usual excuse: illegals will now hesitate before helping the police or participating in the legal system.

Sonoma County Dist. Atty. Jill Ravitch, Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi and San Francisco Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin condemned the arrests for undermining public safety. Sonoma County Counsel Bruce Goldstein called ICE’s actions lawless because the agents had no warrants.

“It’s now going to put total fear in the community,” Pozzi said in an interview with the Press Democrat. “People aren’t going to come to court. Victims will refuse to show up. Witnesses will refuse to show up … cases will have to get dismissed.”

ICE said both men had been arrested by immigration officers numerous times from 2004 to 2010 and returned to Mexico several times.

The illegals don't respect the judicial system anyway. If they did, they wouldn't be illegal in the first place.

There is a real constitutional issue involved here. The Supremacy Clause (Article VI) makes state law that conflicts with federal law inoperative. There are no strictures ever passed by Congress on where immigration arrests can be made. And while the feds usually give way as a courtesy to states, they are under absolutely no obligation to do so in this case.

California is likely to find a friendly judge who will slap an injunction on ICE until the courts resolve the issue. But unless the United States Congress acts to restrict ICE from arresting illegals in a specific place, like a courthouse, the state is bound to lose.

SOURCE 

**************************************

Can Liberals Be Reached in 2020?

A story of convincing a woman that the Democrat Party doesn't do what she believes in.

Willie Richardson   

We have all been in that situation at church, work, a community event, the barber shop, a doctor’s office, or sitting at the table at Thanksgiving dinner. That moment when awkward silence looms large and the room seems like the air has been sucked dry. That moment when someone says something negative about a political candidate/party you support, not knowing they are targeting you.

Last week, I encountered two similar situations. Assuming I was the typical “black Democrat,” one woman spoke negatively about President Donald Trump while performing my routine physical, and the other was offended by a meme that depicted liberals as being, um, liberals. The latter woman was a retired high-school teacher who came up to me after I spoke at a local high school for Black History Month about Frederick Douglass. She wanted to understand the difference between “liberals and conservatives.” I obliged, smiled, and said, “Let’s talk.”

She immediately said, “Look at this! I’m offended by this. That’s not me!” As I read over the meme, it was a depiction of general conservative versus liberal ideology. I had to disappoint her because the meme was a rather accurate generalization. I said with a smile, “Well, um, this is actually pretty accurate if you ask me.” She was flabbergasted.

The meme read:

If you ever wondered what side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk-show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a nonbeliever, he doesn’t go to church. A liberal nonbeliever wants any mention of God and Jesus silenced.

If a conservative decides he needs healthcare, he shops for it or chooses a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh. A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended.”

Just from knowing this woman, I would never figure she was a liberal. She believes in personal responsibility, limited government, the right to life, and fiscal accountability. “Growing up, we were poor,” she shared. “My mom received assistance and that’s why I vote Democrat. I believe they are for the poor.”

I understood her allegiance to the Democrat Party was a heartstring that had been pulled as a young daughter. Although assistance was helpful, she grew up believing in creating the life she wanted instead of waiting on the government to do it for her. I shared the values of the Democrat Party and she said, “I’m a Christian and don’t believe in this platform!” I looked at her and said, “But you vote for it.”

She became sober-minded and realized her decision to vote for liberal policies went against everything we both knew she stood against. “You’ve really helped me understand some things,” she told me. “I thought my conservative friends were just crazy, but when I think about it I believe the same things.”

I allowed her to draw her own conclusions. If you are ever cornered between a political wall and a hard place, remember these three easy steps to reaching liberals, especially if they are professing Christians:

Listen more than you talk. Liberals like to complain about almost everything. The president, the economy, schools, guns, and tolerance. Let them get it all out and even if you’re tempted, don’t say a word. Let the awkward silence happen a few times. When you keep quiet you actually gain leverage when your voice is heard.

Stay in control of your emotions. Don’t let your feelings affect your messaging. If you begin to attack or defend your position out the gate, you will ruin your chances of having meaningful dialogue. Grin and bear the erroneous emotional rant you hear. Smile and shake your head in affirmation as you listen. It doesn’t mean you agree, it means you’re listening with self control.

Intelligently speak your position. Wait until they say something you both know he/she doesn’t agree with — same-sex marriage, forcing children to attend failing schools, abortion, gun laws, big government, and the destruction of the traditional family.

When you speak, remind them of the facts about the economy. Remind them of the beauty of school choice or Opportunity Zones. Remind them of the points in the State of the Union Address.

You will see how they begin to agree with the facts and all you’ll end up doing is nodding your head in agreement. Tell them, “You certainly don’t sound like a Democrat based on what you believe in. Has anyone told you that before?” A close family member or friend has always said something to them about their liberal political leanings to no avail, until now!

There are levels to reaching a liberal. Do not count them all out because many of them vote based on feelings and not facts. Bring the facts to the conversation and leave it there.

If they trample on Trump, help them to decipher between political personalities versus political policies. This woman told me, “But Barack Obama was so smooth and polished. Trump just comes out with it all.” I told her being smooth allowed our former president to get away with policies that would not be accepted otherwise. She agreed and realized that it is not about the personality of the president but what he actually puts into policy.

This exchange of ideas was productive. I learned how to calmly approach those who have different political ideologies. I believe she learned what she actually believes doesn’t line up to what she votes for. Win-win situation!

SOURCE 

*************************************

Political Midgets

Slander, lies, and rumors are now daily staples of political campaigns nationwide.

When I first began to draft this article I was not thinking about Mike Bloomberg, but as my momma used to say, “If the shoe fits, wear it!” But more on little Mike later. In recent years, politics has taken a very critical turn. For the Left it has become all-out warfare! If they lose elections, it’s only because Republicans cheated. It can’t be because of flawed policies.

Slander, lies, and rumors are now daily staples of political campaigns. And it’s not just on the national level, but in local elections as well. Because there is no such thing as truth in advertising anymore, you have to really do your homework to find out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.

The current campaign for the Democrat nomination has been something to behold, especially for a Baby Boomer like me. The entire field of candidates is proposing policies that will destroy our nation’s economy, civil rights, free speech, and Second Amendment rights. Do you think I’m being paranoid?

We have candidates that want to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants and some want to tear down the border wall, allowing unrestricted immigration. All want abortion right up to birth and several think it would be okay after the baby is born to kill it. Two candidates have publicly said there’s no room in the party for pro-life Democrats. Joe Biden has changed his position on so many things it’s hard to keep up with what he believes today — except he hates Trump!

Bernie Sanders, the communist sympathizer who never met a dictator he didn’t like, wants to undo everything that caused our economy to become a global powerhouse. He hates greedy millionaires — well, billionaires now that he is a multimillionaire himself. Elizabeth Warren is now a millionaire, too, but she doesn’t want you to be one.

Then, there’s the New Green Deal that will destroy our economy, though we’re told that we’ll all die in 12 years if we don’t do something NOW. No one can tell me why our country’s economy needs to be destroyed because the biggest polluters, China and India, are not going to destroy their economies. The Green New Deal won’t change the climate, but we have to take drastic measures now!

Their message: “Raise the minimum wage, even though it will mean cutting jobs. Raise everyone’s taxes and take healthcare away from more than 160 million workers and go to single-payer coverage. And the best part is, it will all be free if you vote for us.”

