Monday, December 10, 2018


The Left’s Demented Hatred of President George H.W. Bush

The Left is an ever-fuming volcano of hate

George Herbert Walker Bush, America’s 41st president, passed away on Friday night at the age of 94. The last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office, this great patriot devoted his life to serving his country. President George Herbert Walker Bush represented all the best that defines America – courage under fire in the continuing fight for freedom, generosity of spirit, faith in a higher purpose than oneself, and belief in individual dignity and liberty.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the America-hating Left wasted no time following George H.W. Bush’s death to savage him. Indeed, they have used all the epithets against the late President Bush as they regularly use against America itself – warmonger, racist, sexist, etc.

George H. W. Bush’s understanding of the perils and tragedy of war was forged as a young torpedo bomber pilot during World War II. He nearly lost his life when forced to bail out of his squadron plane over the Pacific Ocean after coming under attack by Japanese anti-aircraft guns. Building on years of post-war government experience as a congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, Chief of the Liaison Office in China, Director of Central Intelligence, and Ronald Reagan’s vice president, he was perhaps the best qualified person to have ever run for president when he campaigned successfully in 1988 to succeed Ronald Reagan.

As president and leader of the free world, he presided over the fall of the Soviet Union, the historic reunification of Germany as the linchpin of a more stable Europe, and the first Gulf War that liberated Kuwait from the rapacious grip of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Domestically, he was responsible for a new civil rights law protecting the disabled. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, making it easier for employees to sue employers on grounds of discrimination, after having vetoed a bill that he believed would have imposed unreasonable quotas. He worked to improve educational standards and environmental protections.

George H. W. Bush served only one term as president, undone by a weak economy and his breaking of a campaign pledge not to raise taxes. Nevertheless, as former Secretary of State James Baker, one of the late president’s closest friends, said in tribute on Sunday, "I think that, no doubt, he will be remembered as our most-successful one-term president and, perhaps, one of the most successful presidents of all time." Not to the America-hating leftists, however. They wasted no time in cursing the deceased former president.

 “F*** him,” tweeted feminist activist Anita Sarkeesian. “And f*** media's historical erasure.” She was particularly disturbed at the late President George H.W. Bush for his launching of the first Gulf War to force Saddam Hussein’s invading forces out of Kuwait. “He was a warmonger whose violence created unliveable (sic) conditions in Iraq hurting civilians, like my family who didn’t have access to life saving drugs or basic food,” she wrote in her tweet. In another tweet, she wrote, “The first gulf war helped solidify the demonization of Muslims and Arabs in the mind's (sic) of (mostly white) Americans creating far reaching consequences. It also set the stage for Bush Jr to launch another racist war WHICH IS STILL HAPPENING IN CASE YOU FORGOT.”

The first Gulf War was in fact a multinational effort, including Muslim countries in the Middle East region, that liberated the Muslim country of Kuwait from a Stalin-admiring dictator. When that objective was achieved, the war stopped. No further effort was made to topple Hussein from power in Iraq itself. Hussein’s monstrous crimes against his own people dwarfed any civilian casualties that may have been caused by the U.S.-led coalition to oust his forces from Kuwait.

The unlivable conditions Sarkeesian complained about were Saddam Hussein’s own doing. He lived in the lap of luxury while his people lived in grinding poverty. Following the end of the first Gulf War, the horrible living conditions and Saddam Hussein’s campaign of genocide within his country continued, along with his defiance of a succession of UN Security Council resolutions.

The second Iraq war was launched more than a decade later by President Bush 41’s son, George W. Bush, to finally remove the dictator. Saddam Hussein was the author of his own destiny after having failed miserably the chance to redeem himself following the first Gulf War. As usual, leftists like Anita Sarkeesian will choose the side of the brutal dictator over Americans fighting for freedom and human dignity.

Leftists have also not forgiven a controversial ad used during the late President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign against former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. The ad featured William Horton, a convicted murderer released in 1986 under a weekend pass program that Dukakis continued to defend even after Horton subsequently kidnapped and raped a woman. Horton happened to be black, which to leftists means that any ad using his picture in a true account of the crime he committed after his release, and noting Dukakis’ unwillingness to change the weekend pass program that made this crime possible, is unforgivably racist.

Amanda Marcotte of Salon was a particularly fierce critic of the Horton ad, accusing George H.W. Bush within hours of his death of being “willing to embrace racial demagoguery from the beginning.” Irrespective of the truth of the ad, she would sacrifice freedom of speech at the altar of identity politics and political correctness that must stamp out all vestiges of so-called white privilege.

“Free speech,” she tweeted last April in a foreshadowing of her denunciation of George H.W. Bush after his death for the Horton ad, “is now being used primarily, perhaps exclusively, as a right wing code for white nationalism.”