But suddenly, hope has arisen for us all! Mike Bloomberg has bought his way … I mean, he’s thrown his hat in the ring. We’re saved! An old white gazillionaire has decided to save the country from Donald Trump. The man has spent hundreds of millions to take our guns and, as mayor, told New Yorkers how much soda they could drink, made racially insensitive and misogynist remarks, and is an elitist who thinks anyone who works with his hands is stupid and worthless. But hey, he’s a BILLIONAIRE! The Democrat Party is suddenly changing rules and moving the goalposts so little Mike can play. Is this a great country or what?

Something to think about?

SOURCE 

********************************

IN BRIEF

LOOKING GOOD: GOP fundraising record: $60.5 million in January; RNC nearly doubles DNC (Washington Examiner)

KEEP AMERICA GREAT: "National satisfaction" reaches 15-year high, "greatly increases" Trump reelection chances (Washington Examiner)

BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT: U.S., Taliban agree to landmark ceasefire en route to aspirational peace deal (The Washington Free Beacon)

DESPITE MARQUEE GUN LAWS: Nine killed by "deeply racist" shooter in Germany (BBC)

POLICY: Social Security cannot survive in its present form (Mises Institute)

**************************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

The problem isn’t capitalism. It’s capitalists like me

SAM HILL has a point below. He does not have much of an  answer to it but he sees that unevenly distributed economic rewards must cause envy if not anger.  And anger is a powerful motivator that can cause  attacks of various kinds on what causes the anger.  The large number of communist revolutions in the 20th century are powerful evidence of that.

The customary way of preventing too much of that anger was redistribution, invented in 19th century Britain by Disraeli and in 19th century Germany by Bismarck -- both strong and patriotic conservatives.  And all advanced societies to this day do redistribute income extensively.

But is redistribution enough?  The undoubted appeal of the borderline insane Bernie Sanders suggests not. Clearly, a lot of anger and call for change remains.

It helps to understand the Sanders upsurge if we look beyond redistribution to the other influences that have so far reinforced social stability.  And we can see that most clearly in the two large countries which have been most immune to the materialistic temptations of Communism.  Both Britain and the USA have never in their history had economically motivated revolutions or much parliamentary success for extreme-left parties.

So what makes the UK and the USA different?  Two main things: Patriotism and the church.

For a long time in Britain, all respectable people went to church on Sunday.  And the one bit of religious guidance that they undoubtedly received was the famous Ten Commandments.  And one commandment that received attention was "Thou shalt not covet".  Envying the prosperity of others was morally and religiously wrong.  The commandment specifically ruled out communism.  So that was a useful influence in Britain for a long time.

It is still a useful influence in the parts of the USA to this day, despite the general decline of Christian commitment in most of the Western world.  The fact that Christianity has suffered  a big decline is one of the reasons Sanders has so much appeal.  One of the barriers to Sanders' ideas has largely crumbled.

The second traditional barrier to civil war was patriotism.  Consciousness of being a  part of a significant and high-achieving national whole engendered warm feelings in people  that were totally at variance with any desire to rip everything up and start again.

But patriotism has been in the doldrums too.  The Left have done their best to wreck it.  It was however only lying low.  Britain and the USA do have great historic reasons for national pride so when Donald Trump and Boris Johnson reauthorized it, there was an explosion of support for it that propelled both men to power.  So that patriotic core is still strong and will continue to do in the USA and the UK what is needed to keep the destructiveness of socialism at bay.


I am a capitalist because I remember socialism.

I was converted to capitalism by a few years at the University of Chicago and a few decades working internationally and seeing socialism up close and personal. Until recently, I was confident that we need not worry about trying that experiment again because socialism had been tested and had failed. It looks like I was wrong. Socialism is on the rise. Don’t blame Bernie and Elizabeth. Blame ourselves. Here’s why.

The version of capitalism we have implemented is a flawed one. Capitalism is based on the idea that enlightened self-interest and free markets produce the best possible allocation of resources and opportunities. When socialist economies began to fail in the late ‘70s, capitalists figured that if less socialist regulation was good, none at all would be even better. We’ve been working toward that end ever since. According to the Financial Times, 2018 had the lowest enforcement of antitrust regulation in almost a half-century. Even Adam Smith argued that capitalism needs rules. Without them, capitalism quickly dissolves into cronyism and eventually Russian-style kleptocracy.

We also rigged the system.

Capitalism is a $30 trillion game of Monopoly, with few winners and many losers. That’s okay. That’s the nature of the game. But we’ve fixed it to make sure the same people win all the time. We’ve created a twotier educational system that stymies upward mobility. We have taxation that lets capitalists pay too little for the public resources that led to their success. We’ve put in laws that protect industries and shield corporations from true competition. And we have played off one disadvantaged group against another. What we have now is a game where some players get extra rolls of the die and their own stack of Get Out of Jail Free cards.

We have been hypocrites about socialism. At its core, socialism is redistribution of wealth by the government. As Karl Marx put it, “to each according to his needs.” The U.S. has gotten the redistribution part down, but in our case we redistribute to each according to his voting clout—that is, we transfer wealth from urban areas to rural ones, to farmers, to older people and to industries with enormous lobbying budgets, like Big Pharma. All the while denying that’s what we’re doing. We’re increasingly being called out by have-nots who want a turn at the trough, like The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson who asks, “Boomers have socialism. Why not millennials?” If capitalists are against socialism, then we need to be against it all the time. If we are not really against it, then we need to stop demonizing people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

We have refused to listen to criticism, especially around income inequality. Technically, everyone in America (and most people in the world) are much better off since the ascendancy of capitalism. But they don’t feel better off. It’s biology. Let’s say tomorrow morning I drive across the street to Randy’s house and drop off a million dollars and then head down to George’s and drop off 10 million. You’d think Randy would be pretty happy. But I doubt it. Instead, he’ll come over and ask why George got more. According to the journal Science, the brain is more responsive to relative wealth than absolute wealth. Rather than trying to understand why people are frustrated, we have, for the most part, dismissed complaints about the wealth gap as sour grapes, or in the case of congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as childish naivete.

And throughout it all, we have been less than gracious. Instead of being modest about our good fortune, we have often been boastful and accused the less fortunate of bringing it on themselves through sloth, profligacy or being unwilling to take risks.

Principled, fair capitalism remains the best and fairest system for everyone. It is far superior to socialism, “democratic” or otherwise, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged. Socialism would reduce inequality in America not by lifting the poorest up, but by forcing everyone toward a miserable mediocrity. (Although probably not billionaires. They’d move to Monte Carlo.) However, principled, fair capitalism isn’t really on the menu. We have created a type of capitalism and a class of capitalists that are very hard to like. If we want to know why socialism is making a comeback, we need only look in the mirror.

SOURCE

************************************

Delivering Truth to Secular Conservatives

Dennis Prager

In the latest edition of “The Rubin Report” podcast, two people I adore, commentators Dave Rubin and Heather Mac Donald, dialogue about some of the great issues facing America. Interestingly, though both are secular, Rubin opened the interview by asking Mac Donald about God and religion.

She began by saying that she is not conservative because of religion but because of her commitment to empirical truth. It is empirical truth that leads her to affirm, for example, “the necessity of the two-parent family” and “most traditional values.”

Mac Donald is right that one cannot be committed to empirical truth and be a leftist (though one can be a conservative or a liberal).

Left-wing assertions that are false include that men give birth; that America was founded in 1619 (when the first enslaved black was brought to the American colonies); that people can be lifted from poverty on a mass scale without capitalism; that there are no innate differences between men and women; that America is a racist nation; that women are paid less than men for the same type and amount of work because they are women; and innumerable others.

But although a secular conservative may be committed to the two-parent family because of empirical truth, marriage and family are not “empirical truths” nearly as much as they are religious values.

Few secular arguments to get married and/or have children are as compelling as religious ones. That’s why religious people are so much more likely to get married and have children.

Mac Donald said: “People who I respect enormously … whether it’s Dennis Prager or Michael Medved … are making the argument that you cannot have a moral society without a foundation of religious belief.”

That is precisely the argument nearly every founder of America made. Not all were Christ-centered Christians, but virtually every one believed that inalienable rights come from the Creator, and only from the Creator. And none (except perhaps Thomas Paine) believed that America could endure if it were to become a godless society.

Mac Donald said:

Part of my resistance to this is simply I don’t find claims of petitionary prayer and the idea of a personal loving God consistent with what I see—what I call the daily massacre of the innocents.

To me it’s a very hard claim to make that I should expect God to pay attention to my well-being when he’s willing to allow horrific things to happen to people far more deserving and innocent than I am.

So, for me, it’s partly just a truth value. I cannot stomach what appears to me to be a patently false claim about a personal, loving God.

I agree with her premises, but not with her conclusion.

I have never believed that God has any reason to pay more attention to me than to any other innocent human being. And I, too, “cannot stomach” the “daily massacre of the innocents”—so much so that I have written how I find the commandment to love God the hardest commandment in the Bible.

But what I also cannot stomach is the thought of a universe in which the horrible suffering of innocents is never compensated by a good and just God: The good and the evil all die; the former receive no reward and the latter no punishment.

The problem of unjust suffering troubles every thinking believer. But the Jewish theologian Milton Steinberg offered a powerful response: “The believer in God has to account for unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.”

Between the two, I would argue that the atheist’s burden is infinitely greater. And insurmountable.

Mac Donald said: “The idea of what started the universe—we can’t really answer that. I think to say, ‘God’—that’s just a placeholder for ignorance. That doesn’t help.”

Maybe we really can’t answer what started the universe. But as Charles Krauthammer, a great secular conservative, said, “The idea that this universe always existed, that it created itself ex nihilo—I mean, talk about the violation of human rationality. That, to me, is off the charts.”

God, therefore, is not “just a placeholder for ignorance.” Since science can never and will never answer the question “Why is there anything?” attributing the origins of the universe to an intelligent force (which we call “God”) strikes me as the most rational explanation.

Rubin: “I might have to get you in here with Prager.”

Mac Donald: “I’d love to.”

I’d love to, too.

Mac Donald asked: “Where are we all headed? What is the meaning of life? To me, anybody who claims … he doesn’t find meaning in life when there is Mozart and Haydn—to invoke a Dennis Prager favorite—or Beethoven or John Milton or Aeschylus or Anthony Trollope—”

Rubin: “Or just waking up with purpose for whatever you do.”

Mac Donald: “Exactly … trying to do the best you can do. I don’t find life meaningless for one second.”

Joseph Haydn began every manuscript with the Latin words “in nomine Domini”—”in the name of the Lord”—and ended each with the words “Lauds Deo”—”Praise be to God.”

I would ask Mac Donald and other secular conservatives: Do you or don’t you identify the steep deterioration of the arts with the death of God and religion? Is a secular society capable of achieving artistic achievement equal to that which was accomplished in tribute to God?

As for meaning, you—and I—may find meaning every day in trying to do the best we can do, or in great works of art. But, as I know you will agree, that does not mean life has any ultimate meaning. If there is no God, we are nothing more than self-conscious stellar dust. And stellar dust has no meaning.

We really need to continue this dialogue. In the meantime, for what it’s worth, I want to say to both Dave Rubin and Heather Mac Donald, who do so much for our country: God bless you.

SOURCE 

**************************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

South Bend Residents Have a Message for America: Don't Elect Pete Buttigieg

South Bend, Ind., is a grimy industrial city of 100,000 people located on the St. Joseph River. It's known for being the "home" of  Notre Dame University -- which isn't really true since Notre Dame is technically located in Notre Dame, Indiana.

But South Bend, whose second claim to fame is the Studebaker National Museum downtown, is the home of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The highly ambitious Buttigieg is seeking the presidency despite serving two terms as mayor of a small city.

A job that most would see as entry-level employment in politics as a stepping stone to the presidency? That's sort of like a burger flipper applying for the CEO position at McDonald's.

There are many South Bend residents who wonder about that too.

New York Post:

When residents of this city’s impoverished West Side reflect on Pete Buttigieg’s two terms as mayor, a few things come to mind:
A spike in violent crime, development that largely ignored the African American community and how their only well-lit street is the one that leads to Notre Dame University.

So how, they wonder, can Buttigieg possibly be trusted to run the country?

“If he’s the next president, I fear for our country. He couldn’t run our city. How can he run the United States?,” said Michelle Burger, 42, a stay-at-home mom who lives in South Bend’s impoverished and predominantly black West Side.

Much has been made of Mayor Pete's trouble with "people of color." There appears to be something to that criticism as economic development during Buttigieg's tenure in office seems to have been lagging in the black community.

Another West Side resident, Cornish Miller, 62, said of Buttigieg, “Rating him 1 to 10, I’d give him a 2.”
“Buttigieg talked about all the improvements he made, but he hardly made a dent,” said Miller, who works for a military supply company.

“The West Side is the most neglected part of town. The street I live on is the only street around here that has lights. That’s because we’re a gateway to Notre Dame.”

Young, articulate, attractive -- and gay. Is that why Democrats are taking this guy seriously? To go from being a mayor of a city with at $350 million budget to running a country with a $5 trillion budget would seem to be a leap too far.

But he's a Democrat and he's gay so he's got that going for him.

Taking credit for the work of others is part of politics but Buttigieg appears to have taken the concept a bit too far.

But Indiana Republican Party Chairman Kyle Hupfer countered that while Buttigieg “certainly had a few economic development wins,” he actually had “little, if anything, to do with that.”

“I found it ironic that when he announced his presidential run, he did it in front of Studebaker Building 84, which had sat vacant since 1963,” Hupfer said.

“But it was $3.5 million from then-Gov. Mike Pence’s Regional Cities Initiative that made that project go.”

Hupfer said increased employment in the area covering South Bend — where the unemployment rate dropped from 9.3 percent in 2012 to 3.6 percent in 2018 — was largely a function of “statewide economic strength under Republican leadership.”

Rush Limbaugh had the temerity to point out that Buttigieg's election to the presidency would be extremely difficult due to his homosexuality. We can bemoan the unfairness of it, criticize those who wouldn't vote for him because he's gay, and make fun of those with religious objections to his lifestyle.

But you cannot deny the reality that Pete Buttigieg will lose a presidential contest against Donald Trump because he's gay. And South Bend residents say we should breathe a sigh of relief because of it.

SOURCE 

***********************************

Whopper Alert: 'Study' Finds Medicare for All Would Save $450 Billion a Year and 68,000 Lives

A study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health shows that contrary to just about every other study published on the subject of Medicare for All, the program would actually save $450 billion a year and 68,000 lives.

Now really, who could ever vote against that? Will this study elect Bernie Sanders president?

How did they come to those conclusions? Smoke and mirrors, of course.

The Fiscal Times:

Previous estimates of the cost of Medicare for All have reached significantly different conclusions, ranging from a roughly 16% increase over current national health-care spending levels to a 27% decrease. This latest study relies on a new analytical tool to measure the impact of different provisions within Medicare for All as applied to real-world data (you can review and adjust the parameters of the analysis in the  Single-Payer Healthcare Interactive Financing Tool).

A "new analytical tool"? "Real-world data"? Sounds impressive. Sounds like they actually know what they're talking about. Is M4A the Holy Grail we've been praying for?

Not exactly. One of the most widely quoted studies on the true costs of M4A tells quite a different story.

The leading current bill to establish single-payer health insurance, the Medicare for All Act (M4A), would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation (2022–2031), assuming enactment in 2018. This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in 2022, rising to nearly 12.7 percent of GDP in 2031 and further thereafter.

Doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan. It is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than these estimates, which assume significant administrative and drug cost savings under the plan, and also assume that healthcare providers operating under M4A will be reimbursed at rates more than 40 percent lower than those currently paid by private health insurance.

The Yale study proceeds from some very different assumptions that don't sound very "real-world" to me.

The researchers found that the proposed system would reduce total health-care expenditures by about 13% based on 2017 spending levels. Savings would come from a variety of sources. Here are some of the major savings the researchers found with Medicare for All, based on the 2017 total health care expenditure of nearly $3.5 trillion:

Reducing pharmaceutical prices via negotiation: $219 billion

Improving fraud detection: $191 billion

Reducing reimbursement rates for hospitals, physician, and clinical services: $188 billion

Reducing overhead: $102 billion

Eliminating uncompensated hospitalization fees: $78 billion in savings.

Get this now: Healthcare expenditures are rising at about 6 percent a year. And yet, M4A will reduce costs by 13 percent?

How did they figure 68,000 lives saved? Easy. Everybody knows that if everyone has health insurance, no one will die. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration. But perhaps the most bogus stat in this entire debate is that insurance coverage leads to treating disease early, thus "preventing" deaths.

The problem with that? In order to be treated early, a disease has to be diagnosed. And for that to happen, people actually have to go to the doctor when they're feeling bad. Even with insurance, most of us don't.

Radicals like Sanders will continue to try and sell this snake oil. But even if Democrats win the White House, the House, and the Senate, Medicare for All will never become the law of the land.

SOURCE 

**************************************

Bill Barr Derangement Syndrome
 
Can the republic survive Attorney General William Barr?

That’s the question that has seized the media and center left, which have worked themselves into a full-blown panic over an attorney general who is, inarguably, a serious legal figure and one of the adults in the room late in President Donald Trump’s first term.

Some 2,000 former Justice department employees have signed a letter calling on Barr to resign. An anti-Barr piece in The Atlantic opined that “it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American,” and warned that his America is “a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen.”

This is impressive heavy-breathing over an AG whose alleged offense doesn’t hold a candle to the greatest hits of his predecessors:

Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer carried out raids to arrest suspected leftists in the wake of World War I.

Bobby Kennedy, serving as his brother’s attorney general, authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr.

William Barr changed the sentencing recommendation of Roger Stone from its original, excessive call for a sentence of seven to nine years.

It’s not clear why the country would collapse into dictatorship if Stone is sentenced to fewer than seven years in prison, especially given that the judge has complete discretion to impose whatever sentence she sees fit.

The suspicion is that Barr was doing Trump’s bidding, but the attorney general maintains — and he hasn’t been contradicted — that he was surprised by the initial, maximalist sentencing recommendation and he intended to amend it prior to Trump’s fulminations about the matter.

If Barr were truly Trump’s henchman, he would have squashed the Stone case rather than merely recommending a little less jail time at the end. Indeed, Barr said in an ABC News interview last week that he considered the Stone case a “righteous” prosecution.

Barr allowed the Mueller probe to reach its conclusion unmolested. The extent of his alleged interference was, prior to the release of the report, summarizing its findings in a way that wasn’t harsh or detailed enough for Trump’s critics.

Finally, he declined to prosecute former Department of Justice official and frequent Trump target Andrew McCabe for lying to investigators. If Barr is really Trump’s Roy Cohn, his personal enforcer masquerading as a top law enforcement official, nailing McCabe would have been his Job One.

No, all the evidence suggests that Bill Barr is doing his best to render fair justice in the treacherous environment created by a president of the United States who routinely comments on pending criminal cases and investigations and by the Justice department’s own politically fraught, overly zealous intervention in the 2016 election and its aftermath.

Anti-Barr polemics dwell on the parade of horribles that might come from his tenure at Justice, without pausing to consider that a norm-busting violation of the rules targeting a politically inconvenient individual already occurred — it was the abusive FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The supposed institutionalists and civil libertarians who are piling on Barr are more outraged that the attorney general wants to get to the bottom of this abuse — and related 2016 investigatory over-reach — than by the abuse itself.

It’s no wonder that Barr has a poorly disguised contempt for his critics, many of whom are so inflamed by their opposition to Trump that they’ve lost any sense of standards. In a peppery speech to a Federalist Society conference last year that is now one of the counts against him, Barr rightly warned that “it is the left that is engaged in a systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law.”

At the end of the day, they really don’t want Trump to have an attorney general, but that’s not going to happen. If they force Barr out — or more likely, Trump’s continued tweeting pushes him over the edge — they’ll miss him when he’s gone.

SOURCE 

****************************************

IN BRIEF

CLOSING ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE CAUCUS: The ninth Democratic presidential debate is set for Wednesday in Las Vegas, and it will feature a new billionaire on the stage (NBC News)

MEMO TO MICHAEL: Bloomberg School of Public Health says there's no evidence "assault weapon" bans reduce mass shootings (The Daily Wire)

NOT ISOLATED EVENTS: Plymouth Rock, other historic monuments vandalized on anniversary of Pilgrims landing (The Federalist)

LEFTISM FATIGUE: Secession in the Pacific Northwest? Some Oregon residents petition to join Idaho (USA Today)

POLICY: The hammer and sickle should be treated like the swastika (Foundation for Economic Education)

POLICY: School vouchers improve public schools (National Review)

************************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

Why the Left Really Wants to Kill America

The century-long attempt to kill capitalism in America gained a dramatic head of steam in the 1960s with the rapid ascendency of progressivism, a Marxist movement that would quietly seize control of the Democratic Party over the last half-century. 

Which was something different. For most of America’s 244-year history, the dominant political parties that evolved had a common goal constantly working to improve the country they both loved.  In the 1860s, a Republican president went to war to end slavery.  A century later, a Democratic president launched another well-intentioned war, a war on poverty.  Democrats and Republicans alike largely saw their country as a force for good, both at home and abroad. 

Beginning in the 1960s, that widely- shared view began to show cracks as the progressive movement began tightening its grip on the modern Democratic Party.  Democrat icons of the 1960s -- Adlai Stevenson, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sam Nunn, Hubert Humphrey and JFK, to name a few -- were genuine patriots who loved their country, a sentiment that was shared by a large majority of that era’s rank and file Democrats.  Such is no longer the case. Here are four ways Democrats are looking to end the idea of America altogether:

Killing America by replacing patriotism with socialism

In October 2018, The New York Times reported that 69% of progressive Democrats  are ashamed of being American.  Increasingly influenced by the progressive wing of their party, Democrats as a whole have moved sharply away from that love of country, and veered toward socialism that sounded like communism: In February 2019, Public Opinion Strategies found that an astounding 77% of Democrats who plan to vote in 2020 self-identify as socialists.  Aided and abetted by the complicit mainstream media, the modern Democratic Party has been remarkably successful at driving down patriotism: Gallup found that less than a third of Democrats are extremely proud of their country.  That's less than a third, and trending sharply downward.

Killing America by making citizenship meaningless

Why has the modern Democratic Party worked so diligently to erode patriotism? Because love of country is a major impediment to convincing voters to support what they really want, which is yielding their nation’s sovereignty to an international governing body, ultimately the United Nations. With patriotism marginalized, a society’s populace can more easily be led to no longer see themselves as citizens of their country, but as “citizens of the world.”  (In his July 2008 speech in Berlin, progressive presidential candidate Barack Obama told an adoring crowd of 200,000 cheering Europeans, “I come to you as a Citizen of the World.”)

In Europe, the long-standing national identity of every progressive-run nation is already being intentionally erased, and it stands as a sort of bellwether of things to come over here.

Government-encouraged mass migration is its instrument, and the same thing is being attempted in America by the modern Democratic Party. This particular phenomenon is particularly associated with billionaire globalist George Soros.  The Hungarian-born "stateless statesman" is the most prolific financier of the progressive push for a world without borders. 

In his anti-capitalist best-seller, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Soros sets out the progressive strategy.  Complaining bitterly about “the sway of sovereign nations,” Soros has advocated for, and since spent immense sums each year fostering “open society alliances” among sovereign nations.  The goal of these alliances is to indoctrinate citizens of western nations to accept the high-mindedness of doing away with national identities in favor of a collectivist world identity. 

With national identities erased, people no longer see themselves as patriotic citizens of their countries, but as united citizens of an enlightened global society.  People who oppose the unfettered influx of migrants and refugees are shouted down as racists and xenophobes.  Once open-border alliances have been solidified, the last obstacle is cleared for a borderless world governed by the UN.  For global governance to become a reality, the sovereignty of every western nation, including America, must be eliminated, Soros believes.

When the election of Donald Trump dealt a calamitous setback to the near-term realization of fundamentally transforming America, Soros penned an angry rant comparing Trump to Hitler, and calling him a racist and a xenophobe.  Known as “the puppet master” because of the enormous influence he exerts on Democratic Party hierarchy, Soros’s foremost target in taking down sovereign western democracies is the crown jewel of them all: the United States of America.  In working toward the culmination of that takedown, the billionaire globalist mastermind has powerful allies at the highest levels of the modern Democratic Party.

Killing America through identity politics

To overthrow a capitalist society, The Communist Manifesto calls for fomenting a titanic struggle by pitting an alleged victim class against an alleged oppressor class.  In the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks rose to power by pitting the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. 

Over the last half-century, the Democratic Party has taken the concept of Marxist/Leninist dialectical struggle to new heights through its use of identity politics. The term refers to politically subdividing the electorate into multiple factions (voting blocks), whose members are told they are singled out for persecution by a bigoted and unjust society.  To wit: People of color are persecuted by racists & white supremacists, women by sexists & misogynists, refugees & illegal immigrants by nativists & xenophobes, Muslims by Islamophobes, gays & lesbians by homophobes & religious bigots, the 99% by the 1%, and so on.  The goal of identity politics is to turn a majority of the American electorate against their country.

The self-serving narrative of identity politics is that caring, inclusive and tolerant Democrats will righteously defend the members (voters) of each identity group from the constant onslaught of outrages inflicted on them by an oppressive society.  Identity politics is used as a political bludgeon to deceive Americans into believing their country is an incurably unjust place where things can be set straight only by killing off its existing economic and governing systems.

That is the observed pattern and it's important. It tells us why the 2020 elections will determine whether our free market Republic survives, or falls from within to single-party socialist rule.

SOURCE 

************************************

Trump Doesn't Mince Words After Obama Takes Credit for Booming Economy

On Monday Barack Obama laughably tried to link his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with the booming economy claiming it paved the way "for more than a decade of economic growth and the longest streak of job creation in American history.”

President Trump didn’t mince words and accused Obama of "trying to take credit" for the Trump economy.

“Did you hear the latest con job? President Obama is now trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration,” Trump tweeted. “He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing. NOW, best jobs numbers ever.”

“Had to rebuild our military, which was totally depleted. Fed Rate UP, taxes and regulations WAY DOWN," Trump added.

Simply put, Trump is right. There have been eleven recessions since World War II, each of which was followed by a recovery. We did experience an economic recovery under Obama—it just happens it was the worst one. Here are the facts: All jobs lost in post-World War II recessions were recovered after an average of twenty-five months. But, it took seventy-seven months for employment to return to pre-recession levels, making Obama’s recovery the slowest recovery of all of them, and by a wide margin. Obama is also the only president in U.S. history to have never had a single year of 3.0 percent or greater GDP growth.

Economic growth during Obama’s presidency was so bad that mediocre economic growth was considered the new normal. In September 2016, CBS News reported that "with U.S. economic growth stuck in low gear for several years, it's leading many economists to worry that the country has entered a prolonged period where any expansion will be weaker than it has been in the past."

Investor’s Business Daily noted that there was “no upward trajectory to the economy on anyone's radar when Trump took office,” but “now that the economy is outperforming everyone's expectations, Trump's critics want to pretend that the current boom was already baked in the cake.”

Obama trying to take credit for the Trump economy is almost as laughable as Obama claiming to be scandal-free.

If Obama thinks he can claim credit for the booming economy—and that it will work—he’s got another think coming. A recent Gallup poll shows that most Americans credit President Trump for the economy.

SOURCE 

**********************************

She's Completely Lost It: Now Pelosi Is Claiming 'There Was No Acquittal'

Leftist denial of reality again

If you were wondering how Nancy Pelosi has been handling the events of the past few months, it's safe to say she's not taking it well. She's been keeping a low profile after making a spectacle of herself at the 2020 State of the Union address, but over the weekend she gave an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour that must be seen to be believed. If reality won't do what Nancy wants, she'll just deny it's happening to her.

She thought the footage you're about to see was so important that she shared it herself. After babbling for a bit to Amanpour about why she tore up Trump's speech at the SOTU, Nancy got even crazier:

Amanpour: What about, though, the fact that the president seems liberated? And this is about Democratic politics, so I'm not asking you to criticize here. But he was acquitted, his poll ratings are higher...

Pelosi: He was not... there was no acquittal. You can't have an acquittal unless you have a trial. And you can't have a trial when you have witnesses and documents. So he can say he was acquitted, and the headlines can say "Acquitted," but he's impeached forever. Branded with that and not vindicated. And even the senators were saying, "Yes, it wasn't right." But didn't have the courage to act upon that.

Amanpour: Except for?

Pelosi: Except for Mitt Romney. God bless him. And then the president criticized him for using his faith to do something he knew was wrong...

Well, at least Mitt can bask in the warm glow of Nancy Pelosi's approval. All is forgiven, Mitt! Forget all that stuff the Dems said in 2012 about you giving that woman cancer, and torturing your dog, and putting women in binders, and having an elevator for your cars, and all those other reasons they hated you. Water under the bridge. You're useful to them now.

Denial is the first stage of grief, and Nancy has been stuck there for over three years. Despite all her sputtering, Trump was indeed acquitted. She doesn't have to like it, she doesn't have to think it's fair, but it happened. She has no control over the United States Senate, and they don't answer to her. They voted. It's over. The End.

As for Trump being "impeached forever," so is Bill Clinton. If Trump isn't vindicated, neither is Slick Willie. And if the Dems had their way, Bill would be back in the White House right now!

I don't see how blatantly lying about Trump's impeachment is going to help the Dems in November, but then, I never understood why they impeached him in the first place. Is there anybody who voted for him in 2016 who isn't going to vote for him now that he's been impeached? Is there anybody who didn't vote for him in 2016 who would vote for him whether he was impeached or not? What did any of this accomplish? How did all this wasted time and money help anybody? What was the point?

Nancy Pelosi's logic is as shaky as her voice. But hey, don't let me interrupt that delusional old bat. The best thing she can do for the Republicans is to keep on yapping.

SOURCE 

******************************

Don't Look Now, But There Was a Huge Second-Amendment Victory in Virginia Today

Gun ban bill defeated! This morning the VA Senate Judiciary Cmte voted to table HB 961 for 1 year. Three sheriffs were present: myself, Sheriff Vaughn, & Sheriff Millirons. Our 2A patriots sent a message, loud and clear, on these bills. We cannot rest however. Other bills remain.

Former New York City mayor, former Republican, current presidential candidate, and never a fan of the Bill of Rights, Mike Bloomberg just saw part of his gun-control agenda suffer a major misfire in Virginia this morning.

Virginia House Bill 961 -- "a ban under the guise of compromise" -- was tabled for a full year by the state Senate Judiciary Committee. Townhall's Lawrence Keane warned last week that the bill would have banned "the sale of semiautomatic firearms that are commonly used for self-defense, recreational and competitive shooting and hunting, as well as suppressors." Worse, "standard capacity magazine possession would become a crime" under HD961 -- or would have, had it passed. That seemed the likely result just up until minutes ago.

It would be fair to guess that last month's huge Second Amendment rally weighed on committee members' minds as they voted to table 961.

The vote is a blow to Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety lobbying effort to strip Virginians of their Second Amendment rights. Laura Vozzella reported on Sunday that Bloomberg and his organizations have "plowed more than $10 million into promoting Virginia Democrats," but it wasn't enough to move this particular bill out of committee. Is that a sign that the unearthing of some of Bloomberg's ...indelicate... pronouncements about women and minorities is limiting his juice with members of his own party?

Maybe, if this Valentine's Day tweet from Virginia Democratic Congressman Donald McEachin is anything to go by:

Michael Bloomberg Appeared To Blame Obama For Racial Division In 2016 | HuffPost.  Unbelievable to blame Obama for racial division! President Obama held out the hand of reconciliation only to have it smacked away.

This morning's vote hinged on four Democrats who broke ranks to side with Republicans in opposition to HB961.

Keep in mind that the bill will come back for consideration in 2021. Since that isn't a presidential election year, it's a sure thing Democrats hope they'll be able to move HB961 forward again -- but under the radar.

Stay vigilant.

SOURCE 

*************************************

IN BRIEF

GRAB THE POPCORN: Racially insensitive elitist Michael Bloomberg makes debate stage, facing bellicose Democrat rivals for first time (AP)

SHADY: Bloomberg funding network of climate lawyers inside state AG offices (Fox News)

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Reporter who caught Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch in their tarmac meeting says, "There's so much that doesn't add up" (RedState)

FOREIGN COLLUSION: Democrat senators reportedly held secret meeting in Munich with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (The Federalist)

VIRTUE SIGNALING: Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to fight climate change climate alarmists (The Washington Post)

UAE GOES NUCLEAR: First nuclear reactor in Arab nation cleared to begin operation (Washington Examiner)

************************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

Trump Demands Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities

It's time for leftist jailers who free dangerous illegal aliens to pay the price.

Crime victims harmed by dangerous illegal aliens should be able to sue the so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that unleashed them on an unwitting public in defiance of federal immigration authorities, President Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. At the same time, he endorsed pending legislation that would accomplish this goal.

This is another politically astute immigration-related proposal from Trump who demonstrates time and time again that he is one of the few Republican presidents in modern American history who actually knows how to fight the Left. It puts the illegal alien-coddlers and open-borders fanatics on the defensive and educates the public in clearly understandable terms about who the bad guys really are in this fight over the nation’s future. It comes almost a year after Trump proposed shipping immigration detainees to sanctuary cities, which are Democrat strongholds.

As FrontPage readers know, the sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers call sanctuary jurisdictions “civil liberties safe zones” to blur the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S. Leftists also like to refer to all migrants, including illegal aliens, simply as “immigrants” in order to further muddy the waters. This helps the Left portray conservatives, who are generally not anti-immigrant –they’re anti-illegal immigration— as xenophobic bigots.

Sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States just as much as the Confederate Army was when it opened fire on Fort Sumter.

President Trump railed against the sanctuary laws of California in his address.

“Senator Thom Tillis has introduced legislation to allow Americans like Jody to sue sanctuary cities and states when a loved one is hurt or killed as a result of these deadly practices,” Trump said Feb. 4, referring to Jody Jones, a guest at the speech whose brother, Rocky Jones, was allegedly shot and killed by two-time deportee Gustavo Garcia, an illegal alien wanted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local authorities in California ignored ICE and let Garcia go.

The December 2018 killing happened after California, which is home to more than 2 million illegals on which the state lavishes unearned benefits, enacted “an outrageous law declaring their whole state to be a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants — a very terrible sanctuary — with catastrophic results,” the president said.

The illegal, who had prior arrests for robbery and assault, was released under California’s sanctuary laws that mandate resistance to federal immigration law. Jones “was at a gas station when this vile criminal fired eight bullets at him from close range, murdering him in cold blood,” Trump said.

And Jones was just one of Garcia’s victims during what Trump called “a gruesome spree of deadly violence.” He killed another person, committed a truck hijacking, an armed robbery, and got into a firefight with police.

“Before SB 54, Gustavo Garcia would have been turned over to ICE officials,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said previously, according to the Washington Post. “That’s how we’ve always done it, day in and day out. After SB 54, we no longer have the power to do that.”

California laws curb the power of state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of ICE, and punish employers for cooperating with the federal agency.

AB 450 prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with ICE—including officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts. SB 54 prevents state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of criminal illegal aliens in their custody. AB 103 imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme on the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts.

Legal challenges to the state’s sanctuary regime have not met with success.

In 2018 the Trump administration sued California, arguing state laws prevented ICE from enforcing federal law. The next year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the suit, finding improbably that California law was not in conflict with U.S. immigration law.

Charter cities are allowed in some circumstances to enact legislation that differs from state law, according to the League of California Cities. There are 121 charter cities across the state, including Bakersfield, Chula Vista, Fresno, Irvine, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Diego, San Jose, and Vallejo.

But in January, a California appellate court overturned a lower court ruling, finding that Huntington Beach and other charter cities have to follow the sanctuary laws.

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes blames the sanctuary laws for a surge in crime.

“SB 54 has made our community less safe,” Barnes said earlier this month, according to the Washington Examiner.

“The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who committed serious offenses and present a threat to our community if released.”

“The two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end,” he added.

The federal legislation touted by Trump could do just that, though with Democrats in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the bill won’t go anywhere for the time being. Control of the House could shift in November, allowing the next Congress to approve it.

The bill Sen. Tillis introduced, S. 2059, the proposed “Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act,” would allow a victim of a crime committed by an illegal alien to sue the sanctuary jurisdiction that shielded the alien from ICE for compensatory damages.

Among the original co-sponsors of the bill are Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

S. 2059 would allow “a civil action [to be] brought against a sanctuary jurisdiction by an individual (or the estate, survivors, or heirs of an individual) who— (A) is injured or harmed by an alien who benefitted from a sanctuary policy of the sanctuary jurisdiction; and (B) would not have been so injured or harmed but for the alien receiving the benefit of such sanctuary policy.” (Its companion bill in the House is H.R. 3964.)

In addition to creating a private right of civil action for victims of sanctuary jurisdictions, the measure would allow the feds to cut off Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to any jurisdiction that blocks victims from proceeding with lawsuits.

“If politicians want to prioritize reckless sanctuary policies over public safety, they should also be willing to provide just compensation for the victims,” Tillis said when he launched the bill.