Marcotte would be wise to do some background reading, including of her own Slate publication back in 1999. It was Al Gore who first introduced the issue of “weekend passes for convicted criminals” in his primary debate with Dukakis, Slate admitted, although it tried to portray Gore’s use of the issue as an innocent act because he did not explicitly identify Horton.

Marcotte also claimed it was of no consequence that an independent expenditure group, not the Bush campaign itself, was responsible for airing the ad with Horton’s picture. She said that the late president was “a grown man, responsible for his campaign decisions.”

The late president was indeed responsible for his campaign decisions and never claimed to be a saint when campaigning. He was at times a “hard-knuckled politician,” wrote Jon Meacham, presidential historian and the author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. “To serve he had to succeed; to preside he had to prevail,” Mr. Meacham added.

“For Mr. Bush the impulses to do in his opponents and to do good were inextricably bound. He was at once ferocious and gracious — a formidable combination. What mattered was whether one was principled and selfless once in command. And as president of the United States, Mr. Bush was surely that. For every compromise or concession to party orthodoxy or political expedience on the campaign trail, in office Mr. Bush ultimately did the right thing.”

If this sounds like an ends-justify-the means philosophy, welcome to the world of U.S. politics. As Mark Twain said, “If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.” Leftists, who play dirty in exploiting the race card, have no business feigning moral indignation regarding George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign.

Their voices were silent, for example, when NAACP ads were running against Bush 41’s son, George W. Bush, in 2000 showing a pickup truck with a chain dragging James Byrd, a black man, to his death. The ad played on race by using Renee Mullins, Byrd’s daughter, to denounce George W. Bush, who had been Texas’s governor before running for president, for opposing new hate crime legislation. "It was like my father was killed all over again," she said, leaving out the fact that two of the three killers had already been sentenced to death by a Texas court, while the third was serving a life sentence.

Gore, who had first raised the racially charged issue of weekend passes for convicts against Dukakis in 1988, not only did not denounce the NAACP racially exploitative ad. He proudly told his audience at the annual convention of the NAACP in October 2000, “I am a member of the NAACP. It’s good to be home.”

Leftists traffic in hate for everything decent about America, including its Constitution, democratic institutions, traditions, and heroes. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, they have shamelessly gone out of their way to slander the good name of George Herbert Walker Bush within hours of the death of this great American patriot.

These narcissistic ideologues on the Left care nothing about the feelings of the late president’s grieving family, friends, colleagues, and the many millions of Americans who admired his heroism and devotion to public service. They care only about imposing their own twisted political pathology on the rest of us.

SOURCE 

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

Grand theft election in California

Back on election night, Republicans were heading for victories in California. Three weeks later, Paul Ryan lamented, “we lost every close race.” For the outgoing House Speaker, it “defies logic,” and quite possibly election law as well. 

This year California legalized “ballot harvesting,” which empowers a third party to collect ballots and deliver them to election officials. The more than 250,000 election day vote-by-mail drop-offs were also the result of ballot harvesting. And the Election Integrity Project California found discrepancies in the totals of poll and mail ballots cited by the state and four counties in southern California.

“It shouldn’t ‘defy logic’ that elections officials are meticulous in counting every eligible ballot,” California secretary of state Alex Padilla told reporters.  “California works to ensure every ballot is counted properly and every ballot is accounted for. In the most populous state in the nation — and the state with the largest number of registered voters — this takes time.”

According to Padilla, “in California, we believe in an inclusive and accessible democracy,” and

“provide voters as many opportunities as possible to cast their ballots.” These include “no-excuse vote by mail, automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, and early voting.”

Padilla talked up the “accuracy and integrity of our elections” but wasn’t about to allow any independent group to investigate the possibility of voter fraud. This was not a new development.

California’s 2015 “motor voter” law empowered the Department of Motor Vehicles automatically to register as voters those who get driver’s licenses. Secretary of State Alex Padilla claimed that protocols and “firewalls” would keep ineligibles from voting, but there was room for reasonable doubt. After the 2016 election, Padilla refused to release any information to a federal probe of voter fraud, which he called a “false and debunked” claim.

For the 2018 election, Padilla expected “millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California.” True to form, by March, 2018, the DMV had issued licenses to more than one million illegals and from April to August registered 182,000 “new voters.” Padilla isn’t saying how many illegals actually voted or how many illegal ballots were among those “harvested” to flip close races for Democrats.

Instead of investigating, the state’s slavishly pro-Democrat establishment media pins the results on anti-Trump backlash. Politicians and pundits also ignore the state’s voting history.  California voted for Ronald Reagan as governor and except for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Republican presidential candidates won California in every election from 1952-1988. That includes Reagan’s two victories and George H.W. Bush in 1988.