“The Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act is commonsense legislation that will enhance public safety and hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for their refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr announced Feb. 10 that the U.S. Department of Justice is cracking down on sanctuary states and cities that have “policies and laws designed to thwart the ability of federal officers to take custody of these criminals and thereby help them escape back into the community.”

“These policies are not about people who came to our country illegally but have otherwise been peaceful and productive members of society,” Barr said at the National Sheriffs’ Association Winter Legislative and Technology Conference.

“Their express purpose is to shelter aliens whom local law enforcement has already arrested for other crimes. This is neither lawful nor sensible.”

Barr said the DoJ is taking legal action against New Jersey, King County in Washington state, and California.

Of course, it’s not enough, but it’s a good start.

SOURCE 

************************************

Are Americans Ready for a Homosexual President?

A glaring issue that few conservative pundits have hitherto dared to weigh in on was finally broached by Rush Limbaugh on his radio show Wednesday. Assessing Democrat voters’ options for presidential candidates, Rush observed, “You’ve got Fauxcahontas way back there in the background barely out of the tepee bringing up the tail end. Biden’s gone. So you’re faced with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who’s not even a Democrat [and] a gay guy, 37 years old, loves kissing his husband on debate stages.”

Limbaugh continued, “You’re looking at your options today, and you’re asking, ‘OK, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer.’ Then they’re sitting there, and they’re looking at Mayor Pete, a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage. And they’re saying, ‘OK, how’s this gonna look — a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband onstage next to Mr. Man Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?’” He then wondered, “[Democrat leaders] gotta be looking at that. They’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great ‘wokeness’ and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage. … They have to be saying this, don’t they?”

Predictably, the Leftmedia ran to the fainting couches, labeling Limbaugh “homophobic” for daring to ask a legitimate and cogent question — a question that no doubt Democrat leadership is quietly considering as well: “Is an outwardly homosexual candidate electable?” To be clear, the question is not whether Buttigieg can win the Democrat nomination; as we have observed in the past, Democrat women in general strongly support homosexuals. (Ironically, should Buttigieg win the presidency, there would be no First Lady or female represented in the White House, but we digress.) In fact, a good argument can be made that the only reason Buttigieg finds himself in contention within the Democrat field is because of his homosexuality, as he checks the Left’s “sexual minority” identity box. However, Buttigieg’s homosexuality may also be a deterrent for a large number of voters who are sick and tired of the mainstream media constantly shoving its homosexual agenda in their faces. The bigger question Limbaugh is addressing is whether the majority of Americans have a problem with a homosexual in the White House.

One who wouldn’t have a problem voting for a homosexual is … President Donald Trump. “I think it’s great,” he said Thursday. “I think that’s something that perhaps some people will have a problem with. I have no problem with it whatsoever. I think it’s good.” And while there’s no indication that Trump didn’t give a genuine answer, it’s also illuminating. First, it negates the “homophobic” smear that would be leveled against him no matter who he faced in the general election, but especially if it is Buttigieg. Second, this also may be Trump tipping his hand as to whom he views as the Democrats’ weakest candidate and the one he would most prefer to run against. In fact, his recent back-and-forth with Michael Bloomberg may be an indication that Trump views Bloomberg as his biggest threat.

Finally, the moral hypocrisy charge with which the Left and many anti-Trumpers love to blast conservative Christians for having voted for Trump given his past indiscretions would only be proven to be the political canard that it is. These self-righteous hypocrites voice their support for an openly proud homosexual like Buttigieg.

SOURCE 

*****************************************

Justice Ginsberg throws cold water on the Left's decades-long push of the Equal Rights Amendment

Last month, the Virginia state legislature, currently under Democrat control, passed the controversial Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Why does that matter? It makes Virginia the 38th state to ratify the long-defunct 28th Amendment that Congress passed in 1972, which is seemingly significant because Virginia becomes the final state needed to push the ERA over the required ratification threshold of two-thirds of states for the adoption of a constitutional amendment.

There are, however, a couple of major roadblocks that make it highly unlikely that the ERA will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution anytime soon. First, when Congress passed the ERA, it gave the states a 10-year deadline to reach the two-thirds ratification threshold needed for adoption. That deadline passed way back in 1982. Second, following the failure of the necessary number of states to ratify, five states have withdrawn their ratification. (The House is voting today to make a new deadline, for whatever difference that will make.)

For those reasons, even the Left’s favorite Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, believes the ERA’s chance of becoming the 28th Amendment is dead. “There’s too much controversy about latecomers. Plus, a number of states have withdrawn their ratification,” she says. “So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said, ‘We’ve changed our minds’?”

While the ERA was packaged to sound fair in theory — with its calls for protecting “equality of rights” between the sexes — in reality it would have created a massive backdoor opening for the injection of socialism, enshrining abortion rights in the Constitution, and eviscerating the difference between the sexes to the detriment of women. Fortunately, even a feminist champion like Ginsberg recognizes the irony in seeking to break the law in an effort to enforce a new law. If only she always believed in that principle.

SOURCE 

**********************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************

Trump Administration to Deploy Elite Tactical Units to Sanctuary Cities

Elite tactical units from the Customs and Border Patrol will be sent to sanctuary cities for several months, the Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday. The elite CBP agents are normally used to deal with smugglers and other violent offenders.

This is the latest in the escalating war against sanctuary cities and states by the Trump administration. And the sanctuary cities can't do anything to stop them.

“This is transparent retaliation against local governments for refusing to do the administration’s bidding,” said Naureen Shah at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The New York Times reported that Customs and Border Protection is sending 100 agents to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. CBP usually handles border and port matters, while ICE is responsible for interior enforcement and deportations.

The ACLU is correct -- it is retaliation. It's retaliation for years of sanctuary cities thumbing their noses at the law and generating enormous fear and hostility against Washington among both legal and illegal alien communities alike. They thought this just one big game. They are finding out otherwise.

ICE, though, has increasingly struggled against sanctuaries, which while they vary in their exact policies, generally restrict cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration law enforcement.

The most extreme of jurisdictions refuse all communications, including refusing to tell ICE when illegal immigrant targets with criminal records are being released from jail. ICE says it wants to be on hand to pick them up and deport them, getting criminals out of communities.

Sanctuaries argue that if they cooperate with ICE it will scare immigrants from reporting other crimes.

I am tired of that excuse. Illegals are terrified of the police. What little cooperation the cops get comes only after the illegal is threatened by the police to be handed over to ICE.

If the left wants to use the heartbreaking story of illegals to gain sympathy for their cause, two can play at that game.

Mr.  Trump, in remarks at the White House Friday afternoon, blasted sanctuaries and gave a platform to Daria Ortiz, whose 92-year-old grandmother was slain earlier this year in New York City in a death the president blamed on sanctuary policies.

Reeaz Khan, the Guyanese illegal immigrant accused of killing Maria Fuertes, had been released by New York in November in defiance of an ICE detainer request.

Ms. Ortiz broke down in tears as she recalled her grandmother, a legal immigrant from the Dominican Republic. Mr. Trump put his arm on her back to comfort her as she spoke.

“The tragedy is my grandmother’s not ever going to be here again,” Ms. Ortiz said. “The man that is responsible for this should have never had the opportunity to do this.”

The courts may not force sanctuary cities to cooperate with the federal government, but they aren't going to tell Washington where it can deploy its agents. This war is a long way from being over.

SOURCE 

*************************************

President Trump praised for draining National Security Council swamp

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement praising President Donald Trump and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien for removing 70 Obama holdovers from the National Security Council:

“More than three years into President Trump’s first term, his National Security Advisor is finally ending the bloated National Security Council structure inherited from the Obama administration. And it’s about time!

The National Security Council personnel were quoted by the New York Times during the first year of the Trump administration bragging that they saw their job as being to block President Trump’s policies and the recent set of leaks associated with the impeachment are evidence that the NSC continues to be a politicized nest of ideologues who oppose the President’s foreign policy.

It is important to have dissenting on foreign policy within any administration, however, the dissenting views must cease once the President has set a policy direction. Unfortunately, the Obama holdovers have been simply trying to run out the clock on the Trump presidency rather than serving and supporting the administration’s goals.

Hopefully, this long-needed downsizing of the bloated NSC will result in an effective operating team as opposed to being the heart of the resistance against President Trump.”

SOURCE 

***********************************

Bernie Sanders single-payer healthcare system failed in his own state

Bernie Sanders is now the Democratic front-runner, but to win the party’s nomination, he must convince moderate primary voters that his signature policy, Medicare for All, is a worthwhile venture. But before he can do that, he must prove that it’s realistic, too.

Sanders’s home state, however, is proof that it’s not. Vermont was supposed to pave the way for a single-payer healthcare system. The Democratic-controlled state legislature drafted the bill in 2014, and Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin was ready to sign it into law. But then Shumlin realized he had a problem: He couldn’t pay for it.

The 11.5% payroll tax on small business and sliding premiums of up to 9.5% on people’s incomes “might hurt our economy,” Shumlin admitted.

“These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass,” the governor said at the time. “In my judgment, the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families, and the state’s economy.”

The system Vermont’s bill proposed would also have added even more administrative complexity to an already complex system. It made certain exemptions for large businesses, reducing the funding necessary to get the program running. And it was never clear whether or how citizens already enrolled in federal plans, such as Medicare and Medicaid, would have been integrated into the system.

In short, Medicare for All was too expensive and too complex for Vermont.

This should be a red flag for proponents of Sanders’s policy: If an individual state was unable to implement a single-payer system, why should we believe the federal government will be able to?

Politically, there were very few obstacles standing between Vermont and Medicare for All. The problem is that Medicare for All is an obstacle in and of itself. Unfortunately for Sanders, the factors that guaranteed the bill’s failure in Vermont have not changed: It’s still too expensive and too complex.

The simple truth is that the majority of Americans still prefer to choose their healthcare plans, especially when higher taxes and increased regulation are the alternatives. Medicare for All might be more popular today than it was several years ago, but not by much. Sanders doesn't seem to care, but if he wants his campaign to progress, he'll need to.

SOURCE 

************************************

Bloomberg — Authoritarian, Not Racist

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump deleted a tweet calling Democrat presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg a “total racist.” Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not delete her tweet saying the same thing. This came after leaked audio surfaced from 2015 when Bloomberg said, “Ninety-five percent of murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities, 16 to 25.” Cue the outrage mob.

That remark would’ve quickly ended Bloomberg’s candidacy were he (still) a Republican, but given that’s he’s a Democrat bent on beating Trump, it’s just old news. But after the clown-show caucuses in Iowa and the uninspiring follow-up primary in New Hampshire, the gun-grabbing former New York City mayor stands poised to save the party from itself.

MSNBC correspondent Joy Reid believes Bloomberg is the only remaining candidate who resonates with blacks. And without the overwhelming support of that key voting bloc, neither Bernie Sanders, nor Pete Buttigieg, nor Amy Klobuchar can hope to beat Trump in November.

This is why everyone from Trump to Bloomberg’s fellow Democrats seems to be taking shots at him. And there’s a growing chorus, including prominent conservatives Newt Gingrich and Peggy Noonan, who think he can pull it off. Bloomberg may in fact be the biggest threat Trump faces.

We’re not sure the “RACIST!!!!” charge will stick. We can sift through the political past of any candidate and find racially insensitive comments here or there. Yet some black leaders are quick to dismiss Bloomberg’s history regarding minority crime. This week, three members of the all-Democrat Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Bloomberg, thereby plugging the hole in a public-relations dam that was about to burst.

Given Joe Biden’s weak performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, black voters had already begun to shift their support to Bloomberg according to recent polling. That’s why his “racist” comments suddenly “leaked.” Next up: Relitigating his #MeToo moments.

Yet maybe instead of going after Bloomberg on race (or sex), we should shine a light on his authoritarian instincts.

As Brad Palumbo writes at the Washington Examiner, “[Bloomberg has] intruded on the lives of New Yorkers in the pettiest and most paternalistic ways, such as a nanny state ban on large-sized sodas. Now, Bloomberg is running for president on a platform of toxic, big-government centrism.” Bloomberg also has been critical of a free press, and his own Bloomberg News has stopped covering him altogether during his presidential run.

It is his anti-Second Amendment crusade, however, that is most tyrannical. Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety is the Leftmedia’s go-to source of misinformation regarding crime committed with guns, and Bloomberg — ignorant though he is about firearms themselves — wants to take away Second Amendment rights.

Black Americans may feel they have nothing to fear from a Bloomberg presidency. But if Mayor Mike makes it to the White House, we’re sure to see an expansion of the nanny state — and an equal diminishment of American Liberty.

SOURCE 

***********************************

UK: Boris Johnson vetoes mansion tax after backlash

The PM has 'cooled' on the idea to charge wealthy homeowners more in next month's budget

Boris Johnson has shelved plans to impose a “mansion tax” on owners of expensive homes, following a major backlash among Conservative MPs and grassroots.

The Prime Minister is understood to have "cooled" on the idea of including a new "high value property tax" in next month's budget, having previously discussed the proposals with Sajid Javid, who quit as Chancellor last week.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that the Treasury had also wanted to announce a nationwide revaluation of homes, which would have left millions of families with higher council tax bills.

Both policies are now "highly unlikely" to feature in the budget due to be delivered by Rishi Sunak, Mr Javid's successor, a Government source told this newspaper.

Mr Johnson and Mr Javid are both understood to have backed away from the proposal for a “recurring” wealth tax after this newspaper's disclosure of the plan last week sparked fury among senior Tories.

In a sign of the strength of opposition to the proposals, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the influential 1922 committee of backbench Conservatives, warned Mr Javid about the "push-back" in the parliamentary party in a face-to-face meeting ahead of Thursday's reshuffle.The plans were first put forward by the Treasury as part of a list of possible "revenue raisers"  that could help the Government stick to Mr Javid's fiscal rules - which could now be loosened, in a move likely to lead to claims of the Conservatives breaching their manifesto.

SOURCE 

************************************

IN BRIEF

"NECESSARY IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST": Trump administration diverts $3.8 billion in Pentagon funding to border wall (NPR)

DEMOCRAT MEDIA COMPLEX: YouTube nixes video of Rand Paul mentioning alleged whistleblower's name during impeachment trial (The Daily Caller)

BUDGET IMBALANCE: Federal taxes and spending set records through January (CNSNews)

FAMILIAR FACE RETURNS: Hope Hicks returning to Trump White House as senior adviser (ABC News)

ON TOP OF FRAUD, IP THEFT: Huawei charged with racketeering and defying U.S. sanctions in business with Iran and North Korea (National Review)

CHANGING TIMES: McClatchy, publisher of dozens of U.S. newspapers, files for bankruptcy protection (NBC News)

WHO'S REALLY DIVIDING US? Man arrested for attacking 15-year-old Trump supporter in New Hampshire (The Daily Wire)

**********************************

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  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here.  Home page supplement

**************************