In 1986, California passed Proposition 63, the Official Language of California Amendment. This measure directs the state legislature to “preserve the role of English as the state’s common language” and refrain from “passing laws which diminish or ignore the role of English as the

state’s common language.” A full 73 percent of California voters approved the measure but state officials ignored it. English proficiency is required for citizenship but in 2016, the California voter guide came in English and six other languages: Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

In 1996 voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, by a margin of 54 to 46 percent. This measure ended racial, ethnic, and gender preferences in college admissions, state employment, and state contracting. The worst offender had been the University of California and current UC president Janet Napolitano still gives preference to false-documented illegals, who get in-state tuition and even legal services.

In 1998, 60 percent of California voters passed Proposition 227, which barred bilingual education, which was really instruction entirely in Spanish for the children of illegals. By 2016, Democrats had enough votes to repeal the measure, and they looked to incoming illegals as their expanding electoral college.

According to an MIT study, the number of illegals in the United States is not 11 million but 22 million. Last year the Public Policy Institute of California pegged the number in the Golden State between 2.35 and 2.6 million, but the true figure, following the MIT model, is surely more than double.

California is a sanctuary state and offers illegals the most lavish benefits, including voter registration. That’s why the latest “caravan” is headed for California, the farthest place from Central America on the U.S.-Mexican border. Democrats are eager for a new shipment of voters. That’s why razaist attorney general Xavier Becerra threatens legal action against the Border Patrol, not the mobs of violent criminals who attack U.S. federal agents.

Meanwhile, secretary of state Alex Padilla claims accuracy and integrity in elections. On the other hand, Padilla refuses to cooperate with probes of voter fraud, declines to open up the voter rolls, and will not allow independent inspection of election results.

Without transparency, Paul Ryan has reason to doubt the results of the close races long after election night. Legitimate citizens and legal immigrants have good cause to suspect massive voter fraud, the best explanation for the electoral changes in California since the 1980s.

SOURCE 

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

Fascist de Blasio shows why socialistic impulses are not made for America

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, as you may have heard, made the biggest mistake any elite leftist can. He admitted what he really believes. Lamenting the inability of his government to plan every aspect of real estate in New York City “to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be,” de Blasio identified property rights as the great obstacle to his ambitions. “What’s been hardest,” he said, “is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property.” His comments have attracted a wide range of criticism.

First of all, the mayor of New York City, the financial capital of the world, complaining about capitalism is much like the mayor of Los Angeles complaining about the entertainment industry holding his town back. If not for the centuries long embrace of private property rights in New York City, de Blasio would be mayor of an impoverished fishing village. Second, his indictment of private property seems to stop just short of trespassing his own. There is nothing stopping de Blasio from handing his multiple rental properties over to the New York City government, yet these rental properties continue to net him thousands of dollars every month.

But as out of touch and hypocritical as his statement may have been, it serves as a valuable reminder of what is really behind the current “socialist moment” within the Democratic Party. The media has made cult heroes of left wing radicals like Bernie Sanders, who are hard at work trying to create new generation of socialist extremists by extolling the virtues of failed Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and New York representative elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. De Blasio attributes this radical energy to a “socialistic impulse” in communities of people seeking “things to be planned in accordance” to their needs.

There is an impulse, but it is not socialistic. It is tyrannical, and it is not new. This tyrannical impulse lives within all of us. The desire to set ourselves apart and write special rules for others is the dark side of human nature. It is that immutable impulse, which ever leads men and nations toward ruin, that our Founding Fathers set out to harness and neutralize with the Constitution. They knew no power on earth could turn people into angels. So they consciously devised a political system of divided government and dispersed powers, and cultivated an economic system of free market capitalism, anchored in equal individual property rights.

De Blasio is absolutely right that the great threat to his ideological goals are private property and the rule of law that protects it. What really frustrates him is that in America, everyone else enjoys the same rights he does. That is the real story about the lament of the New York City mayor, and the reason that boomlet socialism is enjoying a surge on the left.

Despite what “fake news” tells you, there is nothing populist about socialism. It has never empowered the “little guy.” In socialist systems, the little guy always ends up in bread lines or behind bars.

SOURCE 

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

November Jobs Report: 155,000 Jobs Added, Unemployment Steady at 3.7%

The U.S. economy added 155,000 jobs in the month of November and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent, according to Department of Labor (DOL) data released Friday. Wages hit 3.1 percent growth over a year in November, the first time in nearly a decade that wages have broken the 3 percent benchmark. Wage growth held steady at 3.1 percent through November from a year before.

The 3 percent benchmark has not been hit in year-over-year wage growth since April 2009. The increase in wages is an effect of the historically tight labor market as employers offer better pay to attract workers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

SOURCE 

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

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCHPOLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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

No comments: